Chapter Eight

    Quite early in her career, that is, back in the days of the war, Sister Teresa Orlando, now principal of Saint Bridget’s, Blackfish Bay, had been given the opportunity to make a full thirty-day retreat. With a war on and therefore so much suffering, both on and off the battlefield, there was much to pray and sacrifice for, and also, it had been said among the older sisters who had known the priest advertised as the retreat master, he was exceptionally worth the time. “He had the most wonderful way of bring us face to face with silence,” one of the nuns had said to her when it was heard that she was pondering the option. “Absolutely wonderful. Sometimes it felt as if you could cut it with a knife, like a loaf of very fine bread, and eat it. And that, naturally, puts you in mind of Christ in the Eucharist. He said many, many, things that were helpful, but what I remember most was how he talked about silence, and then was silent himself and made us follow suit. He insisted, over and over again, that we could never receive the Eucharist perfectly until we knew how to accept silence perfectly. It was a very happy month for me, Teresa. You will never regret it if you go, and it will stand in you good stead with God for the rest of your life. It won’t always be easy. It is never easy for a woman to learn to be quiet, really quiet. But you will learn what quiet is worth. And then you will learn how to make your voice really heard when it is time to speak, because of course women must always know that there is a time when only a woman can make sense.”
  
     So she had gone for the month and found the old nun utterly correct. The priest, a venerable Franciscan, indeed understood and lived the magic of utter quiet, human and also, it seemed more than once, divine, and had been capable, at least for her, of passing on considerable of his secret. In this he had been more effective than any of her teachers, skilled though they had been in their own way. The four weeks, if anything, had gone by too quickly. But they had left their indelible mark, such spiritually sweet and tranquil memories of something awfully close to perfection in the priesthood, and most important of all, a permanent working relationship with Ignatius of Loyola’s wonderful little handbook, The spiritual Exercises. For two full decades now, the saint’s words had never failed to pull her out of the various muds and slimes of confusion, in their own way as useful as the sayings of the Scriptures, especially when it came to questions that required close study of the rules for the discernment of spirits.
  
     She owned two copies, actually. One stayed in her room at the convent, the other in her desk in her office, where she sat now pondering the rules for the ‘first week’, as the one-time Spanish soldier and romantic had called them after all his years of labour in order to get them right.. His words rang again and again, with excellent reason, in her severely troubled mind, where the barbs of a most vicious contradiction were unquestionably ragging her heart. As best she knew, she had never had any reasons to think of herself as someone called to full time contemplation – how could she live, torn away from the voices of school children? – and yet the inner turmoil, from the reading she had been able to absorb about the spiritual life, certainly seemed to border on the realms of the purely spiritual combat. It reminded her very much of something young Sister Catherine Cameron had said when she was recommending her younger brother to the grade eight post in the school. “It’s something that seems part of the family tradition, Sister. We seem to provoke people. Grandpere says it’s quite all right to blame it entirely on him. Quite often people who take good notice of one of us, any one of us, and trace our lineage back to Philippe, themselves experience quite violent spirits of contradiction. Never the perfect, of course, but really quite good people, asleep in some assumption about themselves or the spiritual life, get jolted about. Grandpere always says it’s the spiritual equivalent of running into the collar, or a religious habit. It’s always a shock, if you’re not prepared, or at the moment tied up in some connection with the world, the flesh, or the devil. And then for people who are actually wicked it can be quite violent.”
   
    This had not come from a merely academic conversation, back in the mother house in Winnipeg. There had been a terrible row, actually, between Sister Catherine and another of the younger nuns, arising from the other sister actually essaying to read some of Catherine’s grandfather’s writing, and not liking what she had found.
   
    Yet when the taking on of her younger brother was in the works, there had been none of these unpleasant details. Well, Sister Hyacinth, at that point reigning over the Blackfish Bay grade sixes, had thought the grade eights should come to her. But Sister Hyacinth was not especially musical, nor was she quite of the stuff that made for easy disciplining of adolescent boys, and her ambitions, as they were quite annoyingly fuelled by an interest in Deirdre Blakely’s alleged vocation, was too suspect to be indulged. All these matters, Sister Teresa had been considering on her return to her autumn duties, were abundantly clear.
   
