Interesting Moments of Unnecessary Silence

The northernmost island of Shanqui Jian was the Island of Pain, with its mountain peaks, high-altitude steps, and cable cars. It held the university campus, the capital city, and the castle of the king. The rest of the island was an untamed wilderness.

“We sort of wanted the same thing,” the younger novice joked. “I wanted someone beside me. He wanted someone besides me.”

In 1933, in the industrial kitchen of Shantideva University, the older nuns worked in silence while the younger novices joked, peeled potatoes, and washed leafy green vegetables in large wooden bowls. The younger ones whispered about past relationships and cruel men with a sense of spiritual satisfaction, but Mother Ruth Lubaba—Little Mei, to some—saw only wounds that hadn’t yet healed properly.

The dining hall at Shantideva U. was spacious, with two-story-high ceilings and north-facing windows that made it impossible to keep out the cold in the winter or the heat in the summer. During the summer, they ate fruit and leafy vegetables. During the cold months, the food was hot and hearty, like soup.

Forty-two wooden tables with benches attached formed six tight rows that spanned the room from the windows to the wall.

It was an unwritten rule that the male monastics sat away from the windows in the winter and summer months, while in the spring and autumn, they sat near the windows. The elder teachers, both male and female, sat at a table on a raised platform against the east wall next to the kitchen doors.

Three hundred monks, priests, and teachers occupied dormitories, tents, and cabins to the south.

The nuns on kitchen duty were up at 4 a.m. preparing breakfast. They milked cows, collected eggs, and made bread. They set the tables in the dining hall and served the food once it was prepared, while at the same time the monks set up offerings in the university’s many temples, chapels, and altars. They filled water bowls and lit butter lamps, incense, and candles.

Monks and nuns had separate classes, prayer times, and courtyards to walk, sit, read, or debate. Men never entered the orphanage or wandered near the nunnery cottages. The men never cooked or prepared food. And except for large ceremonies, of which there were ten a year, the only time monks and nuns shared the same space was when they were eating. But even then, they stayed exclusively on separate sides of the hall, with the elders at a table in the front and the laypeople in between them.

The female monastics entered every shared space through a different door than the men. They were only allowed to use the library and two of the minor chapels at certain hours. They were allowed to walk only in designated well-lit areas of the university grounds because of wild animals. 

Mei had seen the wild animals up close in the walled city. She had seen the look of desperate hunger in their eyes. She had thrown a few out of the brothel where she used to do security.

Nuns of every faith slept, worked, and moved in silence. Three dozen women squeezed into five cabins, while some slept in offices or private rooms in the nunnery and the orphanage.

The mountains were quiet, so the cafeteria was the loudest building in the university complex. The scraping and clanking of wooden spoons on metal plates echoed off the stone walls and covered the curious sound of hushed conversation.

The elder monastics ate in solemn silence, while their students did not. Loud conversations were frowned upon and held to a minimum, while some monks chewed, hummed, gummed, and yummed much louder than most people spoke.

Dayworkers chattered on with their mouths full, which was also frowned upon, but since they were primarily volunteers, they were rarely admonished.

The nuns, however, buzzed like bees in whispered tones. They were the quietest, outside of the dining hall, but often spoke the most at mealtime, perhaps because after holding their tongues, they had the most to say.

Whispered words, the white noise of wooden utensils, the scraping of trays and benches, the chewing and the swallowing were a symphony of enjoyment. After a decade of study and meditation as a novice, mealtime became Little Mei’s favorite time of the day.

“You want the rest of this?” Mei pointed to a plate with goat cheese, spinach, peas, potatoes, and challah bread. “I can’t finish it,” she said after listening to the newcomer’s tale of male betrayal.

Newcomers were good for stories of heartbreak from the outside world. But Mei noticed they were also the first to volunteer for donation collections and alms runs to the major cities and towns to the south. Many young nuns found husbands on these excursions while away from their teachers and surrounded by temptation.

It didn’t surprise Our Good Sister Ruth, after years of collecting protection money from the brothels, bathhouses, and massage parlors of the walled city, that many odd men found nuns sexually attractive. A disturbingly common fetish stripped of all its religious trappings.

Who could believe that homeless women in heavy robes with shaved heads were in fashion? 

Mei nodded her head toward something that looked like a giant baked potato that had been smothered in butter and picked at but not enjoyed, as if to give the younger woman a quick reminder that it was hers for the taking.

After a brief thought, the heartbroken novice motioned swiftly with her head, an emphatic no, and having finished her story with a sharp bow of her head, got up to leave.

Tales of unfaithful men put Sister Ruth off her lunch. She turned her attention to a young nun with a slight build and sharp features. She motioned again to the baked monstrosity of half-finished glory. She had noticed the young woman when she first sat down but hadn’t acknowledged her until then.

Mei noticed her face but thought better of looking for fear of smiling or staring. She thought she should be more discreet with her visual feast, controlling her feelings and judgments. However, had she been pressed to describe the young nun to a sketch artist or a blind person, very pretty would be the first two words out of her mouth. She was pretty, Mei thought. Some girls could pull off having no hair, and some could not.

