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

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.)

(Still no response from Gratian. Nothing from the Voice, either. A long silence falls.)

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

(Laurencia falls asleep.)

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.)

ACT 2, SCENE 2

LA MADRE

HIS VOICE

TERESITA

ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ

HIS VOICE. “Eat, daughter, and bear up as best you can. What you suffer grieves me, but it suits you now.”²⁸

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.

LA MADRE. In Hell?

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.