Hunger's Brides (175 page)
“Example?”
“The mother. Grace.”
“Pretty, isn't she.”
“A high-society drunk,” Petra says.“Very, very smart and twice as edgy.”
“The father?”
“We didn't exactly talk, no.”
“Cold fish.”
“Cold as cod.”
“Sick
fish.” He offers this in the spirit of co-operation.
“Really?âwhat have you heard? He had a very ugly feel. Tell you what, you talk to me about himâ” Her gaze wavers toward the fireplace.
Don't lose your nerve, Petra Stern. “
âand I tell you what I got from the neighbour lady who saw the guy leaving Beulah's apartment.”
“You first.”
“Isn't it your turn?”
“Big fish, little fish.”
“All right, two for one: the neighbour, plus the Safeway clerk three hours before the call to the news desk.”
“I have enough on that in stack three,” he says, waving his glass grandly.
Petra Stern is becoming very slightly agitated in spite of her training. Her eyes have been tracing a little circuit from her subject's face to the tape recorder, to the briefcase and back. Her discipline has been good. Now she allows herself a first frank look at the sheaves of papers stacked on the bare hardwood.
“May I?” she asks, getting suddenly to her feet and starting toward the fireplace. No doubt the placement of the stacks is becoming a worry to her.
“Certainly. But don't touch.” Hitch in her step, a little segue into pacing in her green socks before the small fire in the hearth. “Please.” Taut swells at patch pockets front and back. Tender curves, sub rosa, belie the name of Stern. Stern, Petra, he thinks, swirling the ice in his glass, that must be Indo-Aryan for butt, rock-firm.
“Try this, then,” she offers, upping the bid. “I was talking to a very conflicted Grace Limosneros, with so much to loseâ”
“So many membershipsâ”
“Wanting to help more than she maybe knew. She let drop that Beulah thought her real father might be alive.” A pause.“You
did
know Jonas Limosneros is only her stepfather.”
“Stack two.”
“But I do have your interest ⦠I can follow up for you. It's what we do. A billion-dollar news machine. We have the resources.”
“Though fewer all the time.”
“All the more reason.”
“Be an interesting angle to your story,” he concedes.
“Done. Now you.”
“Miss Stoneâ”
“Stern.”
“Name indeed is destiny. Ms Stern, I have the story and you have nothing I need. And as you can see I'm very busy turning it into my story right now. A hot story.” Picking up a lighter from the coffee table, he thumbs up a small flame.
“You're bluffing.”
“Too many competing drafts. Yours would be one more. So, if you'll excuse me. Unless you'd care for that drink.”
“You know, you really do intrigue me,” she says. He is supposed to take this as grudging admiration. She leans toward him, a glossy sheen of silk glows briefly at the level of her second button. Tape recorder, quilted vest, hiking boots. Green silk camisole. She has come equipped for anything, all manner of inducements.
“Pray tell.”
“Look at you. Drunk, smug smile on your face, you squat in the ruins of your life, with a lighterâlike a little boy about burn it all down, his belovèd treehouse.”
“And look at you, Petraârehearsed but ready to improvise. It's been fascinating to watch you work, close up.”
“Maybe I've got you all wrong.”
“You might.”
“You look more guilty than smug.”
“Guilt. A hard field to distinguish yourself in.” He finishes up his drink. No more.
“So to be distinguished you spend the past half-hour talking like a cheap crime novel?”
“A true-crime story,” he says nodding towards the fireplace.
“You find that funny.”
“Think of it as parody.”
“So you don't really careâabout what happened to her. You were just ready to blow anyway. What are you, forty, forty-fiveâmid-life crisis time? Is that it? Scheduled for your little breakdown?”
“Past due.”
“You've used her for everything else. Now as pretextâ”
“To talk about me. And what a tonic that isâ”
“Really, and who taught you about that?”
“Hysteria, nervous collapse, a good bout of flux. Nothing like it, for clearing the slateâ”
“Who says that, Donaldâyour
mother?
Is that what she thought?”
Broken cloud lays soft shadows over the mountains, without any discernible pattern. A dappling of iron grey, grey-green.
“I suppose,” he says finally, “I should be impressed now.”
“Just part of the job. If you want a spot on the hottest dance card in town. You have a story, Dr. Gregory? I'll run tape, you tell it your way.”
“Maybe you've forgotten, Petra. I've had a little demonstration recently of how you let me tell my story. The interview on the courthouse steps is still quite vivid.”
“You find the guts to tell it, I won't get in the way.” She fidgets a moment with her pen, an expensive ball-point. “Tell you what, you vet the transcript. To hell with it. As of tomorrow the story's dead anyway. Final approval.”
“That simple.”
“We have the resources to get your story out.”
“Not interested.”
“You think you've got your little bookâpeople don't read, sure not some ex-professor's vanity publication. You've got a story to tell, tell it to a microphone.
“I do not need
you
to tell
my
story.”
“But it's not your damn story anyway, is it Donald? Here's a chance to tell the side we don't push.
