I’m shivering, but only because I’m too lightly dressed. This fresh breeze, so airy and sharp-edged, tells me I’m in Avila, is that right? (Fervid reminiscence. The serial goes into historical-epic mode.) Father let me wear the white silk gown with pearl trimmings and lilac-pink stitching over muslin sleeves, the one Mother wore when Charles V came to town. And those leather ankle-boots I loved to see on her. Today’s a holiday, I’m sixteen, and the Empress Isabella is coming with little Prince Philip, who is only four and who will become His Catholic Majesty King Philip II. (Fast.) To swap one’s infant garb for a sovereign’s finery, what a tiresome ceremony: flamboyant celebrations, head-spinning fuss. Then that feeling of emptiness and discomfort, me trembling and shivering like I am now, look, in this lovely dress of white and old-rose silk you’ve decked me out in, I know you meant well, but it’s the middle of winter, be sensible, children.
(No answer. La Madre can no longer hear the nurses whispering, her mind spins upon itself inside the crystal castle of her soul. No, it’s a castle of snow and ice that’s either melting or hardening, it depends. A delicate confusion merges dwelling places, years, silks, contours, beings.)
Is it me arrayed in queenly splendor, or is it you, my daughter? Father Gratian’s favorite, little Beatriz Chávez? (Stares at her for a long time.) Another one with my mother’s name; the Beatrices are definitely keeping me company on this last voyage. And you even took the religious name of Beatriz of the Mother of God! Like our dear padre, that noble squire of the Virgin, who chose the same name to become Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios. I presume you noticed the coincidence? (Pause.)
Ah, that Mother of God, how desperately we reach for her when our own fails us! It would be an understatement to say you lacked a mother, Beatriz dear. (Attempts sweeping movement with arm. Falls back.) She was unkind and a bully, quite unlike other mothers that have been coming to my mind ever since I’ve lain dying in this freezing cold, for how many days now?…Anyhow, not really a mother at all, not like mine, nor like the way I attempted to be a mother myself, although, God forgive me.…(Pause.) He knows how flawed I am. (Pause.)
(Beatriz de la Madre de Dios makes the most of this sentimental moment by acting the little girl, and a pretentious one at that: she’ll never change.)
BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS. In centuries to come, people will say that I was an abused child, won’t they, Madre? You went into detail about my ill-treatment in the Foundations, in the chapter about the painful process of foundation in Seville.
TERESA. Appalling, to leave a seven-year-old mite with her aunt! They may have been rustic mountain folk, but your parents were Christians, like everyone else! (Falls back.)
(Beatriz doesn’t reply at once, intent on her own history as though drunk on bitterness.)
BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS. And then those three servants, who were after my aunt’s inheritance, accused me of trying to poison her with arsenic!
TERESA. To be honest the idea doesn’t seem to me so far-fetched (full face again), in an abandoned child who would do anything to get home to her mother. We can admit these sorts of things now, can’t we? This Hell on earth is well behind us, I mean behind me, and the cold air is already carrying my body, if not yet my soul, up to Heaven.
BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS. You are more au fait with all that than I, Mother. How can I remember what happened when I was so little? I do know that when Mother got me back, she gave me a scolding and a whipping and made me sleep on the floor every night for more than a year.
TERESA. And yet your mother was virtuous and devoutly Christian, like mine! (Long pause. A joyful expression gradually forms.) Aren’t human beings strange! You’d think the Creator had not made us all of a piece, but out of mismatched scraps. As a result we all have several faces. You in particular, my child, it’s a veritable curse.…Unless it’s a stroke of luck, a kind of grace or freedom, do you follow? One of the most enviable of God’s gifts, the ability to travel through our innermost spaces in a kind of pilgrimage.…
(Beatriz goes back to poring over the twisted threads of her misfortune, not listening to La Madre. Teresa, carried away by storytelling, is not listening either. She has already written this drama, she contents herself with gleaning a word here and an image there. Hopeless, toxic female contiguity.…)
TERESA. Ah, so your father passed away? (The movie allows itself some melancholic frames.) You never told me about that…and your brothers died as well? The Holy Virgin had to take you under her wing to ensure that when you were around twelve, you stumbled on a book about Saint Anne and developed a great devotion to the saintly hermits of Mount Carmel. (Joyful expression returns, more intensely.) Like me, you chose virginity. Clearly the best choice of a bad bunch. Fatherless and miserable, harried by your poor mother, who couldn’t help taking it out on you, you barricaded yourself behind your hymen. (Thin smile, fading.)
BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS. I wanted to die a martyr, like Saint Agnes. Father and Mother beat me almost to death, then they tried to choke me.…I was confined to bed for three months, unable to move.…I wanted desperately to lose myself.
TERESA. Lose yourself, child? (Leans back to inspect her.) Thanks to the love of Christ, you were saved! To suffer like Him is pure glory. Once you felt affinity with the martyrs and the Passion, your family’s harassment was transmuted into a token of love, wasn’t it? (Long pause.)
BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS. There was only one way out for me: to become a nun.
(Teresa seems to be suffocating again, she gasps for air to the alarm of Teresita and Ana. She thinks of the other Beatriz: Beatriz de Óñez.)
TERESA. Beaten children, abandoned children, it’s all the same: that’s what you are, my darlings. (The sequence of images is overtaken by darkness.) Primed to take shelter in the bosom of the tortured Father whom I call our Lord. (Turns to face us.) My sisters, you are, and I along with you, we are the paler twins of the Lord on Calvary. The Lord who allowed Himself to be tortured, abused to death if you like, in order that we might merge with Him, fuse our flesh with His, and thus and only thus be saved along with Him. (Sudden vehemence.) You see, little one, you can escape from a degraded or violent mother, flee a falsely respectable and profoundly distressed family, but you can never, ever, get away from Him. We poor mistreated creatures—and what creature is not?—could only be saved by a Father as cruelly flogged as we were, who loves us and saves Himself, and thereby saves us too. (Voice cracks.)
(The Chávez girl will never hear the catechism lesson La Madre recites to herself in order to make sense of her life and death. Beatriz is still hung up on her own adolescent yearnings.)
BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS, in a perverse whine. I couldn’t find a good father confessor anywhere, Mother.
TERESA. That’s the way it goes, perfectly natural, my child. (Smiles.) But you are a shocking little flirt, let me tell you plainly.…As plainly as I allow that your mother was a wicked bully, in her way. (Knowing smile.) No need to blush! I can tell your cheeks are on fire, even with my eyes closed. (Turns her back, settles on side with face to wall.) I’ve known you long enough.…(Breathes out.)
I know you like the back of my hand, in fact, and you hardly need me to tell you why: because of Gratian. Yes, him again. (Pause.) Not knowing how to become a nun, you became depressed, and started haunting churches, looking haggard. An old white-bearded Carmelite did his best to convince you that God had already made you strong, since you’d survived your decomposing family, but that wasn’t enough, you were on the lookout for something else. What could it be? (Smile fades. Lips.) The arrival of young Fr. Gratian on the scene lifted you to seventh heaven. You went to him for confession at least twelve times—oh, I know every detail!—you stalked and harassed him, in fact. (Vehemently.) He was wary of pretty airheads like you, I made sure of that, I wrote to him endlessly on that topic, as on many others.…Finally a lady interceded for you, and the painful richness of your soul was comforted: you clung to him like a limpet, determined
not to let go!
(It would take a lot more to dislodge that little pest of a Beatriz.)
BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS. It was the feast day of the Holy Trinity, 1575, when you came to Seville, Madre, that I ran away from my parents’ house to take refuge in the convent. I was your first novice, remember? You made me eat properly, I put on weight, I made peace with my mother. A few days after my profession of faith, my father resigned himself to die, and Mother came to join me at the convent.
TERESA. Nothing ever made me so happy as to see mother and daughter devoted to the service (effortfully turning over, stares at her for a long time)…the service of One who proved so generous toward them.
BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS. Mother and I? Or do you mean you and I, Madre?
