Isabel de Santo Domingo walks across the stage.
LA MADRE. You’ve come to say goodbye, dear child, God be blessed, I was expecting you. You met Fr. Gratian when he was a student, and I know it was you who steered him toward the Carmelites. In short, I met him thanks to God…and to you! (Quick smile.) “I had never seen perfection combined with so much gentleness.”11 You feel the same way, I know. (Lingering smile. Lips.) Go in peace!
(She turns to the wall. Not dreaming, but rereading her life.)
ANGELA, reading, with a little smile. “I am now very old and tired, but not in my desires.”12
LAURENCIA. For pity’s sake, write to me! She has a point, that psychologist: why don’t you write? (Tragic voice.) I stand up to the censors, I do battle with Nuncio Sega here and with Nicolo Doria there, all for the sake of our joint work, and also to please you, but you leave me to pine.…If at least you’d give up the fight, and give me up, cleanly. But instead you maneuver, you’re equivocal; another sign of your genius, no doubt. I beg of you, write me, Padre, instructing plainly what I must and must not do. (Imploringly.) It’s not fair of you to touch on these matters so confusedly. And also you must pray for me, a lot.…I am surprised you don’t tire of me; I suppose God permits it so that I can bear a life in which I enjoy so little health or satisfaction, apart from what pertains to you. (Pause.) Lord, I well remember having written that to my Eliseus. And this: if, by wounding me, they wound my Paul no matter how slightly, I cannot bear it. I was not upset in anything that concerned me.…There, that’s how I lived my life. (Raises hands and holds them before eyes.) Love will never be a sickness.…I hope that little psychologist who was trying to guilt-trip me has left. It’s obvious the silly woman has never read the First Epistle of John (3:14): “He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.” I’ve read it. Pablo and I, we knew that.…For charity, write to me, mi padre! (Broad smile.)
(Silence from Jerome Gratian. He will not respond to the woman on the brink of death.)
LAURENCIA. Is he still in Seville? Traveling through Andalusia? (Silly voice.) With María de San José? Or Beatriz de la Madre de Dios? What do women want, cloistered or not? A father to reign over, of course. But a man? Jesus, in his sacred humanity? What does a man want? To be loved by women, so as to escape from his brothers and be elected by the father? My mind is wandering.…The Dominican Juan de la Cueva, an eminently sensible man, observed that Gratian had a tendency to act alone, without consulting others. (Suddenly vehement.) Did my Paul think he was some kind of spoiled Infant King? He didn’t even come back for the solemn vows of Lorenzo’s daughter at Avila, although I begged him to, and poor little Teresita was so looking forward to it. Where are you, Eliseus dear? (Silence from Paul.)
ANGELA. I’m talking to you, pleading with you. Laurencia does not often enjoy her confessor, Paul, whom the Lord gave to her, because in the midst of so many troubles he is always far away.…
(Silence from Paul.)
ANGELA, reading. “But what learning and eloquence Paul has!”13 And he has an honorable and agreeable family for whom I came to care, especially his mother, doña Juana Dantesco.…I hope that beastly psychologist isn’t listening, God knows what she’d make of that! (Pause.) Ah, my darling Paul, I did all I could to protect you from Methuselah, our pet name for the nuncio Ormaneto, do you remember? (Normal voice.) Now that it’s behind us, I’m wondering whether the most egregious aspect of the affair might not be my passion for your mother, doña Juana. (Long silence, smile; collapses heavily back onto mattress, fondly shaking head from side to side.) I was as crazy about her as I was about you. (Warm smile.) Who wouldn’t be? Because I’ve seldom, or probably never, met her equal for talent and character. (Reads.) “She has a simplicity and openness that put me in seventh heaven,” I can’t repeat it too often; and “in these she greatly surpasses her son.”14 That was naughty! You’ll forgive me, Father, won’t you?
At this point Sylvia Leclercq feels compelled to tiptoe once more into the scene: Will Teresa’s free-associating cast any light on the (pretty indiscreet) pathology of that godly woman?
ANGELA, silly voice. It was very amusing, Eliseus my sweetheart, when you told me to open the grille and lift my veil for your mother; to show her my face, basically. Good grief, it seems you don’t know me! I would have opened my belly for her! For her first of all, her above all, who bore you in her womb! (Pause.) For her, sure, sooner than for the great Bernini who will make my marble entrails thrill to the cherub’s lance. (Smile.) The sculptor never suspected that the little angel was you…my baby, my lance, my javelin, stabbing me in the heart and beyond…deeper, lower, in the castle’s remotest chamber.…(Blissful smile.)
