A Provençal Mystery Read online

  A creature flew out of the smoke. Its ribbed leather wings made a sucking sound as they rose above its meager shoulders. I think the creature was a demon. It saw me, smiled with evil, and glided towards me. Its breath was hot on my face, burning the skin. Its scaly tail curled around me and wrapped my body like swaddling. I could not move. I could barely breathe. The red pupils of its snake eyes held me. The eyes were very alive, and I could not look away.

  The demon laughed

  I told it to begone. It cursed me. Its tail wrapped more tightly around my body. My breath came faster as its grip constricted my lungs.

  Holy Mary, protect me.

  I reached for the crucifix at my waist.

  Then I woke here in my cot, in my cell. My nightdress was wrapped around my body, and my hand was stiff. At first I thought I had been dreaming, but when I looked down at my palm, I saw a cross imprinted there. The imprint of the cross slowly disappeared when I straightened my fingers. My crucifix was hanging on the hook with my habit. If I had been dreaming, how did the crucifix get from the hook to my hand and back again? Perhaps it was a little miracle, the cross in my flesh. I do think miracles are rare. I wonder about those who come upon them all the time. My father taught me that. And miracles certainly do not come often to us humble converse nuns, who do the manual labor of the convent. But how else to explain it?

  * * * * *

  “Yes! Yes!” I said in a loud voice.

  The other readers looked up, and Chateaublanc, the archivist, raised his gray eyebrows. Even Rachel Marchand turned to stare at me. Quick, shadowy, a little smile came over her face, then died; she lowered her head and went back to work.

  After a moment, Jack Leach rose from his chair and walked over to my table, all gangling legs and flailing arms. He didn’t seem to care—not then, at least—that I had broken an unspoken historians’ rule: don’t display too much enthusiasm for a find, any find, not even if it’s Hitler’s lost diary, or all the inquisition registers of a Spanish city, or a physician’s records of a plague year in Marseille. I often wonder why this is. Historians seem to associate enthusiasm with naivité. A certain blasé attitude goes along with the briefcase and the PhD, except among close friends. I had no close friends at the archive, even though I had been there mid-December. My “yesses” had been a great breach of archive propriety.

  Leach bent his face down to mine, too close, saw me flinch, and stepped back out of deference. His blond curly hair was all awry. He smelled of aftershave, lack of sleep, and old cigarettes, and he did not move far enough away. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing you’d be interested in, Jack,” I said, with some pleasure, then felt guilty for hurting his feelings. As I watched his face fall, I remembered too well the psychological intimidation tactics of academics toward graduate students. But what if he decided to appropriate the diary for himself? I wouldn’t put it past him. I suspected he would do anything to succeed. He had to model himself after his adviser, eminent professor Martin Fitzroy, who was due to appear within the week. All Fitzroy’s students felt compelled to do anything for academic success. Crushed for the moment, Leach retreated to his table and opened a document. His hunched body was a study in nervous tension—left knee pumping, head in his hands.

  I glanced over at Rachel Marchand, who was sitting with her back to me as she wrote what was probably still another document request, but I hesitated to approach her. When she had arrived at the archive the day after Christmas and handed over her letter of introduction to Chateaublanc, I recognized her immediately. All severity: the lean body dressed in a black skirt and white blouse, the smooth brown hair held back with a square tortoise shell barrette, the long, straight nose that I associated with Greek statues. A tiny key on a chain had swung free, getting in her way as she leaned down to sign a form. Then she had straightened and looked over the reading room, as if to see if someone she knew was there. Her eyes passed right over me. I had never been introduced to her and was just one more face in the audience when she gave her celebrated talk at the Americn Historical Association’s national convention two years before.

  I knew Marchand’s personal history through the profession’s grapevine. When she was at Columbia, the other graduate students were jealous of her relentless intellect, and her inability to fawn cost her favor among the faculty. None of that mattered. She wrote a dissertation about French cinema so brilliant that it put her above department politics. Her book, based on the dissertation, became a huge professional and popular success. Historian reviewers raved (as much as historians can be said to rave) because of its exhaustive research, bold but tenable thesis, and elegant writing. Sales to the public put it on the best-seller list for two weeks.

