A Provençal Mystery (5 page)

Rachel was relentless. “Would you release these documents to a French historian?”

“They are unavailable,” replied Chateaublanc. He should have added “period.”

“Look, Monsieur Chateaublanc,” Rachel continued, “I  need these documents to complete my work here, and I know they exist. No one else has them.”

“Perhaps later,” Chateaublanc said.

I watched the argument, which continued along in the same vein, knowing Rachel could not win. It was not the first time Chateaublanc had stonewalled her.

Finally I decided to speak up. In a voice that was a little too loud for the archive, I said, “Monsieur Chateaublanc, could it not be that the records have been misplaced on one of the carts?” I was trying to give Chateaublanc an out so that he could gracefully cave in.

Rachel stared at me. “I’ll take care of this,” she said flatly, in English. Her subtext: this is none of your business. She turned back to face Chateaublanc. “Please tell me why you cannot retrieve those documents, Monsieur Chateaublanc.”

“Oh, Maurice,” said Agatha, sounding like someone’s mother. “Don’t give Doctor Marchand such a hard time.”

Rachel shot Agatha a look.

“And you—don’t be so independent, my dear,” Agatha said to her.

Rachel did not respond—all her attention was again focused on Chateaublanc.

Under the readers’ gaze, Chateaublanc managed to erect a more sincere yet still reluctant smile on his square face. “I will look into the matter,” he said, then scooped the necklace of paper clips into his desk drawer and walked out into the hallway.

Wanting to be submissive—befitting my rank in the academic hierarchy as the supplicant ape in the troop, I was going to say something meaningless and friendly as Rachel passed my table at the back of the room, but in spite of myself, other words came out of my mouth, spoken softly so that Chateaublanc could not hear: “That was a nasty little scene. I don’t blame you for being angry. You fill out your cards neatly, you wait patiently. And look what happens. You’ve been the perfect researcher, but for one thing.”

“And that is?”

“Perhaps you should be friendlier with the Big Man up there,” I said, realizing as I said it that what I really meant was that Rachel should be friendlier to everyone. “Buy him a coffee, maybe. Bring him a candy bar. Tell him he looks handsome.”

“That should not be necessary,” Rachel replied, “though I know the theory.”

“And you want to add that every graduate student learns it,” I said.

“You tried cozying up to Chateaublanc and it didn’t work for you,” Agatha said, coming up to us both with Madeleine in tow. She was reminding me that I had also been attempting in vain to obtain missing documents.

“I know,” I said. “Maybe it’s just sloppiness. Things don’t make sense in this archive. Chateaublanc hates to see the documents come down off their shelves into the hands of human beings. As if he’s afraid we’ll deflower them. Like some librarians. Yet he lets us keep them at our places until we’re done, even if it takes days. I wonder why? No other archive I've worked in has allowed that.”

“I guess perhaps we shouldn’t look gift horses in the mouth,” Rachel said.

“What are gift horses?” Agatha asked.

“I don’t really know,” Rachel replied. “It’s an old American proverb from a time when horses were more numerous.”

“
A cheval donnéé on ne regarde pas les dents,
” said Madeleine. “In English . . .”

I know what that says,” I said. I was annoyed at Madeleine’s assumption that my French was poor and at her constant, knowing reiteration of proverbs. “Don’t look at the teeth of a horse given to you.” I turned to Rachel, asking the question that had been bothering me for days, “Are you looking for documents on cinema here, in Avignon? I should think you’d find very little. Aren’t the main records in Paris?”

“It’s the scene of an arts festival,” Rachel said, “but I’m researching a topic that has nothing to do with cinema.”

I opened my mouth to ask what that topic was, saw the glare in Rachel’s eyes, and shut it again. Then I said, “Maybe the archive is understaffed. Griset hasn’t time to search for missing documents, just to piss on fires. Come to think of it, it isn’t that Griset is so overworked. He spends far too much time chatting with a cigarette stuck in his face. The real question—why does Chateaublanc allow Griset to get away with it?"

“Chateaublanc’s a powerful man, and he knows it all too well,” said Rachel.

“He’s just a functionary,” Agatha said.

