Mariette in Ecstasy

by Ron Hansen

  High up on a stark jut of wasted hickory, a hoot owl turns its head completely around and persecutes the night with its stare.

  Church windows and song. Matins. Lauds. And then footsteps.

  Silence.

  Wingsoar and a soft thud in the garden, and then a frantic writhing that the whacking wings carry away.

  A hawkmoth touches down on the tension of still water, turns on a soft breeze, and unsticks itself. The moonsweep is sliced with ripples.

  Seeing herself in a nighted window, a sister holds back her gray hair, then holds her hands tight at her cheeks. She is horrified. She withdraws.

  Water drips onto pink brick in the garth.

  White skirt, black sandals, castanets.

  Written on a rafter is: “They mortify their bodies with abstinence.” And on the one just after it: “May they renew and strengthen their souls by good actions.”

  Electric blue just before sunrise and two white points of light high overhead. The planet Jupiter. The planet Venus.

  Guernsey cows trudge toward the milking barn in the English green of timothy grass.

  Prime. Warblers, finches, orioles, sparrows, peewees, juncos, robins, blue jays.

  Mass of Saint Joachim, Confessor, Husband of

  Saint Anne and Father of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

  Mixt. Sisters are eating in the Great Silence.

  The mistress of novices halts in front of Mariette, whose head is down in prayer. She bluntly raps the wide plank table with the head of her cane and the postulant looks up with surprise. Mother Saint-Raphaël gives her the handsigns, Terce, you, chapter room, and Mariette smiles in agreement as she tractably sips her barley tea.

  And she is sitting in afflicted repose on a green tapestried footstool while Mother Saint-Raphaël worriedly scowls at Mariette’s high school essay about her yearning for a religious life. “We teach a plain style of writing,” the mistress of novices says, and shuts the pages inside a manila folder and tosses it onto the floor beside her.

  “I hope I haven’t displeased you, Mother.”

  She smiles. “You haven’t yet, but you will. With your mistress it is inevitable.” Mother Saint-Raphaël sits in a soft Empire chair slightly above the girl and gently touches her white hands together as she says, “I am the former mother superior here.”

  “I know.”

  She smiles again. “Of course.” She tilts her cane against the wall and tells Mariette, “I have arthritis that acts up sometimes.”

  “How horrible!”

  Mother Saint-Raphaël contemplates the postulant for some time before saying she was in Belgium with their mother general when Mariette first interviewed with the prioress, so she’ll now say what she would have then. Which is: “We are here to learn and to love.” The mistress of novices stares at her, and goes on, “Your sisters here chose religious life for many different reasons. Some have a natural disposition for it. Some have had a crisis or trial that made the Divinity profoundly real to them and since then have had an overpowering need for daily communion with God. Still others have felt themselves famished and bereft until an accidental experience with our shared affection and prayers unexpectedly revived in them the possibility of joy. Every reason inspired by God is a good one for joining us here.”

  The girl is following her with flashing eyes and the go-ahead grin of a teacher urging some foolish drudge to try out a faulty idea. Mother Saint-Raphaël asks, “Shall I guess what your own reasons were, Mariette?”

  She smiles but doesn’t say.

  “You grew up with high ambitions in a village where too many girls married young and got pregnant often and aged gruesomely and, after hard use, died. And you thought you were extraordinary. You thought, quite rightly, that it was God who had made you so talented and smart and pretty and ever so much better than the girls who hated you, who never invited you to stay overnight or try on clothes or talk inanities about true love. So you kept to your room and wrote affected poetry and read the books your teachers talked about when you strolled with them in the schoolyard, and you thanked God for your loneliness and intellect, you even thanked Him for your dissatisfactions. You were distressed by attentions and misunderstandings. You were approached by boys and were only baffled. You heard praise and you thought, Is that truly me? Everyone talked grandly about your future but when you thought of it, as you constantly did, you were just as constantly filled with anguish. And, against your will, you began thinking of the sisters here in their priory, of their aloneness and silence and higher purpose, and soon it seemed the religious life, with all its penance and hardships and imperfections, was freedom for you, and the holy life you’d been seeking all along.” She pauses and stares at the postulant, and she asks, “Have my own petty and selfish reasons partly touched yours, Mariette?”

