Teresa, My Love

by Julia Kristeva

  TERESA, to Ana de San Bartolomé. Tell me, child, are we still in Alba de Tormes, on the duchess of Alba’s estates? (In a childish tone of regressive nostalgia.) Ah, the duchess! She delivered me for a time, like the exit from Egypt, she nurtured me.…It was her, doña María Enríquez de Toledo, wasn’t it? Or am I out of my mind? I see her now.…(Tries to rise onto elbows, falls back.)

  (Doña María Enríquez de Toledo, the duchess of Alba, walks past holding a trout.)

  TERESA, in a changed, respectful, courtier’s voice. The grace of the Holy Spirit be always with Your Excellency. Have you received my letter imploring your kindness regarding the house founded in Pamplona by the Society of Jesus? I know, the duke your husband is leading an army into Portugal, and the constable is your brother-in-law the viceroy.…(Whispered aside to Ana de San Bartolomé.) We must absolutely protect the Society as it protects us, don’t forget that, my child…a testament, if you will.…(Respectful voice.) I am very sick, You Excellency, I am bleeding, I am on my way…it is important to me that the favor you show me in everything be known.50 (Quick sigh, soft voice for herself.) The duchess is definitely worth keeping on side. After all, it was she who helped to have my little nephew Gonzalo exempted from serving in the duke’s Italian campaign, dear Gonzalo, who caused me so many headaches after that.…Oh well, I did my best and so did she, and at least he didn’t get killed.51 (Pause, broad smile.) I’ll always remember the nice fat trout you sent me, Excellency, when I was here in Alba, a good ten years ago it must be; a gift from God.…(Tired voice, sigh. Suddenly sits up, reads in emotive voice.) “If you favor us in this regard it would be like liberating us from the captivity of Egypt.”52 (Silence.)

  (Broad smile, repeating.) Like liberating us from the captivity of Egypt…liberating us from the captivity of Egypt…from the captivity of Egypt…the captivity of Egypt.…“Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.…And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob…I am the Lord.”53 Let my people go…my people…from the bondage of Egypt…deliver me…deliver.…(Coughing fit, long silence. Rest.)

  (Teresa wastes not a second of this respite, the clarity that precedes death. She addresses Ana de San Bartolomé.)

  My dear child, as soon as you see that I am a little better, please order a cart.…(Barely audible.) Settle me in it as best you can and we will go, you, me, and Teresita, home to Avila (voice breaking).…Do you promise?

  ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ. Planning to travel, even with her last breath!

  TERESITA, plaintively, in tears. She wants to be close to her parents.…

  ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ. I don’t think so. She wants to leave Egypt.

  TERESITA. But that’s been done, way back in the Bible!

  ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ. Not like that. I think she’s still caught in her own personal Egypt.…

  Suddenly, after a few slow bars of introduction, a slender, diffident but cultivated soprano voice is heard. Delicately it sings an unaccustomed Kyrie for a funeral service—from the Missa Sanctae Theresiae, the Mass for Saint Teresa by Michael Haydn. The work was commissioned by the Empress Maria Theresa, and the voice we hear is hers.54

  TERESA, surprised, intrigued, attentive. Don’t be afraid, my daughter, nervousness inhibits the voice…as well you know, since at home in Austria you regularly sing the soprano solos of sacred music compositions. (Motherly smile, timidity.) Relax, let yourself go…you are after all the wife of Emperor Francis I of Austria! Come closer, let me hear your tuneful little voice.…Everybody will agree one day that Your Majesty’s musical sensibility was the finest of all the Habsburg line.…You can believe me, it’s your own patron saint telling you.…(Vertigo, slackening, peace invades the spasm-shaken body.)

