Hunger's Brides (136 page)

I
n the evening, I went to find Xochitl, still hoping to convince her to let Amanda come to Mexico. In the kitchen the door to the fields stood ajar. Moths whirled at the lantern glass, throwing shadows over the packed dirt of the yard. I remember that it was a clear night, the moonlight a burnish on the blades of corn. We sat at the small table, the evening's unwashed dishes piled behind us on the blue-tiled counter. Xochitl had said no for the second time, and for the second time I had asked why. Instead of answering she began to tell me of her youth, as a girl respected by her people, a fish of gold. But I had heard this. Though young, she had been a healer, was soon to be a midwife, as Amanda would be one day. I had grown impatient, for this was precisely what she had never wanted to teach me. Xochitl talked then of first meeting my grandfather, when he came to her village on the far slope of the volcano. Soon after, something had slid, and she was no longer honoured.
Tla alaui, tlapetzcaui in tlalticpac
. Fish of gold, what happened to you?

She had been returning late to the village. It was after dusk. She was pregnant. The horse, going fast, had stepped into a
toza
burrow. I saw so clearly then how my grandfather would have blamed himself for the accident, though it was something that might befall even the finest horsemen. It was only afterwards that she came to Nepantla to nurse me. Xochitl had been trying to tell me the one story I had always dreamed true, yet I was hardly listening at all, and afraid, just perhaps, to hear that she and my grandfather had done something improper. I had always thought of her as his age, her hair had been white even before his.

Something had slid, but she did not mean her fall from the horse. Something had broken but she did not mean her hip. This something had broken months before. Two Spaniards, not one. Pedro Manuel de Asbaje, Pedro Ramírez de Santillana. Two don Pedros, a father and a grandfather. Two superb horsemen, two horses … The horse was not my
grandfather's. The horse Xochitl had fallen from was my father's. Pedro Manuel de Asbaje.
Aca icuitlaxcoltzin quitlatalmachica
. Who arranged his intestines artistically.

I had heard this as a child, on a cart ride from Nepantla to Panoayan, and had vowed to resolve it for myself one day. And so I had. And now another from that time—I believed Magda: Xochitl had been trying to tell me Amanda was my father's daughter.

Even as Magda said it, smiling through the grille, I knew it to be true. Because she knew how it would hurt me to know this, now. Amanda was my sister.

Four years after I had left for Mexico I made the long return journey by ox cart only to discover Amanda and Xochitl had been sent to another hacienda. They never arrived. It was from Diego's lips I had had to hear this, and that he had sent men searching for them everywhere.

Isabel had only been waiting for me to leave. She had sent them away without so much as sending me word. I had been thinking precisely this when I saw her, riding fast along the maguey field, past the killing floor, slowing towards the house. In a moment or two, from where I sat among the trees, I saw her go in. She would have been waiting for me to come back to the house; but as the wagon staggered on, I ran to catch it, vowing never again to look back to Panoayan.

I broke that promise to myself. I looked back once, from the convent of San José, my new home among the Carmelites. And when my mother did not answer my call for help, I believed she was paying me in kind for having returned to Panoayan only to leave without speaking to her. I had never forgiven Isabel for never replying, for not coming for me. We never spoke again. Not a word ever again passed between us, not a message; never had I a kind thought for her, never did I permit myself a fond memory.

And I also believed Magda about Uncle Juan. He had promised to deliver it himself, the next day. He always kept his word. Some weeks later he was called to Acapulco on business. In the wide bay before the city, his body was found by a fisherman. Juan had not gone to Panoayan, had hesitated. He was still in love with her.

My mother never received the letter.

February 6th near dawn a light rain stopped. Father Arellano came not long after Prime. One by one the other black veils around our small patio went down to confess at the slots. Terce had come and gone. All
that morning I waited for my turn to be called. María Bernadina was the last to come back from the
craticulas
. His Paternity would see me in the locutory. I wondered if he had conquered his fear of beauty, or had been told there was less to fear. He had not agreed to see me there for years. As I entered he turned his chair to face the window bars, his shoulder to the grille.

We sat shoulder to shoulder looking into the garden, out over the rose bushes. It might have been pleasant, a visit from among the living. We might have talked about the passing of the years. I looked more closely at him. His body had run to fat, his jaw to jowls. His hair was still black at the crown, had greyed at the temples, whitened around the ears. I had forgotten that it was not just the thickness of the walls—Father Arellano, when in the presence of sin, mumbled.

