Margery Kempe

by Robert Gluck

  •

  I feel close to Wenslawe and I make Jesus into my own god whose beauty is a lens—intenser light, clearer colors—like sight in heaven. Absolute Good is casting shadows, and when I pull out I am awed that he is stretched wide open and I catch a whiff as sweetly fetid and timeless as any New York sewer.

  When I began Margery, I took Flaubert’s “The Legend of St. Julian Hospitaler” as a model, a moral and supernatural tale by a writer whose entire faith was in writing, as though telling a story perfectly were the same as obtaining forgiveness for existing. I am drawn to modernism but my faith is impure. I am no more the solitary author of this book than I alone invent the fiction of my life. As I write, I read my experience as well as Margery’s. Is that appropriation?—that I am also the reader, oscillating in a nowhere between what I invent and what changes me?

  •

  When I was a child, belief attracted and repelled me, especially beliefs of Christian friends. Eating the body, drinking blood. Sexual sins whispered into hidden ears. The whacked-out saints, their fragmented corpses. Jesus nursing and the glorious fleshy ham.

  There wasn’t enough faith to go around. My god inclined towards a darkness which was not interested in my belief or my sins and which continues to be none of my business. Where are the Jewish martyrs, the seven million who return as documentaries? I was raised in a kosher home in the huge Jewish community in Cleveland but I didn’t learn of the camps till I saw them on TV in Los Angeles and then my mother volunteered with neutral excitement that we’d lost relatives, as though relating us to TV rather than to history. Did she want to protect me from the abnormality of our recent past? Or maybe everyone talked and I wasn’t listening?

  Later I read some mystics and wanted to join a monastery. Illuminating holy books was a career that suited my temperament and passage to this magical universe was simply belief in it.

  •

  Jesus and Margery act out my love. Is that a problem? Every star in every galaxy spurts in joyful public salute to my orgasms with L. But I look for the Jew from Cleveland and he confuses me. A photo from 1988: L.’s sisters, their mates, L., and myself on a wooden bench in L.’s family’s compound in the Adirondacks. I am jolted to see five sleek WASPs smiling into the camera and a visitor from an alternative universe—pallid, averted, big headed, un-American. I recognize my isolation, a mix of longing and hostility.

  Margery held a mistaken belief in the value of her experience. A tradition I can claim as my own links me to her—of farce and uncertainty, the broad comedy of terror, the fable a community of doubt tells itself: “The Pardoner’s Tale,” the Talmud, The Ship of Fools, Kafka’s slapstick, Freud’s case histories, the sarcasm of Marx, Brecht, Fassbinder—

  •

  I’m in a wooden tub. Face slack, thoughtless, half submerged, neck severed, trunk and limbs hacked apart and soaking in rotting blood and gore. That seems appropriate, a feeling of accuracy and fulfillment overrides the horror of having been murdered in some derelict industrial subbasement. Poignancy in the disheveled air. The whole atmosphere lives with joyous expectation of a visit from L., who wears a black cape in the dream.

  27

  Margery went out to beg from the Romans. A woman’s body blocked traffic, legs thrown apart, head cocked against a stucco wall where she had died. A naked baby howled on his back and a three-legged nursing stool lay toppled beside him. Margery watched fleas jump off the mother’s cooling body; a dead flea jumped back to life when Margery touched it. The screaming baby waved his arms and legs in all directions and Margery felt her breasts swell. The baby was hot, sticky, and sour; he bucked and squealed like a little pig. Margery could hardly hold him and set him down next to his mother, then moved the woman’s limp hand onto her child’s belly to comfort him. The baby’s eyes filmed over; he grew silent and passed through the moment’s small doorway with a contorted face as though he kept crying in the beyond. Margery dropped a penny in his mouth.

  Margery met a handsome man and told him the story of her life up to that moment, as though it held unique, coherent importance. A linear narrative, tunnel vision caused by fear. She was short but looked in his eyes. He was stirred like a lake by a deep current. Although his friends had died, plague and war enlarged his desire to stay alive. When this man had sex, he rocked inside, tipping back and forth rather than sliding in and out. He placed enough money in her palm for a few days.

