The Matriarch Matrix

by Maxime Trencavel

  Jean-Paul’s hand shakes as he holds this medallion. During his studies at Saint-Cyr, he took courses in ancient archeology and in the proto-Indo-European languages, both in preparation for military service in the Middle East. He once aspired to be part of the teams assigned to protect ancient monuments, temples, and national museums. Holding this object in his hands, he has realized his wildest hopes and dreams. Authentic Proto-Greek writing, the bridging language between Modern Greek and the first speakers of PIE.

  One side has a schematic of the Cygnus constellation with the tail star highlighted. Two humanoid figures stand adjacent, one nearly twice the height of the other. He tries to translate the Proto-Greek writing. “Beware the giants of the star.” The good Sister verifies that is what her grandfather told her as well.

  The other side shows what looks like a long rectangular object with a woman touching it. In her hands are two halves of an apple, and at her feet is a large worm. While he fumbles with the translation of the Proto-Greek symbols, the good Sister recalls her grandfather saying it was, “She hears the voice of God,” which pleased her to no end, as it is a woman who hears the Lord.

  Magali says she wears the replica as a good omen for her passage to becoming a Catholic Sister. As she is an only child, her father was agonizingly disappointed she chose this as her path, since he would have no grandsons to pass the medallion on to. She asks the good Brother how old he thinks this might be. She drops her coffee mug as he says Proto-Greek dates back to 4,000 to 5,000 BCE. He then smiles and jokes that, between a Catholic priest and a sister, they can say BC, before Christ. She loves his joke, his humor, as she lightly touches his hand holding her medallion.

  Magali puts her hand around his, folding his fingers over the medallion. Sensing the warmth of his hand, she wants this moment to go on forever. She says with big dilated eyes that, as she will not have children, given her lifelong commitment to the Lord, she would ask he keeps the medallion for now so that he might find out what it means. She slowly gets up, as she is expected at the medical tent to begin the morning vaccinations. She smiles at her good Brother and says she expects him to return the medallion after he finds out the hidden story, and expects him to return in person. Then she winks and leaves.

  Brother Jean-Paul starts his day a little later than he expected, but nonetheless eminently pleased at why he is delayed. As he leads the team in rebuilding a permanent communal kitchen structure, he cannot help imagining what this medallion was trying to say. Who are these giants? A woman hearing the voice of the Lord, several thousands of years before the prophets of the Old Testament. He has never been so intrigued by anything in his life to date. Maybe this is why the Lord sent him the dream of his mother citing Matthew. So he could bring this message to light the world.

  At lunch, he takes a break. He almost had his head lobbed off twice by beams as he daydreamed about giants and the voice of the Lord. He needs to take a walk. As he reaches a nearby clearing, he sees the volunteers and villagers getting ready to play a game of football. He recognizes one of the volunteers from his church, Antonio. His warm-up routine looks highly atypical for a footballer. It looks much more like a fighter’s movements and stretches. In fact, a couple of players are doing the same. And then he spies two sparring. He has never seen this form of martial arts. After the game finishes, he approaches Antonio from his church, who is overjoyed that one of the Jesuit teachers wants to talk with him. Antonio explains that the Filipino martial arts encompass the empty-hand techniques, Mano Mano, which he saw there, along with many sophisticated weapon arts.

  The afternoon becomes steamy hot as the sun returns to grace the island after the terrible storm. As Jean-Paul’s construction crew roasts, taking off their shirts, off goes his black cleric shirt. Even though he left military service seven years prior, Jean-Paul has kept his physique in top condition. His muscles glisten with sweat as he lifts building materials, with his biceps, pecs, and abs all flexing with each motion. A pair of green eyes watches every flex from the medical tent. All afternoon, these eyes are transfixed, saddened when the work is finished and the black cleric shirt is redonned.

