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Authors: Michelle Lovric
Tags: Historical
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died. I held that hand so fiercely that it was white when they forced me to let go.
Furtive and roundabout ways worked best in the convent: to state my desire to be a doctor would have brought down punishments on my head for arrogance. There would be sarcastic questions as to who would pay for the training of a worthless orphan like myself. So I kept my eyes down in the classroom, never visibly distinguishing myself, never writing all I learned on my little slate.
As soon as I had mastered my letters, I began to haunt the infirmary. I befriended the old nun who worked there. Her eyes were failing: she let me read out the pharmacy receipts for her. Each one I read, I memorized. And every day I stole a little sugar or a little salt. In this way I kept alive when many of my companions did not. Sometimes I emptied some herbs into my pocket as I ground up a prescription for a sick child. Eventually I ignored the pharmacy nun’s instructions, for I knew better than she what saved and what exterminated the convent’s inmates, who comprised both children and fallen, destitute women.
The medical records of the foundlings and their mothers were kept in the infirmary. The lock was not too stubborn for a scalpel. I learned that my own unwed mother had died of puerperal sepsis in that very room, due to ‘miasma’ in the air. I sniffed the air of the infirmary archives. The dust of ages and the effluent of the drains filled up my nostrils.
The old nun was persuaded to reminisce about my birth. A medical student had delivered me, arriving hotfoot from assisting at an autopsy, his hands still wet with necrotic gore. One soul, mine, had come into the world by that red hand; another, my mother’s, had left it.
My father was unknown and would stay that way.
Sor Loreta
There came to us more news from Europe of the dreadful doings of the revolutionists who hated the Holy Mother Church, her priests, and even her nuns, and persecuted them like the Christian martyrs of old.
Merchants delivered foreign newspapers to the Tristáns: this rich Arequipan family had connections in Paris. One of the Tristán sambas brought in a well-thumbed page to Santa Catalina and the nuns crowded round while one of my sisters who was sinfully fluent in French translated for us. Some evil-doer had drawn a cartoon of nuns being driven out of their convent.
The Godless revolutionists used laughter just as the Devil plies his pitchfork. They sneered that the convents were like bastilles. They drew the Church as a lamprey, sucking good out of the world without giving anything back. The heathens declared that praying for the wretched was lazy and worthless. They insisted that the nuns were not too good for housework and cooking: they should work for the poor and sick. Nor should nuns think themselves too fine for human husbands. They should go out and marry and procreate for the state.
‘God does not make anything celibate,’ one blasphemer urged.
As if those poor nuns were not already married to God! What kind of state was this, that proposed bigamy for the pure brides of Christ? Some noble nuns were even accused of subverting the revolution, because they refused to cuckold God and lived on in their communities in a blameless manner. It was not until All Saints that news of the notorious event arrived in Arequipa, an event that made all good Christians gasp: on July 17th 1794, sixteen Carmelite sisters from Compiègne had been led to the guillotine and their heads had been cut off.
In Santa Catalina our nuns were swooning with gratitude that such things could never happen here. Yet my heart was torn in my breast, for those nuns from Compiègne had been allowed God’s greatest honour of martyrdom. Deo gratias . I wondered if there was a way to obtain some of the dirt from beneath the guillotine. The earth that had drunk the blood of the martyrs must be a most precious relic, I thought, and I wished with all my heart to have some.
And now there was
Furtive and roundabout ways worked best in the convent: to state my desire to be a doctor would have brought down punishments on my head for arrogance. There would be sarcastic questions as to who would pay for the training of a worthless orphan like myself. So I kept my eyes down in the classroom, never visibly distinguishing myself, never writing all I learned on my little slate.
As soon as I had mastered my letters, I began to haunt the infirmary. I befriended the old nun who worked there. Her eyes were failing: she let me read out the pharmacy receipts for her. Each one I read, I memorized. And every day I stole a little sugar or a little salt. In this way I kept alive when many of my companions did not. Sometimes I emptied some herbs into my pocket as I ground up a prescription for a sick child. Eventually I ignored the pharmacy nun’s instructions, for I knew better than she what saved and what exterminated the convent’s inmates, who comprised both children and fallen, destitute women.
The medical records of the foundlings and their mothers were kept in the infirmary. The lock was not too stubborn for a scalpel. I learned that my own unwed mother had died of puerperal sepsis in that very room, due to ‘miasma’ in the air. I sniffed the air of the infirmary archives. The dust of ages and the effluent of the drains filled up my nostrils.
The old nun was persuaded to reminisce about my birth. A medical student had delivered me, arriving hotfoot from assisting at an autopsy, his hands still wet with necrotic gore. One soul, mine, had come into the world by that red hand; another, my mother’s, had left it.
My father was unknown and would stay that way.
Sor Loreta
There came to us more news from Europe of the dreadful doings of the revolutionists who hated the Holy Mother Church, her priests, and even her nuns, and persecuted them like the Christian martyrs of old.
Merchants delivered foreign newspapers to the Tristáns: this rich Arequipan family had connections in Paris. One of the Tristán sambas brought in a well-thumbed page to Santa Catalina and the nuns crowded round while one of my sisters who was sinfully fluent in French translated for us. Some evil-doer had drawn a cartoon of nuns being driven out of their convent.
The Godless revolutionists used laughter just as the Devil plies his pitchfork. They sneered that the convents were like bastilles. They drew the Church as a lamprey, sucking good out of the world without giving anything back. The heathens declared that praying for the wretched was lazy and worthless. They insisted that the nuns were not too good for housework and cooking: they should work for the poor and sick. Nor should nuns think themselves too fine for human husbands. They should go out and marry and procreate for the state.
‘God does not make anything celibate,’ one blasphemer urged.
As if those poor nuns were not already married to God! What kind of state was this, that proposed bigamy for the pure brides of Christ? Some noble nuns were even accused of subverting the revolution, because they refused to cuckold God and lived on in their communities in a blameless manner. It was not until All Saints that news of the notorious event arrived in Arequipa, an event that made all good Christians gasp: on July 17th 1794, sixteen Carmelite sisters from Compiègne had been led to the guillotine and their heads had been cut off.
In Santa Catalina our nuns were swooning with gratitude that such things could never happen here. Yet my heart was torn in my breast, for those nuns from Compiègne had been allowed God’s greatest honour of martyrdom. Deo gratias . I wondered if there was a way to obtain some of the dirt from beneath the guillotine. The earth that had drunk the blood of the martyrs must be a most precious relic, I thought, and I wished with all my heart to have some.
And now there was
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