Sister Wolf Read online

  Marit got out of bed to find an extra comforter. If she was warm enough, she might conk out and sleep it off. As she raised the lid of the blanket chest, she remembered that he had not asked for another meeting. She let the lid fall, and began to make up her bed.

  FOUR

  COLMAN MEYERLING, BISHOP OF Hart County and dean of Confessors and Martyrs in Ackroyd, Massachusetts, was not a model for converts or new communicants. As a shepherd of men, he was an uninviting figure. He scowled down at the babies he baptized, as soon as smiled at them. He stood watch by the beds of the dying with an eye on his wristwatch. Bishop or not, he felt that his faith was his own concern, and that religious matters ranked below ailments and surgery as topics of conversation. He sneered at doe-eyed devouts like his heir and nephew, Hugo, or glad-handers like his curate, Father Zack, who were walking human billboards for the church.

  The Bishop was a wiry small man with muscular arms and legs. He had developed the muscles restraining big hunters and polo ponies. In the First Great War he had served as a cavalry officer. His mount had stumbled during a charge at Herstal, and thrown him flat on his back on the rocky Belgian field. When he was well again, his back had healed into a hump, a hump like a hiker’s pack, set up high on his shoulders. People thought that he had joined the clergy because of his fall, out of thanks to God for sparing the life of a rake. They were not far wrong, but the hump, not the fall, was the reason. He took his new appendage as a sign of the sin in his nature, and held himself fortunate. The run of men, looking into the mirror, see themselves whole and unblemished, and are duped into thinking that their souls are also intact. The Bishop’s hump was the badge of his continuing need for grace. Lest he forget that without God’s help he was less than a worm, he began to decorate his hump, so that it should always be new to his attention and his vain human eyes never tempted to smooth it out. His clerical robes were layered with extra lace, sewn over the hump. When he was at home, alone or receiving, he also wore robes, loose caftans that came from Algeria, a country he knew from his days as a sport and a hellion. These robes were encrusted across the shoulders with panels of beading, embroidered by a native tailor at his commission. His parishioners assumed that he meant to disguise his hump; it was the only vanity of his that they could pardon.

  “That pagan temple up at Niles” they could not forgive. Wrestling Brewster, the Bishop’s own deacon, had been smuggling the cathedral account books home with him for years, hoping and praying he could prove that Meyerling had been built with church funds. At last he found an entry for a shipment of Vermont marble dating back to 1925, when Meyerling was rising from its foundations. When he discovered, by cross-checking the parish history, that repairs had been made that same year on the fonts and altars, Brewster began to gasp for air and fell off his desk chair in a faint. His attack was not a stroke, said the doctor, though it had all the earmarks.

  Vlado and Luba Deym had played backgammon at Meyerling. They played for high stakes—Luba’s sapphires; Vlado’s Roman coins; or scraps from the Bishop’s collection of antique laces. They played late into the summer nights, at a backgammon table set up on the marble terrace, which was lit by torches. A crimson awning, tilted up like a baldaquin, protected their heads from the heavy fall of dew. When the moon was bright, they looked down to a man-made lake and a gondola rocking gently by a little dock. The gondola had been painted gold, but the gilt was beginning to rub off. The Bishop had won the gondola in another backgammon tourney, played with the Countess Valmarana, on another marble terrace, overlooking the Brenta River.

  Every summer, the Bishop hired the stroke from the Yale or Harvard crew to pole the golden barge around the pond wearing no covering above the waist but a red neckerchief. The strokes could not sing, so the Bishop applied to the Boston Conservatory, requesting poor Italian tenors who were studying there on scholarship. The gondola and half-naked gondolier irked local Yankee scruples more than the mansion itself, which was designed on a Palladian model, with the innovation of a colonnaded upper story. It pleased the Bishop to live outside his century, just as it saddened him that he had merely been born an Anglican. Since he could never wear a Cardinal’s red hat, or be referred to as a Prince of the Church, he indulged his princely tastes at his summer cottage. To Vlado and Luba he was neither affected nor trivial. They were at home with him, since they had spent most of their youth at the courts of deposed crowned heads, in outposts more remote and provincial than Niles, Massachusetts.

