Mariette in Ecstasy

by Ron Hansen

  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 gr
een 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.”

  “We are all special to God.”

  “Of course,” Mother Saint-Raphaël says. “And you need not educate me on the catechism.” She heels over to find her walking cane and heaves herself up to her feet just as Sister Anne faintly raps on the door and Père Marriott hurries in. Mariette rises with Sister Marguerite, and all half curtsy to him as Père Marriott heats his hands underneath his arms and smiles at each fawning woman.

  “Are we prepared, Reverend Mother?” he asks.

  “We are.”

  The old priest hitches a green wing chair around until it is just opposite Mariette, and he tentatively settles into it before tilting toward her and admitting, “I have so looked forward to this!”

  “Talking?” Mariette asks.

  “Certainly! I have become so curious!”

  She is embarrassed by his benevolence and grandfatherly interest, and she blushes as she smiles. She hears Mother Saint-Raphaël say, “She is expected for Sext,” but Père Marriott does not turn to the old prioress until a half-second after she’s gone. And then he faces Mariette again and gladly asks, “Shall we begin?”

  Mass of the Conversion of Saint Paul.

  Méridienne. Sisters Léocadie and Geneviève and Hermance and Claudine are huddling around Mariette and harrying her with talk as they wade through high snow in gutta-percha galoshes. Excitement makes their voices shrill.

  Mariette tries not hearing for the hour and she rests her seeing on the whiteness. Haystacks have softened into breasts. The horsetail grass is hooded. Everywhere they walk they are tearing holes in the snow.

  She finds the Host in the grieving gray skies overhead and then sees a boy in a green mackinaw coat surging through the high snow at the pasture fence fifty yards away. She sees him using both hands to wave at her when she turns away, and he is shouting phrases that a hard wind tears apart as she walks back to the priory. The sisters stand still for half a minute and then follow Mariette inside.

  Septuagesima Sunday.

  Méridienne. While Sister Marguerite shares hot barley tea with friends in the chapter room, Mariette sits at a library table in the scriptorium and concentrates on a great variety of holy relics that are arrayed before her like runes.

  “Just try,” Sister Hermance says.

  She sheepishly smiles and peers at a tooth. “Whose is this?”

  “Mine,” Sister Félicité says.

  “Whose tooth, I meant.”

  “Oh. Saint Valentine.”

  She judges it again and says, “I’m sorry, but it isn’t.”

  “But is it holy?”

  She regards Sister Félicité with regret. “It’s not even human.”

  “She might be wrong,” Sister Geneviève says, but Sister Félicité holds the tooth tightly inside her hand for a while and then hurries from the room.

  Mariette handles a torn inch of yellowed hem and flatly says, “I have no idea.”

  Sister Véronique hints, “Sainte Jeanne Françoise de Chantal.”

  Mariette shrugs and says in the higher song of French that she just doesn’t know.

  Sister Philomène shades that by saying, “Pêut-etre.” Perhaps. And Sister Véronique kisses the hem.

  Sister Marthe insists, “Touch mine.”

  Mariette hears the neediness in Sister Marthe’s voice and gets up from the library table. “Everything else is real.”

  Sister Pauline asks skeptically, “Are they truly?”

  “Yes,” she says. “I think so.”

  Sister Sabine is jubilant. “I have a portion of the true cross!”

  Mariette considers the milkmaid with sadness, but says, “Yes. You do.”

  Père Henri Marriott

  Our Lady of Sorrows Convent

  Arcadia, New York

  1 February 1907

  My dear Jerome,

  Your letter tries so hard to be kind, but behind it I fear I perceive your disdain for my wonderful news about our postulant. Even now I can hear you scoffing. Well, my friend, I too would be incredulous, but like Thomas I have beheld her hands and side and heard what she has said and I have faith in her now as one who may honestly say, Ego stigmata Domini Jesu in corpore meo porto.

  She was sitting at table with me just yesterday. She being in ecstasy. Experimentally, I put one of my breviaries in front of her and we recited the prayers alternately. Even though she has scant Latin, she read the lessons of the nocturns and answered the responsories and versicles with admirable exactness, turning over the pages regularly. She was quite insensible to the heat of a match when I held it close to her shining eyes. She was not shocked or pained when I tapped her flesh with a pin. And then, radiant and joyous, she came out of ecstasy. What a wonderful impression she made upon me! And how short that half-hour seemed! We mortals have such a great hunger for supernatural things.

  She shrinks from being touched, and from the most innocent caresses. Even her father has not been permitted to kiss her since she was thirteen. Does one say she’s neurotic, then, or is she simply chaste? I shall prefer the latter, for she is in all things humble, charming, loveable, full of fidelity and charity, truly one for whom it is her confessor’s duty merely to “dust off the wings.” And yet she is so natural that one would have a hard time differentiating her from any healthy young woman. To treat with her, to labor in helping her to worthily correspond to the blessed impulses of divine grace does not tax me, as so often happens, but rather gives me intense satisfaction. I have spoken to her for many hours on heavenly things without feeling the time pass. She seems to find some difficulty in replying to philosophical questions I have put to her; still what she says is so much to the point, so wise and full of unction that it is enchanting to listen to her. I heave a sigh now as I tell of her.

  Is this all a phantasy? Am I dealing with a holy young woman’s delusions? We know how susceptible the religious are. Even me! We are bored and dull and tired of each other, and we have such a yearning for some sign from God that this matters, that our prayers and good works are important to Him. Is she preying upon that? Is she trying to entertain?

  I have so many questions and I have too little science, but in my reading I have found that the heightened passi
ons of hysterics promote a general irascibility. Hence it happens that persons afflicted with this malaise often become insupportable to those who associate with them. Quite to the contrary, our M. is demure and calm beyond measure, quiet in company and tranquilly smiling. Evil spirits have been assailing her, or so she says, in a hundred horrible and threatening forms, but she neither dwells on them nor shows fanciful signs of fear. She is being praised abundantly by the sisters but is not puffed up, nor do suspicions and abuse disturb her. She is a perfect model of equanimity. And yet she is a challenge to our theology, psychology, medicine. God would have it so many times in our human history. He is never at variance with Himself, only with our meager understanding of Him.

  Well, I have given you much to think about, Jerome, and a great many reasons to write, so please be quick about it. You and your holy sister and mother have often been in my thoughts and are presented to Heaven in all my Masses, as I dare say I may have been in yours. How else to explain the benefices I have received of late? The book, as the saying goes, hangs fire, but I shall try to send you pages in a fortnight or so. And tell me more about your trip—the horrible ship’s food and the opera and Otto K. and our beloved Louvain. Was Clermont perchance there? I do hope so, and that you have further information about the pontiff. Europe is so far away.

  Pax Christi,

  Marriott

  Mass of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

  Hundreds of people have come for Sunday Mass and have put before the high altar horseshoe geraniums, hothouse flowers, a box of parboiled rabbits, green ferns in a Wardian case, a fancy-worked purple table scarf of Java canvas and silesia, a handmade Aeolian harp, ginger biscuits, huckleberry cake, Ottawa root beer, an old Shetland shawl, a blue ornamental hassock, and a harness dressed in glycerine and tallow.