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—voilà!—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, Picasso, neither Modigliani nor Andrew Wyeth, had ever captured. “Usual for you, perhaps. How did it go for Fannie?”
Switters glanced around the room, as if searching for assistance or inspiration. Mute and motionless in her shrine, the shiksa-like Mary offered neither. “Why don’t you ask Fannie?” he said finally and a little defiantly. What was this all about?
“We can’t,” Domino replied, after translating his response for the abbess. “She has gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean?”
“A Syrian surveying team came by very early this morning. Had you arisen at a decent hour you might have noticed. We feared they were police hunting for you, but they only wanted to fill their water casks. When they left, Fannie left with them.”
He scowled. “Voluntarily?”
“It would seem so. She took her belongings.”
“No note?”
“Rien,” said Masked Beauty.
“Nothing,” said Domino.
“Well, dash my dumplings,” said Switters.
The next half hour ranked among the most uncomfortable he’d ever spent. It made him long for the minefields along the Iraqi-Iranian border. As delicately as possible considering the nature of the previous night’s activities, even waxing poetic when circumstance and élan allowed, he attempted to give the women an overview, from his perspective, of how it had gone for Sister Fannie.
He’d rather expected that Fannie would be a scratcher, a screamer, a biter, one of those bedroom banshees whose veneer of civilization was involuntarily ripped away by the claws of Eros. To his surprise, her volcano lay dormant, and no shifting of plates that his undulations engendered could precipitate a measurable eruption. The first time, she had grimaced and whimpered a little, because as gentle as he was, he had hurt her. The second time, she was more relaxed, and the third, in the dawn’s early light, she’d actually cooed a couple of times with pleasure. For the most part, however, she’d been a quietly interested, curious, almost studious participant, eager enough but not in the least demonstrative.
And now she had decamped, leaving him to wonder if losing her virginity at thirty-four mightn’t have been anticlimactic for her, a big disappointment, and, suspecting that it must have been his fault (which, alas, it might have been), and spurred on by her Asmodeus, she’d gone in search of a man or men who might better live up to her long-held expectations. Or, casting himself in a more favorable light, he considered that it might have been so overpoweringly wonderful for her that she’d been unable to speak or move out of sheer awe, and afterward she’d run off to sample a variety of partners in order to make comparisons. (Somehow, that seemed less feasible.) On the other hand, the experience—good, bad, or mediocre—might have buried her beneath such an unexpected avalanche of conditioned Catholic detritus that a spirit-bruising guilt had sent her scurrying home to Ireland to beg refuge as a lay sister in an orthodox nunnery.
“Je ne comprends pas.” He shrugged. “I don’t understand.” Indeed, he didn’t understand, and it would ruffle his masculine feathers for months to come, because Fannie neither returned nor sent any word.
Strangely enough, once he completed his full account of the deeds that had nearly demolished his narrow cot, Domino sighed, smiled sympathetically, and said that Fannie’s exodus, as long as she came to no harm, was probably for the best. For her part, Masked Beauty said nothing more on the subject whatsoever, but instead inquired if Switters would mind teaching her how to operate a computer.
Beginning tomorrow morning, he e-mailed Bobby Case, Matisse’s blue nude will be sitting beside me at this very keyboard.
Far out, Bobby wrote back. Next thing I know, you’ll be knitting socks with “Whistler’s Mother.”
It’s true, I suppose: I am learning to appreciate older women to whom I’m not related. But you needn’t put Whistler’s mother in quotes. The actual title of the painting to which you refer is “Arrangement in Gray and Black.”
Thanks for correcting me. You’re a true friend. I could have made a fucking fool of myself at any number of swell soirees.
“I wish I didn’t,” Switters told his pupil, “but when
I leave at the end of September, I have to take this vampire with me.”
Masked Beauty said she understood but that she had reason to believe that God would eventually provide the Pachomians with a computer of their own.
Right, thought Switters. God going under the name of Sol Glissant. Aloud, he explained that it wouldn’t be quite the same, that the sisters would require a server, one with satellite capabilities since there were no telephone lines into the oasis, and should they obtain one, there would be hook-up charges and a monthly fee. When the old abbess asked who his server was, she was surprised to hear him answer, “The CIA.” She’d thought he had severed his ties to that organization. He explained that officially he had, but that he still had friends at the pickle factory, clever angel boys who saw to it that he remained on-line.
