Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

“Stitches

too; you already have, really, but you’re pretending that you don’t understand. I’ll tell you something: that’s no way to spend your life. That night, each in her own bed, we thought about what had happened during the previous months and we all arrived at a similar conclusion: that Imogen had embraced the teachings of that man she didn’t even know, because she was a simple girl who believed things as they were presented to her. The rest of us girls and Sister Elvira Lecumberri were clearly more mature, and that’s why we fearfully shut our eyes against everything bigger than us, and having closed them, we were in danger of getting swept along with everyone else. The other nuns didn’t count; they were very obtuse. The other conclusion we drew was that something had to be done. Now we were all a little bit closer to Sister Elvira Lecumberri, because Imogen, even as simple as she was, had strung us along here and there about the school however she wanted. Being so close to that nun gave us some consolation, perhaps all that we had during those years in Polar. Spring had sprung by then, somewhat earlier than normal. In the first days of March, we were already altered, agitated by that whisper in the air around Imogen: Giovinezza. Giovinezza. Primavera. Di Bellezza. We tried to deafen ourselves internally, but we couldn’t; there were some things that we weren’t ready to learn yet. Spring also brought the usual excitements: finally going to bathe in the swimming hole, for example, to relieve the heat we’d accumulated all winter. Imogen came with us to bathe, and in those hours we almost believed once again that she was one of us, especially when we observed her flesh—the same as ours, we repeated to ourselves while we cooked in the water. Even on those very first hot days, the water was too warm and did little to alleviate our fevers. When she finished swimming, she got out of the pool naked, dried herself clutching the towel very tightly to her body, and smiled. That was the end of the illusion that she was one of us; at Polar, we all made ourselves serious—it was our lot to endure. Even when she wasn’t smiling or laughing, there was a happiness in Imogen that was not in us; it wasn’t the happiness of the girls of 173