The Priest's Madonna Read online

  “Because the Church’s power was threatened,” I said.

  “Because people’s souls were threatened! Because the heretics were leading people straight into hell!” He struck his walking stick against the ground, then glared at me.

  His anger startled but did not scare me—my father had acquainted me with bluster. I waited a moment, studying my flower, then said in a measured tone, “But the Cathars believed their faith was true. How could they be forced to believe something different? And if someone pretended to believe something to avoid being killed, it would be a lie, which is also a sin. And wouldn’t God know he was lying?”

  We had reached a fork in the path. One way led farther down the hill, into a thickening forest of oak and pine. The other veered left and stayed open, rising again. Bérenger stood at the fork, glaring downhill, ominously silent.

  “I’ve angered you,” I said heatedly. “I should not have brought it up.” I realized with chagrin that my fervent curiosity had gotten the better of me. I feared I had lost his approval.

  He turned to face me, his hands folded as if to control them. “You are very intelligent, Marie,” he said. “But the problem with human intelligence is that it strives to understand what it cannot understand, and in doing so, destroys the beauty and the mystery of the ineffable. We proclaim the mystery of faith, Marie. It is a mystery and must remain so.” He gazed at me for a long moment, until I felt I had to break the gaze or be swallowed. I looked back in the direction from which we’d come: from our position, I could see only the dusty trail we’d taken down the hill, which rose steeply, obscuring the view of the village.

  “I suppose I should start back toward home now,” I said. “I have dinner to prepare.”

  He nodded. “Leave a plate for me. I’ll be walking a while longer.”

  When I had reached the crest of the hill once more, he called to me, “Marie! Come to confession!”

  On the Way to Natzaret

  She went with them over the objections of Kefa, who thought such a woman would discredit their cause. She was the only woman yet to join them, though there would be others later. Yeshua walked beside her. At one point, Kefa fell back and tried to coax Yeshua away. “We have things to discuss,” he said. “Things that don’t concern a woman.” But Yeshua would not leave her, and so Kefa walked with them, fuming.

  Yeshua was shy with her. With others he could be genial and talkative, but with her he fell silent, and seemed instead to be listening intently, even if she wasn’t speaking—as if he were listening for the hush of her blood as it maneuvered the particular turns of her veins.

  It was thirty years since the death of Herod the Great, thirty years since rebels had risen up against the empire, thirty years since Varus’s legions had swarmed the countryside, raping, razing, battering, smashing. Everywhere, the synagogues spoke of destruction: columns rose in the open air, supporting nothing; stairways led into emptiness. Old women’s eyes were still glazed with grief for their murdered children, and there were few old men, for so many of them had been dragged into slavery in far-off corners of the empire. They were a people in need of healing. Yeshua spoke to them in what remained of the synagogues, declaring the end of oppression and death. “The hour is fulfilled!” he shouted. “The Kingdom of God is near! Repent and believe in the good news!” Some believed and were joyful; some quietly hoped and yet doubted; some were pained by what they heard as arrogant nonsense; and some demanded proof, a sign from God.

  And so Yeshua healed. He placed his rough palms over the eyes of a blind man, and when he removed them, the man fell prostrate before him, crying, “Light! Light!” He stood before the thrashing body of a boy and commanded the demon to depart; it left with an ungodly roar like the crash of a great wave against a ship’s hull. They brought him their blind and lame, their hemorrhaging and leprous, their maniacal and possessed, and he healed them, one by one. But even these signs were not enough for some, for there had been other healers before Yeshua, and weren’t they all still here, yoked to the Roman plow?

