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engaging, perhaps even beautiful, young woman, but she was first and foremost a
monk of the Order of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo, Children of the Mind of
Christ, and she was not beautiful to behold when she was angry at ignorance and
stupidity. It was amazing the number of quite intelligent people whose ignorance
and stupidity had melted somewhat in the fire of her scorn. Silence, Libo, it's a
policy that will do you good.
"I'm not here about any child of yours at all," said Dona Crist . "I'm here about
Novinha."
Dona Crist did not have to mention a last name; everybody knew Novinha. The
terrible Descolada had ended only eight years before. The plague had threatened
to wipe out the colony before it had a fair chance to get started; the cure was
discovered by Novinha's father and mother, Gusto and Cida, the two
xenobiologists. It was a tragic irony that they found the cause of the disease and
its treatment too late to save themselves. Theirs was the last Descolada funeral.
Pipo clearly remembered the little girl Novinha, standing there holding Mayor
Bosquinha's hand while Bishop Peregrino conducted the funeral mass himself.
No-- not holding the Mayor's hand. The picture came back to his mind, and, with
it, the way he felt. What does she make of this? he remembered asking himself.
It's the funeral of her parents, she's the last survivor in her family; yet all around
her she can sense the great rejoicing of the people of this colony. Young as she is,
does she understand that our joy is the best tribute to her parents? They
struggled and succeeded, finding our salvation in the waning days before they
died; we are here to celebrate the great gift they gave us. But to you, Novinha, it's
the death of your parents, as your brothers died before. Five hundred dead, and
more than a hundred masses for the dead here in this colony in the last six
months, and all of them were held in an atmosphere of fear and grief and despair.
Now, when your parents die, the fear and grief and despair are no less for you
than ever before-- but no one else shares your pain. It is the relief from pain that
is foremost in our minds.
Watching her, trying to imagine her feelings, he succeeded only in rekindling his
own grief at the death of his own Maria, seven years old, swept away in the wind
of death that covered her body in cancerous growth and rampant funguses, the
flesh swelling or decaying, a new limb, not arm or leg, growing out of her hip,
while the flesh sloughed off her feet and head, baring the bones, her sweet and
beautiful body destroyed before their eyes, while her bright mind was mercilessly
alert, able to feel all that happened to her until she cried out to God to let her die.
Pipo remembered that, and then remembered her requiem mass, shared with five
other victims. As he sat, knelt, stood there with his wife and surviving children,
he had felt the perfect unity of the people in the Cathedral. He knew that his pain
was everybody's pain, that through the loss of his eldest daughter he was bound
to his community with the inseparable bonds of grief, and it was a comfort to
him, it was something to cling to. That was how such a grief ought to be, a public
mourning.
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108
Little Novinha had nothing of that. Her pain was, if anything, worse than Pipo's
had been-- at least Pipo had not been left without any family at all, and he was an
adult, not a child terrified by suddenly losing the foundation of her life. In her
grief she was not drawn more tightly into the community, but rather excluded
from it. Today everyone was rejoicing, except her. Today everyone praised her
parents; she alone yearned for them, would rather they had never found the cure
for others if only they could have remained alive themselves.
Her isolation was so acute that Pipo could see it from where he sat. Novinha
took her hand away from the Mayor as quickly as possible. Her tears dried up as
the mass progressed; by the end she sat in silence, like a prisoner refusing to
cooperate with her captors. Pipo's heart broke for her. Yet he knew that even if he
tried, he could not conceal his own gladness at the end of the Descolada, his
rejoicing that none of his other children would be taken from him. She would see
that; his effort to comfort her would be a mockery, would drive her further away.
After the mass she walked in bitter solitude amid the crowds of well-meaning
people who cruelly told her that her parents were sure to be saints, sure to sit at
the right hand of God. What kind of comfort is that for a child? Pipo whispered
aloud to his wife, "She'll never forgive us for today."
"Forgive?" Conceicao was not one of those wives who instantly understood her
husband's train of thought. "We didn't kill her parents--"
"But we're all rejoicing today, aren't we? She'll never forgive us for that."
"Nonsense. She doesn't understand anyway; she's too young."
