by Edmund White
“Rubbish.”
I looked back instantly to see how seriously dismissive he was. Reassured that he wasn’t mocking my grief, I stood my ground and said, “The funeral meats will not coldly furnish forth the marriage table.”
“No one has proposed marriage … yet. Unless you freeze them, the meats will go off by that time.”
“I wonder. A widow with a fortune needn’t go unbidden for long.”
“Unless she’s very discriminating.”
“Or has many demands.”
“For the true lover, his lady’s demands are his own fondest wishes.”
“But it’s exactly that sort of courtly eloquence I distrust.”
“Then I will pursue my suit with rudeness—slut!”
“Somehow that doesn’t do the trick either.”
“I think I’d best take up my cause another day.”
“That might be advisable. Or simple friendship might be best of all.” Rather fantastically, I got tears in my eyes. “I think I need a friend.”
“Of course, of course, she needs a friend,” the prince said in that weird way the French have of speaking in the third person about a baby to a baby (“She wants her bottle, doesn’t she?”).
Eddie had a short upper lip that always exposed his upper teeth, so it looked as if he were smiling all the time, even when a smile wasn’t appropriate. Depending on the circumstances people liked him for his unrelenting good humor or disliked him for his sarcasm—he was someone to whom unearned sentiments were attributed.
He was well informed, like a journalist who knows a little about everything but not a lot about any one thing. He had an old man’s habit of reeling off one anecdote after another. If his memory were a closet it would be full to bursting; on some remote hook a joke he heard when he was ten could still be found dangling shapelessly. He had a muscular, “sincere” way of shaking hands firmly and, while looking someone in the eye, saying, “We must get together soon. Very soon,” though his perpetual, unintended smile added irony to what he said and confused everyone. Most people suspected him of compulsively showing off his erudition, shallow though it might be. The Devil could drag him by the hair off to Hell and Eddie would still be chatting amiably, wracking his damaged brain for his next bon mot. In boarding school he’d translated a poem by Catullus to Lesbia and everyone had praised it, which led Eddie to announce he was going to devote himself to Catullus 65, the little epic about Ariadne deserted on Naxos by Theseus.
But he never made much headway. He would try a very free, slangy version but a friend who was a classicist objected strenuously. Then Eddie went back to the text, which only depressed him; why was he sitting alone in a room with a poem he couldn’t even tell if it was meant to be parodic or not? He would tell friends he was nearing the end, but in fact he hadn’t even finished a stanza that satisfied him. He had, however, read reams of commentary about the poem and his conversation was lightly peppered with classical allusions. The made-up jobs of aristocrats (Ercole’s painting, Eddie’s translating, Addy’s decorating) began to irritate me. We were supposed to discuss and praise their fine points longer than they actually pursued them. Everyone owed a certain deference to them.
Ercole had been my most satisfying lover. He liked masochism. He understood my attraction to women. He was polite and deferential. He’d even had the wit to reject me (ha! ha!). I doubted he and Helen were happy. Couples were never happy because individuals were never happy. That was their secret. They didn’t have sex and they made each other miserable. Of course, they’d sooner die than admit that, since everyone wanted their friends to envy them. Envy was the only viable guarantee of bliss. One could construct a whole life out of being envied. Envy is to experience as petrol is to an automobile.
I was very suspicious of Prince Eddie. I knew his castle on the Marne had been sold, I realized they were related to the Guises from Lorraine (the duc de Guise had become the prince of Joinville), a Catholic family during the Reformation that took terrible revenge on Protestant conspirators. There was a duc de Guise who was the lover of Louis XIV’s brother for forty years, though the duke preferred women but wasn’t above being the maître en titre and appointing and administering the thousand servants of the Palais-Royal. He really was a Guise but out of some sort of reverse snobbery he went under the less impressive name of Joinville, like Proust’s Baron de Charlus, who had the right to throw around far more exalted titles but chose a humble one out of reverse snobbery.
