Hunger's Brides (131 page)

“Tell me Gutiérrez, if the Inquisition has so much time at its disposal, why do you look like someone with so little? Is the Inquisition's time, perhaps, measured by the rise and fall of its functionaries? If I have been the path of your success, then perhaps I may yet serve your failure just as liberally….”

Showing now in his cold blue eyes was the frustration of having so nearly succeeded. For if he was out of time, I was clearly weak—after all, I had not yet asked him to leave. He had to know how close I had been to giving in, giving him something, giving him anything.

“You look more and more the desperate rat, my good friend. Do you face penalties at the Holy Office for your insufficiencies?”

The convent had seen a lot of rats as the waters rose. I'd been thinking of their morality, but I could not help seeing how Gutiérrez might take the remark as a reference to his appearance—how near both the sublime and the tragic cleave to the childish. From the first, Gutiérrez had been funny to look at even when he didn't intend it—scratching under his chin, accentuating his chinlessness, as he had just been doing. The next few minutes were quite out of character but then I did not really know what his true character was. He became vulgar, spoke of heresy as an illness, one that did not end with death—just as banishing Palavicino unbroken would not so much be to expel an ordure but pass along an infection. And as for the Inquisition's use of time, I might profitably study its employment now with Palavicino. The Holy Office was disinclined to move against him until its inquiries were completed, and would only do so if Sor Juana attempted to warn him, though she should feel free. As the only person outside the Holy Office who knew, let her choose—let her give him the truth or leave him with the illusion. So I would feel the blow twice, twice watch him fall, be in no doubt where the responsibility lay. Twice.

But if Sor Juana wanted to know why she should expect the Inquisition's patience in
her case
—did she want to hear? Then he would tell her.

There was always a certain anxiety with heresiarchs.

Since by definition they were adjudged to have the power to corrupt princes, the cases had to be handled delicately. Such investigations were likely to cost a prince or two along the way. Executions of that kind poisoned relations at court for decades. The case of the Florentine was taken up early enough, yet so leniently as to merely aggravate the problem. There had loomed a real danger of having to open proceedings against not only a Medici Grand Duke but the Archbishop of Siena, and some feared for a time for a certain Jesuit scientist named Scheiner. By which Gutiérrez was telling me Santa Cruz had shown to him—and who knew to how many others, and given them pleasure and laughter and much jollity—my letter on Apelles….

But Sor Juana was not paying attention.

Further, and as he had been saying, the corruption of the heresiarch did not necessarily end at death. One could only guess how long the Lutherans would use the Galileo matter to discredit not only the Holy Office but Catholics everywhere—making a martyr out of a monster of
vanity, crying Injustice, publishing their
Areopagiticae
, invoking the just tribunals of old. In the Vieyra case, whereas, the problem was caught too late. How the Jesuits ever allowed an insubordinate—and an ecstatic into the bargain, with these visions of a Fifth Empire—to confess the King of Portugal was a mystery and a scandal. But it had happened, and now Mexico was embroiled in the sequels to a sermon written on the other side of the Atlantic
how
long ago? One heresiarch, it seemed, begat another and then who knew how many others over time? At least in her case the potential for a problem was caught early—

Meaning. Hypothetically speaking? Yes, Gutiérrez, yes. The Holy Office had been receiving reports on a certain case for … years. From whom—how
many
years. If he would not give me a name—a year then,
when
, 1675, 1670? Oh, earlier. At the
palace?
Oh, no, before.

Before.

Consider the year 1663. But perhaps he had already gone beyond his brief. To sum up, then. Time, the Inquisition had a great deal of, a very powerful advantage. With the heresiarch, not an advantage to be surrendered too easily. Care should be exercised. This one had quite ruined one priest, with two more likely to follow, had corrupted royalty—just how many viceroys now, and vicereines?—had seduced one prince of the Church and set two more at each other's throats. It had come to poisonings. Spying with France.

To take on such a case without a measure of reluctance was a thing only the very ambitious or the foolhardy would do. Master Examiner Dorantes did not seem to be one of the latter. He was determined that the Holy Office in Mexico make its own mistakes and not repeat those of the Inquisition in Lisbon or Rome. But no one was so sure of his theology as to oppose her in print. Everyone had seen what she had done to the Prince of Catholic Orators. Proceed slowly, indirectly for as long as possible, and only with force as a last resort. Until her mind was broken. Hypothetically. It would not happen straight away. It would take time. It was the safest path. She shouldn't take it personally. He was sorry to have upset her, but she had asked. Still, she was entitled to her doubts. He admitted he had often lied to her, and was perhaps no longer credible. She would want to draw her own conclusions.

Sor Juana should study, next, the Inquisition's way of proceeding against the
beatas
, which there was every chance now she would be able to do at close range. The rumours long abroad were correct, a trial was
pending, and a sentencing: a woman had been in the Inquisition's prisons for some years now. The campaign against false sanctity was to receive more resources. There had been two secret trials in just the past few years. When? February of 1688. March of last year. I had heard nothing of this—why were we hearing about these now?

A glint of amusement. This was why they were called secret trials.

