The Convent: A Novel Read online

  After the mid-afternoon prayer, they resumed their work until it was time to assemble for supper, which began with each nun having a reluctant spoonful of that cod-liver oil. It was a practice started by the Mother Superior, who was aware of its health benefits from her missionary days. When supper finished, they had an hour of recreation, which they spent doing needlework, reading or, once a month, watching the magic lantern show which the Mother Superior would put on in the refectory with slides ordered by post. It was followed by vespers, and then the nuns were free until the night prayer and the Great Silence. In the middle of the night they left their beds to attend nocturns.

  On the eastern transept of the chapel was the library, filled with religious manuscripts and printed books that had not been banned by the Inquisition. There were two gardens in the convent, one where the nuns grew the vegetables and herbs they used in the kitchen and one for the flowers they sold in the summer to a florist in the city to supplement their income. Behind the chapel was a well-equipped carpentry workshop, which had not been used in years, and a cemetery with crosses and gravestones covered with yellow moss where the nuns were buried. There were several other buildings and rooms in the convent, but like the school for novices they, too, had been left empty for a long time and had fallen into disrepair. The music room, where in the past the choir that was famous beyond the borders of the diocese practised, was now used for the storage of furniture and tools which no one wanted to admit that they would never use again. A group of white storks had made their nests on the tall chimneys of the convent, where they stayed until late October, and then left for the African coast, not to return until spring. Over the years the number of nuns in the convent had declined, and these days there were only five and the Mother Superior. Sister María Inés had no doubt that they were the last survivors of an age that was coming to its end.

  When the nuns in the chapel heard the baby crying, they crossed themselves and looked at each other with terror. The Mother Superior spoke in a calm firm voice. ‘Sister Carlota,’ she said. Go to my room and feed the child. The milk is on the bedside table.’ She gestured to the other nuns to stand and added: ‘I will be with you as soon as we finish our prayer.’

  Sister Carlota obeyed with a bow. She was the oldest nun in the convent, already old when Sister María Inés had arrived, but still carried out her daily tasks with a spirit that could only be understood as a candid contract with death not to call her over as long as she could be useful. The Mother Superior depended on her. Having been brought up in another time, Sister Carlota always carried out any instruction she was given, even if she disagreed with it. She was the one who had welcomed Sister María Inés when she had come back from Africa, and had taken her under her wing with maternal affection. They had remained close until Sister María Inés, having been elected mother superior, had reluctantly distanced herself from the old woman, convinced that their intimacy would compromise her authority.

  The nuns watched Sister Carlota leave the chapel and turned to the Mother Superior. They did not dare ask her about the baby. Sister María Inés cleared her throat and resumed the service. The hymns did not dissolve the sense of mystery. She ordered the door shut, but she could tell that the nuns continued not to pay attention. When at last the prayers ended, the women remained on their pews with the hope of learning why there was a baby in the convent. But the Mother Superior was in no mood to explain. She said: ‘That is it. Go in the peace of Christ.’

  She left the chapel before them and hurried to her room. Sister Carlota was sitting on the bed with the child in her arms. He was no longer crying. The Mother Superior took him from her with great care and noticed a little silver medal pinned to the bed sheet with which the baby was wrapped.

  ‘It is Santa Brígida,’ Sister Carlota said. ‘She will look after him.’

  The sun had passed its highest point and slanted through the narrow windows. The heat in the room rose. On warm days like this, Sister María Inés often took refuge in the library, whose high-beam ceiling kept it cool all afternoon and allowed her to work there all day, emerging only for prayers and meals. But a room heavy with the smell of old parchment would not have been healthy for a newborn baby. Without taking her eyes from the child, she asked Sister Carlota to open a window. ‘Only one,’ she said.

  The old nun did as she was told. She had a natural love of the young and defenceless. The mission closest to her heart was saving the stray dogs of the city and bringing them to the convent, where she cared for them as if she were Saint Francis of Assisi. Time had shown no mercy to her eyesight, but this did not prevent her from going about the convent at any time of day, for she knew the location of every room, staircase and corridor by heart. The Mother Superior said: ‘The baby will need to be changed soon, Carlota. Make him some nappies from the softest cloth you can find.’

  The nun promised that she would do so, and asked: ‘Have you decided what to do with him, Reverend Mother?’

  Sister María Inés shook her head.

  ‘Perhaps someone would know of a childless couple,’ the old nun suggested.

  ‘That would be against the law,’ the Mother Superior said.

  ‘Then we could try the orphanage.’

  The Mother Superior also dismissed that suggestion with a grimace. ‘It would be like giving the baby away to the gypsies,’ she said, and sent the nun away. ‘I am sorry I made you miss the prayer, Carlota. The nappies and nothing else. I relieve you of your other duties for the rest of the day. Pray in your room.’

