We had gone to Lourdes via a travel agent. Picked up at the airport by a tour bus. We drove with about twenty other people who were on our tour. We didn’t do just Lourdes; we first went to a town called Nevers to see the convent where Saint Bernadette lived and died after her visitations from Our Lady.
They had her tiny body in a Snow White glass case on display, and people filed in there every day to see it, a grotesque tableau. It reminded me of the Dublin zoo. They had a crocodile in a glass enclosure the exact length and width of its body, so it couldn’t move, with enough water to almost cover it while leaving its back exposed. At the top of the glass there was a gap with the ceiling. The grown-ups would throw coins through the gap so they’d land on the crocodile’s back to see if they could annoy it because it couldn’t move. I wonder what the zoo people did with all the coins.
Sinéad O’Connor, Rememberings,2021
Listy z Tydelii 