Beautiful Losers Read online

  2

  I’ve got to go fast because the organs of Mary Voolnd will not buzz forever in sexual surprise like an eternal pinball machine and maybe even my four-fingered hand will tire. But I will give you everything you have to know. The priests in charge of the mission were le P. Pierre Cholenec and le P. Claude Chauchetière, our old sources. They read the letter which the girl carried: “Catherine Tegakouita will live at Sault. Kindly assume responsibility for her direction. Soon you will know the treasure we have given you. Qu’entre vos mains, il profite à la gloire de Dieu and to the health of a soul which assuredly is dear to Him.” The girl was assigned to the cabin of Anastasie, an old woman who was one of the first converted Iroquois, and who, “coincidentally,” had known Catherine Tekakwitha’s Algonquin mother. The child loved the mission, it seemed. She knelt at the foot of the wooden cross on the shore of the Saint Lawrence, and there beyond the boiling water, the distant green horizon, and the mountain of Ville-Marie. Behind her was the tranquil Christian village, and all the meaningful tortures which I shall describe. The place of the cross by the river was her favorite spot, and I imagine she spoke to the fishes and raccoons and herons.

  3

  Here is the most important incident of her new life. In the winter of 1678-1679 another marriage project developed. Everybody, even Anastasie, wanted Catherine Tekakwitha to have her cunt opened. Here in this Christian village, or there among the heathens, it was all the same. Every community was, by its nature, ultimately secular. But she had sailed her cunt away and it did not matter who came to claim it, a Mohawk brave or a Christian hunter. There was a nice young fellow they had in mind. Not only that, but the relative who had rescued her and who provided for her sustenance hadn’t thought for a moment that misty morning that he was assuming a lifetime economic obligation.

  – I won’t eat anything.

  – It’s not the food, dear. It’s just unnatural.

  She ran in tears to le P. Cholenec. He was a wise man who lived in the world, lived in the world, lived in the world.

  – Well, my child, they have a point.

  – Arrrrggghhhh!

  – Think about the future. The future starves.

  – I don’t care what happens to my body.

  But you care about her body, don’t you, my old friend and disciple?

  4

  Th ere was great fervor in the mission. Nobody liked his skin too much. Their pre-baptismal sins hung about their necks like the heavy tooth necklaces they had thrown away, and they sought to erase those old shadows with rigorous penitence. “Ils en faisaient une rigoureuse pénitence,” says le P. Cholenec. Here are some of the things they did. Think of the village as a mandala or a Brueghel game painting or a numbered diagram. Look down at the mission and see the bodies distributed here and there, look down from a hovering helicopter at the distribution of painful bodies in the snow. Surely this is a diagram to be memorized on the cushion of your thumb. I haven’t got time to make this description gory. Just read it through the prism of your personal blisters, and of those blisters choose the one you got by mistake. They liked to draw blood from their bodies, they liked to pull some of their blood outside. Some wore iron harnesses with spikes on the inside. Some wore iron harnesses to which they attached a load of wood which they dragged everywhere they went. Here is a naked woman rolling in the 40-below snow. Here is another woman buried up to her neck in a drift beside the frozen river, reciting her Rosary in this strange position, and let us remember that the Indian translation of this angelic salutation takes twice as long to say as the French one. Here is a naked man chopping a hole in the ice, and then he lowers himself in up to his waist, and then he recites “plusieurs dizaines de chapelet.” He pulls out his body like an ice mermaid, the erection perpetuated as it formed. Here is a woman who took her three-year-old daughter into the hole, because she wanted to expiate the child’s sins in advance. They waited for the winter, these converts, and they stretched their bodies before it, and it passed over them like a huge iron comb. Catherine Tekakwitha got an iron harness and she stumbled through her duties. Like St. Thérèse she could say, “Ou souffrir, ou mourir.” Catherine Tekakwitha came to Anastasie and asked:

  – What do you think is the most horrible painful thing?

  – My daughter, I don’t know anything worse than fire.

  – Me neither.

  This is a documented conversation. It took place on a Canadian winter across the solid river from Montréal in 1678. Catherine waited until everyone was asleep. She went down to the cross beside the river and built a fire. Then she spent several slow hours caressing her pathetic legs with hot coals, just as the Iroquois did to their slaves. She had seen it done and she always wanted to know what it felt like. Thus she branded herself a slave to Jesus. I refuse to make this interesting, old friend, it wouldn’t be good for you, and all my training might be for nothing. This is not an entertainment. This is play. Besides, you know what pain looks like, that kind of pain, you’ve been inside newsreel Belsen.

  5

  Kneeling at the root of the wood cross Catherine Tekakwitha prayed and fasted. She did not pray that her soul should be favored in heaven. She did not fast so that her marriage would never nourish history. She did not cut her stomach with stones so that the mission would prosper. She did not know why she prayed and fasted. These mortifications she performed in a poverty of spirit. Never believe that the stigmata do not hurt. Never make a decision when you have to pee. Never stay in the room when your mother has her fortune told. Never think that the Prime Minister envies you. You see, darling, I have to trap you on an altar before I can tell you anything, otherwise my instruction is just a headline, just a fashion.

