The Sisterhood

Chapter 34


Las Golondrinas Convent, Spain, April 2000





After letting Almira in, Menina managed to pull her boots off before collapsing on her bed, but despite being more tired than she had ever been in her life, she slept badly, waking every few minutes imagining that the men looking for Almira were climbing over the walls. As the first light of dawn came through the window she got up quickly and went to check. But Almira was still snoring, curled in a ball.

Too nervous to go back to sleep, Menina was on edge listening for gunshots, but except for the swallows it was quiet. She brushed her teeth, then went to intercept Sor Teresa, who was just then hurrying to open the gate to the chapel. Menina delivered Alejandro’s warning to keep the gate locked. Sor Teresa was predictably outraged. She went off into a tirade in Spanish. Did Menina not realize it was Good Friday?

“It’s not my idea,” Menina tried to interrupt over and over. “Alejandro says it is necessary. We must trust him…There’s a police operation going on. It’s very dangerous. Dangerous for him and for many people if we do not do as he says. There are very bad men involved. Please.”

Finally Sor Teresa calmed down enough to focus on what Menina was saying. “Dangerous for Alejandro?”

“Yes, for many other people, too. There are criminals, probably with guns. Alejandro has a gun, and there will be other police with guns…”

In distress Sor Teresa cried, “No! Guns evil! People had guns in the civil war, very bad!”

“Alejandro needs you to help him, by not opening the gate for any reason. He wants the gate to the convent to be kept closed and bolted.” Menina tried another tactic. “If the gate is locked and he doesn’t have to worry about you and the other nuns, he will be safer. You don’t want him to get shot, do you, while he is worrying about the nuns and not paying attention to his job?”

“Is for the police what he is doing? Not for anything else, not because these criminals are paying him money?”

So Sor Teresa had been worried he was on the take!

“No, it’s not like that, not at all. He will tell you about it later. It is a long story and Alejandro is very brave. But first he needs to catch the criminals.”

“When we can open the gate again?”

“He will tell us when it’s safe.”

“Alejandro is a good man. He take care of people, he help us in the convent, he help you, that is why I do not like to think of him and his too much money, his prostitutes. Or dead from the men with guns.”

Menina sighed. “I never thought I would agree but I do now.”

“Alejandro like you.”

“I’m not so sure but that doesn’t make any diff—”

“Yes, I tell you I see with my ears, hear what people think when they talk. I hear Alejandro when he say he want to talk with you, he is nervous, like a boy. I think he is combing his hair and straighten his uniform.”

“I don’t think he…”

“He is lonely. So many girlfriends but is lonely. He was in love with American girl. In California. She was novia. But she did not come here. So he does not get married and he waste his life on bad girls.”

Menina couldn’t enlighten Sor Teresa just now about the girlfriends. “Really that’s none of my concern.”

“He should get married. Settle down. Have children.”

“No doubt you’ve told him so many times. I’m sure he will when he meets the right woman, but it’s none of my business.”

“You are not married!”

“No—”

“Why not?”

“Sor Teresa, that’s—”

“Something bad make you unhappy. Two days ago you were crying.”

“I am not unhappy!” Menina was appalled to hear herself snapping at a nun. She just managed to stop herself saying that it was none of Sor Teresa’s business.

Sor Teresa shrugged and changed the subject. “Alright, I do not open the gate today. I will tell the others. Sor Clara she has a cold and a little fever. Is windy in the sala grande, she get a chill there.” Menina was guilt stricken by this parting shot. If Sor Clara was ill it was Menina’s fault. What if it turned into pneumonia? A doctor ought to see her, maybe she needed antibiotics…So now the nuns were her responsibility? Menina slumped against the wall and rubbed her temples where a headache was starting.

Menina kept listening and waiting for something to happen, but all was quiet. She found an apple from the mesh bag for breakfast. Almira wouldn’t be able to eat it with her broken teeth. She paced the corridors restlessly while she ate it. Then she walked back to the refectory and took the last of the stale bread. Let the chickens find worms. She was so twitchy, she’d go look at more paintings.

In the locutio parlor she pulled the tapestry hanging across the broken window and looked around to see what else was there. On the wall with the portrait of the girl entering a convent was a portrait of a well-dressed middle-aged woman and another of a man in a black gown and skullcap with a jewel around his neck. They were grouped together over the chest that had tripped her on her first day.

