Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen

and my prayers! I do not seem to like them anymore. Hours in the oratory now seem so long and tedious. Each of my meditations is a torture in which everything that was once so tenderly given to me is now teasingly withheld. And yet I persist. I have not shortened my prayers nor softened my penances, no, in spite of it all I mean to increase them in the hope that this hell on earth will pass. Oh, what have I come to? The sheer insanity of love has never been worse than this.” Well, I’ll stop there.
    —She is passionate. She is perhaps too proud. She is not hysterical.
     
    Mass of Saint Raphael, Archangel.
     
    Sister Geneviève hesitates before she begins her dinner reading from The Imitation of Christ , and then Mariette stands and she smiles as Sister Hermance chimes a full water glass with her fork. Everyone turns.
    “With Michael and Gabriel,” Mariette states, “Saint Raphael is one of just three archangels talked about in the Holy Bible. His name in Hebrew means ‘God has healed.’ Archangel Raphael was the one who told the boy Tobias that he could cure his father’s blindness with a fish’s gall, and he is associated with the healing waters at the Sheep Pool in Jerusalem, featured in the fifth chapter of John. We honor today the healing powers of our own Mother Saint-Raphaël, knowing that the great archangel speaks through her whenever she forms or corrects us.”
    Mariette then humbly sits and looks askance at the mistress of novices, who is staring ahead into the great room as if she hasn’t heard.
     
    Mass of Saints Chrysanthus and Daria, Martyrs.
     
    Mother Céline cannot sleep, so she handles financial transactions until their first rising when she hears the sexton pass down the hallway to the room of the externs and hears Mariette softly waking them for Matins. And Mother Céline is putting the green account book away when she sees a white envelope fall through the mail slot. She gets it and recognizes the handwriting in the address to their priest.
    While she prepares a book of psalms for the first reading, Mother Céline argues with herself about honoring the letter, but she finally opens her sister’s “Confessional Matter” just as she’s done before, and she frowns as she reads the first paragraph, the fourth, and the fifth. She thinks, She’s impossible. She’s too many people. She’s too many shades and meanings. She’ll only do herself harm .
    She goes to an upper desk drawer and lifts out a flame-red box that once contained a Missa Romanum . Eighteen pages are already in it. And now there are two more.
     
    Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost.
In honor of Christ the King.
     
    Sister Honoré polishes the fall board on the grand piano and looks out a haustus room window at northern winds and storm clouds in ferment and their postulant happily wading in a purple flow of maple leaves. Mariette stoops and puts her hand down in them and they froth up to her chin like sudden pets. Sisters Pauline and Geneviève join Mariette as Sister Honoré sits on the piano bench. She hears their high giggles and hectic talk as she plays one measure of a Chopin étude and steps on the damper pedal.
     
    November 1st. Feast of All Saints.
     
    Mariette gets into Sister Félicité’s cardigan sweater at Méridienne and joins Sister Antoinette in the winery’s underground cellar, helping her funnel and rack the still-young wines from one oaken barrel to another, and fining the dark lees and tarry sludge from some aging red wines with slowly wandering egg whites. Sister Antoinette then holds a high-shouldered bottle over a frail candle flame as she tenderly pours a grand cru vintage into her silver tasting cup. Mariette sniffs it as Sister Antoinette tells her to find there hints of black currants, vanilla, and green cigars.
    “Even now it’s growing,” Sister Antoinette says. “Like our love for God.” She holds up the green bottle and points to the dark sediment gradually easing down the side.