  Sister Magali waits for her good Brother, the one with muscles like she has never seen before, to come to the food tent. She helps serve food until it seems very unusual he has not shown up. She goes to his tent to find him. He has just awoken from a nap as he was knackered. She asks permission to enter his tent as he groans over the inadequate sleep he had. She explains her father had the same thing happen with his naps.

  She gives a little smile, looking to the side as she also reveals her mother had many ways of helping her father deal with his sleep and taught her what to do if her future husband suffered the same. With that, the good Sister puts her fingers to her good Brother’s forehead, rubbing it a certain way. Jean-Paul can feel his headache just melt away. After several minutes, Jean-Paul stands to go to the food tent. She touches his arm and asks whether, if he is ever in distress again, it would be okay for her to stop by and help. Her mother taught her much, much more. Jean-Paul is not sure what to make of this interaction, except for one clear dominant thing. He likes her. He nods yes as he leaves for the food tent.

  That night, he dreams of his lycée martial arts training—Parisian street savate, the French kick-based martial art. The street version he learned added open-hand blows, palm strikes, and stun slaps. His feet and hands wave in the night as he dreams and grunts through his memories of his adolescent savate matches. Sister Magali, the good nurse that she is, comes by to see how her “patient” is doing. And no surprise to her, her new Brother is thrashing about again. She comes into the tent, closing the opening. Her mother taught her a special way of approaching the violent stage of the afflicted man’s dream phase, which she executes perfectly. Jean-Paul awakens to see an angel on Earth. A redheaded angel with green eyes passionately looking into his. An angel wearing but a light tunic on top and no veil to constrain her voluptuous waves of redness.

  Before Jean-Paul can speak, she holds him, whispers in his ears, intimately personal things in French, and then blows on them. She puts her palms on his bare chest and rubs his heart area for several minutes while she holds his head into her neck with her other hand. She lifts his head and rubs his forehead for several minutes as they stare into each other’s eyes. She asks if he is feeling better. Of course he is, he thinks as he nods. She says that there is more, but given they have taken their vows, she will exercise the appropriate constraint. He is absolutely curious what he is missing. He thanks her profusely for her compassion. As she leaves his tent, his guilt overtakes him for his allowing her to do what she did under the pretense that she was fixing her father’s affliction.

  This guilt remains as he awakens with a bad feeling. Well, actually, he feels incredible. How could someone not, when an angel from heaven showed such physical compassion? But he feels the guilt of his less-than-honest answers. So this morning, he avoids interactions with his angel, making excuses of needing to tend to urgent issues. She is truly his angel as she is always so understanding, further adding to his guilt.

  This time at lunch, he goes to the footballers and warms up and stretches with the martial arts crowd. He is impressed with his kicks, and after the game they come over to compare techniques. They explain that the martial arts skills have improved their football game. This statement sticks in Jean-Paul’s conscious. The wheels turn and tick. Maybe, just maybe, he can come up with a solution for his boys at school.

  That night, he cannot fall asleep, thinking about his possible solution. Then he hears her soft, gentle footsteps as she enters his tent. He groans with his eyes closed and thrashes his arms about. And she performs the same wonderful, simply euphoric compassionate acts she did the night before. This time she adds smelling her neck and putting his head on her chest so he can smell her ample bosom. He is in heaven. And as she leaves, he reckons he is not going to go to heaven the way they are going. And guilt settles back in.

  And so, their w
eek passes in the same manner every day. Football and martial arts at noon. Compassion and embrace in the evening. The last night of their mission arrives, and they will board separate buses the next day, never to be so near each other ever again. The good Sister has been somewhat despondent that, despite her best emulation of her mother’s compassion techniques, her new Brother is not getting better from night to night. She does not want to tell him about her despondence as she does not want him to think she is incapable of being the life partner a good afflicted man needs. She has already begun to rethink her vows, never having imagined she would ever meet a man like him.

