A Saint from Texas

by Edmund White

  “Gladly,” I said (“volontiers”).

  “I’ll pick you up at eight,” he said, taking his leave, kissing his aunt on two withered cheeks and bowing to Justine: “Enchanté, mademoiselle.”

  Before I could slip away Madame told me what an honor it was, going to the Knights of Malta evening. “You have to have six aristocrats among your eight great-grandparents to belong,” she told me solemnly.

  Snobs, I thought, all homosexual. All poor. The Opéra Comique sounded amusing at least.

  Adhéaume was only half an hour late, which was early for a Parisian, I discovered. “Oh, what a day!” he exclaimed, by way of excuse, I suppose. He was dressed in white tie with an elaborate medal on his lapel. In Dallas I’d have asked all about it, pretending to be interested, but I’d already learned not to ask questions of the French. I was in a long blue wool skirt and one of my new white silk blouses under a long blue military jacket. He seemed pleased with the way I looked.

  We took a taxi to the Opéra Comique, which was a heavily ornamented white lozenge in the middle of a small square. It was in the style of the 1890s, a period that I came to love for its questionable taste, its heavy gold ornaments, and its sentimental paintings of gods, satyrs, and naked women, often frankly pornographic, with alabaster skin and delectable nipples, like desserts made of whipped cream topped off by strawberries. In the grand foyer upstairs many tables were set up for dinner under two huge chandeliers and ceiling scenes from operas I didn’t know.

  The hall was already crowded with men and women in evening dress, many of them blond and blue-eyed (those Norman ancestors!) and many of them surprisingly noisy and vivacious for French people. Now, all these years later, I understand that the Knights of Malta were uninhibited in the presence of one another—and proud of their countrified manners and regional accents, all of which attested to their lives in far-flung châteaux. Only once a year did they assemble in Paris for one of their drunken routs, full of back-slapping, heavy teasing, and faces dilated with drink-broken capillaries. Except for their clothes, height, and faces reminiscent of Jefferson’s, and their boorish self-confidence, I might have taken them for a convention of farmers, the Knights of Columbus in Findlay, Ohio, rather than the Knights of Malta in Paris.

  Adhéaume made no effort to introduce me to anyone, though he did say to several people, “You know Yvonne,” and they bowed slightly and I lowered my eyes. I didn’t know what they were saying to one another and I’d learned that the eyes inevitably give away one’s confusion. We were all drinking flutes of champagne that the waiters, curiously dressed in wigs, brocaded coats, and knee stockings, kept serving when they weren’t offering warm canapés of blue cheese and something chewy. A bare-shouldered lady at the entrance had told us we’d be at table five. As a costumed majordomo passed by ringing a gong with a cloth-wrapped mallet, we found our way to our table. Adhéaume inspected all the place cards and switched two—“She’s a terrible bore,” he said in English. Then in French he muttered, “The man to your right is a famous wit and a Communist duke—we call him the Red Duke. You’ll like him.” I didn’t want a wit if that meant puns and wordplay. I wanted a dullard who spoke clearly and liked women.

  As it turned out the duke was very jolly, spoke English, and soon was pinching my thigh. He was about seventy-five, I’d guess, had sapphire-blue eyes, a ready smile, and endearing ways. He told me that he’d lived in Texas in his twenties and was never so happy. Why? Oh, managing a family agar factory. “Have you ever heard of agar?”

  “Algae?”

  “No, it’s even duller. It’s used in food to thicken things, like candy. It’s used to make dental impressions. Oh, it has a million uses, all of them excruciatingly tedious. The Japanese had dominated production but during the war we needed to develop our own. The thing was discovered by a French, who was some sort of ancestor …”

  The duke, who was named Henri and had a slight Texas twang, asked me if I liked France.

  “I love the people! They’re so friendly, just like folks back home. I love everything except the food.”

  Henri frowned. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Like take this gray, wobbly thing we’re eating that tastes like old rabbit. Is it agar, too?”

  “Of course not. It’s foie gras.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s duck liver paté.”

  “I guess we don’t have that in Texas.”

