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THE MOTHER SUPERIOR always took particular notice of the boys and girls in the younger group, the two-to-six-year-olds, who were lodged on the second floor. The first thing Pierrot and Rose had in common was the black cat. The Mother Superior was always trying to get rid of the black cat, which seemed to haunt the orphanage. It had spiky hair and looked as though it had just climbed out of a vat of tar and was miserable about its fate. There were days it could never be found. It would seem to just disappear into the walls. But one time she found it in Pierrot’s bed. They were asleep, wrapped up in each other’s arms like lovers. She chased it right out the window. She was sure that was the last time she would ever lay eyes on it.
And then she saw it again, talking to Rose. The little girl was crouched down and was speaking to the cat as though they were going over some very important business together. But Rose was so young she couldn’t even speak proper words yet. She was just uttering garbled, burbling noises. They sounded like water in a tiny pot bubbling over. The cat was listening carefully to what Rose said and then hastened out the door, as if to deliver the message to the insurgents.
When Pierrot and Rose were both four years old, the Mother Superior saw the two of them pretending that the black cat was their child. They kept kissing the cat on the head and handing it back and forth.
“You’ve been a naughty kit-kat. Silly bad thing. Dirty raggedy scamp. You’ll go straight to hell,” said Rose.
“Yes. You’ve been bad and whiny. You don’t get milk. No milk at all. No milk one bit. No milk for you,” insisted Pierrot.
“If you cry, I’m going to poke you in the nose.”
“Owww! Owww! Owww! I don’t want to hear it.”
“You smell bad. You have to scrub your paws. Bath time. Stinky creep.”
“Naughty sinner, naughty, naughty, naughty. With mud for paws.”
“Soooo shameful. Look at me. Mister Shameful.”
They had never been taught words of affection. Although the two had only known harsh terms and words of discipline, they had managed to transform them into words of love. The Mother Superior immediately made a note to keep the two children apart. Boys and girls were kept in separate dormitories and classrooms, but they played in the common room, ate in the same large cafeteria and did their chores outside in the field together. It was necessary to thwart all love affairs in the orphanage. If there was one thing responsible for ruining lives, it was love. They were in their pathetic circumstances because of that most unreliable of feelings. These affairs sometimes began years and years before the children themselves were aware of their affections, and by the time they became evident, they were impossible to uproot. So the nuns were all instructed to keep Rose and Pierrot away from each other.
Not these two delinquents, she thought. Not these two unlucky foundlings. They had already escaped death. And still they were expecting more.
4
THE EARLY YEARS OF A BRILLIANT IDIOT
Pierrot was a late bloomer. When he was a baby, he didn’t do much of anything at all. He wouldn’t even sit up but just lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. And then when he finally learned to sit up, he couldn’t be bothered to talk for months and months and months. He let the other children do all the talking. He was too delighted listening to the others to say anything himself. He would burst out laughing at odd times when you weren’t sure what he could possibly have found funny.
The Mother Superior was quite sure that before he was six years old, she would have to pack his stuff into a suitcase, draw him a little map with the directions to the insane asylum and send him on his way.
The nuns almost separated him from the other boys, but he seemed to play well with them. The other boys didn’t cast him aside like they usually did with oddly maturing children. This seemed to imply that they thought he was somehow at their level. And children were the best at knowing such things. Once he did open his mouth, at age three, he seemed bright enough.