One day, not very long after we had returned from our own silent retreat, Miriam and I had taken a somewhat longer journey from Paris down into the Burgundy region. Once we’d left the autoroute, we followed narrow roads set in seams between billowing expanses of wheat or pasture, until Leuvray floated into view. Miriam wanted to show me the place where she would begin her postulancy and to introduce me to Sœur Béatrice, a young nun who would serve as Miriam’s guide and helper before Miriam made her final move from Paris to Leuvray.
“And who am I supposed to be today?” I asked as we climbed the cobbled main street of Leuvray on foot. The church, at one time a basilica, seemed to ride above the town, like a ship breasting a swell.
“Supposed to be?”
“Your last-ditch, terminal fuck?” I said in English.
“Comprends pas, enfin, sauf ‘fuck,’ ” she said, having understood nothing except fuck.
“Am I supposed to be your friend?” I said, returning to French.
She replied, however, in English. “So you say I am not your friend, only your fuck friend?”
“Maybe I should just be your silent friend. You people seem to like silence,” I said, and we climbed the remainder of the hill without speaking.
Sœur Béatrice was waiting for us in the small café on the square at the foot of the church, and she greeted me with a handshake and a clipped “How do you do.” I said I was Miriam’s friend from the United States, joining her for a day in Leuvray, as though that were the description Miriam and I had agreed upon. Béatrice met my eyes for a long second and said, “You are welcome,” as though I had thanked her for something. She greeted Miriam with a double kiss and throughout the interview spoke almost exclusively to her, in a French as rapid and fluid as it was heavily accented, marked everywhere with the British inversion of emphasis: mais-on, ba-teau, châ-teau. I realized Béatrice was in habit only when in the distance another nun mounted the steps to the church, wearing the same long dress of blue linen or chambray, the same white kerchief meant to cover the hair. In Béatrice’s case it failed spectacularly; her hair, long and copper blond, peeked out around her ears and forehead and lay over her shoulder in a heavy braid, the length of which she stroked as though it were the tail of a great cat.
“Miriam has told me that you will be returning shortly to America. Have you enjoyed your vacation?”
I explained that I had not been on vacation, but that I’d come to Paris on a medical fellowship.
“Will you leave with what you hoped to leave with?”
I said I had never asked myself the question.
“We seldom do,” said Béatrice, and shifted back into French, inquiring if Miriam had received some books she had sent. My attention strayed when a trio of hot-air balloons floated into view from behind the hulking eminence of the church. They passed, it seemed, at eye level, though still high over the valley. Periodically, someone in one or another of the balloons would pull a cord and a tongue of flame would shoot up into the balloon with a coughing roar. “Les touristes américains, hélas,” said Béatrice, following my gaze.
“American tourists like me, alas,” I said.
“Ah,” said Béatrice, “it appears you understand some French.”
I said it would have been difficult, even for an American tourist, to avoid learning a little French over the course of a year.
“Miriam sings beautifully in English, don’t you think?”
“She is a beautiful singer,” I said.
“A voice such as hers is a gift from God.”
“You do have a beautiful voice,” I said to Miriam.
“It is only the voice of a little boy,” she replied.
“You wouldn’t agree, Daniel,” Béatrice went on, “that Miriam’s voice is a gift from God?”
I said I wasn’t in the habit of thinking in those terms.
“Are ‘those terms’ not compatible with your philosophy?”
“Am I required to have a philosophy?”
“But your work is a form of practical philosophy, isn’t it?”
“I’m used to thinking of it as a branch of medicine.”
The conversation reverted to French, and I do not remember what else Miriam and Béatrice discussed. That afternoon, before returning to Paris, we attended Mass in the church. Miriam sat beside me this time. The towering spaces of the church blotted up the monks’ prayers and consecrations, but during the chants Miriam’s treble, closer to me than it had ever been, seemed to open a clearing around us, as a shaft of sunlight might open a sudden chamber in the woods. Miriam seemed merely the occupant of this space, not its source. It was a place she had brought me to, this clearing she had happened upon.
At the passing of the peace, before communion, the monastics left the choir and mingled among the sparse congregation, greeting each person with a sort of double handclasp. May the peace of the Christ be with you, each would say, solemnly, slowly, before moving on to the next person. A young nun with black eyes and a whiskery fuzz above her lip took Miriam’s hands and addressed her by name, kissing her on each cheek. By the time she took my hands in hers, my palms had grown moist with apprehension.
—
“You must forgive Béatrice,” Miriam said as we drove home.
“What reason would she have to like me?”
“It is only that she has known me for a long time. I am sure she feels protective, responsible for my vocation.”
“Isn’t the vocation supposed to be your responsibility?”
“God’s, in fact,” said Miriam.
Did I find it as unthinkable then as I do now, the prospect of her becoming one of those blue, beatific, sandaled shapes? Did I think, or hope, that she would renege when the appointed moment finally arrived? And when was the moment supposed to arrive? Would she pack up her things in her apartment? Her futon? Her CD player and her disc of African blues? Where would
