Hunger's Brides (97 page)

No, this memory I do not trust at all. But neither am I quite certain that somehow I did not see too much that day, as well as too little, and showed too much of what I saw….

No, no and no. I do not accept this. All this for some
thought
of mine
he might have guessed at? Ridiculous. This is just not good enough. Whatever happens next, I want to
know
why a friend has done this to me. And I want to know why
now
. That was
Easter
. It is almost Christmas. Why wait seven months? Easter, Christmas …

The Archbishop's cancelled sermon, his trip to Michoacan. It can't be about this.

“Antonia! Get Gutiérrez for me, please. Quickly? If you hurry you can be back by Vespers.”

I will not be going down for Vespers either. Let them think I am afraid. Let them think I am scheming. Let them think what they will.

Why
now?

If Gutiérrez had not been an officer of the Inquisition the turnkeeper would have challenged him, arriving after Vespers unannounced. Antonia shows him into the locutory. She lights a lamp over on his side of the grate and hurries down the corridor, through the porter's gate and back in, fusses with the lamp on ours….

One does not expect cheer from a visit by an Inquisitor but in the three years I have known him, this is often exactly what I have been given. A funny gnomish face, the sparse little beard, as though the entire scraggle were attached to his lower lip. I have liked him from the first, having from the first an intimation of our secret bond. He has precisely as great a vocation to be an Inquisitor as I to be a nun. He has his ideas on faith and Faith and how to serve them, but that he should find himself in his present profession still seems wildly improbable to him.

He has come quickly. Everyone has seen the letter by now. A sheen glistens on his freckled forehead. With just two lamps lit I am reminded of Núñez's visits.

Has Gutiérrez heard anything?

“His Grace is ‘home' in Michoacan. He hadn't made a formal announcement but the topic of the sermon he was to have given was no great secret either.”

“You're not telling me, Gutiérrez. Is it bad—is it as I thought?”

“Another sermon by Antonio Vieyra, yes. He must have decided to deliver this one himself, Núñez's having gone over so well.”

“He had no idea what Núñez did at the college rectory after….”

“I think we can suppose not. But His Grace of course has many … distractions.”

“Is he really so unstable? Could Santa Cruz believe this might unhinge him?”

“Who is to say it hasn't? They might be able to tell us in Michoacan tonight.”

“Can you find out?”

“We'll know soon enough, I suspect. But yes, I might find something out. This letter, Sor Juana. Very neatly done. It was also an enormous risk.”

“You do understand, this was to be about Núñez. It is Philothea's letter that makes it seem otherwise.”

“Yes, now that you have pointed it out. Publishing it is incomprehensible, as you say. In fact, I can see him finding the phantom letter, as you put it, even more maddening. But Antonio Vieyra … His Grace has been nothing if not loyal.”

“If one were to exempt everyone in Europe the Archbishop imagines he knows, one could not discuss anyone
but
phantoms. And you do see that not having heard about Núñez will have skewed his perception from the outset—”

“Clearly, clearly. And His Grace has been nothing if not a bit embarrassing. To hear him trading on his contacts—”

“He seems never to have grasped the basic point that one already expects an archbishop to have them. Like someone who cannot stop auditioning—”

“For the job he already has, yes. But I hardly think Vieyra qualifies as one of His Grace's many phantoms.”

“How so?”

The watery blue eyes blink owlishly. He seems almost to be about to tell a joke, then frowns, lightly clears his throat. “Juana. I assume you have your own copy of Vieyra's sermons.” I do. He asks to see them. Summoning the patience to indulge him his bit of theatre, I turn to send Antonia up, and find her already at the doorway….

She comes back with a single volume. Gutiérrez asks if I don't have both. I explain that as far as I know the Portuguese edition collects the complete sermons in a single volume. My heart is sinking. There is something unpleasantly familiar in this turn of conversation.

“I'm sorry. I was referring to the Spanish editions. Could you have her bring them down?”

“I don't have them.”

He thinks about this for a moment. “But surely you've seen them.”

“Any reader of Castilian should really make the effort and read Vieyra in the Portuguese.”
As I was saying to someone else a few months ago
. “What is it, Gutiérrez?”

His eyes are of a childlike roundness. “I'll let you see for yourself.” He gets up to go.“I'm sorry to drag this out but there are a few things I want to look into before it gets too late. I'll be back first thing tomorrow.”

Antonia sleeps downstairs tonight. She has been quiet since Gutiérrez's visit, as have I. After clearing away the dishes of a light
cena
, she stokes the fire and goes downstairs. Though it is dark, I find myself as often as not looking out one window or other. One to the south, from the library, another east from the bedroom, two looking east from the
sala
. I am awake when the chimes call us to Matins. It is not fully light. When Antonia does not meet me at the bottom of the stairs I go into her room, thinking she has slept through but she has gone on ahead.

