Hunger's Brides (72 page)

Many things have changed since my years with Núñez, if not so many as I'd thought. The room itself I have had redone. Its three tall narrow windows still of course face west, but the grate that divided the room—and us in our cloister from the worldly—I have had torn out. The bars had run north-south, putting all three windows on the visitors' side, and in the late afternoons Father Núñez had had an unfortunate way of placing himself between me and the light—hitching a shoulder or swaying at the grate—to let the dying sun strike my eyes. So now, a light grille bisects the room from the eastern wall to the middle window, and thus runs not north-south but more or less parallel with the afternoon light. The exact angle varying slightly with the seasons. The new arrangement gives me one window, my visitors another, and the third we share, sitting together at the grille.

Since he was last here, the room seems less grim in other ways too. From the high, raftered ceiling depends a silver chandelier on the visitor's side, a gift from one of our convent's many patrons; behind an arras on the convent side is the pantry and staging area from which our guests' crystal glasses and silver cups and platters may be replenished; down the west wall runs a row of wide, cushioned benches. Two clavichords—for duets, but also so that the cantor
†
and I may work together efficiently at our commissions. Armchairs of ox hide stretched over oak, carpets to cover the cold stone floors … Flemish tapestries and a selection of maps and paintings relieve the impassive thickness of the walls. Polished cases and
cabinets lining the south wall, on both sides of the grille. Books, of course, but also the many curiosities and conversation pieces brought by visitors from the Philippines, Cathay, Europe, Perú, the missions of California and Nuevo México….

So, all in all, the arrangement of the room since the time of Father Núñez feels much less like a prison, even now. The old grate's bars were spaced barely far enough apart to permit the passage of a book, whereas our grille is carved in rosewood, beautifully, to resemble an arbour of wide-spread boughs, full-leafed and bent with pear and grape and apple. Among the branches are gaps a child or slender woman could wriggle through. I might manage it myself, for another year or two, but it is a comfort to think I could break that grille down if I needed to.

In places the enlacement of the boughs permits the most extraordinary intimacy, when there are two, especially in late afternoon. Each of us with a chair pulled sidelong, each murmuring through as we sit as if at an assignation in a private garden of warm redwood and rose … light plays in the turns of brights and darks, and as the space behind each recedes into glades of shadow and cool, we might almost forget where we are. And who.

There are rarely, now, only two.

My parlour is famed for many things, but the one I have most invested in is its gaiety. This afternoon I have several friends, all arriving separately, all appearing almost at once by different avenues, come to see how I am bearing up after this morning's sermon. A company of six fallen faces that it falls to me now to cheer. Five I have known for years. Carlos longest of all, and then our convent chaplain, but there is also the cantor, Diego de Ribera, and with him the Dean of the Cathedral. My friend Gutiérrez of the Inquisition has also come. And, for a while, Father Xavier Palavicino himself, my defender, glummest of all.

Much more significant is the list of who is not with us. Father Arellano comes only on Fridays, only for confessions, and avoids this locutory like a contagion. The Bishops of Oaxaca and Michoacan, meanwhile, have not been seen here for some months. The Bishop of Puebla was until recently a fixture here. The Archbishop, well, the Archbishop would rather wade into a lake of fire than set foot in any convent, let alone this one. Indeed such a misstep might very well hasten his eventual visit to that shore. And Father Núñez has not been here for ten years.

Haltingly Father Palavicino has begun to tell us how after his sermon this morning—right here in the street just beyond these walls—he was accosted by a self-proclaimed friend of the Inquisition. “He would not give his name.” Palavicino lowers his voice and all but glances over his shoulder. “He ranted of sacrilege and my blasphemies. In front of twenty witnesses he called the sermon
heretical—
”

If only my champion had been less brave this morning. The change in him since then is distressing. And if the long face and hushed tone were not annoying enough, he stops talking each time he hears a sound from beyond the door. Laughter in the locutory down the hall … the scrape of a watering can in the garden … footsteps.

Just then, under a sifting of road dust, a small new personage drops by on his way to the palace to present his credentials. While the dusting in his heavy moustache and brows suggests he might be the Viceroy's new baker, the fellow instead claims to be Baron Anthonio Crisafi of Sicily. In the quiet that follows the round of introductions, he says he cannot stay long. He points out what should have been casually obvious, that he has not been to the palace to present his credentials—it would be awkward if the breach of protocol were found out. And yet he shows no sign of being about to rush off. Recent days have made me perhaps too suspicious. On the evidence, he is so newly arrived he can have no idea of my current situation, and yet I wonder. There are no more innocent visits. And then he says, “That is an extraordinarily good copy of the Velázquez.”

The remark could seem natural enough. It would be easy to see why the painting has caught his eye. Across the north wall, the sun brands a narrow wedge—its tip cuts across the canvas to light up the geographer's globe. A smile, especially lustrous now, candles his simpleton's face like a child showing off a favourite toy, as by the crook of a geographic finger he bestows guileless favour on a lucky continent. The geographer's bangs are cut along the jagged hemisphere of a badly fired bowl; under the shiny tuber nose the moustache sprawls, a black caterpillar, feebly rampant. The lace collar is the white of greying snow….

“You're aware, sir, that his model for
The Geographer
was a lunatic?”

“Yes, Sor Juana, the fellow was a favourite of the King. His name escapes me just now.”

“Philip.”

“The Fourth,” Carlos adds gruffly.

Ribera almost smiles. The dean looks up mildly from a book he's been thumbing through.

There, that's a bit better
.

