Amandine by Marlena de Blasi Read Free Book Online

only that she had been told of you through the auspices of an extended member of this family.”
    “Someone in Poland?”
    “Yes.”
    “Who was it?”
    With her eyes, Grand-mère said she couldn’t tell me. She continued
.
    “She knew of your time in the convent at Beaune. She knew that you’d only recently returned home. I believe it was instinct more than reason that convinced her of your worthiness, instinct being the more faithful device, the more courageous device, I think, when things matter most. We trust reason always less as we grow older, Solange, you’ll learn that. You shall have occasion to feel how feckless reason can be. In any case, she traveled here to speak with me about you. To see you, if only for a moment. I think that moment was sufficient for her. She left this package as a kind of trust. A first step. It’s for you to keep, to give to the child when she is older. When she’s thirteen, I think she said. Yes, when she’s thirteen.”
    “Thirteen? And she’s just, did you say that she’s a month old now? Are you saying that the child will be, that she is to remain under my care? Always?”
    “Yes. I think that, as long as the child lives, until she is grown, she will be your charge.”
    “I’ll be like a mother to her.”
    “Like a mother.”
    “But why in a convent? Why can’t I take care of her here with you and Maman and Chloe and Blanchette? It would be better that way. I have only just left a convent, Grand-mère, and I know that sort of life is not—”
    “It’s not a nun’s life you’ll live. Certainly not a sequestered one. You and the child will be under the protection of the convent. Your work will be to care for the child, to raise it in the atmosphere of a religious house, but the freedoms of a lay sister shall be yours.”
    “I’ve never heard of such an arrangement and I—”
    “I know. I, too, have never heard of such an arrangement. A most particular situation. In addition to the lodgings, the table provided by the convent, you will be given a stipend to further maintain yourself and the child. Every detail has been considered, Solange, but not every detail can be explained, most especially to your martinet’s satisfaction. Now it is you who must employ instinct rather than reason. It’s your turn. No matter what you do, you’re bound to suffer. It’s the way of things. But now, right now, you are straddling two lives, and I fear you will live neither of them. You say the convent is not for you—and yet I sense, nor is the world. This … shall we call it a rare chance? Yes. This rare chance of being called to Montpellier as lay sister, as nurse to this child, it may serve to reconcile discord if not to stave off sufferance. You may be able to combine the two lives rather than choose between them. You might appease your guilt, however contained, at having left the convent while affording yourself some measure of adventure. Once again, however contained. You would live the portions of the religious life that so appeal to you but without surrendering your liberty. That was it, I know. The suffocation of final vows, the inextinguishable promise. That was what you couldn’t make. So much for a woman-child to consider, was it not?
    “And then there’s destiny, Solange. Sooner than later, make friends with the Fates and be less alone. What little more I know than you do now, what very little more that I know, I shall not tell you. If your curiosity is stronger than your compassion, the position is not meant for you. If you must know more than that this child is to be entrusted to you, refuse, Solange, send your regrets and get back to pruning vines
and stirring soup. And outwitting the occasional lechery of your father. Not a bad life here after all, is it, child?”
    At ease with the vague ways of her mother yet trusting her implicitly, Maman said little about it all. If Janka proposed my going to Montpellier, then it was for the good. That’s what Maman told