He looked at me anxiously. “All right, Camilla. But remember, Jinjin is our son.”
Thus decided, on the next Wednesday, which I assumed would be a quiet time in the convent, I set out in the deep womb of the night, expecting everyone to be sound asleep. When I arrived at the Sacred Heart Convent, the sky was inky black and there were no other pedestrians, nor any sounds other than the distant rumble of traffic. I wore dark peasant’s clothes to be as close to invisible as possible.
I’d come yesterday to survey the yard and the building, and so was able to find my way easily to the back entrance. With a few twists and turns of my master key, the wooden door emitted a soft, celebratory click and swung open to reveal a long, dark staircase. Entry had been surprisingly easy, perhaps the nuns counted on God to protect them, or just assumed that no one would dare to intrude upon their sacred space—let alone steal from it.
I sneaked inside and, wearing my cloth slippers, walked noiselessly. Under my torch’s dancing light, I carefully made my way to the abbess Sister Mary Stone’s office on the ground floor. Once again, I took out my master key and slipped it into the keyhole. This one, like a virgin, showed some reluctance to yield, even to my special key.
Perhaps this lock had been specially made to safeguard what was inside. Or maybe it was just like its boss, the sixtyish Sister Mary Stone, who also yielded her secrets with great reluctance. But my training had taught me determination and patience. So after seemingly endless gentle twisting in all the auspicious and inauspicious directions and angles, with the application of just a little strength, the lock finally surrendered with a long-awaited sigh of release. I couldn’t help but feel satisfaction at the culmination of my courtship of the lock.
But I didn’t swing open the door and strut in like a regular customer into his favorite prostitute’s gate. Instead, I softly pushed the door inch by inch until the crack was large enough for me to peek. After making sure there was no one inside, I slipped in.
I relied on the narrow beam of my flashlight, aided by my memory, to make my way to the metal cabinet that I knew held all the documents. I opened the drawers with my key and took a quick look. I noticed there were several drawers with labels such as “Sisters,” “Staff,” “Guests…”
As I flipped through the folders in this nearly dark room, the rustling of papers sounded eerily like ghosts whispering, perhaps trying to tell me secrets forgotten for decades, or even for centuries. I was saddened to read of the misfortunes that brought people here—consolation for loss, refuge from creditors, destitution, even care of terminal illness for those with no living families.
There seemed to be two main reasons that women came here. Some wanted to marry Jesus and live with him happily ever after. But in his gloomy, lifeless, grand building? I wondered could those who were so eager to share Jesus with his many wives under the same roof be happy with only a prayer in their “marital” bed? Or were they simply too wounded by a failed romance to continue to live in the world. Did they find peace, or only quiet desperation?
Others hoped that by confessing a few sins and doing some easy penances, they could spend the rest of their lives in this sacred place—for free.
I let out a soft sigh. If I had known about Sacred Heart, could I have come here to escape the gangster world? But this would be an unlikely fate for me. Few escape the underworld completely. Rather than seek God’s protection, they would offer expensive gifts to induce another gangster head to take them in.
How would one go about entering the convent? Would God also require a bribe? And if so, with what? Chinese burn paper money at funerals to bribe the King of Hell to let the deceased pass easily through the Ghosts’ Gate. But I could not imagine that the Christian God would accept such an offering. What about the bishop?
I worked my way down to the bottom drawer, which was labeled only with a simple cross. I guessed that this was the place of repose for the files of the dead. Thumbing through the alphabet it took me only a few minutes to find the file of Julie Lewinsky.
My heart beat fast as I held the flashlight closer so I could better read. The first page gave Lewinsky’s name, age, nationality, place of birth, date of birth, and death. The second page was a report on her entering the convent:
Julie Lewinsky, a widow whose husband was killed in a construction accident in Shanghai’s French Concession, came to live in Sacred Heart Convent on November 9. She brought along her adopted baby son, Anton Lewinsky, four months old.
Miss Lewinsky had been diagnosed with advanced liver cancer and told she had only three months to live. She expressed her devout wish to be cared for here in the hands of our Lord, to spend her final days in repentance. And that the baby would be cared for by our sisters and then placed in a good Catholic home. As an expression of her sincere piety, Miss Lewinsky donated a large sum of money to our church for the Lord’s work.
Julie Lewinsky did not reveal the names of the real parents of her adopted Chinese baby. She said that the baby’s mother died in childbirth and she did not know who the father was.
Lewinsky passed away peacefully two months after she came here, having received baptism and final rites from Father Ricci. She was buried in consecrated ground with prayers for the salvation of her immortal soul.
The adopted infant was placed for adoption with an American family well respected in our community. They had been unable to conceive after many years of marriage. However, the new parents moved after the adoption and Sacred Heart has been unable to locate them, despite searching the registers of all the nearby districts.
We must place our trust in the Lord to take care of baby Anton Lewinsky—
Just then I was startled to hear the telephone ring, jolting me back to the present. It kept ringing, but before I had a chance to decide what to do, footsteps were approaching. I quickly slipped the file back into the drawer, then hid myself inside the storage room next to the cabinet.
Just after I turned off my flashlight and pulled the door closed, I heard someone enter and switch on the light. Through a small crack in the door panel, I saw that it was the abbess. She was wearing a loose white gown with her sullen-looking hair imprisoned under a mesh. My heart beat fast like Lewinsky’s metronome set at presto pace.
Who would call in the middle of the night to wake up the virginal, formidable, and now sleep-deprived abbess?
She sat down regally, picked up the phone, and spoke in a groggy yet authoritative alto voice. “Hello? Yes?”
Suddenly her tone lost its clam and turned theatrical. “What? Oh, how terrible! Who is he? You mean you called me about a gangster? So he’s injured, someone stabbed him or shot him? Just take him to the hospital! Sacred Heart is a convent, and we sisters care for God-fearing folk. But you have been generous with us so we will pray to our Almighty Lord for his recovery. Remember, we are sisters, not doctors…. Don’t worry, I ‘ll pray.”
The abbess hung up, then exclaimed, “Tough luck for him! But better not wake me up again in the middle of the night because of some common criminal! Doesn’t everyone know that I need all the sleep I can get to run this place?!”
She abruptly stood up, walked past me, flicked off the light, and closed the door with a bang. A hot nun—at least her temper. I waited till the sound of her slippers had vanished down the hall before I stepped out from the closet.
I snatched back Lewinsky’s file from the cabinet drawer and pulled out as many of the pages as I could grasp. Then I heard another sound. Was the hot nun coming back for something to cool her down? But this time I knew not to overstay my non-welcome. I quickly stuffed what was left of the file back in the drawer, left the room, dashed down the stairs, and hurried out the back door into the cool air of Joffre Avenue.