Mariette in Ecstasy (12 page)

Evening and an azure light just above the horizon.

Horse and rider just seen on the road.

Sister Geneviève hunches forward in the choir, a book open on her knees, and Sisters Philomène, Pauline, and Hermance huddle around her, joining in saying “pray for us” as she goes through the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary: “Mother most pure, pray for us. Mother most chaste, pray for us. Mother inviolate, pray for us. Mother undefiled, pray for us. Mother most amiable, pray for us. Mother most admirable, pray for us. Mother of good counsel, pray for us—”

Hooves knocking the rough wooden planks of a bridge.

Mariette genuflects upon going into the oratory and gets onto Saint-Pierre’s prie-dieu so she can kneel apart from the four novices. She sees Sister Hermance compassionately stare and she tightly shuts her eyes. She prays for an acquittal. She prays for a simple exchange.

Horse gloss and high black boots. Woods and old crackling tawny leaves sloshing away from shoed hooves. Trees as snug as fencing and here and there a sketch of an English greatcoat, a starched white shirt cuff, a hand in firm grip on the reins.

Second Sunday of Advent.

Sister Aimée walks onto the red Persian carpet at Prime and tells the sisters that Reverend Mother Céline is still sick, that she’s in great pain, that she’s lost fifteen pounds or more, that she may, in fact, have cancer. And the whole priory responds as if the infirmarian has blandly announced a murder. Sister Félicité faints. Throughout Mass and Mixt there are handsigns about the illness. Worry harries the sisters in their work and haunts their prayers at Terce and Sext, and at dinner six or more nuns tremulously weep as Sister Monique goes up in the pulpit with
The Rule of Saint Augustine
in order to have them hear again: “‘Let your superior show herself an example to all in good deeds; she is to reprimand those who neglect their work, to give courage to those who are disheartened, to support the weak and to be patient with everyone. She should herself observe the norms of the community and so lead others to respect them too. And let her strive to be loved by you rather than to be feared, although both love and respect are necessary.’”

Mass of Saint Lucy, Virgin, Martyr.

Horsetails of gray smoke rise from the candles at Vespers. The December sun goes down in a blood-red light as it slants upwards through the high, stained windows.

At the half-minute pause following the fifth psalm, Mariette hears soft winds outside, hushing like the skirts of a girl rushing up the stairs. She hears Sister Catherine hissing to herself, “
Jesu. Mon Seigneur Jesu. Cher Jesu
.”

And then she flinches and looks down at her hands. She tries to rub the hot sting from one palm with her thumb but the hurt persists like hate inked on a page. Eventually the sisters rise and slowly pass by Mariette as she sits there for a half hour more, hoarding the pain. She hears something skittering along a joist. She hears the red lanterns on the high altar sigh as flames trickily consume them. And then she hears Sister Emmanuelle hesitantly settle beside her and whisper, “Are you praying for our prioress?”

She looks up and simply says, “Yes,” and the seamstress pats her approvingly on the wrist.

Third Sunday of Advent.

Mariette twists scissors through heavy black paper in order to snip out a silhouette of Wise Men and a manger that she pastes onto a folded white card. High above the manger, she pastes one of Sister Hermance’s gold stars, and then she writes inside, “
Joyeux Noël, Papa!
” She pauses and thinks, but no further phrases come, and so she puts the card as it is inside an envelope.

Mass of Saint Lazarus, Disciple.

Twenty minutes into Mixt, Mother Saint-Raphaël opens the great door to the dining hall and grins as she announces, “She has gotten better.”

And Mother Céline is abruptly there in her habit and veil, the skull beneath her skin plainly visible, getting support from Sister Aimée as she walks falteringly to her place. Sisters rise up to kiss her cheek and hands or just to cheer and applaud her, and the prioress briefly smiles. She seems twice her age as she greets the sisters with a half wave and then hesitantly sits.

Sister Saint-Léon’s gray eyes shine with tears of joy as she kneels next to Mother Céline and asks, “Oh, are you truly improved?”

“Yes,” she says. “Christ be praised.”

Ember Day. Mass of Saint Liberatus, Martyr.

In her dream Mariette is pregnant and her great breasts ache with milk, but she holds the infant Christ to them and he smiles as he feeds on her. And then she hears a dish crash to the floor and she thinks he was in a toddler’s chair and she was a girl in a housedress but she doesn’t know why the dish crashed and she worries and she wakes. She listens, but all is silence.