  During his last season at Niles, the Bishop received the summer colony on his deathbed; he held open house around the clock because he could not sleep. There was a cancer in his blood, which had drained the strength from his powerful trunk and limbs. Just his hands and his mind were active; he seemed to be all head and hands. He was living on grapes and cheese, and refused any medicine. Luba Deym often came to sit beside him in the early morning. She slept like a cat at night, dozing off for a matter of minutes and waking with a start, as if her name had been called. By 4 a.m., she was fretful and restless, so she would drive over to Meyerling, wearing her taffeta greatcoat with the Pierrot collar, and satin pantoufles with pointed toes that curled up backward. The pockets of her taffeta dressing gown were stuffed with treats and remedies like a grandmother’s reticule. She carried a bar of the Bishop’s favorite white chocolate, a bottle of hyssop water to refresh his forehead, and the pack of tarot cards that she was teaching him to read.

  One morning she found him rapping his knuckles with the crucifix that he always held, a gesture which for a well man would have been like pacing the floor. There was a bitter smell in the room.

  “Pouff, Colly, you have been burning paper. Surely it is dangerous.”

  “Hugo’s letter,” the Bishop rasped. “Hugo asks my permission to marry the Thielens girl.”

  “But he is a eunuch,” said Luba firmly. She pronounced it “ainche,” as if it were a French word.

  “No, no,” said the Bishop, “you are judging by his pasty complexion. They want to marry and have a tribe of pasty babies. They intend to turn Meyerling into a shelter for derelict men.”

  “You are not logical, Colly. She is Marian de Neufville’s granddaughter.”

  “That does not alter their plans for my house!” the Bishop shouted.

  Luba pulled the crucifix out of his grasp. She saw that his knuckles had started to bleed.

  “Lie back, Colly.” She took his hands. “Remember you are not helpless in this matter.”

  The Bishop’s head sank deep into the goose-down pillows. His eyes were closed, but he was frowning like an angry vole. Luba massaged his hands and began to conspire out loud. As she spoke, the Bishop stopped frowning and opened his eyes. Then he asked to have his head propped up a little higher. Spite acted like iron in his blood. He took over the plot.

  “So, now.” He was summing up. “We will have blind children, not beggars. You and Vlado and the appalling Enos will be trustees. What a howling joke on a philanthropist. Hugo loses to charity.”

  Later that day the Bishop died, in much the same manner that he had lived. The World and the Faith stood flanking his bed, in the shape of a lawyer and a priest. In his right hand he held the crucifix, while Father Zachary read the office of extreme unction; with his left hand he initialed the clauses that changed his will.

  On June 30th, unless it fell on a Sunday, the Meyerling Community held its Children’s Fair. The fair marked the end of the spring term, and commemorated Bishop Meyer-ling’s birthday. After the fair, the children were sent home to their families for two weeks. When they came back, Meyerling turned into a summer camp, which ran through Labor Day. The fair had opened at ten o’clock with a grand march. It was nearly noon.

  Marit had been in the sanctuary all morning, walking the western edge of the enclosure, which bordered on Marco Jullian’s pasturelands. Through the fence she could see his herd of fawn-colored Jerseys, which did not sense that a lynx could also watch them grazing. Marit had spotted the lynx stretched out
on a low-hanging branch. He opened one eye, as if to measure the space between them. He could have felled her in one bound, but he rubbed his chin on the bark and went back to sleep. He preferred to nap by day and hunt at night, and, in any case, girls and cows were much too large—a red lynx likes to crunch on smaller prey. For an instant, when she had locked eyes with the lynx, Marit wondered if she was wise to go unarmed, but she hated guns and she felt that the animals knew who had one. A gun on her person would lend an extra vigilance, which would make the animals restless and defensive. Wearing a weapon implied that the beasts were not friends but enemies. She wanted to be their equal and their kinsman, and a gun was the badge of a jailer or a tyrant.