  “It’s illegal in Texas.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s made by force-feeding a duck till his liver bursts.”

  “Eew … That should be illegal.”

  “We eat lots of strange things, we French. Tripe, the second stomach of the cow. And tiny … periwinkles, which we take out of the shell with a straight pin. Pig’s trotters. Kidneys in mustard.”

  “We like a good pig in Texas.”

  He put his small hand on my pubis. “And we love Texas pigs.”

  “I declare,” I said, lifting his hand and putting it back on the table. “Now I can understand why the French keep their hands in full sight.”

  He laughed. “You’re very droll. I like you.”

  I winked and said, “It’s mutual.”

  “Now we all have to talk to the person on the other side. You must come to my château in Bourgogne with Adhéaume, of course. I promise to make a Texas barbecue, Yvonne.”

  I thanked him and turned to the person on my right, a prince who couldn’t speak English and had a putty-colored hearing aid. He was very old and seemed bent over by his order, a white enameled cross that looked like something he might have inherited from his grandfather (it was chipped and fissured). He understood after a while that I was American. I asked him to explain to me what the Knights of Malta were. He spoke at length in a very faint voice, but I gathered it was a Catholic order founded during the Crusades in the eleventh century to provide hospitals to knights wounded in battle with Muslims. He said there were only fifty “professed” knights (profesés, that is, those who’d taken vows of poverty and chastity), but that there were about twelve hundred Knights of Malta altogether in the world. It was a sovereign nation that printed its own stamps and money and had embassies in most countries; it was also the only nation with no territory (I thought of the Panthers and the Palestinians). Its headquarters were in Rome and the pope was the titular head, though the knights had their own prince with the rank of cardinal. I must confess that Justine, who’d studied the Knights, confirmed the next evening what the prince had told me.

  “But tell me, Prince, most of these men look like rich roués—how can they have taken vows of poverty and chastity?”

  The prince laughed and said he didn’t think any of the professed knights were here tonight.

  “Is it true you have to be a noble to be admitted?”

  The prince looked embarrassed.

  I said, “Forgive me for my American questions. We’re not very discreet, are we?”

  He seemed charmed by my apology, smiled, and tried to speak but choked on his tournedos Rossini (a little steak with more of that wretched foie gras smeared on top) and I waited quietly, hands in lap, while he struggled to spit it up, making terrible sounds and drooling long thick streams of saliva. I felt terrible but thought it best to do nothing. Adhéaume leaped up and started to beat the old man on the back, but the prince waved him away. He went on struggling, but I could tell he was still breathing in and out and I knew from my first-aid course at school that that was a sign he’d survive. At last he settled down, though he was very pale and his eyes were moist. He tried to speak in a ghostly whisper but I put my finger to my luscious lips and he nodded and smiled, coughed some more and drank a sip of water.

  At last he could speak normally (albeit faintly) and he said, “I’m not sure any of the professed are here tonight—it can get pretty rowdy and the tickets are expensive. Oh, there’s one! You see that little bald man at table three? That’s the comte de Saint-Esprit. He’s taken vows.”

&
nbsp; “Is he a monk?”

  “No, a knight.”

  “That’s so glamorous.”

  The prince looked at me quizzically, like a hen who’s hard of hearing and isn’t quite sure she’s heard a mating call.

  True to the promise of une soirée rustre, at first a few guests, soon almost all, broke into throwing bread pellets at one another. Some knights were standing on their chairs and taking aim. The poor little professed knight seemed to be a special target. Adhéaume was dancing on his chair and ululating; he’d pulled his shirt out and we all had a glimpse of gray belly. I was afraid his chair might break. He was obviously bien arrosé (drunk).

  After a dull crème caramel, the bewigged majordomo went past again, pounding his muted cymbal, this time to move us into the theater. Adhéaume had mopped his face with his napkin, arranged his clothes, and came panting up to accompany me.