  •

  To further her abasement, Wenslawe set Margery to serve a pauper whose unredeemed suffering is barely clothed in a story. Margery lived for three months in semidarkness in the woman’s third-floor tenement cell without bed or furniture, and slept under a cloak. A single mosquito stood on the ceiling. That’s Jesus, she thought. Both women were infested with lice. To Margery’s dismay their menstrual cycles linked so she was united with generic suffering, nameless and buried many times over.

  The woman didn’t cover her head; her gray hair was matted. Smoke from the unvented fire inflamed their eyes. Bumps on Margery’s ankles became infected and they itched with swoony exasperation.

  A black goat lay panting on its side in a murky corner—he was a sort of hearth to the women. The goat was so crippled by malnutrition that he walked on his front elbows. Margery carried water and sticks on her neck, begged for the woman’s food and wine, and longed for Jesus. Because Margery was poor, every act demanded greater effort and her energy counted for less. Her tongue pushed around dry fibers of meat from diseased cattle and when the wine went sour she drank it herself from a stone cup.

  Margery bought the woman a fancy meal with a gold coin that Mary had earned from begging. The goat watched slyly and Margery’s own mouth watered as she laid out the salmon and shrimp (expensive in Rome even then), white bread, noodle pudding, and white beans cooked with mutton and onion, as though she were serving Jesus.

  As Jesus, her guest touched the salmon. Margery pressed her tongue against her upper teeth to suggest how tasty it was.

  An angel—gold space and wings like wilted lettuce leaves—turned away from the threshold: the angel of scrupulous despair who won’t accept a false word in describing itself.

  28

  In early January at market in the Campo dei Fiori, Margery saw Dame Margaret Florentyne riding in a tiny car drawn by a white mule. The cold air held a yellow pall of ash. Margery stood in white rags, one hand resting respectfully on the mule’s neck. Neither woman understood the other very well. Margaret noted everything attractive which affected the pace of her perception. She heard a wren’s vehement warble. The mule nodded its big mallet head emphatically. Margaret’s voice was artificially cheerful. “Marjerya in poverté?”

  Margery considered the question, the brutal day-to-day grinding to dust. “Grand poverté, madame.”

  Margaret gathered the reins. “Marjerya Sunday yes?”

  You can’t have chance encounters unless you travel. Every table had a head waiter and two servitors but Margery sat at the high table where Margaret served her with her own hands.

  Margaret wore golden hairpins, a silver belt, a slashed tunic, and a long red train. She had a parrot: green body, pink wingtips, and blue forehead; he bit his perch. Margaret admired Margery’s capacity. Feeling full made Margaret anxious as though something noisy had occurred.

  She gave Margery a hamper with ingredients for a beef stew, filled her bottle with wine, and added eight balendine coins as well. Margery wept so hard she choked for air; her jaw distended and her eyes bulged. The parrot shrieked and splattered water in its bath and for some reason Dame Margaret clapped her hands.

  It became fashionable to entertain Margery. Another Roman, Marcelle, asked her to dinner two days a week. He made a good living: they ate roasted quail stuffed with pomegranate seeds and marinated in honey; fritters of pike and eel mixed with dates, ginger, apricots, pine nuts, and parsley; an infusion of laurel and fennel; artichokes flattened out and fried; a comfit of squash, sugar, ginger, lemon, and honey; and fried custard, crisp a
nd melting. Hys wyfe was gret wyth childe; pregnancy transformed her into a blood-lined nest. She wanted Margery to be godmother.

  A single lady fed her on Wednesday, a blonde with big teeth and gold lashes who had a joyous love of company. For instance, in order to come she concentrated on fantasies in which three or four people attained together the utmost moment of pleasure.

  The other days Margery begged from door to door. She was always hungry; as she lost weight her legs felt longer. She imitated Jesus’s cold mobility when she walked. He was an incomprehensible silence.

  29

  As Margery, I wake up and enter the dark street hoping to catch a glimpse of Jesus and trying to avoid him. I miss him frantically but can’t face his lack of interest. I didn’t know I had a cunt till he wriggled his fingers inside me.

