Hunger's Brides (61 page)

And oh the neap tide of voices rising and falling, a peso a song. Sing along. Quaver and plaint, sharp discord and flat melodrone. An intoning, a litany, a rosary, an incantation—all the heartbreak, the lovesick invocations. Now and then an angel's voice to wake us from our subcutaneous sleep. And somehow for each and all, even the most tone-deaf, we find a coin. A tiny disk of embossed foil to pass along.

Shellshocked smiles—
would you smile at me if you knew my mind?

Songs for bread. Belts cinched, one man's family eats a little less this night that another's—ranged round a guitar case—may feast on yesterday's unsold bakery. In train after train salarymen in vast transit and pilgrim families and teens shyly break out their little lunches, make self-conscious offers to total strangers. Like me.

How can I eat with you?

But how I want to.
I want to
. Why does this wound me so sweetly, make me want to weep? I glance around me to ape the right reply. How should I behave? How do I act, I am a child among you, O Mexico—old soul,
México hondo
.

To the barefoot, grimycheeked urchins—eyes like dazed fawns—I learn to give money only when changing trains. Some try to follow but they are too small in the crowds, too light, leaflike in this forest so heavy-limbed.

Were you there? Somewhere in the crowd—hiding your omnipresence, did I talk too loud? Did you sell me chicklets—thine, those glazy leaden eyes? This little compass, did its needle swing to you? I found you not. Was't from you I bought this tiny penlight to light my way each night?

Or maybe that was you sharing food—a thin day of fishing. The loaves ran out.

No, I didn't find you—but O the five million souls shunting through the underground. Shot star trailing its disastrous train in
hideous combustion down /
through the earth's honeycombed heart—abuzz awhirr adrone. Underground railroad, mine eyes have seen the glories of thy
via negativa
. Fly us to the moon and back through swisscheese skies of green. Ratheride down here with you than in a host of Elohim. In limousines.

By this upflung tide of songs, am I not washed clean? Sing me sweetly to my rest this night / I wish I may I wish I might / in these lost bones, keep and hold you for to-night … lost human race.

We who falterfall to kingdomcome in second place.

I ride and ride for hours until the shiny coins and worn-kid bills are spent, paperthin vellum treasured notes swapped for lenten songs.

I know this stop, I know this name, have known it all along—
Bellas Artes Underground
.

Night, a light rain falling.

T
AKING THE
V
EIL
        

7th day of August, Anno Domini 1668
†

T
ODAY
I, F
ATHER
A
NTONIO
N
ÚÑEZ DE
M
IRANDA
, take my share of satisfaction in a great good: to have preserved our New Spain and the Viceroy's household from the mortal peril of a great temptation. Today I convinced Juana Inés Ramírez de Santillana to take the veil. Divine Providence ordained that I be in attendance at the cathedral wherein, an hour after Prime, I found her in a state of great agitation, which in turn exerted a powerful effect on me, for here was a girl of extraordinary beauty and distinction whom I had met (though not often: she confessed also to having avoided me), and of whom I had of course heard much discussion, at the Viceregal Palace.

At first I stood outside the chapel, unsure of how to proceed as she, thinking herself alone, collapsed before the altar and gave vent to a storm of wracking sobs. Her skin, already pale, was ashen, the more so in contrast to her black hair. Her large eyes, black in the dim candlelight, were wide, filled with tears and what seemed, from where I stood, like horror. At last I entered. As I drew close she looked up and at length recognized me as the confessor of her patrons. The girl and I began to speak. Though the details of our conversation remain in confidence, I can record that she expressed herself with astonishing precision for one in her state of unconcealed disarray, and with a remarkable maturity in one so young. I had the overwhelming sense that here was one whom God had marked for a special destiny, and resolved thereat, though I am not by nature impulsive, to offer her my protection, in this way to serve as His instrument.

The child spoke of an evil that followed her everywhere, saw visions of a black beast that stalked her, dogging her every step. Though she retained a rigid control of her faculties she was also clearly in anguish. She declared she would leave this world sooner than face it again. Finally I overcame her reticence to make a confession. As I listened with unrest to the distressing tale that ensued, I knew that she must be persuaded to enter a convent, a sanctuary from the temptations and predations of the world. The Carmelite convent of San José is known for its austerity and, moved by the ease with which she acceded, I have agreed to her own suggestion that her penance there be especially harsh….

The errors you have made with this girl
. Read them again for yourself. Unforgivable mistakes for a man of your experience. After all you are not a young Theology professor anymore, fresh from the provinces—no, not fresh at all—yet on the eve of her profession, of her seclusion, you arranged all the candles on the altar yourself with the trembling hands of a young groom….

She is far more beautiful than any nun should be, and her physical beauty pales before her qualities of spirit—such clarity of mind, breadth of learning, the incomparable wealth of her talent. With such jewels as these does one stud the mitre of St. Peter. But did you really think, Fool, that it would be so easy, that the Dark One would not fight you for her every step of the way? How pleased you were with yourself, thinking to have brought her soul safely into harbour. And now you will both have to pay.

