SISTER ELO?SE WAS YOUNG when she arrived at the orphanage—only twenty-two, in fact. She had a high forehead, yellow eyebrows, cheeks that were covered with freckles, a pretty nose and pink lips. She had a curvy, healthy figure that needed to be seen naked to be appreciated. Any man would have found her attractive. The first time Pierrot saw Elo?se, she reminded him of a glass of milk. She reminded him of clean sheets blowing in the wind at the exact moment when the water evaporated from them and they became dry and light and easy again.
All the children believed that when a new young nun entered the orphanage, she would remain kind, she would remain tender, she would act just a little bit like a mother. Their hopes were always dashed, of course. The Sisters always became wicked, slapping and yelling at the children after a few months. The older children never even got their hopes up because they knew a transformation was in the works.
But Pierrot had high hopes for Sister Elo?se because of the way she treated him. She came by his desk and looked over his shoulder in class. His handwriting was always so terrible. His hand was always trying to write some other word than the one he wanted it to. She did not smack him on the back of the neck the way the other Sisters invariably did when they looked at his disastrous handwriting. She took the chalk out of his hand and wrote love and cherish with perfect skill and ease on his blackboard. Like a bird that flies without any fear of falling.
When he passed by Sister Elo?se, she smiled at him and he blushed and shuddered.
Sister Elo?se, although young, was put in charge of the children on the third floor, who were between the ages of seven and eleven. She noticed things about the children before the children themselves did, a skill the Mother Superior saw in very few nuns. Elo?se was able to punish some children preemptively. Although some of the other nuns disputed the morality of this, they could not deny that it was effective.
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PIERROT WAS LOST IN THOUGHT one day when Sister Elo?se took his arm and led him to a corner.
“Look under my dress. I have a treat for you.”
He peeked under her habit like a photographer peering under the black cloth of a camera, intent on capturing the elusive mysteries of the world. When he stuck his head out again, confused, she had a small cookie with raspberry jam in the palm of her hand. The children were never given any sweets. He felt ashamed afterward that none of the others were able to eat this cookie with him and that he couldn’t tell them about it. The cookie was delicious, but it tasted of death.
When he was smacked for trying to scrub the floor by attaching the rags to his feet and skating on the surface, Sister Elo?se intervened. After that he found that he was not hit or beaten for anything. He would have been delighted by this phenomenon if it extended to the other children, but he discovered, to his consternation, that none of the other children were spared. He was the only one not being brutally punished. It made him feel singled out and guilty. And he noticed that Rose especially seemed to be hit more than ever. He saw Rose with a black eye feeding the chickens. It made him suddenly want to be beaten. He wanted to have the same fate as Rose. He didn’t know why.
5
NOTES ON A YOUNG PROVOCATRICE
Rose was an ordinary-looking little girl. She was definitely not unattractive. But she wasn’t one of those children so absolutely lovely that you can’t take your eyes off them. She had black hair, with eyes to match. She looked a bit like the snooty expressionless doll that was popular in the high-end stores back then. Perhaps her only remarkable feature was how pink her cheeks would get when she was out in the cold. It was the only time people would remark that she was beautiful. When she was inside, it was as though that attractiveness just melted away.
Like Pierrot, Rose also, from a very young age, had a fondness for dissimulation. Rose pretended to be a kitten at the foot of the bed. She mewed in the cutest way. She was able to make a steam-whistle noise. She was able to make her cheeks go really round, just like those of a trumpet player. Rose would plop herself down on a chair and make a farting noise. All the other children loved that.
Perhaps it had to do with her first deep, deep nap in the snow, but Rose was a remarkably introspective child. She wondered about the difference between what was happening right in front of you and all the strange stuff that goes on in your head. She sometimes thought that there wasn’t a distance between the two. Sometimes she thought it was just plain silly that we were paying all this attention to the real world when there was this wonderful one in our minds that we could just as well be engaging in. So she would suddenly act as though the real world had no import.