Our Lady of Babylon

by John Rechy

  Sister Celestine was befriended by another Nun, from another country, Sister Monica, who, given another set of less fortunate circumstances, might have become — these were the words of an observer — a “tangy wench with flashing eyes.” One can only imagine what the holy habits these women wore concealed — curves and soft partings, softened even more by tiny puffs that nature places there, and which slide and press, press and slide, so warmly, so cozily, against each other — not unlike the way reverential hands are clasped in attitudes of prayer as their possessors sigh their Aves during evening meditation.

  Within the hallowed corridors silenced by piety, an abrupt burst of giggles emanating from the cell of Sister Celestine — and someone else — resounded like the explosion that must have rocked Heaven when the recalcitrant angels disobeyed the Holiest of Holies. It was through God’s guidance that the chastest of holy sisters, Sister Alphonsine, was idling nearby and heard the raucous intrusion. Alarmed by this breach of silence (surely an intruder was involved in this puzzle), she devoted herself to exploring the origin of those unnatural sounds that once again rang, in this temple of silence, as loudly as discordant bells must toll when yet another wayward soul is hurled into Hell’s abyss and fires.

  Sister Alphonsine had offered the first blink of her eyes — and every blink thereafter — to the Holiest One, a worthy offertory that resulted, in latter years, in the dear Sister’s not being able to discern earthly shapes clearly, though she often spoke to angels invisible to others. God in His beneficence had granted her the gift of acute hearing. Armed with that gift, she stationed herself the next night (within comforting shadows that cooled her troubled brow) in such a way as to better overhear any sounds that might emanate from Sister Celestine’s cell.

  Her eyesight (donated, the Reader will recall with adulation, to her Maker) did not allow her to discern to whom belonged the curvaceous figure that knocked softly on the door of Sister Celestine’s room. Sister Alphonsine was aware, however, that the door had opened — it squeaked — and quickly closed. Soon after, she heard words that troubled and baffled her, words that interrupted the giggling, which preceded them: “. . . it tickles . . .” “. . . now you . . .” “No — leave the habit on and raise it . . .” “You, too . . . and bounce.”

  After more giggles, breathy words, and the sounds of tosses and turns — and, soon, horrifying gasps — subsided, Sister Alphonsine’s acute hearing detected the quiet turning of the door-knob of the violated chamber and the squeaky opening of the door. Certain a thief had defiled the sanctity of Sister Celestine’s room, and, to disguise his activities, had forced her to utter mysterious words, Sister Alphonsine thrust herself on the figure who emerged.

  It was Sister Monica adjusting her habit.

  The need was clear: More fervent dedication to her vows must be coaxed out of Sister Celestine. She was assigned to a post that guaranteed close contact with His Holiness the Pope, a wish His Holiness granted her distraught family, and did so (to emphasize his commitment to their mutual goal of leading her back into the holy stream of the devotional life) in a quiet ceremony held in a chapel the devout family had donated to the Cause of Goodness.

  Feeling chastised instead of elevated, the treacherous Nun turned against her Holy Benefactor and proceeded to initiate repugnant lies concerning him, the Most Devout Prelate of the Holy Mother Church. Seized by only the Devil knows what, Sister Celestine kept her sacrilegious accusations deliberately vague —

  Ha!

  — revealing only that they concerned the High Prelate’s daily walks about the Cathedral’s beautiful gardens and his kind invitations, extended to especially devout mothers and their beguilingly innocent children, to receive his special blessings in the holy palace, whose polished floors gleamed as God’s Heaven must have when God hosted his loyal angels to sing their Alleluias.

  When a Nobleman most worthy in the eyes of the Holy Pontiff requested that a Nun be appointed to oversee the actions of his rebellious wife (the notorious Contessa, the Reader may by now have surmised), it was Sister Celestine whom the Pope himself assigned. Although he would have preferred to dedicate his own life to steering the wayward Nun onto the virtuous path himself, he nonetheless responded foremost to the Nobleman’s great need.

