It was Becky's third week at the monastery. She woke up in the middle of the night, sweating.
Her dreams had been entirely about cigarettes the whole night. Long cigarettes, wide
cigarettes, all sorts of them. The same dream came back over and over again: Her Mom smiles
at her and puts the cigarette between Becky's lips but as soon as Becky's about to light up,
the abbess is there and takes it from her. "No smoking", was one of the first rules.
In the morning, she was waken up early, as usual. Still after three weeks, her 18 year young
body was screaming for a cigarette; it felt like if her lungs were weeping the whole days. After
the morning prayers and the breakfast it was time for studying. It was hard to concentrate in
the class, because her thought were just more and more about smoking. She looked at the
tall, dark-haired abbess who was lecturing and tried to imagine the woman with a cigarette
between her big lips. She started to wonder how old she actually was and realized she was
quite young to be an abbess already, she couldn't be more than 37, maybe 40.
Suddenly, Becky realized something she had noticed before but hadn't so far really thought about. The abbess' voice was so dark and raspy, and she had had a certain cough all the time since Becky had arrived. The tall woman often interrupted her lecturing, turned her head and coughed with three, long hacks in her cupped hand. All the hackings sounded deep and wet, and every now and then her body wasn't satisfied by them so after a few seconds she had to repeat it and the second time almost always produced four hacks instead of three. After around 40 minutes, the abbess noticed Becky's curious glance after a coughing fit, and first gave Becky a short, hard glance but then smiled a little and said "excuse me" to her students. She almost looked a bit embarrassed, Becky thought.
It was soon time for Becky and the other new members of the monastery to translate
some latin sentences by themselves, and the abbess was walking around in the class room
to assist. Becky was good at languages, but had some problems with the latin pronounciation.
The lecture was all about writing, but a certain phrase made her so curious. "Rex tremendae majestatis",
how do I pronounce the "ae", she thought and gave a sign to the abbess.
- Excuse me, sister Sarah, but I'm so curious about this word, how do I pronounce it correctly?
Sister Sarah expressed her happiness over Becky's ambitions and pronounced the word slowly,
but Becky's brain didn't catch a single word of it. The woman's breath was over Becky and when she
felt it in her nostrils it was almost like from her own Mom. No doubt, the abbess' long lungs must
have been full of smoke just before the class started. Becky glanced at the abbess' chest and inside
herself she first saw the Catolic lungs filled with cigarette smoke, then they got more and more
dark until they were black.
Three lovely, deep hacks woke Becky up from her dreams.
- Rebecca, are you listening, the abbess said. - Yes, sister Sarah, yes, thank you, I was just...
trying to ... repeat the pronounciation inside myself, Becky lied.
Sister Sarah left and Becky glanced at her when she stopped beside the next desk to help
another student. Her hand was shaking a little, Becky noticed. She got back to the latin sentences
but her thought still were around smoking. She wanted to get the abbess' attention once again to
try to inhale her smoky breath deeply. Deliberately she wrote "tuba mirum spargens sonum" with
the word "spargens" spelled "spurgens" before asking for assistance again.
- Excuse me sister Sarah, she said and tried to move her face closer to the woman's without
making it too deliberate, I feel there's a spelling mistake here but I can't see it.
- Isn't it obvious, sister Sarah said sharply to Becky's surprise. The woman sounded
irritated. OK, Becky knew herself it was an obvious one to her, but she had noticed that some
of the other girls were making much simpler mistakes often.
- Say the last word, sister Sarah said still in an irritating way, speaking a bit louder than
before which made her breath flow over into Becky's nostrils because she reacted fastly enough
to inhale at the same time. It felt fantastic! "Sp-a-r-g-e-n-s", Becky tried.
- Oh, there it is, sorry to disturb for such a simple one, Becky said quickly to calm the woman
down.
- Nothing, Rebecca, Sister Sarah said and left. Becky heard her breathe a bit heavily and she
closed her eyes for a moment and then looked at the sun outside with irritation. There were no clocks
in the room, and noone was allowed to wear a watch. Becky was quite sure that the abbess
always got more and more irritated and nervous during these two-hour lectures, but this was
the first time she had really started to study her behaviour.