  She hints at no irony as she tactfully says, “You have discovered and honored me.”

  Mother Saint-Raphaël smiles. “Well put,” she says, and stands up. She parts the curtains and peers outside at sunshine and the unpainted weatherboarding of the milking barn. “Oh, proud I was, and swelled up with willfulness and self-praise, until God grew irritated with my haughtiness and I heard Christ’s words in the gospel of John, saying, ‘You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.’”

  “I have always liked that part,” Mariette says.

  Mother Saint-Raphaël turns. She pauses until she sees that the girl has heard and understood. “Do not lose your fervor, Mariette. Do not grow bored and dull and disinclined to pray. Do not become again the haughty girl you were, but the holy nun that God wants you to be.”

  “I shall.”

  Mother Saint-Raphaël walks to the chapter room door and opens it. Five novices are dallying in the hallway, but quickly tidy themselves when the mistress stares. She says to Mariette, “Sister Saint-Denis is expecting you upstairs in the classroom by the scriptorium. You’ll be having religion there at this hour until you take vows.”

  “What are the seven deadly sins?”

  “Excessive pride, anger, covetousness, lust, gluttony, laziness, envy.”

  “What are the seven healing virtues?”

  “Humility, meekness, liberality, chastity, temperance, diligence, sisterly love.”

  “What are the seven spiritual works of mercy?”

  “Correcting sinners, comforting the afflicted, counseling the troubled, forgiving offenses, teaching the ignorant, suffering all wrongs patiently, praying for the living and the dead.”

  “What are the seven joys of Our Lady?”

  “The Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of Our Lord, the Adoration of the Magi, the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple, the Apparition of the Risen Christ to His Mother, and the Assumption and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin in Heaven.”

  “What are the seven charisms?”

  “Evangelism, eloquence, healing, prophecy, wisdom, contentment with poverty, true discernment of evil spirits.”

  “What are the seven sins against the Holy Spirit?”

  “There are only six. Despair of salvation, presumption of God’s mercy, impugning the Christian faith, hard obstinacy in sin, impenitence at death, and jealously over our sister’s blessings and increase in holiness.”

  “Excellent, Mariette.”

  Mass of Saint Hyacinth, Confessor.

  Work. Mariette kneels on ginger-brown earth as she plants winter seeds in a hot-weather garden that Sister Saint-Luc has harrowed and Sister Saint-Pierre has grooved with a stick. Brussels sprouts, kale, and savory cabbage. Sister Hermance is just behind her with a tin watering can. Sister Saint-Luc sings the hymn “Immaculate Mary” and the sisters join her.

  Hot breezes slide through the bluejoint grass. Sister Sabine is walking behind a horse-pulled thresher in the barley field. When Sister Hermance pours, she sees the water puddle like hot cocoa, but soon it is just a faint stain in the earth. Killdeer kite down and d
ally above Mariette, as if suddenly interested. Turtledoves watch from the telephone wire. And Sister Hermance thinks, We will have a bounty. Everything she touches will grow. Dirt puts itself in her hands.

  Mass of Saint Agapitus, Martyr.

  At collation Sister Pauline is in the high pulpit, continuing their reading from the Revelations of Divine Love: “‘We can ask reverently of our lover whatever we will. For by nature our will wants God, and the good will of God wants us. We shall never cease wanting and longing until we possess him in fullness and joy. Then we shall have no further wants.’”

  While she reads, Sister Saint-Michel, who is being punished for handsigning in choir, goes up to the professed sisters with a handleless teacup and gives the signs, Please, food. Everyone denies her except for Sisters Monique and Saint-Estèphe, who sullenly turn teaspoons of onion soup into the penitent’s cup, and Mother Saint-Raphaël, who tears off a piece of hot bread. Sister Saint-Michel then curtsies to the prioress and crawls underneath a table to eat. She seems to be near tears.

  And so Mariette is surprised at recreation when Sister Saint-Michel plays badminton in the yard with Sisters Zélie, Aimée, and Saint-Estèphe, jumping and shrieking joyously as she tries to hit a high, fluttering shuttlecock.

  Mass of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, Widow.

