Sister Wolf (17 page)

Some time before dark she might get around to moving, or trying to move. The sun was warm and many birds were singing. The grass felt as soft as a pillow, or perhaps it was her body that was cottony and resistless. Thoughts floated up through her mind like bubbles released from a clamshell buried in sand. She had never been able to rest except under enforcement, or to lie down on her bed without a pile of books. If she tried to sleep in the daytime, she would hear her heartbeat drumming. It frightened her. Watching the sand drain out of the top of the egg timer frightened her. Every wristwatch she had owned got wet, overwound, or smashed. She could never be still in an upright position, either; she stalked like a houseless ghost, making work for her hands. Luba would chide her from her throne of cushions: “You have no repose.” And now she was lying on the ground, or floating, without complaint, given up to the blue of heaven. The only organ that was not yet functioning was her will.

The kiss of life was administered by a deerfly. He landed on her nose and bit into the skin. Marit was up like a shot, swearing and hopping in circles. She had slapped the bridge of her nose, not the fly, with the band of her signet ring. The commotion she made was having an effect on the landscape, as if nature were responding in its fashion to her yelps and pains. The mountain laurel was rocking, its pink flowers hobbling; the wind was blowing through a patch of ferns, except that there was no wind. Marit stopped her dancing, rooted by amazement. That bush with the round red berries was whining and barking. That bush had grown a long gray snout and a hairy tail.

She held out her arms and laughed with relief and joy.

“Who is in there?” she called. “Which ones? Did you come to save me?”

For an answer, the larger bushes rustled and shook. There was a flash of red through the laurel, the rusty-red of a fox’s coat. Two brown shapes, thin and loopy, streaked out from behind the ferns—the mated minks, who were heading down to the pond. There was the crashing sound of branches trampled by heavier animals, making their way through the shrubbery back to the safe dim woods. One of the animals had seen her lying stunned on the ground, and she knew which one. He had spread the word to the others and they had gathered for a rescue or a vigil. He must have signaled that their work was done, now that she was on her feet again and lively.

Their leader was still at his post, the last to leave. For one instant his head poked out. The gray muzzle, flecked with white hairs, and the one walleye belonged to the oldest wolf, Swan. Marit bowed from the waist, as if he were able to read this act of deference. By the time she had raised her head he was gone, like the others.

St. Francis of Assisi would have bid the beasts into the open. He would have made them lie down and extend their paws for his touch. He would have caused them to be still while he spoke a blessing over them, or enjoined them not to harry the countryside for food. Marit was born with money, like St. Francis; she had no other qualifications for making miracles. Saints love all creatures equally; Marit loved animals better than human beings. It was no miracle that the animals had rallied around to help her; it was a tendency in their nature, and it spoke of their worth, not hers. Animals were innocent. They were not bad when they lunged and bit in pain or fear, or good when they fetched a slipper or came to heel. Those were human standards, devised for training children.

Nikolai had been raised by children’s rules for his protection, since he must live in the world with people. Nikolai would be battering the sides of his pen. It was noon, by the sun overhead, and he had missed two feedings. Marit had half an hour’s jog through the sanctuary before she could free him. She would ask Lola to drive her back to the road to retrieve the jeep.

Between three and five on weekend afternoons, teachers and counselors at Meyerling entertained guests of the other sex in their own rooms, which were furnished like little suites, with a sofa and armchairs. Daisy Fellowes had a miniature icebox; Rennie Gaines, the spiritual director, had a tufted kneeler; and Gabriel had a pair of badly foxed bird prints; but the most important fixture of any teacher’s room was the doorstop supplied by the Community, a brick covered in various calicoes by a previous cook. The brick doorstops had their own code life: the open position meant that the occupant was holding office hours; halfway open, that he was having a private talk; three-quarters shut, that he was working; fully closed, that he was dressing, undressing, or sleeping. This unwritten code was for the discipline of the teachers, since the blind children treated halfway and three-quarters as fully open. So did the Head Teacher, Henry Dufton, most of the time, although he could only claim to be legally blind. “We are a family,” Mr. Dufton liked to say; “we must not keep little secrets from each other.”

