Pilgrim (44 page)

He sat bolt upright in the straw of his stable-bed. His skin and shirt drenched with sweat, and his limbs trembled in the cold night air.

All he could think was:
there was fire and I ran and walked and had no sticks…

The next morning—Thursday, the 16th of July—Teresa awoke to find Manolo in her bedroom. It did not occur at once that something untoward might be about to happen. She had no fear of him.

“Teresa…”

His tongue was thick with sleep and with his disability. Her name came out as Manolo might have said
tierra
—
earth.

“Yes?”

“I need thee,” he said.

He was crouching on the floor in a spill of light from the window.

Teresa sat up, holding the edge of the sheet against her shoulder. “I am here,” she said. “What is it?”

Manolo’s new sticks rested in the crook of his left elbow. His right hand wavered near his face, as if he would touch himself but could not. There was nowhere, it seemed, he could make contact with himself. His nose eluded him—his mouth, his chin, his eyes were so far distant they might have been joined to a body other than his own. His ears were the closest he could come, and he held them—one and then the other—fiercely between his fingers. The impression given was that Manolo had caught a free-floating head in the air and brought it to a standstill.

Teresa had been schooled in the “needs” of men. It was a word she profoundly distrusted, knowing that man’s “needs” had more than likely killed her mother and been instrumental in bringing Tia Aña to her present disorientation. Nonetheless, as most women did of her class and kind, Teresa had no hatred of men, merely disdain. And pity. They were helpless creatures, caught in a circle of desire that began and ended with themselves—
me, my and mine
. Women knew only
thee
and
thine
. They were mothers, servants, cooks and nurses. One day, someone’s death—their own or another’s—would free them. That was the whole of a woman’s life. Waiting for one’s own or someone else’s death. And all the while, attending the living.

Now, this abused and damaged man crouched near her window. She had befriended and loved him. He might have been her child. A foundling. An orphan in
need of shelter—nothing more. But nothing less. He was dear to her. Beloved.

Manolo said: “thou hast created miracles, Teresa. Thou hast saved my life and brought my dog to me.” His words—perhaps because of his desperate need to speak them—found their right order.

“Perro. Yes,” said Teresa.

“Last night I dreamt another miracle and I believe thou canst make it also come true. Thou canst make me well,” Manolo said. And smiled. “I speak already well because of thee. Thou hast caused my sticks to be reborn. Thou hast fed and clothed and sheltered me.”

Teresa nodded. “Yes,” she said. “And with love, Manolo.”

“Take thou my curse,” he said. “Destroy it. Thee and thy God. Make me as I was in my dream.”

Teresa closed her eyes.
Oh, please,
she thought.
Do not do this. There can be no miracles.

Manolo moved forward. On his knees—a supplicant.

“I cannot,” said Teresa. “You must not expect it. It is wrong.”

“To be upright is wrong?”

“Oh, no! No, no, no. Oh, no. To be upright is to be given…” She was going to say
dignity
, but decided not to. “I cannot,” she said. “You must understand. I cannot.”

“But thee found me and saved me.”

“No, Manolo. You were delivered to me by the horseman who had harmed you. I was merely there.”

“Thee brought Perro.”

“No, again. Perro came. It was his own doing.”

“But thee and thy God. Thee spoke with Him.”

“Perhaps. But I am incapable of more than prayer.”

I am not a saint.

Teresa knew that a saint does not think in terms of miracles, only of the needs of others. It is the supplicant who seeks to bridge the gap between earth and heaven in order to survive some human disaster—the loss of one’s sight, the death of one’s child, the prevention of slaughter. The saint’s only means of intercession is to indicate the path to salvation. The rest is up to God.

All this, Teresa knew. She also did not wish to be a saint. She wanted only to know His Majesty and to do His work—whatever that work might be.

She had already suffered so many times from the collapse of her nervous system that she stood in awe of her own resilience. She could not resist the question as to why she had survived. Her interpretation of this was simple:
something must be wanted of me. Not expected
—
but wanted.