You saved her life
. Didn't you?” See the stern face of a hostile community suffused now with sympathy. Petra, thank you. “She would have
bled
to deathâright?”
She's become annoying. He has become tired, dead tired. Can't she see. Why doesn't she go away. She should be made to go away.
He looks out the window, never wanting to look at her again. Somewhere to the south, brush is being burned. For miles south, all across the foothills, light breaks through gaps in the clouds. Where it angles through the smoke, it is like the spotlights of some vast ball game. Angling all across the rolling checkerboard fields.
This field on this day shall receive the blessing of light; these shall remain in shadow
.
Soon the gold light will sallow and the scarlet turn to rust.
“You keep thinking I have nothing to offer you in return. But you're
wrong.
I took the call
, Donald. I was at the news desk. She spoke to me.
I heard her voice. I heard her plans for you
. What she said, Donald, you need to knowâ¦.”
“Tell me what she said.”
“Your turn, Professor Gregory. You talk, I talk.”
Truth or dare
.
“How did she â¦?”
“Sound? I know heartbreak when I hear it.”
He considered this.“Petra, the stern romantic. Who'd have guessed?”
“This hasn't a fucking thing to do with romance.” Her hands twist at the shaft of her pen. “It's just a chord, breaking. Very soft, very clear.”
Prepare to greet the faces that you meet.
Face them.
UANA
I
NÃS
DE LA
C
RUZ
   Â
chorus
1: Of wonders I would sing to youâa miracle.
 2: What, what is it? Tell us all!
1: Stop, waitâthat I might speak.
 2: Well, what is it? Quickly, please. I'm dying to hear!
1: Stop, waitâand I'll tell you what I've learned.
   Â
verses
As I say,
there was a girl
of tender years,
the age of ten and eight.
Stop, waitâ
that I may tell you of her.
 This child
had acquired great knowledge
despite being female
(or so it was alleged,
though little do I see
how this could be believed).
Stop, waitâ
that you may discover what I mean.
Â
Because, it is claimed
by I can't say whom,
that women only ought
to learn to weave and sew.
Stop, waitâ
I'll tell you what I know.
 It seems, by virtue of superior reasoning
she could tie sages up in knots;
a slip of a thing, persuading
these great scribes and scholars of whatever she thought!
Stop, waitâ
I've told you nothing yet.
 For soon enough they said
she was a saint, no less,
yet in no way did these books she read
detract one bit from her saintliness.
Stop, waitâ
the matter is not ended there.
 It is said Lucifer
never sleeps; when he heard
she was not only learned but saintly
he took form as a Mephistophelesâ
Stop, waitâ
there is much else to learn.
Â
There was something Satan
was desperate to determine:
if there truly was a woman
whose learning surpassed his.
Stop, waitâ
that I may tell you something more.
 To this end, how does he proceed?
He goes to tempt an emperor
to bring her by force
to apostasy.
Stop, waitâ
There is one more thing yet in store.
 Dear Lord, how brutally
the Emperor sets upon her,
but she lets herself be martyred
so as not to be defeated.
Stop, waitâ
but a few words more are needed.
 Ask no moreâ
to know what one such as Catherine
is made of, and this forever.
I know not. Amen.
IGHT OF
P
AZ
        [29 Dec. 1994]
G
ATES THROWN WIDE
âS says the convent's open not just for NewYear parties but for the celebrationsâ
1995!
Magical tricentenary of the passing of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Continuous cycles of conferences concerts plays and special celebrations. Year of mysteries, stunning disclosuresâthe recovery of Sor Juana's purloined medallion. A rediscovered inventory of all the items in her cellâand rumours of a new
poem â¦
no one will say for sureâ¦.
And all the angels dark and light of
SorJuanismo
jetting in and flying back home to Mexico from all over the globe!âLavrin Luciani Bergmann Alatorre Merrim Luiselli Glantz Bénassy Muriel Buxó ⦠the whole honour role.
And Paz.
Octavio Paz comes all the time to the Claustro
.
S knows him or did onceâSweet S waits to tell me till now? He was a close friend of her father before a big falling out.
Paz is coming!!! In two days. A party to ring in the Great Year. First year of the new bundleâto fire the fifty-two-year millennium / talk about accelerationâwhat the Aztecs couldn't teach us about time.
And conflagration.
Then she says he may not come. His heart, his health. His cats. No one knows. Octavio Paz!âa whole convent aflutter, impaled on pins and needles.
[30 Dec. 1994]
All day yesterday and the past three S spends in the Claustro theatre for rehearsals while I stay away. Our first quarrel.
Oh S I'm so sorry.
S was many many years ago an actress on the stage, and once the childstar of a bad very bad filmâ
of the silent eraâ
her laugh and sweet lovely blush, no S you are beautiful and thirty-six is youngâ
and now for visiting performers I am the Claustro's unofficialâyou have an expression in Englishâwelcome wagon?
The play the fucking play! New Year's Eve! Night of Paz! â¦
Who never wrote. Never once, to me.
S and I fightâfor this? No this is the Great Year of the Phoenix of America. All this is supposed to be for
her
.