  The good nurse Magali is certainly not going to let her new man not get better. So, she dials up the techniques. Tonight, after having him smell her neck, she puts his head directly on her bosom and asks him to inhale deeply. She takes his hand and places it on her breast, helping him stroke it lightly. She has thought about this next part long and hard every night this week. It is probably the missing part that has prevented the afflicted Jean-Paul’s full recovery. And as Jean-Paul’s head rests on her bosom, she reaches down to stroke his crotch. He flinches but stays put. Much to her delight, he really does love her, down there. Hot and hard love at that. No words pass between them after she crosses the line she set at the beginning of the week. She blows him a kiss as she leaves his tent, and he waits for the cloud of guilt to descend upon him.

  The next morning, most of the mission teams are packed and ready to leave on their respective buses. The two, the brother and the sister, meet in the middle between their buses. Neither one speaks of the night before, only of the good acts and services their teams have accomplished this week, and they thank the Lord for the opportunity. Their primordial carnality beats at them to kiss goodbye, but they can only kiss with their eyes, which they do over and over again until the last call to board their buses. And they separate, knowing, but not knowing.

  Jean-Paul wastes no time getting with Petrus to discuss his ingenious idea. Jean-Paul’s solution is simply elegant and has a plausible deniability factor, which Petrus loves. And so, they meet with Antonio and his Mano Mano master. They will make a fair deal for the exchange of services. Antonio and his master will help develop a series of martial-arts-oriented warm-up routines for their Jesuit school’s footballers and come and teach them at practices. In return, Jesuit Brothers Jean-Paul and Petrus will come to their club and teach them French savate techniques. Exceptional deal accepted. Both sides win, of course, as Jean-Paul has received the highest grade in his negotiations class.

  For the first week, Antonio and the Mano Mano master come to a few practices a week and show the boys how to warm up in a new way. The next week, they show them a new way of kicking to help them on the field. The third week, they have the boys practice the kicks with blocking moves on each other.

  Jean-Paul just smiles as, by the fourth week, he already sees less absenteeism, both on the field and in the classroom. Petrus wants to follow the boys after practice, as he did before, and see if this turnaround is truly due to the boys fighting back. Jean-Paul, who previously quoted Matthew, this time quotes US President Bill Clinton. “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.”

  By week five, with Jean-Paul’s literal blessings, Antonio begins to integrate hand techniques into the warm-ups as a way to develop their reflexes so they will not touch the ball on the field of play. Week six, throwing techniques as a way of learning to fall correctly during heated football matches. The two Jesuit brothers are ecstatic as attendance and tardiness among their footballers has been one hundred percent fixed.

  Jean-Paul brings the attendance problem to the attention of the head of the school, who already noticed the exemplary academic attendance of the footballers. And thus, Jean-Paul gains permission to introduce new stretches and calisthenics into the general physical education program for the whole school. By the middle of winter term, the whole school attendance issue is resolved.

  Sister Magali is a patient woman as a good Sister should be. However, her patience is being tested over the winter as her Brother Jean-Paul is always busy after school with his footballers in some new training program. She comes down to some practices and is rewarded by seeing her afflicted man practice with the boys without his cassock. On a number of occasions, they are assigned to missions together, but he shares quarters with others, so what transpired between them in that village on the coast does not happen again.

  She is overjoyed when Jean-Paul declares his new training program a total success, for he has time now to see her. On the days she is at his school, after the football practice or after the game is over, they go on walks. Not long, thirty minutes, sometimes forty. And they talk. And they talk. And they talk.

  What do they talk about? If you asked her, she would say, “n’importe quoi,” or whatever or anything, as she does not care. She only cares that she is with him. And if you asked him, he would say they talked about school, the hospital, world affairs, the next steps in their formation, why they decided on the religious life devoted to the Lord.

  As spring comes, and the days become longer, she asks for longer walks. She really just wants more time with him, as for her, time is running out.

