The Priest's Madonna Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Amy Hassinger
as well as the grapes she stole from the neighboring vineyards. Everyone said she was crazy and not to be trusted, but Bérenger insisted that she was part of the parish and a child of God.
People were flattered by his visits. They took an interest in Bérenger as they had never done with the previous priest, bringing him small gifts—freshly baked bread, snared partridge, truffles discovered in the woods. One of the Baux boys brought him an asp skin, spread and tacked on a board. Little Marguerite Mouisse, who lived with her shepherd father in a hut near Le Bézu, presented Bérenger with a bound bunch of dried asphodel stems. “Matches for your cigarettes,” she said in her thin voice, giving a tiny curtsy. The children especially liked him, for he led a rollicking catechism class and often rewarded those who recited the text correctly with sugared almonds or candied chestnuts. (I had the honor of helping to lead the class, so I witnessed his generosity firsthand.)
Bérenger loved the gifts, of course, and the attention, but he cherished even more the increased assembly at church. Remarkably, several of the men who had rarely set foot in the church began to appear regularly on Sundays and even occasionally on weekday mornings. Mass became a happy, even festive occasion, and the church—though the roof still leaked onto the altar when it rained—transformed from a dungeon into something resembling a haven, mainly through the force of Bérenger’s personality. Even the old woodworm-infested confessional saw an increase in traffic. But while Mass drew newcomers of both sexes and all ages, the newly eager penitents at confession consisted almost entirely of the married women of the village, women of my mother’s age, women who desired Bérenger’s attention.
One day, before seven o’clock Mass, I entered the church to change the holy water and was startled to see three women—Mme Montaucon, Mme Baptiste, and Mme Fauré—kneeling in the pews, evidently waiting their turn. An actual queue! For confession! The sight ruffled me; I had to quell an urge to send them all away. My mother snorted her disapprobation when she heard of it. But my father found it funny, and from that day on, asked Bérenger nightly how many confessions he’d heard that day. “Madame Baptiste come again today?” he’d ask. Mme Baptiste was a homely but flirtatious woman whose husband had lost his arm at the hat factory and could no longer work. He spent his days at the tavern. “One of these days she’ll offer to take your confession, now, won’t she, Monsieur le curé ?”
Bérenger laughed; he enjoyed my father and his expansive ways, despite their differences of opinion.
The fact was that my father was jealous of Bérenger and the amount of time he spent with my mother throughout the day: the midday dinners we shared, the assistance Mother gave him before and after the Mass, the myriad little housekeeping tasks she completed for him in the church. Confession particularly bothered him—he could not stand the fact that my mother met privately with Bérenger and voluntarily told him her most intimate thoughts. “What do they tell you, anyway?” he would ask Bérenger.
“Edouard,” my mother would scold, “he can’t repeat it. It’s confidential.”
Bérenger, for his part, seemed not to mind my father’s prurience and even encouraged it by dropping a few tantalizing details—nothing to implicate anyone, but enough to pique my father’s interest. “I hear all kinds of things,” he’d say. “You’d be surprised, monsieur. Let us just say that some of these women have led full lives.”
My father would throw up his hands. “I should have been a priest.”
“God forbid,” said my mother.
Though my father may have been jealous, he must have known that Bérenger posed no true threat. They respected each other, Bérenger and my mother. She was not like the mesdames who called themselves friends of Bérenger’s but were
People were flattered by his visits. They took an interest in Bérenger as they had never done with the previous priest, bringing him small gifts—freshly baked bread, snared partridge, truffles discovered in the woods. One of the Baux boys brought him an asp skin, spread and tacked on a board. Little Marguerite Mouisse, who lived with her shepherd father in a hut near Le Bézu, presented Bérenger with a bound bunch of dried asphodel stems. “Matches for your cigarettes,” she said in her thin voice, giving a tiny curtsy. The children especially liked him, for he led a rollicking catechism class and often rewarded those who recited the text correctly with sugared almonds or candied chestnuts. (I had the honor of helping to lead the class, so I witnessed his generosity firsthand.)
Bérenger loved the gifts, of course, and the attention, but he cherished even more the increased assembly at church. Remarkably, several of the men who had rarely set foot in the church began to appear regularly on Sundays and even occasionally on weekday mornings. Mass became a happy, even festive occasion, and the church—though the roof still leaked onto the altar when it rained—transformed from a dungeon into something resembling a haven, mainly through the force of Bérenger’s personality. Even the old woodworm-infested confessional saw an increase in traffic. But while Mass drew newcomers of both sexes and all ages, the newly eager penitents at confession consisted almost entirely of the married women of the village, women of my mother’s age, women who desired Bérenger’s attention.
One day, before seven o’clock Mass, I entered the church to change the holy water and was startled to see three women—Mme Montaucon, Mme Baptiste, and Mme Fauré—kneeling in the pews, evidently waiting their turn. An actual queue! For confession! The sight ruffled me; I had to quell an urge to send them all away. My mother snorted her disapprobation when she heard of it. But my father found it funny, and from that day on, asked Bérenger nightly how many confessions he’d heard that day. “Madame Baptiste come again today?” he’d ask. Mme Baptiste was a homely but flirtatious woman whose husband had lost his arm at the hat factory and could no longer work. He spent his days at the tavern. “One of these days she’ll offer to take your confession, now, won’t she, Monsieur le curé ?”
Bérenger laughed; he enjoyed my father and his expansive ways, despite their differences of opinion.
The fact was that my father was jealous of Bérenger and the amount of time he spent with my mother throughout the day: the midday dinners we shared, the assistance Mother gave him before and after the Mass, the myriad little housekeeping tasks she completed for him in the church. Confession particularly bothered him—he could not stand the fact that my mother met privately with Bérenger and voluntarily told him her most intimate thoughts. “What do they tell you, anyway?” he would ask Bérenger.
“Edouard,” my mother would scold, “he can’t repeat it. It’s confidential.”
Bérenger, for his part, seemed not to mind my father’s prurience and even encouraged it by dropping a few tantalizing details—nothing to implicate anyone, but enough to pique my father’s interest. “I hear all kinds of things,” he’d say. “You’d be surprised, monsieur. Let us just say that some of these women have led full lives.”
My father would throw up his hands. “I should have been a priest.”
“God forbid,” said my mother.
Though my father may have been jealous, he must have known that Bérenger posed no true threat. They respected each other, Bérenger and my mother. She was not like the mesdames who called themselves friends of Bérenger’s but were