News of a visitor spread within minutes of his or her arrival. Gabriel lived in the last room but one at the end of a corridor. The room at the far end was a locked linen closet, and the only room across the hall from his was unoccupied during the summer. So far, Marit had counted five faculty people passing by and glancing in, undisturbed by the fact that they had no excuse except inquisitiveness for being in that part of the hall. After the third passerby, she had taken off her sneakers and arranged her chair so that all they would see through the half-open door were her naked feet, calves, and knees. There was no point in letting them go away unrewarded.

When Marit had reached her house at midday, she had found Gabriel sitting on the back steps. If hats had been the fashion, he would have been waiting for her hat in hand. He had enough sense not to speak to her immediately, since she was red in the face from running, and breathing hard. He followed her into the kitchen, where she cut up round steak for Nikolai, and followed her outside again while she opened the malamute’s pen. Nikolai jumped up to lick Marit’s face, fell on his food dish, wheeled back to nudge his mistress, remembered his dish of raw meat—Gabriel stood by until this frenzy of welcome had died down. Then he asked her very shyly, like a village swain, if she would come to have tea in his room that afternoon. He was on back-up duty all weekend, and he had something important to say to her. Fresh from a miracle, Marit watched him without interest. He hesitated when he spoke. His hands were clasped behind his back. In some scenarios he would have produced a little pasteboard ring box. Only after he had left, or, in fact, had bowed his way out, did she remember that she had considered sending him away.

Two mugs were sitting on the coffee table in Gabriel’s room. Marit had finished her tea, but Gabriel’s mug was full, and she was alone. The crafts counselor had slipped on wet clay and broken her wrist, and Gabriel was even now letting her substitute into the blind maze, a series of rooms in the basement that were fitted out like a small apartment. All he had to do was to tie a black scarf over the new woman’s eyes and instruct her that she would be left there for two hours, with the lights out, during which time she was to take a bath, change into garments that were hanging in one of the closets, find the icebox, and make herself a sandwich, half of which she must leave as evidence of her effort. There was a radio in one of the rooms, but almost none of the initiates ever found it.

Gabriel peered around the door before coming in, as if he expected Marit to be spitting tacks or to be vanished.

“That was a long one,” she said, with a pleasant smile.

“She balked,” said Gabriel. “I think she’s going to cheat.”

“How can you tell when they haven’t cheated?” asked Marit, trying to keep a good interviewer’s distance from her subject.

Gabriel glanced out into the hallway before he answered. He lowered his voice. “Blobs of mayonnaise on the floor.”

Then he met her eyes and laughed at himself for whispering. Marit reached for his hand and steered him into the chair across from her. For the moment she had the advantage, and she enjoyed it. Perhaps they could build a friendship out of the romantic rubble.

“There is enough pietistic nonsense floating around here to start a church.” She was kind enough to keep her voice from carrying.

“Hold on,” said Gabriel. “How can you be effective with blind people if you have no insight into being blind?”

“Oh, wonderful. Admirable. There are monks who sleep in coffins so that they can get insight into being dead.”

“Dufton may be a turkey, but he’s a genius with children.” Gabriel bit his lip, a sure sign that his temper was rising.

“Then everyone who works here should be blind. The maze is a halfway measure. Put out their eyes instead.”

Gabriel grew mild. He had decided to practice nonviolence. “Is there some reason why the subject of blindness makes you uncomfortable?”

A flicker of hostility loosened Marit’s tongue. “What are they, in the first place? A bunch of overprivileged kids: they could be blind or green.”

“I agree,” answered Gabriel. “Blindness is a privilege.”

Neither one of them heard Daisy Fellowes coming, although she walked with an echo, like a storm trooper. Miss Fellowes never knocked and never apologized. The only grammatical mood that she used was the imperative.

“You have a guest, Gabriel,” she announced. She also talked with an echo. “Miss Deym will have to excuse us. There is a fight in the five tent.”

“John?” asked Gabriel, but she had already marched away.

