Mariette in Ecstasy (16 page)

And she is astonished to see that in spite of the darkness and the earliness of the hour, thirty people or more have been patiently waiting outside the church, and six press forward to hand her charlotte russe in a copper mold and jars of sweetmeats and preserves.

“Oh, you are too kind!” Sister Catherine says.

And a Czech woman asks, “Is she there?”

An hour later, at Holy Communion, Père Marriott holds a gold ciborium in his hand as he goes down the three steps from the high altar to the great oaken grille, where Sister Catherine unfastens the half door above the oratory Communion rail. Each sister stands prayerfully with folded hands and floor-lowered eyes until her turn has come, and then she kneels to receive Christ in the Host. And as the prioress and professed sisters are replaced at the rail by the externs and novices and Mariette kneels for Holy Communion, Père Marriott hears the shoe noise of people in the church behind him hurrying up the side aisles or shifting positions in their pews in order to catch a fresh glimpse of the famous postulant. And she cries with shame as she receives the Host, then stands and hides her face in her bandaged hands.

Mass of Saint Baldwin, Martyr.

Sister Philomène hurries down to the visitation parlor next to the prioress’s suite but halts her stride just outside the door and humbly enters. Elderly Sister Catherine is sitting there on the forward few inches of a tapestried Empire chair and hissing the rosary prayers in half-whispered French.

“
Benedicite
,” Sister Philomène says.

“
Dominus
.”

Sister Catherine holds out her ear as Sister Philomène tries, “
Je suis après toi, je pense
.” I am after you, I think. And then Sister Marguerite is behind her. “
Soeur Catherine?
”

She smiles. “
Maintenant?
” Now?

Sister Philomène helps her up and ineptly walks her to the prioress’s suite. And when the door is closed, Sister Philomène hears Père Marriott saying, “
Nous parlerons enfrançais s’il vous plaît
.” We’ll speak in French if you like.

“
Anglais serait pénible pour moi
.” English would be hard for me.

Sister Philomène holds her hands tight to her ears as she waits her turn in the hallway.

Mass of Saint Hyginus, Pope, Martyr.

Mariette is in the scriptorium at the twelve-person library table, hurriedly sketching on the blank sides of a hundred used papers. She no sooner finishes a sketch than she hates it and hits it aside and with great fury tries another. Her hands are pink and raw with household work. Where just a few days ago there were blood-red holes she could hide a penny in, there are now only faint and tender healings and soon these, too, will go away.

Sister Pauline has been assigned the task of observing the postulant, but she is too uneasy for reading and too cold just sitting there, so she gets up and stares down into the garden through the pitted and frosted windowpanes. She sees Sister Honoré in a tattered black coat and head shawl and mittens, slowly traveling the shoveled sidewalks as she says the rosary to herself. Each prayer grayly feathering from her mouth.

Sister Pauline turns and sashays toward Mariette. She lifts up one sketch and another and she then looks at twenty other sketches littering the great table and floor. Each drawing, she thinks at first, is exactly the same: just two intensely sad and masculine ink-black eyes set underneath a hint of ink-black brows. Looking more carefully, though, she recognizes slight differences and intricate changes in emphasis. Sincerity in one shades into harsh judgment in another, just as sympathy gives way to trouble or affection or a kind of innerness that may be understanding. And then she is aware of Mariette’s awareness and she sees in Mariette’s eyes what she’s seen in the sketches. Tears.

Feast of the Holy Family.

Sunday, just after Sext, Mariette is told she’s to go to the visitation parlor and she does so.

Dr. Baptiste is there in his sea otter automobile coat, his hands in his suit pants pockets, staring out at six crows in the churchyard gleaning Sister Anne’s squander of popcorn.

She says nothing as she stands a few feet from the grille, but gradually he senses her presence and turns and stares for half a minute. “I heard,” he says.

“We aren’t supposed to have our parents here now.”

“Mother Saint-Raphaël sent a note.”

“She shouldn’t make exceptions.”

Dr. Baptiste smiles. “You are
exceptionnelle
.”

“Are you in good health, Papa?”

Shrugging, he sits down on a green tapestried chair and gives his ruddy cheek to his left fist. She can smell Murad cigarette tobacco floating from his black suit coat. She can see the shine of brilliantine on his great mustache. “
Your
health is the question, Mariette.”

“Please don’t think about it.”

“Just let me look at your hands.”

She hides them behind her back.

“Are they bleeding still?”

She dully shakes her head.

“Are they healed?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, let me see how that is done.”

“No, Papa.”

“Examining them won’t hurt.”

“Christ has forbidden them to science.”

Her father frowns with irritation at Mariette and says, “You are talking idiotically.”

“I have said what I have to say,” she says. “We love you, Papa.” And she goes.

Mass of Saint Anthony of Egypt, Abbot.

Sisters Claudine, Saint-Luc, Saint-Michel, and Zélie hood themselves in shawls and tightly button riding coats over their cardigan sweaters and then go out through the horse pasture with fishing poles and tackle until they can mince onto the green mirror of ice on the river.

Every now and then sisters pause in the eastward hallway to thrillingly watch the fisherwomen hunkering on the ice. And every now and then they hear a yell of joy as a line is hauled up and a waggling green perch is held so the others can praise it.

Sext is prayed outdoors and dinner is skipped. And only when snowflakes as big as postage stamps begin fluttering down at nightfall do the sisters trudge indoors with their catch and heave twelve fish up on the scullery table. “We all think you’re very brave,” Sister Véronique says, and Sister Saint-Luc grins redly as she holds her hands to a stove.

