The Sisterhood

Chapter 14


Las Golondrinas Convent, Spain, April 2000





Having fought off sleep to keep nightmares at bay, Menina was groggy the next morning as she followed Sor Clara. She wished she had a whole pot of coffee. They passed the scriptorium and stopped before a heavy double door. “Here is sala grande.” Sor Clara fumbled for a bunch of keys at her waist and found the one that unlocked the ornate iron lock—but even though the key turned, the door refused to open, despite her shoves and mutterings and prayers.

Menina asked Sor Clara to stand aside, and gave it a good kick with her boot. The door scraped open—probably for the first time in many years, judging by the cloud of dust their entrance raised—and stuck halfway open. Menina sneezed and, looking around, saw they were in a room so long and dark that its ends were in shadow. She guessed it ran the length of the cloister. As her eyes adjusted she saw it was similar to the room with the iron grille where she had been yesterday, only much bigger. This one had the same dark carved wooden furniture, as well as a stiff horsehair settee with stuffing coming out of it, matching chairs, and a huge crucifix crooked on a wall. Then Menina caught her breath. The walls, which had just looked dark at first, were actually covered with picture frames.

Weak light filtered through the dust motes onto a threadbare Persian rug in the middle of the room. The arms and backs of the furniture were draped in rotting antimacassars, and an arm had fallen off one of the chairs. An embroidered runner with holes in it ran the length of a heavy table against the wall, beneath a dusty plaster statue of the Virgin Mary and two fat lopsided ecclesiastical candles in holders. The musty smell that permeated the convent was overwhelming, and the silence was so heavy it was tangible.

“How long since anyone used this room?” Menina asked, looking around.

“Many years. Is cold in winter. But I think the painting by Tristan Mendoza was in this room.”

“Do you remember where, Sor Clara?” asked Menina faintly, looking up at the walls that held probably hundreds of pictures, all dark with dirt and age. Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack. Sor Clara tottered over to one of the stiff-looking settees, sat down, and waited expectantly.

“Sor Clara, do you know which wall it hung on?”

“Eh?” Sor Clara cupped her hand around her ear to hear better. Menina repeated the question, almost shouting. Sor Clara gave an expressive eye-rolling shrug.

“Why did I ask?” Menina said to herself. She chose a small frame at random, lifted it gingerly from the wall, took a piece of bread and began working it between her palms to soften it, then started pressing it gently onto the surface of the painting. The bread picked up dirt until it disintegrated. Menina stepped back and realized she could see a hand. She hastily pressed some more bread onto the surface until she recognized the same tonsured monk with a crooked nose and squinty eyes she had seen yesterday, only from a different angle. Menina took it to the middle of the room and searched for a signature at the bottom but could see nothing, no sign of writing or a bird. She wished she had a magnifying glass, but she didn’t. Sor Clara was asleep with her rosary in her lap and her mouth open, snoring gently.

Menina propped the monk out of reach of the sun and picked another frame from the middle of the wall and started to work as quickly as possible. It would take months to get to every painting.

A couple of hours later, Sor Clara hadn’t moved. Alarmed the elderly nun might be dead, Menina checked her breathing, then realized Sor Clara was probably tired because of the nighttime vigil. By now, half a dozen murky paintings of different sizes stood propped up against the wall. Menina stepped back and squinted at her handiwork. The monk kept drawing her attention, and the longer she looked at it the more uneasy it made her. She knew her reaction was probably due to being tired and disoriented—but it had an evil presence and she didn’t like it. Finally, she turned it face to the wall.

As for the next four paintings…she peered, trying to see what they were about, looking for familiar themes and symbols and subjects that cropped up in religious art that would give her a clue about the painting. At college she always enjoyed the exercises where students had to “read” a painting, but at college there were textbooks and a library for reference. Now she was on her own, memory her only resource.

At Holly Hill the course on Renaissance methodology began with the same joke every year, that anyone brought up in the Bible Belt had a head start identifying the themes of Renaissance art. Menina had been astonished to find that years of Baptist Sunday School and coloring books of Bible stories had delivered this particular dividend. And while the methodology course was no more than the basics, Menina loved the process of hunting for clues to a painting’s hidden meaning, unraveling the significance of light and shade and colors, the positioning of the figures, the symbols—like rays streaming through a window to represent the Divine Light illumining the world, or pomegranates to symbolize fertility and the Resurrection, dogs for fidelity, and parrots that people in the Middle Ages believed made the sound “Ave” as if they were about to pray to the Virgin Mary.