If you are to be this child's spiritual guide, you will have to begin again. Start with what you have in common. Recommence with the awareness of your own emptiness, of your essential worthlessness except in the service of a higher power. Make common cause in your war against the flesh, the enemy you and she now share. And, books … you must begin all over again with her—make them
your
ally not hers. You have both lived your lives in libraries, but where you find heretics, she finds friends, comfort, bread. Her shield of learning?—
vanity
, futility is what it is, a paper army interposed between her and God. You know her,
you know her soul
.

So how then could you have been so wrong? How could you have so misjudged the fantastic power of her concentration, her mind? You thought, separating her from her books, to put her soul on the path of Virtue. Instead you have sent it careering, spiralling down to this, to vice. Did she not warn you?—of how, deprived once of her books a few short days by doctor's order, she had quickly felt the terrible energies of her mind breaking free of their ballast. But you were so anxious to dismiss this as silly self-indulgence, excess of poetic temperament.

How can you recognize her as exceptional one minute then in the next treat her as you have all the rest?
She
begged
you to impose any penance but that one—solitude without books—one voice, her own, its echo turning round and round in ever-tightening spirals…. Thinking, thus, to humour her like some child, you permitted her one—but just one. Kircher's
Oedipus Aegyptiacus.
³⁵
You suggested others, but sinking a little deeper into your fatherly good humour you allowed your child to prevail. What harm could it cause.

She is not
your
child—you
deserve
to lose her. Seeking to dilute the power of her books, instead you concentrate all into one. You should have
seen
the signs, you must have. These dreams, first this black beast of hers and then the Sacred Heart. You told yourself nuns have these dreams all the time. Christ comes to the sleeping woman's bed, extracts her heart from her wide-open chest—excruciating pain then overwhelming joy. Three days later He returns and holding His own large, still-beating heart in His hands—those beautiful hands covered with His precious blood—he inserts the Sacred Heart. It fills her entire corpus with pulsating warmth as she weeps with the ecstasy of total communion, the absolute joining of body and soul. At last wedded to him, a true Bride of Christ.

In the morning they come and beg you to tell them it was not Lucifer.

Lucifer masquerading as Christ. You warn them against allowing their passion for Him to become too … literal, too material. You give them a special penance, the renunciation for a few days of any sustenance. They leave gratefully, smiling.

But she is not like them—is that so hard for you to remember?

You did nothing
. You heard the reports. The endless hand-washing, the fasting, mortifications increasingly severe. But
you
, you persuaded yourself they were only in just proportion to the enormity of her sins and her gifts. But her soul is not yours. Her soul is not a mathematical equation. For her, you must master new subtleties: not every battle is a frontal assault. You will not have her become an
extática
, not while her soul is in your custody. All this is your fault. And now this letter. What an unmitigated disaster.

    
Padre Antonio Núñez de Miranda
,

Collegio de San Pedro y Pablo
,

Pax Xpti,
†

Father, it is with extreme regret that I must write you about a novice whom I know you have taken it upon yourself to protect and counsel, Juana Inés Ramírez de Asbaje. After careful consideration and much prayer and consultation, I have decided that for the girl's own welfare it is necessary that we ask her to leave the convent of San José.

As Your Reverence well knows, ours is an austere order, in keeping with the vision of our founder, Saint Teresa; and the girl's harsh penitence was not at first out of keeping with it. Hours of fervent prayer, days
of fasting with only lemon water as sustenance are not uncommon with us. Neither is a certain amount of self-discipline. However, the ardour with which she has surrendered herself to these mortifications has become alarming. I must confess that to witness one so lovely become in so short a time unkempt, her hairshirt caked with the blood of scourgings … the icy baths, the hours spent praying on split knees, her gauntness … These are painful evidence of a disordered zeal. Nuns in cells adjoining hers claim she has not slept in a month. Sounds of weeping are heard issuing from her cell in the dead of night.

When these same sisters came to me about the chanting and the invocations, I felt compelled to investigate. For some weeks we clung to the hope that her fervour was for the Blessed Virgin. But the girl admits to spending entire nights poring over a tome by, I believe, a learned member of your own most esteemed and revered order. Reminded that
ours
does not tolerate the reading of books of any kind in private, she claims perhaps falsely that you, Your Reverence, allowed her to bring it in with her. It is this
pagan
—it pains me to use the word—Egyptomania that was the final straw in our decision.

By day she carries herself haughtily as though she were still at the palace, but her nights are haunted (though of this, she still admits nothing). And although she freely confesses to having broken our rules by reading, she refuses to concede that her conduct has in itself been in any way impious, or even wrong. As you must already know, it is useless to engage her in debate: no matter the extremity of her suffering and disorder, her mind burns bright and clear as the Pole star. If it were not for this, I could perhaps accept—many of the nuns here are often confused. She is not. And were it not for my deep respect and admiration for you, Father Núñez, and for all you have accomplished with the sisters of Mexico, I could not have stayed my hand this long.