our choices together. Of course you have L’École Biblique, but I know, since you have told me yourself, that it is not the same, that people come and go. There is not this same shared … it is not a vision, exactly, but a purpose, which we share. When one of us falls, there are several at hand to pick her up again.”
“You did not mean to say I am alone, then, in the sense that I am without God.”
“Oh.” Her self-possession fell away again and she looked aghast. “No—gracious.” She was apparently unable to go on. The knife went further into Antoine’s shame.
The door handle began to shake, and someone called from the hallway:
“Is there someone in there?”
“One moment.”
Sister Louise rose and unclicked the door on a young woman wearing a nursing habit and a bewildered expression, a candle in her hand.
“I’m very sorry, Sister Marian. I must have locked it by accident.”
“I came to light the lamps.” Sister Marian peered in at Père Antoine.
He also stood, and reaching quickly for the page curving up from the table, bowed to conceal his face.
“If you would excuse us for just a little longer, Sister,” said Louise, “we will be finished with our conversation in a few moments.”
Sister Marian curtsied, and reached for the handle. Sister Louise locked eyes with Antoine and waited for Marian’s footsteps to recede.
“My advice,” she said curtly, “is continue with your work. It does have a value. Do not let thoughts of nations and laws and powers impinge on that. L’École Biblique has a reputation for remaining impartial, remember, and that is of consequence. If you can help it, do not become involved. Take it from me.” Her glare was full of desperate meaning. “It is not worth it. If you will excuse me now, I must go to bed.”
In the morning, as everyone took their coffee, the garden doors of the dining room were opened wide to admit a breeze. Sister Louise was returned to her impenetrable, capable self, though she was not, Antoine noted, among those leaving for the hospital. As they walked he heard Sister Marian say she was on another village visit.
Their conversation last night had not settled Antoine’s dilemma. In fact, Louise’s final words so surprised him that he had lain awake thinking over them. And over what Hodges had said, that this type of work was quite common among your profession, believe it or not. We asked the French nuns to keep an eye.
But for the chairs, the hospital veranda was empty. In the far corner Antoine’s old rocker faltered in the wind. He sat back against its familiar ridges, opened his notebook to a blank double page, and began to sketch the view. He knew it so well he barely needed to look. In the foreground, three olive trees. A slope of earth with shadows and stones. In the back, Ebal rising. Above the mountain, the sky.
“Abuna,” said a bright voice. “Zaman ma shoofnak.”
The veranda door was open, and a small woman with a long neck trod out.
“Randa,” said Antoine. “As-salamu alaykum, keef halek.”
Randa was the wife of a soap factory labourer. She worked as an itinerant housemaid, and since she liked to gossip for gossip’s sake had been a helpful source for Antoine’s research. After their conversations he always gave her a few pennies. At first he had murmured the words: “for your trouble,” but he had come to the conclusion that it was better to claim it was an act of charity from priest to pauper, separate from the information she gave him. It was not always easy to disguise the transaction: she spoke, he paid her. But Randa did her part by complaining of her back problems, how difficult the week had been, how expensive food was becoming, which all supplied pretexts for his payment as a spontaneous action.
“Oof, my back hurts,” she said, as she took a seat beside him.
Antoine turned over the page.
“Salamtek. So. Have there been any stories, lately?”
“There was one blood feud,” she said breathily, “between the Murad family and the Shawwaf. A Murad man went to visit the Shawwaf. The Shawwaf man chopped down his trees.”
“Why did he chop down the trees?”
Randa looked dismayed. “Because he wouldn’t pay the money!”
Antoine nodded. He wrote the date in the upper right-hand corner: 20 Mai 1920, and made a note: Murad—Shawwaf.
“And what else are people talking about in town, these days?”
“Oof,” she said again. “Problems, problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Ya‘ni.” She chewed her lip. “You