Messi@ by Andrei Codrescu Page B

inability to enter Mother Mary’s house in Gethsemane.
    â€œThe Magdalene tried three times to enter Mary’s house, and three times she failed. The weight of her sins pulled her back.” And: “Mary’s purity stopped the Magdalene three times. Three times.”
    â€œThen why,” asked Andrea, proving that she was a diligent student, “was the Magdalene the first to see Jesus after his resurrection?”
    â€œHe forgave her,” Sister Rodica said, and thought to herself: Just like a man; I bet Mary didn’t. And then she crossed herself, feeling blasphemous.
    â€œI forgot, I just plain forgot about Mr. Rabindranath! I heard he did it again today,” said Sister Maria, barging in and interrupting Sister Rodica’s cautionary tale of the Magdalene. “I didn’t see him actually floating, but I heard him chanting verses, and I smelled burnt milk coming from his room!”
    â€œThat,” said Sister Rodica petulantly, wrinkling her nose in distaste, “was absolutely forbidden by Mother Superior, but he keeps doing it!”
    â€œPart of his religion. Milk is offered to Pasupati, an ithyphallic god!” Andrea said in English.
    â€œWhat is … ithy …?” Sister Rodica asked, her red cheeks blazing.
    The answer didn’t relieve her embarrassment.
    â€œA god with a big erect penis!” Andrea blurted.
    The nuns crossed themselves. Andrea was clearly improving. Humor, Sister Rodica knew, was proof of recovery. Soon, Andrea might be able to leave the guest house and live with the other children, in the convent dormitory. There was, however, one impediment. Andrea was extraordinarily messy. To the sisters’ heightened sense of discipline and cleanliness, the girl’s behavior was nothing less than shocking. She managed to scatter her few items of clothing widely and disrespectfully. The trunks and shelves in the storage room might have been crammed, but even in that state they projected a German sense of order. One of her socks ended up suspended from the light fixture on the ceiling. One of her shoes fell from the windowsill into the garden. She never put anything away. She moved constantly, leaving whatever she happened to be holding wherever she put it down. She then spent nervous minutes searching for the lost item. Most shocking, she had absolutely refused to bathe more than once. She sprawled when she talked to people, often exposing more flesh than was seemly. Her clothes were wrinkled, bunched, and twisted. Her hair took on astonishing shapes, covering half her face. Often she chewed on a stray lock, pursing her lips in unconscious delight. She gave the impression of a storm, but she was so youthful, so fresh, and so unconcerned that everyone inhaled her scent deeply rather than turning away. And of course, Sister Rodica’s reproaches rolled off her like water off a mirror. At least that is how Sister Rodica, rather fancifully, put it to herself.
    Sister Rodica prayed as hard as she could for two things: one, that Andrea would soon regain her health and begin to forget the terrible things that must have happened to her in the camp, and two, that the inappropriate attraction she felt for the girl would be channeled immediately into stronger faith. Sister Rodica, like most of the other nuns, was refusing to consider the mysterious gap of four years in Andrea’s biography. She believed that her memories of war were still fresh, which explained the girl’s absent behavior.
    Sister Maria was fascinated by Andrea as well, but for other reasons. She could not forget the girl’s luminiscent eyes looking up at her the night she had arrived. Her eyes had never again achieved that feverish intensity, but Sister Maria felt to the depths of her soul that Andrea was not an earthly being. She would have been hard put to describe what kind of being she believed Andrea to be. She was certainly not an evil being, not one of the legions of