Chapter 11: "Alma" — Episode 534
Chapter 11: "Alma" — Episode 534
It was an afternoon in late spring, before the rains came.
Fujiko-han was walking along the foothills of Aso when she noticed a white figure at the edge of the road.
At first she thought it was a heron.
As she drew closer, she saw it was a young woman in a habit. Sitting in the grass, both hands resting on her belly. It might have looked like prayer. But to Fujiko-han, it didn't. It was simply the posture of someone who had placed their hands there.
"Sister."
The woman slowly raised her face. Still young. Her eyes were dry, but around her mouth was the particular color of someone who had been holding something back for a very long time.
Fujiko-han said nothing. She sat down beside her. They looked together in the same direction. Across the grassland, beneath a sky the color of pewter, the ridgeline of Aso dissolved into haze.
After a while, the woman spoke.
"Are you angry with me?"
"About what?"
"With me."
Fujiko-han thought for a moment. Then she looked at the woman's belly.
"There is someone else there."
The woman was silent.
"To be angry with you would mean turning toward that child as well. That's not something I'm willing to do."
The wind moved through the grass.
The woman looked down. After some time, quietly:
"Won't you ask whose child it is?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Fujiko-han kept her eyes forward.
"Asking wouldn't change the color of the sky."
A pause.
"Or the weight of what you're carrying."
The woman looked at her own hands. Hands resting on white cloth.
"I can't go back. To the convent."
"I see."
Fujiko-han stood and brushed the earth from her hem. She looked up at the sky.
"For tonight, there is a place. The child inside you cannot choose where to sleep tonight. Only the parent can do that."
That night, the two of them sat before the hearth.
The fire quietly turned to ash. The woman spoke, a little at a time. Where she had come from. What she had lost. But she never said the name of the man. And Fujiko-han never asked.
When the embers finally crumbled, the woman said:
"Is God punishing me?"
Fujiko-han set down the fire tongs. She watched the flames for a long moment. Then she asked:
"What do you make of Mary?"
The woman looked up, slightly surprised.
"…She is holy."
Fujiko-han nodded.
"She was with child."
Silence. Only the fire spoke.
"That much is certain."
She turned the coals slowly.
"What she saw after that. What she believed. What she told. That is a question people have been sitting with for a very long time."
The woman said nothing. She kept her hands on her belly. Not to hold anything in this time. Not in prayer either. Simply to confirm that something living was there.
At last she said:
"A name."
"Too soon."
"It doesn't have to mean anything yet."
She smiled faintly.
"Just one. Please."
Fujiko-han looked into the fire. Then she said:
"There's an old word — Alma."
The woman looked up.
"What does it mean?"
"Young woman."
A small smile.
"Anything beyond that, the child can decide for herself."
The next morning, the woman laced her sandals and left without saying where she was going. Fujiko-han didn't ask.
The white habit grew smaller and smaller in the morning mist, until it was almost gone. At the last moment, she turned once.
Fujiko-han didn't wave.
She simply stood and watched her go.
And thought: I wonder what face that child will have, coming into the world.
The spring wind crossed the grasslands of Aso and laid the grass quietly down.