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Be with me, religious medals of all kinds, those suspended on silver chains, those pinned to the underwear with a safety pin, those nestling in black chest hair, those which run like tram cars on the creases between the breasts of old happy women, those that by mistake dig into the skin while love is made, those that lie abandoned with cufflinks, those that are fingered like coins and inspected for silver hallmark, those that are lost in clothes by necking fifteen-year-olds, those that are put in the mouth while thinking, those very expensive ones that only thin small girl children are permitted to wear, those hanging in a junk closet along with unknotted neckties, those that are kissed for luck, those that are torn from the neck in anger, those that are stamped, those that are engraved, those that are placed on streetcar tracks for curious alterations, those that are fastened to the felt on the roofs of taxis, be with me as I witness the ordeal of Catherine Tekakwitha.
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–Take your fingers out of your ears, said le P. Jean Pierron, first permanent missionary at Kahnawaké. You won’t be able to hear me if you keep your fingers in your ears.
– Ha, ha, chuckled the ancient members of the village, who were too old to learn new tricks. You can lead us to water but you can’t make us drink, us old dogs and horses.
– Remove those fingers immediately!
– Dribble, dribble, went the foam and spit between toothless jaws as the old ones squatted around the priest.
The priest went back to his cabin and took out his paints, for he was a skilled artist. A few days later he emerged with his picture, a bright mandala of the torments of hell. All the damned had been portrayed as Mohawk Indians. The mocking aged Indians squatted around him, finger-eared still, as he uncovered his work. Gasps escaped from their rotting mouths.
– Now, my children, this is what awaits you. Oh, you can keep your fingers where they are. See. A demon will place round your neck a rope and drag you along. A demon will cut off your head, extract your heart, pull out your intestines, lick up your brain, drink your blood, eat your flesh, and nibble your bones. But you will be incapable of dying. Though your body be hacked to pieces it will revive again. The repeated hacking will cause intense pain and torture.
– Arghhh!
The colors of the picture were red, white, black, orange, green, yellow, and blue. In the very center was the representation of a very old Iroquois woman, bent and wrinkled. She was enclosed in her own personal frame of finely drawn skulls. Leaning over the oval skulls is a Jesuit priest who is trying to instruct her. Her arthritic fingers are stuffed in her ears. A demon twists corkscrews of fire into her ears, perhaps jamming the fingers in there forever. A demon hurls a javelin of flame at her deplorable breasts. Two demons apply a fiery two-handled saw to her crotch. A demon encourages several burning snakes to twist around her bleeding ankles. Her mouth is a burnt black hole seared in an eternal screech for attention. As Marie de l’Incarnation wrote her son, On ne peut pas les voir sans frémir.
– Arghhh!
II a baptisé un grand nombre de personnes, writes Marie de l’Incarnation.
– That’s right, pull them right out, the priest invited them. And don’t put them back. You must never put them back again. Old as you are, you must forget forever the Telephone Dance.
– Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
– That’s better, isn’t it?
As those waxy digits were withdrawn a wall of silence was thrown up between the forest and the hearth, and the old people gathered at the priest’s hem shivered with a new kind of loneliness. They could not hear the raspberries breaking into domes, they could not smell the numberless pine needles combing out the wind, they could not remember the last moment of a trout as it lived between a flat white pebble on the streaked bed of a stream and the fast shadow of a bear claw. Like children who listen in vain to the sea in plastic sea shells they sat bewildered. Like children at the end of a long bedtime story they were suddenly thirsty.
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Catherine’s uncle was happy to see le P. Pierron leave in 1670 for a post at the Iroquois mission on the St. Lawrence. Many of his brethren had been converted to the new faith, and many had left the village to live and worship at the new missions. The new priest, le P. Boniface, was not any less effective than his predecessor. He spoke the language. Perceiving how the Indians loved music, he formed a choir of seven- and eight-year-olds. Their pure rough voices drifted through the village like the news of a good meal, and many were lured to the little wooden chapel. In 1673 this village of less than four hundred souls witnessed
