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

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.)

(No sign from Gratian.)

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.)

(She is very cold, shivering in every fiber of her being.)