Authors: Marlena de Blasi
Tags: #Birthmothers, #Historical, #Historical - General, #Guardian and ward, #Poland, #Governesses, #Girls, #World War; 1939-1945 - France, #General, #Romance, #Convents, #Historical Fiction, #World War; 1939-1945, #Nobility - Poland, #Fiction, #Illegitimate Children, #Nobility, #Fiction - Historical
Amandine (18 page)
There is combat for a place next to her in the refectory and to determine who shall link arms with her when they form a circle to say the beads of an evening. A praline on her pillow, a flower in her pocket, they pinch her cheeks in affection, try to commiserate with her about her mother, ask: “How does it feel, not knowing your own mother?” tell her: “Whoever she is, surely she’s even more beautiful than Hedy Lamarr.” And to celebrate her eighth birthday, they pool funds to commission from the village
pâtissier
a seven-layer mocha marjolaine, upon which they beg him to write:
“Bon anniversaire, notre jolie mignonne
.”
Solange gasps, marvels at the convent girls’ immoderate designs to restore Amandine to favor and, all the more, she marvels at Amandine’s resistance to them. To herself, she cheers that resistance, the prudence therein.
O
NLY SIX DAYS PASS BEFORE SOLANGE HAS A LETTER IN RETURN
from her mother. In the first pages, Magda is timid, formal even. But by page three she begins to speak in her real voice, the voice Solange remembers from when she was very little. Before the troubles. Magda says that talk of war is everywhere. “The
boche
will try with us, but I think we’re ready. Still we are beginning to think and act like people who wait for war. We were canning peaches, your sisters and I, with Madame Borange and her girls and someone asked what would be the good of all this work only to leave the fruit to be gobbled by the
boche
. Blanchette thought we should poison a batch, arrange the jars extra cunningly somewhere in view and bury the rest. Some people have indeed buried silver and other things they think to be valuable. Just as we did during the Great War. I admit I’ve packed two old valises with photos even though I know we’ll run them out like pigs to slaughter. The
boche
. Even though.”
By page five she begins the story of Solange’s father. Of his exit
from the family nearly three months earlier. She says that he’s gone to work in Belgium, a small farming village near the border, that he’s taken up with a woman there or at least that’s what she’s gleaned from the gossip which trickles down from as far away as that. A woman from Charleroi or a village near there, a widow with daughters. “God help her,” she writes.
No, he never came near Chloe or Blanchette. But when he’d be gone for weeks during the winter, working as a carpenter’s helper up in Châtillon, well, I had suspicions. And one day, the suspicions became flesh. Her name was Margaux
.
Having hitched a ride from Châtillon in a lumber truck, she’d come down to the farm looking for him. She was pretty enough, with gorgeous auburn hair all tied up in a pastiche on top of her head, small and well-made, wearing an old tweed jacket and men’s trousers and, apart from envy of her hair, all I felt for her was pity as she stood in the kitchen, weeping and ranting about how her own father had warned her that her new boyfriend was
un mauvais, un charlatan.
From the first, your
père
proved him right. He took money, told tales, always vowing to Margaux that he loved her, that he’d never loved anyone before her, least of all his wife. He’d told her to be patient. He’d never mentioned his three daughters. When Margaux’s father saw your
père
with another woman in the town, he confronted him
. Père
laughed at him, called his Margaux a whore. The typical condemnation of women thrown about by men like your
père.
I made tea for Margaux, put bread and cheese on the table, though she never touched either, and then I drove her back to Châtillon. She was only a year older than you, Solange. It was three days later that I went to Reims, to the attorneys. Set the divorce in motion. On the way home, I stopped at the commissariat in the village and filed a restraining order. When your
père
came in from the vineyards that evening, two gendarmes were waiting for him. He never
said a word, never tried to reason with me, never that night nor since has he asked me to reconsider. Do I regret that I waited? Yes. Am I lonely? Yes. But less lonely than when he was here
.
