Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction
Next book on the shelf is Love Letters
Okay – so this one was written in 1966, post Wrinkle – and it’s one of her “adult” books – I lump together this book, Other Side of the Sun and A Winter’s Love … They have very tenuous connections to the rest of her work (in terms of repeat characters) – while all of her other books have this interwoven thing happening.
I actually enjoyed The Love Letters when I first read it – now I’m not so sure I would like it as much. I think AS Byatt did what L’Engle was attempting here and FAR better in Possession. L’Engle is best with teenagers, I think. Her adult heroines (Cotty in this book, Stella in Other Side of the Sun, and definitely Emily in Winter’s Love) feel like adolescents. They don’t seem like grown women emotionally. And maybe that’s on purpose – but I don’t think so. I think L’Engle’s adult characters are the most realistically drawn when they are seen through the eyes of teenagers.
So – this book. What I remember is: Charlotte (or Cotty) has fled her marriage – in a panic – and she has gone to Portugal, because she has gotten into her head that she MUST speak to “Violet Napier” – who is a famous harpsichordist, but who is also her husband’s mother. Violet is terrifying. A force to be reckoned with. Charlotte has not written ahead telling Violet she is coming – so when she arrives in Beja, she finds that Violet is in Paris. Charlotte is obviously not well (emotionally) – she is devastated by this news. It feels incredibly urgent that she see Violet and NOW. She has it in her head that Violet will tell her what to do.
Charlotte eventually gets a room in a local pensao. She has been wandering about in the rain – and she gets ill – she lies in bed – feverish, waiting – You don’t know what the fuck is wrong with this whiny beeyotch. Is she 16? Or 25? Grow up.
Anyway – there’s a book on a shelf in her room – the published letters of a Portugese nun – centuries old – a book of love letters. The nun had been in the convent in this small town. Are the letters to Christ? That kind of passionate “I give myself to you” language? Or was there something else going on? Something carnal?
L’Engle then splits her narrative. We have whiny sick feverish Cotty in the present – and we go back in the past – to follow the journey of Mariana, the Portugese nun. And we go back and forth.
It’s a nice device – hard to pull off – and Byatt kind of cornered the market in it with Possession – and it makes you see how awkward L’Engle is here, how she struggles to make it work.
BUT – as always – there’s some really good writing here. What I remember most about this book is the character of Violet – who is, in my opinion, one of L’Engle’s most original creations. You can’t forget her. I also remember the opening section – where Charlotte is wandering through the rainy streets of the small Portugese town – she’s booked a room in a small pensao – but it’s freezing there, she just can’t warm up … Eventually she moves to the convent (I think) – but it’s so vividly written, Charlotte’s growing fever, her aching limbs, her sense that she will never ever feel well again.
So I’ll excerpt a bit from the beginning.
Excerpt from Love Letters
She turned up a cobblestoned street with narrow sidewalks that were an intricate design of black and pale-gray mosaic. Mosaic at her feet: the colors luminous in the street lamps; ceramic tile on the white houses to her right and left; everywhere a sense of order, of design. But in Charlotte’s own chaos she was unable to comprehend order, and she found that her sense of smell was less blunted than her sight. The air was sharp not only with impending rain but with the acrid stink of drains and of rancid oil and damp cold; the smell seemed to seep through her coat along with the night wind.
She went along a street of small shops, dark now for the night, so that their windows were blind expanses of glass, turned down a street of private houses, and then saw on her right a great white building gleaming softly in the dark. As she reached the top of the street, she could see a plaque on the corner of the building. She crossed and peered at the lettering in the dim light of the street lamp: CONVENTO DE NOSSA SENHORA DA CONCEICAO. The convent building faced a large mosaic terrace with marble benches and a life-sized statue of a woman. The building was entirely dark. Of course it would be, at this hour of the night – or morning. It would be time for the nuns to be up, soon. Where was the chapel? There would always be a light in the chapel. But she could see no glimmer of light anywhere, could sense only an empty darkness hanging about the convent. Or was she projecting her own desolation on her surroundings?
Beja.
She was in Beja to see Violet Napier, Patrick’s mother, Charlotte’s mother-in-law, who was also Dame Violet Napier the harpsichordist. And it was not for nothing that Violet had been nicknamed the Violent.
— When Violet comes back tomorrow — no, today — and I can talk —
What made her think she could talk to Violet, Violet, of all people, Violet who was Patrick’s mother?
Antonio de Tieve knew Violet, and this was only logical in a small town, not horrid coincidence. What would Violet think of Antonio’s coming to the convent plaza, of his arrogant, blasphemous kiss?
The rain began to fall more heavily. Her pale hair, her coat were soggy. She could not stay here any longer. Would the nuns let her in?
Without thinking she crossed to the arched entrance of the convent. There did not seem to be any bell to the door, so she began to knock. She knocked and no one came, and it was the very lack of response that broke through her unthinking pounding and she withdrew her hand quickly.
If she was this tired, so tired that she could think of trying to rouse the nuns in an unknown convent in the middle of the night – and she was this tired – she might as well accept the fact that she was not thinking coherently, that she was really incapable of thinking at all. She had better return to the pensao and get back into the damp bed that was at least drier than the rain.
