Hunger's Brides (184 page)
ERSERKERS
        R
EMEMBER THIS
. Or, if there is still a way, forget.
The iambic creak of jays nesting near Beulah's window. Pale blue walls, grey-green carpet, her bedroom's dark green curtains tightly drawn against the afternoon. The bray and screetch of swing sets in the park across the street. As we rutted on the sea floor of Beulah's darkened apartment I was sometimes afraid, just once or twice, that if she'd asked it in that instant, I would have murdered her. Brutally.
I think I know how this sounds, under the circumstances.
Such an admission conjures some sad escalation from whips to chains to whetted razors. But there were no hooks or attachments, no booted uniforms and scout knots, no ropes or scaling techniques. The topographies were the same as they've been since Eden, since Atlantis.
Everything I should ever have needed in a marriage Madeleine offered me. Throughout those early years, as long as I was passably discreet, Madeleine rarely gave me any need to lie. I was never asked to make excuses about the occasional skipped dinner or weekend conference. She wouldn't be jealous of mere sex.
For Beulah there was nothing âmere' about sex. Comparisons are invidious; analogies, the last resort of the desperate. But if in lovemaking Madeleine played the daring spelunker, Beulah was the savage who'd painted the cave.
Madeleine lacked inhibitions, Beulah burned hers like gasoline.
There was a wildness. She would strip herself so bare, always down, deeper into this primitive sea, and take me with her. I had never been there, pared of my hesitations, my crabbed, scuttling fears. I'd known nothing like it, no intensity like this until the night of Catherine's birth, when I swore to Madeleine on my daughter's eyes: No more infidelities.
Tidal, oceanic, but not Birth's violent crash of surf flinging itself up the beach. Rather, the Return. Placid, fatal undertow ⦠a first, slow penetration. Short pulse, long ebb. In and down. Back, withdraw ⦠again. Subsiding otter-glide, slippery slide over amphibian skin.
Serene, obscene, epicene.
Down through epilimnion and thermocline, down over angled hydroplanes. Bank and dive through the dark. Dive, back, dive. Again.
Here and there the flare and flicker of phosphorescence ⦠dragon fire, distant suns exploding ⦠ships' lanterns through salt fog. In and down. A throb of pressureâringing anvils, kettle drums locked in bone. A soft string of mute concussions ⦠gleam and fire of batteries from a shore. Down, retract, return. Ever deeper, brine thickening ⦠a knitting in the protein warp. A faint clutch unclutched ⦠a notch, minutely riven. Deliquescent starbursts in the flesh.
We were dying, knowing at last what it was to be alive. Two minds, one consciousness, fastened to dying animals. Our death was all around us yet
outside
. And for that hour we were not alone. Sex and deathâGod, I've made enough of a joke of things without dragging poor Sigmund in. Yeats was bad enough.
But death was not the point. We had just held up our livesâhigh up, cupped wildly beating in our hands.
Something I saw two weeks ago in Mexico shook me. It was a mistake to have followed her there. An indigenous sculptural motif as old as the feathered serpent she so often mentions. At least two thousand years. Of a youth, emerging face-first from the unhinged maw of a dragon.
Sometimes with the world about to burst to white, when we had draped ourselves in the dragon's fresh-flayed hide, our faces a berserk mask, I could look into those green and amber eyes and somewhere in them see the face of a girl, staring out at me.
UANA
I
NÃS DE LA
C
RUZ
   Â
chorus
Seraphim, come!
Come all and find
a Rose that is cut
and yet it lives on;
 that withers not
but revives
to a fierce new bloom,
one stemming from
her own deepest being;
 and so it proved a blessing
to have bent her to the knife.
Harvesters, come!
Come all and find
a Rose that is cut
and yet it lives on.
   Â
verses
Against a frail Rose
a thousand north winds contrive:
how hedged in by envy she is
in the brief hour Beauty is given to live!
 Because she is lovely, they envy,
and because she is learned, they ape:
how ancient now is this story
in a world that pays merit with hate.
Â
A thousand panting breaths
give vent to a thousand whirling blades on edgeâ
that for each fresh distinction score and mark
a great and lonely heart.
