– She can’t control it.
– She’s tearing her skin off.
– She’s trying to listen to us.
– Yes. She is trying.
– She always tries.
– Give her that, Claude.
– Those thorns are ugly.
– They make an ugly thorn.
– Child?
– Yes, Father.
– We know you’re in terrible pain.
– It’s not so bad.
– Don’t fib.
– Did she tell an untruth?
– We think you’re up to something, Catherine.
– There!
– That wasn’t a twitch.
– That was a deliberate move.
– Bring the fire closer.
– Let’s have a look at her.
– I don’t think she can hear us any more.
– She seems so far away.
– Look at her body.
– It seems so far away.
– She looks like a painting, sort of.
– Yes, so far away.
– This is some night.
– Hmmm.
– Like one of those paintings that bleed.
– Like one of those icons that weep.
– So far away.
– She is at our feet but I have never seen anyone so far away.
– Touch one of those thorns.
– You.
– Ouch!
– I thought so. They’re real.
– I’m glad we’re priests, aren’t you, Claude?
– Terribly happy.
– She’s losing a lot of blood.
– Can she hear us?
– Child?
– Catherine?
– Yes, my Fathers.
– Can you hear us?
– Yes.
– What do we sound like?
– You sound like machinery.
– Is it nice?
– It is beautiful.
– What kind of machinery?
– Ordinary eternal machinery.
– Thank you, my child. Thank her, Claude.
– Thank you.
– Will this night ever end?
– Will we ever go back to bed?
– I doubt it.
– We’ll stand here for a long time.
– Yes. Watching.
15
Shakespeare is 64 years dead. Andrew Marvell is 2 years dead. John Milton is 6 years dead. We are now in the heart of the winter of 1680. We are now in the heart of our pain. We are now in the heart of our evidence. Who could have told it would take so long? Who could have told when I entered the woman with my quick and my wit? Somewhere you are listening to my voice. So many are listening. There is an ear on every star. Somewhere you are dressed in hideous rags and wondering who I was. Does my voice sound like yours at last? Did I assume too much when I sought to unburden you? I covet Catherine Tekakwitha now that I have followed her last years. I the pimp am I the customer. Old friend, was all this preparation for nothing but cemetery triangle? We are now in the heart of our pain. Is this what longing is? Is my pain as valuable as yours? Did I give up the Bowery too easily? Who tied the reins of government into a love knot? Can I ride in the Magic I enfueled? Is this the meaning of Temptation? We are now in the heart of our agony. Galileo. Kepler. Descartes. Alessandro Scarlatti is 20 years old. Who will exhume Brigitte Bardot and see if her fingers bleed? Who will test the sweet smell in the tomb of Marilyn Monroe? Who will slip with James Cagney’s head? Is James Dean flexible? O God, the dream leaves fingerprints. Ghost tracks on the powdered varnish! Do I want to be in the laboratory where Brigitte Bardot lies? I wanted to meet her on the leather beach when I was 20. The dream is a sheaf of clues. Hello, famous blonde naked, a ghost is speaking to your suntan as they unshovel you. I saw your open mouth hovering in formaldehyde. I think I could make you happy if we keep the money and guards. Even after the lights came up, the Cinerama screen continued to bleed. I quiet the crowd with a raised scarlet finger. On the white screen your erotic auto accident continues to bleed! I wanted to show Brigitte Bardot around revolutionary Montréal. We will meet when we are old, in an old dictator’s cafeteria. Nobody knows who you are except the Vatican. We stumble on the truth: we could have made each other happy. Eva Peron! Edith! Mary Voolnd! Hedy Lamarr! Madame Bovary! Lauren Bacall was Marlene Dietrich! B.B., it is F., ghost from green daisies, from the stone pit of his orgasm, from the obscure mental factory of English Montréal. Lie down on my paper, little movie flesh. Let your towel preserve impressions of your bosom. Develop into a pervert in our private. Shock me with chemical or tongue request. Come out of the shower with your hair wet and rest your crossed shaved legs on my one-handed desk. Let the towel slide as you fall asleep during our first argument, while the fan heaves the same long wisp of golden path every time it faces you. O Mary, I have come back to you. I have returned up my arm to the true swatch of black body windows, the cunt of now, soak of the present. I led myself from Temptation and I showed it happening.
– You needn’t have, says Mary Voolnd.
–No?
– No. It’s all included in the so-called fuck.
– I can imagine whatever I want?
– Yes. But hurry!
16
We are at the heart of the winter of 1680. Catherine Tekakwitha is cold and dying. This is the year she died. This is the big winter. She was too sick to leave the cabin. Secretly starving, the thorn mat continues to bounce her body like a juggler. Now the church was too far away. But, le P. Chauchetière tells us, she spent a part of each day on her knees or balanced on a crude bench. The trees came to beat her. We are now at the beginning of Holy Week before Easter, 1689. Holy Monday, she weakened considerably. They told her she was dying fast. As Marie-Thérèse caressed her with birch, Catherine prayed:
– O God, show me that the Ceremony belongs to Thee. Reveal to your servant a fissure in the Ritual. Change Thy World with the jawbone of a broken Idea. O my Lord, play with me.
At the mission there was a curious custom. They
