Hunger's Brides (117 page)

Friday afternoon, a cold grey rain. It was the turn of those of us who confess with Father Arellano. The Mother Prioress preferred that the most senior of the black-veiled nuns not go to our own chaplain, who had influence enough here among us. I had been called and could not delay long—our patio being the closest to the chapel. Reluctantly I made my way along the arcades to stay out of the weather, down the short passageway, past the chapel entrance and out into the rain. The orchards were ahead, a drab of yellowing leaves, the gardens to my left, mostly mud and a sprig or two of green. Sister María Bernardina was kneeling on a stone slab, soaked to the skin, confessing through a small slot in the thick chapel wall. She finished as I drew near, blinked water out of her eyes. More drops tumbled from her brows. She almost smiled. The
cratícula
is the width of the mouth, such that on neither side of the wall may we see each other with both eyes, leaving one feeling not unlike the Cyclops confiding in Odysseus. I was not even sure I knew any longer what Father Arellano looked like, to those with sight in both eyes. For ten years he had been my nominal director, entitled to meet with me more comfortably in the locutory whenever he wished. He never wished.
I am too beautiful, he had once explained. Nice that he still thought so, for a Cyclopean attaining a certain age—though were it intended as a gallantry, and it was not, it would have meant somewhat more were he indeed able to see me.

It was cold, it was raining, there was pain in my knees, I was prepared to be brief and Arellano rarely spoke beyond prescribing a light penance. But today he did speak; through the patter of the rain and a channel in the masonry the depth of a forearm, I only heard him with difficulty.

… failing you … I cannot much longer … protect you
. When had I ever asked such a thing of him? He meant to protect himself … The rain, the stone was cold now.
A time to study the writings of John of the Cross …
But I
knew
his work—he was the poet I most revered.
Another spiritual director. Father Núñez …
Father Núñez what?—he could not mean … protect
me?
This could have been amusing, from someone else, in another circumstance, in sunlight. But from Arellano it was not. For Arellano found nothing amusing in the monstrous face of sin—at least since he had looked down fifteen years ago to find his dagger separating a fellow gambler's ribs.

I had wanted to listen to the pain in my knees, but changed my mind when Father Arellano admitted he'd approached Núñez without my leave….

Father Arellano, you must not worry yourself overly about failing me. My previous spiritual director did so utterly, was quite unable to answer questions such as these, or not satisfactorily—can you hear me all right, can you hear me clearly? It is awkward to speak to one's spiritual director in this way rather than in the comfort of the locutory, but at least His Paternity don Arellano is dry? For while I treasure John's poetry, in his commentaries there are concerns….

John writes of even the adepts in spiritual matters as being like children in their knowledge and feelings, in their speech and dealings with Him. In the first night of the soul, ours is the love of a child, for this is the easiest love, our love of the infant Christ and our sadness for his destiny. In answer to that love, He sends the sweetest milk flowing through our prayers and meditations. But through this night He will wean us toward a more adult love, so that in the last watch of the first night, the soul is more like a young lover slipping out of a darkened house, the house of the senses, to be with her Beloved.
Beloved of my life, I run to you
. Delectable moments, stolen, brief, promises of a still greater richness and fullness to come.

As in the Canticles.

Yet as the first night draws to a close the love has become difficult and painful: we are to be deprived again, but of joys now of the spirit, weaned again. And the first trial of the second night is this frustration, for one is a lover and not a child anymore. But why must it always be thus? If in His house there are many rooms, why must love abide in each indifferently? And the love He returns, is it the same for everyone, or is it a love of each of us? Surely he would not love as if we were other than we are, surely he loves us knowing
who
we are. Does this love take no colouring from its vessel—is it ever and forever the same?—while the face of the ocean, the wide eyes of a lake change with every tick of the sun, every shred of mist, every lake-bottom and sea-floor lift, every alteration of the deep—silt, sand, rock, mud—every angle of its run and pitch?

What is more constant and yet more various? What is more constant in its variations than water? If not love?

Silence from beyond the wall.

I should have known by now. I was not, in fact, a child. I did not need his advice, I did not need direction. And so I started out, as so often happens with me, clever … as a child hoping if she were only clever enough she might keep him…. And then I end up kneeling in the rain, pouring out my heart to a slot in the wall—scent of stone and must, rain in my mouth, taste of salt—to a man who once found me beautiful and cannot bear to see me now, who probably cannot hear me, who has perhaps already gone.

The books, I could see, were different. The books might be dangerous. But these other things of mine, would they take all this from me? What harm have they done anyone when only I may see them?

