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than God. Pardon my blasphemy. In a way, I think we’re meant to love someone more than God. Denied that, denied the anguish of a personal love, the yearning, the up-close and singular purpose it gives to a life, we religious, we, all of us, become, in some way,
deviant
. At best, we grow old awkwardly, pushing against the grain till the last. Calling it piety.”
    “I have had a
personal
love, and it has denied me no anguish, Philippe.”
    “What did you expect? That he would leave old Mother Church and set up with you? It was never an option, Paul. You, and all the others before and after you, were respites. Lusty respites from the drone. The desired, the beloved drone, you were a titillating interruption from the sway of that, a deep draft of cold air. You and the others were his particular expression of deviance. One of his expressions.”
    “What are you trying to do with all this talk, Philippe? Are you out to comfort me, to torment me? I can’t tell which.”
    “I’m trying to tell you to let loose your rancor. Especially toward a five-month-old infant. Paul, look at me. Do you see how wasted I am? I am a mirror of you. Why should we not take this singular opportunity, surely it’s a last opportunity, to live, to live like others do? Yes, let’s you and I be
grand-mère and grand-père
to this child. While we can. Let’s pretend. God knows how proficient we’ve become at deceit. You more than I, Paul. Let’s pretend. Who knows but that the fraud will turn about, become the truth. Wouldn’t that be the miracle of our, of our
winter?
That we might actually
feel
something spontaneously rather than by rote. Nothing so much would change. You will carry out your tasks and I mine, but in between, we could, God help us, we could try to love her.”

CHAPTER V

    A T GREATER SPEED THAN HE DROVE ON THE WAY TO THE CONVENT of St.-Hilaire, the chauffeur retreats down the same lime tree avenue, his passengers—the Countess Czartoryska, the nurse, and the man with the thin white mustaches—composing a hardly less muted group than they did an hour before. Before having delivered their charge to its destination. Before consigning the infant. The baby is gone. Its gaze, though—the serene blue-black gaze of a lamb consenting to sacrifice—the power of that gaze flits about the Packard’s lush gray saloon. The nurse’s arms hang loosely, awkwardly in her lap, or so they seem to the countess, who looks then at the man with the thin white mustaches, this Toussaint with the twitch in his jaw, the homburg pitched far back on his forehead now, eyes closed—calculating his take, his deed?
How odious accomplices become
afterward, the countess thinks.
And what is this pain, this heaviness about my own arms? Is it like the pain, the ghostly pain of a limb amputated? Is it she that I feel? Pray that filthy old priest shall never hold her, less that
sweating bitch of a nun. Oh God what have I done?
Against the pain, the countess crosses her arms about her breast, each hand clutching the long, soft fur on the sleeves of her jacket. She squeezes shut her eyes, and yet the pain and the lamb’s gaze remain.
    It’s done. It’s gone. How much longer until the station? The privacy of my compartment. Please let us not be late for that train. I must be alone. I must think. This part is done, and now I must concentrate on Andzelika. On how I shall present the events to her. I must be so careful, weigh and study every word before I say it, construct a case for each part of the lie. I shall be quite forthcoming. I shall embrace her, tell her without delay. The baby has died. Before surgery could be attempted, she died of heart failure, just as the birthing doctors had predicted she would. Predicted she
might,
but Andzelika need not know the relatively favorable odds they proposed. I shall emphasize that the doctors in Switzerland offered scant hope of saving her, assured me that, should the surgery keep her alive, it would be, at best, in