  Marchand was a formidable figure.

  But deciding to forget that she had rebuffed all of my friendly overtures politely but firmly and remembering her little smile at my “yesses,” I geared myself up, picked up the diary, and walked over to put my hand on her bent rigid shoulder with its fall of hair, surprisingly silky under my fingers. Startled, she jerked away. She did not smile. The key she wore around her neck was now hidden inside her blouse.

  “Yes?” she said, with impatience in her voice.

  “I wanted to show you this,” I said. I felt like a kindergartner at show-and-tell. Instead of holding out the diary, I grabbed it to my body. “It’s a diary by a seventeenth-century nun.”

  She hesitated, as if marshaling her words precisely, then said, “Sorry, I don’t study the seventeenth century, and if you’ll excuse me, I need to order some documents before lunch.” Her neat face had as much expression as a stone; her ginger-colored eyes had gone opaque.

  Dismissed, I went back to my place, in both senses of the phrase. I had gone to graduate school at thirty-six, too old to accept the pecking order without question. The elitism of some historians, their snobbery and snubbing of each other, had never ceased to anger and amaze me. “Who do they think they are?” I had once said, full of bravado, to a fellow graduate student. “They live in a closed academic space. Carve out their little fiefdoms there. Why don’t they at least treat each other well? Nobody else in the whole world gives a damn about them. Can’t they see that?” And yet when someone treated me as Marchand just had, I could not help but feel diminished.

  * * * * *

  28 May, 1659

  I started writing this because of my vision of the fire and the demon last night. Mother Superior Fernande would probably not approve. It is forbidden to write personal journals because to do so speaks of pride. I am just a humble gardener, a converse nun, here at the convent though I was born the daughter of a wealthy goldsmith. They call me Sister Rose, my name in God. My name in the world was Anne Berthold. I came here seven years ago at the age of sixteen. I took my vows on All Saints Day four weeks past my eighteenth birthday. I do not regret it and will never leave. I love my trees and plants. I give my work to God.

  This morning I was in the garden in the center courtyard, where I spend many hours tending the herbs and flowers and vegetables. As I knelt, weeding under the olive tree, a shadow fell over me. It was the shadow of Mother Superior Fernande of the Assumption. She tapped her foot. The large wooden cross at her waist swung with agitation. Her pale, round face was angry.

  And we had this conversation:

  She: Sister, you were silent at group confession. It is not possible that you consider yourself completely free from sin.

  I: I could not remember a sin to confess.

  She: Sister, answer me properly.

  I: I do not know what to say, Reverend Mother. In my life I have been guilty of many sins, like all imperfect humans. Yet no recent sin of mine occurred to me.

  She: Consider the sin of pride.

  I: I know my station, and I do the work well.

  She: You see?

  I: But my pride is not excessive.

  She: You were not committed to flagellation during the discipline yesterday. I saw. You lacked enthusiasm. You were not engaged in our task.

  I: I cannot.

  She: Search your heart.

  She spoke as if she knew what was in my heart. Mother Fernande often acts as if she knows more than she actually does. Like Peter the fisherman, she fishes among us to catch our sins. A silence fell between us.

  She: If you will not admit your sin of pride to me, then you must admit it to the Lord.

  She raised her hand to stop me from answering.

  She: Add some knots to your whip. Consider your duty to God. We must humble ourselves before Him.

  I: Yes, Reverend Mother. I will obey, but it seems to me that the discipline does nothing for my soul. Perhaps I am spiritually stupid.

  She: Perhaps you are.

  She was red in the face and wagged her finger at me, and the sleeve of her habit flapped back and forth. She had seen through me. I threw some weeds into my basket.

  She shook her head and grasped the crucifix as if it were a tiny sword.

  I: I will examine my soul, Reverend Mother.

