Gospel, page 19
And in the back of the room, her tissue out, was Sister Miriam quietly weeping, making a show of her sufferings. Until each child turned and saw her, until her tears were well recorded and at last a dense silence of embarrassment fell on the class.
“And what is your problem now, Sister?” the father would grumble, sobered and annoyed.
“Your soul,” she’d wail dismally.
And apparently her threat to call the archbishop had some predicate, for one week as Lucy and Faith sat in their afternoon Church History class, Sister Miriam came in and stood regally, triumphal, in gloria, behind the podium: “Father Kennedy has been transferred,” she said richly, and the class inwardly groaned, sensing deeper despair when it became known that Sister Miriam, justified, was to be his replacement. The father, it was rumored, was exiled to a rough, impoverished boys’ school in Hammond, Indiana, to be a librarian, which was a demotion, a punishment; and not far behind was Sister Vickie, also shipped out. Maybe that beloved bit of schoolkid gossip concerning their affair had been passed on and taken seriously by the archbishop. Maybe it had been true.
So it was Church History with Sister Miriam, and out went the difficult learned texts, the City of God of Augustine, the Summa Theologica of Aquinas, gone were Pseudo-Dionysius, Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertullian, and Basil the Great, Isidore of Seville. Sister Miriam decided the text should be St. Alphonsus de Liguori’s Victories of the Martyrs.
“Procopius,” she said, during the five weeks devoted to the Virgin Martyrs, “not discouraged by St. Agnes’s refusal to marry him, continued to pester her.” She read from St. Alphonsus: “Procopius continued with his ineffectual importunities until at last the saint, wishing to free herself from his unwelcome attentions, said to him, ‘Begone from me, thou food of death! I am already engaged to another and a far better Spouse. He is the King of Heaven, to whom I have consecrated my entire being.’”
Sister Miriam could partake of that high emotion. She sang out the refusals and rejections of the Virgin Martyrs’ suitors as if she had had the occasion to issue the very words. And how she luxuriated in the eventual martyrdoms, St. Catherine’s wheel bursting into flames before the inevitable beheading, the pincers and coals and grills and boiling pitch. And how when the Virgin Martyrs St. Lucy and St. Faith were mentioned, their namesakes, both red in the face, felt the glow of unwanted publicity as the class snickered at their God-ordained virginity.
“In 304,” Sister Miriam noted seriously, always happy to justify her martyrologies as histories, “Agnes achieved her glorious martyrdom.” She sighed heavily and delved into the book again: “The governor then thought to intimidate Agnes by threatening to have her sent to an infamous place to be there … dishonored…”
That must mean a whorehouse, thought Lucy, and dishonored means she was going to have to have sex. Deciphering St. Alphonsus’s prim phraseology naturally made Sister Miriam’s martyr-ridden history classes a good deal more sex-obsessed than Father Kennedy’s proper ones.
“But if any man approached her,” read the sister, “with an immodest intent…”
Fucking, thought Lucy, stealing a glance at Faith, who, though devoted to Sister Miriam’s hagiographies, may have missed the baser points.
“… he became so overawed as not to be able to look upon the saint. Only one rash young man attempted to offer her a violence, but as Cardinal Orsi here observes, the impure wretch soon experienced the jealousy with which the Spouse of Virgins defends them, for a flash of lightning struck him blind and he fell dead upon the ground.”
Sister Miriam serenely gazed out upon the next generation of Catholic youth, so fresh-faced and interested, never suspecting that they were stirred to the depths of their percolating adolescence, imagining Agnes chained down spread-eagle in a whorehouse, the young man buck-naked and ready to give it to her, before Christ ruined it all with His lightning bolts. Lucy glanced at Christian, whom she always cast as the pagan suitor. A boy just primed to offer a Virgin Martyr a violence, she was sure.
Half an hour later, Agnes was at the stake.
“The funeral pyre was accordingly erected, the saint was placed upon it and the fire enkindled; but the flames respecting her person divided themselves on either side of her and consumed many of the idolators who were assisting at the execution…”
Christian allowed himself a small, disbelieving snort.