    Or were they? That was the problem now. Were they so clear? First of all, when she had arrived and stopped off at the rectory to have a moment with Father McKeon, he had come right out and reported on the current situation, as he understood it at that point, between Paul Cameron and Iris McCallum and the Blakeley’s. “You don’t have to worry about Paul,” he had insisted. “He’s a very solid young fellow. He’s already put me on my mettle. Reminds me of my metaphysics teacher, old Father Garvey. Plays a wicked piano and has both Deirdre Blakeley and Maggie Schlegel in his hip pocket from what I hear, and later we’ll have to sit down together and find out what the television people want to do with us. But I’m concerned about Iris. We don’t want to lose her. And, as you know, she can be tempermental.”
   
    And then the phone had rung and the conversation had ended leaving her with a burden she could not shake. No, they couldn’t lose Iris. She was the only organist in the parish with a real sense of liturgy. Well, pray, put your head down, and get on with the job. Thus, to her office, where young Mr. Cameron would be showing up towards two.
   
    And then, at one-thirty, the phone had rung and Mrs. Edna Havincourt had trotted out her concerns. Mr. Cameron and his history with a class in life drawing. It had occurred to Sister Teresa to wonder how Mrs. Havincourt actually knew that life drawing was a normal part of the training of an artist, because the woman, as good as she might be in her own way – and she was a daily communicant – had never given any signs of having much education, but then Mrs Havincourt had said that she knew of a Catholic university which had a faculty of drawing and painting and had quite properly refused to allow the students to do studies of the nude. It was at moment like this that Sister Teresa gave thanks to God that she was for the most part Italian by descent, and thus not subject to the odd moral proclivities of so many northern Europeans and their transatlantic descendants. But then she would recall that Jansenism had actually originated in a country of the Romance languages, that is, France, and had shown up with a vengeance in such Catholic bastions as Ireland and Quebec, and then she would shake her head and return to being happy, simply, to have so much of her blood from the Roman culture, which had, of course, been in so many ways merely a successor of the Greek. And the Greeks had created some wonderful sculpture, were later on imitated by the Romans, and clothes were frequently forgotten, as in the first days of Eden.
  
     And yet, for all this, her soul was heavy. Was she simply tired from the traveling? And it had been a long summer. Her father was failing, one of her brothers was in grave difficulty with his marriage, and it had been necessary to function in Portland, in their American headquarters, as well as in Winnipeg. And the worst part of all had been all the flutter about making her the new mother general! Thank Christ and all His wounds that she had possessed the strength to stop that bit of nonsense in the bud! But whatever the reason, Edna Havincourt had been a dark moment, challenging her sense of trust, and bolstered by the fear that perhaps she had been wrong to tell Hyacinth she belonged with the Sixers. What classroom experience did Paul Cameron have? Two months in Vancouver because a nun had been taken ill? How could that minimal exposure to children measure up to Hyacinth’s fifteen years?
   
    McKeon, had he had the time, might have calmed her fears. He was unquestionably a fine priest. Steady as a Goddamned rock, as her father would have said, but the bloody phone had rung, and she had assumed that the quiet of her office would clear her mind. Who was the Pope who had refused to allow a telephone in his office? Smart man.
  
     “Not safe with the girls, Sister Teresa. Can we take that chance? These artists are such libertarians! And he is quite handsome. And a singer, so I hear, although we had no music at the mass this morning. Perhaps his reputation is exaggerated.”
  
     So her soul was troubled. She could not get out of her mind the story of Mother Cabrini’s arrival in New York, where of twelve Italian priests available to the thousands of Italian immigrants only two had commendable histories. The other ten had all been booted out of Italy for breaking their vows of chastity. Why had New York taken them in? Had that been in the time of Archbishop McCloskey, the half-wit who had chased out that contemplative nun, the German woman who had come the blessings of the Pope of the time? She must look it up. So many fools in high places. What had that lovely Franciscan said? He had quoted John of the Cross. Something about a third of the “holy ones” going to hell. These, he had said, were those who had taken the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience. Frightening stuff, and certainly conducive to thinking deeply about silence. Not all the nuns had been eager to take that thirty day retreat.
  
     Please God, she thought in her travail, that Sister Catherine was right about her little brother. Please God Ignatius applied. She had stared determinedly, every couple of minutes for half an hour as she went about other duties, at the only comfort she had: “Then it is characteristic of the evil spirit to harass with anxiety, to afflict with sadness, to raise obstacles backed with fallacious reasonings that disturb the soul.” And then, as her office looked over the school ground where Deirdre and her friends had come to cavort with a basketball, she saw him. It had to be young Mr. Cameron. Dark haired, none too tall, and loping. Or was it jogging, as they called it now? Entering from the southern end of the school yard, having walked – or jogged? – all the distance from the Blakeley house. Jogging, with a remarkably relaxed gate, almost like a dancer, but angled forward just slightly, for he was not at all trying to be fast. Then, as he drew close to the basketball hoop, he shifted his mode to that of a basketball player, miming a dribble, keeping his eyes on the basket, and then actually shooting, rising into the air. Probably putting an imaginary backspin on the make-believe ball, Sister thought. She had played forward. In high school, being quite tall. Her father had come from Turin.
Admittedly, at the sight of her new teacher, her heart eased, her mind felt calmer. He looked so balanced, with the body language of a free spirit, and anyone who had ever understood a course in moral theology knew that no one with an unclean mind had a free spirit. But the two adverse incidents had left their burden. The front door banged somewhat, the feet strode swiftly down the hall toward her, and the new young man entered her room.
  
