Free Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen Page B

fountain pen and looks over her pages, holding her knees to her chest in a fetal position just outside the yellow sphere of candlelight. The hiss of her prayers is the only sound.
     
    Mass of Saint Mary Salome.
     
    —We’ll speak in French if you like.
    —English would be hard for me.
    —Sister Marguerite will translate this later. We will start with your name, please.
    —Sister Catherine. Earlier I was known as Simone DuBois, from Perpignan. I hardly remember her now. Is there still a Perpignan accent?
    —I have not the ear for it. I have been too long in America.
    —Even so we French.
    —Have you been in this country long?
    —With the great indulgence and grace of God, I have been in this priory for forty-seven years. Forty-seven. Yes, and you are so kind to look surprised! Well, I have come to tell you, Father, that this year, or at least these past few months, whenever that holy girl joined us here, have been the most magnificent in my religious life. We are being showered with blessings. And she is the cause. Mariette.
     
    She is working in the priest’s sacristy after Terce, washing a great wall of leaded window glass with vinegar as Sister Catherine polishes a golden ciborium and paten and pyx and Père Marriott’s own chalice, with its agates and emeralds and sapphires.
    Sister Catherine is so hunched she can hardly see ahead and her frail yellow fingers are awry on her hands like hinges hammered from a door. And yet she touches the vessels with tenderness and joy and is humming the “ Tantum Ergo ” to herself as she scours the intricate sunrays of the holy monstrance.
    Wringing a sponge, Mariette flinches with sudden pain and bewilderingly heeds her hands.
    “Have you hurt yourself?” Sister Catherine asks.
    She grins at the aged woman and says, “What a great favor Christ shall be giving me!” And then she soothes her reddened palms with short tastes of her tongue.
     
    —She didn’t explain.
    —She didn’t need to, did she.
    —Go on, please.
     
    She and Mariette are strolling in the chestnut grove at Mèridienne. Tan leaves thrash from their sandals. A high tree branch suddenly breaks and shatters its way to the ground. Sister Catherine talks about being homesick for France. She talks affectionately about Edouard, her older brother, who is twenty years dead now, but who once painted wonderfully, in the manner of Jules Breton.
    And Mariette tells Sister Catherine about the prioress as she was before she entered the convent. “Each night Annie would join me in my upstairs room for hours at a time! We prayed together, we talked about Christ’s great affection for all humanity, and how I should have an intense horror for sin. With Annie I first found myself before Jesus crucified. Oh, to see it, Sister Catherine! Such blood flowed from his hands and head! And he was having such trouble breathing! We watched in tears, Annie and I, and she told me, ‘Look, Mariette, and learn how one loves.’ And she said, ‘Jesus has given himself wholly to you. Will you give yourself wholly to him?’ Yes, I told her; yes and yes a hundred times. And then Annie tenderly petted my hair and told me to be consoled because my sorrow had killed Christ’s pain.”
     
    —She seemed sensible to you?
    —Oh yes; always.
    —She gave you the impression that Christ was actually there in her upstairs room?
    —She did not make it seem imaginary.
    —I have here a letter from Mariette. Shall I read it to you?
    —With her permission.
    —We have it. She has dated it October 23rd. “Dear Père Marriott,” she writes. “Is it possible that I still live, or have I perished all unaware? Of my happiness please speak to me—I have no memory of it. I have only the horrible pain of seeking Jesus and hearing no reply, of having been turned away and repulsed. And yet I think of Christ incessantly, with heartache and terrible yearning, but it is now all so different. What desolations and aridity I now endure in my Masses