Eddie told me that the seventeenth-century composer Charpentier had written a gay opera, David and Jonathan, for the king’s brother and the duc de Guise—and that it was swooning with love duets between boys and we should stage it somehow. I was amazed how rank outweighed every other consideration. When the king’s mistress Mme de Maintenon told him he should banish the sodomites from court, Louis asked wearily, “Must I begin with my brother?” The king loved his brother and allowed him alone to serve him dinner. He also esteemed the duc de Guise, who after all was from a princely family.
My prince de Joinville told me that I was doing my children a disservice by not providing them with a “father figure,” which he pronounced in the English fashion, “figger.” I turned it all into a joke and began to call him “Dear Figger.” He was amiable enough to laugh, but he didn’t like me mocking what he no doubt considered his strongest suit.
To myself I argued that if the children would benefit from a “figger,” then maybe Eddie wasn’t the best example—a man who didn’t work except to sigh over his Catullus translation, whose princely title was worth more than his fortune. I began to go out with a rich commoner, Monsieur Delage, the biggest mass producer of women’s shoes in France, who was an obsessive collector of the painter Derain and who lived with his mother, once a famous grande cocotte and said to be the model for Colette’s Léa, in a twelve-room apartment on the Parc Monceau. He was a nice man, very eager to rise in the world, though he had an unfortunate comb-over and a hair color not found in nature as well as exaggerated vertical marionette lines around his mouth from excessive amiability. He owned a few of Derain’s great London paintings but also several more recent lifeless works similar to The Painter and His Family. I thought it might be amusing to collect the later, uninspired works of painters who had taken a wrong turn, such as Derain and di Chirico.
Then I went out with a Chicagoan who was working for a French international; they were paying him a “hardship” allowance for living in Paris. He’s been married twice and divorced twice. I never could figure out what had gone wrong with the marriages. It couldn’t have been sexual; he was the best sex of all my beaux. He wasn’t against “muff-diving,” he had a big dick, and was a slow cummer. He told me that once he’d done a six-month “seminar” on anger management, but I never saw him angry. He listened to those businessman inspiration tapes you see advertised in in-flight magazines and I found that depressing. Once, when stationed in Los Angeles, he’d taken “a course in miracles,” whatever that was. His clothes were sloppy and didn’t fit; I imagine he’d bought them off the rack. I found that reassuring, after having lived with a Savile Row dandy. I would have dropped him if he hadn’t been such a good lover.
Father Pierre came back briefly. He’d become bewitched by an ex-priest, Thomas Mirabeau, a married man who claimed his American wife, Eunice, had introduced him to a deeper knowledge of the godhead than Jesus Christ had ever done. The priest was unusually eloquent, I’d heard, but he’d been reduced to lay status for questioning the doctrines of papal infallibility and clerical celibacy. “That man is a heretic, Pierre, and is predicting an immediate and rather unpleasant Armageddon unless we accept his ideas. He’s always in a rage, they say, and will make public your letters to him to show how he has won over an orthodox priest such as you.”
Pierre laughed and shook his head, his plume of hair accompanying his movements. “Now you’ve become my spiritual counsel, and I don’t doubt you’re wiser than I.”
“But I actually need your
counsel.”
“Yes, my child.”
I told him about my Chicagoan, about Monsieur Delage, and updated him on Prince Eddie.
“You don’t sound so taken by any of them,” Pierre remarked. “You couldn’t be so satirical if you really had a crush (un béguin) on one or the other.”
“But what about the father figger problem?”
“Complete nonsense. In any event they’re hardly exemplary—a collector of Derain, a layabout Latinist, a Chicago divorcé. I don’t think Foulques could learn anything good from that lot. The wrong painter, the wrong poet, twice the wrong wife.”
I felt relieved, though I couldn’t dismiss Catullus so easily. “Can I go on just being a widow?”
“No one’s suggesting you forego carnal relations. But a long, long widowhood will impress your in-laws. Besides, black is very becoming to you with your pale face and hands and blonde hair. I don’t think you need worry about Foulques.”
“But about Ghislaine?” I wailed, clutching my hands together.
“I think she needs a different kind of love than the kind you’re giving her.”
“What do you advise?”
“Prayer.”
I examined him to see if he was joking, but he wasn’t.