  Ever since one particular extern joined them—God be praised, she is gone now, she makes jellies, she is married to a trapper—Sister Saint-Léon has been humbly required to teach table etiquette to all those who would imitate Our Lady in decorum and délicatesse. Even to ones as perfectly refined as the postulant. She therefore sits Mariette at a collation place setting while pointing out how offensive it is to feast beside or across from a sister whose hands and nails seem not to have been cleaned since birth, who imparts a general stickiness to everything she touches, whose wholesome food shows itself again and again as she changes it by chewing. Mariette is to seat herself quietly, without heaves and sighs and jostling. She is not to tuck her napkin under her chin, nor use it for unseemly purposes that have nothing at all to do with the fastidious dabbing of the cheeks and lips. She is not to put her knife in her mouth, nor pour coffee or tea in her saucer rather than drinking it from the proper utensil. She is not to reach over another sister for flavorings and butter, nor bumptiously stand up to grab something not near at hand. They are not pigs at a trough here, Sister Saint-Léon says. She is to hold her face at least four inches from her food. And if there are fish bones or cherry pits or foreign things that ought not be swallowed, she is not to spit them obstreperously onto her plate, but softly allow them back onto her spoon and subtly deposit them just beside her servings. And henceforth, Mother General has declared, sucking and smacking noises will not be tolerated. Such politesse, Sister Saint-Léon says, can be quite readily acquired, with a firm purpose of amendment, and is really not as difficult as it sounds; it may indeed already be natural to the postulant.

  And if not, Mariette says, I shall practice in secret.

  Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

  Wide milk cows are tearing up green shocks of grass in the pasture. Each chews earnestly, like a slow machine, until the roots disappear in her mouth and she goes back to the grass again.

  Hothouse flowers on a sill in a jar. The green shafts seem to break at the water line and get milkier while angling down. Sister Honoré plucks some pink dahlia petals whose withering edges are tanning with age.

  Sister Ange is throned upright on stacked pillows and stares outside from an infirmary bed that Sister Marie-Madeleine has slanted up with wood blocks. She worries over the pleasure she takes in viewing the yard, but she thinks it is like a prayer, seeing so many of God’s favors and blessings on their priory. She sees Sister Véronique sitting in an Adirondack chair in the shade, sternly peering over half-glasses as she sketches pigeons on the dark green lawn. Externs stand in the yellow wheat as an eastern wind crawls over it. Torn clouds are in slow gait to the south, like a straggle of gray and white house dogs hobbling to their beds. Sister Ange smiles while remembering her childhood, and Comtesse, Galette, Bibi, and Richelieu.

  Mass of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, and of

  Saint Sabina, Martyr.

  Père Marriott honors Saint Sabina’s martyrdom just before the Epistle and Sister Sabine flushes pink, and just after giving her Holy Communion, the priest rests his hand on the milkmaid’s head and murmurs, “Bon anniversaire.” At the noontime meal Sister Sabine is invited to sit next to the mistress of novices, and she beams as her sister externs present her with husking gloves in honor of her saint, but then blushes hotly when Mother Saint-Raphaël asks her to tell them about Saint Sabina, and only slightly rises to announce, “She was persecuted by Herod.”

  “Emperor Hadrian,” Mother Saint-Raphaël says.

  “Excuse me, Mother. Yes.”

  Mother Saint-Raphaël asks, “Was she a virgin?”

  Sister Sabine seems dismayed.

  “She was not,” Mother Saint-Raphaël says. She turns to the sisters. “She was martyred in Rome in the second century. And she may have been with child.”

  “Oh dear,” Sister Monique says.

  Sister Sabine says desperately, “She’s told me often in prayer that I do her proud.”

  Mother Saint-Raphaël smiles and pats her hand.

  Alkali water and powdered sodium carbonate are slopped across the kitchen flooring, and a scullery brush that’s hard as a horse comb scrubs lard and grease and hard clear stains from the dark brown planks.

  Sister Zélie is on all fours with the new postulant when she notices that the harsh ripsaw noise of Mariette’s own hard scouring has ceased. She looks to her left and sees the shut-eyed girl kneeling upright on her fingertips and softly praying into the room’s emptiness. Sister Zélie watches until Mariette pauses and raises her knees to release her hands and goes back to her work again.