But the artist’s perspective was only part of it. Painting was a dialogue between the artist and the viewer, and to interpret a painting you had to understand how the artist expected people of the time to understand it. And that depended on many things—the period when it was painted, politics, and religious ideas. The question you had to ask was, where were the painter and the viewer “at”? Maybe the painting was intended to link a donor or artist’s patron to holy figures—where everybody was “at” was that the saint’s holiness rubbed off on the donor by association. Maybe it was intended to generate awe in the viewer at the radiance of God’s word, maybe it had a message of the power of life over death, or connected a king or queen to God, or illuminated a mystery everyone would have been aware of at the time, like changing the water and wine of communion into the body and blood of Christ—the possibilities were endless but it was important to search for a painting’s message to the person looking at it.

Menina thought about all this while she opened her notebook and uncapped a ballpoint. She would be methodical and give each painting a number before she began cleaning it, then write a brief description of what she found. Then she could try the dialogue test.

She took down painting number one and narrowed her eyes. Where was everybody “at” with this one? The longer she looked, the uglier it seemed—a moon-faced Madonna whose hands looked like they had been painted on as an afterthought, sticking awkwardly out of her sleeves. Either the artist had no grasp of basic anatomy or it was an artistic statement. She would let somebody else worry about it. Just in case, she pat the corners looking for a signature, finding a C followed by something that might be “Lopez.”

Painting number two was equally disappointing—insipid angels with open mouths, flat and lifeless against a brown sky. No signature. Menina put it next to the Madonna.

Number three was a still life of roses and lilies which she knew were a reference to the Virgin Mary, and might be valuable depending on the detail and colors under the dirt. She checked for a signature, found a B. and put it aside.

Number four was a stolid child carrying a lamb over his shoulder. Both lamb and child wore exactly the same dramatic pout and soulful expression. So awful it made her smile. She put it with the Madonna.

Three and a half hours later Menina was filthy, surrounded by two dozen paintings propped haphazardly against the walls. She wiped her forearm across her brow. None of it looked promising—maybe a cut above, or at least older than what was hanging in the corridors—but still she would bet nothing she had seen so far was worth much. She stood up to stretch her back and looked around the walls again. It was now early afternoon and the room was bright enough that Menina could see that a large black frame hanging at eye level had a lumpy pattern.

She looked at the frame closely, then scratched it with her nail, leaving a hairlike gray line. Menina spat on it and breathed on it and rubbed it with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, until her sleeve was dirty and the spot she had rubbed had a dull gleam. Not gilt as she had expected, but silver. Venetian? But a silver frame surely must be an indicator that the painting it held must be reasonably good. She looked at it closely. Under the tarnish was an ornate pattern of curling vines. Then Menina cried, “Oh!” Among the vines were small birds with forked tails.

She staggered under its weight as she lifted it down. Propping it up against the wall she set to work, until she could make out what looked like a crowd of people with no faces. No wait, there was a face in profile on the side. The others weren’t faceless—it showed the backs of their heads. They were looking toward the center right which had something light, what looked like two figures…something was happening in the middle…she could see what looked like a bandaged leg. Was that crooked thing a crutch?

Unsettling faces, some in profile, some at an angle, emerged from the dirt—grotesque faces, syphilitic or alcoholic or something, noses too short and wide and nostrils twisted up, mouths open, sick and weary and mad faces, faces with features swollen and battered and distorted by hard lives and hunger, a crowd of suffering people all focusing on something. Someone lying on what looked like a stretcher. A skeleton. And something moving at the bottom of the painting. As the grime of centuries came away, demons with reptilian bodies, grinning humanoid features, and malevolent yellow eyes stared directly at Menina even as they scurried away between the legs of the crowd, away from whatever was taking place in the center of the painting.

She recognized the theme immediately—the story from the Bible of Jesus healing and casting out demons. She cleaned some more dirt off until she could make out two figures in the center. Two men in profile? No, it looked like a man and a woman. With the last piece of bread she dabbed the lower left-hand corner. And as the last bit crumbled, she thought there was a T. Then an r.

