Hunger's Brides (139 page)

The chapel bell tolled once, quietly. In the distance others sounded. A noise from below—
una india
arriving to set up her stall beneath the lantern at the grate, an infant sleeping in the sling of her
rebozo
. Fresh
tamales
and
atole
for the worshippers at Lauds.

What more could I be instructed in dispensing with? I did not need their books, if there could be only one—I did not need this book, which Núñez had poisoned now. In my mind I had the verses. Juan's and many others, many hundreds. But what of the rest?

How many stars did one require? I thought over how many I might remember, more or less, over how I should recall them, as they had been on some other night or as they were tonight? If I could fix them in my mind, tonight, hold them fast, glowing still in the simple sketches they traced in the sky, as if a finger a thousand years ago had traced them behind my eyes. Perhaps it was the constellations one remembered, not the stars. After all these years I still could not connect them, knew so few of the names by which they had been called by other peoples in other places and times. Fire-Bow,
Los Astillejos
, Orion. Taurus, Gemini. How many constellations would suffice? I wondered how I would remember Night itself. Like this, or as I had once feared it as a child? And this new night, as final and complete as the living may see, there was no way to know if it was more to be feared.

Poetic nonsense
.

And having taken out his eyes, could I at last be free of his voice in my mind?

I had thought to force the moment—but had left myself no way out. They who could wait decades had only to wait now a little while, a week, a month, to see if I would follow through. If I could, nothing in their files had changed—I was only where I had been—but if I could not, they would have the measure of my weakness, would know that I am beaten. Would know that I know it.

I wondered what it was that led me to this. Was it only pride, or weakness? No, there was something more.

It was in his messages, his taunts …
prediction, natural magic, divination
. He had something more in store, something better, someone else, after Magda—
I had to know
. What—charges they could bring against Antonia? But she had done
nothing
. Or the trial, it was to be any day now, was it the
beata
—was that it, that the charge against her was to be divination? But I could not see how that was to make for a more devastating discovery. What had I missed? Were these to be the charges against
me?
Divination, sorcery? There was the hex on Sister Paula, the
sorcerer who passed
through the classroom in Nepantla, but it was only an expression—this was childishness. What else would Magda testify to? Or had they found someone
else …
?

Another possibility had slipped into my mind, into the quiet, with a dread unlike anything I had ever felt. The one final truth the holy officers were only waiting for the moment to reveal. One last discovery. That in the Inquisition's secret prisons, in a cell whose occupant had been held for years, only to be used one day as an instrument against me, as Magda had been … a holy woman from the country, a healer, half-Indian, a midwife … that the secret within the secret trial, was that the
beata
was Amanda.

And within this vertiginous spirit there dwell such intolerable blasphemies that even in desolation it were better not to pray. Far better to kiss the dust with one's mouth … for the remembrance of past evils, the ignobility of past actions, reveals such vileness as to make the soul believe God its Enemy, and itself the enemy of God…
.

How long they have instructed me in uncertainty, how long I have been fed on doubt. When was the first lie told that brought me here, now? Days, months, weeks, thirty years, three thousand. I cannot wait longer. It must be tonight, while I have the strength to pray for strength.

I thought the answer hidden in those pages—that to know what would bring him, I had only to read with care, closely, deeply enough. But I have not solved it, because the answers were never
in
the book. The solution is the book itself. This is not about evidence or messages or instructions. It is not a question of my willingness to change or submit. It is not that he disbelieves I could be made to follow the path, but that he is afraid I could, for a time. For if it goes so hard on the confessors of heretics, how much harder on the director of the heresiarch. There is a safer path. It is as Gutiérrez said. A convergence of interests. The paths are not separate. Núñez will come when I have destroyed myself in search of answers to the false questions he has planted. This too is a kind of divination, circular discipline, a natural magic. The book serves as both method and sentence. It is his instrument. This book is killing me.

And when the work is done, the magic course is run, together will they come to pick over what is left, strip off whatever yet has worth, put away the rest. In a cupboard, or a closet.

I do not know what else to do, what else to pray for. I have lost faith that he will come at all. He may leave this work to others. How am I to pray for answers when I know no question I can trust?

No, there is one. One question … for all the answers I will never get. Who is the
beata?
One name I would give anything to know, one face I would give everything to see.

To know, to see. Can I give my eyes to see?

No one sees more clearly than blind Núñez how much I fear this place he has led me to. My mind. An empty room, a night with nothing in it. How much strength need I pray for, to lift a feather? Twice. To let the madness out.

Christian Herakles, set me free.

I will not rise from this table until I have chosen, will not leave this room until it is decided, till I have done it, or discovered I cannot and know that I am beaten.

Table. Basin. Vase.

How small has the world become. Brown. Turquoise. Red. How plain the palette. For twenty-four years I have sat at these windows overlooking the spectacle of other lives passing by. The neighbours across the way whose routines I know so well—I have never heard their voices. Never spoken with the old widow lodging in the lower rooms, helped her with her packages, exchanged greetings with the wheelwright. And I will never see more
of their lives than I have seen until tonight. The chapel bell chimes the hour. Two past midnight, three to dawn. How brief, how few the hours ahead … how long, how many, those behind.