  Jullian’s pastures lay opposite—on a map of Marit’s land—to the Meyerling blind school. It was here, on her side of the fence, that Marit had last caught sight of the two black bears, standing waist-deep in the pond and fishing for trout. Marit was tracking the bears by their spoor in order to find out what territory they had established. If there were no good hibernating spots in the black bears’ territory, Herb Frechter, the local treeman, had promised to find some hollow tree trunks and deliver them to her. She had left a basket of currants by the edge of the pond, but the fruit was still uneaten. The bears had moved on. She could tell by the sun overhead that she had no time left today to go on searching.

  With the sun climbing higher and higher, Marit dawdled back through the woods toward the sanctuary gate. She wanted to stay alone in her fenced-in wilderness, the only place in a peopled world where she was not afraid. The animals were equipped with killing claws and teeth; they could see at night and stalk her by her scent. They were larger or swifter than she was; a lynx could climb higher, and a bear could crush her with its weight. But four-footed creatures wanted nothing from her, except that she should not harm them. Her two-legged kind had hidden needs, which they expected her to understand.

  Marit’s senses shut down outside this fence, and her reflexes played her false. Her instinct about any animal was sure and generous. She could tell the growl of pleasure from the growl of warning. She knew when a bite was playful, or a signal that her hands had touched a sore place under the fur. Several times she had felt the power that belongs to healers, and had seen a black ring or aura encircling the bodies of creatures who had shown no prior signs of illness. Her special sight had helped to halt the infection before it grew.

  What power she had to help her animals came from love untrammeled by suspicion, the kind of love that does not seek its own advantage, or negotiate for favorable terms. With human beings her insight foundered in mistrust. When animals bared their fangs, they were enraged; in humans a show of teeth was called a smile. A freak of weather could make an animal erratic, or a tumor pressing in upon the brain; but human actions were always uncertain and perplexing, especially the actions of the people whom she wished to love. Marit had come to expect injustice and whim in all relations, and only Lola had ever loved her without reserve. She had learned early to be on guard against her mother, before she was old enough to go to school.

  A baby brother, who was not named, had died at birth. Luba stayed in her room and did not call for Marit. She may have asked for Vlado, but Vlado had disappeared. Marit sat on the stairs where she could watch Luba’s bedroom door, and the train of maids and nurses moving in and out, bearing trays of food and other trays covered with cloths. The nurses never closed the door without shaking their heads, or lifting a finger to their lips to keep Marit from speaking. Sometimes they sent her away and she would visit the nursery, which had been painted light blue and refurnished for a new baby boy.

  After several weeks Luba had come down to take her meals, but Marit was kept in the playroom until her mother had retired. Twice she tried to sneak into the dining room, but her governess caught her in time and dragged her upstairs. Marit had seen the shadows under Luba’s eyes and her pale, thin mouth, and she knew, without being told, that her mother was mourning.

  Marit knew what dying meant, because her own star-nosed mole had just died, the mole who lived in a shoe box under her bed. Now the mole could not eat or move or play with a string. Its eyes were closed and its coat was matted and dull. Marit wished to share her sadness with her mother, but she was not allowed to talk to her or go near her. The best she could do, for their mutual comfort, was to put the mole in one of her socks with its head sticking out, and carry it into the nursery. She lay the creature in her brother’s cradle and pulled the embroidered sheet up to its head. She never heard Luba enter, nor could she remember whether Luba had hit her first and thrown the mole out of the window afterward, or the other way around. She did remember lying on the nursery rug until it was dark, with one hand cupping her swollen cheek, and her knees drawn under her chin. Her tears washed the blood off the corners of her mouth, ran down her neck, and stained her white collar brown. When her governess saw the collar, she was very angry.

