The Priest's Madonna

by Hassinger, Amy

  Once the list of unfulfilled requests had swelled to fill five pages (each of which took about two weeks to get through), I brought the notebook to Bérenger, suggesting that it might be wise to send some of the intentions, honoraria included, to his brother David or the curé in Rennes-les-Bains. “Otherwise, I can’t see how you’ll be able to fulfill all of these,” I said.

  His face darkened momentarily. “I’d rather not just yet,” he said. “They’ll taper off eventually, and then I’ll be able to catch up.”

  Though Bérenger had granted me his attention once more, he had grown more studied in his propriety, not as freely affectionate as he once had been. Rather than sit beside me and marvel at my writing or my bookkeeping skills, he left me alone in the office. He did not seek me out for company, only if he had a task he wanted me to complete. His eyes no longer lingered on my face over dinner. In fact, he had begun to request more frequently that he take his dinner alone in the presbytery. He always treated me with civility and even kindness—holding doors for me, praising my work on occasion—but he no longer singled me out. I began to wonder if I had misunderstood, if perhaps I had taken the smiles, the affectionate comments, the looks to be specific to me, when they were only his way with all women.

  It occurred to me in my more compassionate moments that Bérenger’s aloofness might have stemmed from his efforts to resist temptation. Still, I longed for him. All the pores of my skin seemed to open when he stood near me. My vision seemed to sharpen in his presence: colors intensified, edges grew more defined. With him, I was alert, engaged; without him, my senses dulled. The lust was physical, yes, but it went deeper than the skin—it lived within me like chronic pain.

  I invoked an old fantasy: Bérenger and I, living side by side in a chaste marriage, sure of our mutual affection. What would the harm be in that? It was customary for a priest’s housekeeper to live in the presbytery. And how could the Church keep us from loving each other? The law prohibited only fornication, and I felt sure we could avoid that.

  I grew merciless. Knowing Bérenger to be a creature of his appetites, I decided I would court him with cuisine. He had told me once that he preferred my cooking to my mother’s. “Your mother’s dishes are very good,” he said, “but yours are temptations.” So I tempted him: I made cassoulet with ample meat—bacon rind, pork loin, and sausage—and prepared the goose confit myself. I insisted that M. Gautier, the butcher, sell me only the freshest cuts he had. At home, I chose only the most perfect vegetables for Bérenger’s meals. He liked to hunt and would sometimes bring home a pheasant or a hare for us to prepare. I would roast it long and slow in a stew of wine, blood, and rosemary. I stuffed sheep’s tripe for him with ham, eggs, thyme, and garlic, and sliced it thin as paper. I splurged on bottles of Côtes du Roussillon and Blanquette de Limoux instead of buying the cheaper carafes from the Verdiés’ vineyard.

  My mother scolded me for being wasteful. “Monsieur le curé does not pay us enough for all this,” she said, “and your father’s pockets are not lined with gold.” But as long as Bérenger enjoyed my meals, I kept on. Claude and my father were pleased. Claude even suggested I go to work as a chef for one of the bistros in Espéraza. “The owner is my friend’s father,” he said proudly. “He’ll get you a job.” My parents seemed to like the idea—perhaps they thought it might be an opportunity for me to meet a prospective husband, someone who wasn’t already discouraged by my reputation for eccentricity. But Claude did not pursue it, and it was soon forgotten, to my relief.

  Bérenger noticed my efforts. “You’ve outdone yourself, Marie,” he said on more than one occasion, and even though he did not grace me with his roguish grin, he spoke with genuine warmth. My attention—selfishly motivated as it was—seemed to touch him.

  One evening, as I entered the presbytery to deliver his supper, I found an unopened envelope on the kitchen table. The paper was creamy and fragrant with lavender water, the handwriting unmistakably feminine. The return address displayed no name, only the city of origin: Narbonne. I gave it to Bérenger at supper. He sliced it open, then read hungrily.

  “Who is it from?” I asked, affecting a thoroughly unconvincing nonchalance.