“How often?” I asked.
“Daily. Pray for guidance. The Lord wants to help you.”
I thought about that for a moment then said, “Does the Lord love a murderer?”
Father Pierre looked around uneasily. “I alone must hear your confession.”
“Agreed.”
“And don’t forget to pray to the Virgin. She was a mother, too.”
He suggested I see a chic Left Bank psychiatrist, a Lacanian. I was having the most terrible migraines, something my sister and I had always suffered from but that now were excrutiating and nearly constant. I gratefully pocketed the doctor’s coordonées.
I didn’t want to spring too much on Father Pierre at one sitting. I could tell he was weary (from his travels but also from always having to say quotable things that stayed within the boundaries of decency). It must be tiring to be a prêtre mondain. To be witty and pious. I kissed his small, soft hand and he immediately withdrew it like a Moroccan king. “Don’t exaggerate, my child,” he said, scandalized.
The next day when I found him alone by the Arethusa fountain, which was quietly reciting its rosary to itself, I asked him if I could bring up something serious with him.
“As long as it won’t leave frown lines on that lovely face.”
“I want to promote Yvette as a saint. I just spoke with Mercy, and the new bishop has agreed to take up her cause.”
“Excellent.”
“Will you?” I asked. “Would you retire to Rome? I’ve found a lovely villa for you with large gardens and a staff. You could keep your apartment in Paris and come back on frequent trips. The villa has a Renaissance private chapel. And two guest bedrooms.”
“I have a young Norwegian friend named Pal who likes gardening. Could I bring him, too?”
“I’ve never heard you mention him before.”
Pierre blushed, ever so faintly. “He’s a ski champion and models ski clothes for a German catalogue. He’s excellent company, a hard worker—and, how do you say in English—easy on the eyes?”
“How old? Catholic?”
“Twenty-two. I think they’re some sort of Lutherans. Non- practicing.”
“Of course you can bring him. Where is he now?”
“Oslo.”
“Rome sounds much better. Actually, it’s an hour away on the Appian Way. Does he drive?”
“Yes. He’s almost two meters tall. No Mini Coopers.”
“I had no idea you had a special friend.”
“He’s like a son to me.”
“Sounds more like a nephew … What do we need to make Yvette a saint?”
“Money, first of all. It takes about half a million. No one without rich backers was ever beatified.”
“Money. Okay.”
“Then two miracles. It used to be four. Almost all the miracles are medical.”
“We have one of those. The other one occurred when she lifted a car off a Mexican boy in Texas.”
“Any witnesses?”
“Yes, for both.”
“Of course, most miracles are posthumous. The Vatican distrusts miracles during the saint’s life—that might be the Devil’s handiwork. Whereas the Devil is powerless once the saint is dead.”
“We’ve put her remains in a grandiose tomb next to her Saint Catherine of Siena altar. They’re already lining up to ask for miracles and there are several ex-votos—those little primitive paintings on tin—to attest to a divine cure for rheumatism and another for an oven fire that went out and that my sister magically reignited.”
“That won’t do much good with the Curia, I fear.”
“But there will be others.”
“We must assemble letters and testimonials that prove she led a life of heroic virtue. Letters from people who knew her.”
“Spanish is okay?”
“Of course. Most of our postulators know five modern languages and the two ancient ones.”
“What else do they look for?”
“The saint’s own writings.”
“I have countless letters from her, deeply pious.”
“But didn’t you tell me she wrote about being in love with Sister Mercy? And even passing to the sinful act in Rome? What we call PSA—passing to the sinful act?” His English was an accented Oxbridge way of talking. Where was he from? I wondered.
I thought a moment. “Her handwriting and mine are identical. Always have been. Only a handful of her letters to me would need to be censored and recopied.”
“Can we trust Mercy to send us some blank convent stationery? And a bottle of convent ink? I’m good at slightly antiquing paper. The Vatican labs are very thorough at detecting frauds.”
“Yes, Mercy will help in every way, I’m sure. Are our chances for beatification and canonization good?”