It wasn’t possible, she told herself, turning the painting to get the light on it. But was that a T? And a capital M? At that point she would have licked the dirt off to find out if it wouldn’t have done so much harm to the paint. In her excitement she gathered up dirty crumbs from the floor and rubbed, a little more vigorously than anyone should do on an old painting, and there—she couldn’t believe it, she rubbed her eyes—was a little blob. Mustn’t get overexcited, a blob was a blob…unless it was a swallow! She cleaned until she saw T-r-i-s then M-e-n-d, and stopped rubbing before she damaged it irreparably.

She stood up and took some deep breaths. She, Menina Ann Walker, age nineteen, had just made a discovery, a real art-world discovery, just like that! Bam! Art historians spent entire careers trying to do what she had just done. “I don’t believe it,” she muttered over and over. Then she punched the air with her fist and cried, “Yes!” Wait till Becky and Holly Hill and her parents heard! Yes! She was so excited she did a little impromptu victory dance, then “Sor Clara. Sor Clara? Wake up! Good news!” She patted the old nun on the arm excitedly and Sor Clara snored loudly and woke up, looking startled. “Eh?”

Menina said very loudly in Spanish, “I found the Tristan Mendoza! I found it! I found it! It was here! Just like you said! And I found it! Thank you! Thank you!”

“Deo gratias…” mumbled Sor Clara, rubbing her eyes.

There was a sound of footsteps, then Sor Teresa threw open the door and without preliminaries announced Menina’s food was waiting for her and they must hurry. Sor Clara had to go to the vigil and she needed to get back to the kitchen because there were polvorónes baking. All the world wanted polvorónes, everything was late today, she had far too much to do, and Alejandro needed to speak to Menina at once.

“Sor Teresa, come look. I found the Tristan Mendoza! I found it!” Menina was almost jumping up and down with excitement like a five-year-old when she suddenly remembered Sor Teresa couldn’t see. She started to apologize, but she needn’t have bothered; Sor Teresa wasn’t listening.

“We talk about it later. Come now!” she barked. Leading the way down the corridor to the locutio parlor, she was loud enough to be heard on the other side of the grate, complaining it was Semana Santa, and they were too busy to be always welcoming Menina’s visitors. The captain said reasonably from the other side that he was the only visitor and it was necessary for him to speak to Menina on police business.

The two nuns hobbled off, Sor Teresa airing her grievances loudly as she went. Menina tried to stop dancing and bubbled happily. “Captain, you were right about the convent having a valuable painting, I just found—”

To her surprise he wasn’t interested. He said, “Mees Walker, some people are looking for you.”

The day was getting better and better. “Thank heaven! My parents obviously managed to galvanize somebody. I’m so reliev—”

“Your parents, eh? Though you do not believe me, I would have telephoned them if it had been possible, but I could not. So maybe is not your family who send them,” he said slowly. “And maybe is more important than ever that you stay out of sight.”

“What? Of course it’s my parents! Who else? I called them from the airport to let them know I wasn’t in Madrid yet, and that I was taking a bus. Obviously they got the police to trace the bus, and the bus driver explained I had been left here and—”

“No, it is a man and a woman who are following you, and whoever they are, they are not police. In fact they do not want the police to know they are looking for you. And because I do not want them to cause problems for me, I must get to the bottom of this now. You must tell me, who wants to find you?”

Menina’s mouth suddenly felt dry and her elation evaporated as she remembered. “Oh God, please, not Theo!” she muttered. He had the money and connections to trace her, but surely the Bonners would be trying to put a spin on why the wedding had been canceled.

“Who is Theo?” the captain demanded.

“Um, nobody. My parents must have hired a private detective to find me.”

“No, I do not think so. And I will tell you why I do not think so, and then you will tell me why they look for you, because it does not make sense to me. An old man, a retired policeman friend of my father, is driving from Malaga back to a village in the mountains where he lives with his daughter’s family, and he stops for coffee. While he is drinking his coffee, a couple comes into the bar, a man and a woman, nice clothes, want to put a sign in the bar window, a picture of a girl, very pretty, and it says ‘Menina Walker,’ an American, is missing. Says big reward for information. My friend thinks I should know this…never mind why. But he, too, wants to know why so he listens to everything—old habit. And people do not think an old man in the corner with his pipe and his coffee is listening. He wants to see what this couple do next. He drinks more coffee, reads his newspaper. The couple order food, drinks, spend a lot of money for a small bar, and people at the bar say OK, they can put up their poster, but is better to fill out an official report at the police station. But, the couple say no, they do not bother police.”

