Now the flame returns, henceforth to remain on stage. Teresa is back at the Incarnation, alone, this time in her prioress’s chair. She converses with John’s spirit; there is no longer any bodily evidence of him.
TERESA, in an anxious voice. They’ll reproach me, I’m sure, for not mentioning him enough in my writings. His body was not at all attractive. Unlike his eyes. And his mind. It’s true Fr. Antonio de Jesús takes up more space in my Foundations, and God knows he was no genius, nor an hombre in the strong sense, well, I know my meaning. Brother John practically forced us to overlook him, such was his urge to self-annihilation.…(Pause.) He nearly caught us out that way.…I wouldn’t let him…I went all the way to our good Philip II, to rescue him from the mitigated lot…and succeeded, thanks be to God. (Pause.) There’s nobody like him for making me feel obscurely unworthy and infinitely guilty.…(Pathetic voice.) Under the steady gaze of his burning eyes, I stop being a crystal, I become once more that black pitch I’ve never ceased to be, as I know better than anyone, with or without the Lord’s voice, between ourselves. (The dying woman, appeased, has recovered the critical lucidity that is the hallmark of her writings. Casts circular glances around her.)
TERESITA, mothering her beloved aunt. Don’t beat yourself up so on your deathbed, Auntie: after all, the asceticism of John of the Cross was hardly yours, while you lived.…
TERESA, exhaling. Never fear, darling, I can look after myself, and even John got the sharp end of my tongue when he deserved it. I must say…(coughing) over and above the obliviousness to his person that he more or less deliberately instilled in us…(eyes looking right, pause) the great purifier aroused in me a dash of, what’s the word, impatience. (Eyes looking left, pause. She is no longer uttering a word, but knows her little niece can read her thoughts and only wishes to do her some good.) Oh, it was just a game between us, he wasn’t fooled…a piece of mock cruelty, don’t get me wrong.…(Circular glances, sighs.) Just for a laugh at his expense, and at mine too, of course. I’d found the sweet key to revenge, you see! (Looks at her fixedly for a while.) When in distress…and to shake up any who wallow in it just to show off…there’s nothing more effective than to be happy. (Pause.) And to laugh. Do you think that’s easy? (Pause.) But not everyone has the knack.…Try it and see. It’s enough to disarm the Inquisition itself. Even the “chief angel,” as I used to call him in my letters to Gratian, you know, the grand inquisitor…that’s right, Gaspar de Quiroga, bishop of Cuenca, archbishop of Toledo, well, even he came around to my reforms. As I was saying.…One of his nieces became a Carmelite.…But to bend such a model of perfection as dear Seneca, that’s a whole other matter.…It can be done.…Well, we’d better wait and see (Wry smile.). Death himself may get nothing for his pains, I’ll let you know from the Beyond once I have passed over.…(Stops smiling.). Does it seem to be taking a long time, little one? I think so too. How am I supposed to be afraid of the Reaper, as the wicked call him, when he is what I desire? One stage in my long desire for the Other…hardly anything…I’m nearly there.…(Deep sigh.)
The din made by the alguaciles can still be heard.
ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ, upset at her inability to make La Madre’s last moments quiet and peaceful. What a hellish racket!
TERESA, gaily. Wrong, my girl, it’s not the alguaciles but the commotion stirred up by the Vejamen, that some will call my Satirical Critique! (Smiling.) You know, that mock-colloquium, remember? That parody of a homage rendered to me by Julián de Ávila, Francisco de Salcedo, my brother Lorenzo, and John of the Cross himself, in the parlor at Saint Joseph’s, before a rapt audience of sisters.…(Broadening grin.) We’re going to have more fun before I take my final leave, come along, cheer up.…(Mock-serious expression.) Bishop Álvaro de Mendoza had requested them to send me their thoughts upon that edifying instruction I received from the Lord one day of grace in prayer: “Seek yourself in Me.” (Stops smiling.) The gentlemen’s muddled remarks were positively comic: it still tickles me to think of their precious colloquium and my own barbs in response! (Smiling again; the faithful nurses can’t hear the words, and can only imagine what’s passing through her mind.) Good Lord, I had no idea at the time—five years ago, it must be—that one’s dying agonies could also be a sort of satirical critique. Yes, indeed, a teasing yet gracious exchange with others very similar to my progress toward God, as you’d confirm, my daughters, would you not?…I’m much obliged. (Normal voice, fast.) Who mentioned Hell? Not I. Nor Heaven, of course, not even Purgatory, it’s nothing but a vejamen, believe me. (Coughing, tears.) Because I don’t know who I am, but I know that in seeking myself in the Other within me, I am a double self. I should add that those are Montaigne’s terms, the expression of a writer who is younger than me and not precisely on my side, as will soon be a matter of public record. “And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people.”51 Yet that man is not so far from me, I assure you.…Will anyone have the insight to notice?…Too bad…I am double, I say, and uncertain, endlessly seeking myself; but not shy or distraught, and with good reason! Because the Me in which the Lord invites me to seek myself (“Seek yourself in Me”), the Lord’s Me, the Other Me, is nothing less than recollected deep inside of me, for God’s sake!
