Hunger's Brides

by W. Paul Anderson

  Heady indeed the atmosphere in a nunnery housing up to five hundred cloistered women: as many as a hundred and fifty brides of Christ, along with, as their servants and slaves, three to four hundred more mulattas, indias, and mestizas … for the most part poor and vulnerable. In most of New Spain’s convents, a communal religious life was rather the exception. The cells of the wealthiest nuns were two-storey apartments with inner staircases connecting the kitchens, bathtubs, water closets and servants’ niches to the extensive sitting, dining and sleeping rooms above. The ratio of servants to nuns was as high as five to one. To round out the household, there often figured either girls from the convent school or else a class of women intriguingly designated as ‘favourites.’

  And so even today, images of the cloister-as-devil’s-playground linger, due at least in part to our own idle misconceptions. What do they do in there? we wonder. Idle hands … In actuality Mexico’s convents were a veritable font of good works, nourishing much of the continent’s educational infrastructure, alimenting ceaseless missions of charity, and, perhaps most significantly, preserving islands of decent entertainment amid the bullfights and the charnel houses.

  Girls under the nuns’ tutelage performed uplifting plays and concerts for the public, while into the convents’ locutories streamed a sparkling file of aristocrats and rich burghers to hear music, recitations of poetry and elevating conversation. So although the occasional misadventure was not unforeseeable, it was far from being the norm. In fact it might be fairly said that without the civilizing influence of its convents, Mexico City would have appeared less a polished colonial jewel than a coarse and fractious Wild West boomtown, for a boomtown it was.

  Convents were also hives of industry, teeming with stalwarts producing handicrafts and wines for the communal purse and cultivating orchards for the confection of conserves and sweetmeats, both for sale and for the liberal delectation of convent visitors. Only natural then that such worldly occupations should give rise periodically to financial and political intrigues. Cases of nuns charged with plotting—even carrying out—the murder of a fellow sister, or less frequently a prioress are not unknown, in the annals of the Church.

  The darker current of convent life that Pfandl presents undoubtedly existed, a potent decoction of sexual repression and spiritual hunger. To this day something inexpressibly poignant—a palpable, honey-sweet longing—clings to the term bride of Christ. But, even here, there exist alternative renderings. Judith C. Brown’s Immodest Acts: the Life of a Lesbian Nun in 17th-Century Tuscany is a model of just proportion that glosses over neither the baroque contradictions in the spirituality of one Sister Benedetta, nor the persecutions she was brought to suffer. Brown is a paragon of scholarly restraint in her handling of scenes such as one in which an abbess reads out a sermon while her repentant charges lay on the whip.

  In Pfandl, on the other hand, we find both the tone of dubious regret and the whiff of pious sadism we might recognize from the five o’clock newscast. In Pfandl’s seventeenth-century convents, even a lenient one such as that chronicled by Carlos Sigüenza, the inmates hunger for miracles. What’s more (and lest this seem too strong, Pfandl soon cites Sigüenza’s findings at length), many holy sisters thirst for blood: ‘to see it, to smell it and dearer still to spill it in a bloody holocaust from one’s own body.’46 Pfandl adduces such circumstantial evidence to construct a picture of Sor Juana ‘in the grasp of a dark sexual delirium and tortured by obsessive visions of self-castration.’47

  Again, the convent of the Immaculate Conception was considered lax. Juana, an ultra-sensitive girl then still in her teens, could not therefore have failed to be terrified by what she discovered in the cloister of San José—renowned, among all of New Spain’s twenty-two convents, for its austerity. Indeed, in such a setting who might not be terrified, also, by what one finds within oneself?

  Pfandl (citing Carlos Sigüenza) documents five individual cases of what our dabbler in psychoanalysis characterizes as a ‘cult of cruelty’:48

  … a nun of the royal convent, the Reverend Mother Isabel de San José († 1642), by her ascetic mortifications provoked chills of horror and admiration. Mother Isabel paid one of her own servants to whip her; money and gifts were administered in proportion to the efficacy of the lashing administered to the nun. Further, every Friday noon she arrived in the convent refectory, where her fellow sisters were gathered to eat, removed her veil, stripped to the waist and while whipping herself confessed, between cries and laments, to the little sins and imperfections of her religious life….