  Miryam, though, was hopeful. She whispered the words of the prophet Yeshayah to herself as she walked, “For a child has been born for us, a son is given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

  Her father was a chazzan, the leader at the synagogue, and he honored the scriptures above all else. No woman in all of the Galil was as well schooled as Miryam. Her father did not believe, as some did in her village, that women were unfit for study. From the age of four, when her father had first read to her the story of the creation of the earth, Miryam had memorized Torah. Even then, before she manifested any outward signs of her possession, she felt the devils gripping her mind. Only her father’s voice, singing the scripture, had the ability to loosen the grip, to ease her building agony. She asked him to read the words again and again, and then she repeated them. “The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters,” she recited, and she saw a vast stretch of sea, the Galilee at night, dark and churning in a wind. “Let there be light,” she recited, and the sea glowed from its depths and fingers of yellow light fractured the darkness. “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds,” she recited, and they appeared: ibexes kicking up mountain stones, wild boars snuffling through the cedar, asps uncoiling and spreading their hoods. In this way, she managed to keep her devils at bay.

  But as Miryam grew older, it grew more difficult to pacify the demons. They seized her when she paused to take a breath; her whispering grew faster, louder, and more frenzied. It became clear that no man would have her as his wife. Her mother, feeling Miryam’s agony as her own, encouraged her to devote herself entirely to learning scripture. “Is there not here another prophet of the Lord of whom we may inquire?” Miryam whispered and, “He-man the singer the son of Jo’el, son of Samuel, son of Elka’nah, son of Jero’ham, son of Eli’el, son of To’ah,” on and on. Her affliction had earned her fame in her village, but her devotion made her famous in towns throughout the Galil, even as far as Kafr Nahum. Visitors to her village might hear her whispering and kneel before her, asking for a blessing, but the village mothers pulled their children close when she passed. Some threw stones.

  Yeshua, though, was not afraid. “What a gift Abba has given you, Miryam!” he said. “To have his word always on your tongue! What a blessing!”

  But Miryam felt cursed. The pronunciation of sounds did not equal knowledge. She wanted release from her incessant whispering; she wanted peace, she wanted discernment, she wanted understanding. Yeshua, she hoped, could teach her these.

  He walked among them and spoke with them, but seemed simultaneously to be walking in seclusion. He appeared to be listening, enraptured—it was as if God himself was speaking in his ear. This, after some time, was what Miryam grew to believe: that Yeshua’s Abba spoke to him as her own father spoke to her.

  Chapter Four

  BÉRENGER’S INSISTENCE ON defending the Church rather than soothing my heartache wounded me. I punished him with silence for a time, and he avoided me, sensing my anger. Still, I longed to be near him.

  Thankfully, our battle of wills did not last long. One afternoon, he plunked himself in the chair beside mine as I sat shelling peas for winter storage. When I didn’t look up, he began whistling the tune to “Marinette, Marinette, la Petite Coquette.”

  “Please stop whistling that song,” I said, in as dignified a voice as I could muster.

  “Ah, she speaks. I had begun to wonder whether you’d lost your voice.”

  I kept my eyes trained on the pods between my fingers. “Why should I speak when I have nothing to say?”

  “Oh, but that’s not true, Marie. You do have something to say. You’re angry with me.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said earnestly. “I did not give you a very good answer to your question.”

  I graced him with a look. “No, you didn�
�t.”

  “I responded reflexively,” he said. “I didn’t think.”

  “Do you really feel that way? That the Church was in the right? To murder all those people?”

  Bérenger sighed heavily. “What I think, what anyone thinks, doesn’t change what happened. Yes, undoubtedly, the Church has made mistakes. But that does not change the fact of its singularity, that, through the grace of God and his son Jesus Christ, the Church grants us salvation.”

  “I suppose so,” I said cautiously.

  “You are right to wonder about these things, Marie. You are right to think about justice. Christ was a lamb for justice, for peace. But I don’t want to see your questions undermine your faith. That’s why I spoke roughly to you.”

  “I understand,” I said, my eyes still on the peas.

  He leaned toward me, positioning his face in my line of vision so I could not help but look at him. In a whisper, he said, “But I should not have spoken so roughly. Marie, please. The last thing I want is for you to be angry with me.”

  “All right,” I said, raising my head and finally meeting his eyes. “I forgive you.”

