Frances and Bernard - By Carlene Bauer Page 0,12
put in the mouth of a cynical reverend. I do believe with her that suffering is one way to hear God, or to know God. Or maybe we hear God when, per John, we sense that we are making him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. When we are aware of the distance between God and ourselves, because we are sinning, then we hear him—he emerges when we are ashamed of our nakedness, so to speak.
Then there are times that I think her theology might have sprung fully formed from her migraines.
Bernard, I do not want you to feel black. My prayers may be faulty, but know that whenever I pray I will be praying for your sky to rarely look ominous.
Yours,
Frances
March 31, 1958
Frances—
I’m so very sorry about your mother. I say all sorts of terrible things about mine, but if she died I think it would be as if there were, finally, no God. I am very glad, though, that you were as loved as you were.
Thinking about calling you Tiny Methuselah makes me considerably less black. Thinking about you in general makes me considerably less black.
I like to think of you praying such a lovely prayer. Thank you.
No, no, I do like pretty things. It’s the thorn in my flesh, as Paul would say. Lorraine wanted to be looked at, and I liked looking at her, in the way you can like looking at a view—you don’t need the view, but it’s nice that it’s there and you’ve come upon it, so it wasn’t as if I were robbing her of her virtue just by looking at her. Looking at someone who wants to be looked at—you know that’s not real sin, Frances, and you shouldn’t be jealous.
I have read Weil, and I do think she is right, mostly, as you say. She is right for this, too: “Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt. To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God. I am also other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.”
When I read this, I wince. Whenever I have imagined anyone to be other than what he or she is, whenever I have imagined myself to be other than what I am—here is where I have run into the most trouble in my life. That is when, as you say, I am ashamed of my nakedness. But I grow blind about that nakedness so easily.
She’s right, but you’re right about her too! I read her and think—if the Lord’s prayer is a joke, are the Psalms a joke? What is joy to her? All her ecstasies are in self-negation. She’s completely neurotic about the pull of other people, people as idols. I feel that we are reading someone castigating herself for having loved too much, or having been wronged by her own faith in another. And yet how can I complain about her? Who hasn’t idolized and in that idolizing come to grief? She is a seer like John. She’s the voice of Jesus when he says I have come to divide houses against each other. When I complain about her severity, it’s because I want my sin.
Or is that true?
Still, I think there’s too much Buddhism in her for me. And too much of Augustine in me to appreciate her—to think that love, happiness, and joy aren’t as intelligible, and truly evident, as suffering.
Yours,
Bernard
April 5, 1958
Bernard, I am not jealous. I believe that thought, to borrow a phrase from Sr. Weil, is a creature of your imagination. I laughed out loud when I read it. Oh, Bernard. Surely you know not every girl’s worth looking at. And not every girl is a jealous girl. Surely in your net-casting you have discovered this. I wasn’t jealous. I was, I repeat, being judgmental. You were two people playing at affection, it seemed, and as someone who reserves affection for only a select few, I thought this comfort on the stage was a little disturbing.
But this was before I knew you. I have to admit that at lunch that day, and for some time after, I had an idea that you might be something of a cad. I don’t think you’re a cad now. But perhaps there is too much of Augustine in you!
I do have great affection for Augustine, even if I don’t