Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

Seraphina shook her head as she rose. "I'll get her so you can ask her any questions you might think of." She hesitated on the threshold. "It will take a while. Mary Monica isn't as fast on her feet as she used to be."

Seraphina was. She whisked away, leaving Matt to inspect the mostly bare walls. A crucifix was impaled to the plaster above the desk, on which the pitcher--not opaque green plastic, but real glass--sweated profusely. He heard the distant drone of an air-conditioning plant and reflected that it must have been installed after the place became a convent, for surely it had begun as a private house, a large private house, almost hacienda size.

Hard to imagine the raucous shriek of a perverted phone call disturbing this place of prayers and domestic calm, this last oasis for lives of long service. Yet Matt smiled at the notion of a misguided obscene phone-caller fixating on a deaf, elderly nun. It revealed the act for what it was: so unsexual, so pathetic.

Rustles and shards of sentences down the hall announced the stately arrival of Seraphina with the elderly nun. He really didn't want to meet Sister Mary Monica; he had nothing to ask her. Apparently Sister Seraphina had thought he should see her, and what Sister Seraphina thought--now as then--was what was done.

He stood and went to the threshold to assist her.

The first thing across it was the faded red-rubber tip of a wooden cane as plain and solid as a church pew. Black, lace-up shoes followed with a floor-hugging shuffle. He wondered for the hundredth time where on earth old nuns got those ancient oxfords nowadays; there must be a Perpetual Supply House of Sisterly Shoes, similar to salvage stores that stock an eternal supply of military mufti.

Swollen ankles and shapeless calves were encased in the elastic pumpkin-tan of support hose, the opaque kind that looked like a mask used by a burn-victim burglar with an I.Q. of twelve.

Matt suddenly realized that he had never paid such close attention to a nun's legs before--no matter her age--and quickly brought his eyes to her face, blurring past an expanse of tiny navy and yellow flowers, a cotton duster with a snap front.

Her face was even more seamed than he had expected, though unrealistically flesh-tinted plastic was affixed to her ears like Silly Putty. The hearing aids. She was stooped, one gnarled and liver-spotted hand curled around the sturdy curve of the cane's handle. A large but flat wart rested near one eyebrow, whose thin, rakish gray hairs sprang every which way. Her eyes were the pale, gray-blue of great age, as tremulous as moonstones underwater, a late-life shadow of baby blue.

The anger that rocked him nearly blasted him back a step.

He was used to voices on the phone, long-distance victims, never viewed, and only heard. He never had to face them.

Afraid to say anything lest his voice shake with fury, Matt bent to take the old woman's elbow and lightly guide her along the uneven tiled floor. She arrived safe at his former chair and settled gingerly on the edge of the velvet seat, as if afraid that she might stick and never rise if she settled more fully into anything at her age. Which was--? He glanced at Sister Seraphina, who smiled.

"Sister Mary Monica is ninety-three," she said without his asking. "She can't understand when we speak in normal tones, which is just as well. She's vain about her age and would be in quite a pet if she knew I'd revealed such personal information. ' '

"This man--it is a man!"

Sister Seraphina shrugged. "One would think so, yet Sister can't really hear well enough to tell."

"How does he call only her?"

"We don't number enough to have a convent switchboard; there are only six of us here. Each nun has her own number on the phone in her room. We'd run ourselves ragged otherwise, and it seemed a modest luxury."

"Of course," Matt stared perplexedly at the tiny old woman. He bent down to make sure she could see his face, his mouth when it moved.

Sister Seraphina introduced him, her tones bellowing deep from the diaphragm with the ease of a nun who had been able to call an entire hollering playground to silence after a recess.

"This is Matthias, Mary Monica, my former student."

Sister Mary Monica tilted a hearing aid toward her friend, but kept her watery eyes on Matt. "A darling lad," she pronounced at the top of her lungs with the merest lilt of Irish brogue. "Are you a detective?" she asked him with great interest.

Matt almost laughed. Her deafness was an invisible cloak of defense the caller could not penetrate. His "victim" was pleased by the attention the incidents brought her way.

"No. I'm a counselor," he said, producing his own loud but deepest voice.

He watched her eyes read his mouth and her own mouth pantomime the right word. Coun-sell-or. She paused for a moment. "Like Perry Mason? I like Perry Mason. But I don't like Hamilton Burger."

Good old Ham Burger, the guy you always loved to hate on the oldest Perry Mason reruns. Matt smiled.

"Not that kind of counselor," he said slowly. "I work over the phone."

Her eyes were blank.

"Telephone," He pantomimed a rotary movement, then realized that most phones nowadays were push-button.

Still, she was old enough to get the idea. Her head nodded in long, slow swoops and rises. "Telephone," She pointed to Matt. "You call?"

"No! People call me for help."

She nodded and smiled again. "Maybe I should give your number to the one who calls me. Seraphina says he is a bad man, but he has never hung up on me."

Matt realized another thing. Her poor hearing had made telephone conversation difficult. Only family or close friends would have the stamina to try it, and she would have few of either left. Here was a caller who refused to go away, no matter how much of the conversation she missed. In a way,

Sister Mary Monica and her obscene phone-caller were a match made in heaven.

He straightened and turned to Sister Seraphina. "How did you figure out the nature of the calls?"

ln answer, she bent down to the old nun. "Tell Matthias about what the man says, Sister."

"Such a nice name, Matthias," Sister Mary Monica beamed at Matt, "The disciple who replaced Judas. A very fortunate and redemptive name, young man, Man. Oh, yes. Well, he must be very fond of philosophers."

"Philosophers," Matt didn't have to think to raise his voice; shock did it for him.

She nodded and gazed at her cane handle, "Always talking about philosophers, Mainly, Immanuel Kant. Kant this and Kant that. A learned young man."

Matt, puzzled, gazed at Sister Seraphina, who met him with a limpid look. He was about to repeat the philosopher's name--Kant--when . . .

"I see," said Matt. "And how do you know that he is a young man, Sister?"

Her head reared away as she gave him a don't-kid-me look.

"All of them are young men to me now, Matthias." Her laugh was high and thin, but much relished.

"What else does this caller talk about?"

"Oh . . . animals."

"Animals?"

She nodded. "He is a great animal lover, which is fine, because we have Peter and Paul here, you know. And many cats next door as well. He is always speaking of the pussies."

She paused. "And I believe-it is too bad you are not a detective, young man, because I think this is a clue! Like on Perry Mason." She invoked the name of Perry Mason as another nun would St. Peter's. She leaned forward and fixed him in the glare of her watered-down eyes, now fierce with conviction. "I think that he is a breeder of dogs by trade, because he is always talking of bitches."

The last word, loudly uttered, hung in the quiet convent air. Matt, appalled with himself, choked the desire to laugh.

Then he turned sober. True innocence was a weapon that could confound the sickest evil.