Sister Wolf Read online

  The Holy Eunuch regarded his trusteeship as a sacred mission. He proclaimed that the afflicted were made more nearly in God’s image than the whole and sound, and that the care of the maimed and defective must be an act of faith, as it was in some primitive or ancient tribes where the citizens worked only for their priests, to keep them in marble palaces and linen robes and fed on rare foods. Addressing the board of trustees, the Commander would hold up both hands, thin fingers splayed, narrow fingertips as transparent as the fingertips of virgins and nuns, and implore Heaven, or some crack on the boardroom ceiling, if he, if any of them, were worthy of serving the blind.

  Bishop Meyerling had left the Community an endowment so rich that it would need no supplement until the year 2000. Yet money flooded in, unsolicited, from children’s allowances, widows’ mites, overstocked trust funds, and guilty profits, even though Meyerling was a private school and nearly all of its pupils came from wealthy families. For the few teaching positions that opened up each year, so many applications were received that extra staff had to be hired to answer and process them. Nothing attracts financial support like a little child. In South America every female beggar walks her rounds with a baby, drugged to look sickly. When poliomyelitis was epidemic, an adult victim would not have made good poster art. The unsighted of the Meyerling Community, who inspired such generous giving, were all children, as young as five and as old as nineteen. These tender gobbets roamed loose and unguarded, learning to function without a dog or cane. If they wandered onto the Deym preserve by accident, they could not see a bear or lynx, and might be stunned or gouged by the threatened animal, perhaps to death. These children of night and pathos endangered Marit’s animals. When he learned of her plans, Enos would arm the villagers with guns and torches, and march on Marit as if she were Frankenstein and the woods were alive with her created monsters. It was fortunate that the Commander did not live at Meyerling. He spent his summers at a clinic in Austria, taking injections of a serum made from the organs of sheep, which were thought to reverse the hardening of body tissues.

  A horn blared as if it were stuck. Joe Miller brought the Dangerfield van in, honking like a G.I. jeep entering Paris on V-E Day. Marit made it down three flights of stairs in record time.

  “Cut it out, Joe! I told you no horn and no lights!”

  “You did,” said Joe, jumping down from the driver’s seat, “but I got to thinking what a kick if people knew what I had in here.”

  “I’m going to do worse than kick you,” said Marit. She was fond of Joe, with his freckled, tufted head. He was the first keeper at the model zoo in Dangerfield, fifty miles over the New York border. Joe had calculated how many animals her thousand-acre refuge could support, and worked out the ratio of deer to the larger predators. He knew about the balance of nature, and the difference between summer and winter territories. He had taught her to stock the sanctuary with rabbits, mice, and moles, and to let swarms of bees loose, which would pollinate fruit-bearing trees and bushes, and make honey treats for the black bears.

  “Climb right back in,” said Marit, heading for the passenger’s side. “We take the next dirt road up on the left. We’ll let them out when we’re inside the gate.”

  “No, I will,” said Joe. “They know me.”

  Once they were off the asphalt and bumping down the newly cut dirt road, Marit remembered the anxiety of waiting.

  “You took your own goddamned time getting here.” She turned to look at him. “What accounts for the hip boots?”

  “The jaguar,” said Joe. “We saved the baby, anyhow. There was a lot of blood.”

  Hawthorn trees grew thick by the road. Their thorny branches arched over the road, clattering on the top of the van like a drumroll. The bright headlamps probed far down the tunnel of trees and across the field, and lit up a high steel gate rigged with a megaphone, which could broadcast an alarm that sounded like a fire siren.

  Marit got out to unlock the gate, dismantling the alarm with another, smaller key. Joe ordered her to stay behind, and to close the gate once he got through. He handed her a long aluminum flashlight.

  “Shine it on the back end of the van,” he called. “I have one too, but I need more light.”

  Marit trained the beam. The van was lined up parallel to the gate. She saw Joe press down, very carefully, on the handle of the right-hand panel of the door, then pull the door back suddenly and spring quickly into position behind it. Marit’s flashlight made a circle of light on the ground underneath the open end. Nothing happened for the space of many seconds.