  6

  She wandered through the leafy woods on the south bank of the Saint Lawrence River. She saw the deer start from the thicket, listening even in the arc of his leap. She saw the rabbit disappear into his burrow. She heard the squirrel rattling in his hoard of acorns. She watched a pigeon building a nest in a pine tree. In two hundred years the pigeons would sell out and loaf on statues in Dominion Square. She saw the flocks of geese shaped like unstable arrow heads. She fell to her knees and she cried, “O Master of Life, must our bodies depend on these things?” Very still, she sat on the shore of the river. She saw the leaping sturgeon scattering drops like beads of wampum. She saw the bony perch, fast as a single flute note in a wild song. She saw the long silver pike and below him she saw the crawfish, each on his separate layer of water. Letting her fingers drift, she cried, “O Master of Life, must our bodies depend on these things?” Slowly she walked back to the mission. She saw the field of corn, yellow and dry, plumes and tassels rustling in the wind like a crowd of aged sacrificial dancers. She saw the little blueberry bushes and strawberry bushes and made a tiny cross out of two pine needles and a drop of spruce gum and erected it beside a fallen gooseberry. A robin listened as she wept, a fucking robin stopped in his tracks and listened. I have to start you off with fiction, such is your heritage. Now it was night and the whippoorwill raised his melancholy song like a ghostly teepee over her weeping, a teepee or a pyramid, from a long way off it has three sides, the tune of the whippoorwill. Some men deal in teepees, some in pyramids, and it does not seem to matter, but in 1966, and in your predicament – it matters! “O Master of Life,” she cried, “must our bodies depend on these?” On Saturdays and Sundays Catherine Tekakwitha took no food at all. When they forced her to drink soup she would only do so after stirring ashes into it. “Elle se dédommageait en mêlant de la cendre à sa soupe.”

  7

  O God, forgive me, but I see it on my thumb, the whole wintry village looks like a Nazi medical experiment.

  “On comparing five Iroquois heads, I find that they give an average internal capacity of eighty-eight cubic inches, which is within two inches of the Caucasian mean.” – Morton, Crania Americana, page 195. It is remarkable that the internal capacity of the skulls of the barbarous American tribes is greater than that of
either the Mexicans or Peruvians. “The difference in volume is chiefly confined to the occipital and basal portions” – in other words, to the region of animal propensities. See J. S. Phillips, Admeasurements of Crania of the Principal Groups of Indians in the United States.

  This is a footnote by Francis Parkman on page 32 of his book about the Jesuits in North America, published in 1867. I memorized it while looking over your shoulder in the library. Do you understand, now, that with my photographic memory it would have been disastrous to hover too long beside your ear?

  8

  Catherine Tekakwitha’s best friend at the mission was a young widow who had been baptized under the name Marie-Thérèse. She was an Onneyout, her original name being Tegaigenta. She was a very beautiful young woman. At the mission of la Prairie she was famous for her disorderly conduct. In the winter of 1676 she left with her husband on a hunting expedition along the Outaouais River. There were eleven in the party, including an infant. It was a bad winter. Wind blew away the paw prints. Heavy snows made the track impossible. One of the party was killed and eaten. The baby ate some amid jokes. Then there was famine. First of all they ate some little pieces of skin which they had brought to make shoes with. Then they ate bark. Tegaigenta’s husband became sick. She stood guard over him. Two hunters, a Mohawk and a Tsonnontouan, went after game. At the end of a week the Mohawk came back alone, empty-handed but burping. The party decided to press on. Tegaigenta refused to abandon her husband. The others left, winking. Two days later she rejoined the party. When she arrived the group was sitting around the widow of the Tsonnontouan and her two children. Before eating the three of them, one of the hunters asked Tegaigenta:

  – How do the Christians regard anthropophagist meals? (repas d’anthropophage).

  It didn’t matter what she answered. She ran into the snow. She would be roasted next, she knew. She looked back over her sweaty sex life. She had come on the hunt without confessing. She asked God to forgive her and promised to change her life if she got back to the mission. Of the eleven persons who comprised the hunting party only five returned to la Prairie. Marie-Thérèse was one of them. The mission of la Prairie moved to Sault Saint-Louis in the autumn of 1676. The girls met shortly after Easter in 1678 in front of the little church which was nearing completion. Catherine began the

  – Let’s go inside, Marie-Thérèse.

  – I don’t deserve to, Catherine.

  – Neither do I. What did it taste like?

  – What part?

  – In general.

  – Pork.

  – Strawberries taste like pork too.

  9

  One always saw the girls together. They avoided the company of everyone else. They prayed together at the cross beside the river. They spoke only of God and things pertaining to God. Catherine looked at the young widow’s body very carefully. She inspected the nipples which had been chewed by men. They were lying on the soft moss.

  – Turn over.

  She looked down at the naked haunches, etched delicately with fern prints.

  Then Catherine described to her friend exactly what she saw. Then it was her turn to lie face down.

  – I can’t see anything different.

  – I didn’t think so.

