I was re-reading the ending of this strange and haunting book, and was struck by the idea that the character of Mary Kashpaw, the caregiver of the story’s protagonist, Father Damien, shows a devotion to his infirm body and then his cherished memory as being similar to the devotion that is necessary for bringing about a focused body of work. Even though both of these people are fictional characters, their imagined lives are fascinating and inspiring as they move about in a protected and mostly unobserved service to their community, in quite different ways.
While it would be easy to see this relationship as romantic, it is not, in the traditional vein of novels. Yet it is not strictly filial either, nor even a platonic friendship. It exists outside of a category in its peculiarity. There is simply consistent and applied consideration and detailed attention by the hands of Mary Kashpaw, without recognition or reward from anyone outside of her own soul, as she tends to both Father Damien's public and personal roles.
For a little context to the following excerpt, Mary Kashpaw finds his missing and deceased body on a small island in a nearby lake, a place that she suspects has always held his secrets. He likely would have gone there to die, after divulging these secrets in his "Last Report" to the Vatican, being the longtime Catholic parish priest charged to an Ojibwe reservation. Having cared for him for so long, she also knows his secret, and maintains it as a ritual and as an uninterrupted communion with her beloved. His life is her muse, and his living spaces are her workshop.
Mary Kashpaw
/// “She paddled out to the island in a beat-up and awkward old aluminum canoe. She got out in shallow water, laced together her big rough shoes and slung them over her neck, tied the boat to a tough tree root, and waded ashore. She sat down on a powerful twist of exposed root. Methodically, very carefully, Mary Kashpaw tied the shoes back on her feet. Creaking monumentally, she stood. The island could be traversed side to side in ten minutes. Walking the rough shore might take half an hour to negotiate. The center was rock, piled rock rising in a solid cliff. Everyone knew the cave that Moses Pillger used and where his drum still lived... Birds sang thick in the scuttering bushes, and a red squirrel chattered high in the lyre spread of an old white pine. Mary Kashpaw crossed a bed of soft duff, made her way over to the side of the island where the camping was easiest. There, she saw him right away and she stopped. He was no more than a fold of black cloth crumpled near the white ash circle of his fire. One arm was stretched alongside his hip and the other was bent, a pillow under his head. She knew before she understood that the stillness of his body was the immobility of earth.
"She relighted his campfire, rolled him into a blanket, and laid out his limbs straight and true. She handled him gently, as though his bones were flower stalks, his skull fragile as a blown egg. She folded his arms across his waist, and then Mary Kashpaw sat beside him. Her eyes were clouded, her body stunned, her thoughts far away and tiny as a view through the wrong end of the telescope... Her heart was numb with a kind of odd embarrassment.
"She felt shy now, entrusted with far too much power. Left with the choice whether to bring him back across the lake in the canoe or to bury him here on the island, she froze. She listened to the pines, paced, even considered opening a bottle of the wine at his feet although she never drank. She watched the waves, shut her eyes, fell into a drowsy suspension wherein she received what felt like an answer. She found the Ziploc bag of money and the note. It took a while to read the note, letter by letter she made it out. Of course she understood exactly what he'd expected.
"She buried him in the lake.
"... Later on, the letter was framed and set within the entrance of the little cabin where Father Damien Modeste had once lived, a place the bishop directed, and Jude recommended, be kept as it was and even restored. The little historical shrine was cared for now by Mary Kashpaw, whose attention to detail included a careful stropping of the razor and shining of the copper shaving mug used by Father Damien. Every day, she carefully dusted and arranged the papers on his desk, including words from a long ago sermon she'd saved, scrawled lightly and fading. What is the whole of our existence but the sound of an appalling love? She polished the wood, washed and changed his sheets and towels. Dusted his piano. Burnished the pedals. She spent as much time as she possibly could at these tasks, where she still felt the comfort of his presence. When her duties on the grounds and in the convent were finished, she often took refuge in his house and sat beside his bed. Her body rocked, though the chair was solid. Her lips moved but she made no sound. Sometimes she dozed off and followed Father Damien through the underbrush. Sometimes she dug her way down with a teaspoon toward her priest, her love, through the layers of the earth." ///
While Mary Kashpaw may be a peculiar character, we may follow her example. Know your work so well that even when it gives up on itself, you would know where to find it. Cross whatever terrain is necessary to get to it. Don't give in to carelessness. With humility, sit with it and contemplate your options until you know how to proceed. Commit to your course, even if it's a gamble that risks embarrassment. Tend to its details lovingly-- not because your work is sacred-- but because the doing of it is a gift that has been bequeathed to you by the people who came before you. You are now also a keeper of this gift, and by participating you will be preserving it for others to take up. That sort of love does sound appalling in its reach. And yet its reach need not be sudden and all-consuming. It can come to us one teaspoon at a time.
Louise Erdrich, author extraordinaire
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