     “Sorry I’m late, Sister, but there was some huge fence-mending going on at the Blakeley’s. Iris McCallum no longer wants to run me out of town and her son Ian is actually caught on to my guitar method in one lesson. Well, not mine, really. Grandpere Phillipe’s. But he’s not here to teach it, so they’ll call it my method.”
  
     She could hardly believe the intensity of the relief that surged through her. To actually see the accused criminal had been a pleasant shock, and now to hear that Iris was pleased with him! Deo Gratias! “Oh, thank heaven, Mr. Cameron. The first thing Father said to me when I stopped off at the rectory was about how upset Iris might be at your taking over Deirdre. He was all for it, mind you, but he was also apprehensive. Iris really is our best organist and choir leader, but her abilities come at a price.” She indicated the chair she had set out for him. “Please sit down.”
   
    Paul lowered himself into the chair, relaxing ever more, as he sat, than he had seemed as he ran. My God in heaven, she thought. Saint James was so right. The tongue was such a danger, such a vicious weapon wherever a soul was not on guard, or not properly informed. He was obviously such an innocent. The spirit of his larking under the basket filled the room, and no soul on earth could have been more in error of judgement than Edna Havincourt. “I understand the temperament. My mother’s abilities also come at a price, as the merely sentimental are forever rediscovering. Especially new pastors. It’s hard to know whom to blame the most. The families these fellows grew up in, or the seminaries that taught them so little about good music. Or is it just something about Canada?”
  
     “How did you convince Iris to change her mind?” She smiled at him, and the most wonderful spirit came into her heart. “She can be incredibly stubborn.”
   
    “It wasn’t me. Mostly Sadie. Well, I had said something to Sadie about my mother’s connections and when Sadie brought those up on the phone – Iris called while I was still having breakfast with Father McKeon, I gather – Iris realized that she had heard Maman and her choir at a midnight mass and that did the trick. There’s no point arguing with Vienna, as my Dad says. That’s where they invented the term ‘Art judges the observer,’ or, in this case, the listener. So Iris backed down big time and then Sadie said she might try bringing Ian along for a guitar lesson when she came for lunch. And Ian was not only up for it but he ate the system for dessert.” He gave his new boss a huge smile. “You’re a teacher. You know what it’s like when you get a real first class student, no matter what you teach. I’ve got three beauties in Deirdre, Maggie Schlegel, and Ian. My year’s made already, and I haven’t been here a week.”
  
     “Well, I’m relieved to hear that you have only one enemy with a forceful personality, not two.” Sister Teresa thought she might as well get on with the complaints before they settled down to talk about his class and the upcoming year.
   
    “You mean there’s someone else?” Paul’s irrepressible grin flashed again. “Ah. The second best organist is afraid I’ll take away his or her post. Well, no fear. My time for painting has already been invaded by young McCallum and whatever he’s sure to bring in his wake – I hear of a certain ‘Bogie’ – and while I’m willing to sing my head off at Mass, that’s about all I’m going to do for parish music.”
  
     “The problem is not the music, Mr. Cameron. The problem is precisely the painting. One of the ladies who was present at the very mass you served this morning called me just half-an-hour ago to warn me that with your history of painting nudes you might not be the safest choice as a teacher for our grade eight girls. I feel quite stupid myself having to bring this up, but I thought I’d better tell you, simply because there has been so much discussion about the town over your taking up your post here. People cannot help themselves, they love to get in a flutter and mind everyone else’s business in the name of God knows what so-called pious sensibilities. But talk also creates a burden, and between Father McKeon’s news about you and Iris, and then that phone call about the life drawing classes, I’ve had rather a dark hour. Although I also have to say, knowing your sister quite well, and knowing a little of your grandfather’s writing, as well as Saint Ignatius, that I suspect it’s all been something of a preparation for having the grandson of a mystic in our school. Better now, while things are quiet, than when the school year gets into full swing. I think I can say now that I think the Lord in His Providence has been very kind to let these odd things happen at this time.” She smiled again, and felt herself totally relaxed.
  
