Hunger's Brides (176 page)

Really Beulah? you haven't heard of this company? they're supposed to be famous in Canada very avant-garde—
ah, por eso
—musician friends of mine met them at a huge arts centre in the Rocky Mountains. Bumphh, is the name. Is this correct? No, S. Banff. My friends helped arrange this tour. I have to help, you see? But such a strange name for a theatre company, what does Strontium Nanny mean? And how could you not want to meet them they're from
your country
and touring a play on
Sor Juana?
Why B? YBY?

Banff. Am I just supposed to call this coincidence, S, and if that's all it is, why meet them why bother?

And S answers Coincidence?—no, 1995 may be the year Old Mexico discovers
Canada!
Ah yes S and remember sleepy sentimental 1492? when the Genovese befriends the Arawak and 1519 when the Spaniard gets cozy with the Aztec…. Oh S, sweet-hearted S don't be hurt / think badly of me. How can I make you understand. I've lost interest in the Land Forgetting Forgot. The White Eden of Pretend.

[31 Dec. 1994]

S finds me in the library. Just opening the latest book by Margo Glantz. A book I've wanted for months. Straight from a full dress rehearsal S has tears in her eyes.
I have to come tonight
. If I won't come for Paz then at least for her. She asks this one favour of me. On New Year's Eve.

Beulah this place has seen everything, every Sor Juana imaginable. Last April it was Sor Juana in Mismaloya—nuns as maximum security convicts in striped pyjamas…. I understand you, B, it was hard too for me at first. But the one I saw today is the Sor Juana we have never looked for—and never seen.

She looks nothing like her. Short short hair, white-blond. Tall as a tall man. A dancer—classical training—that much is obvious
. Y una presencia arrolladora
… toughness and grace, and so vulnerable at times.

They're all wonderful! so excited to be finally here at the Claustro. I've never seen actors absorb changes so fast. They've written new lines especially for the performance here. And they move so beautifully—relaxation, precision, economy—the director calls it a kind of mantra for them. Strontium Nanny, you still haven't told me.

They're getting nervous about letting us down, B. The acoustics are bad—
y esas malditas puertas de la chingada
. Letting
us
down?—how many times have I complained about those doors—every time they redecorate another office, that's how often. Cracked and split you can see right through them to the plaza outside no wonder the sound—the rector's asked me to say a few words of thanks at the reception after. Thanks? I should be begging forgiveness for those doors.

This too, Beulah, everything that happens tonight is part of your story. You have to be there. Whether or not Paz comes.

She cares. She cares. How can I say no to her?

But how can I come like this S—in jeans with rips?

Ay Beulah, no te preocupes
, we'll be the most beautiful women there. For you I have a green dress … and tonight a red one for me. You should see the actor who plays don Carlos de Sigüenza. So handsome you'll die.

Treasure this hour of furious hemming, taking in and letting out the gorgeous long-sleeved gown of satin green—Gavin remember me in green?

In at the waist down at hem, cuff and badinage that covers up the bandages—Beulah how can you be so thin and have such breasts? Cause B's a miracle of modern medicine gryphinbride of doctor Frankenstein, stitched and surgically enhanced endowed by Dow but how can I tell this to sweet S? no just shrug and sweetly blush.

Here Beulah try this black shawl—
que preciosa. Eres de una belleza …
and S lifts her chin, remembering, from the jewel box lifts an emerald brooch … here,
querida
, I always wear it with this dress, it was my mother's. It goes with your eyes.

Oh S of the giant heart, how can you? you hardly know me. You only know my name.

Sweet sensuous S in that dress—red-velvet low slung, stretched taut over a canvas of cinnamon kid. Blue-black hair, high-boned face, fierce as a falcon mask. S your body is so beautiful in that dress. Have you ever been more lovely than this?

Maybe on my wedding night. But that was such a long time … she kisses me.

Arm in arm with S propping B on the one-block walk to the Claustro, in heels a size too big / toiletpaper-toed teetering. With every stutterstep—
exhilaration cooling cooling that ebbs out fresh miasmas of disaster. Night of Paz.

