Obedience (29 page)

Bernard confessed everything as she had been told to, trusting the priest to absolve her. She recited her trespasses steadily to the trefoiled screen in front of her, and she bent
her head for the blessing. When it was finished, she said her penance by the candles at the side of the Lady chapel. The other penitents moved apart for her. Behind her, the queue had ended and Father Raymond came to stand by the confessional door, the villagers clotting towards him, watching her, waiting for her to finish her prayers. But Bernard did not notice. The priest had been stern with her, unusually relentless in his battle for her soul, and she had been given several rosaries to recite before she could leave the church. She edged the beads slowly through her fingers, her head low and her breathing tight. She lost count several times and had to begin again.

By the time the penance was said and she was finally back outside in the village, it was dusk – the hour when the soldier might come. She hardly glanced at the villagers still clustered by the confessionals; she did not think it strange that they should be gossiping there, so long after the sacrament was concluded. All she felt was the skip of expectancy. She could not believe it would be long now.

But he still did not come to her. There was no sign of any of the soldiers in the village. And yet it was not how it had been before they came. It was all new. What she had known before seemed faded and forgotten. Instead, there was the unshakeable sense of them, the constraint of occupation somehow knotted into everything, the unmoving branches in the breeze, the moss gathering on the shadowed corner of a roof, the silence of her footsteps on the stone square. Bernard felt all of the Germans, close about her. She knew they were there. But although she walked again to the places where she had met her soldier, he did not yet appear. And in the end she had no choice but to go back to the convent,
making her way up the hill, the village receding behind her, the church sinking into the dusk.

At the gates she watched the last of the light fade turquoise behind the high oaks and again she waited. A night wind blew up, bristling with the smell of summer, and a slim crescent of moon hung low behind the trees. Bernard swayed gently from side to side, relieving the pain and tiredness in her legs. She kept watch in the dark for as long as she could. But there was just the tumbling song of the nightingales and the burr of the crickets and the wretched twitter of God, unstoppable.

The footsteps, when they came, were brisk and heavy, unfamiliar, and when the figure emerged from the night, it was the commandant. Bernard heard her breath come more quickly but she was so confused by the sight of him that she did not move. He did not greet her.

‘Ah, Sister. You have confessed,' he said. His French, as always, was impeccable but his tone was coarse and unsteady.

She nodded.

Shuffling in the dark, he took something from his pocket. Bernard stepped back. But it was only a loose packet of cigarettes which he tapped on his palm. The flare of the match illuminated him for a moment.

‘Good,' he said. ‘You are very good.'

He turned his heel rhythmically in the dusty ground at the end of the drive and looked about him, the soft summer dark somehow inviting. Bernard was thinking of the soldier.

‘Your Mother Catherine is a wise woman,' said the commandant. ‘An honourable woman. The stupid peasants
should be grateful for her.' He grinned. ‘I am grateful for her.'

‘She said the soldier would come again, once I'd confessed,' explained Bernard.

The commandant laughed, too loud and raucous for the falling night. Birds fluttered up from the trees nearby, alarmed, their wings panicked; a dog barked in the village.

Bernard knew then that something had happened.

‘Oh,' she said.

And there was such dread clawing at her throat and stomach, such a darkness sinking upon her, that she could not think of anything else to say. She looked up into the commandant's face, silent, but the plea was there, begging him, of all people, to make things right.

The longing in Bernard's eyes confounded him.

‘She didn't tell you? The boy's dead, you know.' He said it quickly, fiercely, so that there could be no mistake. ‘He did not die honourably.'

He had curled in the corner of the damp cellar, gripping a small bronze crucifix and weeping. They had called the priest to give the last rites, but the soldier had found a final furious anger from somewhere, and had pushed him away, spitting and kicking, uncontrollable. They had had to tie him up in his own filth like an animal and cut out his tongue to silence him. The commandant had carried out the execution himself, disgusted.

‘Schwanz?' asked Bernard quietly, but the name came too heavy and abrupt, too strange. It felt like a blasphemy.

The commandant smiled.

‘Jens Aden was his name.'

For a moment, delighted, Bernard thought they might have killed another man.