  The Reader (at this point familiar with the circle of corruption that this True Account wearily but dutifully continues to draw) will not be surprised to learn that it was this same Renegade Nun (that depraved Celestine!) who witnessed, and shrewdly abetted, the atrocity that occurred in the abundant gardens of the great Nobleman, when he pulled the lustful Gypsy Rogue from an intended position over his wife, a position that, if assumed, would have resulted in . . . (The Writer will allow the Reader to remember, from an earlier page in this True Account, what was about to occur among the tulips but did not occur, thanks to God’s intervention and the quick wits of the Nobleman.)

  What, the Reader asks, was the connection of this transgressing Nun to the wayward Contessa so that holy loyalties would be so displaced?

  What else?

  The swarthy Gypsy Rogue was the brother of Sister Monica, who fled the convent and surely became — (The Writer will not judge a scarlet woman.)

  Time passed, as time is wont to do in the Calendar that leads us ever closer to Salvation — and, for some, Damnation. The libelous Nun insinuated her poisonous rumors into the ears of the ever-eager Whore, who, with the Reverend Pimp, quickly saw a way to entrap even more deeply the kindly but gullible Count, the Contessa’s favorite son — and confidant.

  They do suspect the Contessa confided . . . what? . . . to my beloved Count du Muir.

  The Writer, unbowed by his heavy moral obligation, now returns to this inevitable malevolence: the extorted agreement by the Count to marry the Whore. The Contessa’s wavering morality clearly contributed to this decision, since, infallible witnesses report, there occurred secret meetings between her and the abominable Whore.

  It was Irena by the River — and outside the bridal shop with the Pope — and she followed the Contessa’s carriage on the night the gracious lady first came to warn me of danger! Madame is right. The writers of this calumny believe I possess information they want. . . Do I? About what? Information the Contessa gave the Count and that she attempted to give me, information that he did give me? What! . . . I shall inspect my memories much more closely when I meet with Madame for tea. Of course, Madame may be ahead of me, since, I suspect, it may all involve the matters she conjectured about so wildly, the interlude in the tulip garden.

  I continue to read aloud, without your even having to reiterate your challenge:

  Such a marriage, of the devilish Whore and the Count, might easily be annulled, given the nature of the coercions, and the power of his noble family name. So the Whore and her Reverend Pimp set out to gain the greatest imprimatur of legitimacy to secure the unholy union — and the Count’s vast fortune: the officiating by the devout High Prelate himself in a wedding to be performed (the Writer ponders, ponders, ponders that which is beyond the grasp of the righteous, the enormity of wicked cunning) . . . in the Grand Cathedral. If not, the Whore threatened to make available to the ever-salacious Press the scurrilous rumors that the pernicious Nun had conveyed to her.

  How could the Shepherd of the Righteous allow such an impious mockery of holy sacraments to proceed in the Grand Cathedral? The High Prelate retreated to a monastery of total silence and fasting, there to ponder the matter in holy meditation. He ventured out only in solitude in order to be inspired by the profligate innocence of country lasses (in flouncy aprons which flapped in the wind about their pink unblemished thighs, and sometimes fluttered — just a bit, the slightest, tiny bit — higher) and among equally uninitiated shepherd lads (who romped about the hillsides as insouciant to the immorality of the world as they were to their trousers, too short for their burgeoning loins, as they, those romping lads, herded goats that pretended to be eager to escape the lads’ playful poking and prodding).

  N
ot once did the Holy Father consider his own well-being during this period of imposed separation from the world. He knew that not even the most vicious gossip could imperil him. (Since no one would believe it, the Reader adds with due indignation.) Any attempt to defame him would fail. His purity, his devotion to the Holy Mother Church, and, above all, God’s Benevolence, would shelter him from all slanders. Still, what of his flock? Daily, he guided those of his vast congregation of souls into the holy life of pilgrims, exhorted them to trust in goodness, to bring their children to him for special blessings. All those congregants would be severely harmed if only by learning that there existed beings so base as to attempt to harm him. He must think of them, only of them.