“Wow,” the young woman answered in a mocking tone and a smile to match. “That’s so nice of you.” Referring to Little Mei’s offer of a half-eaten baked potato.

Sister Ruth, the girl would call her, was unsure if she was being made fun of or being blessed with the mockery of an angel. It’s been said that you don’t feel mocked when an angel laughs at you or even ridicules you. You just feel seen.

Ruth felt seen. She took this time to study the woman’s facial features, expression, and mannerisms while being spoken to. It was the only time when it was alright to stare. She savored it. She was Korean but taller. Not a classic beauty but stunning in presence and poise, and she must have had stories to rival any newcomer.

“I get it,” Ruth thought. Because it was always young women who got away with teasing the older women. The less attractive who were teased by the good-looking. It was always angels who laughed at lesser beings. Perhaps it was something left over from when she fell from heaven. She was here in the flesh, but she could have been on giant screens, acting and dancing and charming the world.

After getting a better look at the novice, Mama Lubaba got the feeling that they were about the same age, thirty or forty-ish. However, Mei had never considered age before. Time passed, but the date, the year, the age—these things held no sway over who she was. She was already forty when she was sixteen, having raised herself. She had always been as old as the universe. And the universe didn’t look a day over forty. But who’s counting?

Ruth was instantly smitten and smiled brighter than she should have, forgetting herself in food and conversation, forgetting where she was. She looked into her new sister’s eyes, and mocking or not, she suddenly didn’t care about the age difference. They were both grown women. They were both obviously attracted to each other. She longed to feed her leftover peas like a bird but thought better of it because they were both nuns.

“I was just gonna throw it away,” the older nun said sheepishly.

“I appreciate it,” the new girl replied sweetly, almost too sweetly, immediately recognizing Ruth’s attraction and possibly starting a mild flirtation or simply disrespectfully ribbing her elder classmate again. It was hard to tell, and Mei realized she had never been flirted with like this before.

“You’re very sweet,” the young novice continued, tilting her head to one side in a sarcastically impressed tone, making it clear to all but the most socially awkward that she was being playful, making fun of the older woman, and, yes, flirting.

“No, seriously,” Ruth continued earnestly, nearly flustered by the woman’s eyes. They were soulful and full of compassion. “You’d be saving me a trip to the bin,” Sister Ruth whispered.

Ruth formed half a smile followed by half a laugh that made her glance around the dining hall in utter embarrassment. “I’m literally trying to hand you garbage. There’s no need to thank me.”

The novice laughed.

There was an extended pause as they stared at each other with more severe expressions than the moment required. While one pretended to be shy, the other one actually was. They smiled timidly and looked down at their plates as if on cue, and it was over—not the meal or the conversation but any pretense that they didn’t like each other. There was no denying it. Desire had settled in between them on the bench near the window where they met.

“My name is Somi,” the initiate said. “Djinn Somi,” she elaborated as she moved the disputed half-eaten baked tuber from Ruth’s dish to hers. And with exaggerated astonishment, gazed down at her bounty. “And you, my sister,” she said, “are the nicest person I have ever met in his life!”

Somi laughed, and almost giggled, after any good point was made. She used laughter as a punctuation. Her eyes widened at the bit of extra food on her plate, and she continued to poke fun at the shy older nun.

“Look at this thing, sister. Have you ever seen a more beautiful potato in all your life?”

Ruth noted she had called her Sister and not Auntie or Mother, and although it wasn’t disrespectful, it was sort of familiar in a way that excited Little Mei.

“You know what?” Ruth grumbled, feigning annoyance. “Just give it back to me. You don’t deserve my garbage. I rescind my offer.”

Somi laughed again but a bit too loudly, and the sound immediately felt out of place. It bounced once off the windows and the walls and then died of loneliness near the portraits of past masters near the entrance to the massive dining hall.

Both women returned to silence. They looked down at their plates like bad children, afraid to look up in fear of a mother’s wrathful gaze.

Ruth noticed from the corner of her eye that there was a sudden sadness in her sister’s movements. It frightened her. She was scared because it bothered her so much.

“Djinn Somi.” She rolled the woman’s name in her mouth without letting it go. It was hers and hers alone.

Little Mei feared losing herself entirely to desire. The thought that she had never wanted something so much in her life entered her mind, but she brushed it off like it could not possibly be true. It could have been the timing or the forbidden nature of the flirtation. Djinn Somi was an illusion, a painting that had been painted over a masterpiece, and so was she. So was everyone.

There were more reasons why they couldn’t be together than there were rules for nuns in monastic life, with some significant overlap. The taking of sacred vows being at the top of both lists.

For the rest of the meal, Sister Ruth Lubaba never turned her eyes to look at the new girl, but a few times she let her mind rest on her smile, sliding from one lip to land on the other. She remembered her eyes as if they were not still sitting next to each other, and it made her feel unworthy in the best way.

For several weeks, Mei replayed the young woman’s words in her mind and the way that they made her feel in her heart and below. There was guilt. They had done nothing wrong, and yet it would be months before they ever spoke again. ||