  10

  She gave up eating on Wednesdays. On Saturday they prepared for Confession by whipping each other with birch switches. Catherine always insisted on getting undressed first. “Catherine, toujours la première pour la pénitence, se mettait à genoux et recevait les coups de verges.” Why did she insist on being beaten first? Because, when it was her turn to whip, her effort would aggravate the lash opening she had received at the hand of her friend. Catherine always complained that Marie-Thérèse was not doing it hard enough, and permitted her to stop only when her shoulders were covered with blood, enough blood to drip onto leaves: that was the test of how much blood. Here is one of her prayers, as recorded by le P. Claude Chauchetière:

  – My Jesus, I have to take chances with you. I love you but I have offended you. I am here to fulfill your law. Let me, my God, take the burden of your anger.…

  Here is the prayer in French, so that even in English translation this document will serve the Tongue:

  – Mon Jésus, il faut que je risque avec vous: je vous aime, mais je vous ai offensé; c’est pour satisfaire à votre justice que je suis ici; déchargez, mon Dieu, sur moi votre colère.…

  Sometimes, le P. Chauchetière tells us, she could not finish the prayer, but the tears in her eyes could. This material has a power of its own, doesn’t it? So it wasn’t all work in the library, was it? I think this writing is going to ruin the baskets in O.T.

  11

  The war between the French and the Iroquois continued. The Indians asked some of their converted brethren at Sault to join them, promising them absolute freedom to practice their religion. When the converts refused the Iroquois kidnaped them and burnt them at the stake. One Christian named Etienne burned so bravely, crying the Gospel as he died, praying for the conversion of his tormentors, that the Indians were greatly impressed. Several of them applied for Baptism, desiring that ceremony which appeared to confer such courage. Since they had no intention of discontinuing their attacks on the French, they were refused.

  – They should have got it, Catherine whispered to the blood smears. They should have got it. It doesn’t matter what it’s used for. Harder! Harder! What’s the matter with you, Marie-Thérèse?

  – It’s my turn now.

  – All right. But while I’m in this position I want to check something. Move your feet wider apart.

  – Like this?

  – Yes. I thought so. You’ve become a virgin.

  12

  Catherine Tekakwitha secretly gave up eating on Mondays and Tuesdays. This is of prime interest to you, especially in regard to your bowel complication. I have other vital intelligence for you. Theresa Neuman, a Bavarian peasant girl, refused to take any solid food after April 25, 1923. A little while later she declared that she no longer felt the need to eat. For 33 years, right through the Third Reich and Partition, she lived without food. Mollie Francher, who died in Brooklyn in 1894, received no food for years. Mother Beatrice Mary of Jesus, a Spanish contemporary of Catherine Tekakwitha, fasted for long periods. One of them lasted 51 days. During Lent, if she smelled meat, she went into convulsions. Try and think back. Do you remember Edith ever eating? Do you remember those plastic bags she wore inside her blouse? Do you remember that birthday when she leaned over to blow out the candles and ruined the cake with vomit?

  13

  Catherine Tekakwitha became seriously sick. Marie-Thérèse told the priests the details of their excess. Le P. Cholenec gently forced Catherine to promise not to perform her penitence so rigorously. This was the second secular promise which she broke. She regained her health slowly, if the word health can be used to describe, her chronically feeble state.

  – Father, may I take the Oath of Virginity?

  – Virginitate placuit.

  – Yes?

  – You will be the first Iroquois Virgin.

  It was on the day of the Annunciation, March 25, 1679, that Catherine Tekakwitha formally offered her body to the Savior and His Mother. The marriage question was resolved. She made the Fathers very happy with this secular offering. The little church was filled with bright candles. She loved the candles, too. Charity! Charity for us who love the candles only, or the Love which the candles make manifest. In some great eye I believe the candles are perfect currency, just as are all the Andacwandets, the Fuck Cures.

  14

  Le P. Chauchetière and le P. Cholenec were baffled. Catherine’s body was covered with bleeding wounds. They watched her, they spied at her kneeling before the wooden cross beside the river, they counted the lashes she and her companion exchanged, but they could detect no excessive indulgence. On the third day they became alarmed. She looked like death. “Son visage n’avait plus que la figure d’un mort.” They could no longer
attribute her physical decline to her ordinary infirmity. They questioned Marie-Thérèse. The girl confessed. That night the priests came into Catherine Tekakwitha’s cabin. Wrapped tightly in blankets, the Indian girl was sleeping. They tore off the blankets. Catherine was not sleeping. She only pretended. Nobody in the midst of that pain could sleep. With all the skill she had used to weave the belts of wampum, the girl had sewn thousands of thorns into her blanket and mat. Every movement of her body opened up a new source of outside blood. How many nights had she tortured herself like this? She was naked in the firelight, her flesh streaming.

  – Don’t move!

  – Stop moving!

  – I’ll try.

  – You moved!

  – I’m sorry.

  – You moved again!

  – It’s the thorns.

  – We know it’s the thorns.

  – Of course we know it’s the thorns.

  – I’ll try.

  – Try.

  – I’m trying.