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

There was trouble at the hospital, conflicts with some big cheese, possibly a marital crisis into the bargain; I didn’t want to know, I cleared off in a hurry, like the self-reliant adolescent I wanted to be.…Yes, there must have been some kind of a crisis, because that’s when Blandine began hanging out at literary soirees, whatever was hip, launch parties at trendy bookstores for celebrated authors who’d sign your copy. I recall a rapid-fire succession of au pairs who cooked supper for me, because Dad was overwhelmed with work. Doctors are on call day and night, you see, yes, I did see.…So, no more singing in the shower.…(Childish smile.)

That’s it: he used to sing in the shower! (Delighted silence, big smile, hardly awkward at all.) That’s it, that’s the tune that has been filling my head at night, all week long.…(Writes.)…so bright and bracing…I knew it by heart.…I still do, I know the words, I’m asleep, I’m dreaming, I mouth them along with Dad, an unknown joy comes over me, it doesn’t wake me up though, it awakens me, I’m dreaming awake, I’m singing with him, a cherub’s youthful voice, it’s mine it’s his.…(Long silence.)

And then in the morning it’s gone, so frustrating, I hardly attend to my patients, I even forget to think about my saint, I rummage through the dream, it gets more and more infuriating, I’m fed up, I turn my memory upside-down: nothing, not a quaver. And it’s the same the next night.…So I decide to get up in the middle of the vocal dream, I’ll write it down while it’s still there in my throat, my lungs, my mouth, my memory, my smile.…But I can’t, the dream squeezes me in its arms, I am held, held prisoner, all I can do is sing along with Dad, glued to my pillow, unable to raise my head.…No worries, this time I’m sure I’ve got it, the confounded tune he used to warble under the shower while I drank my cocoa and left for school, with a peck for Blandine and a “See you tonight, Dad! Maybe? Okay, ’bye, then.…” But when I wake up, nothing. The bird has flown again. A phantom bird, no doubt: Did that song even exist? It’s a dream of course, my long cohabitation with Teresa can lead to anything, an unnameable hallucination, there you go, call yourself an analyst but that hoodlum Oedipus can sure play tricks on you. (Pause. Raises eyes to ceiling, cocks head, listens intently. Picks up pen once more.)

It must have been in Latin, couldn’t have been anything else, since Thomas was brought up in a religious boarding school, after his mother died giving birth to him.…I’ve spent hours of analysis on that little point, at least. My grandfather couldn’t think of anything better than to entrust him to the Jesuits. And they eventually expelled him for reading smutty books, as well as revolutionary ones, it was the period of colonial wars.…Well, Dad always put on the same complacent smirk when rehashing these daring exploits to Mom and me, over and over again, for the nth time, the only feats to his name.…I haven’t forgotten that, either. But the singing?…Definitely in Latin. Yes. (Radiant face, writing faster.)

I’ve got it. Thanks to that patient this morning, in Holy Week mode, going on about the father and the son in this litany that compulsively linked “father and son” as if we were in church, I thought at one point, it’s coming back to me, that’s it…Gloria.…No, it wasn’t a Gloria. I’m burning, it’s on the tip of my tongue.…I only did two years of Latin, and Dad never bothered passing on much of his Jesuit humanities (“Outdated claptrap, all of it. What’s left is an oath for doctors with or without borders, which is: love your neighbor and minister to ailing humanity. There you have it, the one and only universal principle that makes sense. As for the decor, well, that’s what museums are for, aren’t they?”) All the same I knew it wasn’t a Gloria, no, no, it was…Bach’s Magnificat! BWV 243 in D Major! Of course! I can’t get over it! Everybody knows the tune and the lyrics these days, thanks to CDs, MP3, and the rest. Part of the “immaterial human heritage.” (Scratches head. Glance of complicity at Teresa’s diffracted portrait.) How much did I love him, my Dad, to have forgotten those incendiary words, those vibrations that shook his whole being at the beginning of every day, that primed him to set off gaily to work, while Mom seethed: “Listen to that, it’s his ‘Marseillaise’ he’s belting out, his ‘Internationale,’ his ‘Hymn to Joy’…hopeless! Your father will never change his spots, whatever he says.” Depooo — suit, depoooo — suit poteee — ntes de seeee — de et exaltaaaaaa — aaaa — aaaa — vit huumiiles.…