Pierre Michon - Winter Mythologies and Abbots

She is summoned. She is beautiful and pale, with jewelry made of hammered iron. She simpers at Gondevald. Gondevald looks at her bosom. He talks to her about a priory in the diocese of Mende, on a river called the Tarn, in a place with an unpronounceable name which Gondevald can nonetheless pronounce. He says to her, “You will be abbess of this place.” He adds that it’s a sort of game, that in any case she won’t leave Paris or Soissons, that each winter she will simply receive sacks of gold from the distant place with the unpronounceable name. He tells her that of course all these sacks of gold will not really be for her, and that each year she must hand them over to her father. She looks at him. “Yes,” she says. Her white hand places a little cross alongside Clotaire’s little cross at the bottom of the treaty.

When she is alone, she wonders whether the Tarn is like the Seine, the Marne, and the River Oise. She decides that it isn’t. She decides that this far-off place with the name which no one can pronounce should be ruled over by a young abbess and a mayor of the palace. She sleeps with Gondevald. When she unfastens her gown, she likes to think that she is offering Gondevald the abbess of an unpronounceable name. Her pleasure is felt in the body of an abbess. She asks her lover several times to repeat the beautiful pure Latin name, the name of her priory. He pronounces it with a laugh as he kisses her in the straw and the sheets. Then he stops pronouncing it. He is sleeping with Galswinthe.

She soon falls ill. It is said to be leprosy. When she dies at Soissons, she pronounces the unpronounceable name.

Under the reign of Louis IV d’Outremer, son of Charles III–Charles the Simple — the Benedictine community of Saint-Chaffre becomes overpopulated and begins to swarm: a handful of monks settle in Burle, on the banks of the River Tarn, and restore the disused monastery which had been founded by a very ancient hermit. Having in their pocket a deed of cession signed by Pope Agapetus does not suffice: the barons in the valley do not like sharing privileges with the lords in monks’ habits whom Heaven has visited upon them. The barons arrive with axes and horses; they make threats and steal a few chickens. Dalmatius, the Father Abbot, asks Brother Simon, who can read and use the noble tongue to perfection, to establish the legitimacy of the monastery in the noble tongue.

Simon ponders. He has the earth dug up beneath the choir of the old chapel, which has long since been ruined. Three skeletons, each holding a sword, are discovered, which he immediately has covered up again. Another is found, overlaid by the shreds of what was once a dalmatic and a stole. Simon ruminates at length over this one, and then after three days regretfully has it buried for a second time. A slighter skeleton is found whose dark black plaited hair has been well preserved and has gleams of life in it. It looks like a woman. “Yes,” says Simon. He carefully cleans the hair and, one by one, the bones. He places them in a small wooden chest. He kisses the chest. He asks the carpenter brother to depict Our Lord on the Cross on one side of it and on the other a female saint.

He sends for Brother Palladius, who is young, likes walking, and is a passionate reader of the noble tongue. He shows him the wooden chest, where the carpenter has just started on the figure of Our Lord. He talks to him for a long time about an unknown female saint who is waiting with great patience in Paradise for two monks, Brother Simon and Brother Palladius, to restore justice to her in this world. He tells him that she appeared to Brother Simon in the form of plaited hair beneath the earth, and that she will appear to Brother Palladius in the form of a name in a monastery archive. It will perhaps be in the bishopric of Mende, perhaps in the bishopric of Le Puy; perhaps it will be at Saint-Denis, where the monks of the king of France live; or in Rome, where Our Lord is directly overhead. Brother Palladius must walk until the saint appears to him written in black on white. He will recognize her. Brother Palladius kisses the small wooden chest and sets out. Several winters pass: Brother Simon has time to read Athanasius, to reread him, to understand him, to copy the text, and to know the first three chapters from memory.

One spring he is sitting in the meadow, and he sees a vaguely familiar man coming down from the causse; from a certain way he has of cavorting as he walks, he recognizes Palladius. He gets up and makes broad gestures to him under the lovely clear sky. Up above, Palladius replies with both arms and starts to run. He shouts something that Simon can’t understand, the same thing over and over again, like a name of three or four syllables which sounds like alleluia . When Palladius has almost reached the enclosure and shouts once more, Simon can hear the three syllables. “Enimia!” shouts Palladius. “So it’s Enimia,” says Simon.

So it’s her. Enimia, the daughter of King Clotaire, sister of good King Dagobert, abbess of Burle in Gabali country in the year of Our Lord 610: this is what Palladius read when he visited the very learned monks of Saint-Denis — not a word more, but it’s quite enough. Simon cuts his quills and prepares a fine calfskin parchment. He feels free, like a child, and yet serious, responsible for a dead woman as Our Lord is responsible for all mankind. For two weeks, every day when he rises he sees the well-stretched fresh parchment and the quills ready in his cell; he doesn’t touch them, but he walks in the springtime. One day he hears a leper’s rattle; he sees the leper walk past beneath the wide clear sky, and when he is close, it seems to Simon that the leper is a woman. “A princess sick with leprosy,” he says to himself. He goes to drink from the spring at Burle. He says, “This water.” Before his eyes, in the hollow of his palm like clear water, he has the entire life of the saint. He exults. He climbs up to the causse. A cloud hides the sun, the wind blows on the ailing trees. He doubts everything: the saint, the wooden chest, the name in writing at Saint-Denis. “Satan,” he says. But he doesn’t leave; he looks honestly at the open expanse. He kneels down, and he says, “Saint, don’t let him stop you. Don’t let him stop me.”

He walks back down. In a single sitting, in the noble tongue, he writes the Vita sancta Enimia .

The anonymous monk who may have been called Simon wrote a Life which looks like this:

Enimia, daughter of Clotaire, is beautiful and pale. She is loved and desired by men. She thinks that she loves God, withdrawal from the world, silence. Her father the king wants to marry her to a ruffian baron by the name of Gondevald. She knows that she doesn’t love Gondevald: he has an iron hand and hard, constantly shifting eyes which only come to rest on virgins. The wedding is set for tomorrow. It is night: the stable grooms are laughing in the courtyard, a few muffled thunderclaps can be heard in the distance, upsetting the horses, and in her chamber Enimia is praying, “Lord, do not let this man place his hand upon Thy servant.” There is a louder clap of thunder, much closer by. It’s night: the grooms have turned in and are asleep, the horses sleep standing up, the storm is a long way off. Enimia looks in despair through her window at the moon, and as she turns in the moonlight toward the mirror, which is next to the window, instead of her lovely face which men desire she sees a mask that is white and puffy like a wasps’ nest. It’s leprosy. Enimia bursts out laughing in the night. Prostrate, she gives thanks to God for the excess of his goodness and his mercy. She weeps and then sleeps.

Later, on another night, there appears at the window an adorable form which has come from the beyond. It’s most assuredly an angel. He tells her that the Lord does not want His servant to remain leprous. That He loves His pale and beautiful brides. That the wasps’ nest that she bears on her shoulders is a trick to get rid of Gondevald, and that she is now to be cured. “Drink,” says the angel, “from the spring at Burle in Gabali country.” Something silken returns into the night, and Enimia can only hear the Maytime nightingales.