Teresa, my Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila

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.

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.)

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.)

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.)

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 faith, 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!)

ANGELA, reading, with a little smile. “I am now very old and tired, but not in my desires.”¹²

LAURENCIA. For pity’s sake, write to me! She has a point, that psychologist: why don’t you write? (Tragic voice.) I stand up to the censors, I do battle with Nuncio Sega here and with Nicolo Doria there, all for the sake of our joint work, and also to please you, but you leave me to pine.…If at least you’d give up the fight, and give me up, cleanly. But instead you maneuver, you’re equivocal; another sign of your genius, no doubt. I beg of you, write me, Padre, instructing plainly what I must and must not do. (Imploringly.) It’s not fair of you to touch on these matters so confusedly. And also you must pray for me, a lot.…I am surprised you don’t tire of me; I suppose God permits it so that I can bear a life in which I enjoy so little health or satisfaction, apart from what pertains to you. (Pause.) Lord, I well remember having written that to my Eliseus. And this: if, by wounding me, they wound my Paul no matter how slightly, I cannot bear it. I was not upset in anything that concerned me.…There, that’s how I lived my life. (Raises hands and holds them before eyes.) Love will never be a sickness.…I hope that little psychologist who was trying to guilt-trip me has left. It’s obvious the silly woman has never read the First Epistle of John (3:14): “He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.” I’ve read it. Pablo and I, we knew that.…For charity, write to me, mi padre! (Broad smile.)

LAURENCIA. Is he still in Seville? Traveling through Andalusia? (Silly voice.) With María de San José? Or Beatriz de la Madre de Dios? What do women want, cloistered or not? A father to reign over, of course. But a man? Jesus, in his sacred humanity? What does a man want? To be loved by women, so as to escape from his brothers and be elected by the father? My mind is wandering.…The Dominican Juan de la Cueva, an eminently sensible man, observed that Gratian had a tendency to act alone, without consulting others. (Suddenly vehement.) Did my Paul think he was some kind of spoiled Infant King? He didn’t even come back for the solemn vows of Lorenzo’s daughter at Avila, although I begged him to, and poor little Teresita was so looking forward to it. Where are you, Eliseus dear? (Silence from Paul.)

ANGELA. I’m talking to you, pleading with you. Laurencia does not often enjoy her confessor, Paul, whom the Lord gave to her, because in the midst of so many troubles he is always far away.…

ANGELA, reading. “But what learning and eloquence Paul has!”¹³ And he has an honorable and agreeable family for whom I came to care, especially his mother, doña Juana Dantesco.…I hope that beastly psychologist isn’t listening, God knows what she’d make of that! (Pause.) Ah, my darling Paul, I did all I could to protect you from Methuselah, our pet name for the nuncio Ormaneto, do you remember? (Normal voice.) Now that it’s behind us, I’m wondering whether the most egregious aspect of the affair might not be my passion for your mother, doña Juana. (Long silence, smile; collapses heavily back onto mattress, fondly shaking head from side to side.) I was as crazy about her as I was about you. (Warm smile.) Who wouldn’t be? Because I’ve seldom, or probably never, met her equal for talent and character. (Reads.) “She has a simplicity and openness that put me in seventh heaven,” I can’t repeat it too often; and “in these she greatly surpasses her son.”¹⁴ That was naughty! You’ll forgive me, Father, won’t you?

ANGELA, silly voice. It was very amusing, Eliseus my sweetheart, when you told me to open the grille and lift my veil for your mother; to show her my face, basically. Good grief, it seems you don’t know me! I would have opened my belly for her! For her first of all, her above all, who bore you in her womb! (Pause.) For her, sure, sooner than for the great Bernini who will make my marble entrails thrill to the cherub’s lance. (Smile.) The sculptor never suspected that the little angel was you…my baby, my lance, my javelin, stabbing me in the heart and beyond…deeper, lower, in the castle’s remotest chamber.…(Blissful smile.)

SYLVIA LECLERCQ. Poor thing, what a passion! Shoving the Word in up to her.…(For reasons of technique, the therapist is given to using crude language with certain patients. Today she holds back, flashing a half-mocking, half-complicit grin at La Madre, who doesn’t notice, immersed in her sensations.)