As in all these stories, despite the lightning and blindings and miracles at the stake, the pagans persevered to behead the saint. Miriam here bleated the lines, moved by stifled emotion: “The executioner trembled to give the stroke but the saint animated him saying, ‘Haste thee to destroy this my body, which could give pleasure to others, to the offending of my Divine Spouse. Fear not to give me that death.”
Anything but sex!
Lucy once was talking to Luke, her Lutheran friend at Chicago, who swore he wasn’t sure what a hymen was until he was in college. But no Roman Catholic would ever go in ignorance! Nooooo no no! As Sister Miriam lectured, the message came through: St. Agatha with her breasts sheared off, St. Dionysia watching her infant tortured to death, raked with scourges, the nun St. Febronia, her body as one wound, charred over a slow fire, her teeth extracted, St. Cecilia with her family massacred and herself put in an oven to roast and suffocate, St. Justina heated up slowly in boiling tar, St. Anastasia with her tongue pulled out, breasts removed by white-hot pincers, her every limb broken with hot coals implanted in her wounds, St. Faith, not even eleven, on the gridiron, and St. Lucy blinded and beheaded—but mind you, whenever the Virgin Martyrs were sent to a whorehouse or threatened with betrothal, angels descended, swords of flame appeared, men were struck blind and dead, the earth opened up, invisible walls were formed! The God of the Roman Catholics was quite clear on the subject: tear these pretty young things apart, any torture you like, but not the hymen! Not the precious, unbreakable hymen of blessed virginity! Lucy, one day while roaming the library at Loyola, pulled down Karl Rahner’s theological essays—the rebel Jesuit, always a step away from excommunication, one of the Church’s most progressive thinkers … and here, even here, was a consideration of the Virgin Mary’s hymen and the implications of its remaining unbroken as she delivered Jesus, the theological necessity of its remaining intact, in partum.
O Masculine Father, was there no escape? Men were fortunate enough to have souls, but Catholic women only this ineffable membrane into which all worth or damnation or redemption was focused.
“And dearest, most beloved Agnes,” Sister Miriam said, breathing deeply, crossing herself as she read the last, “raised her eyes to Heaven and besought Jesus to receive her soul and this tender virgin…”
Lucy saw Faith color at the word virgin. Lucy, back then, blushed too when talking of virgins. Not in the phrase “Blessed Virgin Mary,” as that was automatic and well-worn, but in discussing virginity and an aspect of the proper female Christian life, and Lucy reddened particularly when she had to deliver reports in front of the class and could imagine her overamused classmates, could imagine Christian’s unspoken ridicule.
“… this tender virgin received the stroke of death and went to Our Savior to receive the palm of her triumph!”
Faith once leaned over to Lucy during a particularly ghastly account of St. Potamiena’s martyrdom.
(Who begged to be lowered slowly into boiling pitch that she might suffer more for her divine spouse. How can We forget.)
Faith risked to Lucy perhaps her one irreverence: “If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Sister Miriam was sad that she would never be burned at the stake…”
And Lucy showed enough surprise at hearing Faith say such a thing that Faith immediately blushed and receded to immediate regret. What do you bet Faith confessed this mortal sin that very evening to Father Doogan … and what do you bet Father Doogan secretly had to fight off laughter in the confessional?
(That he did.)
And in any event, poor Faith was wrong. Sister Miriam did not wish to have her convictions tested by martyrdom. To Sister Miriam, her entire life was an arduous martyrdom already.
Sister Miriam, on dispensation from the convent, lived at home with her mother, who was in her seventies, and incredibly, with her mother’s mother, who was in her nineties: women who had grown bitter and cross with her, but women she could not have lived without. With every exasperation and indignity inflicted upon Sister Miriam by her elders, with every thankless wash of the bedpan, with every one of her mother’s reminders of the future she would have preferred for her daughter, Miriam was confirmed and steeped in her martyrdom, known only to her and Our Lady, her Cross to bear, the way her youthful ugliness had been, the way her spinsterhood had been.