Finally, the bell in the monestary's tower rang and it was time to gather for prayers before
a lunch break. Becky had decided to find out whether Sister Sarah would go directly to the chapel
or if she... , but when Becky had just a few words with one of the other girls, the woman
disappeared.
- Do you know why she was in such a hurry, Becky asked the other girl.
- No, no idea. She always rushes away like that. Actually, I think there are some preparations
for her to do before going to the chapel, probably in her own room. You know, the room on the
way to the chapel's side entrance.
Without hesitating, Becky excused herself and quickly went down to the side entrance.
There was just one door there and Becky stopped outside it to listen. Not a sound. Wait a
second... the chapel was on the bottom floor! Quickly, Becky ran outside, around a corner
and found what she was looking for. The room behind the window must be the abbess room -
and even better, a big thicket outside the window! No hesitation - right into the thicket
as close to the window as she dared to. Becky's heart started to beat when she saw the ash
tray on the little table near the window. She looked up and saw the most beautiful sight she
had seen the last month. Sister Sarah moved a cigarette to her big lips and dragged for
four seconds, Becky guessed, with her eyes closed and a happy expression in her face.
She released the cigarette and inhaled, smiling happily and with her mouth open. She hold
her breath for maybe five seconds before exhaling a cloud of smoke. Her next exhale
produced another, but smaller cloud, and then she closed her mouth so her nostrils transported
the last portions of cigarette smoke out from her lungs into the air. Immediately after, she
repeated the same process, time after time until the cigarette was finished. Becky thought
the show was over and that it was time for her to rush to the chapel when she saw a light
in the room. Another cigarette! Poor Sister Sarah, she thought to herself when she
saw the woman's satisfaction and remembered her growing irritation and her shaking fingers
during the last 30 minutes of that lecture.
When she watched the abbess' last exhale of her second cigarette, Becky quickly
turned around to rush back. "BANG", it said. She never saw the other girl, Patricia, who
must have stood right behind her without making a sound.
- Oh, I'm so sorry, Becky said but Patricia made a sign to be quiet and they both
ran back. Patricia touched her forehead carefully and looked at her fingers, but at least
no blood from the hard collision.
It wasn't until the evening that Becky got the opportunity to talk to Patricia. They were
supposed to take a walk in the park around the building to meditate before the evening
prayers, but they were allowed to talk. The abbess were with them, too, and she drew
Becky's attention to her all the time with her cough, which was much worse in the evenings.
Patricia pulled Becky closer to her just as Sister Sarah again cupped her hand over her mouth
and a long sequence of wet hacks started. She then inhaled and coughed with two deep,
rattling hacks. A short break, then a long rattling which turned into a rapid and uncontrollable
sequence of hacks. - Look now, she's doing it any second, Patricia suddenly whispered and
pulled Becky even closer. - Doing what?, Becky said just as Sister Sarah ended a sequence
of hacks that had got deeper and deeper with choking.
- She coughs and coughs until she whoops. Oh, she'll cough her lungs up one day.
What a smoker's cough...
- WHAT, Becky wheezed.
- You heard me, and you saw her. The whole woman smells of cigarettes, her fingers
smell, she coughs herself through the lectures and she gets crazy from her need for a
cigarette after an hour.
- Yeah, I noticed. I'm getting crazy myself. Do you smoke?
- I have a few secret ones hidden in my room. We can have one after the evening prayer.
- Oh, you're so great, Becky almost moaned, but quietly. - By the way, it's something
else that strikes me about the abbess. Why is an abbess doing so much of the lecturing
and spend so much time overall with us, fresh students.
- Because it's fresh students she's after, Patricia smiled. - At least the rumour says so.
- Oh? She feels very ... straight, you know, to me...
- Maybe, I don't know. It's just a rumour.
Becky's evening cigarette was like in heaven. Never had she pulled the smoke so deeply
in her lungs and kept it for such a long time. But this was just the beginning of the evening...