  The old woman thanked her with a bow and left after giving the baby a lingering look. The Mother Superior rocked the child to sleep. No one was allowed in her room without her permission. She cleaned it with a care and commitment that one who did not know her might mistake for humility, but which was in fact a desire for privacy that despite her many years of convent life was as strong as ever. Every day she would wake up long before the bell summoned the sisters to the chapel for the dawn prayer, wash, put on her old habit and take a walk round the convent in the dark as quietly as a ghost, breathing in the night moisture redolent with the scent of pine in the air. Then she would unlock the door of the chapel, light the oil lamps that had gone off during the night, inspect the traps baited with chocolate and throw away the dead rats before Sister Carlota saw them and burst into tears.

  By the time that dawn would break, she would be back in her room and sitting at her desk. Her administrative duties usually took up most of her morning. She prepared and signed invoices and recorded all transactions in a book filled with her beautiful handwriting, which she had learned from the medieval calligraphy manuals kept in the library. The convent had no bank account. She kept the money, the promissory notes from their various debtors and the ancient titles to the land that belonged to the convent from the days of King Philip II in a big coffer with three padlocks whose heavy keys hung with the rosary looped over her belt. After updating the accounts, she answered the many letters from women who enquired about taking the veil, trying not to discourage any from joining the convent but stressing the sacrifices that they should be prepared to make. Above all, she tried to estimate the intensity of their faith, for she knew that it was a decision invariably made on impulse, and urged them to take time to consider with great care what they were about to do. This she did perhaps too well because very few women ever wrote to her again.

  Her afternoons were devoted to her favourite pastime: servicing the car. Like nursing, it was another skill that she had learned during her time in Africa. The old Ford was kept in a shed behind the chapel, where Midas, their superannuated donkey, also quietly lived out his twilight years. After lunch Sister María Inés put on a loose white smock over her habit and went to the shed where she pumped up the tyres of the car, topped up the radiator, lubricated the engine and fought the doomed fight against the rust that spread on its chassis. Once a month she polished the car from end to end with the wax the nuns used on the wooden floors of the convent. She did all th
e repairs herself, pleased that she saved the convent the money they would otherwise have to pay the mechanic in the city. She had begun to teach Sister Beatriz about car engines with the hope that one day she would take up the responsibility of keeping the Ford alive.

  She would stay in the shed for a long time, breaking only for a brief meditation and the rosary. Then she would return to her room, hang up her smock and make her way to the chapel ahead of the sisters to prepare for the mid-afternoon prayer. She would walk up and down the nave carrying out her tasks in silent meditation, while the draught from the door would make the candles flicker and her shadow flutter on every wall. It was an important ritual. By the time the nuns would come in for the prayer, she would already be in the presence of the Holy Spirit.

  But she did not go to the shed this afternoon. Rocking the baby to sleep, she stood at the window and looked at the steps where the suitcase had been found earlier that day. Sister Lucía had driven to the city and would not be back until after vespers. Sister María Inés went from window to window pulling the curtains. In the stifling room she began to sweat, and it was then with the baby in her arms that she understood the significance of what had happened that morning. She kissed the child on the forehead and looked at him as if his face were familiar to her. Then she said: ‘It has been a very long time. I no longer expected you to come. But Our Lord behaves in ways that surprise even his most devoted servants.’ When she was young, she had prayed to God for any sign of mercy, and had continued to pray for mercy for several years after becoming a nun, but He had not seemed to listen. Eventually she had given up praying for mercy, without admitting to herself that she was disappointed in God. Many more years had passed before she had asked His forgiveness for having doubted His wisdom, and still she would sometimes weep in bed with bursts of tears that were heard as far as the nuns’ dormitory.

  The baby had fallen asleep and she placed him on the bed. Then she went and put the old suitcase in the back of her wardrobe, and knelt in front of the statue of the Virgin to pray to the glory of God.

  In the refectory the three nuns were cutting and parcelling the altar breads, their main source of income. The breads had to be ready before the women went to bed. Once a week, very early in the morning, a baker came from the city in a van to collect them. The nuns had spent the entire afternoon talking about the child and had fallen behind with their work. Now it was almost evening, and they worked in a hurry, no longer talking to each other. When Sister Carlota entered, they looked at her with expectation. Without saying a word, she went to the storeroom and came back with a clean tablecloth and the scissors. She sat at the table and began to cut the cloth in squares. Sister Teresa could not stand her silence. She asked: ‘Have you learned anything about the baby?’

  The old woman shrugged. ‘I am not allowed to say. Ask the Mother. But I don’t think she knows much either.’

  The nuns resumed their work, but it was not long before Sister Ana spoke up. ‘Nevertheless, he is here now. And we have to decide what to do.’

  Sister Carlota cut another square from the tablecloth. She said: ‘I think she means to keep him,’ and put the piece of cloth with the ones she had already cut.

  Sister Ana frowned. ‘That is out of the question,’ she said, and the lines on her face which owed more to her forbidding temperament than old age, deepened. She had come to the convent of Our Lady of Mercy from another convent, which she had left with bitterness because her abilities had not been fully acknowledged. She knew stenography, spoke German, French and Italian, and had brought with her a Remington typewriter made in the previous century and almost too heavy to lift, which only she could use. Sister María Inés did not like her but admired her clerical skills. She often asked her to help with her correspondence, even though she had ambivalent feelings towards the typewriter, which she suspected was invented to make lying easier. Her reasoning was simple: she believed that handwriting revealed the truth behind one’s words no matter how hard one tried to hide it with subterfuges, ambiguities and outright lies. It was her opinion as an amateur graphologist. In fact she claimed that she could open any manuscript from the convent library and tell from the penmanship whether the medieval copyist had been a pious Christian or a lost soul who now burned in Hell.