‘Not Schwanz?' she said, and she tried to describe him as she would see him in her dreams. ‘The fair one. Tall and fair, with gentle hands and the straight back of a man and the beautiful—'

‘The skinny one. That's him. But his name is – was – Jens Aden,' said the commandant again, with some impatience.

The darkness closed in on Bernard. They had not killed a different man. They had killed her soldier. To be without him in this way, even now, to be without hope of him, crushed her. She felt faint. There was a whimpering in her head that might not be God and it felt like she was in a storm again, encircled by a tumult she did not grasp.

She sat back on the low wall that ran out from the gates. The commandant took a step towards her, perhaps to help, but thought better of it and just stood watching her, fascinated by her grief. Then, even though she did not want to know that the soldier had been lying to her, even though she could not bear the half-thought that he had tricked her into believing in him, Bernard asked, ‘Schwanz? Is that… a nickname?'

That would have been merciful, fond and intimate, somehow innocent. But even his name would not be left to her. The commandant shook his head, smiling.

‘You French are all so stupid,' he said, chortling at his platoon's vulgar joke and rather proud of its success. ‘Schwanz is not a name. It's a thing.
Der Schwanz.'
He grinned and tapped at the flies of his uniform trousers
with a wink. ‘Sometimes,' he said, ‘a big thing, juicy and satisfying – is that not so, Sister?'

A barn owl screeched and a moment later its pale wings cut through the night to one side of them. The commandant let his hand drop, and found he could not quite look at the nun now. He frowned, dropping his cigarette end to the ground and stamping it hard into the dry earth. They both smelt the cloying summer of the soil.

‘I thought I would love him for ever,' said Bernard simply.

‘Did you?' He had never been so respectful.

‘What shall I do?'

The commandant shrugged. He straightened his uniform jacket.

‘I have an appointment, Sister,' he said. ‘I'm sorry.'

He saluted her neatly.

‘God have mercy on us sinners, eh?'

And he walked away up the hill towards the convent, dissolving into the shadow of the clenched oaks that lined the drive.

Bernard watched him as far as she could and then listened for all sound of him to die away. She got up from the wall. She was unsteady, stumbling slightly as she stood. The air seemed suddenly too cold, and she clasped her arms around her, drawing the warmth from her body. Her injuries throbbed. Schwanz then was a part of a man, the shameful, brutal, unholy part that is hidden from God. Not a lover; not a fit name to be treasuring. She was sorry it was too late to do anything about this. Schwanz was the name she would carry with her through the despair of her mourning, and the terrible sorrow that replaced it. For
the rest of her life, she knew, she would cling to it, to the radiance of her weeks with him and the frantic desire to do penance for his death. Jens Aden would mean nothing to her.

She breathed deeply, coughing, and went back inside for evening prayer. The sickle of the moon continued to rise over the convent, but its light was faint.

A
t Les Cèdres the Christmas party fell on the feast of Saint Lucy. In the bustle, the saint was mostly unremembered. The uneven strings of blinking lights were a distraction, and those who thought to offer a prayer to Lucy that day were less concerned with the cult of her virginity than with a persistent pagan craving for more light to keep back the winter dark.

Immediately after breakfast, the tables were laid with bright napkins, paper plates and sprigs of cedar. A haphazard dance of skinny nativity figures and fat foil snowmen was stuck to the windows by lunch. Some of the residents enjoyed watching the preparations. One or two helped with the decorations. There was a loosening of routine, a sense of holiday. But Bernard was confined to her bed with a drip in her arm and knew nothing at all about it. For an hour or so in the afternoon she was faintly aware of unfamiliar activity in the corridor, more noise and footsteps than usual, an unaccustomed smell of spice, but she did not care to think what it might all be about.

The staff left Bernard to herself. Now and again they looked in on her, conscientiously filling up the blank lines in her medical sheet, the changes of handwriting marking the changes in shift. But there was plenty to do for the party, and the nurses took their readings briskly and left. Bernard did not move. By the time the celebration began and the buffet was irrevocably muddled, she had been lying for so long on her back with her eyes fixed to a spot in the ceiling that the bones in her hips, shoulders and ankles screamed with pain even through the fog of her medication.

