Hunger's Brides (185 page)
UBILEE
, D
AY
39: S
HAGGY
B
EAST
PATIOâMORNING
Wearing a loose cotton shift, her body flowing softly beneath it, Antonia serves a contented-looking Carlos breakfast at a table beneath a fig tree. She refills his cup of chocolate, his hand reaches out and rests at her hip. She looks down at him, smiling. Smile freezes as church bells call the Sunday faithful to Mass. A loud deep tolling of twelve.
PLAZA OUTSIDE THE CONVENTâMORNING
The old woman has replaced the flowers in the altar, and is returning to her door. Sunday ball game played against the convent walls. A group of boysâlarger and even louder than usualâbegins to drift dangerously close to the altar beneath Juana's windows.
The old man emerges from the house two doors down just as the ball crashes into the altar, smashing candles, the flower vase, sending flowers flying. He chases the boys off. Bending down with difficulty, he begins to collect the flowers.
The old woman is at his side now, helping him. He straightens up, flowers in hand. She stands to face him. He is looking at her as though waiting for the answer to a question he has just asked. His lips have not moved.
INTâIN THE CONVENT LOCUTORY
Núñez enters. Leaves Gabriel to wait at the door. She is still pacing. Maybe pacing like this since he left, minutes ago, or days.
JUANA
[gently]
Truly, Father, what brings you back to me?
NÃÃEZ
The anguish I have heard in your voice for twenty-five years. It is that anguish I still hear.
JUANA
I feel a loss, an agony, an absence,
in here
. It is real. It is true.
NÃÃEZ
You thought love was wisdom.
JUANA
I
believed
it.
NÃÃEZ
That if you could only know enoughâ
JUANA
⦠and know enough of this Love, I could overcome doubt. Was this truly a sin against God? I ask you again, Father: are we so different?
Might not priest and poet share in the soul's care and custody?
NÃÃEZ
Heresy.
JUANA
[smiling gently]
Will they call me a Manichean because of my fasting? But a Manichean would not lie down with Satan.
NÃÃEZ
Then they will call you a Beguine.
JUANA
And say I refused to kneel in church?
NÃÃEZ
Or call you an adept of Valdés.
JUANA
Will they call me an Illuminist because I have sought to know His Light directly? An Arian for finding my Beloved too human?
NÃÃEZ
A vomiting blasphemer for rejecting the articles of our faith.
JUANA
And for my experiments, a necromancer.
NÃÃEZ
A Vaudois for putting yourself above any human judgement.
Think of your friends if you are convicted. You open them to charges of supporting and protecting a heretic, trafficking in heretical tractsâ¦
JUANA
Am I a heretic?
NÃÃEZ
In reason of your celebrity and stature they will call you a
heresiarch
, corrupter of princes. But you know this.
JUANA
Have I sinned against God?
NÃÃEZ
They will call you a pseudo-apostle for claiming to have brought down the floods.
JUANA
Am I a heretic, Father?
NÃÃEZ
The more serious the charge, the more inconceivable the refutation. You will be given no opportunity to repent.
JUANA
Have I sinned against God?
NÃÃEZ
Heresiarchs are burned aliveâ
JUANA
Am I a HERETIC?!
He pauses while echoes in the locutory die out, affects a casualness
.
NÃÃEZ
Juanita, we are all heretics.
Heresy is in our heads not our souls.
[he shrugs]
The soul is a shaggy, simple beast. It can be taught a few simple stepsâ
JUANA
A tarantella.
NÃÃEZ
At best, Juana, at best.
And now you must see that this way is best. With your objections conquered and your confession taken ⦠you will be left free to pursue your negative
finezas
in a new way by
not
writing,
not
studying,
not
making a scandal for onceâ¦.
UBILEE
, D
AY
40: C
ASTLE
, O
R
T
OWER
EXT. PRESENT DAY MEXICO CITYâDAY
After a night of rain. On the convent's south side, the eight lanes of Izazaga; across the street, the Vanidades boutique. A car museumâ
El Museo del Auto
âis on the corner. Hawkers, pitchmen and vendors at the Isabel la Católica subway entrance. A sidewalk market under red nylon tarpaulins.
INT. LOOKING OUT THE LOCUTORY WINDOW
Part of a book lies in the dirt beneath the window bars. A breeze ruffles its damp, sun-yellowed pages. Large red paper wasps landing on the book. From close up, wasps are seen rolling tiny strips from the page, ferrying them back to a delicate pearl-grey nest in a copse of trees a short distance from the locutory.
NÃÃEZ
My superiors are considering your propositionâ¦.
So I am to make them understand you are no threat. I am to give them my word.
JUANA
I will give them no further cause for discomfort.
NÃÃEZ
I am the weak link in the chain, after all.
JUANA
You knew this from the start. And trusted me to make you hear your own conscience.
NÃÃEZ
It seems I have counted on you to be stronger than my conscience.
JUANA
You would have heard it on your own. Eventually.
NÃÃEZ
A few years ago, I would not have.
But as I once said to you, old age does a lot of things.
