Hunger's Brides (181 page)

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Authors: W. Paul Anderson

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J
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 LOCATION–NIGHT

Two young women make love by candlelight, loving, tender. bed of soft cushions….

INSIDE THE LOCUTORY–NIGHT

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.

NÚÑEZ

Have you checked, Gabriel? Is this grate now like the others?

GABRIEL

Yes.

NÚÑEZ

Exactly?

GABRIEL

Exactly like the others.

NÚÑEZ

[to Juana]

Gabriel will see you do not take advantage of my blindness.

Gabriel, what do you see?

GABRIEL

She is beautiful.

NÚÑEZ

Not that–does she move freely?

GABRIEL

She seems … in pain.

NÚÑEZ

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 dear–because all that you hold dear has already betrayed you.

Do you doubt it?

JUANA

Yes I doubt it.

NÚÑEZ

Do you not feel the least bit betrayed that your friend Becerra Tanco stopped coming to see you?

JUANA

I asked it.

NÚÑEZ

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.

NÚÑEZ

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 time–testify, 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 answer–should he or
should he not
have been more forceful in warning you that day with Bishop Santa Cruz?!

JUANA

Yes.

NÚÑEZ

Your life seems to have become a lodestone for conspiracies and betrayals. Does it ever seem that way to you, Juanita? Carlos, Santa Cruz–your father's, your mother's.

And Antonia's second notebook–did 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.

NÚÑEZ

We are told by other informants here that you have mortified your flesh.

JUANA

With precision and restraint. As you once instructed.

NÚÑEZ

You weaken yourself deliberately.

JUANA

I am committed to this course.

NÚÑEZ

They tell me you have been ill. With fainting fits and seizures.

JUANA

They make too much of it.

NÚÑEZ

[rising to his feet]

Justifications, evasions–have 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.

NÚÑEZ

This is better.

Against the express wishes of the Church fathers, you once formed a sort of academy here in the convent.

JUANA

Yes.

NÚÑEZ

Admit that its purpose was to undermine our exclusivity in the instruction of its nuns.

JUANA

Yes.

NÚÑEZ

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 ‘science'–but beyond teaching them disobedience, you have taught them Sapphism.

JUANA

Her poetry, not her practices.

NÚÑEZ

You taught Sapphic love.
¡Amor nefano!

JUANA

The love I spoke of was Platonic–

NÚÑEZ

More sophistries!

JUANA

No
.

NÚÑEZ

Did you not incite the women in your charge to break their vows of chastity
with each other?

JUANA

No!

NÚÑEZ

We have obtained statements from two of your former … students.

CUT TO: INT. PRISON CELL–NIGHT

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.

NÚÑEZ

Let us begin again.

It appears one of these students is your own niece …

You still disavow any knowledge of this?

JUANA

Is she all right?

NÚÑEZ

You disavow their actions?

JUANA

I tried to be clear–that none of them should misunderstand–

NÚÑEZ

But they were less discerning.

JUANA

Is Belilla all right?!

NÚÑEZ

Less discriminating in their judgements …

JUANA

Yes …

NÚÑEZ

Do you know they both claimed inspiration from your
Sapphic Hymns?

JUANA

They've never seen a word–

NÚÑEZ

Do you understand what you have done? You were their
teacher
.

JUANA

What they would not learn from me was servility.

NÚÑEZ

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 nature–did you think just anyone could follow you?

Did you think they could follow you?

JUANA

No.

NÚÑEZ

Yet you led.

JUANA

Yes….

NÚÑEZ

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 you….

H
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 him—where 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 …
‘tonces, niña, vaya con ciudado
—take 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 elation—here at least I am
admitted
—to climb among the dead elect.

Stairs not just steep but narrowing. Masses despatched near the bottom's wide marches—ever dwindling candidature / fused taper up to the apex. But way up there only the flowery sacrifice of the fittest—bent 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 stepness—just a half-dozen more—as 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 Aztecs—its 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 here—ending 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 hills—
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 stone….

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 / Pyre—find 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 too—sandals kicked free. Between the stones, here and there small pale blooms, grey in the moonlight.

Gone the city's copper taste—an 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 starstreak—swift, serious—to the south. Into the faint glow of Mexico City.

East—strobe 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.

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