“Well, since Vatican Two they’re interested in servants of God who are somehow relevant and original. Holiness is no longer enough. The causes of lots of holy people are languishing. The fact that Colombia has a recent saint, Laura Montoya, from the very same village who worked with the indigenous—that’s not promising. And that Yvette’s from North America, not Colombia—that’s bad. That she didn’t found an order of nuns—traditionally that would have been against her, but who knows now?”
“Doesn’t piety count for something? Or good works?”
“That you will establish by editing her own writing. And by the testimonials of those who knew her—her priest in Texas, her sister nuns. And we need to get a local doctor to verify that cancer miracle.”
“Of course we must do what we must do. But it does seem to me a proof of her saintliness—her very skepticism, her tormented love of Mercy, her extraordinary way of forgiving our unforgivable father. I realize the people don’t want flaws in the diamond, but for me the flaws are as beautiful as the perfect facets. She struggled to achieve sanctity.”
“With the Indians, do we know of any pious acts on your sister’s part; did she intercede to cure anyone of a harelip or something? Did she divide her cloak with a beggar? But seriously, medical miracles seem to be better; we may already have one and all we need is one more.”
Although Pierre’s “official” family name was Thomas, he confided in me, looking at me intensely, that he’d been born Jewish in Alexandria, where his name was Pringsheim, and only after he’d attended Oxford and converted to Catholicism did his name “get changed” to Thomas; he said it as if he’d had no agency in the transformation. He “confessed” his origins as if the Inquisition were still in full swing and he was a converso celebrating Shabbat in the basement every Friday evening. Then it occurred to me that I’d heard the people I was living with mutter anti-Semitic slurs and that Pierre owed his prestige to his continued secrecy. I drew a zipper with
a finger across my lips. We Texans could be racist toward blacks and Mexicans, and in the old Klan days we’d opposed Jews and Catholics as well, but we weren’t trained to sniff out Jews and our anti-Semitism was more latent than active. I myself was utterly indifferent to people’s origins, but I’d learned not to say that. I had a French friend ask about a Madame Cohen, “She’s Jewish—from where?” “France!” I exclaimed, indignant. Of course, it was Muslims, not French Catholics, who were desecrating Jewish graves—but we weren’t allowed to say that either.
Now that Pierre had told me two “compromising” things about himself (that he had a Norwegian “nephew” and that he’d been born an Egyptian Jew), I felt closer to him. A week later the “nephew” himself showed up, speaking perfect English, of course. He was a giant with a bass voice and a black beard, hands the size of baked hams, neon-stitched trousers, and a leather coat of many colors. He walked strangely, with a wide stance; later Pierre told me that Pal had just had surgery, had added genital jewelry, a “Prince Albert,” like Victoria’s husband’s modification, Foxy’s great-great uncle. I asked Pierre if he’d seen the results. “All in good time,” he said with a wink.
When I walked past Pierre’s room that night, I heard him and Pal laughing and talking (or rather I heard Pal, whose voice was so resonant), a cozy exchange between two friends who could let long silences accumulate … I was happy for Pierre, to know he wasn’t living a loveless life. They reminded me of Yvette and Mercy.
The next time I spoke to Pierre alone, he said, “It’s good that Yvette was a religious. There have been very few married women who became saints. And it’s good that the Pope is traveling soon to South America. He likes to name local people as Venerables when he’s in their country and to open their cause.”
“Cause?”
“There are about fifteen hundred open causes—would-be saints. Some of them date back to the Middle Ages. Of course, the actual congregation must approve of the candidate. Some Burgundian bishop of the fifteenth century is scarcely remembered unless prayers to his relics are answered. But a good woman who helped the congregation—and in Heaven is still interceding for them—is likely to have plenty of advocates. I’m sure your sister will be named a Servant of God, a Venerable, and then a dossier will be opened for her in Rome with the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. A postulator and a relator will be named. The postulator’s job is to produce a positio, roughly a thousand pages of biography, listing the two miracles and the proofs of heroic virtue. It contains the would-be saint’s writings, testimonials to her, observations from doctors, a documented chronology. Usually a postulator will choose a collaborator, a scholar often from the same community. They might find a learned nun from her order.”