Teresa is wearing her teasing smile again. Her attendants read it as ecstasy, as though La Madre were practically knocking on Heaven’s door.
TERESA, waving her arms. So I loosed a volley of grapeshot in the direction of those fine, chin-stroking gentlemen, though leavened needless to say by my customary pinch of amused affection. (Wrinkled nose.) It was aimed at John of the Cross first and foremost, since the dear friar had contributed the longest commentary of all, as befits a highbrow scholar from Salamanca. (Lips.) What’s more he was addressing me, a poor unlettered woman, the way the Jesuits always do, with such haughty condescension…such.…Oh, you know. (Lips again.) Between strict paternalists and patronizing persecutors, no contest! I’ve never hesitated for a moment, do you hear me, girls? (Wavering voice.) A tenderly strict paternalist is indispensable, and will be needed for a long time to come, mark my words. (Does this please or frighten her? Looks up and straight ahead.)
The dying nun continues to argue in her head with John. He is the only one at her side during these final instants before the Other.
TERESA, reading, fast. Why seek God as if we were dead, or when we are dead, my little Seneca? And why do you do no more than seek, unremittingly, wearing yourself out with it? While always claiming that there’s nothing more to question? Why, let’s rejoice, now that the Word has been revealed! The Sulamitess was good at bliss, even though she was always chasing after her elusive Spouse.…In the union I obtained by means of prayer, God’s grace bestowed on the soul means that the soul has found Him, once and for all. (Deep breath. Open palms stretched upward.) His actual presence actually inhabits me inside…since how long ago? As long as I’m alive I seek, but I seek inside me, because I’ve already found Him. I’ve said yes to the Other in me, and His Voice knows it. He is in me, I am Him, I am she who says yes. A woman called Molly Bloom will do likewise, more drolly. Did Joyce, a Catholic Irishman, think of me when he set that scene in the Spanish landscape of Gibraltar? (Pause. Stares at the flame. Closes eyes. Brief rest.)
TERESA, with a beaming smile, reading. “Yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”52 (Smiling more brightly still.) No, that’s not me, Father, it’s all right, just a vision that resembles me. I can see the future now…having got this far, why not.…Do you consider me excessively carnal? Others have done. A bishop even wrote to me about it, but which one? I haven’t a clue, I get them mixed up, all those dour, po-faced prelates. (Pause.) “God deliver
me from people so spiritual that they want to turn everything into perfect contemplation, no matter what.”53 I have always felt the greatest envy of you, I’ve told you so: le tengo una envidia grandísima.54 Good father, good brother John, you should expect irreverence from me.…(Wrinkled nose.)…for I already spoke of you in my Dwelling Places.
(No sign from John. La Madre’s gaze alone outlines and enlarges her friend’s portrait.)
TERESA. Yes, it’s not just deer and butterflies, you are present too.…(Reading.) That man I was speaking of, who was “so desirous of serving His Majesty at his own cost, without these great delights, and so anxious to suffer that he complained to our Lord because He bestowed the favours on him.” And had it lain in his power, that is, in your power, my little Seneca, had you been graced with the enjoyment of His favours, you would have declined them!55 (Lips.) Goodness me! I wouldn’t! I am talking about the delights God gives us to taste in contemplation, not about the visions themselves—you’re entitled to despise those, and I myself am doubtful about them. But the contemplation that emerges out of suffering to overwhelm us with graces! Why deny ourselves the sweet fruits of spiritual marriage? I know, you’ve told me often enough, that the dark night for you is “deprivation of the soul’s taste or appetite for things”; “llamamos aquí noche a la privación del gusto en el apetito de todas las cosas.”56 Nevertheless, dear John, to not expand is to shrink. And where love is true, it “cannot possibly be content with remaining always the same.”57 (Pause.)