     In his time, of course, Paul had known some odd behaviour out of his fellow Catholics, to say nothing of his fellow human beings. And some of that odd behaviour had come from nuns and priests, some of whom had known jurisdiction over his young soul, and some of whom had been accurately identified by older members of his family, especially his parents, as less than perfect.
While he had been willing to take the family wisdom to a difficult situation, for he knew well what Christ had endured from the Pharisees and the Mob, he had been relieved and happy to hear from his sister that the principal at Blackfish Bay was a nun with a life of her own. Teresa knew art, Celine had insisted, Teresa knew as much of the spiritual life as God had allowed her to know. Nowhere in the province would he do better for a post, and perhaps with him around the order might get a little closer to the original design of its founder. Celine had almost been jumping up and down at the other end of the phone with her enthusiasm for the match-up. Now, Paul could see what she meant. This was a warm and intelligent woman. Not unlike her namesake. Had she chosen to identify herself with the great Carmelite, or had the name been thrust upon her? The thrusting had happened to his sister. And then, thinking of family relationships, he saw a little flash of his mother across the desk. The best of signs.
   
    “Would this lady be a rather lean soul, about sixty? A certain Mrs. Havincourt. I’ve been told that she used to nag the altar boys about fidgeting and scratching their heads. But that’s been stopped, so now she has to find something else to fret about.”
  
     Sister laughed. “So much for human discretion, so-called. I wasn’t going to mention any names, but seeing you already know, it’s only sensible that I confirm it. Yes. Edna is a woman of opinions, and very generous with sharing them. I’m starting to wonder already what she’ll do with that grin of yours. It’s so infectious, as I’m complete evidence. Normal women like a man who can make them laugh. But Edna might not be normal that way. I suspect that she thinks that being a daily communicant requires her to go about looking grave all the time. I did the spiritual exercises, for a whole month, when I was new to this business, and that’s where I read that it was not the custom for people to receive the Host every day without their director’s permission. I rather doubt that Edna has any director other than herself, which was not what Ignatius had in mind.” She was now simply chuckling, and for herself seeing in Paul what she had noticed immediately in Celine. Clearly, that robust sense of humour that was the spiritual fruit of genuine detachment was a Cameron trait, apparently spread right across the family. “Still, you might find something to say that will cheer her up. I suspect you’re very resourceful.”
   
    “Basically, I hate to see people suffer, especially from burdens they place on themselves. I’ll try to keep my eye out, find a good time to help her across the sidewalk of life. Ah. Maybe I should simply tell her what happened at our life class. That might teach her a thing or two.” He stopped smiling, although he did not look unhappy, but rather like Father McKeon, when it was time to listen closely to a problem. “That might be an excellent idea, seeing she brought it up. But it’s not that likely to happen. If there’s anything about daily communicants who start judging others it’s their certainty of their own opinions and their profound dislike of changing them. But I could tell you the story and then you won’t be vulnerable to the little creatures with red tails that disturb us in the middle of the night. Do you know my grandfather’s writing?”
  
     “A little, yes. I first heard of him from the retreat master who was in charge of those thirty days I just mentioned. I’ve always felt that he was a little lofty for me – I can never comfortably get past my namesake’s early mansions – but I’ve been a little more diligent since Celine joined the order and I find him a comfort, even if I don’t pretend to always understand him. I suppose mystics are like God in that way. Their voice comforts you even when you don’t actually understand that they’re saying. But who understands the Eucharist anyway? I mean, really understands it? So much, from something so naturally insignificant? How can it be?” But enough of my preaching. Tell me your story. I’m a woman, perhaps I’ll be able to tell Edna. She does, after all, have her moments.”
  