  He acted as if he hadn’t heard and read the letter through once more, shaking his head in amused disbelief, then scoffed and tossed it into the fire.

  But the next morning, as I was sweeping the hearth, I noticed the same creamy paper tucked into a protected ledge behind the andirons. Its bottom edge had been burned, obliterating the final lines of the letter. I hastily plucked it up and began to read.

  Monsieur l’abbé,

  The person who writes you must hide her name. To tell it would be to compromise it and to give you an unfavorable opinion of her. Yet do not judge her badly, do not think her intentions wicked, oh indeed, she has never had the slightest desire to damage the respect due a priest, a minister of God. She loves you with a deep and ardent but pure and disinterested affection. This devoted one, to sacrifice herself for you—it would be the realization of her dream, the end of all her anguish. You have captured her heart, if I may say so, despite herself, because she has long battled this irresistible attraction. She fought, she prayed, but neither battles nor prayers could extinguish this pure and noble flame that will burn in her soul as long as her body has a breath of life. You will never understand all she has suffered because of you, all she still suffers, her life is a martyrdom, an exile more cruel than death. She knows quite well how much this letter will shock you, you will find it unseemly; she finds it so herself, but does not the heart have its weaknesses, its folly? Oh, pity her, I entreat you …

  I took the letter upstairs to Bérenger’s bedroom, where he was dressing for Mass. I knocked once, then opened the door. He stood at his wardrobe in his undershirt. A hollow the size of a thumbprint nestled between his collarbones.

  “So this is your secret,” I snarled, tossing the letter at his bare feet. He glanced at it, but did not yet pick it up. “How pathetic.”

  He pulled on his cassock and buttoned it, neck to feet, as if I weren’t there. He did this to inform me of the inappropriateness of my behavior—his raised chin and haughty eyes told me as much—but I was unapologetic.

  “This is who you visit when you go to see your ‘family,’ then. This pitiful woman.”

  He bent down to pick the letter up and inspected it. “Fire is not what it used to be,” he quipped.

  How I longed to swat him! If I’d been a man, I would have swung him a punch without hesitation. But I knew how ludicrous it would be, my puny fists falling on his chest, like the paws of a cat. Instead, I funneled my anger into a beastly roar that filled the room and the presbytery, and undoubtedly penetrated the exterior walls.

  “Marie!” he said sharply. “Enough.” He stepped past me, walking through my fury as if it did not crackle in the air around me, and continued downstairs. I could only follow him, my rage making me cling to him as if I had been soldered there, a bracket of iron fixed to his indomitable back. I stood behind him as he sat at the table. When he asked for his tea and bread, I did not move. He laughed, to my further consternation. “You’re jealous, Marie?”

  I had an urge to fling the kettle at his head. “You’d better leave,” I said. “Before I hurt you.”

  This made him throw his head back and guffaw. “Oh, Marie,” he said, turning toward me. “How wonderful you are.”

  I found this disarming to say the least, and rather than face his open affection, I turned to the fire, where the kettle was beginning to steam. I poured his coffee and served it to him with his bread. He thanked me, beaming as if I’d blessed him. “You haven’t answered my question,” I said.

  “I have nothing to do with this woman. Is it my fault that she’s written to me?”

  “It might be,” I said. “You might have encouraged it.”

  “Why do you think I threw it in the fire?” he asked. “If I were attached to her, whoever she is, do you think I would have burned her lett
er?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know who she is.”

  “I don’t really,” he insisted, his mouth full now with peach jam and bread. “Well, I’ve wagered a guess, but I can’t be sure.” He chuckled. “It’s as you say, Marie. She’s a lonely woman, certainly to be pitied, and unfortunately has attached her affection to a priest. It’s not an uncommon occurrence.” He twinkled his eyes at me.

  “What do you mean?” I said, my anger rising once more. “Are you implying that I—?”

  “No, no, Marie,” he said. “I was only teasing.”

  “Don’t you dare put me in the same category as her.”

