Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

desert, especially, moonlight was the magic frosting that slathered delectability onto the scorched hard torte of the earth—but surely those critics were correct when they complained that ideas and ideals of physical beauty tended, at worst, to oppress the plain in appearance, and, at best, to make them feel inadequate; while giving those graced with comeliness, through no particular effort of their own, a false sense of superiority. “Yeah,” Switters blurted in English, “but so what?” Then, in his halting French, he argued that the two positions were equally egocentric and thus equally inane. Moreover, given the unpleasant option of having to associate with either the self-satisfied beautiful or the self-pitying plain, he’d choose the former every time because beauty could sometimes transcend smugness whereas self-pity just made ugliness all the more unattractive. He was willing to concede, though, that the plastic crown of glamor could bear down as heavily on its wearers as the dung corona of plainness could upon its, and that frequently the difference between the two was merely a matter of fashion, rather than any objective, universal aesthetic indices.

During this banter, which persisted for nearly half an hour, Domino remained silently attentive. She busied herself with refilling their teacups and to his pronouncements outwardly reacted only twice. At one point, he had nodded toward the plaster Virgin in the shrine and wondered why those who had been allegedly visited by Mary at places such as Fatima and Lourdes (homely young girls in both instances) had been moved to dwell upon her physical beauty, comparing her to film stars or pageant queens, when, historically in all probability, she was an average-looking teenager from a dusty backwater shtetl. Both Domino and her aunt had started a bit at that, exchanging meaningful blinks, before the abbess suggested that the girls naturally would have had a limited frame of reference with which to attempt to describe Mary’s holy radiance.

Later, as Domino bent over to pour tea, her chestnut hair had fallen over her face, and the easy grace with which she’d employed her left hand to sweep it back prompted Switters to declare that that gesture, itself, was an unconsciously choreographed act of intense beauty, and of more value, ultimately, to the human race than, say, the sixty new jobs created in a depressed suburb by the opening of a Wal-Mart store. As she straightened up, Domino whispered near his ear, “You’re out of your cotton-picking mind.”

For her part, Masked Beauty had clucked and compared Switters to Matisse, who, she professed, identified the female form with beauty to such a degree that for Henri, it was the perfect symbol of love, truth, and charity; both a garden of sensual delights and a link (more so than prayer) to the divine. “It’s flattering to be adored, I suppose, but that is a terrible burden to load on the backs of women.” She clucked again. “Henri was an old fool, and if you are not careful, you will end up the same.” She laughed. “But Domino was right. You are an interesting fool.”

Now that the subject of Matisse had been broached, Switters wanted to ask the abbess all about the circumstances surrounding the painting of Blue Nude 1943. Before he could facilitate the segue, however, his hostess stood, seeming to indicate that the visit was at an end. Switters rose to face her. She would have been only a couple of inches shorter than he, were he not now back on his stilts, and he found himself checking out her feet to see if she wore some sort of platform shoes. She did not. When he lifted his gaze from her sandals, he saw to his delight that she was loosening her veil. He supposed he was prepared for anything, but he was wrong.

The septuagenarian’s face, when the veil fell away, proved to be nearly as round as her niece’s, yet without a trace of a double chin. She had large but elegant ears, a voluptuous mouth that became frank and impatient at its corners; a nose longer, more bony than Domino’s, though no less perfectly formed; eyes that were the same odd mixture of gray, green, and brown, but whereas Domino’s orbs invited comparisons to, for example, diamond- dusted napalm, amphetamined fireflies, or hot jalapeno ginseng spritzer, Masked Beauty’s, no longer isolated above the veil, seemed to be paling, waxing transparent, as if agate cinders were cooling into a watery ash. In contrast to her thick, wavy, elephant-colored hair, the abbess’s complexion was rosy and youthful, so smooth, in fact, that her skin might have been her most memorable attribute—were it not for that other thing.

That other thing—the thing that cut short any impulse to exclaim, “My God, she must have been gorgeous in her day!”—was a wart. On her nose. Near the tip of her nose. And not just any common, everyday wart. Hers was a singular wart, a wart among warts, the rotten ruby jewel in the crown of wartdom, the evil empress, the burning witch, the tragic diva of the wart world.

