Hunger's Brides (73 page)
“And who shall make the new theology, whom shall we make priestess of this new Queen of the Waters? Who shall interpret for us the mysteries of this new Sophia rising from the Galilean sea, this goddess in nature everywhere, who presents herself as beauty to all our senses.
Queen of the Bathsâin this pagan
orgy
of sensation, where to know god is to swim in god and all her sensations.
Was this your experience at the palace â¦?”
Was I wrong, was it madness, to think I could do without him? Was I to live in fear of him like everyone else hereâmy whole life? How could I work, with him coming every week to rob me of my strength, harvest it?âto milk me, his rubber tree, his adder.
Better to make of him an enemy than to let such a one near me as a friendâand arm him myself.
“You think this one of your little comedies,” Father Núñez said.
Jokes, I made in answer. For the jester and only heânot statesman, knight or princeâmay sometimes mock the Emperor. Núñez is impressive, I thought, and yes, there were many other clever ones working on my case but however much they might insist, they were not infallible. For in his exhaustive catalogue of my play's pernicious contents and sins of rebellion, Núñez had all but missed the obvious. Hercules. Ten years ago I listened to my Atlas sitting across from me, piling the weight of the world and heaven on my back, because I was not free to answer him.
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And so as not to be quite suffocated, not altogether crushed, I found myself composing, to myself, another little comedy, while he talked, while he talkedâ¦.
Something like this.
How the world pins poor Hercules, stoops the braided shoulders, bows that thewy nape, bends the water bearer beneath his earthen urnâay, what persecutions of gravity!
Herakles, pobre de tÃâ
made passive pillar, pole and axisâmortal champion reduced to Muse. While at your antipodes, lesser men sail in fitful affray west, eyes straining ever west to the world's abysmal end. Yea, would that it had an end for one who knows it round,
knows it moves
âand still, and yet, who is forced to stand, fixed point on which all the watery world spins. Ah to see that end in the stony face of Atlas coming back across the straits with apples in his cheeks, flushed with worldly success.
Ay Herakles, pobre de ti
, I thought, sitting across from him. To be sentenced to the bond service of a lesser king.
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For one act of madness. But what greater madness than to choose to bend to this man's yoke? To toil twelve years, and watch my Atlas perform the labours of Hercules.
In those twelve years since finding me weeping in the cathedral, since
he began to hone his sermons and circulars on me, his grindstone and paragonâwhat successes his service to high Heaven has brought him here on Earth. Rector of the Jesuit College of St. Peter and St. Paul, he shapes not only the New World's young Jesuits, but Jesuit policy throughout the Spanish possessions. Prefect of the Brotherhood of Mary, he dispenses his ethical and practical guidance to a dozen of the most senior officers of both Church and State. Among these Brothers of Mary have been four vice-kings, all of whom Núñez has served also as confessor. And Father Núñez confesses othersâthe archbishops of Mexico.
Bridle the head and the body will follow.
For twelve years bridled but not blinkered I had watched him while he preached submission and humility, while he quoted Augustine to me, that with great gifts comes a greater responsibilityâto endure, to be exemplary, to be strong. To suffer to lead from the rear.
While the work of Titans goes on in Europe.
Until, ten years ago, I told myself no more Hercules. No more pillars, no more
ne plus ultra
. Be their legend no longer, serve instead the daughters of the sea. Let them think me their theological Muse but quietly I will be my ownâmy own fountain, oracle and deeps.
¡SÃ, plus ultra hay!
Or so I hear myself whispering as I sat across from him that day and said nothing.
Instead I plotted to reveal myself in increments, divert them in obliques, advance the sturdy fishing fleet by infinitesimal degrees until they found themselves far far beyond the pillars of Hercules. If Núñez is suddenly so interested in the geography of the oceans, I thought, let him read the welcome I will write for our new Viceroy and Vicereine: their Excellencies the Marquis of the Lake and the Countess of Wallsâ¦.
Déjame ver â¦
how shall I title it? Something, like ⦠Allegorical Neptune.
SÃ, plus ultra, mas ultrajes, hay
. More comedies.
It was another November. Not long after my birthday. 1680.
â
probably Sor MarÃa de la Agreda, abbess, spiritual advisor to Philip IV
â
ânevertheless it moves'âwords attributed to Galileo at the close of his trial
â
cathedral musical director
UANA
I
NÃS DE LA
C
RUZ
,
“Allegorical Neptune”
B. Limosneros, trans
.
