Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

“Well, hello,” she said cheerfully. “You appear to be on the mend.”

“Thanks to you, I’m sure.”

“You must thank God, not me.”

“All right. I may do that. But I sincerely doubt that any Divine Almighty worthy of the name is going to beam if I gush or grumble if I don’t.”

Much to his astonishment, she nodded in agreement. “I suspect you’re right,” she said.

“Don’t you find it a bit batty that people believe God—the absolute epitome of perfection and enlightenment —could be so puffed with petty human vanity that he’d expect us to sing his praises at every opportunity and twice on Sunday?”

She smiled. “Have you traveled by wheelchair to the middle of the Syrian desert in order to debate theology, Mr.—?”

“Switters,” he answered, without the addition of the usual malarkey. “And no, I have not. I decidedly have not.”

She laid a hand gently but authoritatively on his brow. “Naturally, we need to learn why—and how—you did travel here, but I don’t wish to interrogate you until you’re stronger, so . . .”

“Oh, thank you! Please, no interrogation. I’m only insured for fire and theft.”

If she detected a facetious note, she elected to ignore it. “We must get you strong so we can send you on your way. Your fever has broken”—she removed her hand, somewhat to his disappointment—”but you look la tete comme une pasteque, as we say in France.”

“Aren’t you American?”

“No, no. I’m French. Alsatian French, by heritage, which is why I’ve been denied the grand Gallic nose.”

“But—”

“When I was four, we moved to Philadelphia so that my father could oversee a famous collection of French art in a private museum there. I lived in the U.S. for the next twelve years and became very Americanized, as children will, and although I haven’t been back since, I’ve worked hard to keep my English pure, so that I don’t sound like Jacques Cousteau describing zuh most ’andsome craytures zaire are in zuh sea.”

She laughed, and though it jiggled his sore gut, Switters found himself chuckling with her. “So, you’re a Philly fille. What’s your name?”

There was a pause. A long pause. For some reason, she was pondering the question, as if she lacked a ready or definite answer. “Around here, I’m called Domino,” she said at last. “More formally, Sister Domino—but I’m not so certain I can be called that any longer.” A troubled look dimmed the lights in her eyes. “Before Sister Domino, I was Sister somebody else, and before that I had my christened name, and in the not so far future I may have a different name yet.” She paused and deliberated some more. “I think it’s okay if you just call me Sister.”

“I’d be honored to call you Sister, Sister.” Then, thinking of Suzy, he added, “Fate has sought to compensate for the shortcomings of my parents in the sister production department by supplying me with the sweetest, loveliest sororal surrogates.”

“Kind of you to say that, Mr. Switters, but I hope you don’t think you can butter me off and get me to extend your stay here. You really must leave just as soon as you’re healthy enough to travel.”

Switters ran his hand over his face. A week’s growth of stubble rasped his fingers. I must look like a werewolf’s bedroom slipper, he thought. “I find it difficult to believe that someone who spent her formative years in the City of Brotherly Love could be so callously chomping at the bit in her desire to kick me out into the cruel wastes.”

“Yes, but you mustn’t take it personally. Or doubt our Christian charity. You see . . . well, no, you couldn’t see because you haven’t looked around, but the Pachomian Order has itself a regular little Eden here. But it’s an Eden for Eves only. We cannot allow even one Adam to intrude, I’m afraid.” She stood up to leave.

“Hmm? An Adamless Eden? I’ll have to mull that over.” Turning to face her, he heard the ponderosa music his whiskers made as they scratched the silk pillow. “What about a Serpent?”

“A Serpent?” She laughed. “No, no Serpent here, either.”

“Oh? But there has to be. Every Paradise has a Serpent. It goes with the territory.”

“Not this one,” she said, but there was something about her denial that was patently unconvincing.

All day Switters lay on the cot, listening to the sounds of activity in the compound. There was work going on. He heard the spray of sprinklers, the clang of garden tools, the whisk-whisk of brooms, the rattle of buckets and pots, the ech-zee ech-zee of pruning saws, and the simple grunts of labor (so different in their coloration from the loaded grunts of love). A couple of times he stood on the cot to peer out the window at the adobe buildings, the orchards, and the vegetable plots, but he grew quickly dizzy and lowered himself to a prone position. Laments (there had been an unusually long, coolish winter, and the orange trees had bloomed so late that there was danger the fruit would cook on the boughs), complaints (evidently there was some kind of dispute between the convent and the Mother Church), and snatches of French songs (no hymn among them) drifted into the little room, where they were tossed in an auditory salad with the work noises and the cackle and bray of beast and fowl.

Every hour or so, Sister Domino would stick her head in to check on him. He’d wave to her helplessly, and it wasn’t entirely an act. Midday, she brought him a warm vegetable broth but departed when satisfied that he was capable of spooning it himself between his fever-cracked lips. Midafternoon, she stopped by, to his supreme embarrassment, to empty his chamber pot.

Toward dusk, as she delivered a fresh kettle of tea, he apologized for being a burden to her. “I’m interfering with your duties,” he said sincerely, “and it’s making me feel guilty, an emotion my grandmother warned me against.”

“Well,” she sighed, “you must be carefully attended to for a few more days, and nobody else here has good English. Except for Fannie, our Irish lass, and I wouldn’t trust her alone with you.”

“Is that a fact? And which one of us wouldn’t you trust?”

She looked him over. He was physically disabled, he was recuperating from fever, and yet . . . “Neither,” she said. “Frankly.”

“But what do you think might go on? If we were left alone together?”

Domino headed for the door. “I don’t sully my mind with such details.”

“Good,” he congratulated her. “But, please, one more question before you go.”

“Yes?”

“Who undressed me?” He nodded at his clothing, which—suit, T-shirt, cartoon shorts, and all—hung from a peg on the wall.

She turned as red as a blister and sailed out of the room. And it was the older nun who’d first answered his ring at the gate who showed up with his supper tray, removed it a half hour later, and tucked him in for the night.

“Faites de beaux reves, monsieur,” she called as she put out the light.

Switters had always loved that expression, “Make fine dreams.” In contrast to the English, “Have sweet dreams,” the French implied that the sleeper was not a passive spectator, a captive audience, but had some control over and must accept some responsibility for his or her dreaming. Moreover, a “fine” dream had much wider connotations than a “sweet” one.

In any event, his dreams that night were neither fine nor sweet, for he was made fitful by the notion that toward Sister Domino, with the intention of being playful, he may have behaved like an insensitive boor.

How oddly delighted he was (though he tried to conceal it) when she turned up the next morning with his breakfast! It was a fine breakfast, too: scrambled eggs, grilled eggplant, chevre, and toast. Before he dove into it, however, he found himself apologizing once more. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. It’s just that I come from a country where there are prudes on the left, prigs on the right, and hypocrites down the middle, so I sometimes feel obligated to push in the other direction just to keep things honest.”

“No problem,” she said. “What you don’t understand is . . . well, there’s a deep undercurrent of sexuality flowing through every cloister. That may be especially true of the Pachomian Order because we are merely a centimeter above a lay sisterhood, no pun intended. In the hierarchy of sisterhoods, we are not especially great, and we have accepted members who a few of the more esteemed orders might reject. Of course, a Pachomian