Marit opened her mouth to protest, but she cut herself short. Gabriel raised his palms and shrugged, a gesture of resignation that he had picked up in Cuba. He was hovering at the doorsill, pulled toward her and pulled away from her, pleading without a word. She took him by the shoulders, pointed him down the hall, and gave him a little shove to get him started.

Marit stretched out on the couch with her fingers linked behind her head, smiling at her endless flexibility. She did not feel for a second—or perhaps for a second, but the feeling did not hold—that Gabriel’s calls to duty were an act of desertion or disrespect. Up, down, up, down: how busy he was, like a jack-in-the-box coiled to jump when the lid was opened. The jack springs up, head waggling, smiling his painted-on smile, but Gabriel had looked bothered and rebellious, and gone forth to his tasks glancing backward. He wore the institutional life like a hair shirt; at the moment it seemed that the shirt was drawing blood. Just before he went padding after Daisy Fellowes, Marit had seen a wild look in his eyes, as if his eyes had come loose and were rolling in their sockets. Captured birds had that look as well, and hawks who are given over to a novice handler.

Marit thought that the blind children would have that look if their eyes were not dead. This model blind farm, with its euphemistic name, was a cageless zoo where natural instincts were slowly being blunted. Nine- and ten-year-olds slept in the five tent during summer camp season; in three years’ time no more fights would break out, wherever they were housed. Meyerling modulated the voices of its wards along with their personalities. A soft, low voice is considered an excellent thing in the blind. By the time they lined up at graduation, dressed in white regardless of their sex, these same scrappy boys and girls would resemble postulants to a contemplative order, with their bowed heads and bowed shoulders, unlined faces, and pallid complexions. Enclosure and meditation are better than any cream or cosmetic for the life of the skin, but not for the condition of the spirit, walled up before its time. If the journey from birth to death spans seven ages, Meyerling wanted its charges to leap from the dependency of childhood to the resignation of old age, skipping the glory or the conflict in between. Meyerling filed the teeth of its young inmates and declawed them, as some heinous owners do with feline pets.

Marit sat up to halt the course of her thoughts. She was faced with indicting Gabriel along with Meyerling. He worked here; therefore he must have bought the message. He had said that blindness was a privilege. Things were looking bad for Gabriel and worse for her illusions. Gazing clear-eyed at the loved one is just as dangerous as looking straight at the Medusa. All these meek and thwarted children, offered up as testimony to the high intentions of their preceptors: Marit’s back was to the wall, staving off a vision of Gabriel drawing uplift and humility from the blind for the sake of his conscience, not for their salvation, the sin that all philanthropists are heir to.

Marit stood up and started to pace the room. The room was small and crowded. She did not pace so much as pick her way through the furniture. What girl infected by Romance wants the itch to subside and the swelling to go down? Objectivity was the salve, but she refused it. She was too new to the fevers, knots, breathlessness, waiting, throes, and skipped heartbeats. The machine of Romance had been idling; she cranked it up and opened the throttle wide. Gabriel was like a peregrine, leashed at the leg and hooded, in training for immolation, not for combat. She loved the bird, but not the equipment of self-denial. She had the power to make some inroads on his higher nature. The way to his sense of humor was through his appetites.

The door, exactly half open, swayed to three-quarters. The girl in the doorway advanced with her arms outstretched, holding her palms up to feel for obstacles, like the newly blind. She moved in short, quick steps, then braked. Her hands made contact with the top of an armchair. Marit held her breath and stood as still as an Indian. Two chairs stood between her and the intruder; their inert mass might block the magnetic circuit.

“Gabriel?” said the girl.

Gabriel was the only teacher who was ever called by his first name. The girl turned her face in Marit’s direction. Marit recognized her and remembered her live slanted eyes.

“Who are you?” demanded the girl.

Marit did not like to be challenged. All her fine thoughts flew out the window. This was one blind person who did not know her place, this girl with the fancy name, Aimée, who was as plain as an oatcake, actually, who had the sexual assurance of a beauty, who would snake your beau as soon as look at him.

“I can’t help you,” said Marit. “He is somewhere on the grounds with Miss Fellowes.”