Twenty minutes before the second rising, Sister Philomène gets up from her kneeler in the oratory and goes down the hallway toward the house of the externs to wake up Sister Claudine. She softly passes the prioress’s suite before she notices the door ajar and that she can just see a hand on the floor. She pushes inside and finds Mother Céline fallen there. The prioress tiredly smiles up at the novice and says, “Please, help me.”

Mariette is still in her nightgown and her chocolate-brown hair is wild as she gets a black habit from her great pine armoire. Her cell is so cold with December that she can see her breath in the air. She hears two taps on her door and opens it.

Sister Philomène is standing there. She gives the handsigns,
Come, prioress
. And Mariette sees that Sister Philomène’s hands are red with blood.

Everyone in the priory is permitted five minutes with Mother Céline in the heated infirmary, but some of the professed nuns have tarried for half an hour or more, so Mariette is forced to go in with Sisters Hermance, Geneviève, Léocadie, and Pauline when the last visitation is held just before Compline. She finds the prioress sitting up in a gray habit and black shawl, in an Adirondack chair hauled in from the yard. Commercial papers are shuffled up under her folded hands, and on a side table are Dr. Baptiste’s prescriptions of Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters and Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, a flavored medicine for teething babies that he knows is basically morphine. In accordance with the rules and customs of the order, a plain wood coffin has been hastily carpentered by Sister Marie-Madeleine and then put on sawhorses in the room to inspire contemplation and a Christian acceptance of death. Mother Céline sleepily rambles so she won’t have to hear Sister Geneviève’s praise or witness Sisters Hermance and Pauline weeping freely at her feet.

Mariette jealously looks at the novices as Annie tells them that Sister Antoinette reports she’ll be shipping communion wines to upstate parishes by April. She tells them the priory is a major beneficiary of a Catholic woman’s estate. She says she hopes Mother Saint-Raphaël will agree to be their prioress again, she is so good at paperwork. She says she’s impatient for God to take her, she thinks it’s like having all the glorious smells of a Christmas feast but having the tastes withheld. And then the chimes ring for Compline and the prioress holds up her hand for the blessing, “
Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini
.”

And Mariette shuts her eyes as she hears the chorus, “
Qui fecit coelum et terram
.”

Mass of Saint Ischyrion, Martyr.

Fourth Sunday of Advent.

Exhausted, Mother Céline pushes away a dish of half-eaten food on her tray and tilts back against four pillows on her palliasse as she faintly smiles at Mariette. She says, “I have a memory of you when you were five and I was just making my profession. You and Papa visited me here and he was called away, I think, and you and I tried to pass the hour in a children’s game you made up. You told me I was a princess and had been put inside a jail that was just four walls and a locked door. And I was to try and get out. ‘I’ll scream for help,’ I said, ‘and a handsome prince will save me.’ And you said, ‘There’s no one around to hear you.’ ‘Well then,’ I said, ‘I’ll kick at the door until it breaks.’ But you said, ‘The door’s made of iron and you can pound and pound but it won’t be hurt.’ ‘I’ll look on the floor and find a key,’ I said, and you said I could indeed do that, but the key wouldn’t fit the lock. And I said, ‘You’re making this so
difficult
, Mariette.’ You asked if I really and truly wanted to get out, and I told you that I did. And then you said, ‘The jail has no ceiling. And you have wings. And you fly.’”

Christmas Eve.

Stillness. And then first rising.

Mariette is naked. Moonlight glints along a short passage of tangled wire that is as intricate as a signature, that is taut enough to ingrain itself in the skin underneath her breasts. One upper thigh is blackly streaked with blood that is seeping from the rabbit wire that is tied just below her sex.

She sits on the palliasse and loosens the persecutions. She uses a handkerchief to paint away the blood and the pink tracks along her skin. She stows the wires beneath her straw palliasse and gets into her habit.

She goes out in the hallway as Sisters Marthe and Saint-Estèphe are heading toward the washroom. She puzzles over something she sees and hurries her steps.

Sister Pauline holds her hands to her face, and farther down the hallway, Sisters Honoré and Saint-Stanislas are standing at the infirmary door, dully staring inside the room as Père Marriott sidesteps by them in a cassock and purple stole.

Mariette hesitates.

The sisters part so she can pass into the room, but Mariette halts and turns and scurries back to her cell.