  Then, one after another, in a recurring arc, like trained divers, five wolves jumped into the pool of light, moving, when they landed, to the edge of the pool, into shadow. They jumped in order of their precedence in the pack. Big Swan, the father, and Lakona, the pregnant mother. George, the lame uncle, his coat matted with a yellow salve. The two young wolves, a male and a female, born in the zoo eleven months before.

  In the Dangerfield Zoo, the wolves had lived in a fine cage, in a spacious lair made out of rock, like a cave. They had climbed on stone ledges, graded in size, which descended from the cave down to a gully in front of the spectators’ railing. Down the ledges ran a thin stream of water, which provided drink and kept the cage clean. In the Northwest Territories, trailing caribou and elk, the wolves used to travel fifty miles in a day. Their narrow flanks were built for speed. In full cry, they have been clocked at thirty-five miles per hour. In their cage in Dangerfield they huddled like immigrants in a refugee camp who may wait many years for acceptance in their new country. Swan grew fat, and weighed a hundred and sixty pounds. Old George developed mange scabs, which no medicine had cured. From boredom, not adjustment to captivity, Swan and Lakona had mated and bred two live wolf pups. For a while the pups were taken away from Lakona. She had been grooming them compulsively, licking and nipping until there were raw spots on their skin. The wolves slept most of the day, although visitors tried to tease them into action. Young girls would cling to their boyfriends’ arms, begging them not to get close to the cage, while the brave swains bayed and barked at the indolent animals.

  One day Marit had walked, on an impulse, into the office of Harrison Feitler, the zoo’s director, who had encouraged her to make her land into a wildlife refuge, and had offered her the zoo’s resources to help her start it. Feitler had just put down the telephone. The wolves in their atrophy haunted him. He was trying to work out an exchange with Basel, the cageless zoo, but Basel was more interested in the white Siberian wolf than in the North American gray wolf. Forthwith and outright, Feitler had given his wolves to Marit, warning her only of their hostility to the lynx.

  Now, as she watched them in the beam of her flashlight, shivering and uncertain, she knew how far their wildness had been compromised. Was she a stouter guardian than the iron bars of their cage? She had rescued them from humiliation, but she could not guarantee their safety. She had put up a fence, but the fence might be too low, or the lock too easy. The zoo had a squad of keepers; she was the only warden of her preserve. In order to protect the wolves, she must harbor them in secret. She had already lied to the Wildlife Registrar by omitting any mention of them in the list of animals that her land would shelter.

  Marit was used to keeping secrets. She guarded herself closely, since she did not like people well enough to give them any rope to hang her. Wolves are the most important northern predator upon the larger mammals; people are the only predators of wolves. In the zoo the wolves were prisoners; behind bars they could be mistaken for big lazy dogs. Roaming unlicensed on her estate, they would be outlaws. They already had a legendary criminal record. Every right-thinking person knew that wolves attacked homesteads, ravaged herds, relished a child as much as a calf, cheated the hunter out of his yearly kill, loomed against the moonlight with red eyes and rabid jaws. They looked the part, with their deep chests and tapering skulls, and evil self-sharpening flesh teeth. The power of their bite was supernormal; they could leap on the rump of a bul
l moose and tear to a depth of four inches through the finely packed hair and hide. In fact, they were shy and private; they mated for life and stayed in a jealous family circle. They were as frail as Marit—even frailer, for they pulled hatred the way magnets pull metal filings.

  Marit loved wolves more than any other animal, because they were the most reclusive and least valued. They tallied with her image of herself, but she did not try to scale them to her size. They were creatures and she was human, and she cherished the difference more than any likeness. When she was close to the wolves, she would learn what they could teach her: loyalty, endurance, stoicism, and courage, the traits that made them symbols of survival.

  She heard a thump and saw Joe leaning into the van. He took out a burlap sack and threw it into the woods. It was full of mice, and the bag was soaked with meat blood. The elder wolves regrouped and consulted in low growls. Swan took off after the lure, but the young wolves balked and whimpered until Lakona nudged them rudely from behind.