Was that something—or part of that something—the gift of Manolo’s ability to walk and to use his arms like any other human being? She doubted it.

Not that Manolo’s needs were insignificant or that he was in any way unworthy. No one is insignificant when it comes to the indignity of pain. And no one is unworthy. Teresa knew and believed all this. But…

Was she to be the medium? Was this to be her destiny? A destiny even Jesus Christ Himself had
rejected. Every one of His miracles had been couched in His own reluctance to effect it.
The miracle is not in me but in the supplicant’s belief that God makes all things possible.

She looked at Manolo.

There he crouched in the early sunlight, his hair newly washed and gleaming, his fingers knotted against their escape into meaningless gestures, his prized white shirt—a gift from Doña Aña—stained already with the perspiration of his earnestness and his eyes like embers about to burst into flame. It was unbearable to think of his anguish and to witness its effect on him.

All at once, he drew himself on his knees to her bedside. He looked like a child who knelt at prayer.

“Bless thou me,” he said, “for I would walk as other men. As I walked in the night as I dreamt.”

But only the anointed may bless. And women are never anointed. Except, of course, the Blessed Virgin—and today, Teresa all at once remembered, was the saint’s day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
She
could have performed the laying on of hands—but not Teresa.

“I cannot,” she said to Manolo, “for I have not the grace.”

“Then why did thou come to me from nowhere? I found thee praying in a tree.”

“I cannot say. I do not know.”

Teresa was frightened. She was being cast in a role she had never sought to play and had never understood except in the most rudimentary way. She knew
that she could nurture, clothe and to some degree protect Manolo, but she could not make him whole.

“Dost thou not love me?” he asked.

And how does one answer that?

“Yes,” she said. “You are my friend in the wilderness.”

“What is wilderness?” Manolo asked.

“It is nowhere—I suppose—and everywhere,” Teresa answered.

“Thee do not know?”

“It is everywhere,” she said decisively.

Manolo looked at her with a mixture of disappointment and chagrin. “In my dream, there were priests and crosses, the Christ Child and angels. It was a sign. But thou wilt not bring thy God to me. Thou wilt not bring me to thy God,” he said. “I hate thee.”

Teresa sat frozen, wrapped in her nightgown and sheets. She looked away from Manolo. She felt endangered. Something was going to happen.

“I do not feel well,” she said—but she spoke so quietly Manolo did not hear her.

“Do you think you could find my aunt,” she said aloud, “and bring her to me?”

A fire had begun to burn at the base of her skull. There was noise in her brain.

“Please,” she said.

“I cannot bring thy aunt,” Manolo told her. “I cannot walk.”

He turned and began to crawl away to the other side of the room.

“You must. I am ill,” Teresa pleaded.

“
Thou must, I am ill!
Did I not say these words to thee?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes. But there was nothing I could do. There is nothing I can do for you. I am unable!”

She burst into tears. The noise in her brain grew harsher. It was a shrieking noise as of someone sawing wood, the wood like a living person screeching in terror.

“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” she shouted. “
D
ON’T
!”

Manolo sat down beside his crutches.

“I can do nothing,” he said. “I cannot walk. Thou hast left me so.”

It started. The bed began to shake. Teresa drew a corner of the sheet into her mouth and fell back.

People came running. A maidservant. A cousin. A stableboy who had heard the shouting from beyond the window—and, at last, Doña Aña.

She moved to the bed. The others were afraid, being unfamiliar with Teresa’s seizures. Doña Aña went to the servant-girl and slapped her in the face.

“Come! At once!”

The girl crept over to the far side of the bed and did as she was told.

“We must hold her arms,” Doña Aña said. “We must keep her from harming herself.”

This was done.

“Gently, gently,” Doña Aña cautioned. “Gently, gently…”

Slowly, the thrashing in the bed wound down
towards stillness, and as Manolo watched from his place in the corner, he recognized the mirror image of his own incompetence.

