My First Exorcism Confessed, Garth Greenwell Teaches Augustine's Confessions
A chronicle about my first exorcism.
In this week’s newsletter: Garth Greenwell teaches an online class on Augustine’s Confessions, a place to buy pots and pans in Paris.
The Exorcism: A Chronicle
by Renata Mosci Sanfourche
“And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.” ― D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love
I sat on horses twice before, once inside a corral where a cowboy towed me around in circles, and another on a trail on the back of a mare who kept grazing, I had to nudge her belly with my ankles. The sort of riding I did this day was new to me and I didn’t dare command this horse do anything other than what he was already doing.
When we came out of the woods the boys were already off their horses. The morning rain had filled the stream and the water was warm and clear. We looked at the rocks on the river bed, grabbed them, threw them, jumped and splashed each other around on the grass. The sun was burning our backs and when we sat near the edge of the water our calfs were itchy.
On our way back to the house we rode so fast I couldn’t see the boys in front of us or hear my brother behind me. I felt like Jane Bennet riding in the rain, or Marianne at last galloping on her mare. I was not to be out riding with or without breeches, but it was precisely trespassing on this prohibition, propelling my life into danger that felt so liberating. I felt peace, I shouted ‘aye’ as we broke through the sticks and sped past the leaves that stuck to our clothes.
By the time we made it back to the house the sun was setting and our mothers came to greet us with worry. We felt such joy galloping on that hot afternoon that their cries didn’t phase us, we kept riding toward them, turning our ears away from their concern and hanging onto the bliss we had just amassed.
The house was as wild as the woods. It had high cherrywood beams, few windows, the furniture was plain and there were bats hanging above us when we slept. It was one of those places I couldn’t point to on a map, built in the middle of nowhere for no specific reason. My mother sat us down on the bed and picked the ticks out of our bodies. She picked them one by one, turning us in circles. Each time she squeezed one we grabbed it from her fingers, we collected them on the palms of our hands as if they were treasures we found in the woods. When she was done there were little holes all over our bodies, squashed animals lay scattered on our hands.
Except for this particular day I remember nothing from this weekend trip. I have a vivid image of the boys out in the field shooting birds with BB guns, but I don’t know what I did all day, perhaps I watched them play, perhaps I walked around foraging. I used to like disappearing into the forest to collect seeds, sticks, and flowers and put them on the stove, often a tree trunk I designated the kitchen area, part of a place where I lived alone, where I fetched water to make tea and built a bed for my doll. Everything in the woods had a replicated duty.
Daytime unfolds slowly and is easily forgotten but the night falls quickly and ravishes our memory. As the sun fell over the house and my mother picked out the ticks, her friend settled for a nap with her boys. It was that crucial hour for a house guest when a certain malaise falls upon them, the reminder they’re not home, it’s not their pantry to shuffle around in, not their water to drink even if they’re thirsty. We felt confined to our room, we circled around each other looking for anything we could find, and then we settled on the bed with our comics. Our mother kneeled on the floor folding the clothes into our suitcases.
It was common to see her rearrange our affairs when we traveled, she took pleasure in folding each t-shirt, each underwear into perfect squares, patting them down flat on the floor, brushing off any dust from the fabric with her hands and picking tiny pieces of leftover thread or lint before placing everything into neat, segmented piles inside our bags. For at least one hour each afternoon she made sure everything we brought with us was orderly, and these were the hours we looked forward to the most, when we could expect her to crack a joke or sing a naughty song she learned at the military housing when she was our age. But today she was consumed by a frantic sort of duty, she whispered to herself, rolled the t-shirts instead of folding them, forgot the luggage straps between the layers of socks, which caused her to take everything out and put it back in; she jerked her hands with the energy of an entire department store on Christmas eve. There was something unsettling in her mannerisms, a sort of distress. And just then, she looked up and asked us to wash off in the bathroom.
She waited outside the shower with a towel. As soon as we plopped the last dollop of shampoo on our head she took the bottle and dried it off. She did the same with the bar of soap which she placed hurriedly inside a plastic case, and when it was time for us to dry off she wiped the blood out of our vessels, ‘something bad will happen’ she said, ‘we need to leave’. God gave her this message, just that and nothing more, and we did as we were told because for as long as I can remember we had learned when God intervened we best follow the new order, it would be senseless not to fear him, to steer clear from his decree. And we knew well by now that if we hesitated she would go on to remind us:
Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. 1 Ecc. 12:13
By the time we were dressed and out of the bathroom it was already too late. The boys were running to our bedroom door: something was the matter with their mother. We ran to the building next door. A narrow corridor led us to their mother’s bedroom where the ceiling was high and pointed, where there were no windows, and where it was barren save for two side tables and a carved wood bed with floral motifs. Their mother lay on her back asleep, her eyes closed, her hands shaking. My mother sent the boys to get help at the garden keeper’s house and called for me to kneel next to her and pray.