  Mother Ana de Cristo († 1652), a fanatical auto-flagellator, devised for herself a special instrument of martyrdom. She wore against her skin, day and night, two crosses, one against her back, the other against her chest, crosses covered on one side with sharp barbs of iron….

  Mother Antonia de Santa Clara († 1659) petitioned that her face be branded with the following dictum: Esclava del Santísimo Sacramento (Slave of the Most Holy Sacrament). Her petition denied, the nun took a knife and carved the inscription in her left forearm….

  Mother Francisca de San Lorenzo († 1663) favoured the lash. The walls and floor of her cell were reddened and spattered with blood. Nevertheless, her most fully pleasurable agony, or fully agonized pleasure, derived from being whipped by several women (selected from among the huskiest servants) at once…. Fasting, she would present herself at lunch, eyes blindfolded … over her mouth a set of clamps….

  Mother Tomasina de San Francisco († 1675) bound her arms and legs and half her body with rough cords and iron chains; moreover against her back and chest she wore metal grates … in her shoes she placed pebbles, and in special cases of penitential rapture she scattered sharp tacks in among the stones … but the unhappiest and most saintly sacrifice … was an invisible cross of singular weight. Her mother lived in the cloister with her, and the nun (who as a girl must have suffered unspeakable humiliations and mistreatment) endured day after day as the mother satisfied in their cell a sadistic relish for whipping the long-suffering daughter….49

  †friars

  GRACE

  PAST MIDNIGHT NEWS SPREADS through the streets stranger to stranger to me: gracias a Guadalupe, there were no deaths on Tepeyac hill today. And maybe in all of Mexico or the whole wide world the flood is dammed—at death’s stadium, the turnstyles jammed—for one spin from sun to sun, a fasting Death’s Ramadan. Near dawn I sit night table to knees and though again I can’t sleep, for the first time in a very long time the engine in my head is fed, on something other than me. Difference engine, engine of siege that severs me—I will find it other food—it sleeps, it leaves me peace. By the intercession of her grace, heal me.

  On the way home this afternoon from her Basilica, bus after bus in mind-numbing succession passes. We walk and walk, quit turning back to look at the sound of the next bus overstuffed. Elderly the walkers mostly, and amputees not nimble enough to bus jockey. Amputee veterans of the factory wars, human bulwark against the domino effect of equality. One skates past me on a trolley—double-amputation at the groin—a jester’s nod and wink, simian knuckle-push—he sails off on his plinth, heroic bust to Fortitude. And I am ashamed now to write this.

  At last a metro stop. Out of the furious sunset we lurch and pitch and clop down the granite steps past row after row of holographic portraits of Our Mother. Their manila backing stamped SHELLTOX INSECTICIDE, frame after frame the same—what does this mean, does it mean anything?

  Get off at Metro Hidalgo: breach again to breathe the copper air almost dark except for the west’s glower and sulk, while across the street a stage starts up—an animated film lurching to life. On a platform of battered plywood boxes a troupe acts out a holographic diorama of the Guadalupe legend, here known universally, like the nativity.

  Humble Indian Juan Diego thrice visited by a vision of the Virgin in native form and dress on Tepeyac hill, ancient shrine to the Aztec mother goddess. Three times Juan Diego goes to the Bishop—episcopal
sophisticate incarnadine—but only on the third is Juan believed when he spills out onto the palace floor a clutch of roses blooming out of season. And in the robe that carried them, an after-image—miraculous transfer—of the dusky Virgin.

  Last scene plays out, winds down, the actors young and striking strike the set. Full-lipt kohl-eyed Juan Diego comes up to me—with every step more handsome toothsome—says Buenas … Guadalupe watches.

  You’re not from here.

  No from far away.

  Do you know the story of the play?

  Yes I know it.

  Well?

  Why do you perform it here?

  Where?

  Here, the quemadero.

  Ah, you mean, where the onlookers clung to the branches of the trees like human pine cones.

  You know.

