Hunger's Brides (133 page)

On a maroon ground, within a silver border, the Archbishop's shield encloses five seashells set against a cross.

The smallest things, at times. Of these do they build a new cell for me.

Antonia took their coming so bitterly, imagining this to have been some fault of hers. As well to say she brought the floods. Shhh, Antonia. Emptiness has many positive qualities. A caracol makes no sound at all, until it has been emptied out. And then you can hear the sea. Shhhh. There, can you hear? The difficulty can be in persuading the animal who lives inside to leave.

Tonia, hush … John of the Cross was asked, repeatedly, severely, Since God is Light, how can the approaches to God be dark? Even in a soul purged of its attachments and impurities.

The poet's answer was ingenious. Listen.

Imagine a room with nothing in it. Two windows, facing each other, the Light of God streaming through, one window to the other. One never sees the light, only what it strikes. As a hand lifted between the windows is lit, or as motes of dust whirl as if sparks in a wind. Do you see? It is why a cell must be stripped.

We obstruct the light.

In all these months, in the refectory, the workrooms, the choir, the
sala de devociones
, the one rumour that had not ceased was of the
beata
, the trial. It was a prospect some of us dreaded, but not all. I knew when the sisters were telling it by the way they looked over at me. There was little doubt why our convent had been chosen.

I had been supplied with details the others did not have. That she was half-Indian, that she had been a midwife, arrested years ago. Gutiérrez claimed never to have seen her, but said that he had walked many times past her cell; that its door had been more recently replaced, its newer braces and rivets glowing softly in the torchlight of the halls; that the trial was to take place at night. He did not say why, but the possibilities were obvious. It made for better theatre. Gutiérrez was a liar.

I had been weak then. I had asked him if he truly did not know who she was, if she existed at all—or if the
beata …
if I were she.

Then in a letter from our sister convent in Puebla, word of Sor María de San José, that Bishop Santa Cruz had read her
Vida
, the spiritual journal he had commanded her to write, and turned it over to the Inquisition. But this I already knew, and here also had I been given
knowledge the others did not have. She was to be examined by the General Inquisitor himself.

Were the visions frequent, were they actively sought or passively received? Did they follow the path of previous mystics? Did the visions uphold or break with doctrine? Were they frenetic or calm? Were the recollections hazy or clear …
did they bring a sense of peace? Did they lead to God or toward the Enemy?

This was how
beatas
were to be examined. Now Sor María would have to find her own way to answer. I had asked myself what Santa Cruz had ever wanted from her, wanted from us. I wondered if it was merely to raise her up and make me fall. Or to make the writer a mystic, the mystic a writer. To reverse our fortunes. But it was clear now, what Santa Cruz wanted. He simply wanted what we do not. He had never wanted Núñez to join him, but by turns favoured and thwarted him to divide him from the Archbishop. He had not cared if the Archbishop were mad, only to drive him mad with the possibility that everything he touched was poisoned. And then to teach this to me.

They say Sor María is half-Indian, but that is what they always say if one learns Nahuatl. I could write to her, too late, but now at least there was little danger. Send a message in Nahuatl through a servant. María de San José, our paths are not separate. Here is a man who takes back what he has given, who eats his excrement twice. Here is a man who does not care about the outcome, only that there should be conflict. Here is a man for whom the game does not matter, only that he should set two sides upon one another—that in playing him they play against themselves, that to everyone he brings pain and trials. You know this, as I do. You have entrusted to him your secrets too. But the traitor is a gossip—
in necoc yaotl, ca chiquimoli.
³⁰
This expression we have in your valley and mine. We have known him here, we have known him all along.

Necoc yaotl
. Enemy of Both Sides.

Once I had been afraid of the dark.

First as a child, then as a girl, in Mexico. Now though the nights of trial were filled with doubt, my fear of the dark returning, I ceased trying to sleep except during the day, between the hours of prayer. I wanted to be awake, on my feet, when the Enemy came. I ceased going down to the workrooms, the refectory—though I did try to eat. They wanted me weak. But there is something else I have feared. I have feared it all my life.

This void … this lightness, without books or ballast, without work or measures for my mind, this mind turning round, emptily, hungrily, upon itself. Now in darkness. It was clearly explained, why they would not leave a lamp or a lantern. If the Church requires something of Sor Juana for which she has need of light, then she will be brought a candle.

For one who does not sleep the nights are long. Longer yet in darkness. But the cell is not always empty now. The emptiness comes and goes. When it comes, it is, but when it has gone, I am sometimes grateful for the company. The demons come in many forms. To some they come as a naked mulatto. This is to be preferred. Sometimes they come as revenants of the dead.

I had a visitor, in the locutory—I did not take visitors. She said she was my cousin. Magda. Magda was dead. But then what harm in seeing her? This was cunning. Had Magda said that?