“Just wait until you ask for a document and he delays it a week. Then you’ll find out,” I said. "Chateaublanc could scuttle your research if he wanted to."

“Perhaps,” said Agatha, full of equanimity. “But he has a certain respect for the convent, and I have always received my documents in time.”

“He would not hold up documents for Agatha,” Madeleine said, moving almost imperceptibly nearer her friend. “She is working on a convent history. He has respect for that.”

Agatha and Madeleine were standing in front of the building when I left the archives. So, Dory,” Agatha said in English. “Do you think I went too far with Chateaublanc?”

I knew better than to equivocate. “I worry, Agatha. He’s an important man.”

Agatha folded her arms and tucked her hands in her armpits, where they became lost in the sleeves of her habit. “Chateaublanc needs to be loosened up. He’s like a clock. He
is
a clock," she said, with a wicked smile. “A mechanical man.”

"Isn’t that unfair? He seems more human than that," I said.

"Not unfair, but uncharitable, perhaps." Agatha said, now grave. "I must do penances often for my lack of charity. It’s my worst fault, except for my conceit."

"You? Conceit?"

"If I talk about my conceit now, I compound it, don’t I? I will be even more conceited if I talk about being conceited." She smiled and shivered from the cold, then continued, “He needs to be reminded. He is here to serve, no? I think it is good for his soul. And isn’t his soul more in need of reminding than mine?"

I punched her gently in the arm. "Come now!"

"Something about him reminds me of the boys I knew at school. He thinks far too much of himself just because he is a Chateaublanc of Chateaublanc. A very important family." She leaned against the stone rail. “Perhaps it’s the mistral that makes me so nasty towards him. It turns people into crackpots. Even me, the old nun, and stuffy Chateaublanc.” Her habit ballooned out as a gust of wind assaulted us.

“It’s like the Santa Ana winds in Southern California. But Santa Anas are hot,” I said. “They come in from the desert. Some say the Santa Anas bring out the murder in people.” For a moment I wanted badly to be back home watching the wind throw the waves of the Pacific into sheets of scintillating spray. Sticking my toes in the cold water. Throwing tennis balls for Foxy. Riding my surfboard in to the shore. Seeing the bright golden bluffs in the slanting late afternoon sun. What was I doing here, talking to these two on a cold street in France? Pandora Ryan, “the American woman”? I saw myself as I imagined they saw me. Foreign. Pathetic, alone except for my dog.

Agatha must have noticed my change in mood. Perhaps I slumped, who knows? “Don’t worry,” she said. “I know all will turn out all right.”

Madeleine rolled her eyes. “Always playing Mama,” she said. “Doctor Ryan is a grown woman. She can take care of herself.”

“Grown women have feelings, too,” Agatha said. “You do, don’t you, Dory? I think you are homesick.”

The phone was ringing as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I jabbed my key in the door, fumbled with it, finally succeeded in turning it. Foxy was there, on the other side of the door, waiting to jump up. After I had greeted him, I picked up the phone and said, in the French way, “‘
Allo
?”

“Doctor Pandora Ryan, please.” The voice on the other end was plummy and cultured. My department chair, Magnuson. I visualized him in his book-lined office at his big, close-to-empty desk, my last letter in front of him, one long-fingered, fine-boned hand on the letter, the other holding the phone, knuckles against his cheek.

My heart sank. “Professor Magnuson. It’s me, Dory. I live here alone, you know.”

“I have your outline in front of me,” he said.

“And I have your fax in my pocket.” No answer on the phone. The wire seemed to hum in my ear, and I could visualize his frown, the deep-cut lines across his forehead, the lowering of the eyebrows. “I’m working on the article,” I added. “It’s very time-consuming. Social history. Statistics.”

“The outline reads a good deal like Chapter Two in your dissertation,” he said.

“Yes, I suppose it does.” Foxy went over to his food dish, put a paw on it, and knocked it against the wall. I smiled at him. “I’ve expanded the statistical base,” I said.

“It is essential that your thesis express something new,” Magnuson said.

“I haven’t gotten that far.” Another hum on the line. Children’s voices rose from the street. I could see my flute case sitting on the window sill.

“Indeed,” Magnuson finally said. “Don’t you think. . . ?”