“Seems odd they said that! Why?”

“Is strange, no? My friend, too, does not like—”

“Oh for Pete’s sake! What don’t the two of you like? You should be thrilled someone wants to take me off your hands.”

“You must listen…My friend understands why I cannot leave the village now, so instead of going home he comes to see me. While the people are eating, he goes outside, like he will make pi pi, to look at their car, memorize the number plate. Old habit. And then he is surprised, because he knows something most people, most police even, would not. A little symbol on the license means the car belongs to a Catholic organization, is like a confraternidad—brotherhood. But my friend knows this particular brotherhood is very old in Spain and very, very conservative, some say dates back to the Inquisition, dangerous because…how do you say it? It has fanatics, people who will do anything to protect the church.”

“How does he know that? It sounds pretty far-fetched.”

“You must understand something. You are from America, and for Americans yesterday is over, finished. In Spain it is not over. During the civil war in the 1930s terrible things happened that people do not forget today. My friend’s family were Republicans, like my father. In 1939 the Fascists came to this village. They take all the men and boys, children even, and hang them in the square. They wanted to hang my father, too, but he was hunting because was no food, and when they come he hide in the hills, in caves.

“My mother, his wife, was sixteen, with a baby coming. She run with other women to this convent and the nuns take them in and lock the gate. Fascists very dangerous, but Fascist Catholics, don’t burn convent. And the gate is very strong. My mother and the other women are safe. So later, because of the nuns, I have my parents and my family. My father’s friend was not so lucky. The Fascists came to his village, too, killed his parents and raped many women, killed many people. For that, all his life he has hated the Catholic Church because Fascists are Catholics and the Catholic Church supports the Fascists. He has spent much of his life learning about the church and their secrets, and he knows things most people do not. The right wing of the church is very old-fashioned, everyone forget about them now, think they don’t matter. But like this confraternidad they exist, and are powerful in the Vatican. Powerful in other places. And my friend knows, these people do not waste time looking for girls for no reason. So now you must tell me what that reason is. Do not play games.”

Games? Menina just wanted to get out of here. “How should I know about Catholic organizations? I’m a Southern Baptist—the Catholic Church can’t be so desperate for converts that they chase tourists around the country!”

“There must be more you are not telling me if these people want to find you. They get instructions from a high level in the church, some say even the Vatican. And the Vatican has contacts in government, the police, everywhere. The church has great power today. You think religious fanatics are not dangerous? They are the most dangerous people in the world. Look at Northern Ireland, look at the Basques. Look at the Middle East. So I ask you once more, why are you in Spain?”

“I’ve told you and told you—I just want to go to Madrid!”

“Mees Walker, start with this Mendoza. Why is he important?”

Menina was beginning to feel like Alice in Wonderland. She had already explained about Tristan Mendoza, and while he was interesting if you were an art history major with a thesis to write, she didn’t see how that justified this weird interrogation. “Look, I’m studying him because I have this medal, but it can’t mean anything to anybody but me. Here!” She slipped off her medal and passed it through the grille, telling him how she was found with it and how the nuns wanted her to have it when she turned sixteen. “So it’s important to me because it’s all I have that connects me to my birth family. Now see the little bird on one side? The reason I’m interested in Tristan Mendoza is that he signed his paintings with that same bird under his signature. I wanted to research his work at the Prado—the only place with any of his work—to find out if that swallow meant something, what its history was, there would be a…connection to my birth parents. The Walkers are wonderful, and I love them, but if you aren’t adopted you can’t understand this terrible need to know about your birth family. It’s like there’s a hole in the middle of your life. I know the swallows may just be a coincidence, but it’s absolutely all I have to go on.”

“In Spain family is very important. I understand. The nuns helped my mother, my family. Now I must help Sor Teresa like I promise my father.” He held the medal up and squinted, ran his fingers over the worn figures on both sides and thought for a moment before he handed the medal back.