The locutory was dusty. Mould and rust at the base of the window bars. Mildew had crept down from the ceilings, the finish on the grille scored with it and dull. The clavichords, the things on the walls, in the shelves, they should have been taken with the things in the cell. I would no longer be attached to these. These were not to die for. They could come for them when they liked.

A sour smell, as of fermentation, hung above the stench of the canals.

The woman was not Magda, but she had Magda's eyes. An onyx cross. Cunning. A long white dress, silks and silver. She dressed like Aunt María had, if without the veil. Ravaged face, blossoms about her nose and cheeks from drink. Almost hairless. Dead, Magda might come to look like this. And if she were not dead, a veil would have been wise. But the eyes, these were alive, not terribly so for eyes but for inanimate objects. Like Magda. Small, hard, polished. Like beans, lychee pips. They were alive with their hatred of me.

“Hello, Juana.”

Magda died not long after her mother had, Uncle Juan many years before that. María had sold off all his enterprises but one. She kept the
pulque
concession, the most profitable. At her death, Magda inherited. She married soon after, and followed her husband into the north. Zacatecas …? No, it was Queretaro. When he left her, she died there by her own hand.

Magda had been exhumed by the Inquisition, and sent to me.

“The Archbishop has asked me to come.”

“A recent one?”

“I'd heard you were like this.”

“And I you.”

She did not quite understand but never could, and hated me now a little more for it. A spiritual hatred, it seems, is not unchanging, but grows beyond the grave. Like hair they say. I looked over her sparse pate. She was not long dead, maybe.

“Why send you?”

“I asked to come.”

“To see for yourself.”

“More or less.”

“To bring a message.”

“More than one.”

“How does he look? Describe him.”

“You know His Grace does not consent to see us.”

“You spoke to a secretary.”

“I bring an offer, a last chance.”

“To save myself.”

“Not you, Juana. She will be condemned. The sentence will be death. She will burn here.”

“Will you come?”

“Are you prepared to have a woman
die
for your pride?”

“Who.”

“Don't pretend. It's weak.”

“Tell me her name.”

“They did not give me leave to speak of that.”

“Just a last chance.”

“Her last chance.”

“To have her die not here.”

“Or not at all. Perpetual imprisonment. The trial and the sentence to be carried out elsewhere.”

“She cannot hold out much longer. The difference is small.”

“You don't believe that.”

“You know not the first thing about it—”

“Yes, how small of me.”

“And now I am to believe they would modify her sentence. Or is this merely to spare myself the trial?”

“Think of your convent, at least.”

“The conditions.”

“No contact with the court. Here or in Madrid. No letters to or from. No visits, except as directed by the Church.”

“There is more.”

“A general confession of your sins, a renewal of your vows, a return to the state of novice.”

“A stay of all proceedings against me.”

“The Secretary did not mention that.”

“Was there anything else.”

“Two things. A reminder, and also a message. If you want it. I have it here.”

“From.”

“From you, Juana. From you….”

The seal had been broken.

“Did you know, Cousin, your father took care of delicate business for my father?”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“No harm can come of it now.”

“You mean, no good.”

“Yes, I mean no good.”

“Then why, Magda, listen to you?”

“Because you want to know—always, everything, or to think you do. You agreed to see me today, didn't you?” Into her eyes came a look of triumph. The letter would come at a price. Knowing the contents, she already believed I would pay it.“But first you shall hear everything else I have always known. About you, Juana. And for this, there is no charge. Did you know that our grandfather—
our
grandfather—introduced my father to yours? Or that my father was engaged to your mother when
your
father met her? He had heard so much about the beautiful daughter. Uncle Pedro wanted to see for himself. So you got her looks, and I got the other's.”

“You have them still.”

“Tell me, Juana, when was the last time you saw
yourself?
But no, let's not quarrel yet, not when there's so much left to tell…. Did it never once enter your head you were named after my father? There, you see? It was only when Aunt Isabel had
you
that he gave up. I was almost four when he married my mother.”

“You owe your legitimacy to me, then—take it as payment for the dresses.”

“And always so clever about your fifty pesos. Such a bargain hunter. My father paid
thousands
, ran around to wherever you'd been, paying off your debts like a
secretary
. But I am forgetting the reminder now … from Bishop Santa Cruz: When he went to give your mother her last rites, they had a long talk about you, about their many hopes for you.”

“I suppose you'll be taking the canal back.”

“He said you would see….”

“Swimming again, I imagine—you should have insisted on a boat.”

“Did she never tell you about the other fifty pesos?”

“When you get back, do give my regards to Sáenz de Mañozca.”

“Did Isabel ever tell you it was the name that broke her heart—?”

“And my respects to Torquemada—tell them the one who sent you was a bastard, too.”

“Amanda—the cook's daughter. You remember her—”

“Get
out.”

“But you don't know why yet, Juana,
why
it broke her heart. You will want to know this, Cousin….”