The White Garden (15 page)

And so began the time of my betrothal to Jesus. But at this
time also my spiritual dryness increased and I found no comfort
on earth or in heaven. My boat was adrift, and yet, in this flood
of grief I had so eagerly called down on myself, I was strangely
happy, as happy as could be.

I was so little when my sister got married, and I had a long blue dress with a silver sash, and silver slippers too. A basket of flowers and a necklace of pearls. I went slip-slip-slipping and trip-trip-tripping along the path to the church and I was as good as gold, as quiet as a mouse and as good as sugar gold. The very smallest bridesmaid, the pet, scarcely recognisable as Daphne the deaf and dumb daughter.

There was a wedding cake as tall as a tree. My sister was so beautiful, her husband so very handsome, a dream couple. I fell

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in love. And after the party I ran after them, the new husband and wife, Mr and Mrs, and I cried large terrible tears. ‘Take me!’ I screamed. ‘Take me! Don’t go without me. You’re going without me. Come back. Take me!’ But they were gone in the big white car. Gone into the night. I who was part of it all in blue and silver and a basket of flowers, I was left behind, cut off, left out, isolated in bewildered misery. Take me, I sobbed into my midnight pillow, take me, I whispered to the wall. And angels with black and red and golden wings came and took me to the stars.

One evening after Compline, during the Lenten Silence, I was
searching for my lamp on the shelf. I searched in vain, and
because of the Silence I could not ask about it. I realised a sister
had taken it in mistake for her own. In the darkness of my cell
my soul was flooded with divine light.

It was during this period that I was seized by a passion
for the ugliest and most inconvenient things. The pretty little
jug in my cell was replaced by a big quipped one, and I was
delighted. And it wasn’t only ugly objects that attracted me,
but I also welcomed acts of injustice against myself. One day
a small vase which someone had left lying behind a window
was found broken. Our Novice Mistress thought I was guilty of
having left the vase behind the window. She was very angry with
me and told me roughly to be more careful in future. Without
a word I kissed the ground and promised not to be untidy
again. I had to remember that all will be revealed on the Day
of Judgement.

Above all I tried to do my small good deeds in secret. I was
preparing the gown of my soul for Jesus.

The gown of my soul is invisible. To the naked eye my soul is naked. I wrap my earthly body in mist, and I hide in a cloud of dandelion seeds that blow about me. But the gown of my soul is invisible, and my soul, my silent, weeping soul is naked.

Sometimes I think I have been put in a hospital where the doctor says I need lots of rest, plenty of sleep. He jabs me with a needle and it goes ch-ch-ch and I fall fast, fast, fast asleep. I
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often don’t know what happens then, but often too I half wake up, and sometimes I am quite surrounded by dead and dying people with a stench of death and dying and a strange green underwater light. Then other times I half wake up and I am all alone in a small pink room with the doctor, and I am naked and he is naked and with his body he parts me and enters me and ch-ch-ch he kisses me and sucks at me between the legs front and back. I have come to like this, to look forward very much to my episodes in the Sleeping Beauty Chamber. It takes your mind off everything else.

One time the doctor said he was an elephant and invited me to ride him round the zoo, by which he meant the room. Hey-di!

Hey-di ho! The great big elephant is so slow! We both enjoyed that.

The day before my Profession was a day on which my vocation
suddenly seemed as unreal as a dream. The devil persuaded me
that life in Carmel was unsuitable for me, and he suggested that
I was deceiving my superiors in entering a way of life to which
I had not been called. He planted in me the knowledge that I
had no vocation, and that I should go back into the world from
which I had come.

But on the morning of my Profession peace swept over me,
and I made my vows. Next to my heart I carried a letter saying:

‘O Jesus, let my baptismal robe remain forever white.’

I took from my head my crown of roses and placed them at
the foot of the statue of the Blessed Virgin, and I felt that time
would never dim my joy. I became the bride of Jesus on the feast
of the Nativity of the Virgin. It was the little newborn Virgin who
presented her little flower for the little Jesus. Everything was
little on that day except for the graces I received and the peace
I felt as I gazed at the stars in the evening sky and thought that
I should soon ascend to heaven and be united with my divine
spouse in eternal happiness.

I had a crown of silver roses for my sister’s wedding. All the virgin Gillis sisters had crowns of silver roses. I was the smallest virgin, with great responsibility. I would carry a basket of

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flowers. I would be left behind at the end, not really part of it at all. Happy ever after they went off, the bride and groom, and I had a basket of flowers and a crown of silver roses. Ring-a-ring-o-roses, all fall down. Deaf and dumb Daphne made a scene.

Such a tantrum, such a bad-tempered girl, a spoilt brat, deserves a smack, give her a whack. Tacky Daphne. Smack, smack.

The day when I finally took the veil was a sad day because Papa
was too ill to come and bless his little Queen.

A week later my cousin Jeanne married Doctor la Neele, and
when she came to visit me she told me of the care she lavished
on her husband. I was filled with fresh ardour for my beloved
Jesus, and made greater efforts than ever to see that all I did
was pleasing to the King of kings who had chosen me to be his
bride. When I saw the letter announcing Jeanne’s marriage I
amused myself by composing an invitation which I read out to
the novices. How trifling are the pleasures of an earthly union,
compared with the glory of being the bride of Jesus!