  So the Pontiff returned to the Grand Cathedral, to allow matters to proceed. Who knew better than he that God’s mysteries are infinite? Who knew whether during the performance of such a marriage, an Angel from Heaven Itself would be assigned to rip from the debased Whore the mockery of the sacrilegious bridal veil she insisted she would wear? Or perhaps God’s mysterious ways would choose an intervening angel (in the form of an upright woman of sturdy intellect and vast wisdom) to become the instrument of the corrupt Whore’s downfall, banishing her into silenced contemplation of her evil for the rest of her unworthy life, or even hurrying her entry into the abyss prepared for such as she: an earlier judgment in addition to that which the Almighty guarantees.

  And (the Writer hears the pious Reader marvel — but who among his readers is not pious?) all of these sad convolutions stemmed out of the Whore’s determination to seize the sizable fortune of the great dynasty involved, a fortune, the Writer emphasizes, which will surely find its rightful place — and that rightful place is not within the Whore’s sullied hands.

  More asserted threats, more gross accusations. Whatever money I shall acquire, in whatever manner, I shall donate to the destitute. Surely that is known.

  Exhausted but undaunted by this True Account that he is honor-bound to record, the Writer now divulges that, throughout this pilgrimage of devoted exposure, he has been carrying an added weight of outrage: knowledge of a most harrowing act in the Whore’s contaminated past, an act so heinous that —

  Stop! my heart cries out to the pages themselves. I will not turn the page. I wipe away today’s tears, and the ancient tears of centuries of blame, tears I was still shedding, or resumed shedding, as I walked to Madame’s for tea the following afternoon.

  I cannot explain why I continued past her château. I realized, only when I had stopped, that I was once again facing, though still from a distance, the residence of the new tenant. I could not see whether he was there, at what I’ve come to think of as his “station.” There might have been a form there, but perpetual shadows — the château is draped in heavy vines — did not allow further identity. I moved closer, still remaining concealed by brush and trees. He was there! He took a step. Toward me? No. He couldn’t have seen me. He took another step. He clutched something before him. He extended it. Certainly not toward me. The fact that he had stepped forward into full sunlight allowed me, even at this distance, to see what it was he was holding.

  White orchids dipped in blood!

  I ran to Madame’s château to discuss this urgent matter with her. But when I saw her beaming face, and the exquisite band that held her hair in a most becoming new manner, a band gilded with the tiniest of gems that I would remark on later, I became certain that the strange offering of orchids dipped in blood was only an impression created by the play of light and shadows, and a sudden flash of red concocted by the sun’s reflection on the glass covering of my unlit lantern, a brightness left momentarily impressed on my eyesight.

  I handed Madame the “Third Installment” of the loathsome “Account” for her to read. Peering at it, Ermenegildo looked up tensely at me after each page was turned.

  I had to distract myself. So I detected a sweet mixture of scents in the air, grass, flowers, leaves. The sun lingered longer these days to enjoy the spectacle it helped create. Now and then the weather reached back to winter, even turned cold, almost as often as it reached out for snatches of the summer to come. Today, the afternoon was so warm that I had considered suggesting we have iced tea, a custom quite accepted in other regions, but I did not risk offending Madame, since today’s pastries, half-moons of butter and sugar — the promised “surprise,” which I greeted with ample appreciation — were meant to compliment hot tea.

  “Note, Lady,” Madame observed, putting down the new pages when she had reached the place where I had indicated I had stopped reading — reading to the same place keeps us mutually informed — “that they emphasize their warnings, even underlining them.”

  “Yes.”

  She muttered as if to herself but clearly for me to hear: “And once again, we return to the Contessa in the garden . . .” She left her sentence pending.

  I waited, hoping that that further reference would prod her to clarify her assertion that there was evidence in these pages that Irena would like to uncover that the Gypsy was the father of Alix and the Count du Muir, a conjecture quite impossible. Irena is everything horrible, but not illogical.