  Joe shut the doors and locked the back end of the van.

  “They’ve gone,” he called. “They’ll be safe now.”

  Marit shook her head, but he could not see her. The van backed out and she fastened the gate behind it. She said nothing to Joe on the ride back to the house, and he knew her well enough to respect her silence.

  TWO

  FOR A SHORT PERIOD in the early nineteen-thirties, Niles, Massachusetts, was as fashionable a resort for New Yorkers as Bar Harbor or Fishers Island. Under the glass of history, this period would be reckoned as a hiccup, or the blinking of an eye. It took the new summer gentry about five years to lose patience with the rain, bad roads, and midges, the tranquility, the grandeur of the hills, and the lack of water sports.

  One of these burned-out vacationers, a banker who was related to the horse-breeding Belmonts on his mother’s side, sold his new cottage as soon as it was built, before the lawns were seeded or the gutters were hung. Luba Deym did not like the country, but Vlado was coughing and his nerves were poor, and the banker’s house had many Gothic details, vaulted ceilings, a crenellated roof, and four pointed watchtowers. Seen from the front, the miniature battlements were an alternating pattern of rose and blue-gray bricks. The view from the battlements reminded Vladimir of Hungary because he could not see another human dwelling in any direction.

  While the painters were changing the walls from oyster to ivory, Luba began to make lists of guests for weekend parties. Her first house party, held in the second month of their residence, was also her last. Vlado did not come downstairs to greet the Nelson Cuttings or the Princess Rakoczi, who brought a gap-toothed young Englishman as her escort. He did not leave his room on Saturday or Sunday, except to pick a book from the library or to serve himself from the sideboard at mealtimes. Wearing striped pajamas, bleached and ragged, he heaped up his plate, taking time to ponder his selections, padding around the buffet in his backless leather slippers, tasting some of the dishes with his fingers, and wiping his hand on the front of his pajama jacket. He took a glass from the place that had been laid for him at the table, and went upstairs to bed, where dabs of creamed veal or spinach puree found their way onto the sheets, angering the maid, who had permission to change his bed linen only once a week. Luba took her defeat with bad grace, but she gave up importing guests from the city, and tried to make do with the company at hand, patrician but more solitary folk, who withheld their acceptance of the Deyms until their second summer in Niles. Bishop Meyerling became their particular friend, and Mrs. Paul Gilliam, the publisher’s wife, who had been widowed by an idling tractor which slipped into reverse while her husband was working behind it.

  When Marit was orphaned, she discovered her true social nature. Without Luba to hector and groom her, she fell into her father’s habits. She wore old clothes, stopped answering letters, and did not entertain. She pensioned off the butler and the housekeeper, and kept Mrs. Mayo, from the village, who cleaned the house twice a week and left a light supper in the oven. Because she was Luba’s daughter, Marit upheld her position. She attended civic functions, but only for groups of which she was a benefactor—the library, the hospital, the Meyerling Community, the historical society, and the woman’s industries—trading public patronage against the round of golf-club dances, bridge luncheons, and little dinners. As a social being, Marit was incompetent. She could not defer and she did not listen. If she was not drawn to a person at first introduction, she blanked him out. In her opinion most people were not well made and talked too slowly. Her manner was formal or caustic, and she made few friends. She did not need more than one person of either sex to share her life. She had not yet found the man; but she recognized Lola Brevard the moment she met her. Marit and Lola had met at a Meyerling prize-day tea, sneaked away from the ceremonies early and rudely, and stayed up talking all evening and through the night.

  Mrs. Paul Gilliam was a native of Virginia. She had known Lola Brevard’s mother since girlhood, and they had grown up to be each other’s bridesmaids. When she wanted to engage a social secretary, she thought of Mary Brevard’s daughter. It was a nice job for a nice girl, and it left Lola free on Saturday afternoons, which she reserved for Marit. The sun was hot for the second week of June, so the two friends hosed down the lawn chairs and brought a pitcher of ginger ale and grape juice out to the terrace. At the moment, the ice was melting and watering down the mixture in their glasses. Marit stood at the parapet and pointed her binoculars toward the meadow by the sanctuary gate, moving the instrument up the meadow and toward the woods, at the entrance of which was a grove of white paper birches.

