Hunger's Brides (163 page)

This is where I will end up if I run or if I stay. They expel nuns not slaves. Running away from my rightful owner is petty theft, even if it's theft of me.

Carlos tries to make me see she's not really submitting to Núñez, she's defying him. But how?—
tell me
. See, Núñez would want moderation, control—he's already created enough
extáticos
. Nothing he despises more in all the world. Losing her to this, and losing her in death are what he really fears. These two threats he cannot walk away from, must answer for: death and rapture. Two grim levers. And she knows how to work them.

Is this supposed to comfort me?

Come away with me, Juanita, come out of here! I can't stay a second longer in this place. This stone boat is sinking—
Juana please. I won't go down with it
.

Do I dare ask this? Do you know how it feels to watch these years of
ours end? To watch him come to you instead? Can't you see how this makes me feel?

Come, Juanita, Carlos would welcome both of us.

But I already know what you'll say to me, if you'll say anything at all—the same words Carlos tells me you used with him twenty-five years ago:

Would you ask me to exchange the nun's vows against the housewife's: enclosure, poverty and chastity for enclosure, silence and servility?
⁷
What kind of bargain is this?

Carlos comes.

Antonia I was serious about what I said yesterday. I'm not prepared to lose both of you … You—we—have done everything we could. Now we've got to get you out of here.

And leave her alone in this place?

You know better than anyone she's been alone in here for a long time now.

But where would I go?

Of course you'd come to live with me.

The Bishop's whore?

You'll come as a houseservant. There'll be food enough for two. Your duties will be light. No please, don't misunderstand me. I'm not a carnal man. My demons are not insistent.

Carlos, I don't need promises—the idea doesn't horrify me, you know. But I'm embarassing you…. We could keep things simple then, if you want.

We'll have to think on how to get you out. If you were a nun, it would be harder, but as an oblate … perhaps it would be enough to find the money to repay your dowry.

Carlos, I thought maybe you already knew….

Knew?

I'm not here as an oblate. Not really.

I'm not sure I follow….

Two days later, I have him meet me at the market, partly to see if he'll actually be seen walking with me through the streets. Only walking beside him today, away from here, do I understand how lonely I have been.

Carlos wants to buy me. He's asking you to sell me to him.

I never told him, ' Tonia. You know that, don't you?

I know. He wants me to come and live with him.

Toñita, sweet friend, Carlos is right, it's time for you to go now. You should have gone a long time ago….

T
O THE
P
ASS
        

[Amecameca, Mexico, 17 December 1994]

D
ARKNESS
. My ear bent to her lips.

Daylight. Trying to see, stare down the sun.

Days of there and now / nights of here and then—recanting now incanting then. Cant and descant, these my impure orisons…. And what of dusk and dawn—liminal fall, sudden, tropical. Plunge from then to now, and back again.

Each slow noon slants to past, each midnight sloping back to soon. Too soon.

Scribbler, sort your shards of rubbletime, read and reread the same texts narrowed now to three. Juana's anthology, Octavio Paz,
The Contendings of Horus and Seth
. Dogeared trinity, final mysteries of my posthumous existence. A season, a month or two, a few more weakened weeks—to stall the engines of siege

      then rest then peace.

Now down into the there and glare of day.

Sear and gasblast of buses, dueling musics clash and churn the air to white. Powerlines and phonelines sickle-slash this alpen vista crushed beneath a redfisted dawn.

Provincial city sausage-pinched into a gutted valley. Meek streetparks euphemistic and cowed—hardpressed islands huddling in the traffic scream. Lightpoles plastered with dance posters and sunbleached mugshots of politicos in mirror shades. Two chubbycheeked cosmetologists model mother's facial cream distilled from avocado and honey.

Taxi stand in front of the church. Battered white jeep parked off to one side of the cabfile. Aging Pancho Villa slouched against the mangled grille. Who can it be but him? His banter with the passersby, brassy rail and joust with fellow drivers all down the file.

Buenos días
.

The hotel told me to look for you.

You are going up the mountain.

They say you're the only one to go right to the pass.

Not the only one, no. But the best. Here let me put that in the back. Ah a
computadora
—then we will keep the computer between us. The
doorlatch there is a little rusted—here allow me,
disculpe
I was only going to help you in.

Shall I wait a minute here?—you can see the SmokingStone very well just now, though the other is still in cloud, as it has been for days. But no, I see
señorita
is not here for the scenery.

She's seen this movie before. She's here to see it end
.

Esta bien
OK then we are off. Hornsquawk—tequila-toss of a wave in riposte—
hijos de la mierda
, they laugh at my truck those idiots in their new four-wheel drives bartered for land. Ten years theirs will be worse junk than this but the gringo will still own the land of their grandfathers. How is this a trade? This is the rape of a child who has been taught no better.
Lo siento señorita, a no ser grosero, pero asi es
. Never mind lawyers, today Cortés is an economist.

Strong dark hands on the wheel burst into flower. Incessant stream of friendly, jetstream of charm—smiles right into my eyes no squints no flinch no doubts—he talks and talks and we have known each other all our lives asking nothing about my hands this mouth.

Ask him.

Does he know where Sor Juana's hacienda is?

In Panoyá—but of course. Is there a museum like Nepantla? Sorry no, nothing like this, everything there is very old, not new at all. Slysmiled irony.

Is it on the way? Not exactly. Will you take me I can pay, just for a look.
¿Cómo no?
no extra charge, you have me for the day.

Off the highway and onto a lane of arching oaks planted as a windbreak—cinematic shuttering of oakboles, stuttered film of sunshot apple trees.

Little bridge over a grassy trickle of a stream….
The well. The wide west-facing porch. A bell tower, a little chapel …
I have seen all this in photographs. I have seen this place. Your place. In a hundred dreams. And never once dreaming the mountains were so high, so close.

¿Ya ves? Tranquilo, no
, this place of her childhood
? After Nepantla this is a tranquillity unhoped for
. You wish to stop a minute?

After the mountain. What is your name? Raúl. After, Raúl, when I come down. Thank you.

You will let me bring you then. I know the caretakers well. There are things they could explain….

First I will purge my hands of accidents.
⁸
I will come down to you fasted and lightheaded. It's enough to have seen this place, to know it exists. It is enough for now….