– Help me, Doctor.
– I am a priest.
– Help me as a doctor.
– No doctor can help you now.
He told her that her cure was beyond human dominion. He pressed the victim to ask for the intercession of Catherine Tekakwitha, “your sister by blood!” That night she began a novena in honor of the long-dead Iroquois Virgin. One day passed, two days passed, nothing happened. On the third day, she sent her tongue searching over the roof of her mouth, but the syphilis Braille had disappeared like the volumes of Alexandria!
24
In 1689 the mission of Sault Saint-Louis moved farther up the Saint Lawrence River. The reason for the exodus was soil exhaustion. The old location (at the place where the Portage River enters the Saint Lawrence) had been called Kahnawaké, or, at the rapids. Now it took the name Kateri tsi tkaiatat, or, the place where Catherine was buried. They took her body with them to the new village which was called Kahnawakon, or, in the rapids. They called the abandoned site Kanatakwenké, or, place of the removed village. In 1696 they moved once again up the south bank of the great river. The last migration took place in 1719. The mission installed itself in its present location, across the rapids opposite Lachine, now connected by a bridge to Montréal. It took the Iroquois name of 1676, Kahnawaké, or in its English form, Caughnawaga. There are still some relics of Catherine Tekakwitha at Caughnawaga, but not all. Some of her skeleton had been given away at different periods. Her head was carried to Saint-Régis in 1754, to celebrate the establishment of another Iroquois mission. The church in which the head was placed burned to the ground, and the skull did not survive.
KATERI TEKAKWITHA
Apr. 17, 1680
Onkweonweke Katsitsiio
Teotsitsianekaron
Kateri Tekakwitha
17 avril, 1680
La plus belle fleur épanouie
chez les sauvages
THE END OF F.’S HISTORY OF THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF CATHERINE TEKAKWITHA’S LIFE
There! Done! Dear old friend, I did what was necessary! I did what I dreamed about when you, Edith, and I sat on the austere seats of the System Theatre. Do you know the question with which I tormented myself during those silvery hours? At last I can tell you. We are now in the heart of the System Theatre. We are in the dark jockeying for elbow dominion on the wooden armrests. Outside on Ste. Catherine Street, the theater marquee displays the only neon failure in miles of light: dropping two letters which will never be repaired, it signals itself as stem Theatre, stem Theatre, stem Theatre. Secret kabals of vegetarians habitually gather under the sign to exchange contraband from beyond the Vegetable Barrier. In their pinpoint eyes dances their old dream: the Total Fast. One of them reports a new atrocity published without compassionate comment by the editors of Scientific American: “It has been established that, when pulled from the ground, a radish produces an electronic scream.” Not even the triple bill for 65¢ will comfort them tonight. With a mad laugh born of despair, one of them throws himself on a hot-dog stand, disintegrating on the first chew into pathetic withdrawal symptoms. The rest watch him mournfully and then separate into the Montréal entertainment section. The news is more serious than any of them thought. One is ravished by a steak house with sidewalk ventilation. In a restaurant, one argues with the waiter that he ordered “tomato” but then in a suicide of gallantry he agrees to accept the spaghetti, meat sauce mistake. But this is far away from the glass pillar of stubs which the three of us passed and satisfied hours ago. Let us not forget that these doorway ticket depositories are not altogether docile. On more than several occasions I have stood behind a customer whose stub the chute rejects absolutely, and he is forced to get his money back from the contemptuous female sentry booth. They are not pleasant to deal with, these women posted in the entrances of every cinema: they are bound by choice to guard Ste. Catherine Street against self-destruction: the little streetside offices which they dominate protect the army of traffic by an administration which combines the best functions of Red Cross and G.H.Q. And what of the unacceptable patron with his money back? Where can he go? Was the cruel rejection arbitrary, in the sense that Society invents Crime so as to make itself indispensable? There is no dark for him to eat the Oh Henry! – all candy is threatened! Mere suicide vaudeville for the living? Or is there some ointment on the refusal of the toothed throat of the stub depository? Is this the kingly oil of election? Does some new hero discover his ordeal? Is this the birth of the hermit, or his equally passionate complement, the anti-hermit, seed of the Jesuits? And this chess side choice between saint and missionary, is this his first tragic testing? No matter to Edith, you and I, who have safely passed two aisles and half an alphabet, well into the bright amusement. We are now in the heart of the last feature in the System Theatre. Within severe limits, like smoke in a chimney, the dusty projection beam above our hair twisted and changed. Like crystals rioting in a test-tube suspension, the unstable ray changed and changed in its black confinement. Like battalions of sabotaged parachutists falling from the training tower straight down in various contortions, the frames streamed at the screen, splashing into contrast color as they hit, just as the bursting cocoons of arctic camouflage spread colorful organic contents over the snow as the divers disintegrate, one after the other. No, it was more like a ghostly white snake sealed in an immense telescope. It was a serpent swimming home, lazily occupying the entire sewer