  For me the most magical moment at the Opéra Comique is after the houselights go down and before the curtain rises, when the only visible things are the small blue windows in the door of each box seat, light coming from the corridors behind. The big audience is reduced to a black, breathing, rustling, perfumed mass unseen but alive in the faint fairy lights, the blue squares. Though they are square, not round, the windows make me think they’re portholes and we’re at sea. Then the curtain goes up to discover a stage brilliantly lit, the dust swirling festively in the draft. Unfortunately we were treated to a male chorus from Offenbach’s threadbare La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, “Piff, Paff, Pouf,” sung by General Boum. Since it was only forty seconds long, we had it twice. Luckily a real female singer came out and sang the sprightly words, “Ah! Comme j’aime les militaires” (“Oh, how I love soldiers”). When she let out the scored mouse squeaks, the merrymakers in the audience and onstage all burst into thunderous applause. Next a man in a black supplice with a white Maltese cross inscribed on his chest came out wearing a long purple robe and a velvet collar, blue on one side and red on the other.

  “What does that symbolize?” I whispered to Adhéaume.

  “The purple because his family has been in mourning for Our Lord since the First Crusade, the blue for Our Lady, and the red for Golgotha—he’s the warden of his family chapel in Wittenberg.”

  “You have Germans here?”

  “German, if you insist. I think of him as a little bit cousin.”

  There were many speeches and toasts, as champagne was passed again and again, in the theater itself. I was very eager to get home. I thought, I hope the knights left a big deposit to pay for all the broken glass and booze-soaked red plush and the live cigarettes tossed carelessly on the strapontins (the folding seats at the end of rows for an overflow crowd). I’d estimate there was $10,000 worth of damage. Not to mention all the breadcrumbs trampled into the carpets.

  “Let’s go,” I said to my date.

  “Had enough?” He smiled enigmatically around his cigarette holder. I was living in both languages and translating feverishly and had a bad headache, or was it just linguistic fatigue? “Let’s go,” he whispered in English. “Do you feel like you’ve just spent an evening amongst the Hottentots?”

  “Ancient, titled ones.” Despite my disappointment and weariness, I still felt I’d passed muster with the rarest of rare birds, the titled French.

  CHAPTER 7

  About a month later, early in March, I received a letter from Yvette. It looked very bedraggled, had been mailed in mid-February, and bore stamps from Colombia.

  Dear Yvonne,

  I miss you terribly and think of you constantly and finally am setting my lazy self down to write you.

  Here I am in Jericó, Colombia. As you know, I’ve never felt worthy of being baptized and received into the Church but I’m living in the convent of the Missionary Sisters of Immaculate Mary and Saint Catherine of Siena here in Jericó. It is an order founded by the blessed Laura Montoya y Upegui not so long ago; she worked with the Indians here in Antioquia, about 100 km from Medellin. We’re hoping she’ll be made the first Colombian saint before long! She’s already a Venerable. Soon a Blessed.

  You’d love this town! It’s so typical. I’m sitting in the town square. Children—children of all colors in shorts with glossy black hair—are playing noisily all around me. There are many little stands selling things to eat. One sunburned lady, almost a midget, is hawking candy and chewing gum. Another lady, with long, lank hair, who looks indigenous, is selling something stuffed with dulce de leches. A donkey is plodding down the street pulling a cart with big black automobile tires. The adult men wear big cowboy hats, but straw ones, and square shoulder bags made of palomino hide. We’re high in the hills but palm trees are in the valley below and pines up above; the weather is perfect, the temperature of the Garden of Eden, one imagines.

  Many of the houses are just one story high, but those that are two stories have balconies behind a grill of curved wood spindles. The people like bright colors—bright green doors, dark blue walls, pistachio façades. There are birds-of-paradise planted on the other side of the square. In the wilds outside town you sometimes see the bright plumage of a small parrot. There are sixteen churches in town. Right beside me is the rather ugly and recent adobe cathedral. Much prettier is a nearby church with sky-blue vaults, the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On top of a hill is a huge white statue of Christ, his arms extended to bless the whole countryside. There are many small streams in the immediate vicinity. On Saturday night the campesinos get blind drunk on aguardiente, a clear alcoholic drink that looks like vodka; I stay safely at home after sunset on Saturday while the men stagger around town like zombies. Luckily, the people are very sweet and humble—and sober!—the rest of the week. It’s probably sinful to say so, but many of them are ugly—limping or missing teeth or tiny and deformed. Our convent has a lovely inner garden lined with white columns; the roofs are all green tiles, overlapping like the scales of a pangolin. The people speak Spanish very clearly, but I’m constantly learning about their social customs (you must be going through the same thing in Paris). I know you’re not a believer, but you’re a kind, generous person and our rather controversial bishop says that you don’t have to be Catholic to be saved. (He draws the line at Masons, whom he won’t bury in holy ground.) I include you in my prayers twice a day. I can go a week or two without speaking a word of English, though soon I’m going to start to teach our bishop English. He wants to be included in the church dialogue everywhere!