But this next one was to be different, special. There were other locations yet San Jerónimo was felt to be promising … spacious, the orchards, the
gran patio
, the home of Sor Juana. No, a date had not been set, and would not be before the Archbishop's new
beaterio
was completed. A place for unattached women of fervent faith to have their visions under a watchful eye, under lock and key. And so the trial should prove useful to His Grace in his drive to fill the new places with women of quality. Until then, Sor Juana was free to write. Indeed, please. Statements freely given, as many as she pleased. Speaking of which, did Sor Juana perhaps remember Sor María de San José, Bishop Santa Cruz's hermitess? Certain irregularities had emerged in the relation of her
Vida
. Years of visitations from the Enemy, who came to her in the form of a naked mulatto—came still, apparently. Quite prodigious. It was not at all clear to the Lord Bishop Santa Cruz that she hadn't sought these visions actively. Clearly the quality of recruits was everyone's problem.

Now if Sor Juana had nothing further for him, he should be going …

Not everything was a sign, not every sign was of a conspiracy, not every conjunction was in the stars, not every influence heavenly, not every irony was a coincidence, not every coincidence a sign.

That poor girl—struggling to be allowed to live as a holy woman in a cave, prepared to sacrifice everything to be with her Beloved, dreaming of nothing more than admission to a cloister, denied it—again and again, while for twenty years I had dreamed of escape. Had they decided to connect our fates in some way, to make examples of us? But examples of what—we were so unalike. One of us saw the Enemy as a naked mulatto and rebelled against his touch, the other had first seen him as Lucero, shining, Prince of Scholars, divided against the light within himself. And as his demon assistants read him the verses I dreamed of one day writing on the Nativity, he saw prefigured there the story of his fall.

But who in the depths of the night had not heard his mockery? Would she and I have heard him so differently? Truly, how different were
we? One who dreamed of nothing but knowing the touch of His graces, the other to touch the grace of His mind. A hermit's cave, hers, a magician's, mine. Both born in the countryside on a hacienda, both families fallen, indebted, impoverished. For her the danger was a charge of false sanctity, for me, heresy.
Via mística, via intelectual
. Write freely, write a
Vida
, as had been commanded of Teresa. For how many months had even Teresa's
Interior Castle
been torn apart line by line by her enemies at the Holy Office? The paths were separate only if we let them be. It was Teresa who had shown us this. We walk the same path, María de San José. I must warn her. Could I write?—no, send word to her through her sister at San Jerónimo in Puebla. But I could only guess what terrors she was enduring now. I might only terrify her more—in a time like this, in this frame of mind—in hers, in mine—I might only make her see in me another demon trying to deflect her from the path. Had I not heard what Gutiérrez said about warning Palavicino? They would move against her if I tried,
because
I had tried. This was the trap—the special trap for me. Two fates in my hands, and yet neither, for one was already condemned, the other I could do nothing but harm.
Stay away from her
.

The rains had continued through November of 1691 and into the following month. Before December ended I had furnished the Archbishop's secretary with the inventory and a statement of means. The other deadline, the other statement, I had allowed to pass. I would not be taking any commissions from the Inquisition that year. The first days of the new year went by anxiously. But as January wore on, I saw I had been foolish to fear the Inquisition would come for me so soon, for Gutiérrez had promised it would not be like this—that there would be time, a great deal of time. And I could neither believe nor discount what he had said. On January 26th, 1692, came the first anniversary of Palavicino's sermon at the Feast of Santa Paula. As promised, for two months he had kept his freedom, precisely because I had made no move to alert him. Or so I was to believe, that it was I who let him have his life, another day, another hour, though it was not my right. Tried, convicted and condemned, all in secrecy, he would be permitted the illusion of a normal life while his activities and alliances were more deeply probed into. Giving his sermons, having his dreams, making plans.

On February 1st the Archbishop's contractors completed his new
beaterio
, on time despite the weather. This was fact. The
beaterio
was built and
consecrated. This could not be denied. People had seen it, entered there for the inauguration. The date was February 24th … the anniversary of my profession. The timing was a reminder from the enemy that everything was orchestrated; every thought had been given to my discomfort. They were trying to involve her too in my fate, her fate in mine, in my mind. Six weeks later, on April 7th, Father Escaray went to the Cathedral to denounce the price-fixing by the Viceroy's intimates, and the hoarding of grain. Escaray had been to my locutory two days before. Fact. Coincidence—no
not
coincidence, he had come to seek my advice. There was nothing wrong with my mind. And then in the last months leading up to the riots we forgot our own concerns for a time, for this was a moment when the fate of a people was being decided.

Not all was true, not all was false. But these had become facts and observations in another science, conceived not to lessen uncertainty but to increase it, not to remake a world from first principles but to tear one down, in time. Its instruments of spirit were not
admiratio, inventio, divinatio, contemplatio
, but doubt and isolation, bitterness and suspicion, dread. Its instruments of sense were not astrolabe, compass, vacuum flask or pendulum, its instruments—that is, the work of the senses in this science—but no, these did not bear thinking about, these should be avoided by the imagination. But if I had let him, Gutiérrez would have agreed to describe them for me, in time. And with instruments such as these, with this new science, somewhere they were building a new cell for me.