And Mariette stares with fascination as Sister Dominique heedlessly hammers her cleaver down, chopping the fish heads from their bodies, and the perch stay alive for a little while, their gills still seeking what they’re used to, their mouths slowly opening and closing as if trying to say what they’re seeing.

She was always below me in choir, and she knelt with her attention fixed the whole time on Christ in the tabernacle, quite insensible to all other things but that. We’d have Mass or the Hours and there would be sisters who were so moved by her devotion that they would ask to be remembered in prayer. She did not seem to see or hear them. Often I undertook to reply, assuring them that I would communicate their requests to Mariette. And I would
.

With Mariette I feel a sense of quiet. Merely seeing her in meditation makes me recollected and patient, and it gives me great consolation and strength, and I do not feel so much the heavy weight of my cares. What an account we here must all give to God if we do not appreciate the gift He has given us in sending this angelic girl to our house!

She thinks she’s better than us you can tell. She’s always putting on airs and being so high and mighty, especially with us Externs. Sr. Anne says that’s against the Rules! She’s lied about a hundred things, not just this. She gets up close to windows at night so she can admire her pretty self like in mirrors. And I smelt perfume on her too. You ask me about her and I’ll tell you plenty
.

You cannot look her in the face for she seems a seraph; when you have observed this holy postulant for a while, you are humbled by her purity and faith. She prefers to be alone now, and is more silent, more serious than heretofore, but she still takes part in her kitchen and housekeeping work as of old. At prayer she appears to be perpetually in ecstasy. If you saw her as I do, you too would be moved to tears. Would that we all could hear the voice and see the visions that have been bestowed on that darling child!

I shall never believe in these fantasies and I have commanded her in prayer to shun whatever extraordinary manifestations hinder her progress in the ordinary way of devout life. We have had entirely too much mysticism here and too little mortification
.

Of Mariette I can only say that the most wonderful phenomena are continually happening to her as has happened only to our hallowed saints in the past. In her I seem to behold someone not of this world. Oh, what a happiness to have had such a blessed woman amongst us! I, for one, can affirm that the whole time Mariette has been here, never once has the tiniest trouble arisen in the sisterhood on her account, nor did I ever notice any defect in her, I say no defect, not even the smallest
.

Mass of Saint Agnes, Virgin, Martyr.

Waking from a troubled sleep, she turns to her side on her palliasse and is surprised that her door is open. She hears nothing in the Great Silence and then she hears hitched breathing. Everything is shaded and hidden and black. And yet she knows there are four there. She can feel herself being seen and changed and imagined.

She prays as she sees the gray blanket being tugged away, but she is too frightened to so much as lift her head. She tries to still her hammering heart; she tries not to breathe. And then she’s fiercely pressed down to the palliasse and miseried by hands. Even her mouth is covered. She can’t scream or wrestle from the harsh kisses and pressures and hate and insistence. Hands haul her nightgown as high as her thighs and hoist it underneath her haunches. She prays as her knees are held wide. Horrible pictures are put in her head.

Everything stops at that point. Abruptly. Eventually she opens her eyes. She is alone in the room and the door is closed. Silence is the only presence.

She thinks,
You were dreaming
.

And then she thinks,
No. I was not
.

Mass of Saint Raymond of Pennafort, Confessor.

She helps Sister Catherine after Mixt, washing the green marble of the high altar with a milk of powdered chalk and pumice and common soda, then tenderly drying it as if it were Christ’s body. And she is reverently laying out a fresh altar cloth of steam-ironed nainsook and Alençon lace when Sister Catherine hesitantly touches her wrist and Mariette turns to see Sister Félicité giving the handsigns
You, go, talk, priest
. Mariette genuflects and follows Sister Félicité into the oratory and out to the hallway and the prioress’s suite.

Sister Marguerite is hunched over a stack of fine writing paper at Mother Superior’s desk and exactingly filling a green fountain pen from a jar of India ink. And Mother Saint-Raphaël is seriously presiding from the pink velvet sofa and staring at the postulant in an assaying way, with a tray of the sister’s testimonies under her ivory hands.

“
Benedicite
,” Mariette says, and curtsies.

“
Dominus
,” the prioress says. She graciously indicates a wide plush chair, and Mariette sits as she’s been taught, just on the front, her back as vertical as a bookend, facing a tall window of twelve shining panes that shimmer the high wall outside and the fruit trees glazed with ice.

“You know why you’re here, Mariette?”

“Yes, Reverend Mother.”

“Sister Marguerite is just writing down what we say. She’s under pain of serious sin not to repeat what she hears. You should try to remember that whatever you say is for others and you may need to further clarify what is to us only too clear.”

“Yes, Reverend Mother.”

Half a minute passes, and Mother Saint-Raphaël explains, “We are waiting for Père Marriott.” She watches as Sister Marguerite uses tongs to clatter four chunks of coal into the heater. She watches her shut the iron door and dotingly sit again. She squints mistrustfully at Mariette as she asks, “Don’t you frankly find it a tremendous surprise that Christ would choose
you
of all people for these ecstasies?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“I have been a terrible sinner.”

Mother Saint-Raphaël stares at Mariette as if she has become an intricate sentence no one can understand. “Saint Philip Neri commenced his interview of a presumed ecstatic by asking just that question. She got very angry and grandly told the priest why she was in such great favor with God. Saint Philip promptly halted the interview, knowing that the woman’s pride showed that she wasn’t special at all.”