Hunger's Brides (183 page)
UBILEE
, D
AY
32: T
HE
G
RAND
I
NQUISITOR
INSIDE THE CONVENT LOCUTORYâMORNING
A steady rain. From the roof's water spouts, rainwater falls onto the courtyard's flagstones. At the window, flowers bend double with their charge of rainwater. Inside ⦠mood of gloomy intimacy.
Juana enters on her knees, makes her way towards the grate. Shadows in the gaunt hollows of her face. Eyes unfocussed. Takes no heed of the two men waiting for her. Nor of the chairs that have been returned to their places.
Gabriel steps back as she reaches the grate.
GABRIEL
Father, her mouth.
NÃÃEZ
Tell me.
GABRIEL
Horrible soresâon her lips, tongue â¦
NÃÃEZ
You would make yourself mute to escape me, woman?
You would consume your own tongue?
JUANA
Does this notâ
[wincing as she looks up]
make me a cannibal, too, Father? Another charge to add to your list.
NÃÃEZ
Good. We are back to this. Cleverness. Poetic talk.
I have lost my appetite for your false confessions. As have the people, for your learning and your poetry. Your people burn with questions, they thirst with doubts. So many catastrophes coinciding, befalling one city. How to explain it? What is the
machinery
, Sor Juana? You were always one to look for that. Will you tell them it is coincidence? Surely you can better us in this.
Queen of the Sciences
âthe people have no need of your beautiful questions. Questions they have enough of on their own.
But no answers?âwe do not have the luxury. And our doubts, we are thanked for keeping to ourselves. We have responsibilitiesâas do you, who have been granted so many privileges denied others of your station. And yet you have taken so many liberties even with these.
V.O.: Then there will yet be ages of the confusion of free thought, ages of their science and cannibalism. For, having begun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end of course with cannibalism.
30
NÃÃEZ
Get up.
GABRIEL
She is feverish, Father. The infectionâ
NÃÃEZ
This science of yours infects more than your tongue.
JUANA
Not my science, Father.
[rising to her knees, a hand at the grate]
Mine would be different.
NÃÃEZ
Your insistence on
feeling
His Love, experiencing it, this also is a contamination from your science.
JUANA
Through the body there are ways of knowing.
NÃÃEZ
Our Inquisitors would agree.
JUANA
A kind of scepticism.
NÃÃEZ
Perhaps, then, they are poets too.
JUANA
A kind of eternityâ¦.
NÃÃEZ
It is doubt that eats at your heart.
Not only does your Narcissus make the divine a profanity,
you would make the vile profanities of experience out to be divine
.
JUANA
I only looked for the sublime
within
Creation. If we could but open our minds, we would find the beyond ⦠already here.
NÃÃEZ
Yes, tell them there is so much more to know than Churches, there is so much more to God than priests. No wafer, no wine, only knowledgeâcongress, communion with natureâthese are the sacraments now. And they are
free
. How the humble people will love this, who toil so for their daily breadâso sorely taxedâthe rents, the indulgences. How they will love you for this.
And how, Sor Juana, do you imagine my colleagues feel on this account? The anachronisms who are my confreres?
V.O.: Ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages and men of science that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger â¦
NÃÃEZ
By now you probably believe you can multiply the loaves and fishes, in your house of bread. Do that. Feed the masses on the manna of miracles. It is a kindness we also do.
JUANA
You would make us hungry enough to eat stones from your hand.
NÃÃEZ
Command, then, that they be made bread.
JUANA
We are not nourished. We are not fed.
[she winces, swallows]
The bread you feed us is our own flesh.
NÃÃEZ
You would teach them to feed themselves, perhaps. No, you would feed them on
attributes
.
Yes by all means, gorge them on the delicacies of your subtlety, fatten them on scepticism. Tell them He is only a non-count nounâlet them be nourished with that. Salve their hunger and their fear by telling them He is not substance at allâand not Verb but Adverbâisn't that your latest heresy?
Any lunatic can speak for a god, Juana. Ruling humanity for seventeen centuries is quite another matter.