Lucy, the especial victim of the sister, dreaded the day when Sister Miriam’s grandmother died because Sister Miriam’s sufferings would know no bounds. Rather than accept that 90-year-old lives are likely to end, and maybe mercifully ended, all she would see was her loss, her desertion, the fact of a death visited upon her, an opportunity to focus the frustration and downright meanness of her life into a hallowed period of grief. And God help Sister Miriam, thought Lucy, when it came time for her own mother to die—that would be worth all the tortures, breast-shearings, pincers, and racks in St. Alphonsus. No one would ever suffer more or endure more bitterness. And how richer and deeper would be the recitals of the Virgin Martyrs in the Church History classes yet to be endured, to St. Eulalia students not yet born.
The one time Lucy had confessed acute hatred of Sister Miriam, Father Doogan had instructed her after the rosary to say a special and loving prayer for Sister Miriam. Rather blankly, superficially but not without kindness, Lucy prayed that when this disaster, these twin deaths that loomed over Sister Miriam’s life, came to pass that the Holy Spirit would sustain her and help her cope.
(It’s a dirty job, Lucille, but Someone’s got to do it. And I’m proud of you. Miriam is unfortunate, but you have compassion in your way for her. Dear Lucy, sometimes you are truly a child of Mine.)
Poor Faith, Lucy thought, feeling sleep coming on.
No doubt Faith was with the sisters now. How they’d caress and adore her as she wavered between taking vows or not. How Sister Miriam would warmly befriend her, comfort her fears, describe the rewards of a life of chastity—that is, until Faith, with much tears and theatricality, had actually taken her vows and become a sister. Then how they’d descend upon her. “Just because you’re new do not expect any special privileges!” How they’d be jealous of her youth and her popularity with the students, if she managed it. Yes, they would undermine Faith, discipline and criticize her, reduce and annihilate her until in middle age she would be their sister in bitterness. Oh, considered Lucy, it is surely the lowest ebb of female behavior in human experience: the bitchery of nuns.
And it was women like this that Lucy had once planned to make her life’s companions! This was the path Lucy’s own mother had hoped she would follow—her own mother who loved her! Who should have wanted only the best for her! To end up like her namesake, Aunt Lucy: as bad as any of them, capable of exuding righteousness and disapproval, capable of endlessly remembered scores to settle and grievances and pettinesses, incapable of radiating even the tiniest emanation of love. Better the slut circuit with her sister Mary, better Christian Hall and all he entailed!
(We understand how you’d see it that way.)
Yes, thought Lucy, as weariness overtook her, Christian sure looked good, but frankly he doesn’t have a thing on David McCall.
JUNE 28TH
Around noon O’Hanrahan, Rabbi Hersch, and Lucy sat in the near-deserted pub of the Crown. They glanced at the clock, sighed, shuffled nervously, and the professor repeatedly read the same paragraph in a book about ancient African scripts.
“You know,” said the rabbi, “Philip’s book is the definitive one on that subject.”
“This text is perfectly adequate.” O’Hanrahan was not happy to see Father Beaufoix’s eminence reasserted.
Lucy let out an audible exhale of boredom, hoping someone would talk to her. Most of the village’s working men were at the cannery, she had been told, and lunch hour was not until one P.M., when the pub would become alive again.
Rabbi Hersch: “Where is this guy? Could Father Keegan have gotten some of his facts wrong, Paddy?”
“He’s just a half-hour late.”
Presently, the door opened and they heard the little bell tinkle. A slender, tall man in a long black overcoat, pallid with thinning brown hair and a somber expression, presented himself. Jack the publican eyed the man oddly but when he saw the stranger join the table with Dr. O’Hanrahan, he went back to polishing his pint glasses with a bar towel.
“Dr. O’Hanrahan?” the man said, looking at the rabbi first.
The professor identified himself.
The stranger eyed Lucy and Rabbi Hersch. “And who…”
O’Hanrahan: “This is Mr. Hersch, my associate from Hebrew University, and Miss Lucy Dantan, my assistant from Chicago University. Please, be seated.” Lucy noticed that the professor did not advertise Mr. Hersch as a rabbi.