She understands, Pipo thought. Didn't Maria understand things when she was
even younger than Novinha is now?
As the years passed-- eight years now-- he had seen her from time to time. She
was his son Libo's age, and until Libo's thirteenth birthday that meant they were
in many classes together. He heard her give occasional readings and speeches,
along with other children. There was an elegance to her thought, an intensity to
her examination of ideas that appealed to him. At the same time, she seemed
utterly cold, completely removed from everyone else. Pipo's own boy, Libo, was
shy, but even so he had several friends, and had won the affection of his teachers.
Novinha, though, had no friends at all, no one whose gaze she sought after a
moment of triumph. There was no teacher who genuinely liked her, because she
refused to reciprocate, to respond. "She is emotionally paralyzed," Dona Crist
said once when Pipo asked about her. "There is no reaching her. She swears that
she's perfectly happy, and doesn't see any need to change."
Now Dona Crist had come to the Zenador's Station to talk to Pipo about
Novinha. Why Pipo? He could guess only one reason for the principal of the
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105
school to come to him about this particular orphaned girl. "Am I to believe that in
all the years you've had Novinha in your school, I'm the only person who asked
about her?"
"Not the only person," she said. "There was all kinds of interest in her a couple
of years ago, when the Pope beatified her parents. Everybody asked then whether
the daughter of Gusto and Cida, Os Venerados, had ever noticed any miraculous
events associated with her parents, as so many other people had."
"They actually asked her that?"
"There were rumors, and Bishop Peregrino had to investigate." Dona Crist got a
bit tight-lipped when she spoke of the young spiritual leader of Lusitania Colony.
But then, it was said that the hierarchy never got along well with the order of the
Filhos da Mente de Cristo. "Her answer was instructive. "
"I can imagine."
"She said, more or less, that if her parents were actually listening to prayers and
had any influence in heaven to get them granted, then why wouldn't they have
answered her prayer, for them to return from the grave? That would be a useful
miracle, she said, and there are precedents. If Os Venerados actually had the
power to grant miracles, then it must mean they did not love her enough to
answer her prayer. She preferred to believe that her parents still loved her, and
simply did not have the power to act."
"A born sophist," said Pipo.
"A sophist and an expert in guilt: she told the Bishop that if the Pope declared
her parents to be venerable, it would be the same as the Church saying that her
parents hated her. The Petition for canonization of her parents was proof that
Lusitania despised her; if it was granted, it would be proof that the Church itself
was despicable. Bishop Peregrino was livid."
"I notice he sent in the petition anyway."
"For the good of the community. And there were all those miracles."
"Someone touches the shrine and a headache goes away and they cry 'Milagre!--
os santos me abenqoaram!'" Miracle!-- the saints have blessed me!
"You know that Holy Rome requires more substantial miracles than that. But it
doesn't matter. The Pope graciously allowed us to call our little town Milagre, and
now I imagine that every time someone says that name, Novinha burns a little
hotter with her secret rage."
"Or colder. One never knows what temperature that sort of thing will take."
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101
"Anyway, Pipo, you aren't the only one who ever asked about her. But you're the
only one who ever asked about her for her own sake, and not because of her most
Holy and Blessed parents."
It was a sad thought, that except for the Filhos, who ran the schools of Lusitania,
there had been no concern for the girl except the slender shards of attention Pipo
had spared for her over the years.
"She has one friend," said Libo.
Pipo had forgotten that his son was there-- Libo was so quiet that he was easy to
overlook. Dona Crist also seemed startled. "Libo," she said, "I think we were
indiscreet, talking about one of your schoolmates like this."
"I'm apprentice Zenador now," Libo reminded her. It meant he wasn't in school.
"Who is her friend?" asked Pipo.
"Marc o."
"Marcos Ribeira," Dona Crist explained. "The tall boy--"
"Ah, yes, the one who's built like a cabra."
"He is strong," said Dona Crist . "But I've never noticed any friendship between
them."
"Once when Marc o was accused of something, and she happened to see it, she
spoke for him."
"You put a generous interpretation on it, Libo," said Dona Crist . "I think it is
more accurate to say she spoke against the boys who actually did it and were
trying to put the blame on him."