  I’m ashamed of myself. Jesus must be seeing someone else: the speculation takes shape in the dark and I follow my replacement, losing and sighting him in narrow murky alleys. He has a huge craggy head, bald and ugly as Punch. Torches and candles cast halos in the acrid mist and beige moths circle the flames. The streets are noise but the moths are silence.

  I tail my replacement to an alley that climbs to a stairway. He’s shirtless; his massive torso is covered by square green scales like crocodile hide and he smokes a huge cigar whose weight makes him walk faster. Shadowy figures fold into each other and roil obscenely. I wonder if I’ve stumbled into a neighborhood orgy, body grinding against body. I want to wash my face and piss to simplify my congested feelings. I realize I’m wearing a veil—it’s a dark threshold I step across into a town meeting. Citizens perch in tiers, the steps are bleachers. A woman complains, “When my boyfriend and I try to talk—”

  I cut her off; I become the entire map of a problem from the slightest hint. I fall easily into the mode of telling them what to think and stand with my hands raised as though conducting an orchestra. Romantic dissatisfaction is the music. I remind the woman that talking reenacts gender and class codes. Her boyfriend wants a shared verbal rhythm, indifferent to content, while for her it’s shared observations that cement a bond. I had a similar problem at dinner last night when—

  An old man flings his arm into space and cries, “Give up the dream of romantic ecstasy but believe it belongs to others with more luck. Twist your longing into nostalgia for what’s under your nose: a glass on the sill, geraniums in a pot.” He’s so old his head is horizontal. His hair and beard are too long and he wears his gown unbelted with the huge buttons popular thirty years before. “Be old and yearn for the visible which will not love you back. A day at a time, an hour at a time. Can you afford physical joy?”

  My open palms retain their hope but nothing comes out of my mouth. His leathery face is hostile, closed. A woman in front wears a headdress that spreads above her ears; she turns in her seat and says to the group in a taut voice, “My husband is only sorry when I’m crying. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you stay in the relationship.’”

  Jesus’s new lover brushes against me as he climbs. Now he’s as young as Jesus, with soft brown curls and Jewish features as aquiline as an arrowhead. He’s serious, rich, more troubled by my pain than Jesus is. He arouses me; I can’t breathe thinking of them together—the intaken breath as a palm sweeps from armpit to thigh. Once sex is entered they will divide between them the entire universe.

  The old man climbs to his feet; every movement must be planned in advance. He whinnies, “How can I forgive the world till it says it’s sorry?”

  My chest aches—a vehement tremolo—Jesus’s new lover melts in the shifting darkness. The Romans are jumping up and talking all at once. My mouth hangs open; I gaze at the sky, deep night above the noisy court. A man points at me. “I’m fucking and I’m drunk. Continuous pleasure meant something,”—he pumps his fist as though jacking-off—“no future—the meaning’s gone.”

  I want to slow down these grievances but the Romans are incensed. Before I can look on the brighter side, the woman throws her hands up. “Do we need another story about I’m in love with a god?”

  30

  L. writes:

  I guess I feel put on the defensive when I hear you talk about how you want me to be close to you because, while I understand your needs and desires, I don’t think they take mine into account. On the surface it may look as though my life is much more flexible, yet for more than a year I’ve been trying to cement new beginnings that are important to me. If you really feel you won’t be able to allow this to happen or wait before being together in a more continuous sense then we should really talk about it. I also hope you aren’t assigning more importance to my sex thang the other night than it deserves. It was fun, no mess, and it made me feel closer to you. I’m happy for the time being. Attribute this to the end of winter, small gestures towards involvement, or the affirmation I have felt through you.

  I asked my friends for notes about their bodies to dress these fifteenth-century paper dolls. I clothe the maid, Willyam Wever, the Archbishop of Lincoln in Camille’s eruption of physicality, Ed’s weekend of tears, Dodie’s tangled nerve endings, Steve’s afternoon nap. My story proceeds by interaction. My friends become the author of my misfortune and the ground of authority in this book. We are a village common producing images.

