Madeleine's Ghost (46 page)

“Can't see a thing in here without those on,” she says, indicating the fluorescent tubes concealed in an alcove, “but you know Father Rose, he likes the mood lighting. Helps him imagine he's got something here besides a mess of old bones.” Then she walks over to the coffin, runs her fingers along the top, and comes up with a thick coating of dust. “Where does the stuff come from, ever ask yourself that? I use Endust and Formula 409, we've always got the door bolted, there are no windows, but …” She wiggles her finger in my face.

“Entropy,” I say. “Tiny particles of everything. Dust is the visual evidence of the world itself falling apart.”

For a moment her eyes go blank on the other side of the spectacles. Then she shakes her head. “You're just as crazy as the priest,” she says.

The lid of the coffin is secured to the sides by eight elaborate bronze brackets held together with alan screws in the leafy engraving. Mrs. Schnadenlaube produces an alan wrench from the band of her orthopedic socks and bends over the first bracket. Then she catches sight of the spiderweb strung between the nun's clumpy black shoes and knocks an angry knuckle on the glass. The spider hangs placidly in his web, unaware of the holocaust to come.

“I vacuum in there once every two months,” Mrs. Schnadenlaube says, more to the spider than to me. “And still there are bugs. How do they get in there? I'll tell you how! Dead bodies attract all kinds of vermin. The sooner the dead are in the ground, the better!”

I have managed to convince Mrs. Schnadenlaube that as a result of my investigations, Sister Januarius's body will soon be laid in a grave in the churchyard. This suits the woman just fine. We all have our petty annoyances, the irritating details that, added one to the other, somehow conspire to make our life miserable. The removal of even one of them can make it seem like the world is becoming a better place. As Mrs. Schnadenlaube looks at the situation, Sister Januarius's mummy is her responsibility, and she will not let me near the sarcophagus as she works on the screws with her wrench. She bids me lean against the far wall beneath the Christmas lights. It is fifteen minutes before she calls me over to help with the heavy glass lid.

With some effort, we slide it half off one side to the teeth-gritting scrape of glass against glass and surprisingly, the scent of wildflowers.

“I put in one of those stick-um things,” Mrs. Schnadenlaube explains. “You should have smelled the old girl before.”

“Where did you put it?” I say.

“Don't ask. Now, what is it you want out of here?”

I try not to see the shriveled brown skin, the skeletal teeth. “The old Bible,” I say, dry-lipped. “There …”

Mrs. Schnadenlaube nods and reaches in to knock out the spiderweb and retrieve the book. We push the lid back into place, and as she once again busies herself with the alan wrench, I step back to examine my treasure.

It is a heavy Douay-Reims translation of the New Testament, printed in Paris toward the last half of the eighteenth century, bound in black morocco and trimmed with cracking gilt. The inside covers are marbleized; the sacred text is three-columned and close printed to save space. And as I suspected, it is a study Bible, printed on heavy vellum, with more than half the pages set aside for private notation and commentary. A cursory look shows these pages are covered from top to bottom with a minuscule feminine hand—large chunks of writing broken only at odd intervals by the interpolation of a few blank spaces and a date. There are many such dates from beginning to end, covering a period of some
forty years. Not a day-to-day chronology, exactly, but a diary just the same. The diary of a saint.

I feel the weight and density of this book in my hand. I carefully blow a faint layer of dust off the textured cover and smile.

S
ATURDAY.

The day is bright and clear and beautiful. September, with its luminous days fading into the amber twilight of last barbecues. The air in the morning is a bit chilly, just enough for a light jacket. The jetstream trails high impassive clouds. The cars of the Long Island Railroad train smell dusty and old.

I get on at Flatbush and get off at Jamaica, Queens, to wait for the transfer on the platform with the rest: mothers and children with umbrellas and picnic lunches; retirees in golf caps; young, attractive Jewish girls, their hair a tangle of curls, hiding behind sunglasses and books; yuppies fresh from the office bringing briefcases full of legal documents, squash racquets under their arms. Now, sitting on the concrete steps in the shade, I have a vague and comforting sense of déjà vu. This is one of those great repetitions of bourgeois life. Getting out of the city for the day to the countryside, the train pulling into the last station, the dunes near and achingly white, scooped out of light.

