It was during one of these "forgiving and forgetting" sessions that we went to our little house on a lake in St. Margaret’s, Quebec. We didn’t take our son George with us that time.

During this vacation the problems that beset us reappeared. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I felt that day that I had to go out on the lake in our little red boat. I rowed to the middle of the lake and stayed there, the oars in the water making funny little noises. I began to feel despair—that fog, that blackish-gray cloud. Slowly it moved toward the boat and engulfed me.

I stood up in the boat and looked, not at the fog, not at the despair, but at the water. It didn’t appear like a grave at all. Sunny water. White birches. It reminded me of my childhood—peace, love, laughter.

The beautiful water spoke to me of all these wonderful memories, and suddenly I was very tired. I had been tired since I left home at the age of 15 or 16.

Then I closed my eyes and thought about what the waters offered me: home… birches… sparkling sunshine… Russia… mother and father.

Then a strange thing happened. It was like a shimmering curtain. It moved in folds, as curtains do. Suddenly, it stood between me and the fog.

I woke from my dreaming and realized that I was standing on the last bench of the boat.

I "woke up" from my dream. I woke up from despair, and from the grey-black fog, which had vanished at the coming of the shimmering curtain. With great energy, I rowed back to the house.

I don’t know if love dies all at once. Maybe love goes into a drawer and hides somewhere in the corner of a heart. I don’t know. But I knew that something was happening to me and my love for Boris.

Eventually, at the advice of a Jesuit priest, our marriage was annulled.

Every time I look back on this episode of my life, I call it, "The Lake".

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

It was during World War II; I was in Warsaw, Poland. I had been sent there by Sign magazine, to find out how Catholics were faring under the swastika. I went over in July, and between July and September, a hundred years elapsed.

In Warsaw, the stukas (German dive-bomber planes) whined ceaselessly over our heads and dropped bombs wherever they wanted to. Each one had a different tune that wracked the mind as well as the ears.

I was a nurse and I was helping the doctors. All the while I did so, I heard the hammer of strong men driving nails into the flesh of Jesus. But relentlessly, the doctors kept asking for sutures. There was no time to pray.

The day came toward the end of September when a New York Times correspondent said to me, "Enough is enough. We’re all leaving and you’re coming with us."

Then we were on the road walking—English, Canadians, Americans, Australians—we all walked together. Most of us were journalists. The Times correspondents felt they had to look after me; I was the "Harlem girl."

We were following the railroad tracks to Hungary. So were the stukas.

As we were walking along, we saw a young woman hanging out her laundry. She had on a green skirt, a red cotton apron, and a yellow blouse. Her little child was with her, holding on to her skirt. It was a lovely domestic scene—the beautiful woman dressed in the native costume of the Poles.

We were approaching a small station; she must have been the stationmaster’s wife. We could see the red flags used to signal the trains, and the geraniums in the windows.

Suddenly the stukas came, fast and heavy. We all slid down the embankment as they dropped their lethal cargo on the station.

When we came out of hiding, there was no house, no green skirt, no woman and no child. A newly washed quilt was dangling from the limb of a tree.

My flesh still crawls whenever I recall this scene. For me, that quilt hanging from a tree was a prophetic symbol of a world that was coming to an end.

MARTIN, THE MATCHMAKER?

It happened when I was in Friendship House Harlem. One day the door of the library opened and a man and woman walked in. He was good-looking, somewhat graying, and he sported a military moustache.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he walked up to me and introduced himself: "I am Eddie Doherty of Liberty Magazine and this is my assistant."

"What can I do for you, Mr. Newspaperman from Liberty?" I asked.

He said, "We have an assignment, my friend and I, to write an article about Harlem, the wickedest city in the world."

I exploded! "Is that right? Would you ever consider writing about something else, like exactly why this is the wickedest city in the world?"

He parried, "Why is it?"

"You made it so."

"I made it so?"

"Yes," I said, "all of you white Americans. It wouldn’t be the wickedest city if everybody who lives in Harlem could get out and live anywhere they wanted to. Okay?

"So I don’t see what I can do to help you write such damn nonsense as you want to write. So you can go right out the door, because I’m not telling you anything about Harlem. That’s all there is to it."

I looked up at the statue of Blessed Martin de Porres. It must have been the vigil light, but I could have sworn he was smiling.

"An interesting figure," Eddie said. "Black saint?"

"I don’t know whether you are a Catholic or not," I said, "but you asked about Blessed Martin, and you are entitled to an answer. He was born in Peru. He never once left Peru. But people coming from many parts of the world claimed they had seen him and had been helped by him."

"You say he never left Peru?"

"Never," I said.

"Then what about the two years he spent in Guayaquil when he was a boy?"

"So you knew about him all the time!"

"All the time. I know him better than you ever will," he said. "I’ll come back again. I understand you are doing very good work here." He put a check for $400 in my hand.

"This is for Martin. I wouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t seen his name on your window."

I said, "Look, I’ve been in the newspaper business myself. You guys don’t have that kind of money. You either drink it up or simply don’t have any. I’ll take the check, but I just hope it doesn’t bounce."

"It won’t come back," he said, "but I will."

The End

From Fragments of My Life, pp. 88-90,140-142,166-168, A Cricket in My Heart, pp. 26-27, and Friendship House, p. 53. The first two are available from MH Publications.

(Do you want to read a delightful account of the ensuing romance? Read A Cricket in My Heart by Eddie Doherty.)