 So many deaths
against a single life conspire;
yet none meets with success,
for having sprung from cowardice and rancour;
so do not read too much into the ignorant,
blind, malignant fate
she suffers on the wheel of blades,
for with this God constructs the chariot of her triumph.
 Although the circling engine
is a cutting courtesan,
it is one whose machinations
serve to restore Catherine's fortunes.
 And to the Rose herself
it is not new, not in the least,
that upon her august splendours
pungent barbs should mount an honour guard
to mark her final glories.
UBILEE
, D
AY
37: H
ERESY
, T
HE
T
ECHNOLOGY
INT. MODERN DAYâCLIP OF LESBIAN PORN, BY WOMEN, FOR WOMEN Dom. / sub. Close focus on restraints, engines of penetrationâanal, vaginal, fisting â¦
INT. MEXICO CITYâMODERN DAY, MUSEUM OF MEDICINE, DAY Exhibition in progress, banners strung up at the entrance.
“Instrumentos Europeos de Tortura y Pena Capital.”
Long lines waiting to get in. Inside, dim floor lighting, soundtrack music from
The Mission
. A tour guide leads a small group past various exhibits. Speaking in Spanish, she pauses to model the use of certain items. Translation is unnecessary. Two women, maybe the same two from the previous scene, trail the rest of the group, handle the objects, pale, sweating, hands shaking, yet laughing.
CUT TO: The courtyard below, a group of students in jeans and T-shirts performing a silent play on the theme. From the radio in the ticket booth horn-blasts of mariachi, the volume turned up against the music from above. After a long moment, a man rushes to the second storey balcony. Very tall, heavy-set, bearded, his face contorted in anguish. Calls down furiously in Spanish at the ticket seller who shrugs, turns his music down.
INSIDE THE INQUISITION'S SECRET PRISONSâDAY Scene of savage brutality. Dominican scribes seated to one side of the action, recording all. Two women, indeterminate age. One strapped to the rack, the other on the wheel. Wheel angled such that the low point of each revolution passes directly over a flame. Light filters through one tiny window high up, near the ceiling. Light falls across high side of the wheel. The wheel spins lazily, the woman passing through sun then shadow then flame, imparts a stroboscopic effect.
The wheel is spun by public executionerâblack hood thrown back so he can sweat and breathe more freely. He is busy splitting his time between wheel and rack, making adjustments. One inquisitor stands by each, interrogating each subject, pausing frequently to give the torturer instructions, or to give the scribes time to record every cry, gesture, word, prayer, every crack of bone and cartilegeâ¦.
Partly concealed behind a latticework set high in the wall sits a hunched figure.
INSIDE A CONFESSIONALâLATER SAME DAY
The public executioner kneels, his face troubled. The hands, clasped in supplication, are meaty. Nails broken and dirty, under them what looks like red clayâ¦.
Taking his confession is Núñez, eyes glowing like embers in the semi-darkness.
INSIDE THE CONVENT LOCUTORYâLATE AFTERNOON Panel of sunlight warms the window bars and frame. Lines of black and red ants runs endlessly up and down the blinding white plaster, to and from a crack in the wall.
NÃÃEZ
Heresy, the enemy from withinâ¦. For the rooting out of heresies, Europe has developed effective, if crude, tools.
JUANA
Such contempt they must have for you, Father, to expect you to sell your eternal soul for the price of my submission.
NÃÃEZ
My superiors have instructed me to share with you my own very genuine repugnance for these methods.
JUANA
Everything is to be permitted in the name of obedience?âeven reducing God's highest creation to a dumb slavery.
This is not God's work
.
NÃÃEZ
You want me to believe you a coward, Juana, but you will bear up well under torture.
Of course, everyone breaks.
JUANA
Do you think I didn't know that even you have run afoul of the Holy Office?
NÃÃEZ
So you think you understand me ⦠but I do not think you do, since the pamphlet I was reckless enough to write has been so thoroughly suppressed.
It happened just after I first knew you. The same year I found you sobbing in the cathedral.
A pamphlet of sixteen pages. I composed it in the guise of the Blessed Virgin's secretary, writing in her behalf.