     “All right. I’ll start at the end. We had three models, all women, and when the class was done, they got together and insisted on taking me out for dinner. To a very nice restaurant, with great food and not a little wine. They were very determined about it, wouldn’t take no for an answer, and they asked me all together. Now there were about a dozen students in the class, and this was not a general invitation, so I had to ask them why they had chosen me. And their answer was very blunt. They said that I was their favourite artist, by quite a long shot, and they wanted to know what made me tick. They said there just wasn’t time enough to talk about it before or after class, in or their breaks, so they’d decided they would all take me out and ask me how I got to be so nice to them. Of course I didn’t think I’d been anything special, although I had noticed that some of the students, especially the males, could be a touch stupid. But those situations are all very professional, especially with Herr Dortmun the Rotterdammer. Your Mrs. Havincourt should have seen him! The room was about as licentious as a Dutch Reformed Sunday school. His whole point was that painting the unclothed human figure was a religious experience or it was nothing. We were not in what he called the ‘fillum biznez’, where nubile bimbos were used to wring money out of undisciplined schoolboys of all ages. One of the women, the youngest, was actually your Hollywood goddess physically – and also quite sweet – but the other two represented other divisions of the better half of the race, the long and lanky, and the generously proportioned. Dortmun did this deliberately, made us draw all three, with a painting opportunity for the additionally energetic, such as myself, and swore loudly that the surest way for us to fail was to concentrate on the apparent film star. We had to make them equal, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, or else. Apparently, I made the best job of it. Not that the dinner was the reward for satisfying Herr Professor. That was the ladies’ idea.”
  
     “Woman’s curiosity. They wanted to know what enabled you to sit there like one of Fra Angelico’s cherubs, but with your charcoal or your brush in your hand. Obviously they could not help feeling vulnerable to the mind sets of the other students, or some of them, but they did not feel vulnerable to you. And they wondered why. Was it a pleasant evening?”
  
     “It was utterly delightful. I got to play the theologian, talking about Being, with and without the capital, aesthetics, morality, my favourite painters and the history of the nude in Canadian art, which is not extensive. They were all quite intrigued by my upbringing and my personal outlook on life. But there was one fly in the bottle of linseed oil. They all gave me the impression one way or another that my being a Catholic didn’t have all that much to do with my capacity for making them seem especially alive on an easel. That I found a little frustrating. But then I’ve never been able to separate the artist’s vision from the artist’s faith. The latter has to show up, even if it’s only implicit. I suppose models don’t have to think about that. But I have to. I’ve had the odd scruple or two. And the only defense against a scruple, ultimately, is theology. In the case at hand, grace builds on nature, so you have to know the nature. Thus life class. What is the real nature of woman? And no one is always in clothing. So the question for the undraped situation is where and when? Before the Fall, in Paradise? On Judgement Day, so are we in Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory? Or somewhere in between the beginning and the end with indications of the final destination?”
  
     "You were being the theologian, if you spelled all that out to them."
  
     "Oh, no. I wasn't that successful. Not at all. I had tried to bring up the Eucharist at one point and there was no ear whatsoever. I could really only get lucid on Adam and Eve. You know, the Judean-Christian heritage. I had to settle for saying that my secret weapon for making them so radiant was that I played God and created three different shapes for the first mother of us all. Looking back, I suppose even that little was no small victory for the catechism, if it stuck. I have to think of it all as a very mixed evening, because I had honestly felt on my way to the restaurant, that I would be able to make some great hay for the Faith. Perhaps I'm inflicting too much of myself on the situation of a life class, but I had become very clear, thanks to the assignment, that there was an enormous amount of very grass roots theology wrapped up in such a process. I assumed I was going to be able to share this with the ladies. And I did, as I said, to some extent. But not nearly as much as I had hoped. But you know what? I think I was somehow given a really good insight into my grandfather's disappointments, and that seemed very valuable. He has interesting notes in his journals, translated for the English speaking side of the family by my brother, about the so many times he would be simply filled from head to toe with expectations of great spiritual achievements in souls, only to realize that what he was seeing as possible, and what God was seeing as possible, wasn't going to come off. Maybe later, maybe on someone's death bed, or in purgatory, but not at the moment he felt it."
  
     "Sometimes that's all a teacher can expect," Sister Teresa said. "You have to tell yourself again and again, teaching the catechism. Nothing seems to go in now, but perhaps later. And of course you get the opposite, as with the parable of the sower." She looked again at the clarity in him, and realized she had learned something about real painters, and inwardly laughed a good deal at the fears of Edna Havincourt. This young man was about as dangerous to the girls as a breath of fresh air. If anything, she thought, they would find his sense of discipline alarming. That handsome face, would be astoundingly rigourous in the face of their inevitable adolescent sentiments. "But I'm very sure those models will remember you as a most unique experience of their lives. And thank you for the story. You've quite put my mind at rest. In fact, I'm quite looking forward to Sunday Mass. Edna is at the ten as a rule, and I will either be able to speak in such a way as to put the most troubled mind at rest, or else sail by her as unconcerned as a galleon being accosted by a fishing boat. And now we shall talk about the school and your year ahead and then we'll go down to the book room so you can pick up your texts. As you have shown up early I assume you are the sort that likes to be well prepared. Oh. And just before the phone rang, Father McKeon said something about a television crew coming here?"