  She: Don’t be impertinent. I see impertinence in your expression.

  I: I will try not to be.

  She shook her head, then turned on her heel to walk to the dark doors of the convent. Sitting up on my heels, hands covered with dirt, I watched her go. Don’t step on a toad, Mother, I thought to myself, then continued weeding the basil. I should not even have thought the old saying, but it came into my mind unbidden.

  A loud bang. The archive door slamming against the wall. It jerked me out of Sister Rose’s world.

  Chapter 2

  Sist
er Agatha stood framed in the doorway, enormously present in her voluminous black habit. It was as if a spotlight shone on her. I could feel myself blushing with pleasure to see her. Agatha would understand my excitement at finding the diary. And I could trust her.

  With her sidekick Madeleine Fabre trailing behind her, Agatha strode past Chateaublanc’s big desk. Chateaublanc ran his fingers through what was left of his moussed grey hair, so that several strands flapped out of their combed rows on his bald spot. As usual, he smiled half-heartedly at Agatha. She gave him a little ironic half-wave. I had once wondered if they had gone to high school together—he had the attitude of an anxious, pimply suitor. But I had known right away that it couldn’t be because Chateaublanc was at least fifteen years younger than Agatha, and, after all, Agatha was a nun. Even though she made little of it at the archive and asked us to address her simply as “Agatha,” her commitment to her vocation was absolute.

  She came to a halt in front of the table where I sat in the back of the room. “And what has you so excited, my friend?” she asked in French. Her voice, resonant and gritty with its Provençal accent, resounded in the high-ceilinged room.

  “Excited?” I replied, also in French. “You think I am excited?”

  “I see your very large smile. Don’t tease me.” A big grin wreathed her face, framed in a white wimple.

  I held the diary out to her. "Have you seen this? A seventeenth-century diary. It’s a marvelous thing."

  Agatha took the diary from me, seemed to pretend to read a few lines, then folded it shut, put it down, and covered it with her plump but wrinkled hand. In a soft voice that I didn’t know she had, she said, "I've never read it.”

  “Strange,” I replied. “If anyone would know about it, you would. This Sister Rose was from your order. How about you, Madeleine?” I glanced at Madeleine who was, as usual, dressed in a chic costume: a tangerine-colored dress and an inky black wool jacket with geometric designs worked in gold thread.

  “I haven’t found any diaries here,” Madeleine said.

  I heard evasiveness in her answer, but Madeleine was always evasive, wasn't she? I didn't know her well, only that she lived at the convent in some secular capacity and looked to be in her mid-twenties. I suspected that she had been one of the girls saved from “the bad life” by the nuns as was their order’s mission, but I knew better than to ask, and I knew I was engaging in stereotyping even to think it.

  “Lunch at Café Minette, Dory? As usual?” Agatha said.

  “Of course.” I reached for the diary and pulled it from under her hand. She seemed reluctant to let it go. “I need to copy it,” I said, wondering why I was explaining myself. “I want to take a copy home and pore over it.” I wondered at their flat reaction and felt disappointed by it.

  “Il y a un enfer pour les curieux,” Madeleine said.

  “There’s a hell for the curious?” I asked.

  “Oui. Yes.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That's for you to figure out,” Madeleine said. “Perhaps if there’s a hell, there’s a heaven, too. For the incurious.”

  “It's like 'curiosity killed the cat. Satisfaction brought it back,'” I said.

  “Madeleine collects them, those old sayings, les proverbes,” said Agatha, then she winked and put her hand on mine as she had on the diary. It was soft, heavy. I felt both that the hand was loving and that moving out from under it would be difficult. Madeleine shook her head, raised her eyebrows, and made that French grimace called a moue, a pursed-lip expression of delicate disgust. She was a master at it.

  “Problem, Madeleine?” Agatha asked, smiling and leaning her head towards her.

  “Not at all,” Madeleine said.

  “Why, then, do you make such a face? Like a little child?”

  Madeleine put her hand over her eyes and shook her head.

