(No sign from Gratian.)
TERESA, in a faint voice. That’s what you wrote…and the Jesuit priest Ribera would quote your words in the first biography he wrote of me, by the grace of God.…(Reading, fast.) You also mentioned your surprise at the firmness of my breasts…is that so? And then you cut off my left hand, as a gift for the Carmelites of Lisbon, and added in the margin of your memoir: “When I cut off her hand, I also cut off a little finger and kept it with me and from that day to this, glory be to God, I have not suffered any illness, and when I was taken captive by the Turks they took it from me and I bought it back for ten reals and some gold rings I ordered to be made using some small rubies that were on the finger.”26 My baby, you’ll always be a baby, Eliseus…but you still don’t miss a trick, do you? A relic can also be a splendid bargaining chip. (Sigh, broad smile.) And that wasn’t the end of it, you were so proud to have got me home to Avila in the dead of night, firmly sewn into a canvas bag that you flung over the back of a mule. It was a kidnapping, another journey.…(Smile.) You wanted to be buried next to me. The dukes of Alba objected that I belonged to them, which was only to be expected: Hernando de Toledo, the duke’s nephew, thought the world of me. So he went to the Holy See about it and Pope Sixtus V ruled that I be taken back to Alba…that was in August 1586. (Grave voice.) What a crowd was there…an admiring crowd, of course, which would have torn me to bits, so I was kept behind the grille as a precaution. My detached left arm was brown and creased as a date, thin and slightly hairy; after they changed the cloths that wrapped it, the old cloths were touted as relics, too.…Ribera was right to predict that I would be chopped up further, into a thousand pieces.…What a racket! The new prioress of Alba de Tormes, Catalina de San Angel, demands my heart, to keep in her cell.…Saint Joseph’s gets a clavicle and a ring finger…My right foot and a bit of my upper jaw end up in Rome.…(Faint voice.) How profitable I am, from the Beyond!…Who’d have thought it? (Long silence.) Hold my hand, Father…it’s all nonsense.…After all, the sacred wedding takes place in the soul, doesn’t it? That’s what all the learned fathers worth their salt used to tell me.…
SYLVIA LECLERCQ, who can’t resist popping up again. What a fetishist, really! Father Gratian collecting the organs of the phallic mother! A gore movie, I do declare. The little finger, the hand, the arm—left or right?…Who cares, a writer’s arm, that’s good enough for anyone. (Exit. The audience boos the intruder who can’t stop bothering a dying woman. La Madre pays no attention, absorbed in her Eliseus. But she’s reached the end of her tether.)
LA MADRE, losing her temper. Enough, for pity’s sake! Eliseus, kindly put a stop to this cult of the corpse, this carnage.…(Pursing mouth and wrinkling nose with vehement revulsion.) At last! Oh.…You no longer dare do it yourself, so you ask Fr. Nazianze to chop off my left arm for the chapter house in Pastrana—I don’t believe it! What’s stopping you all of a sudden? Are you feeling the pangs of remorse, Father? Is your love growing humanistic? Oh no, not you! An arm is a lot more unwieldy than a finger or a hand, I do sympathize.…Ribera, with dark irony or sincere outrage, marvels at how “easily, with no more effort than it takes to slice a melon or some fresh cheese, Nazianze cut off the arm at the shoulder.” Oh dear, how tedious men are.…I’m tired…forgive me, dear Eliseus.…(Weary, fed up. Brief silence. Then speaking fast.) Poor Fr. Nazianze, he confessed that this act had been the greatest sacrifice he had ever made for our Lord as a token of obedience.…What a notion! “Sacrifice,” indeed—sacrificing me into the bargain! Now for the best part, which is that my hand will wind up in the possession of General Franco…taking pride of place on his bedside table, and all through his long agony! He’s anointed me a “saint of the race.” What I’ve had to put with from men. Poor things…I’m so tired, so tired, my Pablo…my father…tired of you, too…of everything…of nothing…my poor sweet.…Whatever is the point of that hideous butchery? It’s not even mystically correct! Yes, make a note of that expression if you please: mystically incorrect, that’s it.…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. What’s your position on this, Lord? (Tears flow from wide-open eyes, she is hardly breathing.)
(Still no response from Gratian. Nothing from the Voice, either. A long silence falls.)
LA MADRE, reading. Speaking of Eliseus…it’s a strange thing that the affection I have for him causes me no embarrassment, as though he were not a person.27
(Laurencia falls asleep.)