  EMPRESS MARIA THERESA, singing the first movement of the Mass composed for her by Michael Haydn. The choir remains in the background throughout. “Kyrie eleison.…”

  LA MADRE. “Bravo!” “Superb!” “Majestic Haydn!” Are those your words or mine? I am not very musical, Majesty, as is well known, and you honor me by associating me to that sort of faith which music is…being the most spiritual…or rather the most physical…that is, both at the same time…or not? (Dreamy voice.) Majestic, yes, that’s what you called the little brother of the greater Haydn, for you could see he wasn’t so little…a Kapellmeister of Salzburg Cathedral, no less.…The young Mozart will learn a lot about sacred music from Michael, no secret there.…He mentions him in letters to his father Leopold.…They will remain friends, even after Wolfgang’s turbulent break with Prince-Archbishop Colloredo.…Music specialists will have a great deal to say about him, as time goes by…yes, I assure you.…Some will point out that Mozart’s celebrated Requiem has much in common with the Requiem composed by Michael on the death of Prince-Archbishop Sigismund von Scrattenbach, another friend of Amadeus. But we’re not at the requiem stage yet, are we, Majesty?…In my case, at least.…Sing on, my daughter, and may God bless your lovely voice.…(Peaceful smile, falls asleep.)

  EMPRESS MARIA THERESA, solo voice for the Benedictus, once again an unusual choice for Haydn in his homage to the empress and the saint. “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.…”

  TERESITA, crouching at the foot of the bed. It seems the empress is giving her voice to La Madre.…What am I saying, La Madre gave her voice to her.…

  ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ. Is this really a Mass? It sounds more like a prayer, the sound of peace.…

  (Empress Maria Theresa is oblivious. She exits, carried on the Benedictus by Michael Haydn.)

  La Madre’s spirit floats over the eighty-eight towers of fortified Avila, protected under the hem of the Virgin’s blue cloak. At the same time she addresses the cortege of dark female silhouettes filing past her bed:

  TERESA, in a chanting voice. Farewell, ladies, I am on my way to different skies. (Pause.) With no regrets. That is, I don’t think so. (Subtle smile.) You did a good job of filling my life, as I filled yours. Enough is enough.…

  The procession of nuns and prioresses includes Isabel de Santo Domingo, Isabel de San Pablo, Isabel de los Ángeles, Ana de los Ángeles.…

  TERESA. If the soul is a woman, she grieves to see that her nature, or rather her sex, hinders and ties her down. (Reading.) “Si es mujer, se aflige del atamiento que le hace su natural.…(Short silence, then rapidly.) She can’t enter into the midst of the world to praise God.…And she envies those who have the freedom to cry out and spread the news about this great God of hosts.…(Short silence.) Those who are free to proclaim to all the world the greatness of the God of cavalries.”55 (Turned toward them, gazes after the procession of women leaving the scene.)

  (La Madre’s head rolls back onto the fluorescent white pillow, an exceptional concession to the dying in this Spartan place.)

  (Long silence. A voice is heard in the distance.)

  When the breeze blew from the turret

  Parting his hair,

  He wounded my neck

  With his gentle hand,

  Suspending all my senses.”56

  TERESA. What song is that? I never wrote that.…(Voice breaking.) Could it be dear John of the Cross speaking through my lips? Is that you, Father, by my side?

  (The voice stills. The eighty-eight towers, a glimmering girdle of Avila blue, encircle the dying body of La Madre.)

  Chapter 31

  ACT 2

  Her Eliseus

  I knelt down and promised that for the rest of my life I would do everything Master Gratian might tell me.…

  Teresa of Avila, Spiritual Testimonies

  It will seem inappropriate that he should have informed me of so many personal matters about his soul.…he told me about these things and additional ones that cannot be suitably put in writing.…

  Teresa of Avila, The Foundations

  ANGELA, a code name for Teresa in correspondence with Jerome Gratian

  LAURENCIA, ditto

  LA MADRE, out of b
reath

  ISABEL DE SANTO DOMINGO, prioress at Segovia, passing through

  FATHER JEROME GRATIAN OF THE MOTHER OF GOD, permanent presence Aliases:

  ELISEUS, PAUL, JOANES

  TERESITA and ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ, at prayer

  SYLVIA LECLERCQ, psychologist

  VOICE OF HIS MAJESTY THE LORD

  VOICE OF A FUTURE EDITOR OF TERESA’S WORKS

  ACT 2, SCENE 1

  Cast as above, minus the VOICE OF HIS MAJESTY THE LORD

  The soul in agony here enters a terrain that rather resembles that of my MPH, were it not for the way the Holy Mother’s faith has changed it into a well-watered, flower-filled garden. Here, at the extreme of being, extreme beings trail their sufferings and raptures, their obsessions and exaltations, deliriums and OCDs, hysterical passions, manic self-punishments, dull melancholies, and searing moments of lucidity. Filtered through the body and the word, these states at the limit—hers, theirs—appear as alluring as passion, as beautiful as Paradise, as necessary as ideals.

