The Gargoyle (34 page)

I will not pretend that I understood this perfectly, but here is my best interpretation: God acted upon the “buried gargoyles” (meaning the gargoyles still encased in stone) by informing them of the shapes they should assume. The buried gargoyles acted upon Marianne Engel, instructing her how to realize these shapes. Marianne Engel then became the agent of action, chipping away the stone. In this way, she allowed the gargoyles to realize the shapes God intended for them. The now unburied gargoyles (the finished carvings) were therefore a realization of God’s instructions. They were not Marianne Engel’s creations, because she wasn’t the sculptor; God was. She was only the tool in His hand.

She kept scrubbing hard on my body the entire time that she was explaining. When she was finished, I could see the chips of my skin floating in the bathwater.

It was not long before a work crew arrived to install air conditioning and I found myself able to sleep comfortably in the belfry. I assembled a few shelves in the room—one for books, and one for the small stone grotesque and the glass lily that I’d received in the hospital. There was a desk in one corner, which I equipped with the stationery set that Gregor had given me. In another corner were the television and video player that Marianne Engel had bought for me, despite her own aversion to these too-modern items.

The scene in the basement did not repeat itself any time soon after that, and we quickly developed a routine. When I woke in the morning, she’d inject me first and scrub me second. Following this, there was a series of exercises that Sayuri had prescribed. In the afternoon I’d take a nap, and while I slept, Marianne Engel shopped for my recovery supplies or took Bougatsa for a walk. In the early evening I’d get up again and we’d play cards, or drink coffee and talk. Occasionally, if she had something to do, I’d call Gregor and we’d spend a few minutes on the phone. I found I missed the visits he had made to my hospital bedside and we usually ended our calls by promising to get together soon. It was not easy, though, because his schedule was busy and it seemed that whatever free time he had was spent with Sayuri.

At the end of most evenings, Marianne Engel would go to bed before I was ready to sleep, and I’d stay up to read Friedrich Sunder or Sister Christina.

The
Gnaden-vita
was fascinating even though, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, the writing included several occurrences of gender reversal. Sunder would be writing in the proper masculine sense and then—whoops!—he’d be a woman. These mistakes might have been inserted by female editors after Friedrich’s death, or by various female scriveners over the years, or even by Marianne Engel as she finally brought the work into English. (Imagine the glee in Titivillus’ eye!) However, I doubted this was actually the case, because the feminine qualities were beyond mere typographical slips: they were integral to the content.

A particularly striking example is in Father Sunder’s description of his marriage to Christ. The idea of such a union seems—to my modern mind—strange, but apparently “marriage” to Christ was common among men of Friedrich’s position. Even allowing for this, however, there can be no denying the enormously erotic nature of the bridal imagery. The marriage is consummated in an ornate bed covered with flowers, in the middle of a court, and watched by many figures from Heaven, including Mother Mary. Sunder writes that Christ embraces him and kisses him, and that they take their pleasures with each other. (You read that correctly.) When Christ is finished with Friedrich, He tells the angels to take up their instruments and play them with as much pleasure as He has just played His beloved spouse. Jesus even claims that through this consummation a multitude of souls has been freed from Purgatory, which really does suggest that it was quite a wedding night.

It crossed my mind that Marianne Engel might have included this passage in the translation simply to have a good laugh at my expense. Because—c’mon!—this episode
couldn’t
really have existed in Sunder’s original text, right? But in the interval I’ve checked other sources and found it to be accurate.

As interesting as that is, more notable to me is the fact that the
Gnaden-vita
includes no mention of a Sister Marianne who’d been dropped off as a babe at the Engelthal gates. When I pointed this out, Marianne Engel assured me that her omission from Sunder’s book would be explained before she finished telling me the story of our past lives.

“I know that you don’t like the idea of going out in public,” she said, “so let’s go now, under the cover of night.”

I resisted nominally, but was too curious about where a midnight excursion with Marianne Engel (and Bougatsa) might lead. Soon we found ourselves in her car, heading towards a beach at which I’d never bothered to stop. I wondered whether anyone else would be there and decided probably not, on a cold night in late February. But I was wrong. The sandy shoreline was speckled with small bonfires around which teenagers sat drinking beer. They were equidistant in the darkness, affording everyone a degree of anonymity. I liked this.

Marianne Engel laid out a blanket. I wanted to take off my shoes, because they were full of sand, but even in the dark I was too bashful about my missing toes. She said she wished that I could go swimming with her, or at least wade out to my knees, but she had no idea what saltwater would do to my skin. My gut feeling was that it would not be pleasant. It didn’t really matter, because as a child I had never learned to swim. “That’s a shame,” she said. “I love the water.”

I laid my head in her lap and she told me about the great wolf named Sköll that chases the sun every day, trying to eat it. It is said that at Ragnarök, the battle at the end of the world, he will finally succeed, devouring the sun while his brother Hati eats the moon, and the stars will disappear from the sky. She told me about the terrible earthquakes that will rip the earth apart as Miðgarðsormur, the Midgard Serpent, twists his immense body in the ocean and causes towering tidal waves. All the gods will be involved in a tremendous war, and eventually fire will be flung in all directions. The world, Marianne Engel said, will burn before the charred remains sink into the sea. “At least that’s what my friend Sigurðr believes.”

