Unalterable Strength

Frances was descending the steps of the Amphitheatre when she overheard a strange conversation. A few steps down, Sarah, always a little boisterous, was talking to her fellow student.

— “I swear he looked so much like Neo, storming out of the Director’s office as if he was going to take Agent Smith.”

Her partner chuckled, his long-disarrayed hair swishing left and right in amusement.

— “Neo ? With the sunglasses and all?” he quipped.

— “No, silly. But the long coat and the collar were pretty close.”

— “The collar? You mean it was a priest?”

Frances missed a step then, catching the railing at the latest moment. Thomas’s “careful” was lost in the recesses of her mind as her ear strained to hear the conversation. Had a priest ever set foot in this school? Could it be any other than Tristan… Father Tristan?

— “Nah, he was far too good-looking to be a priest,” Sarah chipped eagerly.

Any doubt fled her mind as Frances’ blood boiled. Trust Sarah, notorious curvy beauty of loose morals, to point out Tristan’s attractiveness. Yet, Frances had never lingered on it because of his calling. The man was off limits in any possible way; speaking of his physique seemed … disrespectful.

— “White collar and dark shirt?” Sarah’s friend asked as they passed the doors.

— “Yep. More of a long robe, with buttons.”

They were disappearing in the corridor then, and Frances left Thomas behind to catch up discreetly. Fortunately, Sarah was too engrossed in her recollection to mind her.

— “Definitely a priest.”

— “OK. Well, this one is very yummy. I wouldn’t mind putting him in my bed.”

Frances’ fist clenched and she bit her tongue.

— “Chill, that’s never going to happen,” her comrade told Sarah.

Definitely. I’d kill you first, Frances thought.

She was only seeking to preserve Father Tristan from unwanted attention, right? She doubted that he would react anyway if Sarah threw herself at his feet. The vision, actually, caused her to chuckle darkly; THAT certainly would be fun. The priest could freeze a penguin when he glared.

— “So, got any idea what he was doing here?” Sarah’s friend asked.

Frances snorted then.

Oh I might have an idea, and said priest is going to get an earful…

She didn’t have to wait long for her suspicions to be confirmed.

The very same afternoon, the director showed up in the amphitheatre with a chilling discourse. Giving them a hard stare, especially to young men – which amounted to half the promotion – he stated loud and clear:

— “It has come to my knowledge that sexual harassment has been occurring in this school.”

A wave of whispers welcomed that news, and their material resistance teacher gave the director a shocked look. The tall man lifted his hand to demand silence, and continued sternly:

— “Be it with unwanted gestures or disrespectful words, I WILL NOT tolerate this behaviour. I encourage all the students that are being harassed to come to me, and there will be repercussions. Exclusion, for one, and the matter will be taken to the authorities. You are to be engineers, this is not acceptable. Neither in this school, nor in the future line of your work. Mark my words.”

In the silence that followed the director’s speech, Frances caught sight of the student that had been constantly nagging her. “Are you wearing a throng?” he sometimes asked. “Can you lift up your skirt for me?” All those words hit her back, and she glared at him, boring holes into his skull. The young man swallowed audibly, his head bowed in shame. There, it seemed that the warning had had the desired effect.

By her side, Thomas shifted closer to murmur:

— “It’s good that you finally talked.”

Frances nodded, glad for the support, but…

— “I didn’t”

Thomas’s eyebrows knitted, sending a silent question.

— “Someone else must have,” she whispered back.

If he connected the dots with their encounter at the funfair, he didn’t say a word. It wasn’t such a lie, right? After all, someone else had, indeed, talked to the director. Only it wasn’t another female colleague … her lips twisted. She was quite amazed by Father Tristan’s gall. An indirect blow to the school, probably laden with a subtle threat to speak to the authorities, had done the trick. And she didn’t doubt one minute that he had summoned all his impressive presence to get the director to bow to his will.

She understood, now, why Sarah had admired him from afar. She knew how anger could swirl around him, how very close to that Equilibrium ecclesiast he could seem, how very impressive in his wrath. By his action, he had created a safer place not only for her, but also for the others without fear of retaliation. Frances smirked. Very well played indeed. Father Tristan’s intellect was up to par with his immense patience and wisdom.