  La Madre has rallied a little: it’s the upturn before the end. She can speak again, although with difficulty. The words that garland her memories and premonitions elude her throat and mouth. Almost silent, voluble inside, she relies upon the body more than ever, and marks the passage of time in beats of sound, touch, taste, smell. The failing Madre’s flesh is no more than a love letter by now, a letter endlessly edited, corrected, and rewritten.

  The skin thirsts for cooling waterfalls. The tongue cries out for pungent tastes. The shattered bones dream of strolling among fragrant lilies. When loneliness is so immense, to whom can these entreaties be addressed? Absence makes one mad. So does the longing for presence.

  ANGELA, in a normal voice. One day in 1575…was it in February or May? At the Convent of Beas…the Lord told me that He could grant my wishes. (Pause.) And as a token of that promise He put a handsome ring onto my finger, an amethyst. What divine bounty toward my sorry life, worthy of the fires of Hell! I know it was delirious nonsense to have felt this wedding to be real, in broad daylight. Christ as a marriage broker, un casamentero, that’s insane! Foolishness…I can laugh at it now.

  VOICE OF A FUTURE EDITOR OF TERESA’S WORKS, attempting to moderate the harshness of a judgment that shows her, even on the brink of death, being as tough on herself as ever. Madre, you noted in that context “I am writing this foolishness,”1 but the fragment is apocryphal, of dubious authenticity, and the Church does not recognize it.

  TERESA: You, too, love me too well, Father. (Looks at him for a long time.) Let me confide what comes to my mind about all this now. Was it not foolishness on my part to have seen—around the time I received the amethyst ring—the Lord join my right hand to Fr. Gratian’s? And to have heard Him say that I should take that master as His representative, all the days of my life? (Raises chin, looks straight ahead.) Now, then, Father, don’t back down, I pray you. I take it upon myself to admit that I committed that desatino and many more, fair enough. Neither right nor wrong, but inevitable. Logical. Well, yes, I’m a logical woman! If you think about it, all that kind of thing derives straight from the sacred humanity of Christ. And there aren’t many of us prepared to take on the full implications of Cristo como hombre. (Knowing smile.) Please don’t make that face, Father, I know the repugnance I inspire in you. I have felt my abjection and soiling intimately, I assure you. (Stops smiling.) But after so much pain and contrition, the disgust turned even so to pleasure, to desire, and—but I’m not telling you anything you don’t know—into a clandestine relationship with my Eliseus, my Paul, my Joanes. He needed me. He needed that secret friend, code-name Laurencia, or sometimes Angela.…That’s what I called myself in letters to him that he most certainly has kept, you’ll see. (Hand stroking the veil she imagines is still covering her disheveled head: incorrigible coquetry.) His letters, no, I haven’t kept them. He didn’t write often, anyway, we’ll never know what he really thought, or how different it was to what I suggested he think.…(Tender voice.) I elevated dear Gratian to the place of God, outwardly and inwardly, I confess it. I needed those antojos, cravings, whims, and on reflection, they weren’t incompatible with the Incarnation. (Pause.) That’s all. Mad! (Broad smile.)

  The enigmatic grin brightens La Madre’s face for so long that her two nurses suppose she must be getting an early glimpse of her Spouse.

  She is not contemplating Gratian as he looked the day of their first meeting, but as he is in the seventeenth-century portrait of him that hangs in the Carmel at Seville. Because Sylvia Leclercq has no other way of picturing him.

  LAURENCIA. You’re a charmer, Padre. Had I had no other reasons for serving God, your angelic grace would have sufficed to convince me. And “in a certain manner it is a delight for me when you tell me about your trials.”2 I can think of someone—me—who will know how to defend “her son Eliseus better than anyone else in the world.”3 (Reading.) “I was pleased that Paul wrote me as ‘your dear son.’”4 “Oh Jesus, what a wonderful thing it is for two souls to understand each other, for they neither lack something to say, nor grow tired.”5 “Mi padre—and my superior, as you say, which delighted me and gave me a good laugh.…(Chuckles.) What little need there was for you to swear—neither as a saint nor much less as a teamster—for I am fully persuaded.…I only want to remind you that you gave me permission to judge you and think whatever I want about you.”6 (Still reading.) Oh, my soul grows lonelier every day, so far from you.…(Normal voice.) I feel as though I’m “always near Padre José,”* [*A code name for Christ.—Trans.] but who is he? Jesus Christ or you? “In this way one passes through life well, without earthly consolations, yet continually consoled. It seems you are no longer of this earth, since the Lord has withdrawn the occasions of becoming attached to it and filled your hands with what keeps you in heaven.”7 (Big smile.)

