Карен Армстронг – Through the Narrow Gate: A Nun’s Story (страница 2)
I could not have known this when I sat down to write
—Karen Armstrong
London, August 1994
Enter by the narrow gate, since the gate that leads to perdition is wide, and the road spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that lead to life, and only a few find it.
It was 14 September 1962, the most important day of my life. On the station platform my parents and my sister, Lindsey, were clustered together in a sad little knot, taking their last look at me. I was seventeen years old and was leaving them forever to become a nun.
Kings Cross station was a confused flurry of shouting porters, whistles, people dodging and tearing through barriers. A disembodied voice announced arrivals and departures. An old lady walked down the platform, smartly dressed, leaning on her stick and looking fixedly at the ground, lost in her private world. A group of soldiers drinking beer from bottles laughed gustily at the far end of the platform. A young girl and a boy were standing with their arms draped clumsily round each other, whispering intensely. Saying good-bye.
I looked at this from the windows of the train, but it was like watching a film or seeing it all through a thick glass screen. The whole day had been like this. I had gotten up that morning early, packed my suitcase and stripped my bed, folding the sheets and blankets neatly, conscious somewhere that this was the last time. I took a last look round the house, knowing that I ought to be feeling something, but actually feeling very little. Just a numbness, a blocking of all responses. But underneath all that I was aware of a fluttering excitement. At last the day had come. For the past year I had been looking forward to it with an intensity I had never experienced before, terrified that something would happen to stop it. I was beginning a huge spiritual adventure.
The night before I had read Monica Baldwin’s book
I glanced impatiently at my watch and then instantly felt contrite. This was a wonderful day for me, but my family had not chosen this. For them it was not a glorious beginning but an end. I looked down at them, knowing sadly that even now they were hoping against hope that I would change my mind at the last minute. None of that showed, however. My parents, tall and elegant, smiled bravely up at me. My sister was looking at me with awe mingled with horror, hardly able to believe that this was really happening. She was three years younger than I but already she was far taller and looked much older. Even at fourteen she possessed a physical poise and confidence that marked her as the sort of child my parents should have had. Like them she loved life; nothing was going to make her enter a convent. But I wasn’t like that. To me the world had proved an unsatisfactory place. It wasn’t enough. Only God with His infinite perfection could complete me. “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.” St. Augustine’s words in his
My parents could not really understand my decision. They were Catholics and knew that if I had a religious vocation it was their duty to let me go. But for them religion meant Sunday morning Mass and a decent morality. They were bewildered at my decision to abandon all the good things of life and embrace an asceticism that they could only see as impoverishing. However, they had made up their minds to let me enter the convent and were determined to see it through with as good a grace as they could.
They had driven me down from our home in Birmingham that morning to see me off at Kings Cross. It was our last time together as a family, and our knowledge of this filled the car. Outside on the highway the traffic swooshed past with heartless speed. I looked out the window, mechanically counting the bridges. Lindsey, huddled at the other end of the back seat, as far away from me as possible, stared with deliberate nonchalance out the window. She had been horrified when my mother told her. “How ghastly! I can’t think of anything worse,” and she had refused to talk to me about it at all. It’s almost as though she thinks a religious vocation is infectious, I thought wryly, looking at her averted head.
“All right in the back, there?” my father asked with forced heartiness. A useless question but an attempt to communicate.
“Yes, thanks,” we chorused obediently. There was silence except for the engine’s purring.
“Daddy,” said Lindsey peevishly, “do you think we could have the window shut? My hair’s blowing all over the place—and so is Karen’s.”
“You girls!” my father sounded at the end of his tether. “What the hell does it matter what your hair looks like? Nobody’s looking at you at the moment, are they? Why has every bloody hair got to be in place the whole bloody time! Nobody notices. You’re fanatical about your hair—both of you! Yet you never think of cleaning your shoes. People notice dirty shoes far more than untidy hair, let me tell you!”
We let the outburst go. It was one of his favorite hobby-horses. But he wasn’t really angry about our hair or our shoes. He was angry with God for taking his daughter.
“Would anyone like a piece of candy?” my mother asked soothingly. It was strange hearing her be the peacemaker. Usually it was she who got irritated and my father who calmed her down.
It was odd, I thought, how she felt the need to fill us up with glucose while we were on a journey. Anyone would think we were climbing Mount Everest. But it had always been the same, one of those odd quirks of family life that would be closed to me forever after today. It was the sort of thing you probably quite forgot. In a few years perhaps all my life at home would seem unreal.
“We’ll just be in time to have lunch somewhere nice,” my mother said cheerfully.
We made pleased noises. I felt too excited to eat anything at the moment, but this was another ritual that would have to be gone through. The Last Meal.
“I wonder what the food’s like in there?” mused my father gloomily. The
“Terrible, I should think,” said Lindsey grumpily. She was still feeling sore about her hair and my father’s attack. “It’ll be just like school food. You remember, Karen, the nuns always said they ate the same food as us. Imagine school food every day of your life!”
Gloom filled the car. It was not the moment, I knew, to hold forth on the unimportance of physical comforts. At the moment the issue of food seemed trivial. It would be like the fairy godmother urging Cinderella to sit down to a sensible supper before she set off for the ball, a distraction from the real issue.
“But I’m sure you must have nice food sometimes, Karen,” my mother was saying. “I wonder if you’ll have turkey and plum pudding on Christmas Day.”
“Mmm,” I murmured vaguely. How did I know? These random speculations were serving to impress on all of us the barrier that was so soon to divide us from one another.
“I wonder what you’ll be doing this time tomorrow,” my mother went on, desperate to keep up the conversation at all costs. Silence was much too difficult to handle.