I’ve cut my hair, a bob with a long fringe, and now that I no longer have to turn over the money I make selling my cheeses in the market, I’ve bought new clothes. A gray dress with silver buttons made from old coins and a navy blue one, with small white dots. Chloe doesn’t like the navy one but Janka does. Blanchette hasn’t said. I think I’ll send you the navy one. Would you like that? I’m very thin but well. I’ll be forty-two in November
.
By the time Magda had filled up pages nine and ten, she’d told Solange more about herself, her sentiments than she had ever before. She asked Solange for forgiveness. Said she would understand if forgiveness could not be honestly granted. Said she hoped Solange would come home, bring Amandine—whom she’d long before begun to think of as a granddaughter.
How I long to hold Amandine in my arms. Surely I think of her as yours. And so I admit that part of my longing for her is so that I may have another chance to be your mother. Can you understand that, Solange? I wonder if other mothers feel that. I’ve wondered this same thing about Madame Borange with her brood and about my sisters with their children. I’ve wondered about Janka. Has she ever wished for another chance to be my mother? I wonder about you, too, Solange. Do you long for another chance to be my daughter?
The bishop has, however, not been so prompt in his response to Solange. Two weeks, perhaps nearly three, have passed since she had posted her note to him when Paul sends for her one morning as she is working in the garden. Fearing that Fabrice has informed Paul of her
request for a private audience, her hands tremble as she takes the towel wet with lavender water that Sister Josephine holds out for her. She washes her face, smoothes her hair. She thinks of Amandine and smiles to herself, walks quickly to Paul’s office.
“His Eminence has sent a note requesting a meeting with you at four o’clock this afternoon. In Père Philippe’s parlor no less. I trust you’ll see that the room is in order, that there are flowers.”
“Yes, Mater.”
“I’ve ordered
les calissons
from the village.”
“Yes, of course. Though he’ll likely bring his own.”
Paul looks up at her with a frank, confiding smile, begins to say, “No doubt of—”
She checks her candor, is flustered by it, as is Solange. The silence is long then. Paul does some business with the papers on her desk while Solange pats her perfect plaits, bites her lips, forces them into a smile and then a purse and back again.
Failing at nonchalance, Paul openly waits for Solange to tell her more. Rather, Solange asks, “Is that all, Mater?”
“What do you suppose is the object of his desire to meet with you?”
“I don’t know, Mater. Surely something to do with Amandine.”
“It seems that everything in this house has to do with Amandine. I shall, of course, be available should he wish me to join the two of you.”
“Of course, Mater.”
“Plaits
and
a kerchief.”
“Yes, Mater.”
Not long past four, Fabrice arrives at the convent in much the same unceremonious manner that he did on the evening Philippe died. In his country priest’s soutane and a black cap, he alights inelegantly from the official limousine, the green of his Wellingtons thrusting out like the short, thick stems of succulents from under his skirts. Reminding the chauffeur to carry in the pastry boxes and wines from the
boot into the kitchens, he mounts the steps—
“bonjour, mes petites soeurs,”
he says to the sisters who’ve gathered to greet him under the portico—passes through the door, nods to Paul, who stands just inside it, and propels his massive, rubber-shoed bulk down the long corridor to the far wing, to Philippe’s rooms. Without turning around but knowing they all watch him, he shouts, “I trust Solange is waiting.”
And she is. Holding the door open for him, curtsying, bending to kiss his ring, she watches as he burrows himself in the depths of Philippe’s high-back chair, bends to remove his boots, raises purple-stockinged feet to rest on a hassock. Set near the chair on a gilt-painted table with a black marble top, there is a footed silver tray, a silver candlestick set with a thick honey-colored candle, already lit, a cut-crystal bottle, a matching tumbler. In a long, untidy gush, Fabrice pours out the old tawny port he likes at this time of day, cradles the glass between his large white hands, manicured nails glinting in the yellow light of the candle.