ANGELA. I was thinking, Joanes darling, I’d willingly give the habit to your sister doña Juana, who stayed here with your mother until the last day. And also to that little angel her sister Isabel, “who is as pretty and plump as can be.” Doña Juana very much resembles you.…(Pause.) I’d love to have her with me. By the way, which of us two loves you more, do you think? “Doña Juana has a husband and other children to love, and poor Laurencia has nothing else on earth but this padre.…”¹⁵ (Laughs out loud. Pause.) So, since I couldn’t give birth to you, or suckle you, all my care went into feeding you. Remember, Eliseus my soul, how often I nagged you to eat properly…(silly voice) to put some weight on, to make sure María de San José plied you with tasty dishes? Even if they were cooked by her, who I didn’t much like. I took huge pleasure in feeding your mother, as well as your angel of a little sister, Isabel, who is with us at present. “How plump she’s getting, and charming”;¹⁶ I love her almost as much as I love your mother, since I can’t love you more than I do already. (Knowing smile.) I give her ripe melon to eat, it’s the best I can do, since breastfeeding is not given to all—but shush, that psychoanalyst is still eavesdropping. (Smile fades.) My temperament is strange: the less notice you take of what I think, the freer I feel about expressing my desires and opinions. God bless you.…(Long silence, cheeks reddening.) Ah, it breaks my heart to hear that you are unwell, my father, my son.…A rash, it seems, doubtless due to the heat. That reminds me (tragic voice)…I must tell you about a temptation I had, which persists, concerning you. And I wonder whether you yourself do not neglect the whole truth at times. (Touching voice.) Do you think I’m jealous? Well, what if I am?

Perhaps La Madre is a normal woman after all. Though Sylvia Leclercq already thinks so, she’s somewhat taken aback by such goings-on beneath the rough woolen habit. Two hundred years before Diderot’s The Nun, a scandal in its day. But on closer inspection, is Teresa indulging in a carnal freedom forbidden by her religion, or is she, on the contrary, activating the interior (as La Madre would say) message of that religion? It’s an unconscious message as far as Sylvia is concerned, which acquits desire of guilt, provided the desire is for the father. Well then, let it be proclaimed, let it happen in words rather than deeds! And if matters should get so muddled that sin does ensue, the weight can still be lifted through the senses and in words, over and over again. Isn’t it more enjoyable that way? The jouissance of everything and nothing, from words to flesh and back again. Physical frustration heightens the power of fantasies, while fantasies sharpen sensation to the max. There’s no possession as satisfying as abstention. This could be the delights of masochism, or alternatively an inversion of sadism into an objectless exhilaration, in the omnipotence of narcissism; Sylvia Leclercq is not sure what to think anymore. She is disposed—almost—to admire, while concealing her Voltairean smile.

LAURENCIA. May God pardon the “butterflies.”…(Pause.) I am talking about our Carmelites in Seville, lucky enough to enjoy my Eliseus. It’s a great hardship for me. (Reads.) “I can’t help envying them, but it is a great joy for me that they are so diligently seeking to provide some relief for Paul, and so inconspicuously.”¹⁷ I like women, too, I won’t deny it. Oh, I understand, Eliseus my son, I even approve. Up to a point. God alone knows which point…

ANGELA. Are you taking revenge on me, adored Pablo? (Sighs, reads.) The time left to you after my death—a long time, never fear—“will bring you to lose a little of your simplicity, which I certainly understand to be that of a saint.”¹⁸ (Humbly.) But be on your guard! The sisters are young, and the thought of you spending the summer in Seville is alarming. (Touching voice.) Needless to say you’ll be working against our enemies, like those Jesuits who are giving us a hard time. I used to call them “ravens,” to amuse you; and what about the “cats” and the “wolves”—the more malicious of our discalced brothers, hard to believe, but they exist, and they were after you; not to mention the “night owls,” those dismal calced nuns who can’t stop conspiring…and of course Methuselah, the apostolic nuncio…always the same ones…among so many others determined to scupper us! (Irritated chuckle.) I wrote to you extensively at the time on these urgent topics, in order to guide you, of course. And now, at the end of my allotted span, I only have two counsels for you. (Reads.) Primo, “One gains a great deal from being attached to the Society of Jesus”: a rule not to be forgotten. Secundo, “Believe that I understand woman’s nature better than you.” That’s a fact. The devil likes nothing better than to make a woman’s least whims appear attainable.¹⁹

LA MADRE. Why won’t you speak to me? (Pleading voice.) Say something? It pains me to remind you of the rumors that hurt me so greatly…and against which I defended you with all my might. It’s only natural, being your daughter and your mother at once.…No need to thank me…not that you are thanking me, for that matter. Anyhow, I washed the opprobrium off you with all the friendly solicitude of the wretched sinner I am.…(Pause.) At least I hope so, it’s not definite, the future is highly uncertain, and needless to say I’m more afraid for yours than for mine. (Threatening voice.) You engaged in carnal relations with the nuns…you spent the night in such-and-such a convent, you were spotted naked in another…oh, I know.…(Tragic voice.) Our enemies make the most of imagination, just to cause us harm.…Just to prevent my reforms.…(Hopeless voice, cough, nausea.) But please be careful all the same.