  Marit stood at the edge of the woods where the land had been cleared. She could see the gate in the distance across the field. The sun was hot and the ground was stubbly with new growth. She stopped to tie her shoes and roll up her sleeves. On her way to the gate she stopped for one thing and another: to uproot a sapling that had grown too high; to pick some chicory that would not reach the house alive; to build a pile of rocks next to a patch of poison ivy, so that she could find it when she came back later to burn it out. The Children’s Fair had started by now; still she dragged her feet. Gabriel would be at the fair, and she did not know how he would treat her.

  Gabriel had come to her house twice in the last six days, with the lapse of a day between each visit. The first time he came around nine at night, without calling beforehand. He did not use the bell or the door knocker, either; he tapped on a windowpane. He asked if she had found his Swiss Army knife, and stayed quite briefly. One of his pupils had frequent nightmares, and he did not like to be out too long. He inquired about her wolves politely, as if they were parents or relatives. There was some conversation about raising animals, and whether it was easier or harder than teaching children, but Marit was so bewildered that her answers were curt. He had discovered that she was a Meyerling trustee, and asked her if the board would consider endowing a fund for blind black children. While he held forth on the democracy of blindness, she watched his strong, square hands and well-shaped forearms. His dark hair had auburn lights and his nose was curved like a hawk’s. When he left, after a cordial handshake, she was numb with shame. He was a grown-up man, with a storehouse of ideals and goals, while she had showed herself for a rampant, lustful primitive, sitting mute, with parted lips, eyeing the shape of his penis in his trousers, transmitting greedy thought-waves which had offended him and driven him away.

  The second time he did not call, ring, knock, or tap. He threw a shower of gravel at the window, a noise which startled her, then roused her anger. When she opened the door, she did not take stock of his perfect teeth or his cleft chin; she noticed that he was shorter than she was by at least three inches. She blocked the doorway, waiting for him to speak, but she had not counted on this new, commanding Gabriel, who took hold of her and kissed her deeply, bending her backward to correct the difference in their heights, holding her with one arm and closing the door with the other hand. As he guided her across the floor toward the velvet sofa, his mouth never left her mouth, except to murmur that he should not be there, that he thought he loved her. Marit yielded to his heat and haste and closed her eyes. For once she had nothing to do; he did all the work. He had the silken touch of a craftsman; in his hands zippers slid open, elastic did not snap, and buttons melted out of their holes. Marit was opening and melting, too; there was a buzzing sound in her head, the sound the television makes when a station goes off the air. Once in a while her mind formed a thought, in spite of itself, like the awareness that her navel was as sensitive as her breasts. She felt her shirt slipping off her shoulders, and waited for Gabriel to take her arms out of the sleeves.

  Instead the s
cene began playing backward, as if someone had flipped the reverse switch on a projector: her shirt was pulled up, and her trousers, which had been piled on the floor around her feet, were drawn back over her legs and belted at the waist. Her heart fluttered in alarm. What had she done to make him change his mind? Her underwear was plain and mended, but she kept herself clean. Or perhaps she had been too passive; she had heard that some men want a woman to move like a mink. Gabriel’s hands were still working, smoothing, buttoning, and tucking, making her shipshape before he lifted her to her feet. She did not open her eyes until his arms released her, in time to see him turn and run out the front door.

  Marit made her way up the meadow toward the house, walking as if she were wearing lead shoes. Any moment Lola would arrive to take her to the fair, and start to scold her for being late and dirty. Her mind was simmering like a witch’s kettle, full of eyeless dreads. She did not want to deal with Gabriel in the light of day; she did not even know which Gabriel would confront her, the skittish one or the suave one. He had been tossing her in a blanket, and she was not sure if she had landed on her feet or on her head. She was too proud to hover around him, and too muddled to ask herself why she should be frightened of a man whom she had known for less than a week. She felt like a convalescent, and the sight of him might hasten her cure or bring on a relapse. When she got to the fair, she would stake him out and keep her distance.