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Authors: Ron Hansen
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stares ahead at a wall and she seems to be listening to something just above her, as a girl might listen to the cooing of pigeons.
Shutting her eyes, she talks voicelessly, with great passion, and opens her hands as priests do at the pax vobiscum . And then she swoons as though she’s lost herself and has become only her clothes.
—Was she in ecstasy?
—She said so.
—And what else did she tell you?
—She said, “Where was I?” And then she seemed to be recollected and she said Christ had talked to her.
—About what?
—She said she couldn’t tell me. She’d been told to hide His words in her heart.
—And it’s your opinion that she was speaking the truth.
—Oh yes. I think she’s a saint.
Ember Day. Mass of Saint Januarius, Bishop, and
His Companions, Martyrs.
Sister Saint-Estèphe wakes up after an hour’s sleep and after a great deal of restlessness goes to the chandlery. She heats paraffin wax and stearic acid in a saucepan and then stirs in a hot mixture of bayberry wax and a purple dye. She prays the joyful mysteries of the rosary while scouring her candle molds, then carries the saucepan to an iron trivet on the windowsill and, just after midnight, walks down to the dim oratory to adore Our Lady of Sorrows. She’s just getting used to the church’s darkness when she hears the hush of a habit, and she’s surprised to see their postulant kneeling in her stall.
She handsigns, Each night, here?
Yes .
Sleep, when?
Don’t .
Mass of Our Lady of Ransom.
Chapter and Compline. Every sister in choir is affectionately following Reverend Mother Céline as she fluently strolls up and down the oratory, first giving a short report of international events, and then talking about Sister Antoinette’s worries for the late-September grape harvest, and going over their next week’s assignments in the winery, grange, hallways, scullery, laundry, milking barn, or orchard. She then gets a church basket of handwritten notes from Sister Catherine. “We shall now pray for our petitioners.”
Each petition is gradually unfolded and read aloud to the sisters in order to request their intercession for the health of a child with impetigo, for a farmer whose faith has left him, for a hot-blooded girl who’s run away, for a mechanic who’s lost half a foot in a steam-powered thresher, for an ill, tired, and friendless widow who’s asking God to please let her die. When she has read them all, Mother Céline lowers her head and raises her folded hands to her mouth as though forbidding her own speech. And Mariette thinks, I have been here forty days and she hasn’t talked to me since the first .
Their mother superior then says, “We shall also pray for one of ours who is undergoing great torment.”
Mariette gazes around the oratory. Each nun stares at the prioress in common. Each stares at her separately.
Mass of Saints Isaac Jogues, John de Brebeuf, Charles
Garnier, Anthony Daniel, Gabriel Lallemant, Noel
Chabanel, John de Lalande, and Rene Goupil, Martyrs.
White clouds travel and infest the horizon. Fruit trees shift their feet like hired hands. Sister Marthe is standing on a paint-spotted ladder inside a pear tree so that her wooden sabots alone are unhidden until a great branch cracks away and her ripsaw flashes silver in the sun.
Mother Saint-Raphaël is hoeing weeds around a garden bench as Mariette kneels with pruning shears and snips back the wood canes on pink rosebushes. Sister Claudine is fifteen yards away as she heaves and shakes ammonium sulfate onto a tilled flower bed. Every now and then she pauses and stares at the postulant with envy. Why, Mariette cannot understand, for Mother Saint-Raphaël hoes in silence. Even when Mariette chats about trifles and foolishness, she sees the mistress of novices frowning at her, as if trying to find a hidden character behind the girl’s eyes. And Mother Saint-Raphaël only sighs when Mariette talks about religion.
She is
Shutting her eyes, she talks voicelessly, with great passion, and opens her hands as priests do at the pax vobiscum . And then she swoons as though she’s lost herself and has become only her clothes.
—Was she in ecstasy?
—She said so.
—And what else did she tell you?
—She said, “Where was I?” And then she seemed to be recollected and she said Christ had talked to her.
—About what?
—She said she couldn’t tell me. She’d been told to hide His words in her heart.
—And it’s your opinion that she was speaking the truth.
—Oh yes. I think she’s a saint.
Ember Day. Mass of Saint Januarius, Bishop, and
His Companions, Martyrs.
Sister Saint-Estèphe wakes up after an hour’s sleep and after a great deal of restlessness goes to the chandlery. She heats paraffin wax and stearic acid in a saucepan and then stirs in a hot mixture of bayberry wax and a purple dye. She prays the joyful mysteries of the rosary while scouring her candle molds, then carries the saucepan to an iron trivet on the windowsill and, just after midnight, walks down to the dim oratory to adore Our Lady of Sorrows. She’s just getting used to the church’s darkness when she hears the hush of a habit, and she’s surprised to see their postulant kneeling in her stall.
She handsigns, Each night, here?
Yes .
Sleep, when?
Don’t .
Mass of Our Lady of Ransom.
Chapter and Compline. Every sister in choir is affectionately following Reverend Mother Céline as she fluently strolls up and down the oratory, first giving a short report of international events, and then talking about Sister Antoinette’s worries for the late-September grape harvest, and going over their next week’s assignments in the winery, grange, hallways, scullery, laundry, milking barn, or orchard. She then gets a church basket of handwritten notes from Sister Catherine. “We shall now pray for our petitioners.”
Each petition is gradually unfolded and read aloud to the sisters in order to request their intercession for the health of a child with impetigo, for a farmer whose faith has left him, for a hot-blooded girl who’s run away, for a mechanic who’s lost half a foot in a steam-powered thresher, for an ill, tired, and friendless widow who’s asking God to please let her die. When she has read them all, Mother Céline lowers her head and raises her folded hands to her mouth as though forbidding her own speech. And Mariette thinks, I have been here forty days and she hasn’t talked to me since the first .
Their mother superior then says, “We shall also pray for one of ours who is undergoing great torment.”
Mariette gazes around the oratory. Each nun stares at the prioress in common. Each stares at her separately.
Mass of Saints Isaac Jogues, John de Brebeuf, Charles
Garnier, Anthony Daniel, Gabriel Lallemant, Noel
Chabanel, John de Lalande, and Rene Goupil, Martyrs.
White clouds travel and infest the horizon. Fruit trees shift their feet like hired hands. Sister Marthe is standing on a paint-spotted ladder inside a pear tree so that her wooden sabots alone are unhidden until a great branch cracks away and her ripsaw flashes silver in the sun.
Mother Saint-Raphaël is hoeing weeds around a garden bench as Mariette kneels with pruning shears and snips back the wood canes on pink rosebushes. Sister Claudine is fifteen yards away as she heaves and shakes ammonium sulfate onto a tilled flower bed. Every now and then she pauses and stares at the postulant with envy. Why, Mariette cannot understand, for Mother Saint-Raphaël hoes in silence. Even when Mariette chats about trifles and foolishness, she sees the mistress of novices frowning at her, as if trying to find a hidden character behind the girl’s eyes. And Mother Saint-Raphaël only sighs when Mariette talks about religion.
She is
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