  He took a sip of his coffee, then set the cup on the table. “I would never do such a thing.” The tone of his voice was sober now, genuine. “Really, Marie. Marinette. You are in no other category but your own.”

  And despite my anger, I welcomed the sound of my nickname on his lips again.

  It was the first time we had alluded to our mutual affection. Somehow, our reference to it—couched in innuendo as it was—freed us both. It alleviated my anxiety, for I saw that not only was Bérenger aware of my feelings, he did not discourage them. He had given me a kind of permission, then, permission to love him. And thereafter, he seemed able to let down his guard in my presence once again. He was also more sensitive to my anxiety. Now, before leaving, he would take my hand and hold it for a long moment while he said good-bye. “I’ll return in three days, Marinette. Take care of things while I’m gone.” Despite the seeming neutrality of his words, I heard these gentle farewells as declarations of love.

  I am not sure why my oblique admission of love effected this change in him, for I was still a menace to his integrity as a priest. I had made no promise of stamping out my desire. Perhaps he saw how helpless I was in the face of my love for him and pitied me for it. Perhaps he simply decided he was tired of struggling against me. Whatever the reason, he grew tender with me once more—but his tenderness took on a new character. It could no longer be mistaken for brotherly teasing. I was older; we were both wiser. It was an intentional tenderness, expressed in all the subtle language of adult communication: gazes, courtesies in speech and gesture, words carefully chosen, and very occasional and fleeting well-placed touches—the elbow, the shoulder, the small of the back.

  The perception of having won him made me glad, of course. I grew less desperate, less lonely, less fearful. But it was a mixed joy, for I regretted the difficulty he faced in loving me. I lay awake nights, punishing myself for tempting him, vowing to renounce his affection in the morning for his own good, all the while knowing I would do no such thing. It was the worst sort of hypocrisy, for while I felt his agony in temptation, I was not willing to relieve him of it. Yet I felt I could keep my private vow that we would remain proper, that our love, while unchaste in spirit, would never cause him to literally transgress.

  Our interactions were changing, the way we spoke and moved informed still by the effort of restraint, but underpinned with a new trust in the strength of our mutual feeling. We remained chaste in every way, even more so than we had been, for we barely spoke. I cooked and cleaned; Bérenger worked and ate. It was as if we were at either end of a high wire and the faltering step of one would send the other tumbling into blackness. We exchanged only the necessary words, which were mainly his: the instructions on which linens to set out for Mass, which vase to dust, which pieces of mail to post. And though I knew he relished what I prepared for him, he rarely mentioned food—or hunger.

  We knew now what we were entering into. It was what I had hoped for, though the reality proved both more thrilling and more mundane than what I had imagined in the soft light of my imagination. There would be no banns, no ceremony, no declaration—not even a private one—but it was to be a marriage. A silent marriage, relatively chaste, but one that would surge forward, nonetheless, the way marriages do: in dailiness, in the shared tasks that form a life. Above all, in shared meals, our sacrament.

  Our meals went this way: Bérenger sat at the table and spread his napkin on his lap. I poured his wine. He sipped, nodded. I set the food before him—a soup or stew, a hunk of bread, a meat, a salad, a cheese—and then sat across the table from him, listening as I ate for Bérenger’s soft, involuntary groans of satisfaction and the scrape of his spoon against the bowl.

  Yehudah

  When Miryam arrived at the camp after leaving Shimon’s house, most of the men and women were asleep, the men in the open air, the women in their tent—woolen cloths draped over branches and tied to stakes in the ground. The fire still burned. Yehudah squatted by it, poking at the embers with a long stick. Miryam nodded to him and moved toward the tent, ducking to enter.

  He called to her, “Where is Yeshua?” He was standing, the stick hanging from his hand.

  Miryam walked closer to him so as not to wake the women. “At Shimon’s. I left early.”

  He nodded, his eyes on her. It was unusual to leave a dinner early, but it had been unusual for her to go in the first place. They had all long ago given up notions of what was usual.

  “Come,” he said instead. “Stand by the fire.”