SYLVIA LECLERCQ. That’s saying something! If he’s not a person, Gratian is something more than God’s servant; is he God Himself? A splinter of the divine? She loves Gratian in the way she believes the Church wants her to love Jesus—her beaten Father, her manly double, her Lord. “Not a person.” And also a twin, perhaps; her male clone, her creature, her work? (Such is the psychologist’s opinion, as she leans against the wall in a corner of the stage, watching the saint doze off. She doesn’t say it aloud.)
ACT 2, SCENE 2
LA MADRE
HIS VOICE
TERESITA
ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ
HIS VOICE. “Eat, daughter, and bear up as best you can. What you suffer grieves me, but it suits you now.”28
LA MADRE. Who goes there? Eliseus?
HIS VOICE. Father Gratian is far away as you know, and you won’t see him for a while. He has gone to cross swords with Nicolo Doria.
LA MADRE. In Hell?
HIS VOICE. No. Your Eliseus is not the holiest of men, which won’t be news to you, whatever you may have said or written.…But he redeemed himself, and he did a lot, on balance, for the creation of your order. Peace be with his soul!
LA MADRE. In Purgatory, then?
HIS VOICE. Steady on! You’re far too hasty and intemperate, I am always having to tell you. In his own way, and it’s an honorable way, he will remain true to you. Consider: he goes to Rome to plead the cause of your reforms. Embarking for Naples, he falls into the hands of the Turks. Crosses are tattooed on the soles of his feet while he is the pasha’s captive. An exceptional destiny, so no need for regrets. Finally he is ransomed by Clement VIII, enters the Carmel, and holds your relics close for the rest of his life.
LA MADRE. Wretched am I, a wretched sinner! (Normal voice.) I thought I was Laurencia, or Angela, or goodness knows who. I thought I was married to my Paul as I was married to the Lord. Did I ignore His Majesty’s voice? Did I forget to be that other person I became for You and with You.…(Still normal voice.) The Teresa of Jesus who is in love with the one and only Third Person, His Majesty?
HIS VOICE. My Will is that the great favors come through the hands of the sacred humanity. As I have told you numberless times, that is the gate you must enter through.29
LA MADRE. And that’s how I understood You, Lord. Your Majesty never said that there is a great difference in the ways one may be…a master; (reading, still in a normal voice) or that the master “is never so far from his pupil that he has to shout.”30 (Pause.) I feared confessors who feared the devil more than I feared the devil. (Calmly.) It was Master Gratian who immersed me in Your humanity.
HIS VOICE. Daughter, it is written in Exodus that the people saw the signs, rather than merely hearkening to the “words which the Lord had spoken”;31 but you have done more. You don’t merely see My Voice, you feel it in your whole body. More than a visible or audible presence, I am a sensory presence for you.
LA MADRE. “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”32 Ego phonè, ego vox.…Now I’m talking like a scholar, like John the Baptist. Too proud, again? (Normal voice.) And I am the wilderness, and I am the voice that gropes in darkness…I don’t understand why this is, but that I don’t understand gives me great delight.33
HIS VOICE. Listen, daughter, there is something demonic about a voice that rises within. A Greek philosopher said so before me and without me, and he was right. Because the voice that calls you out of yourself usually deflects you from what you are doing; it never urges you to act.
LA MADRE, ardently, My
Lord, Voice of His Majesty, You never turned me away from action.
HIS VOICE. That is what I like about you, daughter. In you, the voices don’t die away as the Word grows, they only fan out through all the senses, as Jesus’s Voice did in John. But who understood this? It took sixteen centuries for you to come along and persuade the Church that this metamorphosis is always, still, possible. You and Ignatius Loyola, don’t forget!
LA MADRE, greedily. Nobody receives the Voice of His Majesty…without knowing true pleasures and refreshments, gustos, from God.
HIS VOICE. What do you mean?
LA MADRE, in a meditative, quiet voice. The Lord gives me to understand. El Señor me da a entender. The Lord gives us freedom. Licencia nos da el Señor. As he gives us, when we think of the Passion, greater anguish and torments than the evangelists record.34 When I speak of refreshment, I am speaking of “a gentle refreshment—strong, deeply impressed, delightful, and quiet.”35
HIS VOICE. Show some humility, daughter. You are not the first to embark on this path. “The senses rebound in thought,” wrote Meister Eckhart; he and his disciples were familiar with “the essential foundation”36 and “learned ignorance” that were nonetheless open to be “touched” and “tasting of eternity itself.”