TERESA. Mothers and daughters, you know, can never be reunited in this world. (Rubs finger over lips.) So much passion, so much rivalry, with love thrown in; and love is at its murkiest between a mother and a daughter. But there is a way to solder them, the only way! Remember what I am about to tell you, hic et nunc. Were female cohabitation possible at all, it is only possible in the name of His Majesty, a Third Person: that’s what the true, Catholic, Roman, and Apostolic religion teaches. Will you remember that? I hope so, for your sake! As for the rest, between ourselves.…(Nose, lips.) Some of the father confessors God sends us are deplorably frivolous, in my experience. (Reading from Way.) “If this confessor wants to allow room for vanity, because he himself is vain, he makes little of it even in others.”44 Be forewarned! (Pause.) You aren’t obliged to agree with me. In reality, Sister, you are quite incapable of having any opinion on this subject. Besides, these gentlemen are inclined to render us mistrustful of one another, it’s well known.…(Gravely.) Why do you suppose I wrote a whole chapter about you, the twenty-sixth of my Foundations? It was because I knew the story would gratify him, who adored you. Of course I mean Fr. Gratian, who else? A foundation, you see, rests upon a host of stories like that, what did you think? (Tries mechanically to adjust veil, forgetting that she is bare-headed.) And it has a great deal to do with raptures, something else I daresay you know nothing about. Ah, they are impossible to resist, and cannot be disguised. On those days I am like a drunken man, I entreat God not to let it come over me in public! As for the lascivious feelings that come afterward, and that other people have mentioned to me, I pay no attention to them and I advise you to do the same. (Knowing smile.) Actually, I have never experienced this.45 The truth is that I am so cheerful at departing at last toward His Majesty that I can confess all these trivialities to you, trivial creature that you are. But how I always distrusted you! (Rueful smile, followed by nausea.)
(Three knocks at the door. Who is it? Who wakes La Madre from her coma?)
TERESA. Let me go in peace! Dear God, You will not despise a repentant heart? (Lifts beseeching eyes heavenward.)
Father Antonio de Jesús, the old companion of John of the Cross, now a vicar-provincial, has come to witness the agony of the foundress. With him is the new prioress at Alba de Tormes, Juana del Espíritu Santo, a sweet and gentle girl but excessively fond of fasting, in Teresa’s opinion. On grounds that Teresa was junior to the prioress, Juana offered her white linen bedclothes in place of the usual straw mattress, but then left her alone…so as not to be importunate! Father Antonio seemed not to notice this underhand score-settling between women. And now, at the end of the end, sensing the approach of the final hour, the two of them decide to show up—the Carmelite may well become a saint, you never know! But Teresa can’t be relied on to collaborate. She is already floating on another level, waiting to be seized by the “royal eagle of God’s majesty,” “esta águila caudalosa de la majestad de Dios.”46
TERESA. Ah, you must be here to talk business. (Condescends to open eyes a crack.) The battle for the Salamanca Carmel will be my last, and I have some concerns about this latest institution, having formally prohibited that the house be bought. But the prioress Ana de la Encarnación had set her heart on it. (Turns page.) So, it’s you, Teresa, my daughter, Teresa de Layz, I regret that we must meet in these circumstances, but never mind, since it’s God’s will. Come closer, don’t hang back. (A new lease on life, briefly: foundational affairs stimulate her to the last.) I took you, too, for another myself. It was you who founded this discalced convent at Alba de Tormes where I now lie, by God’s grace, on this final leg of my journey. (Reads.) I devoted a nice little “short story” to you, as it will be called, in my Foundations. Don’t thank me, thank the Lord for making you as you are. You had everything to be the beloved daughter: a well-heeled family, noble, pure-blooded parents so as not to feel “sold into a foreign land”47 the way I sometimes did…I won’t dwell on it, but I’m telling you, know it and don’t forget. But no, that’s wrong, it wasn’t like that at all.…(Rubs her eyes, nose, lips.) God wished you to be abandoned also; soon after you were born, your parents left you unattended for a whole day from morning to night, as though your life mattered little to them. So many abandoned girls it pleased God for me to gather up—a sign from Providence, was it not? Providence, no doubt about it, decreed our paths should cross.…What was I saying.…(Hacking cough.) You were their fifth daughter, and people have no use for girls in this ignorant world.48 Now listen, and retain what I say to you: “How many fathers and mothers will be seen going to hell because they had sons and also how many will be seen in heaven because they had daughters!”49 (Stares at her for a long time, then bows head to read from the pages that continue to unfold on the blue cloak of the Virgin, caressing the body on the brink of death.) The times will have to change, that’s all, and I have a premonition that it will be soon…
TERESA DE LAYZ, in a faint voice. The village woman who found me thought I was dead, apparently she said to me: “How is it, child, are you not a Christian?” And I piped up, “Yes, I am,” despite being only three days old, because I knew I’d been baptized; and said no more until I reached the age when all children start to talk.
