VII
My next book was a novelette called Our Lady, and I think it is my favorite among all my too-many books.
I had been brought up as a very religious little boy; I had been confirmed in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in New York at the age of about fourteen. I remember that I attended service every day during Lent. Later on in life I had found the New Testament an excellent way of learning foreign languages. I knew the text so well that I could save myself the trouble of looking up words in the dictionary; so I read the New Testament first in Latin, then in Greek, then in German, then in French, and then in Italian.
I had conceived a real love, a personal affection, for the historical Jesus; it seemed to me that he had been a social rebel who had been taken up and made into an object of superstition instead of human love. I had been particularly repelled by the deification of his mother; I found myself thinking what she must have been in reality and what she would have made of the worship of the Catholics. And so came my story:
A humble peasant woman of Judea, named Marya, sees her beloved son go off on a mission that terrifies her. In her neighborhood is a Nabatean woman, a “dark-meated one,” a sorceress, much dreaded. Marya goes to her and asks to see the future of her son. The sorceress weaves a spell, and Marya in fright falls unconscious. She wakes up to find herself in the modern world, walking on an avenue in Los Angeles, in the midst of a great crowd on its way to a football stadium at which the Notre Dame team is to be pitted against some local team. Since not all my readers are scholarly persons, I point out that Notre Dame means “Our Lady”—in other words, Marya, the mother of Jesus.
Arriving at the gates, the woman in a humble peasant costume is assumed to have been lost from one of the many floats; so she is seated in another, goes in, and sees the game with all its uproar, having no idea that it is being held in her name. She finds herself seated next to a young Catholic priest from Notre Dame University; he is a student of ancient languages and is astounded to hear her speak to him in ancient Aramaic. He decides that this is a problem for the authorities of the Church, and he takes her to a convent. He calls the bishop, and ceremonies of exorcism are performed that send Marya back where she belongs. She is disturbed by the strange experience and sternly rebukes the Nabatean sorceress: “All this has nothing to do with me!”
As I said, I think it is my favorite story, and I think that last line has a special “punch.” I must add that I could never have written the story if it had not been for the gracious and loving help of my friend Lewis Browne, a scholar who knew those languages and cultures and gave me all the rich details. That is why I think it is a good story, and will be read as long as anything of mine. But perhaps not by my Catholic friends.