Will he come?

Pause at the gate—Beulah you're so pale. Maybe it was too soon—are you strong enough?

For you, S, only for you.

Wait let's not go in just yet. We'll go around to the plaza and sit and rest. Just for a minute. There's still time.

Thank you, S.

We sit in the plaza under a bust of Juana. Patina of brazen indestructibility. Draw strength from this. Though I no longer look for her, no longer hope to see…. How practical how brave the little brass soldier.

Children play soccer in the lower court. Past us a clutch of boys—trailing a bigger one pistoning a clattercan of spraypaint. Against the convent walls young brown men shirtless smash a handball—bruising palmslap of Indianrubber, fist thuds of onomatopoeic
goma
pock pock the dusk.

And we sit not speaking as the lanterns are lit. Bats flitting, glancing off soft columns of insects tranced in light. Indigo seeps up from the east. We founder in a lake of ink. Feels like dread as we go in.

Inside the doors at the greeting line's end stands the most stunning woman in All Creation. Auburn movie star in a navy power suit—old money, Swiss-schooled in the most ancient authority—double axe of cash and sex.

Beulah this is la Directora, my boss. Narrowing of the huge brown eyes … I'm sorry S but with Paz coming we're completely full. Your friend …

S to the rescue whisks me past. Forgive me B, but it was worth it wasn't it to see her face?

Backstage I already have a place for you near the old chancel—Backstage?—
no
.

Really, no? I want you to meet them. No no don't worry then, maybe later. There's another … Come,
ven
, this way, up in the upper choir above the nave. Up by the tech booth / electrical confessional. That's right up this little staircase I'm right behind you.

Sway up the spiral dollhouse steps to the landing. Into the light cast up the well quicksteps a guard.
Lo siento, señorita
, this is not for the public up here—

Guido, have you forgotten our friend? Blinks from S to me.
Ayy, buenas noches, Maestra. No la habia visto
. You mean she is the one last week …? But
Maestra
she looks so much better. In his face a kind of wondering. Shy smile, fingertips to his heart in a gesture of pledge. She looks … like the painting, no? Not the new one, the one up there, above the stage.

Si Guido, un poco
.

Sweet Guido slenderer than a reed ducks into the shadows to retrieve two folding chairs / flashes back before his cartoon uniform has time to follow or sag. Unfolds them at the railing, bids us sit with a low maître d' flourish, schoolboy flush.

Next to the technician's booth two men roost alike as brothers, spectacled barn owls watching us. Baleful the younger, smiling the elder nods at S who whispers to me
the playwright and the director
. Which owl is who who? spiral thread of hilarity unravelling—

The younger is a Mexican living in Canada.

They're not brothers?

No, but I see what you mean. I'll introduce you after.

No need no need.

The elder owl smiles and offers S a pull from a silver hip flask. She puts her hand over his, shakes her head.

Has she been with him?

Do you have enough light, B, do you always write everything?

All of it, get it all down. Brightlit stage near-empty—four chairs, four music stands. Columns rising from the stage, baroque scrollwork of gilt. Scrollframed portraits, gilded scenes of ecclesiasticial grapplings.

but the centrepiece … presiding queenly serene above it all, a portrait of her.

Prehispanic soundscape, clay flutes shellhorns and drums. Slow antiphon of cough and countercough in the audience. Scents of mildew, S's faint perfume. Jasmin, dust.

Why don't they start?

We're still hoping Paz will come. They say he no longer has any idea of time.

While all Mexico bends to his magnum agendum
.

Shifts of restlessness. Shriek of folding chair on stone. A murmuring. One minute, two, three. Playwright and director huddle now, fiercefaced whispering.

It's him! him! bent dwarfgod shuffles in on the arm of his queen / trailing his Nobel retinue—secretaries editors retainers poetasters poet-bodybuilders. Octavio Paz—imagine!, no hard feelings all is forgiven, even the playwright owl is smiling now, let the circus begin. House lights down.

I try I try I try not to look at him who never once wrote to me.