  As they become closer and closer, Magali asks more personal questions. She asks about what he is most afraid of. To her surprise, he talks about the horrors of witnessing soldiers burned alive in combat. He has always had this deep fear of incineration, as he studied the Inquisitions and other religious movements’ acts of burning people at the stake. He would rather be shot than be burned. Her answer is very different. Her fear is never truly knowing love. She hopes and prays she will truly know the love of the Lord.

  One afternoon later, she pushes him, not for commitment, but for the full reason for his commitment to the Lord. He has never truly described the moment of his epiphany. And he sits her down and tells the story of the war, the rapes, the atrocities, and the monsters. She strokes his arm as he professes his guilt over what he did, the smug vigilante administering his own justice, not the Lord’s.

  And as he recounts his dream of his mother quoting Matthew and his inner awakening that peace should be his advocacy, she knows he is it. He is to be hers. He is her other half of the apple on the medallion. And the question she has been wrestling with since her First Profession has been answered. The Lord has answered her question through Jean-Paul’s final candor and trust of her in telling his most personal story.

  Feeling they have come to a major point in their friendship, she decides to test the waters. She asks him if he is a virgin. Jean-Paul stammers, taken fully off guard. He blinks and blinks and blinks as he flushes. And with hands in his lap, he says physically he is, but he had unchaste eyes as a boy and as a soldier.

  He quotes Saint Augustine. “Do not say that you have chaste minds if you have unchaste eyes, because an unchaste eye is the messenger of an unchaste heart.” And the good Saint’s message rattles the good Sister. And Jean-Paul, somewhat taken aback by her question, throws it back to her, asking if she still is a virgin. Magali, with a shy schoolgirl look, simply replies that is a question one does not ask of a good girl.

  Sister Magali, the nurse, the compassionate woman, becomes the angsty one as spring passes and the close of the school year creeps closer and closer. Her coworkers in the hospital notice it. The sisters at her guest convent notice it. The Mother Superior notices it and knows what her changing demeanor means, and she lets Magali have the space she needs to make her decision.

  But her beloved Jean-Paul, he does not see her angst. For him, she remains his angel from heaven. She represents the melodic voice of the woman on the medallion who conversed with the Lord in Proto-Greek.

  In different ways on their walks, she artfully probes him for his intentions when he completes his Regency at the end of the school year. He is so philosophical, with answers ranging and varying as different thoughts pass through his mind. In her angst, she finally just grabs his hand so they can walk hand in hand when they are out of view
of others. From then on, she picks paths for their walks that offer much privacy so she will at least have his hand to herself. He certainly does not mind.

  One afternoon in the late spring, Jean-Paul is surprised to see the good Sister at his office door. It is not her normal day to come to the school. She asks permission to come in and then closes the door. She takes off her veil, allowing her crimson rose tresses to fall upon her shoulder as she sits on his desk facing him. She takes his hand in hers and says she is going to take the big leap of faith that she has read him correctly.

  Sister Magali proceeds to say, “My dearest Brother Jean-Paul, my dear, dear Jean-Paul. Our walks are worlds of wonder for me. You have enlightened me about so many new things, ideas, thoughts, and ways of communing with our Lord. They started as the second most important part of my life after my commitments to the Lord as our time together renewed my life and my faith. I can only hope that you feel the same way when I say I have found that my time with you has become more important than anything else, the Lord included.”

  She looks for a response from him as she has started to renounce her vows in front of him, the biggest decision in her life to date. “And I look into your eyes, Jean-Paul, and I see you yearn for more, as do I.”

  And she kisses his hand. He reciprocates and kisses her hand back.

  Witnessing this sign that she should go for closure, she says, “It is not too late for the two of us to cancel proceeding to our permanent vows. Can you not imagine the two of us back in France, raising our family? You could become the professor of theology, history, and archeology that your heart yearns for, and I could continue being a nurse. I love you, Jean-Paul. I truly do.” She takes his head in her hands and kisses his forehead.