The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [67]
—They don’t, actually. The children want to go to school. It’s not just this school. It’s the same everywhere.
Some attempt had been made at cheer. Colorful drawings hung from the walls, one or two of them bold and very good. The children tugged at Thomas, and he happily went where they led him. He wished he had treats for them inside his jacket — lollipops or cookies or small toys. Something. There were no desks, except for Linda’s.
—What do they write on? he asked her. She sat with a spindly boy on her lap. Disease appeared to have made bare patches on his scalp.
—Their books.
Behind her desk was a charcoal grill. She noticed him looking at it.
—I feed them when I get here in the mornings. I make them eggs and give them milk. I get deliveries once a week from a farm, and I bring the food down to the school each morning. There’s no way to keep it refrigerated here.
Which explained the muscles, he thought.
The boy on her lap coughed, spit onto the floor. Linda thumped his back. The women sometimes besiege me for medical treatment, she said. They bring me their babies, and they cry, and, of course, I can’t do anything. I sometimes think this is a test from God. That I’m supposed to go to medical school and come back here and practice.
—Would you consider it?
—I don’t have what it takes.
—I’m sure you’re doing a world of good as a teacher.
—I’m hardly doing any good at all.
She put the child down and took him by the hand to a taller girl against a wall. Linda and the girl spoke for a moment, and when Linda had returned to Thomas, she explained that the boy’s sister would take him home. Together Linda and Thomas left the classroom and walked along a short path up a hill to a church.
—It’s a Catholic church, she said, opening the door for him. One of few in the area.
The church was a revelation after the barren schoolroom — the cool interior lit with five stained-glass windows; the colors primary and rich with thick lines of lead between the glass, as if a Picasso or a Cézanne had painted them. A fresh smell, as of reeds or wheat, permeated the small building. It might have sat a hundred in a pinch.
He watched her cross herself with holy water from a font adjacent to the front door, genuflect at a pew, and kneel for a moment before she sat. His chest felt seared, as though a hot wind had blown through it, the memories so keen he needed to put a hand to the back of a pew to steady himself. He stood at the rear of the church and waited until she had been sitting alone for a few moments before he joined her. Giving her time to offer prayers to the God she passionately hated.
They sat in silence, her head and feet astonishingly bare. He remembered, years ago, the mantilla hastily put atop the hair for Saturday afternoon Confession, when she believed she could not enter a church without a hat. He wanted to take her hand, but some residual sense of propriety stopped him.
—Do you recognize the woman in that one? she asked, slightly squinting and pointing to one of the colorful windows at the side of the church. It was a depiction of a woman who looked both sensuous and adoring, her eyes cast upward, as if to Heaven. She wore a garment of bright yellow, and her African hair was wild about her face. She, unlike the rest of the figures in the depiction, was black.
—Magdalene.
—You remembered.
—Of course I remembered. It’s a wonderful painting. Very similar in concept to one by Titian I saw last year in Florence. In fact, I think it must be modeled after the Titian. The hair was amazing. Very, well, Titian-like. Magdalene is often depicted partially nude with long, flowing reddish-blond hair. Very beautiful.
—You went last year?
—On my way here. I saw two others in Italy. The Bernini in Siena. It’s a sculpture. Her breasts are exposed, and her hair flows over them. The Donatello is very different. Gaunt. Ascetic. More the penitent.
—Interesting that she’s African. Yes, he said.
—You’re squinting.
—I think I need glasses.
—She’s thought to be the embodiment of eros and femininity in Christianity,