She hopped up from our blanket and started stripping off her clothes. “I’m going swimming now.”

Though I usually accepted her idiosyncrasies, I was shocked by this announcement. It was obviously and immediately dangerous, and I protested that the weather was far too cold.

“It’s fine,” she insisted. “People do it all the time, you know, in polar bear plunges.”

I had heard of such events—people jumping into the freezing ocean for a few minutes, usually for charity—and knew they were closely monitored by dozens of volunteers, not to mention doctors. Any one of a hundred participants could help to pull out a swimmer in trouble, but here, she would be alone.

“I love that you’re so worried about me,” she said, “but I’ve done it plenty of times before.”

“Yeah?” I challenged. “When? Where?”

“Finland. Often.”

Finland.
“That doesn’t make it a good idea today.”
We weren’t in Finland.

“You’re sweet. I’ll only stay in for a few minutes, and I won’t swim past where my feet can touch bottom.” Her clothes were now off, heaped in a pile on the beach, and I asked her one more time not to do it. “Only a few minutes. Not in deep water.”

I’M SURE IT’LL BE FINE.

“I really am touched by your concern,” she added, “but you needn’t be worried.”

She headed out into the ocean, calmly. The moon cast a splintered glow over the waves. She did not pause, nor shiver, nor splash, nor scoop up water to smooth over her stomach to acclimate to the cold. No, she just walked out until she was up to her chest and then leaned forward to slide
THERE SHE GOES
into the water.

Down the beach, I heard some of the teenagers laughing about the fact that anyone was stupid enough to go swimming at this
VERY COLD
time of year. I watched the small wake that formed behind her as she headed away from me, but parallel to the shore. At least she was keeping her promise not to head into deeper water. I followed her progress, hobbling along the shore to keep abreast, although I didn’t know what I could do if she encountered trouble in any case.
SAY “BYE BYE.”
Yell to the teenagers, I supposed; since my accident there was no chance that my body could handle the chill of a winter ocean.

She cut the surface smoothly; it was apparent that she was good at this and, despite her smoking, her body was strong from the physical labor of carving. Occasionally she would look towards the shore, towards me. I thought I saw her smile, but she was too far out for me to know for sure. I nervously clutched at my angel coin necklace until I saw her turn around and start back to where she had entered the water.

When she started returning to the shore—to my relief, only a few minutes after leaving it—she exited the water the same way that she went in. She did not rush out, or shake her body to dispel the wet. She just calmly emerged and walked to me, shivering from the night chill, although less than I would have imagined.

“Do you know what the best part of that swim was?”

“No.”

“Knowing that you were on the shore waiting for me.” She used a towel to squeeze the water from her hair—quite a job, I’ll tell you—before she put back on the clothes that I was anxiously thrusting at her, lit a cigarette, and said it was time to tell me more of our story.

Each time she paused, perhaps to add a bit of drama to the telling, I was worried it signaled the delayed onset of hypothermia.

N
ow that you had come out of the worst of it, your condition was improving every day. There was still much healing that lay ahead, but I no longer worried about you slipping away each time I left the room.

In the beginning, you said that you didn’t want to talk about your life. I was unsure if this was because you were ashamed of all your years as a mercenary, or if that final battle was simply too painful to remember. But since your life was not to be discussed, we talked about mine instead. You seemed fascinated by it, by
me,
which I couldn’t quite fathom. What could possibly be interesting about life in the monastery? But your eyes lit up when I told you about my scriptorium duties, and you excitedly asked for your clothes. I retrieved them from the cupboard where we’d stored them. Even though they were mostly in tatters, the nuns couldn’t bring themselves to throw out something that didn’t belong to them.

The arrow had cut through the breast of your habergeon and much of the material around it was burnt away, but I could feel something heavy and rectangular in the inside pocket. You pulled out this item, which was wrapped in cloth. The broken shaft was still embedded in its front, with the arrow’s tip just barely emerging from the back. You turned the object over in your hands a few times, amazed that this accidental shield had prevented the arrow from entering more deeply into your chest. After you pulled the arrowhead out, you pressed it into my palm and told me to do with it as I pleased.

I did not even have to think on the matter; I said instantly that I knew what I would do with it.

“And what is that?”

“I will return it to you,” I answered, “after I have asked Father Sunder to bless it. Then your chest can accept it as protection rather than an assault.”

“I look forward to that day,” you said as you handed over the parcel. “I got this from a dead man.”

I unwrapped it, revealing a hand-copied book with scorched edges that left charcoal on my fingertips. How, I wondered, could the book have remained undevoured by the flames?

I held it against your chest, and it lined up perfectly with your burns. The patch of unburnt skin was exactly where the book had been pinned to you by the arrow, and this also explained the small cut in the middle of that unburned rectangle.

I flipped through the book, noticing that the cut on the pages became smaller the deeper I went, and I asked you about the dead man. You answered, “We had two Italians in our ranks. One was killed in battle, a good man named Niccolò. The book was his.”