Sister Agnès, Sister Anne, and Sister Emmanuelle silently work on Mother Céline. Hands pursue other hands in slipping the nightgown up over her yawing head, sleeking her skin and hair with vinegar and perfume of bergamot, dressing her in a clean gray habit and black veil and winter cape. She is raised up and carried aside one step and nestled into the pinewood coffin. Sister Agnès pretties some skewed pleats and folds and then the sisters bow deeply and walk out with their hands in prayer at their chins.

Late morning.

Six tall candles flank the pinewood coffin as the former prioress lies feet-first before the high altar and just inside the oratory. Hothouse flowers from Ithaca have been tucked inside her folded arms.

Sisters Catherine and Zélie are hurriedly cloaking the church in black cretonne.

Six village women are slumped here and there in pews, whispering their rosaries for the Annette Baptiste they knew and the prioress they saw on great feasts.

Workmen have chopped a hole in the hard earth with picks and spades and now stand in the church’s apse with their hats in their hands.

Dr. Baptiste goes up to the oaken grille and hangs on it with all his fingers for a half hour or more.

I
T HAS PLEASED
G
OD TO CALL TO
H
IMSELF OUR DEAR

 

REVEREND MOTHER CÉLINE

 

WHO DIED IN THE SERVICE OF THE
B
LESSED
V
IRGIN
M
ARY

 

ON
D
ECEMBER
24, 1906,

 

IN THE PRIORY OF
O
UR
L
ADY OF
S
ORROWS

 

IN THE
37
TH YEAR OF HER AGE

 

AND THE
15
TH OF HER RELIGIOUS PROFESSION
.

 

At the hour of Christ’s death on the cross, the oak doors of the oratory are opened and the great bell tolls as the Sisters of the Crucifixion proceed inside, their faces hidden behind sheer black veils.

Wearing a hooded black cope over his vestments, Père Marriott haltingly walks from the sacristy with a book in his hands, genuflects to Christ in the tabernacle, and blesses the whole priory of sisters behind the grille. He then reads: “‘Come to our sister’s assistance, you saints of God. Come forth to meet her, you angels of the Lord; receive her soul and offer it in the sight of the most High.’”

Mother Saint-Raphaël stands at the head of the coffin and settles her hands upon it. “May Christ who has called you, Sister Céline, now receive His handmaid, and may all the angels lead you to Abraham’s bosom.”

The Sisters of the Crucifixion respond, “Receive her soul and offer it in the sight of the Most High.”

Mother Saint-Raphaël retreats from the coffin as the six externs approach it in half-steps. “Eternal rest grant to our sister, O Lord.”

“And let perpetual light shine upon her.”

After the Requiem Mass and just before sundown, the former prioress is taken past the old printery and the green ice of the marsh to the Order’s cemetery. Hard sleet hisses against the trees. The eastern skies are as black as charred wood.

Dr. Baptiste and a handful of villagers trudge up a hillside behind the sisters and kneel with them as Père Marriott completes the interment prayers and blesses the pinewood coffin with holy water. Half the priory is openly weeping and half are staring wonderingly at Mariette as she kneels and prays as if in a trance.

Mother Saint-Raphaël hands Sister Aimée the book of rituals and the infirmarian tonelessly reads, “‘Grant, O Lord, we beseech You, that while we lament the departure from this life of our sister, we may recall that we shall all follow her one day. Give us grace to prepare for that final hour with a devout and holy life, and teach us to watch and pray that when Your summons comes we may go forth to meet our bridegroom and enter with Him into life everlasting.”

And then, as four workmen spade hardened earth onto the box, Mother Saint-Raphaël heads a solemn procession back to the oratory for Vespers and the chant of the psalms.

And there is Christmas Mass at midnight. And going to the haustus room for ginger cookies and sham champagne, and giving Sister Philomène an English lip salve Mariette has made from sweet oil and the attar of roses. And Mother Saint-Raphaël gives Mariette a sympathy card with an inscription from the Beatitudes: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” And then all go to their cells.

Henri Marriott seeks a kind of sustenance in prayer and kneels for an hour on the hard cold penance of the sacristy floor. And when he gets up, he peers through the grille and sees Mariette in the night of the oratory, intently staring at the crucifix above the high altar, her hands spread wide as if she were nailed just as Christ was. He puts on his biretta and overcoat and half genuflects with difficulty and goes back to the priest’s house.

Blood scribbles down her wrists and ankles and scrawls like red handwriting on the floor.