“My thesis arises from the data, not the other way around,” I replied to his implicit question.

“That’s taking a chance, is it not?”

“I suppose so. It’s the way I work.” I flicked a stray crumb across the counter.

“Hmmmm.” His head was shaking, I knew.
“I’ll keep you posted,” I said. “I think I’m losing you. Albert?”

“Yes, I’m here,” he answered impatiently.

“Albert? I can’t hear you. Are you there?” I could hear him perfectly well, but he couldn't know that.

“The connection is poor,” he said. “I’ll ring off.” And he did.

After feeding Foxy and making myself a paté sandwich, which I ate with pleasure, I played my flute a while, a Mozart piece, then went to my desk. As I crossed out words on my so-called draft, I cursed Magnuson. The hell with him. I'd take my time on the article, try to finish reading the diary the next day. Editors of academic journals always set deadlines ahead, knowing that contributors were notoriously late at meeting them.

Chapter 5

Morning river mist rose in gauzy wisps, leaving drops of water on Foxy’s fur and my hair as we crossed a wooded parking lot near the Porte de l’Oulle. After threading our way through the cars, we turned onto a steep medieval street that led to the Rue de la Republique.

Within seconds, a large silver-colored car barreled down the street, fast, coming at us. I pulled Foxy to the stone wall and held him against it. Not a one-way street. What if another car came the other way? Hood ornament— a crest inside a wreath. Cadillac. Two faces. A man and a woman. The man behind the wheel. Chateaublanc. On his face I thought I saw a crazed look. I shrank against the wall. A swish of air. The car passed with inches to spare. My stomach hurt from holding it in. Foxy looked up at me with questioning eyes.

I tend to exaggerate when I’m alarmed. My mind chatters and spits out scenes. I saw Soviet tanks moving inexorably down streets as if propelled by robots intent on mowing down anything in their path. The scene in
A Tale of Two Cities
—the aristocrat in the horse-drawn carriage running down a poor child.

The car screeched to a halt at the end of the street. Suddenly, danger gone, I was furious. With Foxy loping next to me, I ran down to confront Chateaublanc.

He had already parked the car in a marked off space and was getting out when I reached him.

“What were you thinking of?” I shouted in French.

“What?” Chateaublanc said, raising his eyebrows.

“You could have killed me and my dog back there!” I pointed up the little street. “That street is not a race track.” Momentarily, I was proud of myself for remembering the French for “race track.”

“
Doucement
!” he replied.
Doucement
not only means “take it easy,” it is also the word the French use when they are in the wrong and want to calm things down.

I raised my own eyebrows. “
Doucement
? Please!”

“Madame. I am very sorry to have frightened you, but that was not my intention. Did I hit you? . . . Or your adorable dog?”

His smile was false.

“You would have, if I had not moved aside!” I said.

He made a dismissive gesture. “
Je suis désolé
,” he said.

That French expression of regret—“I am desolated”—sounded no more sincere to me than usual, in fact less so.

He walked to the other side of the car, opened the door, and held out his hand. A tall woman took it and stepped out. She wore a very expensive mauve suit and medium high heels. Her hair was swept up on her head in a way that was old-fashioned, yet her face was modern. She could have been painted by Modigliani—all planes, hers was the face of a model. She stood straight and proud. Still holding her hand, Chateaublanc himself stood tall, though shorter than she, in a pose so courtly it made him seem like someone from the distant past. In my fascination with the scene, I forgot my anger.

The sound of a child yelling “
Maman
!” broke the mood. Chateaublanc opened the back door of the car, and two children, both with backpacks, hopped out. The older, a boy, looked to be about nine, a miniature of his mother, but with his father’s hooded blue eyes. The girl, about six, had the look of most children her age—she was a fledgling, in the process of losing her downiness. She, too, had the Chateaublanc eyes. As she came out of the car, she impatiently tugged at her a stray lock of hair, which was in two long, loose ponytails. Chateaublanc reached out and tucked the hair in, with a gesture so tender that I was startled. It was as if he had become someone else.

He looked up at me and said, “Allow me to present to you my wife, Angelique, and my two children, David and Mathilde. This is Madame Doctor Ryan, a reader at the archive.” He inclined his head and smiled. “And her faithful dog.”

