Fantastic Metropolis

For some unfathomable reason, it happens often during Matins that Sister Sebastienne recalls how she, now a bride of Christ, was bartered by her parents to God in exchange for her brother’s recovery from the fever that threatened his life. We will give you our daughter Sebastienne, God, if you spare our firstborn son, they solemnly vowed before a priest and the entire household. It is a female’s lot to be bartered, she knows, but she has always found it especially disregardful of her that her parents exchanged her for her brother’s life rather than for a parcel of land. (Actually, they endowed her with a parcel of land to administer to the benefit of the convent.) Everyone said, when she took the veil, that being given to God was an honor greater than marriage. (Sebastienne, of course, knew that they did not really believe it.) Herself, she feels as though she had been designated a human sacrifice, offered to an exacting, extorting God determined to have his pound of flesh in one form or another.

This particular middle-of-the night, standing in the icy presence of the God who demands recognition at those times most mortals give over to sleep, as Sister Sebastienne feels God in the dark corners and thick silences that persist whenever their voices cease, the secret in her heart gives her the special strength and vitality of the young wife kept locked up by her ancient, cold-tempered husband, enjoying as much the thought that she is flouting his dismal constraints as the pleasure of the adultery itself.

4.

In the morning, after Mass, as they go about their daily tasks, a whisper flies from sister to sister that the Abbess has again spent the night in the Oratory.

As she does several times every day but the Sabbath, Sister Sebastienne goes to her place in the scriptorium. It is fortunate, she thinks, that the Abbess will again be missing the lesson. Though Sister Sebastienne’s years number a mere twenty-two, she is exhausted from a night of seductive sensuality, a night spent reveling in certain words and the sensations they conjured up. In the damp chill of early December, her cheeks, her breasts, her most moist and private places burn unslaked. Passion for an absent lover is an exhaustingly fiery affair.

Earlier that morning, after Chapter and before Terce, Sister Sebastienne, not fearing immolation, replaced the satires of Juvenal she had been studying with the Heroides. Ovid, of course, must be her mentor in grasping her correspondent’s many allusions and witticisms strategically placed like kindling to set the entire edifice burning, as well as her muse in matching him couplet for couplet. Two particular lines of Ovid popped into her head before she even laid hands on the book. Love came to me more deeply for being late—I am burning within; I am burning, and my breast has a hidden wound. Yes, yes, it must be to Phaedra’s elegy to Hippolytus that she turn first. I burn in silence with a knowing love. She has no choice but to keep silent about her burning. She has joined those sisters with secrets never to be bared outside the confessional.

For the first time since the Abbot of Cluny’s visit, the Abbess enters the scriptorium. She surprises and delights them all by going to her desk exactly as she always used to do. The Prioress—who occupies the Abbess’s desk when the latter is absent—rises and bows with the formality that the sheer grace and authority of the Abbess’s person inspires in all who come into her presence. Indeed, all the sisters rise from their benches and stools and bow to acknowledge the Abbess’s arrival, their mouths and manners appropriately grave, but their eyes joyful to see the Abbess now visibly about her duties, looking more radiant and serene than they have ever seen her, veritably brightening the thin wintry gloom that passes for daylight, as though she had not been going nearly sleepless for the last three weeks.

The Abbess gestures Sister Sebastienne to join her. The sister obeys, aware that all eyes are on her, confirming that she is still the Abbess’s favorite. “The Heroides? ” the Abbess says, making room on her bench for the sister, “Did you get through the Juvenal so quickly, then? ”

Blood rushes to the sister’s neck and face. “I thought I would put him aside for a while,” she said softly. “He’s so harsh. By your leave, I’ll return to him when I’ve done with these.”

A flash of gaiety, a hint of playfulness warms the Abbess’s face. “Frustrated love being less harsh? ”