“This research you’re going to be doing—and the Langley search engine is the best that exists—will all be paid for by the CIA. No, no, it’s not a problem. Even when it isn’t bribing dictators and financing right-wing revolutions, the company’s got so much money stashed under its mattress it can’t sleep at night for the lumps. The CIA doesn’t submit its accounts to Congress as specifically required by our Constitution, which means it’s an illegal arm of government to begin with. So, even if we’re stealing, we’re stealing from outlaws.”
“I’m unsure that that makes it more virtuous.”
“Maybe not, but it certainly makes it more fun.” At that point, Domino, who’d stopped in to see how the lesson was going and if Switters’s French was up to the task, gave a light little laugh. He grinned back at her and neglected to inform either of them of the high probability that Langley was allowing him to remain on-line so that it could keep tabs on his activities, those, at least, to which he gave electronic voice.
He went on to warn Masked Beauty that the computer would tax her Christian patience, for while the machine was developed as a time-saving device, it frequently ate up far more time than telephone calls or physical trips to the library. “Some of the Web sites you may want to visit will be getting so many hits you’ll have to queue up like a Chihuahua waiting for its turn at the world’s last bone. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the Internet, there’re just too damn many people using it. Too damn many people using the roads, using energy, using parks and trees and beaches and cows and sewers and planes, using everything except good taste and birth control, although I suppose those two may be the same thing. I mean, did you get a look at the parents of the American septuplets? And did you think of geometric progression and shudder in horror? That one couple’s one tasteless test-tube tumble could dork down the entire gene pool?”
Neither of the Frenchwomen was familiar with the “little miracle in Iowa,” but, as he well knew, overpopulation and its myriad foul consequences was a paramount interest of theirs, so his rantlette garnered a favorable response. He was mistaken, however, in his supposition that Masked Beauty’s travels on the Internet would be limited to sites either directly concerned with family issues or ones that provided the occasional forum for those who were. She would, with his assistance, visit such sites from time to time, but the primary focus of the Pachomian abbess’s investigations proved to be on a different subject altogether. Fortuitously, perhaps, it was a subject to which Switters, the previous year, had devoted a modicum of attention.
June. July. August. September. Summer in the Northern Hemisphere—which included, naturally and, as a matter of fact, emphatically, the Syrian desert. The sun was as red as a baboon’s backside. Relentless, it rose each and every morning and like a malicious baboon climbing a staircase, treated those trapped on the ground floor to a rude display.
Serrated with heat, abuzz with wind-whipped sand, the air outside the compound was like a bouquet of hacksaws. Within the walls, plenteous pools of shade made life bearable, though it was far from cool. At odd moments, orchard trees would quiver, as if trying to shake themselves free of the heat, or would tilt ever so slightly, as if longing to lie down in their own shade. Then, all would grow still again until the next brimstone breeze wafted with a gritty obduracy out of the great oven door. It was an oven that knew well the stern exertions of soda and salt, but not at all the puffy gaieties of yeast.
The pace inside the oasis was slow, and summer seemed to drone on like a filibuster, even to Switters, who was one of those who believed that time in general was gathering speed. When he wasn’t asleep on his Fannie-crippled cot, perusing the odd paragraph of Finnegans Wake, or exchanging the infrequent correspondence with Bobby or Maestra, he was interacting, in various, particular, and for the most part lackadaisical ways, with the eight pious pariahs with whom he shared the outpost.
Where most of the ex-nuns were concerned, interaction was fairly minimal. He joined them for simple meals at one or the other of two rude wooden tables; and complaining that “Italian nights” were too few and far between, he instigated thrice weekly “music nights,” meaning that on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays (the sisters fasted on Sundays, and Switters was forced to steal into the garden then and eat cucumbers off the vine), he’d lug his equipment into the dining hall and play during supper a CD from his limited collection. It goes without saying that he wished wine to flow on those occasions (“Let us be festive!” he’d cry, or “Let the good times roll!”) but succeeded in getting it served only on Saturdays. Saturday became “blues night,” for the women had rather taken to his two Big Mama Thornton recordings; on Thursdays he treated them to the Mekons (about whom they were lukewarm), Frank Zappa (whom they actively disliked), or Laurie Anderson (they were baffled but fascinated); while on Tuesdays, never without a tinge of concealed embarrassment, he’d spin Broadway show tunes (nearly everybody’s favorite).