JUANA
[tenderly]
You have done everything humanly possible for me.
NÃÃEZ
The inhumanities, then, I leave to younger men.
JUANA
I thought this would be easierâI thought it would be a relief. Strange to see â¦
It appears you are my last creation, Father. My last work. We are each other's.
NÃÃEZ
You have said as much as the times permit.
I am ready to believe you have this great hunger in you for a reason. You have been given a great talent, a greater mind. Perhaps even a great soul. I am in no position â¦
[rises with stiff formality]
So it is over. I can attend to my own ending. Gabriel!
Gabriel leads the hunched figure to the door, where they pause
.
NÃÃEZ
Juana, one last piece of advice. Will you think of it as from someone who once loved you?
Stop thinking of your union with Him as a merger. You are not equals. If He speaks to you, it will not be because you have made yourself worthy, but by the mysterious action of His Infinite Mercy and Grace.
She has paused, too, at the locutory's inner door. She has only half turned to hear, but turns now to answer
.
JUANA
You would accept a word from me in return?
Though I doubt, I also
believe
. I believe that the soul is the creation that shapes the world.
God is a discovery, like fire. The soul is an invention. It is the work of many, not one, and of many generations. It is the greatest of our devices, it is supple, it is strong. Like a castle, or a tower with high windows, or a music. But this work of forty centuries is not indestructible. There was a magic in its invention, there is a science in its demolition. And another in walling it inâ¦.
Look to your soul, Father, if you can believe you are possessed of one. And if you cannot, have the courage to invent one now.
ROTEST
(that, signed with her blood, the Mother Juana Inés de la Cruz made of her faith
and her love of God at the time of her abandoning worldly studies in order to
proceed, relieved of this encumbrance, along the path of perfection.)
J
UANA
I
NÃS DE LA
C
RUZ
I, Juana Inés de la Cruz, protest for now and for all eternity that I believe in one sole, all-powerful God, Creator of Heaven and Earth and all things; and I believe the most august mystery of the most Holy Trinity, that are three distinct Persons and one true God; that of these three Persons, the second, who is the Divine Word, in order to redeem us, incarnated and made himself man in the virginal womb of Mary, most Saintly, still virgin and Our Lady; and that afterwards He suffered death and crucifixion and arose from among the dead on the third day and now sits at the right hand of God the Father. I believe also that on the final day he must come to judge all men, to reward or punish them according to their deeds. I believe that in the Sacrament of the Eucharist is the true Body of Christ Our Lord; and finally, I believe all that believes and professes the Holy Mother Catholic Church, our mother in whose obedience I wish to die and live without ever failing to obey whatever she may stipulate, giving up my life a thousand times before betraying or doubting anything she may bid us believe; in whose defence I am ready to spill blood and uphold at any risk the holy Faith that I profess, not only believing and adoring it with my heart but also professing it with my mouth at any time and at any costâ¦.
And it grieves me intimately to have offended God, because of who He is and for which I love Him above all things, in whose goodness I find hope that He might pardon my sins by his infinite Mercy, and by the most precious blood that He spilled to redeem us, and by the intercession of his Mother most pure. All of which I offer in repayment of my sins; and prostrate before the divine observances, and in the presence of all the creatures of Heaven and Earth, I submit this new protestation, reiteration and profession of the Holy Faith; and I beg to serve all the most Holy Trinity that It might accept my protest and permit me to fulfil its holy commandments, just as It gave me by its grace the joy of seeing and believing its truths.
To this effect I reiterate the vow I have already made to believe and defend that the always Virgin Mary Our Lady was conceived without the stain of original sin in the first instant of her most pure being; and in this manner I believe that she herself has greater Grace and to her corresponds more glory than all the angels and saints together ⦠and prostrate, heart and soul, in the presence of this divine Lady and of her glorious Spouse, Lord Saint Joseph, and of his most holy parents Joachim and Ana, I humbly implore them to receive me as their slave, and to whom I bind myself for all eternity.
And as a sign of how much I yearn to spill my blood in defense of these truths, I sign with it, this the fifth of March of the year one thousand six hundred and ninety-four.
32
RUE
-C
RIME
S
TORIES
2
        “R
OLL THE TAPE
.”
“You're done playing â¦?”
“Roll it.”
“Serious? No more preening?”
“Roll it now, Ms Stern. Or never.”
She presses
record
. “Your lawyer's going to hate this.”
“Fuck him.”
“First say you're doing this of your own volition. Not under duress.”
“None that you bringâ¦.” He straightens in his chair. “No, I am not speaking under duress.” Let it be read into the record.
“Professor Donald Gregory, what would you like to tell us about what happened between twelve and three
A.M.
, on the night of ⦔
Portrait of a man drowning. Jonah
. No, that would be another sodden prophet, another time. God but it feels good to speak of it. A night he has kept so tightly bottled up, the night someone showed him how far he could be led, ferried him to sanity's far shores and let him join her on the ledge. And now the telling of it, confiding in Petra Stern, murmuring into the microphone. The crazy new thrill of confession, how could a hundred generations of Catholics be wrong?