  Sister Ana had nothing but scorn for her theories but never dared say so in her presence. She cut another altar bread and said: ‘I propose we discuss the matter of the child tonight.’

  ‘There is no point,’ Sister Beatriz said. ‘The Mother makes her own decisions.’

  ‘Not if she intends to keep the child. That would be a gross violation of the rules of this place.’

  ‘The Mother knows the rules as well as you do. We’ll have to abide by her decision.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about obedience,’ Sister Ana said and returned to her work. But it was not long before she spoke again: ‘In any case there are higher authorities than the Mother in this world. I hope she intends at least to notify the Guardia.’

  ‘There is also the Bishop,’ Sister Carlota said.

  At one end of the room, a large wooden Jesus on the Cross was fixed to the floor. The light cast his shadow on the wall as high up as the ceiling. After four centuries in the damp air of the convent, his body had turned a dull, almost black colour. The remains of a red colour on his crown of thorns were in fact real blood: some time in the eighteenth century, a mother superior had taken it down and worn it on Holy Week to recreate the Passion. It was one of those extravagances that Sister María Inés did not approve of because they seemed to her grim ailments of the soul rather than examples of great piety.

  Sister Ana pointed at the old nun and said: ‘Sister Carlota is right. His Excellency ought to know.’

  ‘That is one thing we don’t have to worry about,’ Sister Teresa said. ‘His Excellency is omniscient.’

  Sister Ana shot her an angry glance. ‘That is vulgarity. Sister Teresa, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘It is the truth. The Bishop knows everything that goes on in here. He must have a crystal ball on his desk.’

  ‘You are expected to obey His Excellency, Sister Teresa,’ Sister Ana said.

  Sister Carlota cut the last square from the tablecloth. ‘Our vows are to God,’ she said, inspecting her work.

  Sister Teresa said: ‘Exactly–not to Sister Ana.’

  It was a calculated insult. From the day Sister Ana had taken her vows, more than a decade earlier, she had dreamed of being in charge of a convent, which she would make the leading one in the country. She hoped to fulfil her ambition in the convent of Our Lady of Mercy, where she had immediately taken on many responsibilities with a zeal that had impressed everyone. One of her first accomplishments had been the digging of an artesian well so that they could irrigate the crops without the need for a pump. Next she taught herself stenography and bookkeeping, and asked permission to buy a gramophone, not in order to play music but to learn foreign languages by listening to records made for that purpose. All this she did without neglecting her religious duties. She never missed prayers; she worked in the kitchen, said the rosary, did her penances and everything else that was expected of her. And yet Sister María Inés could still not decide whether the woman was motivated by deep faith or personal ambition, which was wholly inappropriate for a servant of God.

  Sister Ana said curtly: ‘My only desire is to fulfil my duties as best as my body and mind allow, Sister Teresa. I don’t shirk from my obligations.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ the other woman said. ‘But sometimes one should take time off work to consider whether what one is doing is really what God expects or not.’

  ‘This place is too small to allow us the privilege of ignoring each other,’ Sister Beatriz said. ‘We have to live together whether we like it or not.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very noble,’ Sister Ana said. ‘But at least it is sincere.’

  Sister Beatriz said: ‘I think we ought to keep him. Whoever brought the baby here
could’ve taken him to the orphanage or a church in the city. That can only mean they want us to keep him. We ought to respect their wish.’

  ‘Whoever left him on the steps did not care for him,’ Sister Ana said. ‘You don’t abandon a child you love.’

  ‘Some people are simply too poor to look after a child,’ Sister Teresa said.

  ‘In that case,’ Sister Ana said, ‘they shouldn’t have children.’

  They had to wait for Sister Lucía to come back from the city to learn more about the baby. A little after seven they heard the Ford, and hurried to help the young novice with the provisions before it was time for the night prayer. It was dark when they assembled in the chapel, each holding a hurricane lamp. Although they were used to the Mother Superior’s furtive ways, they did not notice that she was already there kneeling in prayer. Only when they blew out their lamps, sat on the pews and their eyes grew used to the dark did they see her taking shape out of the shadows and coming to the altar, the only sound that of her habit brushing against the floor. She began: ‘Aperi, Domine, os meum ad benedicendum nomen sanctum tuum.’ Unlike noontime, she now led the prayers with great concentration, speaking with a moving voice while keeping her eyes shut throughout the service, shrouded in shadow except for her face, which, white and solemn, reflected the candlelight from the brass holders at either end of the altar. When the prayers ended, Sister Ana stood up to speak, but Sister María Inés raised her hand and stopped her before she had the chance to say a single word: ‘Not here.’

  The nuns lit their lamps and followed her across the courtyard to the refectory, where Sister María Inés asked them to sit. When she finally spoke, there was no hesitation in her voice. She said: ‘The arrival of the child is nothing less than a miracle.’