LA MADRE, in a menacing voice. How am I supposed to forget, here on my deathbed, how in…November 1576…I warned you against a strange woman who wanted you to visit her at home, with the excuse of a nervous illness.…(Pause.) I’m still convinced it wasn’t so much a case of melancholy as of meddling by the devil, because she was obviously possessed. He wanted to see if he could fool you in some way, now that he’d fooled her. (Normal voice.) So by no means go to her house! Remember what happened to Santa Marina, who lived disguised as a monk, and was accused of fathering a child! That would be the final straw.²⁰ (Arms crossed on chest, strangled voice.) It’s no time for you to be undergoing such an ordeal. In my humble opinion, dear father, dear Eliseus…if my words are not enough to push you back onto the right path, think of the papal nuncio, Felipe Sega, the bishop of Piacenza.…(Voice cracks.) The most inveterate adversary of our reform, who does not bear you in his heart and would pounce on any scandal as grist for his mill, you know it.…(Long sigh.)

SYLVIA LECLERCQ, entering for the last time, she crosses the stage unseen by Teresita and Ana, praying on their knees beside the bed. La Madre is watering her garden. Maybe she’s the voluptuous type without realizing it, wrapped in that innocence tailor-made for transgression, sure to be forgiven by the Holy, Roman, and Apostolic Church. She takes her pleasures gently, I see, and gives herself down to the last drop, with just enough guilt to spark desire again and again, interminably.

LA MADRE. Lord, I cannot hope for better days than those I spent with my Paul. But for charity, mi padre, do not read out my letters in public.…(With distress.) Don’t you understand anything? I never wanted anyone to hear me when I spoke with God, I wanted to be with Him in solitude. Well, it’s the same thing with you, my dear Paul.

LA MADRE. You’re in hiding, you don’t dare face the nuncio I advised you so strongly to visit.…(Suddenly anxious.) “My Paul is very foolish to have so many scruples,”²¹ if your reverence will permit me not to mince words for once. (Silly voice.) For the devil never sleeps, my baby! You, with all your ducking and weaving, your indecision about whether to attend Mass—your obsessional moods, as the Leclercq woman would say—have you, or have you not, been excommunicated by Sega? Oh, stop it! I’m fed up with hearing how depressed you are. (With sudden violence.) What would you have said if you’d had to live like Fr. John of the Cross? You are impassioned, agreed, but you could do with more tactfulness and insight. Although you rarely preach, according to you, watch what you say all the same. (Silly voice.) My son, my baby.…“He looks healthy and well fed.” ²² “Even a few hours without knowing about you seem to be a very long time.”²³

LA MADRE. Right, you let me down when I need you most, and I pardon you for it, because we can only follow the path of perfection in hardship. (Another coughing fit.) Allow me, dear friend, to tell you one last time that I am sorry for your “mental fatigue.” As I once wrote you: “Learn to be your own master, avoid extremes, and profit from the experience of others [Sepa ser señor de sí para irse a la mano y escarmentar en cabeza ajena]. This is how you serve God, and try to see the need we all have for you to be in good health.”²⁴ (Long sigh. Pause.) No, I haven’t forgotten what I owe you: you convinced me of Christ’s humanity, of which I was not exactly ignorant, but you enabled me to imitate Mary Magdalene for real. (Coughing, choking.) Women have a special capacity to love an eternal Spouse, a king-man, a man.…Not to die of love, but to suffer from it so as to do things better. I wrote in the account of my Life that nothing meant more to me than to attract souls to a higher blessing.²⁵ That was too general, too abstract, I was being defensive, as the Leclercq woman would rightly say; I think I am about to embrace her logic. And so what? You turned me into a Mary Magdalene, Eliseus, and I found the power to attract, with you and beyond you, in order to serve that higher blessing.…(Dry eyes, long silence.)

LA MADRE. I know you’ll remain attached to the memory of me, that’s something, my Paul. I mean to say, Glory to God! (Reading, in sensitive, almost emotive tones.) “She told me all about her life, her mind, and her plans,” that’s what you’ll write about me, isn’t it? It was the first day we spent together, apart from Mass and mealtimes, of course; the first time we talked about ourselves. “I so submitted to her”—now, that’s laying it on a bit thick, Pablo my sweet—“that from then on I never undertook anything important without benefit of her counsel.” That’s true enough. (Smothered laugh, voice suddenly dreamy.) You are destined to write a great deal, in the future, and you will always pray for three hours a day, because you are a saintly man, in a way.…(Pause.) The Flaming Lamp, am I right? There’s a title little Seneca would have loved. It’s perhaps the book of yours that cleaves most closely to our doctrine.…That’s right, I said “our.” All of your writings evoke your own life, that’s only to be expected. Researchers will detect a faint trace of me in your mystical theology, your way of perfection…it’s not hard to find.…After all, you were dead set on getting me canonized. Apparently that’s a sign of fidelity. (Broad smile.) I want to believe it, and so I will.…(Shaken by simultaneous coughing and laughing fits. Uncontrollable laughter. Tears. Long silence.)