SYLVIA LECLERCQ. Poor thing, what a passion! Shoving the Word in up to her.…(For reasons of technique, the therapist is given to using crude language with certain patients. Today she holds back, flashing a half-mocking, half-complicit grin at La Madre, who doesn’t notice, immersed in her sensations.)
ANGELA. I was thinking, Joanes darling, I’d willingly give the habit to your sister doña Juana, who stayed here with your mother until the last day. And also to that little angel her sister Isabel, “who is as pretty and plump as can be.” Doña Juana very much resembles you.…(Pause.) I’d love to have her with me. By the way, which of us two loves you more, do you think? “Doña Juana has a husband and other children to love, and poor Laurencia has nothing else on earth but this padre.…”15 (Laughs out loud. Pause.) So, since I couldn’t give birth to you, or suckle you, all my care went into feeding you. Remember, Eliseus my soul, how often I nagged you to eat properly…(silly voice) to put some weight on, to make sure María de San José plied you with tasty dishes? Even if they were cooked by her, who I didn’t much like. I took huge pleasure in feeding your mother, as well as your angel of a little sister, Isabel, who is with us at present. “How plump she’s getting, and charming”;16 I love her almost as much as I love your mother, since I can’t love you more than I do already. (Knowing smile.) I give her ripe melon to eat, it’s the best I can do, since breastfeeding is not given to all—but shush, that psychoanalyst is still eavesdropping. (Smile fades.) My temperament is strange: the less notice you take of what I think, the freer I feel about expressing my desires and opinions. God bless you.…(Long silence, cheeks reddening.) Ah, it breaks my heart to hear that you are unwell, my father, my son.…A rash, it seems, doubtless due to the heat. That reminds me (tragic voice)…I must tell you about a temptation I had, which persists, concerning you. And I wonder whether you yourself do not neglect the whole truth at times. (Touching voice.) Do you think I’m jealous? Well, what if I am?
Perhaps La Madre is a normal woman after all. Though Sylvia Leclercq already thinks so, she’s somewhat taken aback by such goings-on beneath the rough woolen habit. Two hundred years before Diderot’s The Nun, a scandal in its day. But on closer inspection, is Teresa indulging in a carnal freedom forbidden by her religion, or is she, on the contrary, activating the interior (as La Madre would say) message of that religion? It’s an unconscious message as far as Sylvia is concerned, which acquits desire of guilt, provided the desire is for the father. Well then, let it be proclaimed, let it happen in words rather than deeds! And if matters should get so muddled that sin does ensue, the weight can still be lifted through the senses and in words, over and over again. Isn’t it more enjoyable that way? The jouissance of everything and nothing, from words to flesh and back again. Physical frustration heightens the power of fantasies, while fantasies sharpen sensation to the max. There’s no possession as satisfying as abstention. This could be the delights of masochism, or alternatively an inversion of sadism into an objectless exhilaration, in the omnipotence of narcissism; Sylvia Leclercq is not sure what to think anymore. She is disposed—almost—to admire, while concealing her Voltairean smile.
LAURENCIA. May God pardon the “butterflies.”…(Pause.) I am talking about our Carmelites in Seville, lucky enough to enjoy my Eliseus. It’s a great hardship for m
e. (Reads.) “I can’t help envying them, but it is a great joy for me that they are so diligently seeking to provide some relief for Paul, and so inconspicuously.”17 I like women, too, I won’t deny it. Oh, I understand, Eliseus my son, I even approve. Up to a point. God alone knows which point…
Sylvia is practically rubbing her hands. What a windfall! This deathbed is a positive psychotherapist’s couch.
