Hunger's Brides (181 page)
UBILEE
, D
AY
17: L
ODESTONE
EXT. STREETS, DUSK
Guided through the dusk by Gabriel, Núñez makes his way past a blacksmith's shop. Dim eyes drawn to the light. He pauses to watch a blacksmith hammer away at a white-hot iron, each blow casting off a shower of sparks.
INT. UNKNOWN LOCATIONâNIGHT
Two young women make love by candlelight, loving, tender. bed of soft cushionsâ¦.
INSIDE THE LOCUTORYâNIGHT
Instead of waiting outside the door, this time the young monk follows Núñez into the empty room. Sor Juana waits on her knees. Núñez approaches the newly-installed iron grate, stops, stands leaning on a cane.
NÃÃEZ
Have you checked, Gabriel? Is this grate now like the others?
GABRIEL
Yes.
NÃÃEZ
Exactly?
GABRIEL
Exactly like the others.
NÃÃEZ
[to Juana]
Gabriel will see you do not take advantage of my blindness.
Gabriel, what do you see?
GABRIEL
She is beautiful.
NÃÃEZ
Not thatâdoes she move freely?
GABRIEL
She seems ⦠in pain.
NÃÃEZ
You see Juana, your body betrays you, as always.
And by the time we are finished here, you will have betrayed everything and everyone you hold dearâbecause all that you hold dear has already betrayed you.
Do you doubt it?
JUANA
Yes I doubt it.
NÃÃEZ
Do you not feel the least bit betrayed that your friend Becerra Tanco stopped coming to see you?
JUANA
I asked it.
NÃÃEZ
He obeyed so readily! Have you heard the rumours that he, also, may be charged by the Inquisition? No? You are too isolated in here.
Does it seem implausible?
JUANA
His loyalty to the Indians ⦠it has always seemed to me dangerous.
NÃÃEZ
As it has been for others. You understand that your friend Carlos will be called to testify. And since he will not be permitted to leave this timeâtestify, he will.
[raising a hand to forestall her]
Before you deny this, you will recall how faint he has been in your defence. You do not answerâshould he or
should he not
have been more forceful in warning you that day with Bishop Santa Cruz?!
JUANA
Yes.
NÃÃEZ
Your life seems to have become a lodestone for conspiracies and betrayals. Does it ever seem that way to you, Juanita? Carlos, Santa Cruzâyour father's, your mother's.
And Antonia's second notebookâdid you really think we would not know there were
two?
[pause]
Many will be called to testify against you. Some will go reluctantly, and it will go hard with them. Still, none of them is innocent. Is this not so?
Sor Juana has little to say this evening, Gabriel. Is she unwell?
GABRIEL
She seems pale, more pale.
NÃÃEZ
We are told by other informants here that you have mortified your flesh.
JUANA
With precision and restraint. As you once instructed.
NÃÃEZ
You weaken yourself deliberately.
JUANA
I am committed to this course.
NÃÃEZ
They tell me you have been ill. With fainting fits and seizures.
JUANA
They make too much of it.
NÃÃEZ
[rising to his feet]
Justifications, evasionsâhave you anything else to say before I leave you?
JUANA
I have curried favour and used it to obstruct the wishes and injunctions of my betters. I have discovered deep within myself an antagonism towards the fathers of this Church.
NÃÃEZ
This is better.
Against the express wishes of the Church fathers, you once formed a sort of academy here in the convent.
JUANA
Yes.
NÃÃEZ
Admit that its purpose was to undermine our exclusivity in the instruction of its nuns.
JUANA
Yes.
NÃÃEZ
By teaching against the express and sagacious will of the Church you have subverted her authority.
Aside from the incalculable damage you have done teaching simple nuns mathematics and letters and the new âscience'âbut beyond teaching them disobedience, you have taught them Sapphism.
JUANA
Her poetry, not her practices.
NÃÃEZ
You taught Sapphic love.
¡Amor nefano!
JUANA
The love I spoke of was Platonicâ
NÃÃEZ
More sophistries!
JUANA
No
.
NÃÃEZ
Did you not incite the women in your charge to break their vows of chastity
with each other?
JUANA
No!
NÃÃEZ
We have obtained statements from two of your former ⦠students.
CUT TO: INT. PRISON CELLâNIGHT
Same two women, now in chains, clinging to each other for solace by lamplight. Jailer enters, leads one towards an interrogation room. Through the open door a brief glimpse of an engine of torture.
CUT BACK TO: CONVENT
Juana pacing anxiously at the back of the locutory. Núñez standing near the grate at the window, his face tilted to an evening breeze.
NÃÃEZ
Let us begin again.
It appears one of these students is your own niece â¦
You still disavow any knowledge of this?
JUANA
Is she all right?
NÃÃEZ
You disavow their actions?
JUANA
I tried to be clearâthat none of them should misunderstandâ
NÃÃEZ
But they were less discerning.
JUANA
Is Belilla all right?!
NÃÃEZ
Less discriminating in their judgements â¦
JUANA
Yes â¦
NÃÃEZ
Do you know they both claimed inspiration from your
Sapphic Hymns?
JUANA
They've never seen a wordâ
NÃÃEZ
Do you understand what you have done? You were their
teacher
.