TERESA, startled and fearful. Shall I tell you? It was manifested to me, with “a knowledge admirable and clear” how the sacred Humanity of Christ “was taken into the bosom of the Father.”58 Divinity…extraordinary glory.…(Trembling voice. Lips.)…And that’s not all. Since we are concerned with the Holy Trinity, do you think I’ve forgotten the Blessed Virgin, in other words, the woman I am? Not at all. Listen: “The Lord placed Himself in my arms as in the painting of the fifth agony.”59 You see? And stop looking at me with those vacant eyes. Christ is held in the Father’s bosom, the Virgin’s arms, and mine.…Same thing.…Don’t worry, these are merely intellectual visions, the only sort you allow. But they’re so vivid that they resemble imaginative ones.…(Pause.)…I’m going too far, aren’t I? I’m being too greedy again? (Throws herself backward as if to picture John more clearly.)
When the body speaks, seeing images is unavoidable, dear John, but I do not really perceive them with the eyes of the body, in fact they are no more than intellectual visions.…In a way, yes, there’s such a thing as “sensation freed from the trammel of the senses.”60 Those aren’t my words, they belong to Marcel Proust, do you know that writer? An expert in accursed races, men, women, and in-betweens, in hawthorn and rose windows and felt time.…Of course I can tell from here, I’m a visionary, don’t look at me like that, my great Seneca…you understand perfectly well.…“My imagination, which was my only means of enjoying beauty.”61…Those words could have been written by me, too bad, Marcel will do it for me. Better than anyone. And that’s why the imagination is “the organ that serves the eternal,” do you follow us, the two of us, that eternal young man and myself?…Deep down you agree with us, Father, but you concur in your own erudite, demanding way.…(Normal voice.) Does that make you feel better?…It’s true, I am very spiritual also. (Pause. Hint of a smile.)
(Close-up on John’s portrait.)
TERESA. I’d have had to master mathematics in order to please you, and yet, I can’t help it, poor little me pleased His Majesty himself from time to time. I’m a pretentious woman and I repent of it. Not your style, I know. (Closes eyes and reopens them.) You see, Father, I don’t let go of you all the same, I love you more than you think, for look, even on my deathbed I am prolonging our so-called colloquium, the vejamen—remember? (Normal voice.) I cannot do otherwise, having this radiant Other at the core of me while you are constantly scurrying after it, poor little wounded deer, unhappy, racked priest whom I love with all my heart. (Long silence.) I understand, mind you: you’re nothing but a wretched man, which when all is said and done is even more frustrating than being a wretched woman. The truth is you’ll never be the Other’s Bride, whereas I am confident that I am. That’s how it is, get used to it. (Lips.) I enjoyed having that place, acquired since my prayer over the Song of Songs, and I’m not budging from it, hardened sinner that I am. But thank you kindly for having so clearly explained to me, in the course of your fraternal contribution to the vejamen, matters I hadn’t asked you about! (Teasing voice.) You disparage the understanding, and yet you wouldn’t stop commenting every sentence, interminably, where I, lowly creature, did nothing but feel.…Forgive me, Father, I don’t need convincing, as you know, that you alone are perfection. Me, I’m nothing but a trifler, I own. The Lord will judge; I’m on my way there now. (Listening expression.)
(Long silence.)
TERESA. You say that David assures us…of what? That the death of the just man is precious in God’s eyes.…Speak about yourself, Seneca my dear, I’m a mere woman, and a hard-hearted one at that.…Is it really in my power to tear the fabric of mortal life, as you put it so well? Perhaps.…But only in the Seventh Dwelling Places.…Run away, you say? No, I feel that I’m closing in on the jewel, la joya, within.