On her way to her room to sleep, Becky happened to pass outside the abbess room
when she heard a strange sound. It sounded like... a coughing child. Becky went outside
to her place outside the window and looked in. It was dark outside so it was easier this time
to see the details in the room. She didn't believe her eyes. Sister Sarah was smoking and
smoking and she had a dark girl in there, probably around 13-14 years only. She kept
exhaling the smoke into the girl's face time after time, either from her mouth or from her nostrils.
Often, she pressed her mouth over the girl's and blow the smoke into the girl. Becky was
quite sure the girl inhaled the smoke too, and her little body was coughing wildly all the time.
Cigarette - after cigarette - after cigarette. Finally, she understood that the abbess reached her
goal, because the woman closed her eyes and fell down on her knees, and shortly after the
girl left the room. Becky's heart was beating and she was unsure about what she really felt
for this. Suddenly, the door opened and the girl came out, coughing and coughing. During the five
seconds it took Becky to reach the running girl, she whooped twice.
Becky forced the girl into the thicket but feared she would start shouting for help so she
pressed her hand over the mouth. There was no reason for fear though, because there was no
end of the girl's bad coughing fit. She coughed and whooped in Becky's hand, time after time
until it finally ended and she was breathing too heavily to be able to talk.
- Calm down, Becky whispered and released her hand. - Calm down. How are you feeling?
- It's OK now, the girl wheezed. - My lungs, she then managed to say quietly. - She's
destroying my lungs.
Becky realized she should be in her room at this time, so she carefully brought the girl
with her and they sat down on her bed, talking quietly.
- I'm staying at the monetary for two months while my parents are abroad, the girl explained.
- The abbess loves to have me in her room wwhile she smokes those cigarettes, and she keeps
blowing the smoke inside my chest all the time. I have to go there every evening, and she
just smokes more and more, and she's started to force me to smoke too. I don't know what to
do...
The girl started to cough again but soon fell asleep.
The next morning, Becky knocked on the door to the abbess' room. Sister
Sarah opened the door slightly and Becky could feel a distinct smell of
cigarette smoke.
- Yes?, the abbess said irritated.
- Let's talk smoke, Sister Sarah, Becky said sharply without hesitating.
- How DARE you, Sister Sarah shouted and was about to shut the door when
Becky suddenly had a cigarette between her fingers. "Want one?", she said
in a teasing way.
- Come inside, the abbess said much more quietly this time.
Still without hesitating, Becky immediately lit up, took a deep drag
and exhaled in the abbess' face.
- Is this what you want?, Becky said sharply, almost angrily. She took
another drag and exhaled it in Sister Sarah's face again.
To her surprise, Sister Sarah suddenly calmed down.
- More. More! , she whispered but Becky handed over the cigarette.
- It's your turn now. With a girl old enough to receive it.
- How did you... how did you know, the abbess whispered, a bit shocked.
- My lungs are here, just for you. I'm not allowed to smoke, but I hereby
allow you to feed my lungs, since they're craving for it and you're craving
to fill them. That other poor girl will cough up her lungs soon if you go on,
and she's afraid you'll ruin her lungs.
- Oh, I'm so much in love with your sweet lungs, the abbess almost weeped
and put her arms around Becky. - Will you let me blow my cigarette smoke
from my lungs right into yours, you mean? Let my mouth and my nostrils
feed your hungry lungs?
- If I just could have one or two drags directly, your lungs will absorbe
too much of what mine are crying for, Becky whispered.
- Between you and me, you can smoke as much as you want in here, the abbess
smiled with tears in her eyes. Will you let me fill your lungs then?
- Evening after evening, Becky promised. - As long as you leave that girl.
- Of course, the abbess moaned. - Of course. Admittedly, her coughing fits
scared me. I watched her cough worse and worse every evening and still I couldn't
keep myself from blowing more of my cigarette smoke into her lungs.
As Becky and Sister Sarah agreed upon after a night some month later, filled with cigarettes and some of the monestrary's local strong wine, a girl can do anything for a cigarette, can't she?