Convent, palace, prison. The worlds in these. Firepit, pantry, library. Prolix memory. Cornfield, river, killing floor. Prolix memory, what did she want from me, for me? Her lamb.
Your eyes are good, Inés, for seeing far. But up close, you are as blind as the rest of us
. Isabel. How must it have felt for you to hear me call you that? To watch me—driven by this hunger—turning away from you, turning to Xochitl for the things she could teach? And to be deserted by my father, only to see your own father turn to me for the one thing you could not offer him?

Window, night, cloud. Three, the chapel bell. Ink, paper, quills. Take one up. Feel free. Remember …? Delicate scratch of quill over parchment. The quill's cool, lacquered shaft … unvarnished tabletop, worn to the roughness of petals. Again, more softly with ink, its pitch on the page a little lower. From the canals an ever fainter croaking. Stench of black water. Scent of flowers faded in a vase. Faint, sharp sizzling of candlewick … bare footsoles on stone slab, rough wool on skin. I sit here unmoving, a ghost haunting its body, and yet how far these senses are from extinction, keen to every fading sound and texture. Taste. Smell. Sight. Study the quill tip, its bead of ink. Not yet?

Horses. A coach crashes blindly through the streets toward some unspoken assignation.

Once I thought I had a gift, a special gift, a greatness within me.
Why
. Why give me a mind that devours my heart, enslaves me to my pride? Words—why this curse of easy eloquence? I choke on it. It has choked this cell on its wages. Books, instruments, curiosities—loyalty for trinkets. I have lent my voice to every passing cause until it no longer recognizes me. When did I agree to barter greatness for fame? Show me the contract—where have I signed it? Show me my name.

Show me my name.

Is it for this that my work has not served? Why must so many others suffer for me, so pointlessly? How do you see me—do you see me? Will you not lift, Bright Lover, your shining face to me? Beloved of my life, so happy and so new, I run to you—lover of my life, in the darkness of the night, so high and so wide … I do not find you. Where have you run? Why is there so much pain in this love you offer us? Why must we be broken to love, and crushed—why may we not love as lovers—with a love
that is our own, even one willful and rich and turbulent? Surely there is One with a heart to answer such a love. What woman ever brought a lover to love—or having lost him won it back, by waiting on her knees? Why can I not suffer this, to lie with my face in the dirt of the yard?

Four. See, you have me counting now the hours. Below, hear the
tamalera
, palms slapping flatly at the
masa
. Inspect the tip, closely, bead of ink, small globe of night. How little left to surrender. How much.

Five. For the third night running I hear the piping. Is it a festival? A day of feast on the calendar of some unfamiliar subject tribe? For three
madrugadas
running he pipes against the dawn. Three notes rising and falling, shrill—shattering insanely against the empty stones. He must be in the street just below. I lean to see. The turquoise basin slips from the table edge. I leave the shards where they lie. There is not much time. You gave me a sky to conquer—a night I now cower beneath. Why give me these gifts, then not allow me to use them? Why shower them upon me only to let me forsake them, turn them against me, upon me, abandon me to my self, my Enemy? Court freak,
mujer de placer, menina
. You bring me to the brink of this black prospect only to turn your face from me—didn't I sacrifice, didn't I try, who is the sower of discord, who is the enemy of both sides if not I?

Or am I not … me?

If I must be another, then let me be another's—if I may not be mine, make me yours, not theirs. Manipulate me magnificently, make me round and roll me in your palm, dance me and sing me divinely, let me make you laugh.

Let me make you laugh.

Hera's lunatic, God's clown. Christian Herakles, who cannot lift a feather to let the madness out.

You mock my eyes. To make them see what I have not been—and yet see nothing of what you have in store for me. He mocks these eyes. Take up the quill. Prepare to sign for him with Night. Two beads, each a small globe. Shoulder them, now, whole worlds. Take them up. Feel how light, the lightness one feather brings. What shall I write … how. Guide my hand. A sign.

Silence. The piping has stopped. Still no word. Still I must wait. As I thought … you remain hidden. More silence.

False dawn … dawn. Rest … false peace. The first light coppers the cathedral spire. Hear the map of bells.

Lauds.

Where does the piper sleep?

So I had lost, and soon enough he would know. This path, this ecstasy was not mine. I could not make myself one even to defy him. The
ecstatics
have an answer, and I only questions. No face in the darkness, no sudden illumination. I do not know who the
beata
is, or even if she exists. But whatever comes I have found an answer of sorts, a kind of negative answer lit as by a small ray of darkness. The
beata
is not Amanda.

My faith in this is unshakeable, because I choose to make it so. It is a kind of certainty.

Whatever else I may be brought to doubt or fear it will not be this. Whatever else they still wanted from me, whatever the action, whatever the surrender, if they had Amanda, and knew whom they held, they had only to show me her face and I would have done anything they asked. Until the moment she is brought before my eyes, with this love shall I be purged of this fear of the face hidden from me.