Veronique heard the sound of brittle singing dribbling along the corridor. She did not recognize the tune. Two nurses hurried past her flapping something between them, a sheet or a sack, perhaps part of the fun, and she stepped aside too quickly, knocking her ankle against a sharp angle of the wall. She rubbed at it, bewildered. The bustle confused her. She had been expecting a familiar institutional hush, the permanent whisper of age. She had pictured her grandmother dozing in the corner of some deserted day room, everything about it predictable, the sticky magazines and the plastic covers and the colourless light. She had thought it would be quietly done, a secret. But now there was the sparkle of Christmas breaking through here and there, and the song. The thought of joining a festive party unsettled her.

She followed the noise and watched through the open door for a long time. All the staff and residents had their backs to her. The man who played piano was twisting bright balloons as an interlude to the music, making a series of bulging dogs. Veronique looked hard at the backs
of heads, the matted and thinning hair, the skewed tufts pushed hard against the stiff antimacassars. She knew Sister Bernard would be effectively disguised if for some reason she had decided not to wear her veil, but still Veronique was quite sure that her grandmother was not in the room. She looked again, to be sure. It was very hot. She felt the bruise on her ankle throb. She had brought an extravagant selection of chocolates, piled in a gold box and tied round many times with metallic ribbon. She feared they would melt.

The show with the balloons was brief, and when the next song started up, one of the staff sidled along behind the row of chairs. She glanced at Veronique's stylish chocolate box and pulled back, wary of some kind of trick.

‘Yes?' She was haughty. ‘You have come to see someone?'

Veronique was not put off. ‘Yes, I have,' she said, and paused. ‘I've come to see Sister Bernard.'

The nurse could feel her unlit cigarette in her pocket. She fingered the butt end, pleased by its softness. She too was hot and craved the relief of standing outside by the deliveries door in the smoky chill.

‘
Sister
Bernard?' she said. ‘I think you must be wrong.'

Veronique looked at her without replying, daring her to say something else.

‘Bernard,' said the nurse, ‘is a man's name.'

‘It's her name,' said Veronique.

The nurse shrugged. She looked again at the glitzy chocolate box.

‘Ask at the desk,' she said. She pushed past Veronique into the corridor and took the cigarette from her pocket,
lodging it between her stained fingers. Then she turned. ‘Is it
Sister
Bernardette or
Father
Bernard?'

‘Neither. It's Sister Bernard.'

There was a rumble of uneven applause from behind.

‘You're sure?'

Veronique nodded, already doubting.

The nurse gave a half-smile. ‘Beautiful chocolates,' she said, and she turned away sharply, cutting across the corridor and pushing through a blank door.

The slop of the nurse's shoes on the hard floor faded quickly, there was a pause in the singing; no one else joined or left the party. It was as though everything was waiting for her decision. Veronique leant against the door frame. The heat was terrible, stifling, impossible. She could not shake the grasp of it. She closed her eyes.

Where had she got the name from, anyway? There had been a brief introduction one hurried afternoon at the old convent, nothing more. She could have misheard. At the time, it hadn't been of any importance. There had been no reason to pay attention or remember. Perhaps she was mistaken. She tried to think back to the funeral. She thought she had heard the name again there, something the other nun had said, but it was hard to be sure. It would be an odd name to have, for a woman. She saw that. Bernadette was more likely. Veronique had heard of Bernadette. Given time, she could have remembered her visions at Lourdes. It was a genuinely religious name.

The piano began again with a soft tune, a lullaby. Veronique could not bear its melancholy. She slipped
further down the corridor and found a glass door wedged open with a table. It led outside, to the back of the building. A narrow concrete path sliced down through the bins to the gas cylinders, and turned at right angles towards a square of tarmacked car park and some kind of shed, its corrugated iron roof hanging loose at one end. Veronique did not take the path. Instead, she set off across the short grass, skirting the gas cylinders and following a sparse line of shrubs, winter bare and gnarled. The ground was chill through the thin soles of her shoes. In the unwarmed shadows, frost lay, not quite silver any more. Veronique breathed in the cold. Her skin tingled. It felt like an escape.