The secret trial lasted three months. Do you want to know what I wrote, Juana?
JUANA
Yes.
NÃÃEZ
It was a plea, that the women and girls of New Spain refrain from wearing provocative colours during Holy Week. The pamphlet concluded with a formula of respect. “Yours, whose feet I kiss.” The Virgin here would kiss their feet as Christ once washed those of his followers. But the inquisitor saw in my formula a lascivious intent.
You will be smiling now. But perhaps when the smile has died on your lips you will think of the danger you are in. If this could happen to me. You will imagine how much and how many of your confessions I have had to conceal. Try also to imagine how much these dissimulations have imperiled me. And how hard I have worked to keep the Holy Office from concluding your works are a hundred times more scandalous than my little pamphlet once was.
And perhaps, at last, you will understand that I cannot protect you any longerâ¦.
[rises, gropes his way toward the window]
My great impiety was only to put a few words in the mouth of the Virgin. But you â¦
JUANA
Mute, she is so much less dangerous.
NÃÃEZ
[he begins to nodâthen, whirling to face her, cries out fiercely]
Santiago!
JUANA
[startled]
¿Me darás el Santiago?
First Cortés's proclamation, now his battle cry?
NÃÃEZ
They will tear your body down, Juana, block by block, like an Aztec templeâ
JUANA
You are the one, Father, whom they have marked for the first sacrifice.
NÃÃEZ
The body you have worked so long to veil within these wallsâ
JUANA
It will be
your
heartâ¦.
NÃÃEZ
And on the same site, and with the same stonesâ
JUANA
At your life's end you would settle for this?
NÃÃEZ
They will rebuild of youâan altar to Christ.
JUANA
As they have remade you, Father? As they have allowed themselves to be remade by their own hatreds and fears? For the serpent, the woman, the Jew?
[pauses]
Do you think I do not know how they made you suffer as a novice for your creativity? Do you not know
your
legend, Father? The pains they took to purge you? The marks are all over you.
I know how much you once thirsted to complete the number, to stand among the elect.
NÃÃEZ
They will show your body to you, Juana.
JUANA
These men you now stand among, Father Núñez, are
these
the elect?
NÃÃEZ
Then they will return your body to you. They will bring you back to earth.
JUANA
I know
your
soul, Father. That is why I have loved you. Fear, respect, hatredâthese you have earned. But my love, I gave freely to what remained of that tormented youthâwho once laughed and ran, wrote verses and plays. Who once knew shame.
And is that boy not Gabriel today?
This is why you have chosen him now.
NÃÃEZ
I have taken the confessions of these men. They are not like us, Juana. They have been coarsened by their work. They are not holy.
JUANA
I have seen your fear, Antonio Núñez.
NÃÃEZ
There is a kind of complicity, things they are reluctant to do to another man, but with a womanâ
JUANA
You have seen terrible things.
NÃÃEZ
With a woman, these men's coarse spirits soar to something close to artistry.
JUANA
Now, with the end so near, you fear for your ownâand where it might soar to.
Do you really think you could be allowed to sit at God's table?âa
henchman
with blood under his nails! With this your last act?
NÃÃEZ
You will be stripped naked.
JUANA
They have made you party to monstrosities, Father, the vilest inhumanities.
NÃÃEZ
Juanita, I have seen their dead eyes. You will feel their coarse hands on your shame.
JUANA
Unspeakable crimes.
NÃÃEZ
Juana, I cannot protect you,
do you understand me?
JUANA
Your fear is why they sent you.
NÃÃEZ
Garras de gato
âthe skull cat ⦠a cap fitted with iron claws.
JUANA
What has been your harvest, Father Núñez? Lice and ticks and fleas! As you have so often said yourself.
NÃÃEZ
Each fresh turn of the screwâdrives the claws farther through the skull and into the brain.
JUANA
A harvest of gall
.
NÃÃEZ
[the faintest note of pleading]
In this case a very special brain.
La Pera
âthe âpear' comes in two sizes. One for the woman's place of shameâ
JUANA
The shame is not ours alone. Is it, Father?