  Just as once I had kept at bay her expectations that I might resume, on my own, my account of how I saved John the Baptist’s virginity, Madame now seemed determined not to resume the matter I had somewhat testily interrupted — unless I asked her to. I would not! To emphasize her own determination, she replaced on the table the “Third Installment” of the “Account.” We would read no more of it today, nor discuss it.

  We sipped our tea in emphatic silence.

  “Lady” — Madame held up an admonitory finger. On it, a ruby squeezed by tiny diamonds multiplied a single ray of sun into a glittering corona. Today she wore a tiara, of amethysts and more diamonds; she is very fond of diamonds. “Don’t be lulled. Keep in mind that interviews will be rigorous. You may be forgetting, because your lives are increasingly familiar to you, that yours is not a conventional story, but quite extravagant.”

  “Extravagant? The story of my essence populating the bodies of the great fallen women, to redeem them in this life, to allow them, finally, a hearing in the court of revised history, to tell the truth at last — you consider that extravagant?” As I compounded my answer, it did occur to me that I was indeed becoming too familiar with my lives.

  “Lady, sometimes you slay me!” Madame had added an odd tone to her odd words.

  “Madame!”

  She spoke in her own voice: “Well, no one will think it all that extravagant if you tell it like you just did, putting that expert quiver in your voice when you said ‘to tell the truth at last.’ Expertly done, very effective.”

  “I did not put a ‘quiver’ into my voice. My passion did,” I told her coolly.

  “Lady, do you sometimes forget that I’m your ally?”

  “Never. If I thought otherwise, Madame —” I couldn’t find words that would even consider such a terrifying impossibility.

  She sat back, dusting sugar from her lap. She readjusted her tiara. “Now! We must discuss a matter we can no longer avoid.”

  “Medea.”

  I suppose Madame did not hear me; she continued: “Yes, we must discuss a matter we can no longer avoid: What’s in it for me?”

  “Madame? That tone —” It had returned from earlier.

  “Get used to it. What do I get out of all this?”

  This wasn’t occurring!

  Did even Ermenegildo wince as if he, too, was hearing a different person? I was so disconcerted that I bent down to retrieve a blossom I had held in my hand and had just dropped, a blossom I had plucked from the adornment on the table near the tea setting, a beautiful yellow rose tinted only at its edges with a flush of red. When I began to lift the fallen flower, it crumbled into scattered petals. I gasped and withdrew from it.

  “What is my purpose in all this?”

  I tried not to stammer, not to gasp, not to plead. “Your commitment, like mine — The truth,
finally — My essence —”

  “You believe that?”

  Ermenegildo jerked back his head.

  “Yes, I do believe you’re as committed as I am.” Why was I speaking these words?

  “But they won’t. They’ll be looking for ulterior motives. They must not anger you, Lady.”

  Her voice was back! Madame Bernice’s voice was back! Oh, to emphasize the import that this matter will be given by interviewers she had succeeded admirably in coarsening her voice, altering its tone. Perhaps she had done that for a further reason — I was sure of this now — to camouflage how much it hurt her that this matter should have to come up at all. “Oh, Madame, if you are questioned, I shall, I’m sorry, be quite angered.”

  “They may claim” — she was so clearly hesitant even to speak these terrible words of unwarranted suspicion that she forced them into casualness — “that I may be using your revelations for purposes of my own. What would you say to that?”

  I wanted to weep at the possibility of such an accusation. “Our purposes have been the same since that memorable day when we met—” I indicated the bench where I had first encountered this remarkable woman and her peacock.

  “Are our purposes the same?”

  What internal strife she was experiencing to have to discuss such unpleasant matters! That’s why she had slipped into the disturbing voice she had used earlier, an unconscious slide perhaps in this most difficult task for her. “What if you’re told that I’m exploiting you to get attention for myself, seeking publicity for my mystic powers, inviting the notoriety that would get me money for my own version of —”