In his self-appointed role as recreation director, he tried to get them involved in making toy boats and racing them in the irrigation troughs, but the Pachomians were not the Art Girls. Only Pippi exhibited either inclination or aptitude. The racing program quickly petered out, though not before Maria Deux scolded him in front of everyone for christening his stupid slat of wood The Little Blessed Virgin.
Speaking of Pippi’s aptitude, the fact that her role as the convent’s handyperson was never challenged by Switters disappointed those who had believed that in inviting him to stay, they would be getting “a man around the house,” a Mr. Fix-It but his serious lack of dexterity didn’t bother Pippi. Proud of her minor skills in carpentry and simple mechanics, she was protective of her domain. The Marias, however, were appalled, and Bob muttered once that it was no wonder that Fannie had fled. Not everybody got Bob’s meaning.
Bob had taken over Fannie’s duties as goatherd and chicken mistress, which left Maria Une a bit shorthanded in the kitchen. ZuZu mopped his room once a week, and either she or Mustang Sally delivered the pitchers of water with which he must constantly rehydrate himself in the Syrian summer, and the pails of water he must use to bathe. Since he elected not to attend chapel, he saw the six undernuns primarily at meals, although, of course, he glimpsed them going about their various chores as he stilted to and from his office. Beneath their placid, reverent, industrious exteriors, he began to sense an undercurrent of skittishness, almost a controlled hysteria, but he reasoned, correctly as it turned out, that it had nothing to do with him.
Despite his shortcomings in the areas of maintenance and religion, they seemed generally unresentful of his presence among them, finding him, well, novel, if not actually entertaining. At least, he didn’t exacerbate their ingrained fear of maleness. (Was it not just such a fear that had led them to marry the mild and distant Christ, the one male figure who never would threaten them with brutish strength or callous sexuality?) Masked Beauty once referred to Switters as their monstre sacré, and among themselves that had become their pet name for him. When Mustang Sally ventured that as far as she could tell, he was neither monstrous nor sacred, Domino, in perfect imitation of his tone and his demeanor, had grinned and said, “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
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As for Domino, his relationship with her had changed since the Fannie affair, but it was a subtle change. Had Fannie not fled, things might have gone more as Bobby had predicted, there might have been in her attitude a discernible measure of jealousy or scorn. As it was, she was aloof from him to such a smallish degree that he was forced periodically to suspect that he only imagined it. At no time was she unfriendly. On the other hand, at no time did she show up at his door again with flowers behind her ear.
During the first month of his residency, Domino had prayed over him quite a bit. A few times she succeeded in coaxing him to pray with her. He was sincere and respectful during their prayerful duets but also noticeably ill at ease. By late June, the exorcism instructions she’d requested from Sicilian Catholic sources had arrived via e-mail. On three successive Sunday evenings, after fasting all day, she had positioned and lit the prescribed number of candles, laid her hands on his head in the prescribed manner, and chanted the prescribed incantations. They were impressive little ceremonies (his favorite part was when she took his head in her hands), but since at their conclusion he refused to test the results, they were destined to be inconclusive. Goodness knows he wanted to please her, almost as much as he wanted the taboo dispelled, yet he had only to aim a trembling toe toward the ground than the stricken image of R. Potney Smithe flooded his brainpan, prompting a hasty, apologetic withdrawal. Frustrated, though sympathetic, Domino canceled further exorcisms and soon broke off the prayer sessions as well. He saw less of her after that.
His summer was spent most often in the company of Masked Beauty. For hours each morning, the abbess joined him in his baked little office, where they cooled themselves with tea and palm-frond fans, where he regained a level of fluency in French, and where the two of them gradually reached a level of comfort with the mask beneath the veil. It was such a nuisance raising the veil every time she took a sip of tea that after a week she’d asked his permission to bare her face. Of course, he assured her that it was fine, yet if “fine” meant that the wart was incapable of distracting him, that he was oblivious to it, or that he would ever become really used to it, then he had misspoken. Every Tuesday night, when the song, “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face” from My Fair Lady resounded in the dining hall, he couldn’t help but think, Henry Higgins would be singing a different tune if he’d hooked up with Masked Beauty.