NÃÃEZ
A smaller one for the place of filthâ
JUANA
You have always been a man of booksâ
NÃÃEZ
Wrought-iron, pear-shaped, when insertedâ
JUANA
A man of reasonâ
NÃÃEZ
Its sharp tines open outâ
JUANA
A man of learningâ
NÃÃEZ
Slowly tearing the vitals apart from within.
JUANA
Their methods are for you the most terrible defeatâ
NÃÃEZ
Las mordazas
. ⦠gags, branks, scold's bridlesâ
JUANA
Absolute defeat. Unto eternity â¦
NÃÃEZ
An iron mask so tightly fitted as to permit the entry of air onlyâ
JUANA
Your eyes can't conceal from me your desperation, Fatherâ
NÃÃEZ
⦠through one tiny openingâ
JUANA
So desperate to believe these crimes against our humanity can be justified.
NÃÃEZ
Easily blocked with the most playful application of a fingertip.
JUANA
But you lack their
faith
.
Like me, Father, you are consumed by doubt.
What if, however improbably, the soul existsâeternal yet not indestructible.
And in spite of all, yours still lives?
At death's door, you are astonished to discover you fear for the death of your soul.
You have discovered that these crude tools debase their user more certainlyâand irretrievablyâthan the bodies they are used upon.
You fought against this. You argued that new tools must be fashionedâthat there were already better methods!
NÃÃEZ
Like
excommunication
.
JUANA
As you've said, the Archbishop has no need of the Inquisition.
NÃÃEZ
The Inquisition offers you a stage, excommunication denies you one. And condemns you to your greatest agonyâHis
silence
.
JUANA
But they have been caught by their guile. These masters of introspection who command you.
NÃÃEZ
They insisted the dramatist in you would become their best asset. We would offer you a rehearsal of your trial.
JUANA
No, Father, you are the assetâthat the dramatist in me would see that your fear for me and your shame are unfeigned.
NÃÃEZ
You think to try me before the court of History!
JUANA
You have seen that your Church is dyingâand grows more dangerous as it dies.
And with it, your precious Order.
Because after seventeen centuries, they have forgotten the weakness in any orderâdivine or diabolicalâis our humanity.
Even you are less terrified of what they are
than of what they might still make you become
.
It seems, Father, that we are all a house divided against ourselves. But maybe that is not such a weakness, after all.
You are the flaw in their plan. Andâwho knows, Father?âthe strength in another.
NÃÃEZ
I have been party to terrible actions.
JUANA
You wanted so desperately to believe in their order, yet even this could not extinguish your love.
Reverend Father Antonio Núñez de Miranda, you are a fraud.
NÃÃEZ
You are defying me to enter history as your Judasâ
JUANA
You are not the man they would have you be.
NÃÃEZ
To be your judge.
JUANA
You are the weak link because you have loved me.
NÃÃEZ
Your executionerâ¦.
JUANA
Yes, Father. So
choose
.
[long pause]
Might your God not learn to settle for a compromise after all?
New methods, Father, for a new age. More flexible, more precise.
It might help you to think of the soul as an invention, our greatest invention. A machine, or an instrument.
Imagine this instrument to be more substantial than a hammer, harder than an anvil, though shaped from ether, not steel.
You yourself, Father, are its demonstration: greater now than your fear of the Inquisition is your fear that a soul you are not quite certain exists be damned absolutely.
NÃÃEZ
It is as they have always said. You have a man's mind in a woman's body.
JUANA
We are false converts to the Church of Reason, Father. You and I both. Woman has been brought to this faith of yours in bondage. Our minds master it but it does not feed our hearts.
But if it helps you with your oath of loyalty, imagine that these convents can be made the observatories of this new science of the soul.
For this new Jesuit science new instruments are to be forged. To convert each woman into her own Inquisitor. An auto-Inquisitor, who with saintly zeal prosecutes the heretical hungers within.
[rising to stand very close to him at the grate]
As I say, imagine this if it helps.
Or at the end of your life, have the courage to face a simpler truth: that this faith of yours does not nourish you, either.
Instead, each day, it is you who sustain this church of yours.
By feeding it your heart.