Mathilde started patting Foxy, who never turned down any attention, as David, who seemed more timid, stood watching with his hands in his pockets..

“Are you spending the day shopping then, Madame Chateaublanc?” I asked.

“The children are going to school,” she replied, “and I am going to my office. I practice law.” Humor lurked in the smile she gave me as she looked me up and down. “Shopping bores me. Does it not you?” She pulled down her chic jacket that showed off her tiny waist.

“Indeed, yes,” I replied, aware that my athletic shoes and faded jeans were testament to that fact.

Over Angelique’s shoulder, I saw a black-robed figure coming at us, edging through the rows of cars. Agatha. Agatha’s eyes were on Chateaublanc; her view of me was almost entirely blocked by Angelique’s back. I saw her jerk her head in the dir-ection of the little medieval street. Chateaublanc, standing at right angles to me and his wife, gave a slight nod.

“Until five, then, my dear,” Chateaublanc said to his wife, as he kissed her on both cheeks.

I said my goodbyes to the Chateaublancs. There was no way I would go up that narrow little street again. As I walked with Foxy away from the parking lot towards the Place Crillon, I looked back and saw Chateaublanc turning to follow Agatha.

At the American Bar, I ordered a café au lait and a piece of buttered baguette, partly for Foxy, partly for me, then went to sit at an outside table to think about the scene I had just witnessed. Chateaublanc and Agatha did have some kind of relationship. Could it be a romance from the past? I could imagine stranger things—Agatha had a rough vitality that could appeal to a man. But would it appeal to Chateaublanc? And I couldn’t imagine Agatha finding her way past her vows, her life, to fall into the arms of a Maurice Chateaublanc. No, that could not be it. I was thinking like a teenaged romantic.

I shrugged off my speculations, took Foxy home, then trudged off to the archive, where I went straight to the diary.

* * * * *

29 May 1659

Last night, during recreation, I spoke to my cousin Sister Marie of the Incarnation, who was brought up with me. When we are alone I call her Antoinette, her childhood name. Her mother and her father both died of plague when she was three so she grew up in our house. We arranged to be nuns here together. My father paid her dowry so she could pray for his soul with me. We took our vows at the same time.

Antoinette and I could not speak long. Special friendships are forbidden in the convent, and for good reason, too. We must love God more than anything. When one of us pays more attention to one nun than another, it causes trouble. Our order is cloistered. We are here for life, all of us, within the high walls, never to leave. A little trouble can become a big one very quickly. We talked thus:

I :Mother Fernande mortifies herself too much, Antoinette. If she keeps it up, she will die.

She: Maybe she’s just more pious than the rest of us. She should be. After all, she’s the mother superior.

I: Do you think that’s the reason? Truly?

She: I haven’t heard anything except

I: What? Except what?

She: The convent money, perhaps. We never seem to have enough, which was not true before. We sold off the vineyard at Gordes, remember. And Mother Catherine’s reliquary, too—they say the seigneur might want to buy it.

I: But, in my dream, the reliquary was all that was left after the fire. Like a miracle. How can we sell it? The money trouble must be serious. Sister Gertrude would have to know about any money trouble. After all, she is the treasurer and sees to money transactions. And, if there were trouble, would she not tell her blood sister Marie Paule?

She: And Marie Paule would tell her favorite, little Jeanne, the novice, who would then tell me! Nothing is really secret here.

We laughed together. The other sisters often comment on Antoinette’s joyous nature, which is pleasing to God, showing that she is happy in her duties. She has always been thus. She was smiling in a way I remembered from seeing her in swaddling, looking up at my aunt. She was pretty then as she is now, and with the same innocence.

We continued talking.

I: I wonder what is really secret here.

She: Like what?

I: I don’t know. How could I know?

1 June 1659

But I must not waste time writing of these things. Antoinette says I talk too much, and she is right. I will not show this to Antoinette. She cannot read as well as I, nor does she care about it. My father hired a tutor for me, when he saw that I had taught myself to read at four years. I learned Latin and Greek and philosophy, and I read the books in my father’s library. I read books about God, of course, St. Augustine, St. Teresa, but also the stories of Rabelais, essays by Montaigne.

