“Certain holy saints, it is thoroughly documented in Roman Catholic records,” his head nodded as he spoke, and his grave eyes twinkled like mica, “lived such pure lives that even in death they did not bloat or decay, preserved in some cases for centuries. Saint Angela Merici died in the year 1540. In 1672, her body was found to be intact, incorrupt, sweet smelling.
And again in 1867, they found the same incorruption.”
Inside, Travis felt disoriented yet not disturbed, a quiet rush that satsang always brought but weirdly warped, and yet nothing less than fascinating. He felt as if he ought to want to bolt, yet he felt perfectly safe and, in an odd way, holy, to be sitting near this whatever-he-was balanced on a crest of oblivion, conveying its message.
“Eleven years following the death of Saint Camillus de Lellis, at his official recognition for sainthood, his exhumed body was as fresh and supple as in life; fragrant liquids exuding from him were referred to as copious. So too with Saint John of the Cross, whose flesh was found to be incorrupt for more than two and a half centuries.” The holy man let it sink in. His eyes scanned the crowd, then fixed for a soul-searing moment on Travis, before lifting lightly away like a mosquito refraining from puncture and suck.
On the north slope of Mount Royal, in La Cimetière de Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, Huguette thrust gloveless hands into her fleecy coat pockets and shifted uncomfortably from one boot to the other, waiting for her idiot boyfriend. Chill air was seeping its way under her coat, spiraling up where clothing ought to be protecting her, but where instead, at Louis-Phillipe’s insistence, she wore nothing at all. The English spoke of freezing your ass off; now she knew first hand—and wished she didn’t—what that phrase meant.
This was stupid. Black Angel with her head bowed and her hands angled open at her sides, thumb-tops dusted with snow: he had said it was good luck to make love under her gaze, but Huguette suspected it was just one more excuse to have sex in an odd locale. Why not? She was finally free of her parents. They were crazy in love. And she had to admit, for all her discomfort and in spite of the shocking overtones of making love in this place—her grandmère, she had to keep reminding herself, was buried not two hundred yards away—
she was turned on at the thought of his impish grin backlit, over the blanket she’d brought, by the black sculpted frown of the Angel. Looked awfully thin, spread out on the ground, that blanket.
Then she saw Louis-Phillipe coming from the direction of l’Université de Montreal below, sleeping bag rolled up under one arm. He lurched among tombstones and she hugged herself and jiggled, shouting for him to hurry. Crunching to her, he gave her a huge warm kiss, then untied the bag and unzipped it open atop the blanket. While he was busy, she bit the bullet, unbuttoning her coat and flinging past him onto her back, coat a third layer but bare naked above except for her arms. These she lifted. “Vite, vite,” she said. “Cover me, I’m freezing.” Her nips were tight with cold and her slick chatte tingled with winter wet.
He jittered his fingers down his coat, unbuttoning to expose himself, raw red funny-finger upjutting, then flew down upon her in a rush of cold. Squirming on her: “Take that side, I’ll do this.” He fumbled his buttons into her holes by her left thigh, while she struggled with the ones on the right, laughing with him as, farther up, it became impossible, arms atangle; but with all the squirming, he’d slipped the yummy tip of his thickness inside her, and the body heat was intense enough that she coaxed his lips down to hers and slow-groined more of his love inside her.
Startled upward. Broke the kiss: “It looks like the Angel is about to fall on us,” she said.
Louis-Phillipe laughed. And then they heard shuffled boots from behind the Black Angel. His head craned up as hard white faces under knit caps bobbled through the black night. Hands wrenched him off her, his penis slipping out and exposing her. She tried to cover up, but boots jammed down on her shoulders. “Hey, guys, lookie here. Anybody wanna fuck a frog? Nice froggie, ribbit, ribbit, ribbit.” Mittened fingers tweaked her right nipple and she smacked them away, but they jammed between her thighs and roughly thrust inside.
“Placeholder, assholes. First pecker out gets to go first.”
“Get away from me!” she screamed, as Louis-Phillipe tried to fight them but took a fist in his belly, falling to the snow like Christ toppled from the cross.
Flat patches of black cloth dimpled on the periphery of her vision, and then abruptly the food dislodged. The splash and rattle of spoon in bowl sounded, as her hungry lungs drank air, rounds of coughing and gasps alternating. She hung her mouth over the sink, vision still patchy but coming back. The shiny silver crook of the spigot in her left hand’s grasp reassured.
For a time, Marcie cried in relief and gratitude, mashed bread floating in bowl-water like an abortion. Her fetus was probably that size now. She worried that her exertions against the sink edge had harmed it, then dismissed her worries as absurd.
When she could walk, she made her way to the living room and settled on the couch facing the windows, blinds drawn full up onto Rue Drummond, where a car scooped its headlights south and out of sight. She liked the feel of this apartment. The people made the place: both of them such friends and such flat-out attractive people. Marcie wondered if Travis had been at all serious about exploring a threesome, and she especially wondered what dear Laura’s enigmatic look had meant. She didn’t want to blow a great friendship, but maybe it could evolve into something very interesting indeed.
Across the street a woman went by carrying a sleeping child. From the blanket wrapped about it, one socked foot dangled, a wide patch of exposed skin between the sock and its rucked-up trouser cuff.
Minor alarms in Marcie’s head. A mother oblivious to the situation could be unwittingly causing her child harm.
She rose, okay now, and went to the window, unlatching and lifting it wide enough to shout out, “Hello there!” trying that first, against an invasion of cold air, then, “Hello over there, your child’s foot is uncovered!” She pointed, saw the woman turn, repeated what she’d yelled, hoping it carried.
The woman never broke stride—if anything, quickening her pace—but moved away as though engaged in kidnapping.
Marcie gave it up and lowered the window, then the blinds, rubbing her hands. Only do so much, then you had to leave things to the fates or to other good Samaritans. Hmm, and speaking of children, it was probably time to look in on baby Jenny, just a peek in, a finger inside her sleepsuit, then gone.
Travis felt so strange as Swami Apadravya spoke, as if he were hearing forbidden wisdom: not the content so much as what strange breath it was riding on. The light greenhouse feel of satsang was with him as always, but as well there was a dark tinge to it, a flair of ginger-root concentrate teasing the corners of the air.
“In the Hindu tradition, holy men find control of the body a trivial matter. Sri Ramakrishna scorned to heal an illness he suffered, though he could easily have done so. He preferred to fix his mind on God rather than turn it to what he called this worthless cage of flesh. A yogi named Haridas had himself buried alive for six weeks, guarded by the skeptical, and came out of his hibernation unharmed in the presence of many witnesses. There are numerous other accounts, well documented, of the control of the physical body which comes with spiritual realization.” Again came that dead silence of no-breath as he paused. The insuck, obscene and oddly enthralling.
“Why do I relate all this to you? To what revelation are these arcane citations the necessary prologue?”