Louise Erdrich - The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

They lapsed once more into the voluptuous morning quiet. At last, he tried again, desperate to approach the subject.

“Why won’t you, or can’t you, speak of Leopolda?”

Marie Kashpaw looked bewildered, then annoyed, and once again drew into her stubborn shell. She refused to talk, but seemed, too, unwillingly drawn.

“Because she…” Marie shook her head, putting it all beyond her. She looked momentarily distressed, trapped. She froze.

“Because she…” Father Jude softly echoed.

But Marie Kashpaw did not take the bait. They sat. It was remarkable, he thought, how long and with no comment they could sit in the peaceable lobby. The sun blazed through the windows, now. Captive, his heart rose.

“Was she a good person, as the bishop sees it?”

Marie shrugged. He tried again.

“You are the only person who can tell us the truth about Leopolda.”

She bobbed her head, hunched and neckless. Folds of tough skin came down over her eyes, and she rested within herself. Sitting in the lobby, waiting, Father Jude was overtaken by a midmorning lethargy. He wished for a sugared sweet roll, a Danish. Raspberry! he imagined. And strong, hot coffee. He could almost taste the combination, and he could definitely see it before him in his mind’s eye, in his dream. The delicious roll began to float, drifting, a vision. He climbed into it. Started the motor. Soon he was steering toward a tiny, rocky island. He went deeper, his breath caught, ragged. He began to snore. As he did so, with reptile slowness, like the visage of an idol, Marie Kashpaw opened her eyes, which had gone a deep and throbbing brown.

AN ARGUMENT

Embarrassed, Father Jude apologized to the quiet woman for dozing off in the sunlight. She nodded, smiled tightly, and appeared to keep thinking about some closed-off and vital subject, so he thanked her and left. A white dust had risen from the ground and floated in a light band across the afternoon landscape. It was a dry spring haze. The grass on the road’s margins was still gray with the residue of road plow and drifted particles of topsoil. Father Jude made his way back uphill to his room in the rectory. Quick with frustrated energy, he lifted a set of weights he’d brought in the trunk of his car. He played back a tape made years ago by someone else, an interview with a Sister Dympna, took notes. Then he located several boxes of files and records he intended to examine for clues to the shape of his subject’s life.

As the afternoon lengthened, Father Damien met Father Jude in the yard. The older priest’s hair was slicked back with water and his eyes puffy from a nap. He regained vigor and made two rounds of the graveyard, walking with a light swiftness that surprised the younger one. And he spoke with intensity as though the movement generated mental electricity.

“A certain concatenation of events upsets me. Fixed causes. Two martyrs. One lifelong victim whose pain I shelter to this very day. And Leopolda!”

“You said that you were up thinking, remembering. There is a report here? A story?”

“Oh, yes! The question is exactly how to tease it out of the events, Father Jude. For you see, it began with the statue’s procession, an occasion of joy, and ended in a howling disaster, and I am not prepared to say I understand, even now, the causes of the effects.”

“Leopolda…”

“Yes, Father Miller, before she was Leopolda. What I mean to say is this: She was still a Puyat during this event.”

“Understood.”

“Only if you understand the depth of what being a Puyat implies.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Father Jude, each name you hear on this reservation is an unfinished history. A destiny that opens like a cone pouring out a person’s life. It took Leopolda a very long time to profess her perpetual vows, and during that time she was very difficult to control. She wore the habit and considered herself a nun, but she was a Puyat and there were difficulties from the first.”

“Saints. Difficulties. Father Damien, I am beginning to agree with you, not that my opinion matters. I am here to gather information. But about saints. When are they ever simple cases?” Jude sighed and pressed his fingers on his forehead. “They seem by nature to foster problems, surprises, at best or worst, envy. As I read”—he consulted his notes—“our Puyat-Leopolda escaped the horrors of the great influenza and even provided some nursing or at least took care of the dead — that was her job in the traditional culture and it became her task in the life of a religious. She was counted as devout in the Catholic sense and the year after her return from Argus her increasing piety and her service to the nuns was noted. In that same year, she asked one of the sisters whether she might be considered a candidate. She was then invited to stay in the convent for a time. Her blood is at least half Polish, and for the most part she was considered a métis , Indian to some slight degree, if that, for she had apparently repudiated her own past and was eagerly engrossed in taking on every aspect of the Faith. It was not long after her visit began that she presented what became her usual problem, that of excessive zeal. She was found face-down on the floor of the church on an extremely cold spring night. There was some concern that she was hypothermic. She never quite regained the circulation in her extremities, it says. There is some cross-out here, as though the writer, Sister Hildegarde Anne, was uncertain whether to include some detail.”

Waving his hand as though to take away the cross-out marks, Father Damien sighed with impatience.

“Leopolda was found that night naked and bleeding,” he said, “and she was covered with mud.”

Father Jude waited for more information, and indeed the old priest seemed to struggle in an effort to provide it — he began to speak once or twice and then fell silent, shaking his head. That was when, with a sudden flash, Father Jude intuited that the old priest was hiding information, secreting it away, and he was amazed and disturbed because he’d been certain that his informant was willing and even eager to divulge all he knew.

“You know more about that night,” said Father Jude, sternly, but his older colleague firmly shut his lips.

Frowning, irritated, Father Jude sat back in his chair. He stared at the other man and forced himself to behave with a patience he did not feel. As he watched Father Damien closely, that troubling sensation once more came upon him. It was a problem of perception. A distinct uncanny sense he could only name in one way.

“Father Damien, if you don’t mind my asking, have you got a twin?”

“I do not.”

“Never mind.” Jude shook his head to clear his vision. Ran his finger along the pages of his notes. “Our Leopolda spent some time cared for by her sisters, I am told. Apparently, she experienced what we would call a nervous breakdown, fell into the grip of hallucinations.”

“Visitations.”

“The difference being…?”

“Ah, you have hit upon the very question. The difference being very difficult, almost impossible, to discern in a person unstable and gripped by false visions as she was. She had a remarkable degree of endurance, and tolerated or even welcomed great physical and emotional pain. What she saw, she saw, whether you view her visions as pathological symptoms or as divine gifts is for you to say.”

Jude spoke dryly. “I am sure that a number of mystics would have benefited from a regimen of antidepressants. However, we would all be the poorer.”

“That is why,” continued Damien, “in the end the discussion will be, should be, made on the basis of heroic virtue. Did she exhibit heroic virtue while nursing the ill, or in her teaching, or perhaps with her sisters? Did she suffer bravely or wisely when afflicted with her illnesses? Was she a good example to her sisters, an inspiration?”