The Reflection Of My Memories: A Short Story

By Sara Ingardia

Mexico 1990: Sister Mariette is a nun in the order of the Religiosas de la Cruz del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, in the state of Yucatan, and during her daily morning walk on the beach at Merida she comes across a stranger on the brink of death. Her name is Vivienne.

Having survived a shipwreck, Vivienne loses the power of speech. Welcomed into the convent in the south-east of Mexico, she will set out on an introspective journey which will allow her, through writing, to process the loss of Nathan, giving new life to his memory in the empty pages that day after day bring to light a bond that was bound to break.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tektime
• Release date: Dec 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9788893980104

Book preview

Quote

« Love awakens things that sleep;

it lights up the shadows;

it gives life to dead things;

it shapes the unformed and makes perfect the flawed »

(Ficino)

Introduction

12 September 1991- Mérida (Yucatan) - Mexico

The sun was high in the sky and her dark habit seemed to attract the scorching rays even more on the golden sand. Sister Mariette softly recited her rosary which she clasped tightly between her hands as she prayed for Divine help in that remote little town, where there was the need to rediscover God’s law or Love in all its forms, hampered and cornered by the interests of people who had abandoned their values, becoming trapped in the inviting and sinful world of corruption.

The sisters did their utmost to welcome young women afflicted by choices that had been forced upon them and antiquated conventions that turned them into slave brides of unscrupulous men.

The war amongst the poor boosted an ever-growing crime rate, leading desperate people in search of a better future to entrust themselves into the hands of slave traffickers, who tempted their victims with false promises in the illusion of possible happiness across the border.

The sudden squawking of a seagull made her jump. She looked up and was dazzled by the sunlight. Narrowing her eyes against the glare she suddenly realized there was something lying on the shore. She approached it cautiously, terrified at the idea of finding a corpse.

She turned the woman’s lifeless body over and felt for her pulse, hoping to find the hint of a heartbeat. She breathed a deep sigh of relief when she felt the faint pulse, Thank heavens! she whispered.

The woman was wearing a black under-slip, reduced to tatters. She noticed there was a nasty bleeding gash on her left arm and deep purple bruises on her legs. She had a terrible thought immediately come to mind and she shivered at the idea that a man may have reduced her to that state.

Her facial features were not those of a Mexican woman, the preciousness of her silk slip made her think more of a noblewoman from bygone times.

She wore a necklace around her neck on which a heart shaped pendant in mother-of-pearl hung, with the name Vivienne engraved on the back.

Your name has mapped your destiny she exclaimed.

She began running in the direction of the convent but the sand slowed her steps and her nun’s habit made her fall with a muffled thud. Without batting an eyelid, she rose to her feet again and taking the hem of her skirt in her hands, she lifted it slightly to prevent another disastrous fall. She quickened her step reaching the convent out of breath.

There she joined her sisters who immediately made ready to welcome the poor unfortunate woman into their congregation.

***

A ray of sunshine peeped through the window where the stranger lay still asleep; beside her, sister Mariette had kept vigil through the night over her tormented sleep.

The murmured whisper of the prayers recited by the nun made her open her eyes. She blinked, trying to focus and realized she was lying on a camp bed in a salmon-coloured room that smelt of incense and sweet smelling Choisya ternata flowers.

Confused, she pushed aside the sheet resting over her body which covered her up to the waist. A spell of dizziness made her sink back onto the pillow like a magnet; she was attracted by the magnetic force of her body which was fighting the infection of the wounds spread all over it.

You mustn’t tire yourself she whispered, You’ve got a very high temperature. Her temperature was close to 39°F and her head ached heavily, partly because of the head injury caused by the impact with the icy water and partly from exhaustion, but nevertheless, she remembered what had happened very well. Her memory had remained intact, clear as the waters of a stream that shows every little pebble lying on the riverbed. She would have liked to make part of that past die, without mercy, in the waters of that ocean and only hold on to the memory of Nathan.

Suddenly the awareness that he had not survived the shipwreck became ever more real.

She whispered his name, deluding herself for a brief