Three days later, Frances walked into the church, jaw set and steps purposeful. The bluntness of Father Tristan still had her mind reeling, and she had to admit that many emotions still jostled in her brain. So, when at last, he joined her on the bench, she sent him a long stare. The priest didn’t recoil, awaiting, his elbows resting upon his knees, long fingers clasped together. He knew she knew, and didn’t try to engage in small talk.

— “I have considered yelling at you, truly,” Frances eventually huffed.

— “But …?”

How infuriating could a priest be, really? But Father Tristan’s stoicism sometimes made her crazy. As if he could read her heart in depth, as if he knew, all along, what her response would be.

— “But I guess I owe you some gratitude.”

And she set on the bench the result of a baking afternoon. Her very first chocolate cake – well, the second, since she’d burnt the first one. Father Tristan, led by curiosity, pushed the foil up to take a peek. A gentle smile spread upon his lips at seeing the offering, and he gave her this mischievous look she found adorable.

— “Thank you, Frances. I see you have put some effort in this. But tell me, I am curious … could you truly yell at someone?”

She expected a jest; he served her an analysis of herself. Pretty accurate actually. The young woman sighed.

— “No, and you know it. I hope you enjoy the cake.”

— “Its lifespan won’t extend more than 48 hours,” he deadpanned, swooping the cake and its wrapping away from the bench.

Frances grinned; he was so easy to please. No more was said about the incident, nor sexual harassment. Small talk replaced the weight upon her shoulders, relief settling in. Father Tristan recounted tales of Easter and its significance, and she of her grandmother who was probably already planning for the meal.

— “It is good that you still have your grandmother,” he remarked.

Frances nodded; yes, she was blessed.

— “I have both my grandpa and grandma on my mother’s side. Speaking of which, I’ll be travelling down this week end for her birthday, she was born on spring day. Isn’t that the symbol of hope?”

— “It is a great day to be born,” Father Tristan responded gently.

And she marvelled that such a pagan symbol – spring – seemed to make sense for him just like Easter did.

— “I even knew my greatgrandmother when I was a child, she lived with them."

— "You mentioned her recently. She was a Scorpio, right?"

Frances’ jaw slackened.

— "How can you remember such a thing?"

He gave her a gentle smile not devoid of smugness.

— "I pay attention. So what was she like?"

The young woman pondered about it for a while; it had been more than fifteen years now, and her memory of Marcelle was fuzzy, at best. Images here and there, the sense of safety, mainly, when she fell asleep by her side in the armchair.

— "She was … an incredible woman. She told me of the war, when my grandma was too young to care. It is difficult to imagine those times.”

She still felt that loss so keenly, tears were already welling. Seeing her emotion, Father Tristan steered the conversation in safer waters.

— “Yes. Technology and progress have taken such a leap. I see how my father struggles with a computer.”

She could imagine easily why someone born from the previous generation might have issues with a new mindset. Before leaving home, she used to type her father’s reports because it took him forever.

— “My dad is the same, but my mum is a geek. I swear she knows more than I do in computer science.”

— “Except for coding.”

The quiet assumption threw Frances out for a loop. Had she spoken of her coding classes and Thomas’ continuous support? If so, the priest definitely had quite an impressive memory.

— “Yeah, well. She coded on perforated cards so…”

Father Tristan chuckled then; at thirty-one, the worst he had done was booting a computer on a hard disk. Coding with perforated cards seemed like the Middle Ages. Catching a movement out of the corner of her eye, Frances turned her head and frowned. Her eyes widened then, and she cried.

— “Oh my God!”

Her exclamation was so loud that it echoed in the church. Clamping both hands over her mouth, she tried to keep her whimpers inside as her body started to shake. Tristan leapt to his feet at once.

— “What is it?” the priest asked urgently.

— “Spider!” she squeaked, lifting a trembling finger to the offending animal.