In the minutes that followed I watched my mother perform her first exorcism. I am sure this recollection belongs to me, for years this memory was so tangibly my own, her story in many ways mine. In my rebellion I will come to abandon her beliefs, but on this night, her perspective was still my truth.
We kneeled, we closed our eyes, we prayed. We invoked the presence of Jesus Christ, we glorified the power of his blood, and we asked him to take the devil back to where he belonged. We repeated several times the blood of Jesus has power and asked Jesus to bring his army of angels into this room with his wide-eyed fire swords, and begged, implored him to burn the devil with his mighty fire. We said it loud, with conviction, we told him we were tying him in Jesus’s name. Then the mother spoke. In a coarse voice she said it’s burning, and my mother continued in prayer, it’s supposed to burn Satanás. The mother opened her eyes, they rolled to the back of her head. We kept praying, commanding the devil to leave. Jesus was in command and we weren’t scared we said. The mother yelled, she was sweating, and then something happened again. I don’t know whose memory this belongs to, but in time I was reminded that her stiff body lifted high above the bed and she fell back down in a seated position. She opened her eyes and everyone in the room was silent. Did you see that my mother asked me, I don’t remember I did.
The kids arrived with the garden keeper and just as quickly left to fetch a glass of water for their mother. I left the mothers alone in the room. When my mother came out she put us in the back seat of our car, loaded all of our belongings in the trunk and we drove away, without saying a single word. It was nighttime and we made our way to a small town with a few small houses that sat on the edge of a dirt road. People I’d never seen before waited for us down a short set of stairs. I was hungry but we didn’t eat. My mother tucked me into the lower end of a bunk bed and said now go to sleep.
A Visual Library
Currently at Rue de Chabrol
What my daughter is reading right now: Funnybones by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
What I’m reading in the morning: Specimen Days by Walt Whitman and his poem: O Captain! My Captain!
What my husband is reading: Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Six things I want to disclose this week:
A sober household.
A guesthouse one hour outside of Paris, La Minotte, and the small towns around it, and the National Farm where Vita got to milk cows, feed rabbits, play with goats and eat farm-made strawberry ice cream.
Playing Lake Swan for Vita and coming up with ballet steps to perform to dad when he’s home from work (our pillows double as theatre curtains).
These Ludwig Reiter boots I saw when we were skiing in Austria last year, and this Hanro bra.
E.Dehillerin in central Paris for stainless steel pots and pans.
Something about Garth Greenwell teaching an online class this fall on Augustine’s Confessions without institutional backing is very appreciated: starts in November.
What my husband is listening to:
A movie I’m thinking about:
Throne of Blood by Kurosawa
A Poem
The Seekers of Lice
by Arthur Rimbaud
When the child's forehead, full of red torments,
Implores the white swarm of indistinct dreams,
There come near his bed two tall charming sisters
With slim fingers that have silvery nails.
They seat the child in front of a wide open
Window where the blue air bathes a mass of flowers
And in his heavy hair where the dew falls
Move their delicate, fearful and enticing fingers.
He listens to the singing of their apprehensive breath.
Which smells of long rosy plant honey
And which at times a hiss interrupts, saliva
Caught on the lip or desire for kisses.
He hears their black eyelashes beating in the perfumed
Silence; and their gentle electric fingers
Make in his half-drunken indolence the death of the little lice
Crackle under their royal nails.
Then the wine of Sloth rises in him,
The sigh of an harmonica which could bring on delirium;
The child feels, according to the slowness of the caresses
Surging in him and dying continuously a desire to cry.
PS:
Thank you for being patient while I was with child this summer. She’s now four but every year is so different from the other that I don’t know how available I’ll be in July and August when she’s off school, and I tripped over myself here.
I’ll leave you with a little bit of her, climbing her first tree in the Greek mountains, in the region that, according to Greek Mythology, was the summer residence of the Gods of Mount Olympus and the homeland of Centaurs, it was where Hercules and Achilles learned music and virtue.
Your prose is very poetic. I enjoyed the rhythm of the story.