"Marcdo doesn't see it that way," said Libo. "I noticed a couple of times, the way
he watches her. It isn't much, but there is somebody who likes her."
"Do you like her?" asked Pipo.
Libo paused for a moment in silence. Pipo knew what it meant. He was
examining himself to find an answer. Not the answer that he thought would be
most likely to bring him adult favor, and not the answer that would provoke their
ire-- the two kinds of deception that most children his age delighted in. He was
examining himself to discover the truth.
"I think," Libo said, "that I understood that she didn't want to be liked. As if she
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101
were a visitor who expected to go back home any day."
Dona Crist nodded gravely. "Yes, that's exactly right, that's exactly the way she
seems. But now, Libo, we must end our indiscretion by asking you to leave us
while we--"
He was gone before she finished her sentence, with a quick nod of his head, a
half-smile that said, Yes, I understand, and a deftness of movement that made his
exit more eloquent proof of his discretion than if he had argued to stay. By this
Pipo knew that Libo was annoyed at being asked to leave; he had a knack for
making adults feel vaguely immature by comparison to him.
"Pipo," said the principal, "she has petitioned for an early examination as
xenobiologist. To take her parents' place."
Pipo raised an eyebrow.
"She claims that she has been studying the field intensely since she was a little
child. That she's ready to begin the work right now, without apprenticeship."
"She's thirteen, isn't she?"
"There are precedents. Many have taken such tests early. One even passed it
younger than her. It was two thousand years ago, but it was allowed. Bishop
Peregrino is against it, Of course, but Mayor Bosquinha, bless her practical heart,
has pointed out that Lusitania needs a xenobiologist quite badly-- we need to be
about the business of developing new strains of plant life so we can get some
decent variety in our diet and much better harvests from Lusitanian soil. In her
words, 'I don't care if it's an infant, we need a xenobiologist.'"
"And you want me to supervise her examination?"
"If you would be so kind."
"I'll be glad to."
"I told them you would."
"I confess I have an ulterior motive."
"Oh?"
"I should have done more for the girl. I'd like to see if it isn't too late to begin."
Dona Crist laughed a bit. "Oh, Pipo, I'd be glad for you to try. But do believe me,
my dear friend, touching her heart is like bathing in ice."
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"I imagine. I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But
how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire."
"Such a poet," said Dona Crist . There was no irony in her voice; she meant it.
"Do the piggies understand that we've sent our very best as our ambassador?"
"I try to tell them, but they're skeptical."
"I'll send her to you tomorrow. I warn you-- she'll expect to take the
examinations cold, and she'll resist any attempt on your part to pre-examine her.
"
Pipo smiled. "I'm far more worried about what will happen after she takes the
test. If she fails, then she'll have very bad problems. And if she passes, then my
problems will begin."
"Why?"
"Libo will be after me to let him examine early for Zenador. And if he did that,
there'd be no reason for me not to go home, curl up, and die."
"Such a romantic fool you are, Pipo. If there's any man in Milagre who's capable
of accepting his thirteen-year-old son as a colleague, it's you. "
After she left, Pipo and Libo worked together, as usual, recording the day's
events with the pequeninos. Pipo compared Libo's work, his way of thinking, his
insights, his attitudes, with those of the graduate students he had known in
University before joining the Lusitania Colony. He might be small, and there
might be a lot of theory and knowledge for him yet to learn, but he was already a
true scientist in his method, and a humanist at heart. By the time the evening's
work was done and they walked home together by the light of Lusitania's large
and dazzling moon, Pipo had decided that Libo already deserved to be treated as
a colleague, whether he took the examination or not. The tests couldn't measure
the things that really counted, anyway.
And whether she liked it or not, Pipo intended to find out if Novinha had the
unmeasurable qualities of a scientist; if she didn't, then he'd see to it she didn't
take the test, regardless of how many facts she had memorized.
Pipo meant to be difficult. Novinha knew how adults acted when they planned
not to do things her way, but didn't want a fight or even any nastiness. Of course,
of course you can take the test. But there's no reason to rush into it, let's take
some time, let me make sure you'll be successful on the first attecipt.
Novinha didn't want to wait. Novinha was ready.
"I'll jump through any hoops you want," she said.
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