  She did not trust him. She trusted none of the men, except for Yeshua. Many of them were young and unmarried and inclined to look on the women lustfully. She had heard one of them joking one night, “They cook and clean for us, do everything a wife does. Why not do a wife’s duty in bed, too?” There had been scattered laughter.

  One night, before Yeshua had healed her, before any of the other women joined their group, a man had come to her, his face covered by a cloth. He had feverishly touched her, as if she were a whore. “Keep quiet,” he said, “I won’t hurt you.”

  She had been sleeping deeply—a rare occurrence—and so woke only partly at first. She believed herself to be dreaming still, and allowed him to touch her, allowed herself to feel his hands against her body.

  As the stranger began to undress her, she awoke fully. This should not be happening, she thought. Keeping her eyes on his neck, she moved forward as if to kiss him and instead bit the flesh at his collarbone, as if she were biting into a leg of lamb. All the while she thought, This must not happen.

  The man screamed a curse and recoiled, his hand to his neck. She had broken the skin; blood-metal was on her tongue. He struck her across the face. She fell back and when she looked up again, he had gone. There were noises from the others then, voices, a flint struck against a stone. Footsteps approached her.

  Levi spoke, “Miryam?”

  “Yes,” she responded, her heart beating.

  “Are you all right? We heard a sound.”

  “Yes. I’m fine,” she said. “I heard it, too. It frightened me.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “We’re keeping watch now. You can go back to sleep.”

  She looked now at Yehudah and wondered if he might have been the man. His fingers were long and slim, as the man’s had been. Yehudah’s whole body was slim. He stood and stepped like a heron, carefully lifting his long legs, as if afraid he might step in goat dung.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Come closer,” he said. “I don’t want to yell.”

  She did, warily. She stood opposite him, the fire between them. His face was streaked, as if he’d been crying.

  “I’m worried, Miryam,” he said. He looked into the fire. In his eyes, the flames pitched and soared.

  She didn’t respond. She was not prepared or willing to accept the stumblings toward intimacy that the other men occasionally made with her. They saw her closeness with Yeshua—unorthodox, improper—and thought she should be their intimate as well, should listen to them, hold them. But she would not be passed from man to man as if she were a loaf of bread.

  “I’m worried,” he continued. “People are noticing now. They’re gathering in great crowds. They’re ready to drop everything and follow us.”

  “Pardon me,” Miryam responded. “But isn’t that good news?”

 
“Yes, of course,” he said impatiently. “But Yeshua needs to lead them, not just talk to them. They’ll only grow, these crowds, the closer we get to Yerushalayim. He has to steer them in the right direction, otherwise they’ll overpower him and we’ll lose everything, all the progress we’ve made.”

  Miryam watched the fire. Yehudah’s voice was loud, too loud for the night. “How should he steer them? Isn’t healing them, teaching them, enough?”

  “You’ve seen how the soldiers stand at the edges of the crowd, keeping watch. If Yeshua doesn’t take control, they will.”

  “What are you suggesting, Yehudah?”

  “I’m suggesting rising up, Miryam,” he said, raising the stick toward the sky. “It’s time to move forward, take action. Or at least start putting the idea in people’s minds. Otherwise we’ll never get anywhere.”

  “You want him to lead the people into rebellion?”

  “Yes!” he shouted at the sky. “Rebellion! Revolution! Pry the dirty Roman fingers from our land!”

  “Shhh,” she said.

  “We’re wasting time, all this puttering around with miracles and teaching. We need to organize, to march—we need to unite against our common enemy!”

  “You don’t want people to be healed?”

  “No, no. Of course I do. It’s not that. But that healing—that has nothing to do with our message. It’s just a way to get people to listen.”

  Miryam continued to watch the fire.

  “Listen, Miryam,” he said. He stepped around the fire and took her arm roughly. “Yeshua’s changed. Can’t you see it? He’s losing focus. He gets distracted too easily. He used to talk like he had the voice of God thundering in his ear. But he’s grown quieter now, sadder. Sometimes I wonder whether God has left him.”