Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

Though he condemned himself, Father Sunder never hesitated in forgiving others. And he had this voice, the sweetest voice that you could possibly imagine. When he spoke, you couldn’t help but feel that not only did he love you but that God did too.

Sister Christina-I don’t even know where to begin. She was an astonishing woman. She had been born on Good Friday, which was the first sign of the blessedness that was to come in her life. People said that of all God’s representatives on earth, she was among the fifteen most blessed. As a little girl, I never once doubted it was true, and it was only much later in life that I asked myself how such a thing could be measured. Sister Christina’s visions and literary talents brought fame to the monastery. She was always writing, and would go on to produce two masterpieces- Revelations and The Sister-Book of Engelthal, a history of the important nuns who had come before us. Her work inspired others in the monastery to also write. For example, Gertrud of the scriptorium wrote The Life of Sister Gertrud of Engelthal with the help of Brother Heinrich and Brother Cunrat but, to tell the truth, I always felt this book was little more than an effort to increase her own legend.

Gertrud had a strange habit of incessantly sucking at the air. It was impossible not to notice and equally impossible not to hate. It was said that her mother had given birth to eight boys before her, all painful deliveries, but that Gertrud’s birth was effortless. You might wonder what that has to do with anything, but from the beginning it equated Gertrud with the Christ child because His birth was also reputed to have been painless-a delivery as immaculate as the conception. People said that baby Gertrud never suckled at her mother’s breast; she just preferred to slurp away at the air as if extracting divine sweetness directly from it. I always suspected she kept sucking at the air throughout her life simply so that no one would forget the story.

Of all the books that came from this period of inspiration, the one that I love most is The Gnaden-vita of Friedrich Sunder. Well, I love it but I don’t love what was done to it. After Father Sunder’s death it was sanitized and, among other things, all references to me were removed. Not that my vanity is offended, but I was-I am-offended by the destruction of his intent.

Anyway, these were the people around me when I was a child. The one time that I asked Sister Christina when I’d be allowed to live in the outside world, she said I never would-but that this was not a problem to be lamented, it was a gift to be celebrated. God had been generous to reveal His plan for me from my very birth, placing me immediately into Engelthal. None of the other nuns, even Christina herself, had been allowed to spend their entire lives in the glory of God’s service. “What a lucky little girl you are,” she said, signaling the end of the conversation.

It was widely expected that when I grew into a woman I’d also take up the pen. This expectation only grew when I began to speak at an extremely early age and took to Latin as easily as my mother tongue. Obviously I can’t remember, but they say that I barely bothered with individual words before I started speaking in complete sentences. In those days, you must understand, children were basically thought to be inadequate adults. A child’s nature was not something that could be developed, because character was set at birth; childhood was a period of revelation, not development, so when my language abilities appeared they were thought to have always existed, placed there by God, waiting to be made known.

I loved the visitors who came to Engelthal. Locals came for medical treatment in our infirmary, and it was only proper that we accept them. Not only from a standpoint of mercy, but also as a political necessity. The monastery was expanding rapidly as nobles donated surrounding lands, and we inherited the tenants as well. There were other visitors, too, traveling priests who wanted to see what it was about Engelthal that produced such exceptional visions in the nuns or who, more practically, just desired shelter for the night. I was just as interested in a sick farmer as in a nobleman, because each brought stories about the world outside.

Sister Christina indulged me when these visitors came. I’d sit quietly in the corner of the room, concentrating intensely upon the conversation, perfecting the art of being overlooked. Gertrud disapproved, of course, and would look down her long thin nose at me. She was already losing her eyesight, and it was a chore for her to keep her disdain in focus.

Gertrud saw these visitors as intruders on her real work because, as armarius, it fell within her duties to translate occasionally. She wasn’t particularly skilled at it-her French and Italian were sketchy at best-but her position required it. Most of our visitors could speak in Latin or German, but I liked the ones best who brought exotic tongues. It was during these conversations that I sharpened my listening. The challenge was not only to understand the foreign words but also to grasp the foreign concepts. For example, I knew that Pope Clement had moved the papacy to Avignon-but why? And where was that? And what was it like? One night, I overheard my first argument. A foreign guest dared to question the righteousness of the late Pope Boniface and Gertrud jumped staunchly to the defense of His Holiness. For a little girl, it was shocking stuff.

I remember distinctly the evening that my talent was revealed. A foreign visitor was among us and Gertrud, as usual, was struggling with the translation. I could never understand what the problem was, because I could grasp everything that was said. It didn’t matter which language it was, I simply understood. On this evening the visitor was Italian, an old, poor, unwashed man. Anyone could see that he was not long for this world, and he was trying so desperately to make his situation understood. Gertrud threw up her arms in disgust and proclaimed that his accent was too vulgar to decipher.

Maybe it was because the old man looked so very frail, or maybe it was because of the rattle in his chest. Maybe it was because he thanked the nuns between every spoonful of his porridge, uttering not a single bad word despite the fact that no one could understand him. Or maybe it was because I felt that if someone didn’t talk with him that very night, it was possible that no one ever would again. Whatever the reason, I broke my code of silence and stepped out of the corner. In the Italian of his dialect, I asked, “What’s your name?”

He looked up over his spoon with such joy on his face. “Paolo,” he answered, then asked how I knew his Italian. I didn’t know how or why, I said, I just did. I told him that I listened to foreigners and after they left I’d have conversations in their languages, in my mind, before going to sleep. He thought this was wonderful. When I asked where he was from, he answered that he’d lived much of his life in Firenze but that he’d been born in the far south in an area notorious for its coarse vernacular. His own accent, he explained, was an awful mix of the two places. He laughed when he said this, and the laugh shocked Sister Christina out of her astonishment. She started feeding me questions, which I suppose was as much to test my translation skills as to uncover information. Through me, the old man’s story was told.

Paolo had spent his entire life married to a woman he’d loved dearly. She’d recently died and he knew that he would follow her soon. This was why he was traveling, because he’d never seen countries outside his own and he did not want to die knowing nothing of the world. He was not afraid of death, as he’d been a good Christian and expected his final reward. He asked if he might have just one night’s rest at the monastery before continuing his journey. Sister Christina granted this, as she had the power to act on behalf of the prioress, and Paolo thanked her for her kindness. For the first time in my life, I felt important.