  Sister Saint-Léon walks in with dishes and an iron saucepan of knives and walks out again. The extern knocks the floor with the wooden handle of her scrub brush and Mariette looks up. Sister Zélie signs, Why, under, knees, hands?

  So, not, sin, against, purity.

  You, always, pray, so?

  The pretty girl hesitates and shows her agreement. Since, was, child.

  Sister Zélie signs, Easy, purity, here. She grins. Too tired.

  September. Mass of Saint Serapia, Virgin, Martyr.

  The skies haze with heat and Mariette and Sister Marie-Madeleine are backing along a green hayfield, snagging down the high grass with dull scythes. Sweat rises on their hands like pinheads. A hide of chaff and dust finds the wetness in their habits. And in the turbulence of hot and brutal effort, Sister Marie-Madeleine huffs and shrieks like a mother in labor pains. And then Sister Marie-Madeleine turns and puts down her scythe as if she’s just been called. Mariette stalls in her work and watches as Sister Marie-Madeleine hurries to Mother Céline, half an acre away. She jealously sees them talk, and then sees Sister Marie-Madeleine shroud her face in her hands. She keens and jerks with sobs. Mother Céline holds the nun in her arms and Mariette looks away.

  Within a few minutes, Sister Marie-Madeleine is beside Mariette in the green hayfield again.

  “Your father?” Mariette asks, and immediately hates her thoughtlessness and childish curiosity.

  Sister Marie-Madeleine says, “She recited to me from the psalms. ‘Although they go forth weeping, carrying the seed to be sown, they shall come back rejoicing, carrying their sheaves.’” And then Sister Marie-Madeleine goes back to work, attacking the high grass with her scythe.

  Compline. Sister Emmanuelle retreats a half-step in her stall so she can peer behind Sister Antoinette and discreetly adore the new postulant in her simple night-black habit and scarf. She’s as soft and kind as silk. She’s as pretty as affection. Even now, so soon, she prays the psalms distinctly, as if the habit of silence has taught her to cherish speech. And she seems so shrewd, so pure, so prescient. Sister Emmanuelle thinks, Sh
e is who I was meant to be.

  And then the sisters turn and walk out in silence, and Sister Emmanuelle thrills as she hesitates just enough so that Mariette passes by. And then she quickly presses her left hand into the postulant’s. Mariette walks ahead and hides her surprise as she secretly glimpses her hand and the gift of Sister Emmanuelle’s starched cambric handkerchief with its six-winged seraphim holding a plumed letter M gorgeously stitched into it in hours of needlepoint. She gives the seamstress an assessing glance and then Sister Emmanuelle flushes pink as the girl shyly smiles.

  Mass of the Most Holy Name of Mary.

  Sisters Marthe, Sabine, Saint-Michel, and Claudine stoop among high green cornstalks in husking gloves, adroitly twisting and yanking the sweet-corn ears and tossing them against a tin bangboard on a horse-pulled wagon. Sister Marthe yells out, “Here’s one the size of a cubit!” And then there’s no sound but that of cornstalks rustling against human movement, and the squeak and tear and tin noise of the harvest.

  Mass of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

  Evening recreation. Sisters Anne, Virginie, and Marie-Madeleine stand waist-deep in brittle blond cattails by the pond, solemnly watching their bamboo fishing poles and the stick floats that bob and twirl on the stinking water. Henri Marriott walks up and speaks French to Sister Monique. She raises a tin bucket and the old priest stares inside, asking, “Comment appelez-vous ces poissons en anglaise?”

  “Lunkers,” says Sister Marie-Madeleine, and the sisters titter.

  14 September 1906

  Dear Père Marriott,

  I have so much to tell you of Christ’s kindnesses and promises to me, but before reading further I plead to you: Do not believe anything I say. Writing you gives me such consolation, but as I begin to put words on paper a great fear overwhelms me. I have such fantastic and foreign things to report that it seems highly likely that I have dreamed them. I shall say it frankly here that my head is a bit strange, for I have seen and heard impossible things, and whenever before has Christ appeared to souls as sinful as mine?