Of Love and Other Demons (11 page)

The Vicereine, an active and somewhat mischievous girl just past adolescence, burst into the convent like a windstorm of change. There was no corner she did not examine, no problem she did not consider, nothing good she did not wish to improve. She wandered through the convent, wanting to see everything with all the eagerness of a young novice. The Abbess, in fact,
thought it prudent to spare her the unpleasant impression of the prison.

‘It is not worth the visit,’ she said. ‘There are only two inmates, and one is possessed by the demon.’

That was enough to awaken the Vicereine’s interest. She did not care at all that the cells had not been prepared and the inmates had not been notified. As soon as her door was opened, Martina Laborde threw herself at
the Vicereine’s feet, begging for a pardon.

It did not seem probable, after one failed escape and
another that had succeeded. She had attempted the first six years earlier, along the terrace overlooking the sea, in the company of three other nuns condemned for diverse reasons to a variety of sentences. One of them escaped. This was when the windows were sealed and the courtyard beneath the terrace
was fortified. The following year, the three remaining prisoners tied up the warder, who at that time slept in the pavilion, and fled through a service door. Martina’s family followed the advice of their confessor and returned her to the convent. For four long years she had been the only prisoner, with no right to receive visits in the locutory or hear Sunday Mass in the chapel. A pardon seemed
impossible. The Vicereine, however, promised to intercede with her husband.

In Sierva María’s cell the air was still harsh with quicklime and lingering traces of pitch, but a new order prevailed. As soon as the warder opened the door, the Vicereine felt bewitched by a glacial breath of wind. In a corner illuminated by its own light, Sierva María sat in her torn tunic and stained slippers, plying
a slow needle. She did not look up until the Vicereine greeted her. In the girl’s eyes she saw the irresistible force of a revelation. ‘By the Blessed Sacrament,’ she murmured, and stepped into the cell.

‘Take care,’ the Abbess whispered in her ear. ‘She is like a tiger.’

The Abbess seized her arm. The Vicereine did not go in, but one glimpse of Sierva María was enough for her to resolve to
save the girl.

The governor of the city, an effeminate bachelor, gave a luncheon, for men only, in honor of the Viceroy. The string quartet from Spain and a bagpipe-and-drum
ensemble from San Jacinto played, and blacks in costume performed bold parodies of white dances. As a finale, a curtain at the back of the room was raised to reveal the Abyssinian slave purchased by the Governor for her weight
in gold. She wore an almost transparent tunic that heightened the peril of her nakedness. After showing herself to the ordinary guests she stopped in front of the Viceroy, and the tunic slipped down her body to the floor.

Her perfection was alarming. Her shoulder had not been profaned by the slaver’s brand, the initial of her first owner had not been burned on her back, and her entire person
breathed an air of intimacy. The Viceroy turned pale, inhaled deeply and with a movement of his hand erased the unbearable vision from his memory.

‘Take her away, for God’s sake,’ he ordered. ‘I do not want to see her again for the rest of my days.’

Perhaps in retribution for the Governor’s frivolity, the Vicereine presented Sierva María at the dinner the Abbess gave in her private dining room.
Martina Laborde had warned them: ‘Don’t try to take away her necklaces and bracelets, and you’ll see how well she behaves.’ It was true. They dressed her in her grandmother’s gown, the one she had worn when she came to the convent, they washed and combed her unbraided hair so that it trailed behind her, and the Vicereine herself led her by the hand to her husband’s table. Even the Abbess was stunned
by the girl’s elegance, her physical brilliance, the prodigy of her hair. The Vicereine murmured in her husband’s ear, ‘She is possessed by the demon.’

The Viceroy refused to believe it. In Burgos he had seen a possessed woman who defecated without pause
the entire night until she filled the room to overflowing. Trying to avoid a similar fate for Sierva María, he had her examined by his physicians.
They confirmed that she showed no symptom of rabies and they agreed with Abrenuncio that it was improbable she would contract the disease now. But no one believed himself authorized to doubt she was possessed by the demon.