Very nearly the circumference of a dime, reddish umber in hue, it appeared spongy in texture, irregular in outline, resembling nothing so much as a speck of hamburger, a crumb of rare ground beef that might have spilled out of a taco. Even as she stood stationary, the wart appeared to shudder, like the tiny heart of a shrew, and to radiate, as if a fungus that grew on raw uranium was practicing for fission. Simultaneously feathery and lumpish, like a squashed raspberry, a pinch of dry snuff, a tuft of moss that a wounded robin had bled upon, or the butt end of an exploded firecracker, it caught the candlelight and in so doing, seemed to enlarge before his eyes.

The really astonishing feature of the protuberance was neither its size nor its color, its brim nor its woof, but the fact, not immediately registered, that it was two-tiered: a second, smaller wart sat atop the first, piggybacking, as it were, like a pencil eraser with a spinal hump, or a little foam-rubber pagoda.

Switters didn’t know what to say. Few did. Which is why, Domino told him later, that her aunt had finally taken up the veil and also why the aunt, herself, had been the one to break the silence. “It’s a gift from God,” she said.

“Are you sure?” asked Switters.

“Positively. My uncle, Cardinal Thiry, gave me no peace about my sexy appearance. Everywhere I went, men, including priests, stared or made remarks. Even novices, other nuns, would eye me lasciviously. My beauty was a distraction for others and an onus for myself. I shaved my head and wore loose clothing, but it made scant difference. So, I began to pray to the Almighty that if he wanted me to do his work, he would grant me a blemish, a physical fault so unappealing that others would be affected only by my deeds rather than my looks. I prayed and prayed, often out in the Algerian desert alone, and—voila!—one morning I awoke with a honeycombed spot on my nose. The more I prayed—I was the diametric opposite of Lady Macbeth—the more glaring the spot became, but I wouldn’t quit; and, in my thoughtless avidity, obviously, I went too far. Even my wart grew a wart. We must be careful what we pray for. In my old age, I’m left to wonder whether God had not intended me to be a model all along. He gave me the gift of beauty—which in your opinion can make the world a finer place —and I rejected it, exchanged it for this other gift, this organic speckle that is more effective than any mask. Nowadays, I often mask the mask and imagine that I hear God’s laughter in the wind.”

“There’s always cosmetic surgery,” Switters suggested brightly.

She shook her head. The wart, like a plug of hairy gelatin, shook with it. “I’ve scorned one divine gift, I shan’t scorn another.”

After they’d taken their leave of her, Domino said, “Poor auntie. But you see, Mr. Switters, what prayer can do?” For days Domino had been urging him to pray with her for the removal of the shaman’s curse.

“Exactly. If this curse is lifted, it could be replaced with something worse.”

“Oh, but your affliction is not a gift from God. It was levied by the Devil.”

He’d grinned. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” he said, half-stepping on his stilts so that she might keep up with him, and from somewhere faraway, he thought he heard a rustle of psychic foliage.

All that had occurred two weeks ago. Now, he was rapping at the apartment door for his second audience with the twice-masked beauty, an encounter that, due to his romp with Fannie, promised to be of a different tenor.

Switters was relieved to find Masked Beauty alone, that she wore her veil (the wart having struck him as pathological), and that her quarters were once again clouded with incense: he’d awakened too late to bathe properly, and Cupid’s briny chlorines clung to him like clamskin britches. No sooner had he hopped off his stilts and onto the settee, however, than Domino breezed in, her bright eyes dancing, her cheeks ablaze. The pair of them, niece and auntie, stood facing him—apparently there was to be no tea—in their long cotton gowns. He switched on his best simper but sensed that the wattage was weak.

“What happened last night?” the abbess asked abruptly.

“Last night? Happened?” If innocence was toilet tissue, Godzilla could have wiped his butt with Switters’s smile. “Why, uh, I took the liberty of providing a dollop of dinner music. Hope it didn’t unduly impinge on anyone’s digestion, or—”

“With Fannie.”

“Oh? With Fannie.” He shrugged. “The usual.”

Domino rolled her eyes, a beautifully seriocomic gesture in a woman that neither Matisse nor his rival,