Marie Claire | Page 4

old, quite thin, and all
bent up. She managed the dormitory and the refectory. She used to
make the salad in a huge yellow jar. She tucked her sleeves up to her
shoulders, and dipped her arms in and out of the salad. Her arms were
dark and knotted, and when they came out of the jar, all shining and
dripping, they made me think of dead branches on rainy days.

I made a chum at once. She came dancing up to me and looked
impudent, I thought. She did not stand any higher than the bench on
which I was sitting. She put her elbows on my knees and said: "Why
aren't you playing about?" I told her that I had a pain in my side. "Oh,
of course," she said, "your mother had consumption, and Sister

Gabrielle said you would soon die." She climbed up on to the bench,
and sat down, hiding her little legs underneath her. Then she asked me
my name and my age, and told me that her name was Ismérie, that she
was older than I was, and that the doctor said she would never get any
bigger. She told me also that the class mistress was called Sister
Marie-Aimée, that she was very unkind, and punished you severely if
you talked too much. Then all of a sudden she jumped down and
shouted "Augustine." Her voice was like a boy's voice, and her legs
were a little twisted. At the end of recreation I saw her on Augustine's
back. Augustine was rolling her from one shoulder to the other, as if
she meant to throw her down. When she passed me Ismérie said in that
big voice of hers, "You will carry me too sometimes, won't you?" I
soon became friends with Augustine.

My eyes were not well. At night my eyelids used to close up tight, and
I was quite blind until I had them washed. Augustine was told off to
take me to the infirmary. She used to come and fetch me from the
dormitory every morning. I could hear her coming before she got to the
door. She caught hold of my hand and pulled me along, and she didn't
mind a bit when I bumped against the beds. We flew down the passages
like the wind and rushed down two flights of stairs like an avalanche.
My feet only touched a step now and again. I used to go down those
stairs as if I was falling down a well. Augustine had strong hands and
held me tight. To go to the infirmary we had to pass behind the chapel
and then in front of a little white house. There we hurried more than
ever. One day when I fell on to my knees she pulled me up again and
smacked my head saying, "Do be quick, we are in front of the dead
house." After that she was always afraid of my falling again, and used
to tell me when we got in front of the dead house. I was frightened
chiefly because Augustine was frightened. If she rushed along like that
there must be danger. I was always out of breath when I got to the
infirmary. Somebody pushed me on to a little chair, and the pain in my
side had been gone a long time when they came and washed my eyes. It
was Augustine who took me into Sister Marie-Aimée's classroom. She
put on a timid kind of voice, and said, "Sister, here is a new girl." I
expected to be scolded; but Sister Marie-Aimée smiled, kissed me

several times, and said, "You are too small to sit on a bench, I shall put
you in here." And she sat me down on a stool in the hollow of her desk.
It was ever so comfortable in the hollow of her desk, and the warmth of
her woollen petticoat soothed my body, which was bruised all over by
tumbling about on the wooden staircases, and on the stone ones. Often
two feet hemmed me in on each side of my stool, and two warm legs
made a back for me. A soft hand pressed my head on to the woollen
skirt between the knees, and the softness of the hand and the warmth of
the pillow used to send me to sleep. When I woke up again the pillow
became a table. The same hand put bits of cake on it, and bits of sugar
and sweets sometimes. And all round me I heard the world living. A
voice with tears in it would say, "No, Sister, I didn't do it." Then shrill
voices would say, "Yes, she did, Sister." Above my head a full warm
voice called for silence. And then there