JUANA
What they would not learn from me was servility.
NÃÃEZ
Our nuns are given the essentials! We have learned what is dangerous to teach them.
But you know better. And this bitter fruit is the result.
You are a freak of natureâdid you think just anyone could follow you?
Did you think they could follow you?
JUANA
No.
NÃÃEZ
Yet you led.
JUANA
Yesâ¦.
NÃÃEZ
You are the most celebrated nun in Christendom, the most celebrated since Teresa herself. And even
she
did not have your fame while she lived.
Your example has the power to do great good, and even greater harm.
It would not take much to encourage the Archbishop to undertake, as the mission of his final years, the extirpation of teaching in all the convents of New Spain. Nor would he lack allies in Europe. The example of your apostasy would be sufficient to make a start. Suppress or curtail teaching in convents, and the priesthood will have to take over the everyday instruction of young girls. If you would turn your back on your sisters, your niece, would you betray also your entire sex?
After all the righteous defences you have made of women's learning?
Each time a girl reaches for a book, a pious elder or priest will remind her of poor Sor Juana, apostate.
By dying unreconciled with the Church, you would make it impossible for the women who would follow youâ¦.
UMMINGBIRD
        Teotihuacan, Mexico, 1 Jan 1995
I
'VE FOUND A PLACE TO REST
at the tip of a pyramid in this city of dragons, old as Rome, Teotihuacan. The roiled road to Old Mexico is paved in security guards / one old one wakes as I stumble over himâwhere are my tiger eyes now? This site is closed, you can't go up there.
No, no more dead ends! Señorita
do you know how much money this is? I accept this for my family. But if you cause any damage in this city of my people I will die of shame, do you understand? Tell me it is for the full moon.
It is for the full moon,
se lo prometo, Abuelo
.
I have your promise then â¦
âtonces, niña, vaya con ciudado
âtake care there are snakes. If you are still around in the morning, child, I will guide you myself for free.
I can stay! and my world is an oystergleam and the moon is full but the dragons I see are stone with flower ruffs and roar silently like roaring twenties socialites in serpent skirts fusing knees, and this comes as a low-relief to me as I walk the Avenue of the Dead and start to climb the Moon's Pyramid. And I cling shortwinded to these steep steps with such elationâhere at least I am
admitted
âto climb among the dead elect.
Stairs not just steep but narrowing. Masses despatched near the bottom's wide marchesâever dwindling candidature / fused taper up to the apex. But way up there only the flowery sacrifice of the fittestâbent back over a grisly effigy of Darwin on his head. What if the Beagle had landed here? what of evolution's evolution then?
Up and up this steeped stepnessâjust a half-dozen moreâas the night pulls back at my shoulders and if I turn it will pull me screaming into its ribthroated well. At the top the string parts and pitches me face-first and gasping onto the platform still sunwarm under my palms. At last I turn to look down and out over this city long lost past longing, half a millennium back already just a rumour of lost greatness to the Aztecsâits tracings out below me now so unlike the coffeetable books and diagrams.
Avenue of the Dead that runs past the Pyramid of the Sun, yes yes it is larger, but ending hereâending here, this deadroad, at the
Moon's
Pyramid. Over there, all along the
Avenida de los Muertos
sprawls an alphabet of children's blocks. Lintels cracked friezes split / chapped frescoes cob-webbed porticos. A sliver of moon crests the hillsâ
all agleam!
the
glyph bestiaries, precincts of jaguar temples and dragon and eagle trembling now with creamy light ashimmer as if with heat released as light. Dustdevils of light / helical moonbeams in a bright miasma whispering up from a boneyard of graven stoneâ¦.
Feel the stillness here ⦠feel its hard pull down at the bone.
Stop. Look.
Feel.
See the full moon draw its clinging sheen clear of the tent-top ridge of hills. The light flares briefly as at the parting of a film of silk.
I could stay
    here
      forever.
Nothing can reach here, nothing touch me ever just this air so calm. Just this tremulous convection of moonlight not wind, sovereign sway of stillness I breathe shyly in, that fills my mouth ⦠taste it run thick like buttermilk down my throat.
Warm stone ⦠feel it ebb its heat into me. Pyramid of the Moon. Pyramid / Pyreâfind the shape of flame in stone, crayon-traced, stability's hieroglyph, see? Count the sides, count to five. Stablest configuration of lines in three dimensions. Unshakeable. Do you remember, Juana, summing the angles in your head? Do you remember the pyramids you dreamt? we dreamt together.
I lean back on my palms, texture of pumice underneath, and under my heels tooâsandals kicked free. Between the stones, here and there small pale blooms, grey in the moonlight.
Gone the city's copper tasteâan hour away. Only the smell, the tonguecloak of dust. I tilt my head back to a sky washed of all but the brightest stars, red and white blink of landing lights above, no sound. At the corner of my eye a firefly's phosphorescent wink. Two, three. Out.
Shooting starstreakâswift, seriousâto the south. Into the faint glow of Mexico City.
Eastâstrobe of headlights rounding a far bend on a hill.
Pulsefade in my ears ⦠fade, fading still, barely audible ⦠to the faintest shriek of sharpening steel.