But when she had undressed and slid, shivering, under the comfortless weight of blankets, she could not sleep. There had been wine with dinner, and then too much coffee, and alcohol and caffeine warred in her blood. She turned to the dim lamp and sat up in bed, her arms circling her knees, and looked around as though seeking reassurance, as though she might see something the room had not revealed before; but no revelation was forthcoming in this dark, chill rectangle, only a foreboding sense of past time, of lost time, of things sought for and not found. Behind her the heavy carved wood of the bedstead loomed up almost to the ceiling; its very massiveness seemed menacing; there was no comfort to be found in the bed, nor in the great, cumbersome wardrobe that matched it. In the spring of the year, with sunlight brightening the dark chintz of the curtains, the spidery pattern of the wallpaper, the room might have seemed full of Old World charm and atmosphere; the feeling of the past pervading the present might have been a delight. In the dead of winter and the small hours of the night, it filled her with a sense of oppression that was suffocating.
She got out of bed and took her coat down from the wardrobe, pushed into it, through it was still matted with rain and pulled the collar up. The floor was icy under her bare feet. She crouched and opened the door to the night stand: on the bottom shelf was a chamber pot; above it were three books which she pulled out. Despite the inadequate light she would try to read herself to sleep. The first book was a Gideon Bible: even in Beja, Portugal? Essie, her father’s housekeeper, beloved Essie, in all times of stress had reached for her Bible, opened it, and pointed a finger at a verse. There she was supposed to find the answer. Charlotte with the certainty of youth had told Essie that this was superstition if not sin, but, as she thrust the Bible aside, she wondered: — But suppose it could answer me …
She pulled it back across the covers, opened it, and put her finger down on the page. The psalms. My flesh trembleth for fear of thee; and I am afraid of thy judgments.
— Well, Charlotte, what did you expect? Serves you right.
She turned to the other two books, both paperbound. The first was French, Lettres d’une Religieuse Portugaise. The second was Portugese, something about Soror Mariana; another nun, then. There seemed to be no escaping them, though nuns were not what Charlotte was fleeing from; more likely to: — get thee to a nunnery. (Her father had sent her to convent schools not for religion but to learn manners. Or so he had said.) Sje opened the Portugese book and her smattering of Spanish helped her to pick out a few words, but at the end of the page she had made no sense of them, so she turned to the French book. At least it would hold a reasonable safety, because from this distance the years in the convent schools seemed to be haloed with an aura of comfort, if only the comfort of time past, passed through; but at least she had learned what to expect from nuns, so even a Portugese nun would not offer many surprises, would give a kind of familiar childhood reassurance.
She began leafing through the book at random. You made me completely yours with your violence; it was your love that made mine burst into flame; your tenderness melted me, and then your promises completely reassured me. My own awakening passion undid me, and the result of what started with such happiness is tears, and deathly despair, and I see no help anywhere.
Certainly there was no help here! She sighed. The language of the Religious, particularly the Latin Religious, in describing the reaction of the human to the divine love, frequently makes use of the language of secular love, of sexual love; there was nothing really new or startling here, so Charlotte, cold, tired, groping, read on: It’s true that in loving you I felt a joy I hadn’t known was possible, but I’m paying for it with a pain I didn’t know was possible, either. If I had tried to resist your love, or held back out of false modesty; if I’d let my reason be stronger than my love, then you’d have a right to punish me now, and to use your power over me. But it seemed to me that you loved me even before you told me that you did: you made me believe that yours was a great passion. You carried me away and I gave myself entirely to love …
She sighed again. This stuff was useless as a soporific . When she was twelve she had memorized large quantities of St. John of the Corss, wallowing in a romanticism far from that austere saint’s intention. She still remembered much of it. Closing her eyes, she whispered,
Whither hast thou hidden thyself, and hast left me, O Beloved, to my sighing?
Thou didst flee like the hart, having wounded me: I went out after thee, calling, and thou were gone.
Sheperds, ye that go yonder, through the sheepcotes, to the hill.
If perchance ye see him that I most love, Tell ye him that I languish, suffer and die.Since thou hast wounded this heart, wherefore didst thou not heal it?
And wherefore, having robbed me of it, hast thou left it thus
And takest not the prey that thou hast spoiled?
Well, St. John of the Cross was not only a great mystic, he was a great poet, which this Portugese nun was not.
She turned wearily back to the first of the letters. Oh, my darling, if only you had known when you first came to me what was going to happen! Poor love, you betrayed me, and you betrayed yourself by hoping for the impossible. You expected so much joy from our love, and all that is left is the pain of our parting.
She rejected the nun’s letters with the same revulsion with which she had thrown down the Gideon Bible. What kind of answer was this? … the result of what started with such happiness is tears, and deathly despair, and I see no help anywhere …
— What would you have made of that, Essie?
She put the three books down on the nightstand, turned out the light, and, still in the damp fur coat, plunged under the covers.
The strange words of the Portugese nun, the mystical words of St. John of the Cross, the searing words of Patrick whirled in discordant counterpoint in her head. She slid in and out of a half sleep, a sleep riddled with dreams that left her exhausted instead of refreshed. As soon as it was daylight she got up and dressed. Her throat felt raw and hot.