Once a peddler came to our house selling almanacs, and I bought one. It was there that I found out about strange things of this world, like the woman who gave birth to one hundred children. That got me in trouble when I told Sister Marie Paule about it. She said it was not true and that I should not read such things. Rabelais, she said also, was an evil man. Of course here I cannot read Rabelais or even the almanac, because there are no such books in the convent. I still remember the giant of Rabelais and facts in the farmer’s calendar telling like the phases of the moon in which it was good to plant and harvest, the stories of America and other far off places, the tale of the Wandering Jew.

2 June, 1659

Mother Fernande was ill with a fever today, and I was called in to attend her. She hitched up her nightdress to show me her side, raw as butcher’s meat from the rubbing of the rosettes on her hair belt. The sore was loathsome. Yellow pus was beginning to form. Some sores had crusted over. I felt my gorge rise, but controlled myself, and dipped my hand in the ointment Antoinette, who works as our pharmacist, had given me to treat her.

She shook her head and pulled the nightdress down. Her mouth was swollen, and I knew she had put needles into her tongue again.

I said: Mother Fernande, I know you must suffer for God, but we need you to lead us. How can you lead us, if you don’t heal? Just let me put a little ointment on it. It will be good for my soul. If I don’t do it, Sister Gertrude will come in and beg you to let her do it. Besides, my touching it will give you pain that you can offer to God.

She relented and pulled up the nightdress. Scars crisscrossed her body from flagellation, from the ax she sleeps on, from those iron rosettes on her hair belt. Some of the cuts were still red, barely healed over.

I gently stroked the ointment on her side and saw her flinch in pain. The sores were angry—the cuts had to be deep.

I told her that I thought the doctor should see her wounds, and soon, but she shook her head.

I said nothing more. When I was done, I showed her the cloth I used to wash her wounds—it was yellow with pus and red with blood. She muttered something in a muffled voice and waved me out of the room. I promised myself I would show the cloth to Sister Gertrude. Then perhaps she would call in the doctor.

Mother Fernande fights an inner trouble, I think. It makes her ill-tempered and a thorn in the body of the sisterhood we have here. She says that she is often blessed with the presence of God, who visits her in her meditations. When she comes back to the world, she is usually a little strange in it. She shouts at us and does not make worldly sense. But to the Lord perhaps she makes better sense. How would I know? Unlike Mother Fernande, I have not the delicacy of soul to suffer spiritual agony. Instead I work with my hands to the glory of God. Therefore I fail to understand her.

In any case, a blackness has settled over our convent since she has been mother superior, and there are those of us who hope that in the next election she will be replaced by someone with a sweeter temper. Before Mother Fernande, the sisters ate very well, meat often, raspberries in season, dried fruit in winter, and plenty of good wine. But now, the wine is weak and watered, and we are given more pease than before. I know that earthly food feeds only our imperfect and corrupt bodies and should not be important to us. After all, we partake of the delicious bread and wine of the Holy Sacrament, God’s body and blood. Yet I think God wants us to nourish our bodies with other food as well.

I know that I need food. My work is hard, so that I have no time for whips or hair shirts. I have scabs on my knees from kneeling in the dirt caring for God’s plants. I dedicate the scabs to Him.

But I wonder why it is that the food is poorer. Does Mother Fernande wish to stick more closely to the Rule? Or is it that there is not enough money for food when before there was plenty? Mother Fernande is a large woman, who was seen in the past to enjoy herself at table. For a fact, once her confessor told her that she perhaps was indulging in too much wine. This threw her into a very bad temper. As she said, how would the priest know how much wine she drinks, unless another nun told him during her own confession?

If the convent sells the reliquary, we will have lost the head of our beloved founder, Mother Catherine. She died ten years ago. The sisters say that her body never decayed at all and that it smelled like roses. Sister Marie Paule, who was near to death with a disease of lungs, was miraculously cured when she touched the body. Mother Catherine’s body was buried, but her head became a relic. An artist from Florence made the copper reliquary for it. The reliquary’s eyes are green enamel, and the artist cleverly gave it curly hair, like Mother Catherine’s.