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

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.)

(No sign from Gratian.)

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.…