The pale man sat down without introducing himself; he began immediately speaking in a clipped, educated British accent:
“Needless to say this transaction must be conducted with the utmost secrecy and care. It was no easy thing to acquire this document and it is to be understood that you have been summoned by the Father General as our greatest hope of deciphering said document. It is and must remain property of the … of the order.”
Lucy looked at the rabbi, whose glance darted to O’Hanrahan.
“Of course,” said O’Hanrahan simply.
“I shall tell you a bit of the history of this scroll. Fortunately the collector who bought it in Rome, in April of this year, a German man, did not comprehend its value. In fact, one of our order posed as an assessor and informed him that the scroll was, indeed, an unimportant curiosity. This German collector put the scroll on the market soon after. Then we sent another of our brethren, Father Quinn, whom you shall meet on Rathlin Island.
“Father Quinn, posing as an antiques collector, displayed a mild interest in this document and in another scroll as well. We concluded by buying two scrolls, leaving the German gentleman with the impression that he had cheated us upon the second one, when all we desired was the first one.”
“Commendable,” said O’Hanrahan, impatiently.
“It is now with us upon Rathlin Island in our retreat.” He paused and assessed how interested his listeners were. With a glance to the left and right to see if anyone else was listening, he continued: “You will hire a boat sometime this afternoon. Four P.M. would be most convenient. We shall meet with you, discuss the arrangements, and I hope, Father, you will join us in a service.”
O’Hanrahan nodded serenely.
“Very well. I shall see you then.”
Then the man pulled his coat tight and left.
Everyone shifted as the pub door closed, breathing more freely.
“Father?” Lucy asked the next second.
Rabbi Hersch: “Father Patrick O’Hanrahan, Society of Jesus, a Company man.”
“Miss Dantan,” O’Hanrahan began humorlessly, “these people are not likely to give this scroll to a lapsed Jesuit, so for the moment I am returned to my former profession. That’s why we stopped in Belfast, to pick up my little priest costume. Morey, stop smiling.”
“Heh-heh, it’ll be something seeing you in a collar again. Not since Jerusalem in 1950 have I seen such a sight.”
“I’m going to the island by myself, if you don’t mind.”
“Nonsense,” said his friend. “It’s my university’s scroll and I want to make sure you get off the island with it.”
“Do you really think, Morey,” asked O’Hanrahan, “that your rabbinical presence is going to make dealing with these kooks any easier? Look, I met Father Creech in 1956 and he was a looney-tune then. He had a master plan to cripple the Soviet Union in order for the West to attack and reestablish a government there friendly to the Holy Roman Church. And…”
“Go on,” said the rabbi.
“It is thought,” O’Hanrahan said in a low tone, “that this order was instrumental in smuggling thousands of Nazis and war criminals out of Central Europe to Argentina at Pius XII’s bidding—that’s just a rumor but I wouldn’t be surprised. Father Keegan keeps up with these guys more than I do and he says they still have a program for the Conversion of the Jews.”
“Was that program or pogrom?”
Lucy said, “I didn’t think the Jesuits were anti-Semitic anymore.”
The men looked at her and then at each other.
“They’re not exactly your card-carrying Jesuits,” said the professor.
“Well, then, who exactly is over there?”
“They’re a breakaway group,” O’Hanrahan said slowly, “but beyond that, I couldn’t tell you much more. We owe this meeting to Father Keegan, who is their go-between in Dublin, but he doesn’t know very much about them either.”
Lucy asked, “Do I get to come?”
“No,” said O’Hanrahan.
“Yes,” said the rabbi. “It’ll take the heat off me if there’s another in the party.”
This was a shock to Lucy. Since when did her existence win the rabbi’s approval?
O’Hanrahan stared out the window at the gusty day, the wind spitting the rain against the panes of glass. “Gonna be a lovely crossing,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get some Dramamine at that little corner shop.” Then he stood up, and downed the rest of his Bushmills Black. “Aaaaah. Well, I better put on my penguin suit, and work up some Latin salutations for our hosts.”