  •

  I borrow a story from Margery: I live on the Isle of Longo. The law of this land is the Longing for L. He enlarges me by not returning my love—wide deserts across which my being hurtles. I am the daughter of Hippocrates in the form of a dragon seven hundred feet in length, pure disguise in order to make a display. I turn my head and my weight beneath me coils the other way. And I shall endure in the form of a dragon until a knight come who is so hardy that he dare kiss me on the mouth.

  •

  L. has the short waist and long legs of a long-distance runner from the British Isles. His immaculate gym body is like a house so clean that no one has a real life there. I draw back to look at his asshole, bubble-gum-pink; there’s a bead of balled-up paper lodged in a brown curl. I flick it away like a jaunty waiter brushing a crumb from the banquet table. He’s sunk in a depression that paralyzes and terrifies him. For the last three months all he’s done is look to other people for help. He’s surprised by the pitch of my love. His features are sympathetic because frail. These descriptions support him as they consume him.

  •

  I follow him. He steals the value of my longing and rejects my fury and drab complaints. As he turns away I feel metal chains pull the gears of a clock in my chest. I raise my hands in a gesture of protection as my face subsides, the face of my elderly father.

  31

  When the Brothers of St. Thomas—who had kicked Margery out—heard of her success in Rome, they issued a new invitation. Margery returned to her room. Now the grapevines were bare and a rangy lizard clung to the brick wall.

  Margery’s maid also lived at St. Thomas; she lived well because she was the wine keeper. She performed her duties with watchful eyes and wore her good-looking body like clothes—a blue gown, tight above the waist and flowing below, with an oval neck and long tight sleeves. Margery begged from her and the maid was glad to help with food and wine; sometimes she dropped a groat in Margery’s hand. The maid had shed her virginity: she was preoccupied by the moment when a monk’s soft spike drove into her guts, so close their pubic hairs tangled.

  They’d met in a tavern. Her clit had been too sensitive to touch. His cock poked her leg like a dog’s nose. Wind whistled high in his throat. He spasmed shyly, laughing in embarrassment. For her, the event summoned an incomplete world. She didn’t come but later, alone, added her own orgasms to a continuous replay of seizing his cock with her cunt. She did not want to marry; she shared Mrs. Noah’s reluctance to board the ark. She probed her own truth, which hid in convulsions between her legs, wafting its aroma upwards. The monk had broken cloister; he’d found in her body and especially in her cunt an elegance he experienced as meaning.

  On February 1, St. Bridget’s Day,
Margery tried to convince the maid to serve again. Unseasonal sunstorms bleached the sky to an eerie pallor. The maid mistook an ant crawling on her inner arm for a trickle of sweat; it moved on its own, a bead of exasperation. Her period was on its way so every insult and criticism was said for her benefit.

  Heat emptied the streets. The plants’ obvious joy in the toxic light exposed their alien and vaguely hostile nature. Clothes hung to dry were stiff in minutes. Jesus sent fluctuations that drove farmers in the fields to seek shelter. A blue mist smelling of sulfur rolled in and clouds gathered in the north. Thunder-startled pheasant cocks rocketed upwards in a whir, crowing a harsh kor-kok. Vast drops of rain were succeeded by round hail, then by pieces of ice three inches across; froth and spray stood four feet above the Tiber.

  The storm continued all night; it dwindled to a drizzle, then exploded frantically. Hollow lanes were torn up; young trees whipped, old ones swayed slowly, and howling dogs traded their amazement. Jesus had warned Margery the night before not to go far from her lodging. Old men said they had never heard such thunder—the lightning radical and bright. Rome stood shadowless and cast out of the dark. By morning the air was mild, a tepid bath in which body shape was lost. A flash of blood on the toilet paper: the maid’s period had begun. Pairs of gray ducks appeared in the flooded meadows, their quacks low and reedy.

  •

  A priest from England arrived bringing money for Margery. She was so relieved she told him the story of her life up to that minute. Her nipples and cunt were raw and alert from tasting Jesus, stretched and prickly, sweet and bosky. She ate with this priest and his party every day.

  To discredit Margery, the pilgrims told the priest that a German who didn’t know English had confessed her. Margery replied, “Preyth hym to dyne wyth thow & wyth yowr felawys, & than xal thee knowyn the trewth.”