Read Online A Season for the Dead by David Hewson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David Hewson
Ads: Link
if they had happened to another person. She remembered boarding the steamer and meandering the great, shining expanse of Lake Geneva on her own, trying to escape the prying attention of classmates who found her distant, different. She would sit on deck for hours, overlooked by nothing except the towering crown of mountains bordering the eastern end of the glittering inland sea, peering down at her from high, like God from Heaven: some vast, omnipresent watcher over her life, detached from its emotionless daily tedium.
These were Sara Farnese’s most vivid memories, ones of physical, geographical objects: The green at Harvard. The college quadrants of Oxford. A handful of ancient streets behind the Blue Mosque in Istanbul where she could lose herself for hours, following the tangled history of Byzantium, imagining herself into its formative years under Constantine, realizing that the study of early Christianity, the subject she had chosen—or had it chosen her, she was unsure which—was one where she had a certain, distinct talent.
There were few people stored in the dark vault hidden within her head. An exception lay in one of the oldest memories of all: Sister Annette, in the convent kindergarten in Paris, taking her to one side on a sunny June morning. This was twenty-two years ago. Yet, seated now in the apartment in the Borgo, she could still recall the nun’s gaunt, worried face, framed by a starched white wimple, like a picture waiting to be hung on the wall.
They had gone to a small room Sara had never visited before. The bright sunlight filtered through a single stained-glass window depicting Jesus with a lamb in His arms. The plangent clatter of the bells of St. Eustache drifted into the room, together with the racket of a reggae band busking outside the Les Halles shopping complex. The place smelled of dust, as if it were little used, though it was as clean, and as simple, as every other corner of the convent. They sat next to each other on hard wooden chairs, with their hands joined together around an old, battered Bible.
Sister Annette was not as old as she looked, the child Sara thought. Sometimes she imagined the nun’s face without the wrinkles, without the tension which seemed to come from some inwardly felt pain. Without the wimple and the habit too, dressed in normal clothes, like the people she saw on the street. When Sara did this, Sister Annette became a different person: full of life, vibrant, restless. Normal somehow. This imaginary person and the real Sister who now sat next to her shared only one identical feature. They both had very bright, very intense blue eyes and, on this long-dead Paris day, the real Annette turned them on the infant Sara with a fierce, unbending power which gave the child no room for escape.
Memories were about generalities, not details. Even the child Sara had understood this and never tried to fix each word precisely in her head. It was the meaning which counted and in that, said the nun’s eyes, there could be no room for mistakes.
They had spoken about the mysteries of God and how no one, not even the greatest human being who has ever lived, could begin to understand everything in His mind. Not Sister Annette. Not the kindly priest with the foreign accent who came into the convent from time to time, gave them talks Sara could not understand, then left, touching each child on the head as he walked to the front door and the bright world beyond.
Even the Holy Father himself was outside every last detail of God’s great plan, Sister Annette said, which surprised the child Sara greatly since she had been given to understand that the distant white figure who lived in the Vatican was, in some unexplained way, part of Heaven itself.
On occasion God could appear cruel. There would be times when no one would comprehend His meaning. The innocent would suffer, perhaps more than the wicked. There would be pain where it was undeserved, grief which could appear so great it
These were Sara Farnese’s most vivid memories, ones of physical, geographical objects: The green at Harvard. The college quadrants of Oxford. A handful of ancient streets behind the Blue Mosque in Istanbul where she could lose herself for hours, following the tangled history of Byzantium, imagining herself into its formative years under Constantine, realizing that the study of early Christianity, the subject she had chosen—or had it chosen her, she was unsure which—was one where she had a certain, distinct talent.
There were few people stored in the dark vault hidden within her head. An exception lay in one of the oldest memories of all: Sister Annette, in the convent kindergarten in Paris, taking her to one side on a sunny June morning. This was twenty-two years ago. Yet, seated now in the apartment in the Borgo, she could still recall the nun’s gaunt, worried face, framed by a starched white wimple, like a picture waiting to be hung on the wall.
They had gone to a small room Sara had never visited before. The bright sunlight filtered through a single stained-glass window depicting Jesus with a lamb in His arms. The plangent clatter of the bells of St. Eustache drifted into the room, together with the racket of a reggae band busking outside the Les Halles shopping complex. The place smelled of dust, as if it were little used, though it was as clean, and as simple, as every other corner of the convent. They sat next to each other on hard wooden chairs, with their hands joined together around an old, battered Bible.
Sister Annette was not as old as she looked, the child Sara thought. Sometimes she imagined the nun’s face without the wrinkles, without the tension which seemed to come from some inwardly felt pain. Without the wimple and the habit too, dressed in normal clothes, like the people she saw on the street. When Sara did this, Sister Annette became a different person: full of life, vibrant, restless. Normal somehow. This imaginary person and the real Sister who now sat next to her shared only one identical feature. They both had very bright, very intense blue eyes and, on this long-dead Paris day, the real Annette turned them on the infant Sara with a fierce, unbending power which gave the child no room for escape.
Memories were about generalities, not details. Even the child Sara had understood this and never tried to fix each word precisely in her head. It was the meaning which counted and in that, said the nun’s eyes, there could be no room for mistakes.
They had spoken about the mysteries of God and how no one, not even the greatest human being who has ever lived, could begin to understand everything in His mind. Not Sister Annette. Not the kindly priest with the foreign accent who came into the convent from time to time, gave them talks Sara could not understand, then left, touching each child on the head as he walked to the front door and the bright world beyond.
Even the Holy Father himself was outside every last detail of God’s great plan, Sister Annette said, which surprised the child Sara greatly since she had been given to understand that the distant white figure who lived in the Vatican was, in some unexplained way, part of Heaven itself.
On occasion God could appear cruel. There would be times when no one would comprehend His meaning. The innocent would suffer, perhaps more than the wicked. There would be pain where it was undeserved, grief which could appear so great it
Similar Books