LA MADRE. I didn’t know, my Spouse. I am determined to be different from all those bookish, saintly men. For Your call does not keep me in “indefiniteness,” as the honorable doctors past and future like to say.37 You authorized me not to turn absolutely away from all that is familiar. (Pause. Eyes, squarely in shot.) And there’s nothing indeterminate about this familiarity, to my mind. It is delectable through and through.…(Smile that fades at once.)
(The Voice does not reply.)
LA MADRE, in a conversational tone. That being the case, Your word and Your call are not for me reduced to a “vocal utterance.”38 I appreciate them, I seek them out. You know it. But more importantly I register them as a brazier burning inside my body. Because I don’t neglect other sensations, on the contrary I savor them, Lord.…Where your humble servant is concerned, I must say that sensations often take the upper hand, I mean the lower, well, in short, they take over! (Red cheeks despite the livid features; then meditative voice, closed eyes, peacefulness.) For aren’t all sensations destined to be reabsorbed into the movement of imaginative thought that is distinct from intellectual understanding?
HIS VOICE. The flesh is feminine, my beloved child, Christ himself was aware of it. To the best of my knowledge, in his case the Father’s Voice was not merely a “giving-to-understand,” and was indisputably a “giving-to-feel,” as it is for you, my daughter.
LA MADRE. I am born all over again when you call, my Spouse, and my rebirth is not just vocal, not a brute cry, let alone an understanding. I am reborn in You through all my intermingled senses joined into one, mouth, skin, nostrils, eardrums, eyes, the whole garden awash with Your waters. (Reading, serene voice.) Didn’t you say to me that “turning away from corporeal things must be good, certainly, since such spiritual persons advise it.…[But] the most sacred humanity of Christ must not be counted in a balance with other corporeal things”?39
(The Voice does not respond.)
LA MADRE. You are silent. Is Your Majesty’s Voice deserting me because It considers any corporeal thing likely to hinder contemplation of It? (Anxious voice.) But to withdraw completely from the body of Christ, or to count His divine Body among what causes us nothing but misery, no, I can’t accept it.40 (Reading.) We can compare His Voice to “a food that many persons eat.”41 The epileptic, anorexic novice I once was, plagued by such nervous anxiety that everything frightened her, gradually relaxed and grew stronger, according to the academics García-Albea and Vercelletto, as well as that nice psychologist Leclercq. She acquired her manly courage by receiving from His Majesty the kiss a Bride demands. How good it tasted, Lord! (Replete, satisfied voice.) One sees how beneficial it is, and one’s taste has so adapted to this sweetness that one would rather die than to taste any other food.…(Pause.) Because anything else would only take away the delicious taste Your food left behind. (Exhalation.) Here an abundance of water was given to this unloved woman who was wounded…42 and thus I can live in Your world, separate from the world. Because I clearly heard You say: “You will grow very foolish, daughter, if you look at the world’s laws.”43 (Nostalgic voice.) That was You, wasn’t it, Majesty? Where are You? You won’t talk to me anymore. Say, Lord, where has Your admirable, friendly company gone to…?
(The Voice remains silent.)
LA MADRE. “Dilatasti cor meum,”44 so sang the Psalmist, but it’s not my heart, it’s another, still more interior part that dilates and expands in me.…(Pause.) It must be the center of the soul.…(Long pause.) Or the center of the body? (Shrewd smile.) Or maybe both?45 I hope it’s not an illusion crafted by the devil, to feel that Your Voice impresses itself by dilating through me.…When Your Majesty inhabits me like that, everyone complains of what a ignoramus I am. All but the disciples of John of Avila, and the Jesuits.…(Pause.) Mind you, on reflection, it was the disciples of Loyola who got me to meditate on the sacred humanity of Jesus—at the time when I’m afraid I was adrift in some fairly hazy orisons, Osuna-style. (Knowing smile. Pause.) Answer me, Majesty, don’t desert me!
(Silence.)