Using the grate, she pulls herself unsteadily to her feet, ignoring the chair
.
JUANA
They will not follow you forever.
NÃÃEZ
[disdainful]
We try to take things a millennium at a time.
JUANA
You only protract your defeat for so long that it passes for victory.
NÃÃEZ
While you would correct His workâresurrect Him, if ever so briefly.
End his perfect silence, then!
Who but the strongest can follow you?
V.Oâ¦. Freedom, free thought and science, will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves; others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning at our feetâ¦.
JUANA
Your confreres mistake their contempt for strength.
NÃÃEZ
Your own strength is your weakness.
And
our
greatest strength, over time, has proved to be your despair.
JUANA
What the soul hungers for most of all is not transcendent Truth but meaningâa human meaning in the face of this.
NÃÃEZ
The soul!âwhat an ungainly, unbelievable, unnecessary appendage. Your science will soon disprove its existence â¦
V.O.: ⦠Bathed in their foolish tears, they will recognize at last that He who created them rebels must have meant to mock at them. They will say this in despair, and their utterances will be a blasphemy which will make them more unhappy still, for man's nature cannot bear blasphemy, and in the end always avenges it upon himself.
JUANA
You take your disdain as the heaviest burden of all.
Your Inquisitors use their cruelty and contempt to make martyrs of themselves.
NÃÃEZ
If you truly believe your way is better, you, who have been consumed by doubt all your lifeâif you are who and what some say, go forth and preach your message to your fellows. I can arrange easily for your release.
I offer you much more than your freedom,
I offer you the world
.
Conquer them yourself. Give them death-defying feats. But by all means, cast thyself down, from a great height, that the angels bear thee up. Pilot your
chariot. Give in to all your fantasies. Your pagan heroes will surely protect you from us.
No? Do you leave your people to find their own way?
JUANA
I will not escape.
NÃÃEZ
But you could. To your precious MarÃa Luisa in Madrid, or to France. You know we can arrange it. Anywhere you please. And think what a trophy you would make the Lutherans.
JUANA
My place is here.
NÃÃEZ
You could return in triumph when we are all dead.
JUANA
I will not live so long.
NÃÃEZ
Still playing at prophecy.
JUANA
My place is here.
NÃÃEZ
Then it shall be decided hereâ¦.
CUT TO: THE VALLEY OF MEXICOâLATE AFTERNOON, CLEARING After the rain, water glinting everywhere ⦠shallow lakes, sloughs, canals. Dry hills to the north and west. The eye rising, moving slowly east. Pine forests mounting the slopes of the two volcanoes. Snow at the peaks. Clear blue sky above. Steam and pale smoke billowing from the southernmost cone. View of another white cone farther off, the eye is speeding eastâover jungles, another white cone near the coast, a ribbon of beach, glint of sea â¦
UBILEE
, D
AY
34: R
EQUERIMIENTO
MEXICO CITYâMORNING
Indian crouched in a mud hut, kindling a tiny fire. Skeletal street dog standing dazed in the sunlight outside the door.
INSIDE THE CONVENT LOCUTORYâMID-MORNING, BRIGHT SUNSHINE Juana enters to wait for him. Her lips move soundlessly. She hardly notices his arrival. She stands at the grate, again disdaining the chair.
Núñez has begun to shuffle back and forth along the grate, leaning heavily on his cane. A shaking hand reaching out to steady himself. He will not sit before she does. Gabriel has moved to stand just a step or two behind Núñez, afraid he might fall.
NÃÃEZ
How is your cannibal tongue today? Does it hurt you to speak? It should hurt you very much now to speak. I forbid you these mutilations!
JUANA
If you would have me find such pain in pleasure â¦
Pauses to wipe her mouth roughly with the back of her hand. It comes away streaked with blood
.
JUANA
⦠why not pleasure in pain?
NÃÃEZ
Do you see, Gabriel? Do you see what we are up against here?
JUANA
There is a Dutch Jew ⦠who has said pleasure is not evil but inherently good, while painâ
NÃÃEZ
Word games, equivocations, digressionsâ
JUANA
Is evil itself.
