At her request, Olin shows Catherine the proofs of his new anthology of verse by Herbert and Milosz and Szymborska and other great modern writers of her country: as a group, he says, only the Polish poets rival the modern Americans as the finest in the world today.
In their discussion of the poems, Catherine mentions that her namesake, St. Catherine of Siena, that gentle Dominican of the fourteenth century, had been a poet.
“‘All the way to Heaven is Heaven,’” Olin smiles, and she raises her brows in pleased surprise, gratified that a nonbeliever can quote St. Catherine’s sublime teaching. And though he fears he may be making a mistake, he can’t help mentioning an apocryphal parable that seems to express St. Catherine’s teaching in a darker way.
Christ crucified is importuned by a penitent thief, in agony on his own cross on that barren hillside. “I beseech you, Jesus, take me with you this day to Paradise!” In traditional gospels, Jesus responds, “Thou shalt be with me this day in Paradise,” but in older texts—Eastern Orthodox or the Apocrypha, perhaps?—Christ shakes his head in pity, saying, “No, friend, we are in Paradise right now.”
She stares at him.
“No hope of Heaven,” he says gently. “No Trinity, no Resurrection. All Creation right here now.”
“That is not our idea of things,” she says evenly, retreating among his pages. And when he asks if while she reads he might glance over her notes from yesterday’s meditation, she passes him her diary without looking at him.
. . . the prisoners are hurrying in fear of death, yet I hear faint voices. They are singing . . .
Oh Lord, those wandering souls again, with their infernal singing! Her stuff is strong but it is also sentimental, a bit “poetical,” he thinks. As metaphor, her voices from on high might have some merit if so many of their companions weren’t also tuning into them in their platform meditations. Some even report a tinkling of little bells in the winter sky—the music of the spheres, perhaps? Some weird acoustical contagion?
To spare them both the strain of a forced compliment, he returns her diary with a wordless bow that he trusts might convey the sincere respect of one poet for another, but feels duplicitous when it seems to work. In that sudden smile of hers is a gleam of fresh white teeth and breathless innocence. My God, man, what’s got into you? You’d like to kiss her, right? You’re a damned fool, Olin. Truly.