  Fr. Jerome Gratian of the Mother of God. Sixteenth century. Carmel of Seville. Private collection.

  Here, Sylvia Leclercq grows irritated. Despite her years of graphomania, our poor Madre remains a slave to her passions! (The therapist will not speak of her irritation, but allows herself a moment’s intrusion into the deathbed scene of this most unusual patient.)

  SYLVIA LECLERCQ. After so many years of, um…(hesitates, clears throat)…of flattering, supporting, and shielding your precious genius of an Eliseus, mightn’t it be a good idea to give it a rest? And for you to find rest in the peace of the Lord Himself, rather than in some stand-in or other?

  Teresa is not best pleased by this interpellation. Under the guise of protectiveness, could the stranger be seeking to discredit her?

  LA MADRE, trying to get a clear view. How very sensible of you, my dear! Kindly refrain from treating me as an invalid who has lost her marbles. (Tries to point a finger at the intruder, hand falls back onto sheet.) Think what you like, but pray keep this in mind: “The important thing is not to think much but to love much.”8 Consider if you will, clever lady, that by 1575 I had already started seven convents and was having some trouble with the friars of my Order. There weren’t many discalced men in those days, and not one, frankly, who could hold a candle to Fr. Gratian. (In a wheedling voice.) And so, you understand, a fellow like that who as a young man in Madrid used to beseech an image of our Lady, whom he called his “Beloved”—all right, it’s a bit pretentious, but with such disarming humility! He fell in love with our order in Pastrana, where he charmed the socks off the prioress, Isabel de Santo Domingo.…(Snort.) Who succumbed like all the others, male or female, to the magic of his conversation.…Finally he decided to take his vows with us, after trying out the Jesuits.…(Widens eyes.) An hombre with that kind of mettle is something to treasure, don’t you think? (Knowing smile.)

  Defeated by the evidence, Sylvia Leclercq keeps quiet.

  ANGELA. When he came to see me at Beas, a few years later, in that unforgettable year 1575, he was already widely esteemed as a discalced white friar. Considering that, three months before his profession of f
aith, he had had to vanquish some very powerful temptations; he told me a little about it.…(Absorbed in Gratian’s travails, the voice grows dreamy, quivers, melts. Is Teresa taking the path of ecstasy already?) Anyhow, he had been called upon to be a captain of the Virgin’s sons, and he was fighting with great valiance.

  SYLVIA LECLERCQ, trying to get through to her via realism. So you needed him, just as he needed you? Gratian would be the organizer you had been hunting for in vain, the man to coordinate the renovation of the Primitive Rule. And yet he didn’t include your name in the Alcalá Constitutions published in 1581; there’s no mention of you at all!

  LAURENCIA. That was our agreed strategy. You are being petty. (Normal voice.) True, Fr. Gratian drafted the Constitutions for the discalced friars.9 (Silly voice.) He was plainly helped by our Divine Majesty, and our Lady had clearly chosen him for the task of restoring Her Order. Of course, wretched sinner that I am, I strove to hide my imperfections from my daughters—although my flaws are so many that they must have noticed some. For instance, my affection for Paul, not the same today as it was, perhaps, but it persists.…(Tragic voice, reading.) And the concern I have for him. “I often point out to them how necessary he is for the order and that I am under an obligation—as if I could act otherwise if I didn’t have this reason.”10

  SYLVIA LECLERCQ. I see. Not only was he useful to you, you loved him. (She advances a simplistic, coarse interpretation, as one does with smart-ass patients who try to hide their cards. Take it from me, such patients are conscious of all sorts of things that are assumed to be unconscious!)

  Teresa has stopped listening, doesn’t reply, plays dead. The psychologist, somewhat embarrassed, circles the bed. Not a flicker. Sylvia withdraws, resigned. La Madre remains with her Pablo-Paul-Joanes-Eliseus.