36
The cabins of the village were empty. It was spring. It was 1675. Somewhere Spinoza was making sunglasses. In England, Hugh Chamberlen was pulling babies out with a secret instrument, obstetrical forceps, the only man in Europe to deliver women with this revolutionary technique which had been developed by his grandfather. Marquis de Laplace was looking at the sun prior to his assumption that the sun rotated at the very beginning of existence, which he would develop in his book, Exposition du Système du Monde. The fifth reincarnation of Tsong Khapa achieved temporal supremacy: the regency of Tibet was handed to him by Mongolia, with the title Dalai Lama. There were Jesuits in Korea. A group of colonial doctors interested in anatomy but frustrated by the laws against human dissection managed to obtain “the middle-most part of an Indian executed the day before.” Thirty years before the Jews re-entered France. Twenty years before we remark the first outbreak of syphilis in Boston. Frederick William was the Great Elector. Friars of the Order of Minims, according to a regulation of 1668, should not be excommunicated if, “when about to yield to the temptations of the flesh … they prudently laid aside the monastic habit.” Corelli, the forerunner of Alessandro Scarlatti, Handel, Couperin, and J. S. Bach, was, in 1675, the third violin in the church orchestra of St. Louis of France, which was in Rome in 1675. Thus the moon of the seventeenth century waned into its last quarter. In the next century 60,000,000 Europeans would die of smallpox. F. often said: Think of the world without Bach. Think of the Hittites without Christ. To discover the truth in anything that is alien, first dispense with the indispensable in your own vision. Thank you, F. Thank you, my lover. When will I be able to see the world without you, my dear? O Death, we are your Court Angels, hospitals are your Church! My friends have died. People I know have died. O Death, why do you make Halloween out of every night? I am scared. If it’s not one thing it’s another: if I’m not constipated I’m scared. O Death, let the firecracker burns heal once more. The trees around F.’s treehouse (where I am writing this), they are dark. I can’t smell the apples. O Death, why do you do so much acting and so little talking? The cocoons are soft and creepy. I am afraid of worms with a butterfly heaven. Is Catherine a flower in the sky? Is F. an orchid? Is Edith a branch of hay? Does Death chase the cobwebs? Has Death anything to do with Pain, or is Pain working on the other side? O F., how I loved this treehouse when you lent it to me and Edith for our honeymoon!
37
The cabins of Kahnawaké were empty. The fields around were filled with workers, men and women with handfuls of kernels. They were planting the corn in the spring of 1675.
– Yuh yuh, went the strains of the Corn-Planting Song.
Catherine’s uncle squeezed his fist over the heap of yellow cradled in his palm. He could feel the powers of the seeds, their longing to be covered with earth and explode. They seemed to force his fingers open. He tipped his hand like a cup and one kernel dropped into a hole.
– Ah, he mused, in such a way did Our Female Ancestress fall from heaven into the waste of primeval waters. Some are of the opinion that various amphibious animals, such as the otter, beaver, and muskrat, noticed her fall, and hastened to break it by shoveling up earth from the mud beneath the waters.
Suddenly he stiffened. In his mind’s heart he felt the sinister presence of le P. Jacques de Lamberville. Yes, he could feel the priest as he walked through the village, more than a mile away. Catherine’s uncle released a Shadow to greet the priest.
Le P. Jacques de Lamberville paused outside Tekakwitha’s cabin. They were all in the fields, he thought, so there’s no point trying even if they let me in this time.
– La ha la ha, came a tinkle of laughter from within.
The priest wheeled around and made toward the door. The Shadow greeted him and they wrestled. The Shadow was naked and easily tripped his heavily robed opponent. The Shadow threw himself on the priest, who was struggling to extricate himself from the coils of his robe. The Shadow in his ferocity managed to entangle himself in the very same robes. The priest quickly perceived his advantage. He lay perfectly still while the Shadow suffocated in the prison of a fortunate pocket. He got up and threw the door open.
– Catherine!
– At last!
– What are you doing inside, Catherine? All of your family is in the field planting corn.
– I stubbed my toe.
– Let me look.
– No. Let it go on hurting.
– What a lovely thing to say, child.
– I’m nineteen. Everyone hates me here, but I don’t mind. My aunts kick me all the time, not that I hold anything against them. I have to carry the shit, well, someone has to do it. But, Father, they want me to fuck – but I have given my fuck away.
– Don’t be an Indian Giver.
– What should I do, Father?
– Let me have a look at that toe.
– Yes!
– I’ll have to take off your moccasin.
– Yes!
– Here?
– Yes!
– What about here?
– Yes!
– Your toes are cold, Catherine. I’ll have to rub them between my palms.
– Yes!
– Now I’ll blow them, you know, as one blows one’s fingers in the winter.
– Yes!
The priest breathed heavily on her tiny brown toes. What a lovely little