The Bishop took advantage of the festivities to reflect on the memorandum from the Abbess and on Sierva María’s final disposition. For his part, Cayetano Delaura attempted
the purification that precedes exorcism and shut himself away in the library with nothing to eat but cassava bread and water. He failed. He spent delirious nights and sleepless days writing unrestrained verses that were his only calmative for the raging desires of his body.

When the library was dismantled close to a century later, some of these poems were discovered in a sheaf of almost indecipherable
papers. The first, and the only one legible in its entirety, was Delaura’s recollection of himself at the age of twelve, sitting on his student’s trunk under a light spring rain in the cobbled courtyard of the seminary at Ávila. He had just arrived from Toledo after several days on muleback, wearing an outfit of his father’s that had been altered to fit him, and traveling with the trunk
that was more than twice his weight because his mother had packed in it everything he might need to live with honor until the end of his novitiate. The porter helped him carry it to the middle of the courtyard and then left him to his fate in the rain.

‘Take it up to the third floor,’ the porter told him, ‘and they’ll show you where you sleep in the dormitory.’

In an instant the entire seminary
appeared on the
balconies overlooking the courtyard, watching to see what Cayetano would do with the trunk, as if he were the single protagonist in a play known to everyone but him. When he realized that no one would help him, he removed as many things as he could carry and took them up the steep stairs of living rock to the third floor. The proctor showed him his place in the two rows of beds
in the dormitory for novices. Cayetano put his things on the bed, went back to the courtyard and climbed the stairs four more times until he had finished. At last he took the empty trunk by the handle and dragged it up the staircase.

The teachers and students watching from the balconies did not turn to look at him as he passed each floor. But the Father Rector was waiting on the third-floor landing
when he brought up the trunk and he began the applause. The others followed suit and gave him an ovation. Then Cayetano learned that he had passed with flying colors the first initiation rite of the seminary, which consisted of carrying one’s trunk up to the dormitory without asking any questions or requesting help from anyone. His quick intelligence, good disposition and strong character were
proclaimed as examples for the other novices.

But the memory that would make the greatest mark on him was his conversation on that first night in the office of the Rector, who had arranged to see him to discuss the only book found in his trunk, its binding torn and the title page missing, just as Cayetano had discovered it in one of his father’s chests. He had read as much of the volume as he
could during the nights of his journey, and he longed to know the ending. The Father Rector wanted to hear his opinion of it.

‘I
will know when I finish reading it,’ he said.

The Rector, with a relieved smile, locked the volume away.

‘You will never know,’ he said. ‘It is a forbidden book.’

Twenty-four years later, in the gloom of the diocesan library, he realized he had read every book that
had passed through his hands, authorized or not, except this one. He shuddered with the sensation that an entire life had ended that day. Another, unpredictable life was beginning.

He had started afternoon prayers on the eighth day of his fast, when he was informed that the Bishop was waiting for him in the drawing room to receive the Viceroy. The visit was unplanned, even by the Viceroy. The
inopportune idea had occurred to him during his first excursion through the city. He was obliged to contemplate the rooftops from the flowering terrace while urgent messages were sent to nearby functionaries and some order was imposed on the drawing room.

The Bishop received the Viceroy with six clerics from his own general staff. He sat Cayetano Delaura on his right and introduced him with no
title other than his complete name. Before beginning the conversation, the Viceroy examined with commiserating eyes the peeling walls, the torn curtains, the cheap local furnishings, the clerics dripping with perspiration in their indigent habits. The Bishop said with injured pride, ‘We are the sons of Joseph the Carpenter.’ The Viceroy made a gesture of comprehension and launched into an account
of his first week’s impressions. He spoke of his illusory plans to increase trade with the English Antilles once the wounds
of war had been healed, of the benefits of official intervention in education, of promoting arts and letters and bringing these colonial outposts into harmony with the rest of the world.

‘These are times of renovation,’ he said.

Once again the Bishop had confirmed the facile
nature of secular power. He extended a trembling finger toward Delaura, not looking at him, and said to the Viceroy, ‘Father Cayetano is the person here who keeps abreast of those innovations.’

The Viceroy followed the Bishop’s finger and saw a remote expression and startled eyes that looked at him without blinking. His interest was real when he asked Delaura, ‘Have you read Leibniz?’