  The photocopier, a balky antique, stood at the back of the room. In my fanciful moments, I thought it glowered at the readers, daring them to make it work. At times, I even thought it winked at me in a malevolent way. I dug in my jeans pocket for my stash of one-franc pieces, and counted them. I had five. If I placed the diary sideways, I could copy at least half the pages. I went to the machine and started to feed it. It hiccupped. I leaned against it and looked over the room as I waited for it to spit out the first copy.

  The room smelled of musty documents, coffee, floor wax, and underarm odor at war with Chateaublanc’s strong flowery eau-de-cologne. I heard the genealogist couple whispering "Mariage!" to each other as they searched through notarial records. From the tone of their voices, I knew that they were not finding what they were hoping for—evidence of nobility, even minor nobility. Why is it, I wondered, that the French, who love revolution and equality, are so fascinated with aristocracy? But didn’t Americans venerate their own revolution? And didn’t they tend to worship British royals—at least the young royals—and very rich Americans? Besides, I had my own fascination with genealogy. It was what had brought me to graduate school.

  Before I could further examine my thoughts, a draft of old, cold air hit me in the neck, and I turned to see Griset, the archive go-fer, coming from the storerooms, once prison cells, across the hallway. Small, dark, always the ladies’ man, he winked at me as he wheeled the cart holding stacks of boxes and leather-bound books to the front of the room. Though smoking was prohibited in the archive, a Gauloise, the last butt end, was attached to a corner of his lower lip as usual.

  The copier was silent; no copy had been ejected from its stubborn insides. I pushed the button again. The machine clicked, whirred, and went dead so I gave its side a little slap. I really wanted to kick it hard. Griset hurried over. He was good at reading body language. “The machine does not understand punishment,” he said in thick Provençal-accented French. “It is of low intelligence.”

  “Perhaps it understands tendresse, then. Can you fix it?”

  The copier stood dumb with no LED lights to give a clue as to what was wrong with it. Griset stared at it as if it were his adversary. Then he sighed, opened up the front, and stared inside. “No paper jam,” he finally said. “It needs an expert. I will call.”

  “I must copy this document,” I said, lifting the lid to pick up the diary. “It’s a diary by a nun. Did you put it at my place?"

  He reached out his hand, his short fingers stained with nicotine, and I reluctantly entrusted the diary to him. He read the first page and turned the document over, looking, as I had, for the archive stamp. Then he shrugged—very Gallic. "I have never seen this before. But I’ll check the records. Perhaps it has been misplaced.”

  "It’s not the sort of thing that gets lost." I heard my voice rise. “It’s very important.”

  "Doucement, doucement," he said, giving me the French equivalent of “Take it easy,” which literally means “sweetly.” He leaned toward me. I smelled Gauloise. "Don’t agitate yourself.”

  "I’m not agitated. I am happy!"

  He smiled, and the smile revealed his nicotine-stained teeth and creased the crows’ feet around his eyes. "A happy agitation, then, if that pleases you, Madame Red,” he said. I wasn’t fond of his nickname for me, even though I knew it showed affection for one of his favorite readers. It was too reminiscent of the teasing I had undergone as a kid because of my hair—Carrot Head or Brillo-Head.

  “I'll ask Chateaublanc about it,” I said.

  “Don’t,” Griset said.

  “Don’t? Why not?”

  “It is a bad idea. He might take it as a criticism,” Griset said. He took a folded paper from the pocket of his old, shapeless jacket. “Anyway, Chateaublanc is not happy with you. This fax came for you.”

  “He agreed . . . ,” I said, wondering how long ago the fax had clattered off the machine in the storerooms.

  “But, he says, so many!”

  “I’ll buy him a case of fax paper.”

  “That should appease him. He likes you anyhow.”

  “Truly?”

  “Like me, I think he has a liking for women with a bit of grossesse.” I grimaced. I hated the word for its sound, even though I knew it just meant weight to the French. However, Griset knew how I felt about it.