  Yes we know. We know our history.

  Then why.

  The government—el PRI—pays for us to perform it here. We are graduate students but this is how we live….

  I start to walk, he says how well do you know our history? Do you know that that cinema on the corner sits exactly on the burning ground? Why not go in and ask them how they can go there and watch Sylvester Stallone and Cantinflas?

  What would they answer?

  Some will say if you don’t learn when to laugh this place will kill you. You are from the North. Is it true Stallone is only four feet tall?

  Do they laugh as much at him as Cantinflas?

  You are joking, my friend, but they do, yes. Go in and see for yourself. Many of the people in there laughing also know where the quemadero was. They will tell you nothing happens for nothing. Coincidence does not exist here. Mira, a few of us are meeting at the Opera Bar. If you come I promise not to show you where they tell the tourists Pancho Villa rode in on his horse and shot a hole in the ceiling. The atmosphere is good.

  I have to go.

  It’s not what you think. That is my wife standing over there.

  Guadalupe?

  Smiles his beautiful young man’s smile as Mother of America comes forward, shakes hands hard like a man. More serious, older, a little less beautiful than he.

  All right if you can’t come, walk with us for a moment.

  Estoy cansadísima.

  I understand your weariness, you’ve come from Tepeyac.

  It shows?

  It won’t take long, this will interest you.

  We walk over to a little plaza joined to the cinema. Plastic tarps strung overhead, bindertwined to parking signs and pounded stakes in the asphalt roadbed. Through the cough and sough of hurricane lamps slinging shadows over vendors’ stands we walk. Soft drinks bob in galvanized tubs, with ice chipped from blocks slid from the beds of cattle trucks. Bonecages of meat. Meat racked hooked diced shaven cleaver-cleft. Fatsizzle onionhiss -

  Why—?

  To show you.

  Show me what? show me food show me blood show me what—

  Were you here for the Day of the Dead? Just last month. No? You must see that sometime.

  What do you want me …?

  This is the exact place they set up the stakes and scaffolds, right here, where we’re standing.

  They know—?

  Oh they know. Look at them.

  I don’t see.

  They are eating, with … joy. They are eating their own deaths….

  Ah so you do see don’t you—wait, don’t go.

  On and on I walk alone lapping the park always swinging back to here blackhole of truth and slowly I do begin to see, by the coughed light of hurricane lamps and stars poking through the awningsky. There the slow burble of aluminum vats, atole and hot chocolate, there electric blenders clear fruit-clogged throats, wicker baskets of tamales—little cornhusk bundles swaddled, tucked like quail in beds of rushes. Cornmeal gorditas stuffed with zucchini flowers, resolved on the griddle like tea leaves, low-tide skiffs—in gypsy patterns that whisper beckon—Oye, hay flor de calabaza, delicious, try one—

  And he spoke true: this is the word for how they eat.

  Joy.

  Sweet corn—elotes with mayonnaise, ¡ven prueba, amiga! green mangoes diced on sticks like ginger flowers like pineapple grenadas—tart grenades bursting on the palate’s steppes. Ven, señorita, try this too—mine are just as good as theirs and different—no you don’t pay, not this day, you have come for her from far away. Oye—here, try sweet papaya with chilli and lime. Mi vida—try these tamales con rajas—very hot. No you don’t pay, my boss is off in Acapulco. Oye, flaquita,† from California?—all you chicanas are so thin—eat! Don’t listen to him, corazón—look, these tacos with piña mi hija are to die for—how many, only six? let’s make it eight, they’re small anyway—taquititos!—how much they charge you for the tamales?—nada? that is only as it should be on this day.

  Mexico sweet bed of rushes I remember you—once as a girl I walked these streets. Childbride of the jack of hearts, do you remember me, that girl?

  And how could I not trust how could I not eat with you who ask me are we not all dying, señorita, are we not alike in this? Who is not alone? Let me feed you. Together let us eat our deaths. What counts more than this, this one meal this night? ¿Quién sabe lo que nos trae la mañanita? ¿Quién sabe, de veras?