ANGELA. Are you taking revenge on me, adored Pablo? (Sighs, reads.) The time left to you after my death—a long time, never fear—“will bring you to lose a little of your simplicity, which I certainly understand to be that of a saint.”18 (Humbly.) But be on your guard! The sisters are young, and the thought of you spending the summer in Seville is alarming. (Touching voice.) Needless to say you’ll be working against our enemies, like those Jesuits who are giving us a hard time. I used to call them “ravens,” to amuse you; and what about the “cats” and the “wolves”—the more malicious of our discalced brothers, hard to believe, but they exist, and they were after you; not to mention the “night owls,” those dismal calced nuns who can’t stop conspiring…and of course Methuselah, the apostolic nuncio…always the same ones…among so many others determined to scupper us! (Irritated chuckle.) I wrote to you extensively at the time on these urgent topics, in order to guide you, of course. And now, at the end of my allotted span, I only have two counsels for you. (Reads.) Primo, “One gains a great deal from being attached to the Society of Jesus”: a rule not to be forgotten. Secundo, “Believe that I understand woman’s nature better than you.” That’s a fact. The devil likes nothing better than to make a woman’s least whims appear attainable.19
(Silence from Father Gratian.)
LA MADRE. Why won’t you speak to me? (Pleading voice.) Say something? It pains me to remind you of the rumors that hurt me so greatly…and against which I defended you with all my might. It’s only natural, being your daughter and your mother at once.…No need to thank me…not that you are thanking me, for that matter. Anyhow, I washed the opprobrium off you with all the friendly solicitude of the wretched sinner I am.…(Pause.) At least I hope so, it’s not definite, the future is highly uncertain, and needless to say I’m more afraid for yours than for mine. (Threatening voice.) You engaged in carnal relations with the nuns…you spent the night in such-and-such a convent, you were spotted naked in another…oh, I know.…(Tragic voice.) Our enemies make the most of imagination, just to cause us harm.…Just to prevent my reforms.…(Hopeless voice, cough, nausea.) But please be careful all the same.
La Madre’s blood pressure shoots up, irrigates her brain. A final apoplexy? Teresita and Ana de San Bartolomé jump nervously to their feet. But the old lady has not done with score-settling on earth.
LA MADRE, in a menacing voice. How am I supposed to forget, here on my deathbed, how in…November 1576…I warned you against a strange woman who wanted you to visit her at home, with the excuse of a nervous illness.…(Pause.) I’m still convinced it wasn’t so much a case of melancholy as of meddling by the devil, because she was obviously possessed. He wanted to see if he could fool you in some way, now that he’d fooled her. (Normal voice.) So by no means go to her house! Remember what happened to Santa Marina, who lived disguised as a monk, and was accused of fathering a child! That would be the final straw.20 (Arms crossed on chest, strangled voice.) It’s no time for you to be undergoing such an ordeal. In my humble opinion, dear father, dear Eliseus…if my words are not enough to push you back onto the right path, think of the papal nuncio, Felipe Sega, the bishop of Piacenza.…(Voice cracks.) The most inveterate adversary of our reform, who does not bear you in his heart and would pounce on any scandal as grist for his mill, you know it.…(Long sigh.)
(Pure tears trickle from the dying woman’s closed eyes. There’s no spasm of weeping, her eyes are simply melting, exhausted by visualizing so many scenes of love and turning themselves away from such profanity.)
SYLVIA LECLERCQ, entering for the last time, she crosses the stage unseen by Teresita and Ana, praying on their knees beside the bed. La Madre is watering her garden. Maybe she’s the voluptuous type without realizing it, wrapped in that innocence tailor-made for transgression, sure to be forgiven by the Holy, Roman, and Apostolic Church. She takes her pleasures gently, I see, and gives herself down to the last drop, with just enough guilt to spark desire again and again, interminably.
LA MADRE. Lord, I cannot hope for better days than those I spent with my Paul. But for charity, mi padre, do not read out my letters in public.…(With distress.) Don’t you understand anything? I never wanted anyone to hear me when I spoke with God, I wanted to be with Him in solitude. Well, it’s the same thing with you, my dear Paul.
(Silence, prolonged silence from her Eliseus.)
LA MADRE. You’re in hiding, you don’t dare face the nuncio I advised you so strongly to visit.…(Suddenly anxious.) “My Paul is very foolish to have so many scruples,”21 if your reverence will permit me not to mince words for once. (Silly voice.) For the devil never sleeps, my baby! You, with all your ducking and weaving, your indecision about whether to attend Mass—your obsessional moods, as the Leclercq woman would say—have you, or have you not, been excommunicated by Sega? Oh, stop it! I’m fed up with hearing how depressed you are. (With sudden violence.) What would you have said if you’d had to live like Fr. John of the Cross? You are impassioned, agreed, but you could do with more tactfulness and insight. Although you rarely preach, according to you, watch what you say all the same. (Silly voice.) My son, my baby.…“He looks healthy and well fed.” 22 “Even a few hours without knowing about you seem to be a very long time.”23
(Still no sign from Gratian.)