There was a tarnished plaque underneath the middle-aged woman—she breathed on it and rubbed off tarnish until she could make out the name “Dona Maria Isabella Beltran” and something about a school. The portrait was a gift of…Dona Sanchia de Sobremonte. Like the portrait of the girl entering a convent, there was something primitif about the painter’s style, and yet it was an arresting portrait—the matron had a lively face with expressive dark eyes, and under a black lace mantilla, a mass of brown hair graying at the temples that looked as if it had been neatly arranged earlier in the day but had now slipped from its restraining combs. She had many bracelets, pearls around her neck, and diamond earrings dangling from her ears. Her dress was high and decorous at the throat, and black with a froth of lace trimming. She held a fine white handkerchief, a book, and a riding crop, and something about her pose made it seem that she had only paused briefly and turned her head to look at the painter. A portrait of a rich and busy woman, who had made a hasty if elaborate toilette, impatient to get on with her tasks.

Menina rubbed the plaque under the man in the skullcap. “Vaez Sobremonte, gift of his widow.” Who were these people and why were their portraits here? Menina was interrupted.

“Aha! You are here like I thought,” said Sor Teresa.

Menina turned and begged, “Sor Teresa, it would be so helpful if you had any idea where the inventory of the paintings might be.”

“Is somewhere of course…many things in the convent is somewhere.”

“I bet. But what about in an office?”

Sor Teresa’s reply was drowned out by a rumble of thunder and Menina realized the morning had turned dark. “Is storm,” said Sor Teresa. “Big storms in the mountains.” There was another clap of thunder, followed by a flash of lightning, and Menina knew she had to get back to Almira, who would panic when she found Menina was gone—and Menina didn’t want to have to explain if the nuns found Almira wandering the empty corridors. She was glad Sor Teresa couldn’t see her grab two half-burned church candles and a handful of matches.

Hurrying back she found Almira pacing the corridor, tearful and scared to the point of hysteria.

“It’s OK,” said Menina soothingly. Almira clutched Menina’s arm, saying something over and over but Menina could not understand her. “Don’t worry,” said Menina, and put her arm around Almira’s trembling shoulders. “It’s going to be alright. We have to hang on a little longer. The police will get them and you won’t have to be afraid anymore.” She hoped.

Lunch was bread and watery lentil soup. Menina gave half to Almira and slipped her share of the bread into her pocket, hoping she could resist the urge to eat it until later. Sor Teresa said it was the nuns’ habit to mostly fast on Good Friday and Saturday, only drinking a little water until Easter. She said it in a way that made Menina feel in the wrong for thinking of food at such a time, but by now she could think of almost nothing else.

Almira wouldn’t let her out of her sight, and Menina was frustrated and bored. At least the storm blew over and the sky cleared. She and Almira went to sit in the wet pilgrims’ garden in the sun. Almira seemed to like it there, but it was boring to sit and listen to Almira chewing her nails. Menina finally went back to her room and fetched the old book. She’d try the Spanish part again…

The writing was spidery but neat, and though the ink had faded it was legible.

I, Sor Beatriz of the Holy Sisters of Jesus, servant of God and scribe of the convent of Las Golondrinas, make my last entry in this Chronicle I have kept for over forty years.

She had to skip Spanish words she didn’t know. When it grew too dark to see, Menina looked up with a start, her mind thousands of miles and four centuries away, lost in the stories of Esperanza and Sanchia and Pia and Marisol and Luz. And it seemed that all of them—Menina hardly dared believe this, it seemed such an odd coincidence—had been at a convent called Las Golondrinas in Spain. This very one, unless she was terribly mistaken. And if she was right, there had been a portrait of the five girls that Tristan Mendoza had painted. Was it possible that still existed somewhere in the convent? What had happened to the girls?

All this was interesting enough to distract Menina from the present, but she came back to it with a start when Almira shook her arm again and rubbed her stomach. They ate the last of the food Alejandro had brought for supper. By now it was cold, greasy, and unappetizing, but Almira seemed to enjoy it. Almira finally went back to sleep in her cell, but Menina was too keyed up to sleep. She tossed and turned, thinking about the Chronicle, listening for gunshots and police helicopters, but nothing was happening. And she was hungry. At dawn on Saturday she had an idea—maybe the portrait of the five girls was in the sala de las niñas. She got up and made her way through the silent convent to the kitchen where she found a stale polvorón in the chickens’ basket along with some stale bread, which she took.

