Hunger's Brides (99 page)

And then the moment passes without my quite seeing it. Seizing
upon this idea of defeat as a favour, to ease his embarrassment at being beaten by a novice, I launch into my own earnest effusions on the negative expressions of God's love, the withholding of his favours, which we shall surely abuse and for which we show the foulest ingratitude. And permitting Santa Cruz to glimpse it—just the possibility of answering my insufficient gratitude for his many favours with a salutary correction, a negative
fineza
so sublime …

Is it possible that the affair turns on the fortunes of a moment? A stroke of hazard: the conjunction of a game and a chance remark. Is it possible that one without the other might not have been enough?

Six months later the opening presents itself. The Archbishop lets it quietly be known that he will follow the Maundy Thursday with a Vieyra sermon of his own. In this, Santa Cruz must indeed have seen the hand of Providence, a blessing, a sign
of favour
for his strategy, the negative
fineza
of his sacrifice. For the great players, there are days when one plays with such a brilliance. It is as if the game is guided by another hand….

Then the game is up. It was just a game: the consummate player lives to play his queen again. For I am more in need of his favours than ever. Now he will teach me a deeper gratitude. Favours I will not take so lightly. Favours I shall crave desperately. My very life is in his hands. My teacher teaching me still the ways of the game.

A lifetime of shoring up defences. A bishop blocks a priest, a vice-queen holds an archbishop in check. Then she leaves, the bishop wants promotion, it all collapses. No one expects an accounting, no one demands to hear your excuses. Just a game you lose, then disappear.

But it is not a situation that lacks for humour. One has only to work at it a bit. One may of course win a battle and lose the war. I find myself entering a new stage, exploring a more extreme hypothesis. That I, Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor, can win every battle and still lose everything.

For the game is not up at all. And he is a fool if he thinks he can control the Holy Office. He only thinks he knows where this may lead, and my redeemer may soon have to look to himself. No one controls them once they begin. It is why even kings do everything they can to give them no reason to start. Even the Sun King. Insubordination to popes is one thing, but Bishop Bossuet keeps him from offending against the Sacred Canons.

On Friday, the first leaflet appears. It is the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception, the eighth of December, 1690. Yes, Gutiérrez, let us be clear. The moment is chosen to heighten the outrage. The leaflet rants, the leaflet raves. It is signed ‘the Soldier.' Not long after, a second leaflet by the Soldier. It refers to a certain nun's
Sapphic Hymns
. Núñez. The phrase was first his, a deliberate distortion of the title, but he has been speaking against them for years. These things take on a life of their own. Their life now is blasphemy.

The leaflet inveighs against the only verse I recall having published that refers, alludes to or in any way hints of Sappho.
Sáfico
, I shall tell them, is a dactyl.

Elación
, arrogance in a woman, disobedience, ingratitude.

Now the hay cart starts to run downhill. Next come the sermons of attack. My friends scrambling to plan a defence. Better, I say, to give no answer at all. Let it lie, let it rest. So far there have just been threats. By the Feast of the Epiphany, the furore may have died down; the people will have had Christmas. It is the people the Holy Office will not see troubled. But I fear there is no stopping it.

It is the work of convents to pray for the well-being of the community that supports us. For the surrounding neighbourhoods, to take their sin and suffering upon ourselves. But now Mother Andrea calls for special prayers to be said for the convent of San Jerónimo itself, for deliverance from the threat that hangs over us, the shadow that has fallen across our good name. My fellow sisters file past the door of my cell with looks askance. They seem to find me somewhat unlucky these days. But what do they
want
from me?—to waste my life gossiping mindlessly at the convent grate? Is this so becoming of a nun? The whole convent savours seeing me stumble—
ah maybe her life is not charmed, after all, her intelligence not quite divine. Seems like she was over-reaching … perhaps she would have seen this coming if she'd lifted her head out of her books for once. So it took the Bishop of Puebla to put her in her place. At last! She wouldn't dare defy him now. She needs his protection more than ever…
.

I've
done everything they ask! Entertain the Viceroy?—I do it weakly, meekly, weekly.
She's too worldly
. I remain in seclusion.
She's too good for us, standoffish, selfish
—I hold classes, direct plays, direct the convent's finances—
she's trying to take over. Just like the Spaniards—she prefers them, you know. Like Malinche did, Cortés's whore
—so I write Mexica
tocotines
, reams of
popular verses in dialect. Now I'm pandering to the rabble.
Her mother's half-Indian they say
.

Yes, write verses, says Philothea. But write on theology. And here is a taste of how it is for women theologians, how it is when the Muse takes up the quill. Can Santa Cruz not see what Núñez has known all along?—if I take up theology they'll have me a heretic by the end of the week.

Theology was the last thing Núñez wanted. It is why he burned my journals fifteen years ago. It is how I finally escaped his command that I write for him. If Santa Cruz speaks for Núñez now, how can he ask this of me? How can they even want the same thing? What is it?
What do they want from me?

They implicate me in order to attack each other. They reconcile in order to see me punished.

Without a doubt the Archbishop wants me destroyed. The Holy Office is now at least curious, and Santa Cruz cannot be sure he can stop it. Núñez, on the other hand, has given me fair warning. He said I would destroy myself. Is this is what they want?—to see me destroy myself?

How? What would permit them to orchestrate it? What little manoeuvres and adjustments? Something I will write, something rash, ill-conceived? Something I'm writing now. Is the Saint Catherine commission a trap? Or is it something I have already written? What would hurt the most, humiliate best, give the most satisfaction, what would be their most negative finesse? Something I might refuse to give up, too intimate, too painful to let them paw over. And in refusing to hand it over, to repudiate it—and in the writing itself—all will see how the arrogant nun has brought this upon herself.

To prove their correction is just, what might I be asked to surrender? … as the ships of the alliance fill the horizon. An armada of men schooled in the affairs of the world, who send a message, who bring a lesson. To teach us our abecedario, to bring us our primers. Egypt taught us our first letters, but Athens is our first school. Lesson number one. No one stands apart. There is no neutral ground. Lesson number two. Give way to the greater force, that takes itself for a force of nature—the volcano, the quake, the flood. Lesson number three. Loyalty and justice are only questions among equals. The rest must choose. Slavery and criminal cowardice on the left. Or annihilation on the right.

Left. Or right. Decide. But we are children who know not our left from our right. Where is Athena, wise Athena now? Does she hover still over Athens, as the Dove broods upon the abyss? They come to set the dice upon us, and the dogs. Whom shall I call to defend us? Perhaps Antonio Vieyra, who saw the needs of others as no impediment to his pursuit of greatness…. Is this the irony they want me to see at the end?

D
UMPING
D
ONALD