I look around and watch the faces. New York faces, hard and yellow and worn by life in the city. They haven't had much time to get away this summer, to breathe some fresh air. The rat race has kept them pent up in the offices, in the stores, on the subway. They seem like characters out of Maupassant, tragic and ironic at the same time. Once I was one of them. Just yesterday. But now I am different, and I fancy that difference burns like a star. In my shoulder bag, padded between a new paperback history of the Mississippi Bubble scandal of 1720 and a two-month-old copy of the
Voice
—the key to my life. The diary of a saint. I want to embrace
strangers, shout my discovery from the top of the train. I can hardly suppress my glee.

Suddenly a clean wind blows from the direction of the sea. I fill my lungs with it. The train comes clattering around the curve and slows into the station. The passengers line up along the platform. I hesitate, then push my way toward the front. Do I imagine this, or do people move aside to make way? And the attractive young Jewish girl with the mop of gold-brown hair, does she lower her copy of Camus and flash me an approving glance above the dark half-moons of her sunglasses?

T
HE SMALL
station at East Hampton is decorated with a large banner advertising the Rushwick Country Club-Long Island Pro-Am, with the dates in big green letters. Rushwick Country Club is a new facility, opened just two years ago on the grounds surrounding the turn-of-the-century mansion that once belonged to one of New York's oldest families, the Van Rushwicks. The last heir died insane in the late 1980s. After a long court battle the grounds and house were sold to a golf enthusiast-real estate developer who carved eighteen holes out of the property and put up the most modern golfing facility in the state, full of superfluous conveniences like digital ball washers and electronic scorecards.

I board the shuttle bus to the tournament with a small group of golf fanatics, older men and women wearing green-visored caps and exaggerated golfing attire. They seem quite excited and hold hands like teenagers. We roll for twenty minutes through the green and even countryside and approach the Van Rushwick estate through an alley of oaks that reminds me of plantations in Louisiana. There is a great iron gate between brick and mortar posterns, the glimpse of green lawns extending to the horizon, and somewhere the sound of cheering.

When we disembark, it is like stepping off the bus into paradise. We advance in awe to the ticket booth and pay the thirty-five-dollar admission fee without blinking an eye. It seems a reasonable price on
such a beautiful day, in such a green and precious park. Then I follow the crowds around the brick bulk of the old mansion, its dark sides laddered with scaffolding. “They're turning the place into a fancy hotel for golfers,” I hear one of the old ladies say, “with close-circuit monitoring of the greens and underground parking, so as not to spoil the effect.” We pass through a second set of turnstiles, where a dour young man with a walkie-talkie and a Rushwick CC polo shirt checks my bag.

“What are you looking for?” I say as he paws through my books, a scowl on his face.

“Automatic weapons, explosives, alcoholic beverages. In that order,” he says.

“Have you had problems out here?”

“You never know, sir,” he says, eyeing me narrowly. “There are lunatics everywhere.” Then he pulls Sister Januarius's Bible out into the air.

“Be careful with that,” I say

“What is it?” he says.

“A Bible.”

“You're not one of these born-again Christian nuts, are you? They can be dangerous. We had one start witnessing last year from the gallery in the middle of the seventh hole, and the golfer missed his putt. That really sucked.”

“Don't worry,” I say. “I'm a Catholic. We're pretty quiet.” He scowls and flips through the Bible and hands it back. “A book like that, you could use as a weapon. Don't they make smaller editions?” I shrug. He hesitates but lets me through.

For the next two hours I wander the course, dazzled by the sumptuous landscape. Along the way I see several birdies, two eagles, and three bogies. On the greens the pros lean over their putters as if in prayer, caddies bowed at a respectful distance. The sand traps loom like open mouths. It's not so much the game itself, the primitive sexual dynamics of ball and hole and club, as the whole beautiful setting: gemlike greens in oceans of grass, trees swaying in the breeze, the warmth of the last sun, and the spectators hushed and respectful, like the crowds at a coronation.