Menina didn’t dare stay away long. Quickly examining frames in the sala de las niñas she had decided that what she was looking for probably wasn’t there either. The room was getting light, and a painting that had obviously slid off the wall to the floor caught her eye. She picked it up and ran her fingers over it. The swallows, definitely. This painting was in better shape than the others in similar frames. She could make out the composition despite the dirt. Then she sat back, baffled. This frame had fooled her. It was a painting of children alright; that was why it was in the sala de las niñas. But not of five girls.

Instead there were small boys playing at the edge of a stream. At first sight it looked like the Christ Child and John the Baptist and some cherubs. But the longer she looked at it, the less certain she was. None of the children had a halo. They just seemed to be…playing in the mud by a stream. Ordinary children, making mud pies. In fact, that was the disconcerting thing about all five of the paintings in the silver frames—at first sight they looked as if they should have Christian themes, then the longer you looked the less they did. Menina couldn’t point to a single biblical reference or religious theme here. But it was in the convent, it must have one.

Though as she looked there were some incongruous details—a child’s pale foot sticking up out of the water—at a disturbing angle, like a child was drowning. And one of the boys was holding a lump of mud, while in front of him sat a little girl in a semicircle of…more lumps of mud. And there was a flock of swallows with their forked tails playing above the boys’ heads. She didn’t have time to check for a signature, but maybe it was the sixth Tristan Mendoza Sor Clara had mentioned.

It wasn’t a picture of any Bible story or myth she knew. She looked at her watch and hurried back to check on Almira and give her the last polvorón.

In the pilgrims’ garden Menina and Almira ate the last of the chocolates and drank some water from the spring. Almira began to chew her nails again and hum tunelessly.

Menina got back to work on the book. The four girls were leaving the convent one step ahead of the Inquisition and there was something about a Gospel. Wait, the Gospel had been copied into the Chronicle. It must be the Latin part in the middle. It seemed to be important. If she understood correctly, they wanted to hide it from the Inquisition. She got her small Latin-English dictionary out of her backpack and opened the book to where the Latin part seemed divided into sections, or small chapters.

She began copying what she could make out onto one of her pads. The Latin wasn’t as difficult as Cicero’s speeches or the Aeneid. This was church Latin, sort of basic and literal. She found she could manage a fairly literal translation, perhaps what the writer intended. Hours passed and the shadows grew long. Her eyes hurt. Her brain hurt. She persisted and wrote it all down, but decided her translating skills must be rusty. It seemed to be a peculiar story about the child Jesus. It made absolutely no sense. Who on earth had written this? Then she wondered if the painting in the sala de las niñas was telling a similar story.

She wrote what she could. Dusk fell and they went back inside. Almira had dragged her mattress and blankets into Menina’s room, where she fell asleep and began to snore. No supper appeared and the first fat church candles burned down. Knowing she wouldn’t sleep, Menina lit the other candle and kept working, pausing to rub her eyes or go to the bathroom to splash icy water on her face.

Concentrating, she didn’t notice when the bell tolled its mournful hours, or hear the distant bang that caused Almira to open her eyes and shriek. Then she heard what sounded like an explosion, a rattle of gunfire followed by a screeching of tires and sirens and then shouting and the roar of helicopter engines. More gunfire. Almira screamed and she and Menina clutched each other as it came closer, and Menina thought surely the dark corridors were full of armed men who had somehow scaled the convent walls. The bell at the convent gate began to clang, as if someone was pulling the rope hard.

Menina shook free of Almira’s grip and ran toward the gate. What if the gang was breaking in? There was no hope of getting out; all she could do was try to barricade the gate. Almira scrambled after her, jabbering hysterically and tripping on the loose tiles. Menina reached the gate where someone was pounding and pounding on the door, and there was more gunfire in the background. “Who’s there?” she cried, and to her relief Captain Fernández Galán shouted, “Open the gate! Now!”

Menina lifted the heavy bar and pushed the gate open. There was a frenzied group of young women holding up two of their number covered in blood and Captain Fernández Galán behind them waving a gun and signalling to a policewoman with a medical bag while pushing the women inside.