“Este …
as of today, Sor Juana, you must no longer consider me your director.”

He was very sorry, but it went hard for the confessors of heretics. He said this glancing sidelong, his voice high for one of his bulk. He did not think he could face it. This I could believe, if he could not even face me; just as I could believe him a man who had just recently made his first visit to the offices of the Inquisition.

Was it true Sor Juana sought the protection of the Prefect of the Brotherhood of Mary? Yes? Then His Reverence had sent him, Father Arellano, to say that she would have to agree instantly, that day, to meet his conditions, meet them all, meet them fully, lest she soon come in for a more rounded discipline.

By what token was I to believe he came from Núñez?

Prefect Núñez had expected this. His terms were these, which Father Arellano would now try to present verbatim, that there be no misunderstanding. Having heard them Sor Juana could judge of their source for herself.

First, Sor Juana was to cease all visits to the convent archives, all study of any kind. She was herewith forbidden to read even among the saints and learned doctors of the Church. The time for Augustine was past. For the moment, as a kindness, she was to be permitted one text. Father Arellano placed it on the table that spanned the grille. If she cared to, let Sor Juana read her John of the Cross as often as she could bear. Not the verses. These she was never to read again. But
The Ascent of Mount Carmel
. This was the only mountain left for Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to
climb. All else was vanity. One candle per week would be permitted for this purpose, if she was prepared to meet the other conditions.

Which …?

Sor Juana was to cease all writing, except at the express command of her director. And this next point the Prefect had enjoined Father Arellano to make with some clarity: Sor Juana was never again to write poetry.

Not in any form, no devotional verses, no carols for the Church. This condition was not negotiable, and was never to be rescinded under any circumstances, for the rest of her days. God did not need her poetry here, and in Heaven are enough who sing.

Sor Juana would first draft a preliminary statement of guilt, in preparation for a full examination of her conscience, of all the unnumbered crimes and vilest sins of her worldly life, from the beginning…. Father Arellano was sorry. These had been the Prefect's exact words. Nothing had been forgotten. Nothing is ever forgotten under the eyes of God. Gaps, omissions were no longer to be tolerated. With even this simple condition the Prefect doubted very much she could comply, after so many years of evasions, for
the thing that hath been is that which shall be … and there is no new thing under the sun
. It was the Prefect's view that she could not change, would not. And even if Sor Juana might delude herself for a while, he was not given to delusions. Too much of the Prefect's time had been wasted on her already—his time, and that of so many others working on her case. So much waste and vanity and vexation of the spirit.

No doubt Sor Juana would want some time to make her calculations.

Vexation of the spirit…
.

It was with Magda I had first seen the Palaces of the Inquisition, the banner above the front gates, two girls flirting with the sentries … the rose-coloured church on the plaza, the workshops, the forges. It was with Magda and María that I had first learned of the great
auto
of 1649, retraced the route to the burning ground, heard described the uncanny likenesses of the effigies. It was in Magda's voice I heard whispered the names of the Grand Inquisitor and his nephew Sáenz de Mañozca, and those of the family Carvajal, Ana and her brother Luís. Magda had even learned the brother's poetry.
And from myself, without You, who would deliver me, And to You, without You, my Lord, who would carry me? …
Magda, too, was a scholar. A chronicler of family and the familiar. And it was on that day that I had first heard of the book collector Pérez de Soto, who had
also too little respected the Holy Office. She talked then of a smaller
auto
, more suitable to the edification of children, the
auto
of 1656 … the year Pérez de Soto was arrested.

Magda had made it clear from the first that she was prepared to bear witness against her own father's parents. Nor was I sure it was untrue that they had been secret Jews. If they were convicted of Judaizing, their remains would be exhumed and burned,
sambenitos
hung in their parish church, in Mexico, and in their birthplace in Spain. I did not know if even Magda could give evidence against a father she had loved, though he was beyond hurting now; but she would not hesitate against mine. Others would believe. Was this truly why he had left us, as Magda said, to escape the
auto
of 1656?

No, I would not let myself believe it, because she would know how I wanted to—which from Magda would make it false. What else did the scholar Magda know, what had she told, to whom? What lies could I refute? What truths …?

1663. This was the year, according to Gutiérrez, of the first testimony against me. For Magda, her first visit here would have been a kind of anniversary. Thirty years … perhaps to the day.
There are many working on
your case, Juana. You would be surprised to know just how many…
. Núñez had said this to me a dozen years ago. Núñez too would have known about those first files—had he been warning me even then about Magda?