  He leaned back in his chair, his face momentarily stricken with relief, as if he’d just barely evaded some great calamity. Then, abruptly, he stood and, smiling his mischievous smile, gave a charming little mock-bow.

  I was glad to be free to enjoy his company once again, and for that reason did not press the point. But the question remained: Did he truly believe that the Church had been justified in its massacre of all those thousands? In the absence of any definitive answer from him, I made up my own. I assumed he’d been carried away by his desire to defend the Church, and so had spoken insincerely. In this way, I was able to resume my former fantasies, in which we were free to love one another, though they were complicated by this new insight, this small window into his bewildering intransigence.

  THEN CAME THE election. In the weeks leading up to elec tion day, my father spent his nights in the tavern with other men of his political persuasion. I imagine they raised glass upon glass to Robespierre, Gambetta, Clemenceau, and the Republic. We could always tell when Father was about to come home on those nights, because we could hear him and his companions in a rowdy rendition of “La Marseillaise,” sung all the way home. Once in the house, Father would stumble wordlessly past Bérenger, who was usually reading by the hearth, and climb into bed with Mother, muttering about his great misfortune at having to share his home with a priest.

  This was a change. Since the time my father had decided to spare Bérenger his usual political harangue, the two had gotten along well. They always shared a smoke after dinner. Bérenger had taken to helping Father with small repairs around the house—patching the roof, rehanging the door when it fell off its hinges—and in return, Father had begun taking an interest in Bérenger’s own building projects. Bérenger had drafted a renovation plan for the church, which included a reconstructed roof, stabilized walls, a new altar with a new set of steps leading up to it, a new confessional, and a new floor for the nave. He and Father pored over the plans together, discussing the merits and risks of various materials: tile, stone, plaster, glass. Bérenger had not yet heard back from the Austrian and spoke heatedly about the immediate necessity of renovation. Father happily denounced the episcopate, the mayor, and the village council—with whom he’d had disagreements in the past—for their refusal to put forward any money for the project. He told bad jokes, which Bérenger laughed at heartily. They avoided discussing politics or religion.

  But as the elections neared, those subjects became more difficult to avoid. It happened that a local boy, Jean-Baptiste Durier from Couiza, was up for a seat in the Chamber. He was a republican, and while many of the men in the village would have voted rightist—or, more commonly, would not have bothered to vote at all—because Durier was a terradorenc they had become republican, if only for the purposes of this election. My father would forgo his customary after-dinner smoke with Bérenger and head for the tavern. Bérenger began leaving copies of his Catholic weekly, La Semaine Réligieuse de Carcassonne, on the table for my father to see, especially when the headlines were particularly antirepublican: “Enemies of Religion Converge on City Center,” or “Bishop Calls Laicization of Schools the Work of the Devil.” My father would drop the paper in the dust outside the front door, letting its pages scatter.

  One night, after I had been sleeping for some time, I woke to the sound of my father and Bérenger arguing.

  “Your Church is doomed,” Father said to Bérenger, his voice smug with liquor.

  “What makes you think that, Edouard?” asked Bérenger calmly.

  “The Republic will prevail. When Church and State are finally separated, the Church will sink fast.”

  “And why is that?” asked Bérenger

  “Who’s going to dole out money voluntarily to an organization that gives them nothing in return?”

  I heard my mother rummaging for her slippers and nightcap.

  “Nothing?” Bérenger said.

  “Empty promises. The worst kind of lies. A fluffy cushion in heaven after you die! Convenient! An IOU, payable only upon death!”

  Claude was stirring and Michelle was awake. She leaned over and asked in a whisper, “What’s going on?”

  “Shhh,” I said.

  Mother descended the stairs, a candle in her hand. “Edouard! Come upstairs this instant!”

  But he ignored her. “Tell me, Monsieur le curé,” he continued. “Do you believe in God?”

  Bérenger’s voice was soft but sure. “Of course.”

