Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (50 page)

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.”

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.

Considering that in every other
aspect she was as handsome as a person of her advanced age might hope to be,
one would think that her little gift from God could be overlooked. It could
not.
It
was the
monstre sacré,
a magical beast. He tried to
compare it to the third eye of an Asian saint, but the wart was as blind as a
mole rat and twice as ugly. Both repelling and compelling, it was charged with
the grisly charisma of a serial killer. In its globby piled-on redness, it was
a scarlet letter embroidered by an obsessive compulsive. And it was too damn
vivid.