under the veil
by Hélène Lenoir
Grasset, 220 p., 19 €
What can be, at the end of a life, the story of what it was? What words to restore the extent of an experience, the long time of the years, the fine succession of emotions, the secrets? As a preliminary, one thinks of trust, of the complete abandonment of the confidant to his listener. The accuracy of Hélène Lenoir’s new novel is perhaps due to this, to the truth of a word delivered to the right person. He who listens will never interrupt this word – the monologue of a woman – nor reveal himself. We can understand in this that he could be the attentive reader; or more surely the daughter of this woman, beyond the years and perhaps beyond death.
“This fiction is rooted in the discovery of my mother’s novice notebook”, poses the writer Hélène Lenoir in the preamble. “Nun in the forties of the congregation of Notre-Dame de Sion, a teaching order which at the time had several houses in France and abroad, she had almost been silent about this period of her life”. It is therefore an encounter and a rediscovery that it is about: a mother through her daughter, and the young girl she was through an elderly woman.
Moving is the faith of this young woman, and poignant her distress. At twenty-nine, after nine years of novitiate, she still wants to become an accomplished nun, including in the mission assigned to her order – prayer for the conversion of the Jews – but part of her knows that the obvious may be elsewhere. She intends to follow the rule of order, to be “like a waiting canvas”, as a priest says; “do the lizard”, as a trusted Mother Superior advises, “that is to say, simply put oneself in the radiance of Our Lord, expose oneself to his gaze, to his influence and abandon oneself while continuing to do one’s duty”.
Understand your calling
The story goes further than the presentation of a novitiate since the doubts are immediately present. They spur the “fundamental questions: my faith, my vocation, my place in the Congregation and in the world”. An elder nun to whom she confides her trouble will enjoin her to deepen, to seek further her own vocation, beyond decorum:“The reaper is not always the sower. The sower knows that God sees all his efforts, that he assures them by his grace, that he brings them to fruition. That’s enough for him.”, she reassures her.
The fear of finding oneself in the world is not the least of the trials. “I am twenty-nine years old. No training or degree. Without resources, because I still don’t know anything about the dowry that would be paid to me in the event of departure or exit. But even these words are unpronounceable., remembers the old lady. Peace will come gradually, in a return to the world which will not be easy. Her sister surrounds her, her parents have disowned her. For the one who will be called successively Odile, Sister Jeanne-Marie, then Jeanne Delalande, a new name will allow a new start, an appropriation.
The inflections of voice, the hesitations, the digressions of the story are beautifully restored, in an orality so expressive that one could believe the words recorded and reported word for word. The writer Hélène Lenoir leaned on this literary work with great delicacy, working from the archives of Notre-Dame de Sion, never damaging what religious life was like at that time, and never concealing harshness, nor happiness either.
She will also grace the itineraries of other young women, restoring them to their normalcy and honour. Jeanne’s story will continue after her habituation in 1950, in the third person singular this time, as if to, in this greater distance, express the modesty of a novelist in the literary reinvention of the story of her mother. The meeting with a doctor experienced in situations such as his will make it possible to put words on a singularity, in the long time necessary, in the trial and error of a return to the world with the allure of new birth and new learning, “alive”. “The future… Our Father who art… The future outside… outside…”.