JOHN OF THE CROSS’S VOICE, with the face of an El Greco Christ. Solus soli.
TERESA, vehemently again. Quite so, I was about to say. “For it is not knowing much, but realizing and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul.”62 It may be that I am closer to these words of Loyola’s than you are, my friend. Ignatius does not refer to prayer, as we know, even if his spiritual graces are not so very different from your “substantial words of the soul,” are they?63 And he is warier of the devil than I am, I agree. But.…(Broken voice, silence.) but when he has a vision of the Blessed Trinity “in the form of a lyre or harp,” amid uncontainable tears and sighs, and when.…64 (Pause.) When Jesus appears to him in “white,” in His humanity as I see it, and again when He dazzles him like a sun…and leaves him nothing but the relish for the interior loquela, the uninterrupted voice.…(Her breathing and pulse accelerate.)…Well, I feel for it, it moves my soul, wounded with love, that seeks solitude with the help of the Holy Spirit.…65
JOHN OF THE CROSS’S VOICE, still with his El Greco face. Solus soli. There is nothing nuptial in Ignatius Loyola!
TERESA, with a broad grin. Fortunately not! Man or woman, alone with the One and Only…what else do you think marriage is, my great Seneca!
(The flame turns bright red as La Madre’s innocent laugh rings out.)
TERESA, suddenly anxious. I smell burning, daughters, can you smell it? Is it me that’s on fire? That wouldn’t be surprising since His Majesty threatened me with Hell once before, but it was a stinking tube, a space without space where to be was impossible. A place that John of the Cross alone—who else—managed to survive and escape from. He must be a saint, that Seneca, as the hole where the mitigated friars locked him up was so infernal that it was a miracle he got out alive. A miracle, I tell you! (Still excitable.) Oh no, it’s not me that’s on fire! I do not consume myself, I can’t compete with John on that score, God bless him. It smells of charred paper; are they maybe burning my letters to the papal nuncio, the dreaded Nicolás Ormaneto? Or those I wrote to Pius V? To the Carmelite principal, Ángel de Salazar? To the nuns at the Convent of the Incarnation? How many thousands of letters and notes have I written…a collection not everyone regards as a treasure trove, naturally, plenty of people would sooner destroy it. How well I remember.…(Pause. Wide smile.) I who have a short memory.…(Smile wider still, with an edge of sarcasm.) It was the Dominican priest Diego de Yanguas, a reader of superior capacities, who when he heard that I had written down my meditations upon the Song of Songs commanded me to torch them on the spot, and of course I hastened to obey. (Pause. Hides face behind crossed hands.) What a silly I was…never suspecting what fearful dangers lurk inside that book for a woman.…(Uncove
rs face. Sighs, smiles.) But what’s this I see? (Worldly.) No, not you, my dear John! (Long pause. Stops smiling.)…So you’re playing the wafer trick on me again? Terminally, this time? I didn’t expect that, hats off, I’m impressed! I should have known it was too much to ask; you couldn’t fail to burn them. All my letters, up in smoke? Incredible. So driven to abolish yourself that you divest yourself of everything, even of me, especially of me.…We are so like and so unlike, aren’t we; day and night. Day is afraid of night. Night is indifferent to day.…And yet they are indissociable, one cannot be without the other.…
(The flame licks into the cell, two shadows move over the white wall: Brother John and a companion, who is holding a small bag.)
COMPANION. Look, Brother John, I have just found this taleguilla whose contents might interest you.
JOHN OF THE CROSS, absorbed in being perfect. Interest me?
COMPANION. I said “might.” This bag contains the letters of the late Mother Teresa of Avila, may she rest in peace.
JOHN OF THE CROSS, turning slowly but decisively to toss the bag into the fire. Burn them!
(After uttering the above words in dispassionate tones, “Little Seneca” glides serenely into the furnace invading the cell. From there we hear JOHN OF THE CROSS’S VOICE reciting.)
“Without a place and with a place
to rest—living darkly with no ray
of light—I burn my self away.”66
(John’s companion murmurs the words after him and follows his master into the furnace. The recitation can still be heard.)
JOHN OF THE CROSS’S VOICE. “In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything,
Desire to have pleasure in nothing.”67
(Pause.)
Teresa, My Love Page 64