“Now, my dear. Come sit by me. I hope you don’t mind that I preferred to meet with you here. Though I understand your desire for privacy, there is no need for secrecy. You, as do all the other sisters, have a perfect right to seek audience with your bishop. That you shall incur Paul’s wrath by exercising that right should hardly matter. I’ve left off caring what Paul thinks, and I would recommend the same to you. It would seem that Amandine has already done so.”
Liquescent, mud brown eyes nearly swallowed in the glee-crinkled folds of his lids, he laughs. Sipping the port once, then again, he holds the glass upon the taut abundance of himself and looks hard at Solange.
Still standing, Solange smiles, nods her head, carries a small wooden chair close to where Fabrice is sprawled. She sits, folds her hands in her lap. Still smiling, she says, “It’s Amandine about whom I wanted to speak, Your Eminence.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I’ve practiced the words I wish to say, the way I wish to say them, but—”
“Would it be simpler if I began?”
“Well, if, well, yes, of course, as you wish.”
“I think you should take the child and leave this place.”
“What? What are you—?”
“Listen. Hear me. Neither you nor Amandine thrives here.”
“How do you know—?”
“I asked you to listen. I know of the recent events in the refectory, I know that Amandine has, shall we say, found her voice, that in her artless way she has gone toe-to-toe with Paul and held her ground. Won the admiration of her schoolmates, whatever that might be worth. More than a reason to stay, this seems like a natural ending, a victorious exit, if you will. Why should you not run from a place that nourishes neither of you? You and the child are not prisoner to Paul. Why would you stay?”
“Because it is my duty to stay, sir. Staying here to watch over Amandine is what I promised to do.” She’s standing now, leaning toward him, perhaps beginning to weep.
“I think it’s the
watching over her
that you promised to do. That is the duty you assumed all those years ago. A duty that you have executed splendidly and that I trust you would continue to execute splendidly in any other place. Hence I repeat my question: Why would you stay?”
She moves in tight circles, turning her back to him, then facing him. “Wasn’t that the agreement? That she should be schooled here … and—?”
“I suppose it was. But perhaps that agreement has outlived its original intent. Perhaps those who wished to ensure Amandine’s welfare would be the first to say that it is not here, not in this school, not anywhere about this place where her welfare is of particular and primary concern. You can’t change that, and neither can I. Knowing that we can’t change it makes us wise. And being wise, we should seek an alternative.”
She backs up into her chair. “What are you saying, sir? Another convent?”
“No. I’m saying that I believe you should be on your own. A family of two. You should make a home for Amandine, for yourself. You
should marry someday, Solange. You’re beautiful and lovely and fine.”
Awkward under his appraisal, she blushes, covers her face with her hands, looks up at him, her thoughts muddled.
A sip of port, a broad smile, the amethystine veins of his nose in high relief in the candlelight, the bishop asks, “How would you even begin? Is that what you wonder? With my help. The Church has a wide embrace, my dear. I would help you to find work, good work. An apartment in Montpellier, a little house somewhere in a village. As you prefer. Or perhaps you would choose to go to your family. It’s for you to deliberate calmly and eventually to decide. I say ‘deliberate calmly and eventually decide’ with some reservation, though.”
He looks hard at Solange, tilts the decanter over his glass again.
“The war. My mother wrote to me of it. But that was a few weeks ago, before these, before the Germans … I mean, no one here talks much about—”
“Hitler? Well, they should. I understand that Czechoslovakia and Poland seem the other side of the moon to you, yet they’re just up the way a bit and, depending upon who steps in this Hun jackal’s path, who turns the other way, depending upon the shape and force of it all, well, what I’m saying is that nothing can be the same for very long anywhere in Europe now that this has begun. It
has
begun, Solange. We’ve declared war on the
boche
. The die is cast. Improbable,
unthinkable
as it is, this blitzkrieg of theirs may just be beginning. What I’m trying to say is that, should the
boche
invade France, well … Should that happen, the south will be safer than the north, at least until … It will be safer here for a while.”