Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

“Stitches

but we were beginning to understand that some things were better done separately. After thinking it through, we chose a girl who we’ll call Imogen. Imogen wasn’t her real name—you needn’t know what it was, but it was similar—and Imogen’s mission was the following: fish the information that we wanted from the very mouth, the very body, of Sister Elvira Lecumberri. (What did Imogen look like? Believe us when we say that we barely remember; what we remember, of course, are the important things.) So we sent Imogen on the mission; we were already nearing the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the weather had turned quite cold. The nuns hadn’t let us swim in the river at the foot of the mountain for some time already. We told Imogen that she had to affix herself, endear herself to Sister Elvira Lecumberri, just like a niece or a younger sister. And so she did. From the Feast until the solstice, almost nothing happened. We watched Imogen getting closer to Sister Elvira Lecumberri, especially in the dining hall; she seemed to be doing everything that we’d told her to, but our hopes still weren’t very high. One has to give these things time, Imogen repeatedly reminded us in the dormitory at night, especially when we exposed more of our impatience than we should have. Then Christmas break arrived, which was somewhat of a pity but no more than usual; we’d barely settled into Polar after the summer and we had to leave it behind again. We always left at Christmas and Holy Week, or almost always—not when our parents happened to go to Rome or Florence for Easter Sunday and left us to stay at school. That year, though, not one of us stayed behind at Polar. At home, alone as usual, we would think: What is she doing right now? It bothered us inside, in silence, that question. The day we returned to Polar, four of us swore that we’d seen Sister Elvira Lecumberri during the holidays (one in A Coruña, 163

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