When it was truly over and Teresa lay against the pillows with her aunt holding her hand, Manolo thought:
her God comes to still her, but I am left forever as I am.

And yet, he loved her still—though he would never say so again.

In the months remaining of summer and the early days of autumn, Teresa still rode out to La Sierra de Gredos and sat beside Las Aguas while Picaro stood in the shade of the stunted oak and cork trees behind her. The yellowed pelicans, the ducks and the weasels still appeared, but the doe with her fawns, the heron and the kingfisher came no more. Nor did Manolo. He had led his flock to the farthest reaches of
la tierra dorada
and the golden land with its crippled shepherd was soon to be consigned entirely to memory.

Teresa would never see them again. In her dreams, however, a naked man on crutches would stand beneath the branches where she prayed and he would ask her if she knew the way to God.

Beside him, a dusty golden dog looked up and slowly wagged its tail. It had a merry look in its eye, and a look, somehow, of knowing.
People do not sit in trees, but angels do and creatures from another place than this.

As for the way to God, Teresa wrote in her book one day:
God can happen only when you give up being God.

Manolo had taught her that, all unknowing and to
his sorrow. But it was true. There can be no miracles until the gift of simplicity has been acknowledged and become a way of life.

As always, the doves made their circles in the sky. As always, the cicadas sang. As always, Teresa waited for God to happen—but it seemed that He was waiting, too.

Two years later, at the age of twenty, a young woman appeared at the gates of the Convent of Carmelite nuns in Avila and offered herself as a postulant. This was in 1535. In her lifetime, she would change the face of her religion. And just one hundred years after her birth, Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada would be sanctified as the medium of miracles.

9

Emma fed the book back into the drawer and turned the key.

A moving and disturbing episode had ended in Pilgrim’s chronicles and she could not yet bring herself to digest more. Perhaps this would be a good day to take some air and get some exercise. Doctor Walter, her physician would be pleased. He had recently criticized her for not being more active.

“It encourages circulation,” he had told her. “It strengthens the constitution. Too much sitting is bad for the back, and when the time comes, you will be glad if you have taken these precautions.”

Emma knew all this and was somewhat dismayed that Doctor Walter had thought he needed to bring such things to her attention. It was not as if she had never given birth before.

She pocketed the key and went to the kitchen, where she told Frau Emmenthal that she was going to go for a stroll and might be some time.

She put on a light spring coat and a hat, and taking a walking stick, she strode down the garden path towards the lake, where she intended to walk on the beach.

I will look for round stones
, she thought,
and think about Teresa of Avila.

Ten minutes later, having found a large round stone that perfectly fitted into the palm of her hand, she stood and stared across the water to the other side.

I should like to be out there,
she thought
. I should like to be riding on the lake.

She looked to one side towards the town. There was the ferry dock and far beyond it, the ferry itself, returning from Zürich.

Emma fished her watch from the pocket where it rested and saw that, if she hurried, she could be on time to board the ferry before it made its three o’clock departure for the city.

Once on deck and standing near the railing, she began to feel thoroughly rejuvenated. There was a forest-scented breeze and several noisy gulls were floating above the wake of the ferry in the hopes that passengers would throw them bits of bread and rolls from the
café-bar on board. Children often did this, but Emma was not inclined. She wanted just to stand and watch the water, dreaming of Manolo and what might have become of him if a miracle had occurred and he had gained the proper use of his limbs. The phrase,
he was only a shepherd,
kept returning in her mind and she wondered why. Did it matter that he was only a shepherd?
Of course not
. And yet…

She would ask Carl Gustav about this reaction—and whether or not it necessarily meant her sense of compassion was qualified. She hoped not—but it worried her. She had once heard her father say a most unfortunate thing to her mother when they were out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon in Schaffhausen. It was in the spring of the year in which Emma turned ten. 1892. How long ago that seemed.

An elderly man with a long white beard had fallen in the street and no one had helped him up. Emma’s mother had made a gesture as though she would go to his aid, but Emma’s father had pulled her back and said:
pay no attention. It is only an old Jew.