the waste and overflow pipes from the bathroom ran somewhere along the cellar corridor. So he was pernickety, to put it mildly. And although Marda did not have the intellectual background to apply Freudian insights or terminology, her shrewd instinct told her that, besides order and cleanliness, he demanded control. His fear of touch implied fear of love. Perhaps he could love only when he had total control and power over the object of his love. No, she decided, he cannot love; he can only control.
She tried to understand his mentality, because this knowledge might keep her alive that little bit longer. Celibacy could never be easy, but perhaps it had been easier when sex in public was taboo; now it was everywhere. Sex seemed to have been discovered in the 1960s, so maybe now it was that much harder for him. Perhaps he was a homosexual who, unlike some of his fellow priests, intended to remain chaste.
“Keeping women in bondage must be his kick” were the blunt words she entrusted to her diary. Duval’s earnestness in his religious instruction seemed either to contradict or to confirm that; she wasn’t sure which. On some days he spent three or four hours talking, teaching, instructing her in theology, and she had learned a great deal. Her rationale was straightforward: the more she learned, the more Duval would be losing if he let her die. Religion was her investment in her own future.
Perhaps she was going insane, but she also took some pleasure in acquiring new knowledge about a world she had never thought about before. She was an eager student because she had no distractions, except constant fear, and cold and hunger on occasion. The utter and comprehensive boredom of total darkness was a powerful incentive.
When she had started working in France, she had wondered what it would have been like to go to university. She often thought about it. And Duval may have been a killer, but as a teacher he was good. She started talking aloud to herself: “Good? A good teacher? Am I going mad? I’m captive to a monster. I’m not a student. I’m studying to fill my time. To keep my sanity.”
Yet, despite herself, she started to enjoy learning. It was her only contact with the outside world. The Holy Land was a lot more rewarding than the dank nothingness of her cell. Her studies allowed her to escape from her fears for a while. And Christ’s thoughts were usually healthier than her own morbid ones.
For the first lessons he spoke through the grille. Not only did this feel awkward, but the lessons were short. The longer the lesson, the more warmth, food and light. He seemed to want to be invited in. Marda sensed that she was not facing an immediate physical threat from him, not unless she really upset him by trying to escape, perhaps. She also wanted him to appreciate the discomfort of her cell, if he could be moved by such things.
She said, “Michael, why don’t you come in and we can speak face to face? I would prefer to sit upstairs, but until you trust me can’t we at least try to be civilised down here?”
She was trying to exercise some control over him. He understood that, but he accepted her co-operation. “All right, Marda,” Duval said gently, “but we will go through the handcuff procedure, at least for a while.”
Reluctantly, Marda agreed. She sat on the bench with her left hand cuffed, while he sat on the single chair that he had placed as far away from her as possible.
“Mmm. It is chilly in here,” he said, as if he was reading an actor’s line. “Do you mind if I turn up the heater a little?” He seemed shy, almost nervous. “I shall get you some more paraffin tonight…You have no objections to my smoking a pipe?”
“No.”
“I do not approve of women smoking cigarettes. You smoke those French cigarettes, if I remember correctly.”
Her eyes twinkled. “I do like to smoke Gitanes. My brother used to tease me, and said I was going all Brigitte Bardot on him. Is there…is there any chance of a pack or two? It might help to relieve my…my tension. And help me concentrate on my studies, of course,” she said almost coquettishly.
“I will consider it,” he said, lighting his pipe. The aromatic Dutch tobacco filled the room, and she noticed that he had a habit of breaking his matches in two and then putting the pieces back in the matchbox.
“I like that tobacco, Michael, and not just because it smothers some of the paraffin smell.”
He ignored her small talk. “All right, Marda, let’s discuss your knowledge of the Catechism again. I have mentioned that once you know enough, we could start the process of your confirmation. We’ll have to adapt a bit because I cannot really ask the bishop to come here.”
Marda almost said, “Can I go to the bishop, then?” But she knew well enough by now that he didn’t like what she would call “smart-aleck” comments. She sometimes overreached herself in her attempts to spar with Duval, to keep lively a conversation with someone she knew to be far better educated than herself. It was very hard.
“Let us run through some of the basics,” he said slightly impatiently. “What is faith?”
She replied eagerly: “Faith is a supernatural gift of God, which enables us to believe without doubting whatever God has revealed.”
“Good. That is word perfect. How are you to know what God has revealed?”
“I am to know…to know…what God has revealed by the testimony, er, teaching, and authority of the Catholic Church.” Marda looked a little embarrassed by her hesitation.
“There is no problem with a stumble. It is knowing and understanding. That is what counts. This is not an elocution lesson.”
“Michael, may I interrupt? You have a wonderful voice. Did you learn to speak that way or was it something God-given?” Marda would never have used that adjective before. She did it unconsciously. With a start, she realised her vocabulary was altering.
“I was born with it.”
“Where?”
He seemed reluctant to concede further information, then suddenly blurted out, “Not far from here…” And then again, he said, “Not far from here. Not far from here…”
A curtain descended and blanked out his motor functions and his speech; his eyes were glazed. Marda remained absolutely still, while Duval, triggered by some past trauma, explored his inner being.
Although he tended to live in the past, both professionally and personally, Duval did not talk about his own history. To anyone. He didn’t even like thinking about his upbringing. At first he had tried to forget the whole business, then he attempted to change reality: Duval rejected, then falsified, most of the emotional experiences of his childhood. And he had eventually come to believe these lies as fact.
Especially, Duval tried not to think about his father, who was cold and authoritarian towards him when he was young. He had been attached to his mother, and had some fond memories of his childhood before the tragedy of his sister’s mental illness and eventual suicide. After that he grew away from his mother. His conversion to Catholicism caused the final break in an already emotionally estranged family. The Church became his mother, yet although he loved Catholicism, he also hated parts of it.
Duval recovered almost immediately from his brief reverie, but even if it had lasted for eternity, he would never have fully recognised the element of destructiveness in his complex Oedipal relationship with his Church, which to him was both a protective and persecuting goddess.
Duval seemed not to notice that both he and Marda had been silent for over a minute. She had learned to remain very still and quiet when occasionally he slipped into these almost catatonic states.
“But enough of me. Let us get on,” he said in a normal voice, as though he were in the middle of an Oxbridge tutorial.
Silence again ensued as he fiddled with his pipe for a few seconds.
“I will ask
“Oh, Michael, you don’t want to know…”
“Yes, I do. Please tell me.”
“Well, it’s the name of a mountain pass in Somalia. My father served there during the war and he just liked the sound of it.”
“How very noble of him.” Duval smiled. “Yes, it’s a pretty name, and it sounds like ‘martyr.’ That’s what I thought when I first heard it…‘And the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.’ Isaiah, chapter thirty-five, verse one.”
He stopped himself and his voice became a fraction sterner: “Now the Apostles’ creed. How does mortal sin kill the soul?”
Marda was disconcerted by his gloss on her name, but she could not allow herself to be side-tracked; she had
