Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (49 page)

When her tall, erectly held figure
slowly pivoted to face him, he saw that she was veiled. The sensation he had
was that of being received by a Bedouin matriarch (were there such a thing) or
the wife of a minor pasha (were such a reception permitted). Despite the
crucifix that hung above the shrine and the image of Mary that dominated its nave,
the atmosphere in the apartment was decidedly more Levantine than Roman. Lines
from Baudelaire’s
“L’Invitation au Voyage,”
the very first poem he’d
studied at Berkeley, drifted through his mind, lines such as, “In that
amber-scented calm” and “Walls with eastern splendour hung,” and, waiting to be
introduced, he spontaneously blurted out in French the poem’s refrain:
“Là,
tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté / Luxe, calme et volupté.”

Domino and Masked Beauty exchanged
glances. Both sets of eyes seemed to be smiling. The abbess, in a flat,
childish voice, bade Switters sit beside her on the couch while Domino arranged
for tea. Then, without excess of preamble, and still under veil, she engaged
him in a dialogue about
beauté
. He told her that in America, socio-political
dullards had chopped up beauty and fed it to the dogs sometime in the late
1980s on grounds ranging from its lack of pragmatic social application to the
notion that it was somehow unfair to that and those who were, by beauty’s
standards, ugly.

The abbess asked if it wasn’t true
that beauty was, indeed, useless, to which he responded with an enthusiastic,
“Mais oui!”
He proclaimed that beauty’s great purpose was always to be
purposeless, that its use to society lay in its very uselessness, that its lack
of function was precisely what lent it the power to scoop us out of context,
especially political and economic context, and provide experiences available in
no other area of our lives, not even the spiritual. He likened those
philistines who would banish the beautiful from art, architecture, dress, and
language in order to free us from frivolous and expensive distractions to those
scientists who proposed blowing up the moon in order to free us,
psychologically and commercially, from the effects of the tides.

The abbess agreed that a world
sans
lune
would be a poorer world indeed—in the 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 jalapeño
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—
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.