⦠This other canvas paints in bellicose
hues the Triton
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goddess,
â
once-engendered, twice-conceived,
never-born inventor
of arms and sciences;
but here in lucid rivalry
with the deity
â â
who adores the tireless
Oceanâthe Sun's foaming tombâ
whose greenblack lips' myriad kiss
spurs the dawn to greater glories,
and who, with spray and sea-spume,
Minerva's regent salt-limned foot
shods in silver buskins;
yet Minerva outrivals even Ocean,
6
and even the Great Mother, unscathed withal,
though girt in strands of seas that seethe,
no less pacific for all their teeming
than she who decks the branches of the olive tree
with signs of peace and the fruit whichâif but lightly pressedâ
yields the precious oil the bookworm worships
as the Apollo of night;
and yet if too hard pressed, hotly she burns to meet
with Athenian aegis and brutal armada
the watery warships
of the Trident â¦
November 1680. The new Vice-King and his wife made their entry through two triumphal arches,
7
theatre sets of plaster columns and effigies, painted canvases and inscriptions, all explicated in a quote-studded companion booklet running to perhaps sixty pages of verse and prose. The arch for the cathedral was designed by Sor Juana, the other arch, in the Plaza de Santo Domingo, by don Carlos Sigüenza. His eschewed the usual mythological treatment for that of historical fact. He contrasted the peaceful governance of pre-Conquest America with the bloodiness of European power. Indeed arches should not be called triumphal since “⦠never was an arch erected for anyone who had not robbed five thousand enemies of their lives ⦔ His arch was not a success. Sor Juana's, meanwhile, depicted the Viceregal couple as a beauteously proportioned Neptune
8
and Amphitrite, naked on sea shells à la Botticelli, and elsewhere as Neptune and Minerva contending in wisdom for the guardianship of Athensâ¦
.
ENTH
M
USE
T
onight, at last, he comes. February 24th, 1681. The anniversary of my profession. Of course he would come tonight.
Always the theatre of his disappearances, home to Zacatecas, to keep me waiting on the indulgence of a visit so that I may know the Reverend Father Núñez is displeased. Every Thursday night since November my locutory has lain in darkness, as a sign of deference. The other three chime with music and laughter, while the one reserved for my exclusive useâthe most notorious parlour in Christendom, as he is so fond of calling itâlies dark. But Father Núñez is not a man to be placated.
New Spain's most relentless mindâbright like a blade.
Tragalibros
,
â
they call him for his learning. Living Memory of the Company they christen him for his complete recall of all he reads and hears. There is another title that chills me. The Jesuits' Living Library.
Living Library? I have one more exactâ
Living Tomb of Tomes
. He makes hecatombs on the books I read as a girl and loved. For now comes the honour he has coveted more than all the others: the Holy Office has made this humble son of a silver miner Chief Censor. At the Inquisition there is only Dorantes to rival him.
Scratch the surface just a little, Núñez says, to read the vein of heresy in meâand how he rasps and scours,
mi escofina escolastica
,
â
to mine that vein before the others reach it. He has built his reputation on me, plundered for his oratory the spiritual journals he has ordered me to keep. But why, why does he still come? He has no more need of me. He is done playing the Father to me. Except in his absences.
Everyone fears him nowâeven our Viceroy admits to his own fear openly. At the Jesuit college the novices are reduced to whispers as their rector approachesâSssh,
el Tragalibros
, hide your books and pamphlets. Sssh, Sor Juana's confessor â¦
In those three words, I have my answer. For my fame, still am I mined; my gilt adds lustre to his hoard. But how theatrically he defuses the charge, going about in that ridiculous cassock of his, torn and threadbare, teeming with vermin. Bleeding himself like some ecclesiastical barberâhis scalpel, the flail. No,
mi escofina
, humble you are not.
Why may I not be proud, why should this be a sin? To feel pride in the exercise of God-granted gifts. Am I born in a field, was I raised among weeds? Was I cradled on a crag, am I some wild beast?
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Or am I a woman descended directly from Adam, with the rational soul that ennobles us all, that reflects as in the mirror in the lighthouseâthe panopticon of Pharosâthe greatest glory of Godâ¦.
Mind
.
Why should it have been impossible to explain this to him
of all people
, to explain myself? Why have I tried and tried? Out of gratitudeâbecause he was a father to me once, because he has loved my soul. But that was such a very long time ago. Can my simple arithmetic be so faulty, truly can it be that in the dozen years since that first day in the cathedral, he has come to me here
five hundred times?
Half a thousand times to scour my heart. Until I can no more.
And so I have sent for him. Tonight he will know I have had enough.
He comes at dusk when he comes at all, afternoons no longer. I have begun to suspect the sight is failing in those eyes the grey of cooling lead. All the long years, all the late nights of reading and banning by the mortal light of one candleâ¦. Or is it that the bonfires have been so very bright?
Tonight we will sit in the locutory without so much as a single lamp. He will not surrender the slightest advantage to me. He will not give me the satisfaction of seeing it:
The book censor will one day be blind
. At dusk he comes like an owl, like Nyctimene,
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to steal the oil from my lamps. And so it is in this dusk that I sit and brace myself, to face that face, to meet the exorbitant eyes, to see the rage under lids heavy with humility, the dry tongue, the lipless lips â¦
Courage do not fail me now.
“You asked for me.”
“It's good you've come.”
“We shall see.”
“Very well, Father, we shall. I am hearing from every quarter that you are unhappy. Is it something I've written?”
“You are writing so much these days. It must be hard for you to guess.”
“It must be hard for you to choose, with so much for you to censure, and so
manyâ¦
. I see it is official.”
“You mean the nun.”
“So we are finally saved from her
Mystical City of God
. And yet there are so many left for the Holy Office to extirpate. They pop up everywhere these days, these cities of God. Why do you suppose that is, Father?”