NÃÃEZ
Self-justifications! Take note, Gabriel. All the heretic's tricksâ
JUANA
You, Father, think pain
[coughs then swallows]
is your allyâ
NÃÃEZ
Feigned bodily weakness at critical momentsâ
JUANA
But pain is still more fickleâ
NÃÃEZ
Faking even ingenuousnessâ
JUANA
More
fickle
than pleasure ⦠it serves whom it choosesâ
NÃÃEZ
Giving herself saintly airsâ
The backs of her hands and wrists are smeared. Though she still wipes at them, threads of a dark liquid run freely now down her chin and throat and into the hairshirt's neck, blackening it
.
JUANA
Your superiors think to baptize my silence. But what will it say ⦠if God takes me from you before you finish their holy work?
[turns to face him at the grate]
You look unwell, Father. You should eat something.
NÃÃEZ
[he casts about for Gabriel]
Where are you, boy? Come.
JUANA
Empty threats, Father. Bring him his chair, Gabriel.
Sit down!
You will not leave me now. As you said: we are in new territory. No more evasions.
Conquer my doubts
.
Instead of leaving, Núñez sits heavily, begins reciting, voice betraying an old man's quaver
.
NÃÃEZ
âRepresenting Charles V, his most Catholic Majesty â¦
31
I, his servant, notify and make known to you as best I can that the living and eternal God, our Lord, created the heavens and the earthâ'
He continues proclamation. Her bitter smile of satisfaction
.
JUANA
Cortés's
Requerimiento
. You know it by heart,
por
supuesto
.
NÃÃEZ
â⦠And God gave charge of all these people to one called St. Peterâ
that he should be the head of all the human race, and should love all men of whatsoever land, religion, and beliefâ'
JUANA
But now let another facultyâreasonâserve you who have served it, too, so well, Father. So obediently.
NÃÃEZ
âAnd one of his successors, as lord of all spiritual matters, made a donation of these lands you occupy, to the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabela, so that they now belong to themâ'
JUANA
You who have been its instrument, use reason now to force this conversionâthis confession from my infected lipsâ
NÃÃEZ
â⦠other countries have received and obeyed their majesties willingly and without resistanceâ'
JUANA
[mocking eyes bright]
Insert a gag between my teeth with the pure force of your arguments, Father! Claim this pagan territory for your Church.
Gabriel hovers over Núñez, peering wonderingly into his face. The young priest has seen this kind of rapture many times before, in many faces, but never Núñezâ¦
.
JUANA
Become the ram's head you promised me, Father.
Batter down my defences.
NÃÃEZ
âUnderstand and obey!
If you do this you will do well. Their Majesties and I will receive you with all love and charity.'
JUANA
Is this the best you can doâoffer promises,
bribes?
No! Command understanding, Priest!
NÃÃEZ
âBut, if you do not do this and put impediments in the way, I swear to you that with God's help, I will come among you powerfully and make war upon you everywhere and in every way that I can, and I will subject you to the yoke of obedience to the Church and their Majesties.'
The triumph in her eyes has faded. Her voice betrays exhaustion, disappointment
.
JUANA
No â¦
Convince
me. Make me
see
.
Truly, can you not do this for me?
NÃÃEZ
âI will take your persons, your women and children, and will make slaves of them and sell them or dispose of them as their Highnesses shall command.'
JUANA
We are made slaves already.
NÃÃEZ
âI will take your possessions and will damage you as much as I can, as vassals who do not obey or wish to acknowledge their sovereign, but resist and oppose him.'
JUANA
We are already damaged and bereft. Bring us to give freely of our assent.
NÃÃEZ
âAnd furthermore, I protest that the damage and death which you suffer thereby shall be your own doingâAnd not the fault of their Majesties, nor mine, nor of the knights who accompany me.
Of all I say and require of you, the scribe who writes this shall be my witnessâ¦.'
CUT TO: Cortés continuing his proclamation over a bewildered farmer tilling a stony field high up in the pass, the plains to the east filled with smoke, the hacienda of Panoayán below.
FADE OUT