TERESA. That’s quite a story, my dear; these women tell so many of them! Be that as it may, tell yourself that God willed it so, and don’t attempt to fathom the mystery, we all of us bear its stamp (Stares at her again, with incredulity.) Forgotten by both parents, you knew you were a Christian. An excellent Christian! I myself recognized this about you, or else I should never have let myself be awoken by your visit at this stage. When your parents heard what their baby had said, they were amazed. They would have been amazed by far less. (Coughs again, clears throat.) Full of remorse, they began to lavish love and care upon you.…They were also troubled by your subsequent lack of speech that went on for a long time, I believe! (Widens eyes. Pause.)
TERESA DE LAYZ, reciting her homily. I didn’t want to get married. But then, on hearing the name of a man who turned out to be both virtuous and rich, Francisco Velázquez, I consented at once. He loved me and did everything to make me happy, while on my side, God had equipped me with all the qualities he could wish for in a wife.
No, women never stop telling stories.…And this is another, stranded on its sandbank, jumbling times and places, high on love, children, and disappointment. Teresa isn’t listening, she knows it all in advance, always did. What she had to do was swim on by, let the rest sink, wash herself down, escape.
TERESA. A happy marriage, then. Like my marriage to my Spouse? (Broad grin.)
TERESA DE LAYZ. Not all that happy, Madre, in that it was barren.
(At these words the foundress falls back into her blue chill of agony. The visitor continues prattling about the desire for children, hijos, posterity, generación, and the many devotions and prayers she offered up, all in vain. Teresa thinks nothing. Nothing but the cold that sends icy fingers through the entrails that once were enflamed by the spear of transfixion.)
TERESA DE LAYZ. “Do not desire children, for you will be condemned,” I was told by Saint Andrew, a powerful patron of these causes. And then I seemed to see a patio, Mother, and beyond it green meadows as far as the h
orizon, dotted with white flowers. Like your gardens, Mother, irrigated by the four waters, fragrant and in bloom. Saint Andrew appeared to me again, saying: “These are children other than those you desire.” At that I understood that our Lord willed me to found a monastery. (In a metallic, conquering voice.) I no longer wanted to have children.
(Teresa remains silent for a long time. Why must this other Teresa rekindle such hoary griefs, incommunicable, forgotten, overcome and buried long ago?)
TERESA. I never wrote about what is now burning the tip of my tongue, and will remain as pure, unformulated thought.…(Fervid reminiscence.) Your story finds an echo in me. Two Teresas, de Cepeda and de Layz, two barren wives who begat religious houses instead of offspring.…(Pause.) You and your faithful husband eventually created Our Lady of the Annunciation at Alba de Tormes, a fine convent, and I’m proud of it. (Pause.) Sincerely proud. (Weeps. Another long, heavy silence.) And now, they tell me that the good donor that you were torments those great souls? (With sudden violence.) “I fear an unsatisfied nun more than many devils!” There!
Teresa de Layz feels the fear of sterility come over her again. If a mother upbraids her daughter, if she deserts her, is it not because the mother is herself unhappy, numbly inadequate, afflicted by some inexpiable infirmity? A dried-up fig, in short.
(The dying woman pushes herself up on her elbows in the white bed with its freshly changed sheets.)
TERESA. Ah, dear lady, one cannot serve God in disquiet. All this is infantile, mere attachment to self. How different it is wherever the Spirit truly reigns! (Turns the page.)
Teresa of Avila can be cruel, all right—just enough to restore order. Up to her last breath, and, if God wills it, piercing her foremost alter egos to the quick.
Father Antonio de Jesús shows Teresa de Layz the door.
Teresa, My Love Page 58