Take my hand, Father.…Just for a moment.…For friendship’s sake, I’m on my way to the Spouse, I’m in transit.…Hold my hand, in the name of Christ’s sacred humanity.…(Flat voice, almost cold.) No, what are you doing, I didn’t ask you to cut it off, just to hold it.…You make me laugh…no, of course I don’t feel any pain, not by this stage. You amuse me, you often did.…(Quick sigh.) You’re still chopping me up…you’re not listening…did you ever listen to me…who listens to anyone.…There’s another fine myth, this business of listening. One hears voices, sure enough, but from there to listening.…(Serious voice.) Stop it, really, you’re hurting me now, for the love of God…I suppose you want some relics out of me, what utter nonsense.…(Drawn-out groan, then talks at speed.) You found my body whole and uncorrupted…well, obviously, under that heap of limestone.…You conveyed it stealthily to Saint Joseph’s at Avila, you set it up as an object of devotion.…A great comfort to the dear little nuns.…My sisters placed the coffin in the chapter house, on a stretcher, with curtains that could be pulled aside for visitors to gawp, and afterward closed again.…Ah, that casket, lined in violet taffeta with silk and silver braids, the outside covered in black velvet with ornaments of gold and silk, gilded nails, locks, rings, and handles, and two escutcheons of gold and silver, bearing the symbol of the order and the name of Jesus, and on an embroidered cloth the words Mother Teresa of Jesus.…(Knowing smile.) I gave off a lovely fragrance…I should hope so, what with my four waters every day, and the flesh that becomes Word, or the other way around, goes without saying.…(Reading.) “The clothing smelled bad once removed from the body, and I had it burned. While it was on the body, it smelled sweet.” (Lips. Pause.)

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.)

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

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.)

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.

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.)

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

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…?

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!

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, 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 the 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?…

LA MADRE, surer than ever of His Voice. Jesus was not an angel…(shrewd smile)…so far as I know! (Reading.) We are not angels either, we have a body.⁵⁵ I always go back to that.…Is that called an obsession, you psychologist over there? Laurencia and Angela under the habit of Teresa of Avila, Pablo beneath the appearance of Fr. Gratian.…(In a frankly serene voice, still reading.) Being human, it is very beneficial for us to consider God in human form, suffering because desiring, for as long as we are in this life.…(Voice breaks, blood trickles from right corner of mouth.) To desire to be angels while we are on earth—and as much on earth as I was—is foolishness. (Pause.) Ordinarily, thought needs to have some support.…(Pause.) Jesus Christ is an excellent friend, in His sacred humanity.⁵⁶ (Broad smile.)

TERESITA. She’s going to sleep.

ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ. She has seen the Lord.

LA MADRE. What’s that I hear? His Voice again? No, it’s not the same carnal timbre, the voice that guides me tentatively, caressingly, upliftingly.…(Pause.) So it’s not the Lord, not yet. Who, then? Could it be you, my little Seneca? I miss you so much! Even though we don’t agree on everything, you and I. What did you say? That you personally don’t need support? You push on to the end of the night? (In a greedy voice.) Me too, I try in my own way, in my own night…No, don’t take that for an exaggeration, Father, I pray you, in reality my words fall short because the experience is unexplainable.⁵⁷ You know that better than anyone.…It seems to be like gibberish, algarabía.⁵⁸…A taste in the mouth…I know, we never finished discussing it; we were both of us rather against it, though, weren’t we, my big Seneca? (Imploringly.) And what if that were Paradise? An adjustment of just souls? We never stopped trying to be just, did we? You less than me, perhaps, or vice versa.…(Reading.) For “the soul of a just person is nothing else but a paradise where the Lord says He finds His delight.”⁵⁹ So what happens when in addition to this, two souls strive to offer delights to the Lord.…What do you think? Speak up, won’t you, John dear? Come on, force that thin adolescent voice of yours.…(Pause.) I daresay you’ve scorched your vocal cords as well, then, today.…(Short laugh.) All I can hear is an ashen sound, I’m dying, you know. (Cheerful laugh.)