Sounding less impatient he said, “In the mountains here, there are some old stories about a Jewish Christian community in this part of Spain, when the Romans were here. The first Christians were Jews, too; I think they do not say Jesus’s mother Mary is a virgin forever, because she has other children besides Jesus. Then hundreds of years later, when Constantine is emperor, the church says yes, Jesus is son of God, so is like God and Mary is a virgin always. By then, who knows what is true about Mary? But Catholic Church is very powerful, and people must not ask what is true, must believe what the church says, and church says Mary is virgin forever, that is why she is powerful with God. And I think the old stories about the Christian Jews who were here when the Romans are here have swallows in them, but I do not know why. But never mind, you must tell me the rest of your story, so I know what I can believe about you. First, who is Theo? How is he involved?”

“Um, Theo’s no one.”

“If he is no one, why did you think he sent people to look for you?”

Menina felt anxiety rising. “Theo was…OK, we were supposed to get married.”

“Supposed to? You are engaged to Theo? This is no one?”

“No, I’m not engaged. Not anymore.”

“Why?”

Menina tried to keep her voice from shaking while she told him that they had a fight and called off the wedding. She tried to say calmly that people broke up all the time. But much as she didn’t want to, she saw herself and Theo in the car by the lake and felt Theo’s hand across her mouth and her own helplessness…it all came rushing back, she couldn’t banish it from her mind. Theo’s hand stifling her screams so she couldn’t breathe…it was like he hated her…and then…what’s the big deal…she was hyperventilating. “And I…he…I came to Spain because…” Shut up! Menina told herself.

“But you will get married when you go home?”

“NO!”

“Why?”

It felt like her skin was slowly being peeled from her flesh. “Leave me alone! I don’t want to talk about it!”

“It’s better if you tell me.”

“Look, it’s none of your business, it’s got nothing to do with the people you’re describing or some argument in the church. It’s got nothing to do with anybody but me!” She clutched the locutio and started to cry. “Now leave me alone!”

“Mees Walker, I am sorry, to break up, not get married like you want to…is painful. But maybe he is not a good man, or maybe not a good man for you. Sometimes we are lucky to find out in time we cannot trust the person we love.”

Menina lost all her self-control. Fury took its place. She was angrier than she had ever been in her life. She grasped the grille with both hands and wished she could kill the man on the other side. “Trust? He raped me! And said it didn’t matter, that we were getting married, and I think he wanted to get me pregnant, and I don’t even know whether it’s my fault—my mother would say so if she knew, so I can’t tell her. I can’t tell the police because I don’t want to drag my family through a court case with all his fraternity brothers saying I’m…I’m a…I can’t even tell my best friend! I’m trying to handle it and I was and I felt better and today I thought…now you…ruined that…you…you…arrogant bastard!” She heard herself shrieking words she had never used to anyone, until she was crying and choking too hard to go on.

The captain let her scream and cry until she was gasping for breath. “It is not good to say nothing when such a terrible thing happens to you.” He sounded sympathetic. Reasonable. What a shit, she thought helplessly, hating him. “Is many bad people in the world, but you are not to blame if he is one of them.” That made things worse. Menina didn’t want his sympathy. She didn’t want reasonable. She didn’t want him or anyone to know! That he did was like being raped all over again. Menina kicked the locutio as hard as she could with her Timberland until the bars rattled and her foot hurt. “Damn you! You stupid…Damn you!” she screamed as loud as she could.

“You are angry,” said the captain “This is good! Be angry at him. He deserves your anger, and to be angry at me because you tell me this, is better than angry at yourself for what is not your fault.”

“Oh sh-sh-shut up you f*ckwit! Just shut up!” Menina screamed again.

Suddenly Sor Teresa was there, scolding, “Alejandro! What is this? What have you said?” She put her arm around Menina, saying, “We go now.”

Sobbing and gasping for breath, Menina was pulled away by Sor Teresa. The captain was calling something and then banging on the grille himself, saying it was important. Menina didn’t care. She had almost felt like herself again for a while, but she’d been wrong. Her life was in ruins. The rest of the day was a miserable blur. She forced herself to wash her T-shirt and other set of underwear, rinsing them again and again in icy pump water until her hands were numb. Then she sat in the pilgrims’ garden and tried to make notes about what she had found that morning. She couldn’t remember a single thing. She picked up her guidebook and read the same paragraphs over and over again, then kept putting the book down because she was crying. That night a plate of small almond cakes were on her tray. “Polvorónes,” said Sor Teresa and left.

Menina had no appetite for them or anything else. She lay down and stared into the dark. She remembered she hadn’t brushed her teeth. She started to get up and do it, then decided that her life was going to hell, her teeth might as well rot.