The Pinch of Death – a mystery by Alysse Aallyn

Chapter 24. A Spiritual Exercise

The road to the convent was steeper than she remembered. And the monastery itself looked stranger – though that could be accounted for by the time of year; a Mediterranean villa plunked down on leafless New Jersey farmland.

The visiting parlor was attached to the office. The nuns reached it by way of a covered walk so as not to break “enclosure” although once in the parlor they could be clearly seen. The famous separating “grille” was a low iron rail Jacquetta could have stepped over had she been in a rule-breaking mind. Perhaps she was in a rule-breaking mind. Perhaps that was what this was about.

The room was rigidly, even obsessively clean, but not warm. The iron stove inserted into the fieldstone fireplace was not lit. Jacquetta sat down uncomfortably on a wooden bench, eye level from a realistically suffering Christ hanging from a cross. She was a few minutes early. She rose when Sister Thekla burst through the curtained doorway and leaned across for a hug, her old face wreathed in smiles.

“Jacquetta! So good to see you! Mother Xavier will be here in a flash. She asked me to give this to you.”

It was a booklet entitled TESTING YOUR VOCATION. Jacquetta opened it with a sinking heart. Everything had been thought of. There was nothing new on the planet. According to this book there would always be “work-related” and “family- related” reasons not to enter and as long as they made sense to the applicant, she should refrain from entering; understanding, however, that no place could be kept open forever.

Not like they have to fight away the applicants, thought Jacquetta, watching Sister Thekla make the fire. Harvard Law School this place is not.

And here was Mother Xavier, steel-spectacled, with sharp lines like cat’s whiskers radiating from her mouth.

“Tea, I think, Sister Thekla,” she said, and the older woman lit the fire and bustled gratefully away. Like I’m contagious, thought Jacquetta.

“Why don’t you tell me what this is about,” said Mother Xavier, seating herself in an ancient chair ornamented with creaking wooden lace, “And don’t try to spare me. You wouldn’t believe the stories I’ve heard. Is it a man?”

It took Jacquetta a moment to comprehend. She thought for a moment Mother Xavier was asking for the gender of the murderer.

“It’s not that,” she said finally. “It’s an old lady I met on the train. She invited me to lunch, to consult me about an evil person close to her. But that very night she killed herself, so they say. But I don’t think she did.”

If she had hoped this whisper of suicide and murder would rock Mother Xavier she was mistaken. The old woman was immovable.

“God know what really happened,” she said calmly. “Why don’t you leave it in His hands?”

“What if the murderer kills someone else?” Jacquetta argued, “As in fact they have. They seem to have also shot a private detective and burned down his office.”

Once again, no reaction from Mother Xavier, whose hands remained folded in her lap loosely clutching her rosary.

Tea arrived. Lukewarm, with blue milk. Sister Thekla unwrapped an ancient looking sugar cube with such excitement Jacquetta tried to seem pleased.

“Saint John of the Cross’ advice to contemplatives – perhaps you recall it? ‘She should not become involved in other works and exterior exercises that might be of the slightest hindrance to the attentiveness of the love toward God, even if he work itself be of great service to God.’ “

Sister Thekla’s fire went out. She poked it ineffectively.

“The true contemplative,” Mother Xavier went on, quoting from The Cloud of Unknowing, “does not desire to mix in active life. He does not care what is spoken about him and does not defend himself before his critics.”

This is not about ME, thought Jacquetta, stealing time by sipping her terrible tea, doubtless made with re-used tea leaves. If she thinks I’m going to say I’m not a natural contemplative she’s got another think coming.

Mother Xavier continued serenely, “Have you explored active vocations? I recommend it.”
Jacquetta thought of the sisters she had seen on city buses, rushing about in their ugly shoes, polyester skirts and short veils, probably working three or four jobs in every ghetto they could find. And shuddered.

“It’s the contemplative life I want, I’m certain of that,” said Jacquetta.

“It’s not what you want, it’s what God wants for you,” said Mother Xavier. “I will pray for you. Decide soon, my dear Jacquetta.”

She pressed her own rosary into Jacquetta’s hand and disappeared silently through the curtain.
There was no hug goodbye. Sister Thekla’s fire still refused to light, and Jacquetta thought she saw tears in the older nun’s eyes.