When I find Father Rose, he is stuck in the dogleg of the thirteenth hole, trying to hack his way out of the rough. He has abandoned his mock-Jesuit simplicity today. Indeed, there is nothing of the priest about him. He wears a fashionable 1920s-style golfing ensemble, with tweed knee pants, yellow argyle socks, two-tone brogues, an argyle sweater, and a tweed cap. He studies the lie for a few minutes, gestures to his caddie for a nine iron, and knocks the ball into a clump of willows seventy-five yards to the west. He swears, goes red in the face. I can almost imagine him breaking the club over one knee. On the big board he ranks 110th out of a field of 112.

I wait till he's up on the green, three shots later, and staring down a double bogie, his next putt a nearly impossible forty-footer. I tear a page out of my notebook and write, “Father Rose: It might help your game to know that Brooklyn has its saint, with a miracle or two thrown into the bargain—Ned C.,” and send it through a greensman.

Meanwhile, the famous Armenian golfer Pulan Lazikian, who's playing along with Father Rose, bends for his marker and replaces his ball for a twenty-foot putt. He squints at the hole for a moment, then putts with the calm assurance of a professional. The white ball inscribes a gentle arc on the grass, looks good up to the last foot or so, but jogs off to the left. The gallery lets out a disappointed murmur. Lazikian's just lost himself a half million dollars and the tie for first. Father Rose pulls himself away from this drama to read my note. Then he scowls, takes a pencil out of his pocket, scribbles a response on the back, and sends it back to me.

“Right now I'm not a priest, I'm a golfer,” the note says. “And as a golfer, I resent the intrusion on my game. You can talk to the priest following the tournament this afternoon on the terrace of the clubhouse.”

After this he seems nervous but, moments later, sinks the impossible putt in a single dazzling stroke.

T
HE TERRACE
of the clubhouse is kidney-shaped and half an acre wide, paved in polished fieldstone of alternating grays. The clubhouse itself, a massive bungalow of timber, stone, and glass, recalls Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water. There is the smell of night in the air, of cut grass and the loamy dark beneath the bushes. The tables are packed with golfers and entourage, relaxing over drinks in the first calm light of dusk. For some reason, mariachi music filters through the loudspeaker as if one of the Mexican busboys has commandeered the sound system. The rattle of the tinny horns and accordion mixed with the sound of male laughter and the clink of glasses makes me think of a cantina in a border town and the raw stink of tequila.

When I find Father Rose, he is slumped alone over a Bloody Mary at a small table in the far corner. Lithe girls in aprons move back and forth, silent as elves with their trays full of glasses. A cold wind blows from the sea. He motions for me to sit down. He stirs his Bloody Mary with a celery stick and will not meet my eyes. I wait for him to speak.

“It's been a rough day,” he says after a while. “I've got to face it. I'm not much of a golfer anymore.”

He finished 108th, improving his standing somewhat in the latter part of the afternoon.

“Come on, Father,” I say. “There were a couple of good shots there. I saw one excellent putt.”

He waves me off. “Sometimes I think golf is a worse vice for a priest than having a mistress from his congregation or sleeping with the altar boys,” he says. “Wanting to win as much as I do, it's a sin. I tell myself the obsession won't matter if I pledge my winnings to the church. No, that's not true. What I really think is that if I pledge my winnings to the church, a miracle might happen and I might make the top five.”

“A miracle did happen, Father,” I say, smiling.

He raises his eyes wearily. “All right, what have you got for me?”

I pause dramatically, then take Sister Januarius's Bible out of the book bag and set it on the table, where it sits heavy and dark as a slab of beef.

Father Rose recognizes the book instantly and is aghast. “You didn't”—he can hardly find the words—“desecrate the resting place of—”

“Please, Father, hear me out.” I tell him about the miracles in the hospital, and I tell him about the ghost, about Madeleine de Prasères de la Roca, and about Albane d'Aurevilley, how one became a prostitute and the other a nun who took the name of the martyr Januarius. The light fades in the west over the dark hills. The night comes on. The lithe girls bring out heat lamps and place them here and there on the patio to take the chill off the ocean breeze.