In the past I have not spent much time dwelling on Archbishop Aguiar. There are unseen prospects and faces that it is as well not to contemplate too often, lest they begin to set themselves like hooks in the imagination. As has happened, apparently, in the mind of the Archbishop himself.

But now the stories of his near madness run endlessly through my mind. His famous bed of vermin … the bedding he has not allowed to be changed since his installation at his palace. His fear of poisoning. His refusal to eat food cooked by a woman's hand or to eat the meat of any female animal. His furious hatred of a woman's traces—our bodies, our perfumes, our voices, our singing. His loathing for cats. There was the time he had the flagstones of his palace replaced on the rumour a woman had walked across them while he was away at the Cathedral. The story of how his mother gave him up as an infant to be raised by the Church at the death of his father. The countless, laughable pretexts to boast of the antiquity of his family. And, of course, there is his vast acquaintance.

But now it seems I am the one who may have let her mind be overrun with fictions. It seems he has become
my
phantom, and with this letter I am now made his. A figment, a demon, and yet unlike the others, this demon is real, has a name, has a place, has taken a woman's voice and form. And now this Sor Juana incites others to follow her example, such as Sor Philothea.

But this is idle brooding. I have a more active brooding to do. These past few years the Archbishop has acted as if I did not exist, for reasons not unlike mine no doubt: for the horrible aspect the fact of my existence presents. God, O God, after the insult of this letter, after the discovery of this intrigue of an attack on Vieyra, and on top of this, the mockery these direct toward him … he will loathe and detest and abominate my very name.

The night has not been a pleasant one. Gutiérrez returns, but not first thing. It is mid-morning, windy. The sky is white, the light carries tints of faintest orange.

“Fires,” shrugs Gutiérrez. “An infestation of some kind in the crops.
Mira
. Nothing yet about the Archbishop's state of mind. I do know Núñez has left for Zacatecas and will not be back before the new year. The Spanish editions,” he says, handing them through the grille. “The '76 and the '78. See for yourself.”

“Yes?”

“The first page,” he says, watching me intently.

The first page. 1676 …

“Go on, now the other.”

1678 … Both Spanish editions of the sermons of Antonio Vieyra …
‘are dedicated by the author with respect and affection to don Francisco de Aguiar y Seijas …
Then, Bishop of Michoacan, now His Illustrious Grace the Lord Archbishop of New Spain.

Gutiérrez and I sit in silence for a while. I hold the books, closed, on my lap.

The connection is real. But it is not a connection it is
a
friendship
, and the friendship is deep. Once one contemplates the thing seriously, they do not altogether lack for things in common. The younger Jesuit who seeks a bishopric in New Spain writes to the greatest Jesuit in the New World. Now the one is Jesuit Inspector General for Brazil, the other Archbishop of Mexico. Both hated by the local authorities, though for very different reasons. But because a man is widely disliked it does not mean he has no friends. It may even be that His Grace is loved. By one man, a great man. Of an age to be his father….

“I am informed,” says Gutiérrez, “that they have been close correspondents for almost twenty years.” He scratches the red tuft under his chin but for once the effect is not comical. “His Grace's secretary is in deep shock, and will be spending the Christmas season in Michoacan condoling
with the Archbishop. Sor Juana, I cannot for the life of me tell you why, but the how is clear enough. Bishop Santa Cruz saw you did not know.”

“The whole afternoon remains gallingly unclear but I do remember we had a nice long digression. What did I think of the Spanish translation? I said one should really read him in the Portuguese. And then he used almost your exact words. ‘But the Spanish editions, you
have
seen them.'”

“To make absolutely certain.”

“And then he tested me. To see if I'd correct him, if I knew of their correspondence. Santa Cruz let it slip that the Archbishop had never so much as met Vieyra. It must have been then. The haziness could really, I think, make me scream. He claimed he had just learned of it…. He had it on unimpeachable authority,” I add, my face beginning to flush. It sounds like an excuse.

“It might even be true,” Gutiérrez says graciously.

“I'm sure it is.”

“I reread it last night. My copy.” He shakes his head. “Unpublished it could have been so effective. But this, this is about something else entirely. I've been thinking about it all night. I'm at a loss. I'll keep checking around. But I don't want to stay too long.”

“It was good of you to come. Don't make that face. Truly, I'm in your debt.”

Gutiérrez gets up to go, checks himself, turns back. His freckled hands come to rest on the back of the chair.

“Just a thought … This business of haziness, vagueness. It would be better if you did not talk about this too much.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're familiar with the guidelines for assessing mystical visions. Well, the principle is the same. The main criterion of distinction between a God-gifted vision and an intervention by the Enemy is exactly this. Clarity. Heaven forbid, but you may eventually be called to give testimony about this day. No shadows, no diabolical vagueness, only clear recollections…. Whatever you say, say it with your usual clarity.”