Amandine by Marlena de Blasi Page A

plump. Like the plump, red-cheeked Champenois themselves. Slabs of shale piled up, pell-mell, into walls about the garden, box-edged plots of sprawling cabbages and trellised beans, clumps of lavender enclosing herbs, a patch of fat, bruised pumpkins, a hayfield, freshly shorn. Sunflowers. Then the vines. A row of cork oaks, their leaves marbled russet, lean over the hollow creek bed, narrow as a goat path. How good the earth smells, this southern earth, like corn and sheep and clay. Older, sun-leached, melancholy. This southern place. I like it here. Days pass without my thinking of home, of them. I say their names in my prayers as though they were part of my past and not still there, a two-day train journey away. I do not miss them. Or is it only that I do not miss her? Maman. Or is it that I miss her too much?
    Philippe, who has been working in a far corner of the garden, approaches her, pushes back upon his forehead a broken straw hat,wipes his hands on his soutane, leaving mud streaks to mingle with dribbles of wine and long-cooked sauces. He nods to Solange. Smiles.
    “Bonjour, Solange.”
    “Bonjour, Père Philippe.”
    From her sentinel’s post at the chapel window, Paul watches this complicit greeting just as she has the last passing of the basket. Worrying the beads hung from her belt, Paul broods.
    Even Philippe has joined them. Their little girls’ game. A relay race, their baton a baby. They know that I know. Such esprit de corps, every last one of them, and nothing I say or threaten will turn them from their playing house with her, toting her about, precious chattel, gurgling, cooing. Moonstruck hens. And Philippe barely able to contain his glee for their tactics
. Imbécile ancien.
It was dear Fabrice, a single visit from His Eminence, my own Eminence, and every rule was dust
.
    “Ah, let me see her. Let me see our baby girl,” he’d said
.
    A beauty queen clasping a sheaf of roses, Solange drifted slowly down the stairs, carried her to him. Rather than only look at her, he took her in his arms—a florid old uncle—walked with her up and down the salon, held her to his breast, pronounced her
“Jolie. Jolie angeau de Dieu.”
    He asked that the house be called together and, still holding her, bade them kneel while he blessed them, blessed her
.
    “Remember, my dears, work and prayer and meditation. And now a shared ministry to this motherless child. I shall hold it a special favor to me every time one of you shows her love. Keep her among you, even in the
réfectoire,
in the chapel, during your evening work. With Père Philippe and Mater Paul as your examples, treat her as a rare gift and teach her the ways of our holy life.”
    A rare gift, yes,
I’d thought then. Rare enough. I wonder the sum the little thing represents. Sufficient to buy more land? Another château to restore to his imperial taste, at least enough for that. To keep the ways of our holy life
.
    Their eyes downcast, I heard them then, the collective
“Mais oui, Votre Eminence”
as he waddled away. Dear Fabrice
.
    Now, all these months later, still they play the game, still they pretend that the child stays in the apartment—swaddled, fed, and left to herself as I’d instructed—while Solange is about her work. The child has never stayed longer than three seconds without one handmaiden or another. They keep the farce to save my face
. Let them be, Annick,
I tell myself
. Heed Philippe,
I say
. Try to heed Philippe. You are too old, Annick who became Sister Paul, Mater Paul, too sick from plots far thicker than this.

CHAPTER VIII

    A
FLAWED PORCELAIN DOLL, SHE IS NOT BEAUTIFUL, YET ALL THE WRONG pieces form a splendid whole. Another kind of loveliness, enduring, I think, beyond the perfect sort. Pale blue tendrils show through the diaphanous skin of her small, pointed face, and thick black ringlets are a coquettish frame for such solemn eyes. Great black solemn eyes, she closes them, totters or sits or lies down, arms