“The driver tried to shoot the girls in the truck; three died but we rescued these. Take care of them till I get back.” The girl bleeding from a wound in her shoulder collapsed to the ground and the medic bent over her. Almira began to scream and grabbed at his jacket, but Alejandro pushed her hard back inside the gate and disappeared.

Menina pulled everyone in and locked the gate. They all sank down, sobbing and wailing around the two wounded girls. The medic was injecting the first with something, and then turned her attention to the other one who had gone into shock and was shaking uncontrollably.

Then a furious Sor Teresa was there, demanding to know why the ungodly din was disturbing the peace of Easter. The older nuns believed the Falangists had returned. Menina sprang to her feet and explained it was the police operation she had mentioned, and very quickly, told her some girls had been hurt in Alejandro’s police operation, and that Alejandro would come back and explain later. Sor Teresa wrung her hands in distress. Menina put her arm around Sor Teresa’s frail shoulders and said that everything would be alright—the best thing Sor Teresa could do was go and explain to the other nuns. Maybe say a prayer for the injured girls and Alejandro.

The next few hours passed in a blur of tears and noise and bloody dressings. The two injured girls lay quietly, sedated and bandaged, and the medic said she had done all she could for the time being, that someone would come as soon as the way was clear to take all the rescued girls to the safe house under a police escort. The two wounded girls would go to the hospital then with police guards. “Will Captain Fernández Galán go, too, or will he come back here?” asked Menina tentatively. “I mean, he needs to talk to his aunt.”

“Oh, I think he is coming here as soon as he can,” the tired medic said, and grinned. “Keep these two still; they should be alright. Now I must go in case anyone else needs me.”

Menina bolted the gate behind her.

Menina and Almira found beds for everyone. The two dozen or so girls pulled their mattresses together to crowd into the corridors huddled together. Nobody wanted to be alone. At dawn the chapel bell began ringing to welcome Easter, and sleep was out of the question. Menina, who had been awake the better part of two nights, thought her head might explode.

Then Sor Teresa appeared again, this time to shoo everyone down to the kitchen where there were cracked, mismatched cups of thick hot chocolate and some fried sugared things she called “churros” to dip in it. A little color returned to the rescued girls’ tearstained faces. Menina noticed the kitchen was full of food and good smells—the village had obviously provided for the nuns’ Easter celebration.

Then the bell over the gate was ringing and there were medics with stretchers for the two wounded girls, followed by the police and an armed policewoman who took the rescued girls away. After hugging Almira a long good-bye and telling her that she was safe, and everything would be fine now, Menina went to her cell and collapsed on the bed, utterly drained. She couldn’t remember what the piles of notes next to the open Chronicle were for. She couldn’t remember what day it was. She didn’t care.

She fell into a deep sleep until a persistent ringing noise penetrated her consciousness. She ignored it, but it was a very loud bell. It rang and rang until Menina reluctantly opened one eye. She closed it again. Let it ring. And she did, until it felt like it was ringing between her ears. Crossly she realized the only way to stop it was to answer it herself; obviously the nuns weren’t going to.

She staggered out of bed and made her way to the gate, lifting the crossbar to give whoever was ringing a piece of her mind. It was Captain Fernández Galán, gray with exhaustion. She was not too tired to feel relief he was unharmed. “Did you get them all?”

“Yes. I wanted you to know we got them all alive—except for one idiot who tried to shoot his way out. He is dead. There are no words bad enough for these people. I am not sorry. The rest, they will try to make a deal, give us names. But you, you are alright?”

“Only tired. But you must be more tired.”

“It doesn’t matter. Now, what I came to say is, when I have made my report and cleaned up, will you come with me to the village? Always in this village, Easter is a holiday, at the bar they make a fiesta, lambs on a spit…the whole village is there, is very nice. To say thank you before you go?”

“Oh! I’d love that if Sor Teresa will let me out. I’m starving! I almost forgot I’m going tomorrow. The bus is coming, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes it will be here.” He sighed. “Leave Sor Teresa to me; the owner of the bar always sends food from the fiesta to the convent.”

“And I must tell you what I found.”

“I see you in two hours.” He turned and she watched him walk down the terraced olive fields she had followed him up so warily less than a week ago. It wasn’t a date; he was only being polite. And she did need to explain about the paintings. No, it wasn’t like a date at all.

Still, she had to freshen up.