LA MADRE. My nuptials with dear Eliseus, my father turned son…my fetus…my achievement…could well have been the devil’s work, if I hadn’t known that the fire came not from me but from You, Lord. (Tragic voice.) Not one word?…Perhaps Your silence, Majesty, suggests that Laurencia or Angela once shut herself all alone in a room with Eliseus? That she didn’t realize that the light which married them came from His Voice? (Pause.) Are you suggesting I’ve forgotten that the carnal furnace itself, the furnace of desire, is consubstantial with His Voice?…(Tragic but feeble voice.) That it doesn’t come from me or from you, Eliseus, but it does make us other, both of us, because it comes from the Other.…Perhaps I was foolish to the point of imagining.…Oh, it’s nothing but gossip…my Gratian decked out in garlands and crowns like a heavenly King.…I did, “I saw my Eliseus there, certainly not in any way black, but with a strange beauty. On his head was what resembled a garland of precious stones, and many maidens went before him with branches in their hands singing songs of praise to God. I didn’t do anything but open my eyes so as to distract myself, and this wasn’t enough to take away my attention. It seemed to me there was music from small birds and angels in which the soul rejoiced; although I didn’t hear it, but the soul was experiencing that delight.”46 (Pause.) A Christ.…(Pause.) A sovereign.…(Pause.)
HIS VOICE, at last! You took a risk, the pair of you, unhappy sinners. But you managed to thwart the consequences, in the end. I choose to consider that you thwarted them, and would inevitably have done so sooner or later, because it was My Will that you should.…So there you are. It’s over now, go in peace, both of you.
La Madre lies motionless for a long while. Exhausted by her efforts, glad to have been accompanied by His Voice one last time, is she still thinking, feeling, or living at all? There’s no way of telling, because Teresa has completely merged with her interior castle. There she holds open the doors of possible and impossible dwelling places.
She wants to let go into meaningless words, to speak in tongues…Delirium is her Pentecost, and she pulls herself together.…This transit toward His Majesty is going to be interminable.
LA MADRE, regaining her breath and her senses. They say the “babbling talk” of lovers does not say anything about the events of the world. (Knowing smile.) I expect they’re right, because they are philosophers, whereas I am just a woman, and a wretched one at that. Certainly, lovers’ babble has nothing to tell, not about worldly events.47 (Another shrewd smile.) But my own babblings, inflamed to the point of madness by the fire that carried me to Pablo, made me tell everything I knew about…about what? (Stops smiling.) About my wanting to do what is in me…me, outside myself…outside the world within t
he world.…(Opens eyes, seeking to rest them upon an absent interlocutor. Sylvia Leclercq hides, unseen, behind a column.)
HIS VOICE. What are you talking about now, you stubborn creature?
LA MADRE, reading. “Oh, Lord, how we Christians fail to know you!”48 To do what is in me, “do what lies within your power,”49 that’s what living is. (Pleading voice.) That is the reconciliation of Martha with Mary Magdalene. Does it surprise you that a contemplative like me should identify with Martha? (Pause.) Because Martha is not a contemplative in the way of the Magdalene, that’s official. You know better than I do, Majesty, that contemplative women are not immune to the call of the flesh. (Pause. Reading.) If Martha had been like them, who would have prepared food for His Majesty? Who would have served Him? Who would have eaten at table with Him? Contemplation makes one forgetful of self and of all things, and progress is fast.50 Others such as Martha, however, are led by God into the active life. (Still reading, gravely.) The Lord, fostering them little by little, gives them determination and strength.…51
TERESA, palms joined in prayer. By straying with my Eliseus, while also listening to the Voice of the Lord—Oh God, would that I heard it more often!—I was attempting to reunite Mary Magdalene and Martha. (Pause.) It seemed to me that, since the Lord is corporeal and likewise His Voice, the Creator was surely to be sought in His creature.…52(Quavering voice.) To be precise, I knew this to be true, but thanks to my folly with Eliseus I experienced it body and soul, in this world, by trying to accomplish the work of a Martha reconciled with Mary. (Lifts hands and holds them open before face.) A contemplative soul is left floating in the air, as they say; it seems it has no support no matter how much it may think it is full of God. (Normal voice.) Well then, the humanity of Christ’s body provides that support.…Ah, but that humanity attracts the desires, in other words the fires of the Spirit, which weaker souls are daunted by.…(Pause.) And such souls are quick to conceive fears…flee from the pleasures…and reject that extreme sweetness…which I so often could not tear myself away from, no more than could Saint Francis, Saint Bernard, or Saint Catherine of Siena.53 (Expression of happiness.) Most of the others prefer to ascend or be elevated, and that is doubtless excellent for the souls most advanced in spirituality, but it is not continual. (Happy expression fades.) Pardon me these comparisons, Majesty, I often have trouble being humble, in spite of my best efforts. And yet I fear that others are far more deficient in humility than I am, if they’re not content with so fine an object as the humanity of Christ. And, of course, “a woman in this state of prayer is distressed by the natural hindrance there is to her entering the world.”54…She is distressed, I am distressed, do You hear?…
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