There, on the tiles at the opposite of Marie’s feet, crawled a little and ugly spider. Father Tristan couldn’t quite contain his mirth, and he swallowed his amusement after a short chuckle.

— “It’s been a long time I didn’t see one in here. Arachnophobia?”

Frances shuddered, her fingers stuck on the bench, knuckles white.

— “You have no idea”

He gave her a knowing look.

— “I think I might”

And, gently, he tugged at her sleeve to pry her hands from the wood.

— “It’s all right, Frances. It’s gone.”

— “What if it crawls around and climbs on the bench?”

She hated how pitiful her voices sounded, but there was nothing she hated more than spiders. Sexual harassment, she could deal with, but spiders… She just froze in fear.

— “Then I’ll take it outside” he said, his voice soothing.

— “Promise?”

— “I promise, Frances. Relax, it’s very scarce. I only see them in spring when the nights are cold, they come from the square on the other side of the street”

Frances nodded, her teeth grinding against each other.

— “I have to admit that I’ve never met someone so afraid of spiders.”

His voice, his manners, his tone were all calculated to soothe her. Unbeknownst to him, it was the topic he chose that caused her to relax.

— “Well, I have.”

Father Tristan’s eyebrows rose, as if begging for more. Little did he know that he had opened a can of worms.

— “My cousin, Élise, I can get her to scream over the phone it I tell her the word ‘spider’.”

Laughter bubbled in his chest one more, and he kept it at bay by asking more details. Frances was too happy to provide them; it allowed her body to relax.

— “We used to meet at my grandmother’s, my father’s mother. She lived in an old house, with those giant beams of wood in the top bedroom. One day, I just spotted this giant, huge spider hiding against the beam. It was the same colour, so you really had to squint to see it.”

— “What did you do?”

The memory was embedded in her mind.

— “I downstairs to fetch the broom.”

He was smiling already, expecting a recollection of Frances’ antics, for he knew a catch was coming from the twinkle in her eyes.

— “Then I heard her, from downstairs, telling me, ‘oh, it’s just a little sweetling spiderette’. I thought she had lost her marbles.”

Father Tristan cocked his head aside, studying her.

— “Had she?”

— “No, in truth, just in front of my giant spider, there was a very tiny little green one. This is the one she had seen. But when I climbed with my broom, she suddenly started screaming. ’Fuck it! It’s a bulldog.”

This time, neither Father Tristan nor Frances managed to keep a straight face. Dissolving into peals of laughter, the young woman observed as the priest struggled to remain as silent as possible. Then, after taking a deep breath, she managed to finish her story.

— “Élise was paralysed on the threshold, I attacked the spider with the broom and it escaped on the floor. She screamed her head off, and nearly toppled down the stairs as I hunted the spider to death.”

— “Did death occur in the end?”

Funny, how Father Tristan always managed to twist the simplest of events into poetic words. Frances wondered if he wrote in his spare time. She left that thought linger before she recollected the moment of panic when, broom in hand, the eight legged animal had managed to crawl in between her feet.

— “Yeah. I pummeled it into the ground just before it disappeared under our bed.”

— “Poor beast,” the priest sighed playfully.

The young woman straightened on her chair, barely refraining the urge to dig her finger into his side. It would have been an easy, and usual attack – her brothers were ticklish.

— “Hey!” she retorted in mock offence. “I had a hysteric cousin to handle, and I was close to losing it myself.”

— “So you saved her.”

Frances rolled her eyes.

— “Hardly, I screamed so much my grandma ascended the stairs at full speed. But God, I remember it!”

A moment passed, both of them trying to rein in their amusement before, unknowingly, Father Tristan caused the sword to fall upon Frances’ neck.

— “Do you see her often?”

Her face fell. The absence of her paternal grandmother was still keenly felt. As for Élise…

— “Er, no.”

And she left it at that, not keen on elaborating about the fusional relationship she’d had with Élise and the subsequent fall out after their grandmother’s death. It was, after all, an excellent moment to leave Father Tristan to his duties, right?

When she left for Easter break, two weeks later, Frances had no idea that she was walking away for good. For ahead of her stood, maybe, the toughest trial of her life.