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

TERESA’S VOICE. “The image may be very helpful — to you especially — for since we women have no learning, all of this imagining is necessary that we may understand that within us lies something incomparably more precious than what we see outside ourselves.” (Coughs, trickle of blood.) You say women are hollow inside? You have no inkling of what a Guest we harbor!⁸⁹ You smile, I see: so who might this Guest be? The Father? The phallus? Animal lust? Hysterical excitability? All of the above, and of necessity sublime? Call it what you please, call it desire for the Other if you want to. Personally I’ll stick with Guest, for the moment.…“Nor is that happiness and delight experienced, as are earthly consolations, in the heart. I mean there is no similarity at the beginning, for afterward the delight fills everything; this water overflows through all the dwelling places and faculties until reaching the body. That is why I said it begins in God and ends in ourselves.”⁹⁰ Clear as day, is it not? Are you with me, my Seneca? (No reply.)

TERESA’S VOICE, meditatively. Some minds are orderly, and some are “so scattered they are like wild horses no one can stop.” I’m thinking of myself, of course…you guessed it.…Always restless and on the go…“and perhaps they were no more than two steps from the fount of living water, of which the Savior said to the Samaritan woman, ‘whoever drinks of it will never thirst.’ How right and true!”⁹¹ (Voice weakening, trembling of the arms, legs, head.) Between ourselves, I prefer Saint Augustine above other spiritual masters because he was once a sinner,⁹² a runaway horse. O rushing storm, euphoric tempest that “comes from regions other than those of which [the devil] can be lord”!⁹³ And how can we be sure? Why, because the soul derives benefits from it, by confronting the ringing Voice of His Majesty, or the superego if you prefer, the ideal Father who imparts the Law — that of both Testaments at once, needless to say. Poor butterfly-soul, “that went about so apprehensive that everything frightened it and made it fly.…The Lord has now fortified, enlarged, and made the soul capable.”⁹⁴ (Long silence. The crimson light turns violet.) The soul does not leave the wondrous company of His Majesty and never ventures out of its interior mansion, as a consequence of which it is somehow divided, like Martha and Mary Magdalene: perpetual calm and repose on the one hand, problems and worries on the other. (Exhales.) Although the degree of clarity is not the same, because the vision of the Divine Presence is rarely as vivid as it is on the occasion of its first manifestation, when God elects to grant His gift, “quiere Dios hacerle este regalo.”⁹⁵ (Breathing faster.) The light has changed color, it will accompany me to the very end of this final road. Its variations still illuminate, even today, the anguish I felt when I discovered that the movement of thought, or more precisely the imagination, was not the same thing as understanding.

(Pause. Bright lights diffracting the sparkle of the diamond.)