Please do not take these away. These are only instruments of beauty and wonder, these are only innocent things.

No more brooding on how little I had accomplished these past ten years, or the past twenty-two—a few verses to take pride in, the glimmerings of an idea or two. I would not ask how much time I had. I would not lament that it was not enough. I lamented now only wasted time. Work harder, work faster now.

I finished the last remaining lyrics on Saint Catherine in a day and sent them to Puebla, city of Angels, to Santa Cruz. If he had any intention yet to play my Redeemer … Let that be up to him. It could not hurt now.

One morning a little before noon a young nun came to say a man had come for me. The way she had said this put a small spur to my fears. Her expression was kindly and solemn, almost pained.

“From the Inquisition?”

“No, no, Sor Juana, a composer.”

One composer. Which one was it now? One or the other, they could wait if they would not come together for me just once. I finished the page I was reading at the window, and an extra three, slowly, for good measure, then went down. Sálazar. Looking angry and wounded in his pride. My gaze went out to the little courtyard, past the rose bushes to the long yellow grass, less like lawn than sedge. The rain was making the ground frail, everywhere returning the island to the marshland it was. Gardening had branched into masonry: the gardener's every step these past months laying tiles of sky in the earth.

Sálazar stood waiting some way from the clavichord and well back from the grille, hands down at his sides. He was tall, a man fully grown, but it was the expression of the six-year-old he wore—a proud artist kept waiting like a page. As I studied his face what softened my anger was that his own seemed quite dwarfed by his hurt. I almost apologized, for I was just then remembering him as he was the second time we spoke together. A tall boy of seven, Antonio de Sálazar was by then known by all to be a prodigy. He had come to the Palace again, to play the clavichord this time, not the violin—and to play no one's music but his own.
He had not been made to wait. He recognized me among the many who came afterwards to congratulate him. Later we had a moment to talk. He led me to the same vestibule and thanked me for my kindness on his previous visit. I had been like a princess to him—he flushed then.“But how stupid, perhaps you are one.”

“No Antonio, I am from here, just like you. And do you remember the advice I gave you?”

“I do, and won't forget it.”

“And will you tell me?”

“Take time from my music, to make friends and keep them. Save a little of myself, for myself.”

“Anything else?”

“A genius can be hurt like anyone else.”

Now I was forty-three, he was still ten years younger, and the one who had given him the advice was now the one who had wounded his pride. He had forgotten the princess in the palace, or did not see her in a middle-aged nun. Or rather a middle-aged nun in her. That was understandable. But I wanted to ask if he remembered what she had said, so many years ago. Her advice. And if it had been of any use to him.

Instead I thanked him for coming, made no excuses for the delay, and was the cantor perhaps coming later?

Fury stood in his eyes then—no, Sor Juana, he was not coming later, and he, Sálazar, did not like to be kept waiting. He had a lot of work to do—many new commissions—now more than ever. This
Caracol
had never been his idea but the Cantor de Ribera's, and another thing he did not appreciate was being asked by the Vice-Queen to look through my poetry to her for musical insults. At last night's ball the Countess had drawn him aside to tell him at length of her conviction that she had been slighted during her last visit to this locutory. She'd had the distinct impression that in my verses on that day I had called her handmaidens whores. Which made a musical composition I had penned on the occasion of her birthday at the very least suspicious, and who better than Antonio de Sálazar to ferret out the insults most certainly buried there. And precisely what, he wondered, was he to do?—pretend he could find none the least bit suspicious, only to have someone else do it for him and make him look either a fool, or very much like the man who has played the Countess for one? Half his commissions
came
from her, and if I was determined to throw away what was left of my career—which I seemed
to be, however little
that
might be—he had no such intentions for his. He would not lie to her, for Ribera maybe, but not for me. And so as he was saying, he had more work than he had ever wanted and a burden of responsibility he wasn't even sure he could cope with, so this was not at all the right time for a collaboration.

I was glad I had not asked him about that day we first met, for though he stood as a man speaking of a great career to one who had not quite had one—he looked so terribly hurt. He was that boy, about to cry, and I was no longer sure what was happening.

Well, Maestro Sálazar should do as he saw fit. Who knew indeed what the future would bring? For the present, Cantor de Ribera and I would be fine. We could finish what we started.

Sálazar's eyes went cold, the boy quite gone, but he had already shown me his hurt. I had not been the one to inflict it after all, but he was nothing averse to passing it along.

“No, Sor Juana. I am afraid that will not be possible. That is what I have been kept waiting so long to tell you. Cantor de Ribera died this morning. Two hours ago.”