After a few more minutes of this I see the Baron is thinking to make an exit and to save his message for a time when we can be alone. But just how much time do I have? Being alone may be less of a problem soon enough, but at the moment this locutory is watched. Today he has come to introduce himself, but unexplained visits in the future can only invite unwelcome speculation.

I need to know who has sent him—the Countess? or even someone from my time at the palace?

Rising, the Sicilian expresses the hope he might soon return to visit America's Tenth Muse. I am so widely called that now, and for almost a decade, it should come as no surprise that he knows this, given everything else he knows. Palavicino leaves immediately after him, and as soon as he is out of earshot Gutiérrez confirms that Palavicino's accuser did indeed come by the Holy Office.

And at last it comes to me that one other person might have briefed the good Ambassador, who has perhaps just arrived, but perhaps not—or then again, has been met somewhere on the road from Veracruz. But then his interceptor would have to have known the Ambassador was coming, which suggests a network of informants, and someone persuasive enough to bend the man to his purpose.

Someone like Núñez.

“As ever, Juana, you test my loyalties—to you, to the Company, to the Holy Office—even as you mock me for my conflicts. And how you repay me, who paid for your lessons in theology! For years, they have come to me, saying, Father Núñez, if the Jesuits can give her theology but not self-discipline, discipline comes in other forms. You think you cannot be forced to name the one who brought Galileo's dialogue to you, or the explorer Columbus's journals, or Cortés's letters. As usual you think only of yourself. You do not care whom you endanger. But now to your greatest error, as you are so short of time. Yes, you very cleverly detect divisions in the Church—of policy, even of doctrine—and think to exploit them.
Divide et impera
, perhaps. But on the very point you attack, the Church is not divided at all. No, at this, you are very much working alone.”

“So you say. But at what, may I ask?”

“The sacraments, Juana. Your play.”

“An entertainment.”

“Oh yes, and so you entertain us with three theologians on your stage, quarrelling amusingly of course as theologians do.”

“Two
, Father. You keep saying three.”

“Thank you, two, the third is a mere adept of the new science, an honest broker, a Galilean who puts himself at the service of the fractious two. How could I have mistaken him for the priest of a new natural philosophy? Honest, neutral, wise, cheerful. Admirably equipped to resolve the eternal vexations of theology—the sacraments, the Passion, the
finezas
, Gethsemane, the Supper. Nothing is enough for you—you must best us all at everything, even theology. Augustine, Aquinas. Me.”

“Nothing I do, Father Núñez, is
enough
for you. Nothing pleases you anymore. You've become so unjust. Do I not give the Thomist the upper hand by giving him your—”

“That is not why you give him my restatement of Saint Thomas to speak. You do it to better me, my position.”

“Was it so futile to hope America's foremost authority on the Eucharist would be flattered? But of course, to be so praised, Your Humility must be mortified.”

“Always this cleverness, always your insolence. Now, let me spare you the inconvenience of having to formulate your subtle and undeniably original theology in terms we the unimaginative, the fearful, the simple may understand. Working together—something
you
would not understand—we have done this work to spare you the effort. Be grateful. You should marshal your energies. Nothing clever to add yet? No, of course, it is late, and you are short of time.

“Your play returns us to the hours before the Passion, to the vexatious question of Christ's greatest proof of love for Man. Is his greatest
fiineza
in giving us his undying presence in the bread and the wine, as Thomas maintains? Or, after poor simple Augustine, does it consist in dying to the world, for the world? Even as a
bride of Christ
is vowed to do. You give us the Angelic Doctor, you give us Augustine, but still you make no mention of the other great
fineza
. You do not mention the bathing of the disciples' feet. Why is that?—no, rest, I will tell you. Because later, when we your bedazzled audience
thirst
for it, you will offer us your answer.”

“Truly, Father, you find too much in it—”

“A new sacrament, a new Host—one far finer, as surely the common people will see. Because it is free. Better than bread, which we have taken as a symbol of scarcity.”

“Even I thirst to hear it now.”

“But you know already.”

“Please.”

“Water, Sor Juana. The humblest thing, the purest, everywhere free. In tears and springs and seas. Such poetry you make for us simpletons, with the simplest of things. And it has been with us
since the beginning
. We admit you are clever. You have your Hermenegild clearly, ringingly, repudiate this Arian heresy of a Christ co-eternal, co-equal with the Father, uncreated. No, indeed, you have him created by God and fashioned from nothing short of God's Free Will. So far, so much to the good—or is it. Oh yes, your case will be hard to nail down. Much like water itself. But now, with this new Eucharist of yours, you have Christ Our Lord transubstantiated in water, a kind of infusion, like tea, I suppose, a kind of witch's broth. Christ in the sacrament, the sacrament in water, water everywhere in nature, nature as Christ everywhere present—no, no, not co-eternal with God, but now
omnipresent, co-extensive
. God's love everywhere embedded within the beauty of creation.

“All nature as our temple—forest springs, rivers, rain. But no, not quite a temple, more like a … bath. A pagan bath. And all the naiads and nymphs and dryads restored to cavort again. And free, all free.

“And so you return the world to us, return us whence we had been cast out, to the garden. You make the world into an Eden of floods. Water everywhere, all is holiness—nature, existence itself is the sacrament now. What need has one for bread in Eden? What need have we for priests at sea? No—not priests but navigators, scientists—natural magicians. And they must be bold, boldness itself, to make daring from humility, from a simple washing of the feet. If we are truly to know God, we must entrust ourselves to the sea, to go beyond the humble limits of our ignorance.