  “You believe you’re going to be frolicking in the clouds, playing the lute? You’re an educated man, for God’s sake!”

  “I believe in eternal life, yes, if that’s what you’re asking me.”

  “Eternal life. What does that mean? Describe it to me!”

  “In heaven, we meet God,” Bérenger said with conviction. “As Paul tells us, ‘For now we see through a mirror dimly, but then face to face.’ If I knew what God looked like, Edouard, I would describe him to you with joy. But I don’t yet.”

  “How do you know it’s not just darkness, dirt in our nostrils?”

  “Because I know the sustaining strength of God’s love. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’ ”

  “For Christ’s sake,” my father roared, “stop quoting someone else’s words and think for yourself for once!”

  “Edouard!” shouted my mother.

  “Answer me this, Monsieur le curé: What kind of a father would crucify his own son?”

  “That’s enough, Edouard!” said my mother, and this time the ominous tone of her voice must have caught his attention, for a moment later I heard my father’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. I lay down and turned my back toward the door, as did Michelle and Claude, and we were motionless as my father undressed and climbed into bed. Within moments, he was snoring. Downstairs, my mother apologized tearfully to Bérenger. “It tortures him, it does,” she said. “He wants to come back to the Church, he wants to believe, but he won’t let himself. It’s the men at the tavern. If they ever knew he was going to church, he’d never hear the end of it.”

  “They’re the same as he is, Isabelle. They’re just the same. Too scared to face the truth.”

  “I’ll pray for him, for all of them.”

  They went on like this for some time. I stopped listening after a while. My father’s question rang in my ears. What kind of a father indeed? I lifted my pillow and took out the Marian thistle Bérenger had given me on our walk weeks earlier, now half-dried and crushed flat. It smelled faintly of decay. I lay back, holding it, but I could not sleep, even after my mother returned to bed and all was quiet. When I finally drifted off, in the early hours of the morning, I dreamt of vast empty spaces, scorched ground stretching into eternity.

  ON THE DAY of the election—a Sunday, as was customary—people ga
thered early in front of the church and stood in factions, whispering, exchanging glares and jibes. An election offered some sport, and the village loved it almost as much as the occasional running of the bulls in Espéraza: the suspense, the antagonism, the anticipation of a sweet and bloody victory. Everyone wanted to hear the Church’s word on the subject; it was another element in the drama. Even Mme Laporte came that morning, her hand on the mayor’s arm. She wore a round hat fixed with a swatch of tulle that dipped over her eyes; her graying hair, usually straying from an unkempt twist, was well brushed and neatly arranged in a chignon at the nape of her neck. I gaped at her; she smiled discreetly and nodded her head in greeting.

  No one knew for sure what Bérenger would say that morning. Normally, he followed the missal scrupulously and did not often preach about politics or public affairs. Nevertheless, we all knew his political position: he wanted the monarchy to be restored and Catholic power to be reinstated as the State’s intimate ally.

  Dread overcame me when he stepped up to the pulpit, for his expression was rigid, his jaw set, his eyes as hard and evasive as they had been the day he recited the story of Baal and the prophets. It seemed as though he was afraid to look at anyone for fear they might try to change his mind.

  “Today is a moment of truth for our nation,” he began, “our département, our village. Today we will see whether religion and divine law will be upheld in France, or whether God himself will be tossed aside like a rotten vine.

  “Since the fall of Sedan, the republican parliament has steadily looted its own spiritual inheritance and the inheritance of its children. We have seen the secularization of our schools and the Lord’s Day profaned. We have seen the legalization of divorce, a practice condemned by Our Savior Jesus Christ. These laws and practices, handed down to us over the centuries, inscribed in our Holy Scripture, have been cast aside by Jules Ferry and this provisional Republic, which, may I remind you, was created as a temporary solution. The majority of Frenchmen do not want a parliamentary government. They have been living with it until the proper monarch is ready to step forward. The majority of Frenchmen want the reinstitution of stability and righteous governance: they want a new king.