  Someone nearby is strumming a guitar. It’s really lovely here—you must visit some day! Of course, it’s a simple, unsophisticated world compared to Paris, I imagine.

  I’ve been very inspired by our bishop, who really embraces the poor of our region. The rich landowners detest him and accuse him of being a Communist, which isn’t true (Communists are atheists, after all). But he loves the poor as did Our Lord. His critics say he has a hidden agenda and a hatred of the wealthy; he’s involved in a dispute with the papal nuncio, which journalists have caught wind of and have completely distorted in the press. Although the bishop, Oscar Geldbach, is dedicated to the poor, he loves all of us sinners and prays for us all constantly.

  What is my day like? I usually awaken at about four (probably the same hour when you come home from a ball and go to bed). After I tidy up, I kneel on the hard tile floor and pray for two hours. Just after terce (around nine A.M.) I begin tutoring the village children in Latin and, in the case of one little boy who wants to be a priest, in Greek; math (up through plane geometry) is something I also teach, as well as philosophy. I wish I knew something they might actually use, like leather-working or animal husbandry—maybe I’ll go back to school to learn them. I have some mundane tasks at the convent, including gardening and washing the tile floors and polishing the silver articles used on the altar during Mass. I enjoy gardening so much that I’ve asked the Mother Superior to take away that task; I prefer something duller and more painful. Something the other sisters complain about, like husking endless ears of corn for our t
ortillas. I embrace every job with true joy.

  For a long while Mother María Concepción was very harsh with me. I suppose she distrusted me because I’m American and won’t be baptized. She’s always pointing out some tile bit I didn’t wash (you know how shortsighted I am). Once I clumsily tipped over a ceramic pot of suds and broke it. Mother María whispered, “What else do you expect from a rich American?”

  At first I thought her constant disapproval was unfair and cruel, and I prayed to God to open her eyes—but the only result was that God turned away from me, hid His face with His hand, and my spiritual life became arid as a desert. Then I understood that Mother María wanted me to embrace my work for the Sacred Sisterhood with all the care and attentiveness of which I was capable. And in my heart of hearts I still suspected that I was special, that I was a sort of tourist who could always go home rather than a traveler who had no place to return to except Heaven. Moreover, about that time I begged God to send me to Hell, since no one there worshipped Him; even in Hell I could adore Him so that he would look down on the map of the universe and see at least one point of light in Hell. I’m in love with affliction; I could not ask God to raise me from Hell, which would be an offense against His infinitely tender Love, which has made me the gift of affliction.

  Actually, that’s an idea I stole from Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the “Little Flower”—stole or it resonated within me. I also liked her goofy idea (she was fifteen when she wrote it down) that she could be a toy to amuse baby Jesus, a little ball; he might toss her aside as distractible children do and forget all about her—and then, spying her one day under the curtains, rush to pick her up and play with her again and again. I’d like to be the baby Jesus’s ball. But you must think I’m crazy! Or that I’ve become simple-minded (Saint Thérèse was a bit dim). For most people I don’t exist—I’m the barren fig tree. I do love the sweet naivete of Saint Thérèse. Some people say she was fat and stupid.

  I usually attend Mass every day and usually I communicate daily (I had to get special permission from Bishop Oscar since I am not a Catholic). You can’t imagine how happy that makes me! It occurs to me each time I take the host on my tongue that in Heaven, He will feed me directly (but I promised myself that I wouldn’t go all crazy pious on you).