LA MADRE. Right, you let me down when I need you most, and I pardon you for it, because we can only follow the path of perfection in hardship. (Another coughing fit.) Allow me, dear friend, to tell you one last time that I am sorry for your “mental fatigue.” As I once wrote you: “Learn to be your own master, avoid extremes, and profit from the experience of others [Sepa ser señor de sí para irse a la mano y escarmentar en cabeza ajena]. This is how you serve God, and try to see the need we all have for you to be in good health.”24 (Long sigh. Pause.) No, I haven’t forgotten what I owe you: you convinced me of Christ’s humanity, of which I was not exactly ignorant, but you enabled me to imitate Mary Magdalene for real. (Coughing, choking.) Women have a special capacity to love an eternal Spouse, a king-man, a man.…Not to die of love, but to suffer from it so as to do things better. I wrote in the account of my Life that nothing meant more to me than to attract souls to a higher blessing.25 That was too general, too abstract, I was being defensive, as the Leclercq woman would rightly say; I think I am about to embrace her logic. And so what? You turned me into a Mary Magdalene, Eliseus, and I found the power to attract, with you and beyond you, in order to serve that higher blessing.…(Dry eyes, long silence.)
(No sign from Gratian.)
LA MADRE. I know you’ll remain attached to the memory of me, that’s something, my Paul. I mean to say, Glory to God! (Reading, in sensitive, almost emotive tones.) “She told me all about her life, her mind, and her plans,” that’s what you’ll write about me, isn’t it? It was the first day we spent together, apart from Mass and mealtimes, of course; the first time we talked about ourselves. “I so submitted to her”—now, that’s laying it on a bit thick, Pablo my sweet—“that from then on I never undertook anything important without benefit of her counsel.” That’s true enough. (Smothered laugh, voice suddenly dreamy.) You are destined to write a great deal, in the future, and you will always pray for three hours a day, because you are a saintly man, in a way.…(Pause.) The Flaming Lamp, am I right? There’s a title little Seneca would have loved. It’s perhaps the book of yours that cleaves most closely to our doctrine.…That’s right, I said “our.” All of your writings evoke your own life, that’s only to be expected. Researchers will detect a faint trace of me in your mystical theology, your way of perfection…it’s not hard to fin
d.…After all, you were dead set on getting me canonized. Apparently that’s a sign of fidelity. (Broad smile.) I want to believe it, and so I will.…(Shaken by simultaneous coughing and laughing fits. Uncontrollable laughter. Tears. Long silence.)
(She is very cold, shivering in every fiber of her being.)
Take my hand, Father.…Just for a moment.…For friendship’s sake, I’m on my way to the Spouse, I’m in transit.…Hold my hand, in the name of Christ’s sacred humanity.…(Flat voice, almost cold.) No, what are you doing, I didn’t ask you to cut it off, just to hold it.…You make me laugh…no, of course I don’t feel any pain, not by this stage. You amuse me, you often did.…(Quick sigh.) You’re still chopping me up…you’re not listening…did you ever listen to me…who listens to anyone.…There’s another fine myth, this business of listening. One hears voices, sure enough, but from there to listening.…(Serious voice.) Stop it, really, you’re hurting me now, for the love of God…I suppose you want some relics out of me, what utter nonsense.…(Drawn-out groan, then talks at speed.) You found my body whole and uncorrupted…well, obviously, under that heap of limestone.…You conveyed it stealthily to Saint Joseph’s at Avila, you set it up as an object of devotion.…A great comfort to the dear little nuns.…My sisters placed the coffin in the chapter house, on a stretcher, with curtains that could be pulled aside for visitors to gawp, and afterward closed again.…Ah, that casket, lined in violet taffeta with silk and silver braids, the outside covered in black velvet with ornaments of gold and silk, gilded nails, locks, rings, and handles, and two escutcheons of gold and silver, bearing the symbol of the order and the name of Jesus, and on an embroidered cloth the words Mother Teresa of Jesus.…(Knowing smile.) I gave off a lovely fragrance…I should hope so, what with my four waters every day, and the flesh that becomes Word, or the other way around, goes without saying.…(Reading.) “The clothing smelled bad once removed from the body, and I had it burned. While it was on the body, it smelled sweet.” (Lips. Pause.)
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