I wrote:

ALMIGHTY GOD

Creator of Heaven and Earth

Supreme Sovereign of the Universe

and

THE MOST GLORIOUS VIRGIN MARY

Queen of the Court of Heaven

Announce to you the Spiritual marriage of their august son JESUS

KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS

with

Little Therese Martin

now princess and lady of the Kingdom of the Childhood of Jesus and His Passion, given to her as a dowry by her divine Spouse from which she holds her titles of nobility OF THE CHILD JESUS and OF THE HOLY FACE

It was not possible to invite you to the wedding feast held on the Mountain of Carmel, 8 September 1899, as only the heavenly court was admitted, but you are nevertheless admitted to the At Home tomorrow, the Day of Eternity when Jesus, the Son of God, will come in the clouds of heaven to judge the living and the dead to the full splendour of his majesty. The hour being uncertain, you are asked to hold yourself in readiness and to watch.

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For they that wait upon the Lord shall not be weary. Servants of the Lord, virgins at the temple, keepers of the flame. Weary and careworn, I am a worm in the wicked world.

I blunder through the mud and blind, deaf, dumb — dumb as a doornail and deaf as a ghost, dead as the hangman with his drop dead noose. I saw the bride and groom as they set off, swept off, going on their honeymoon. A word of warning to the groom, a word about the honeymoon. ‘To fall into a jar of honey’

means simply to die. Paint your slit with honey, Honey, before your wedding-night. And the queen bee kills the bridegroom

— how — by tearing off his prick. First let him lick elixir, blood and honey, then rip him apart, throw him away. Paint with honey, get the money. That’s the way to go.

I was granted a very special grace on the day Mother Genevieve
died. Every sister hastened to seize a relic of our mother. I
have a most precious one, for during her last agony I saw a
tear shining on her eyelash like a diamond. It stayed there,
and was the last tear she shed on earth. I saw it still glittering when her body was placed in the choir, and I took a
scrap of linen and went to her without anyone seeing me. I
wiped the tear from her eyelid, and now I possess that final
teardrop.

In the rainbow light of the crystal oval of a tear you can see a bit of everything. You can see dragons, for instance, if you want to. Great flying, coiling, writhing, scaly monsters with yawning jaws spitting flame. They guard the treasure, and the treasure is the store of golden honey.

Imagine if you will a swarm of mad, wild bees. They move in a fierce body, writhing, whirling, wheeling. They are the dragon.

The dragon will eat the maiden, eat her up. Gobble her. Chew her and swallow her and spit out her bones. She is no maiden; she is a slut, a whore, a merry little magdalene. See her suck the doctor’s dick. What a little sucker. Just like a squelchy scarlet anemone found on a rock on a beach on a sunny afternoon in simple childhood when all the world was young and green and

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innocent. I am his patient and he is my doctor and we pull our pants down and get stuck into it.

Then, one night after the death of Mother Genevieve I had a
most comforting dream. My dreams are usually of no importance — I dream of woods and flowers and pretty little children
and I catch birds and butterflies unlike any I have ever seen.

However, this dream was of far greater significance. In it I saw
Mother Genevieve, and she gave to each of us in the convent
something that belonged to her. Her hands were empty when
she came to me and I feared I would get nothing, but she looked
at me tenderly and said: ‘To you I leave my heart.’ She repeated
this three times, and I was overcome with joy.

The human heart is the seat of life, hollow, muscular, contrac-tile. By its dilation and contraction it keeps up the circulation of the blood. Heartbeats on the heartstrings hammer out the minutes of your life. The tick-tick-tick of your tickling ticker whooshing the shining slip of scarlet bloody life. Heart and soul, put your heart and soul into the minutes of your life and dance on the dancing dance-floor until you drop. One-two-and then rock! One-two-and then roll! One-two-and then jump-tick-tock! It’s good for your soul. I have sometimes been overcome with joy when he puts his tickler up inside me. One-two-and then rock! One-two-and then roll! We laugh like mad and he puts his hand over my mouth and I nearly choke. Don’t die laughing, whatever you do, he says to me.

My nineteenth birthday was saddened by the death of the
Prioress. This happened during the influenza epidemic of 1891,
when many of our sisters died. One morning as I was getting up
I had the distinct feeling that Sister Madeleine was dead. The
corridor was pitch dark and I went to her in the darkness. She
was lying on her mattress, dressed, and in the stillness of death.

I went to the sacristy and brought back a crown of roses to place
on her head.

During the epidemic there had not been enough altar breads
to go around, and I was nervous one day as I approached
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the altar. I had decided that if I received only part of a Host
I would know that Jesus was only coming to me reluctantly.

Oh, the joy when the priest gave me not one, but two separate
Hosts!

There were two girls in the Bishop’s spectacles, two separate girls, joined at the bridge of the Bishop’s nose, forever linked in the matrimony of lenses, of those circles of glass, those mirrors of the gleaming world. One eye each, one eye per girl, girls sitting on his nose, occupying his spectacles. And does the Bishop have testicles? One per girl? Or are they shrivelled and ghostly — the ghostly testicles of the Bishop. Is he, beneath his black and seemly robes, a spectral concoction. Like an image in a mirror, in water, in the stuff that dreams, bad dreams are made of?

I adorn the altar with all the flowers we have here in abundance

— the cornflowers, poppies and marguerites. I longed for my
little friend the shy corncockle, and I searched for it in vain
until one day God showed me where they were growing, and I
was able to add them to the vases on the altar.

I longed for my sister Celine to come into the convent. Once
when she was going to a party I wept, and I begged Our Lord
to stop her from dancing. The relief when I learned that that is
exactly what he did! To the amazement of everyone, Celine’s
partner found himself unable to dance even one step. All his
body would allow him to do was to walk solemnly around
the room with Celine by his side. This example of God’s love
increased my confidence and showed me that Jesus had put his
mark on the forehead of my beloved Celine.