‘I have,
Excellency,’ said Delaura, and specified: ‘In the course of my duties.’

By the end of the visit, it became evident that the Viceroy’s greatest interest was the case of Sierva María. For its own sake, he explained, and for the peace of mind of the Abbess, whose suffering had moved him to pity.

‘We still lack definitive proof, but the acta of the convent tell us that the poor creature is possessed
by the demon,’ said the Bishop. ‘The Abbess knows this better than we do.’

‘She thinks you have fallen into a snare of Satan,’ said the Viceroy.

‘Not we alone, but all of Spain,’ said the Bishop. ‘We have crossed the ocean sea to impose the law of Christ, and we have done so with Masses and processions and festivals for patron saints, but not in the souls of men.’

He spoke of Yucatán, where
they had constructed sumptuous cathedrals to hide the pagan pyramids, not
realizing that the natives came to Mass because their sanctuaries still lived beneath the silver altars. He spoke of the chaotic mixing of blood that had gone on since the conquest: Spanish blood with Indian blood, and both of these with blacks of every sort, even Mandingo Muslims, and he asked himself whether such miscegenation
had a place in the Kingdom of God. Despite his obstructed breathing and his old-man’s cough, he ended without conceding a pause to the Viceroy, ‘What can all this be but snares of the Enemy?’

The Viceroy showed his distress.

‘The disenchantment of Your Grace is of the utmost gravity,’ he said.

‘Do not view it in that light, Your Excellency,’ the Bishop said in the most courteous manner. ‘I
am only attempting to clarify the strength of faith we require so that these peoples may be worthy of our sacrifice.’

The Viceroy returned to his original subject.

‘To my best understanding, the misgivings of the Abbess are practical in nature,’ he said. ‘She thinks that perhaps other convents would be better suited to so difficult a case.’

‘Well, Your Excellency should know that we chose Santa
Clara without a moment’s hesitation because of the fortitude, the competence and the authority of Josefa Miranda,’ said the Bishop. ‘And God knows we are not mistaken.’

‘I will take the liberty of telling her so,’ said the Viceroy.

‘She knows it all too well,’ said the Bishop. ‘What concerns me is why she does not dare to believe it.’

As he spoke he felt the passing aura of an imminent
attack
of asthma and he hastened to conclude the visit. He said he had received a formal memorandum of complaints from the Abbess, which he promised to resolve with the most fervent pastoral love as soon as his ill health allowed. The Viceroy thanked him and ended the visit with a personal courtesy. He too suffered from an obstinate asthma, and he offered his physicians to the Bishop. This did not seem
fitting to the prelate.

‘Everything that pertains to me is in the hands of God,’ he said. ‘I have reached the age at which the Virgin died.’

In contrast to their greetings, their leave-taking was slow and ceremonious. Three of the clerics, Delaura among them, accompanied the Viceroy in silence along the lugubrious corridors to the main entrance. The viceregal guard kept the beggars at bay with
a wall of crossed halberds. Before climbing into his carriage, the Viceroy turned to Delaura, pointed at him with an unappealable finger, and said, ‘Do not allow me to forget you.’

His words were so unexpected and enigmatic that Delaura could do no more than bow in response.

The Viceroy drove to the convent to tell the Abbess the outcome of his visit. Some hours later, as he was about to leave,
he refused to pardon Martina Laborde, despite the repeated pleas of the Vicereine, because he thought it would set a bad precedent for the many people incarcerated for lesser crimes whom he had found in other prisons.

The Bishop had closed his eyes, leaning forward in an effort to calm his whistling breath, until Delaura returned. His assistants had withdrawn on tiptoe, and the drawing room was
in shadow. When the Bishop looked around,
he saw vacant chairs lined against the wall and no one but Cayetano in the room. In a very low voice he asked, ‘Have we ever seen so good a man?’

Delaura responded with an ambiguous gesture. The Bishop struggled into an upright position and then leaned against the arm of the chair until he could control his breathing. He wanted no supper. Delaura brought
a candle to light the way to his bedroom.