  All the gentle courtesy—how can people speak this way, even here or especially in the quake zone, world’s largest landmine—time’s chalked endzone.

  Twenty million people / seventy thousand taxis licensed to kill / twenty thousand factories big and small vomiting a chemical mind-sucking in/solvent-sea. How can it be that still you speak this way? mi amiga mi hija, mi vida, mi corazón—my friend my daughter my life my heart. Is this how to speak to one another in the jaws of hell—teach me, how you do this how you live, teach me this poverty.

  Let me stand beside you when the trumpets bark

  Hide me in the flowerscreen bower of your gentle smile, archaic courtesy.

  Yes I will sit down and eat. With you.

  †skinny

  ROUGHING IT

  April 12th, 1995.

  ERIC HEFFNER, LL.B., LEFT HIS OFFICE EARLY and drove out to see me. He was coming to collect my cheque, a courtesy call both to save me the trouble of coming into the city and because a certain journalist was keeping her dogged eye on his office. He was not particularly good at cloak-and-dagger. I think she found me in the first place by following him.

  It can be mildly deflating to see your lawyer in weekend clothes. Orioles cap, corduroy shirt bulging over a thin brown belt. Jeans, hiking boots. All of which brought a certain youthfulness to a freckled face lengthened appreciably by the receding hairline. He had something about him of the summer camp director. In fall.

  “What if, just for argument’s sake,” he said, “and I stress, speaking hypothetically—you could keep your job?”

  I sat silent for a moment. Awkwardly he leaned back in a willow chair across from me on the couch, a driftwood coffee table between us. His features were hard to make out at first against the bright white drapes shutting out the afternoon sun. The possibility that things might simply carry on as before had never occurred to me. I’d only just got used to the idea that I might be facing a stay in prison. Now this vague, unreasonable sense of having been cheated of my dessert. I was being rehabilitated?

  “Not so fast. What I’m trying to tell you is if, and I mean if the police decided not to file, everything else’d be up for grabs. That is, if you aren’t determined to fuck things up thoroughly and completely.”

  “You’re saying they’re not already.”

  “Thoroughly, but incompletely.”

  “That’s good, then.”

  “If the girl doesn’t die.” Watching his face soften slightly I sensed my lawyer and I were arriving at a new plateau in our relationship. “I’m sorry, Don. It’s rough and I’ve been pretty hard on you.”

  “Drink, Counsellor?”

  “What do you have?”

  “Scotch. Ice.”

  “How about
some ice water.”

  He accepted the glass without comment and leaned toward me without pausing to drink, glass in both hands, elbows propped on out-turned knees. “I need to know what you want, Professor. The less the police do, the more it falls to the university to handle it internally. This would be a nightmare for them. I’d see to that and they know it.”

  Did I want to keep my job.

  No. I wanted an unending series of ever more distinguished situations offered to me over the years at a manageable but rapid rate. A stately, considered ascension towards eminence emeritus. No, I did not want just to keep my job.

  “Anyone following the news of course will want to see you get yours—there’s tremendous pressure to fire you. But such purgatorial agonies they’ll suffer! Meetings and more meetings. Committees struck, policies parsed, ethicists consulted. Cagy and conflicting legal opinions tendered …”

  This kind of proceeding had become a graveyard for careers, and not just for the accused. Perhaps I’d heard. Schools all over the continent had been badly chewed up, from presidents on down. This would just be another case where proof would prove perversely hard to come by and a wrongful dismissal suit just a misstep away.

  He paused to swirl the cubes in his glass, glanced down undeterred as a bit of water splashed over his fingers. A man warming to his topic.

  “And for them, it gets worse. Here the potential plaintiff is in a coma. Nobody’s got the faintest idea yet whether she would even want to pursue the matter.”

  I had an idea, hundreds of pages of her ideas.

  “It might be days, weeks before this shakes out—and what are they to do with you in the meantime?”

  “Their options?”

  “Stick it out and see what happens or negotiate a severance package. My guess is, if you’re ready to fall on your sword here and resign, they’ll fall all over themselves in gratitude. Could be very substantial. That college trust fund for your daughter would no longer be a worry. Something funny?”