  Lola was watching a bobtail cat stalking the peonies. The cat was a gypsy, not a stray, one of the barn cats from Jullian’s dairy farm, more than five miles away. He emerged from the bushes carrying a chipmunk by the neck. He dropped it and started to bat at it, leaping from side to side and pretending to pounce. Released from the monster’s mouth, the chipmunk played dead. By this time the cat was sitting back on his haunches. The chipmunk rose up on his two hind feet and did a dance step. Then he lifted his leg as if he were squirting or spraying.

  “Get over here, Marit,” called Lola. “They’re playing a little death game.”

  Marit kept her binoculars trained on the birch grove. She turned the dial that adjusts the focus, and got down on her knees so that the railing could support her elbows.

  The cat had opened the chipmunk’s stomach, and sat washing his paws while it cooled. Lola walked over to Marit, scolding her as she went.

  “You’ve got no business to be squeamish. What kind of nature person acts so squeamish?”

  Marit did not address the question. She raised her hind end and leaned farther over the parapet.

  “I don’t want any pious anarchic goddamned backpackers on my property.”

  Lola grabbed the field glasses and moved them over the meadow.

  “Where, darlin’?” She rubbed her eyes. “I swear I just see worse through these things.”

  “Fling that riot of curls off your forehead and you might see better. There. That red spot.”

  Lola pushed back her bangs and tried again. This time she succeeded.

  “My, he’s puny. Why carry on about him?”

  “They report the wild animals,” said Marit. “They want bunnies and bluebirds.”

  “I thought you told me big animals didn’t go by the fence because it’s out in the open.”

  “This is not a state park. I won’t have it. I’m going to do some reporting of my own.”

  Marit made a move to recapture the binoculars, but Lola kept on spying. The figure below sat down and leaned against a birch, one leg extended and one knee cocked, a poet in repose.

  “Gorgeous head,” said Lola, “like a falcon. He just might convert me.”

  “Give me those, you Tidewater sapphic.” Marit raised the glasses and took another look. “Lord, you’re right. He’s what we used to call ‘cute.’ I was too mad to notice.”

  Lola fanned
her face with her hand and pinned her hair in a knot on the top of her head. Before she settled herself in her chair, she inspected the scene of the carnage. There was nothing left of the chipmunk but the tail, the ears, and a wet patch. The cat was rolling on the flagstones, having a dust bath. Lola sat down and began to rub baby oil on her face. Drops of oil kept landing on her sunglasses. She hiked her skirt up to the middle of her thighs, and pulled her blouse down to bare her shoulders. She closed her eyes and waved a hand at Marit.

  “Keep an eye on your watch for me, honey; don’t let me go to sleep.”

  “Why?” asked Marit, who had brought her chair to the full upright position, since lazing in the sun was not one of her talents. “Does that silly woman want you to sharpen the bridge pencils?”

  “Rest it, Marit; it’s too hot.”

  “You should quit. Your brain is going to turn to cottage cheese.”

  Lola wiped her sunglasses on her skirt. “Don’t fuss at me, angel. We’ve had this conversation.”

  “Oh, I do recall. The one about how soothing it is to live in an orderly universe. By which you meant that Mrs. Gilliam has lots of servants.”

  Lola did not intend to swallow this remark. She brought up a topic which she knew would be inflammatory.

  “We’re meeting about the cotillion. I believe I mentioned it?”

  Niles Village, incorporated in 1747, had survived without a débutante cotillion for two hundred and eleven years. Lola had plotted the framework for the first Berkshire Ball, to be held on the Labor Day weekend, and for the decades of cotillions to come. Mrs. Gilliam had agreed to be the sponsor. Marit struggled with her temper for a moment, watching the bait dangling out in front of her. The bait was juicy, and she swallowed the hook. She pulled a cigarette out of the package in her shirt pocket. She chain-smoked when she was vexed.