“And so you return the world to us, return us whence we had been cast out, to the garden. You make the world into an Eden of floods. Water everywhere, all is holiness—nature, existence itself is the sacrament now. What need has one for bread in Eden? What need have we for priests at sea? No—not priests but navigators, scientists—natural magicians. And they must be bold, boldness itself, to make daring from humility, from a simple washing of the feet. If we are truly to know God, we must entrust ourselves to the sea, to go beyond the humble limits of our ignorance.
“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 Baths—in 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 …?”
Was I wrong, was it madness, to think I could do without him? Was I to live in fear of him like everyone else here—my whole life? How could I work, with him coming every week to rob me of my strength, harvest it?—to milk me, his rubber tree, his adder.
Better to make of him an enemy than to let such a one near me as a friend—and arm him myself.
“You think this one of your little comedies,” Father Núñez said.
Jokes, I made in answer. For the jester and only he—not statesman, knight or prince—may 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.3 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 talked….
Something like this.
How the world pins poor Hercules, stoops the braided shoulders, bows that thewy nape, bends the water bearer beneath his earthen urn—ay, what persecutions of gravity! Herakles, pobre de tí—made passive pillar, pole and axis—mortal 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—and 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.4 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 paragon—what 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 others—the 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 responsibility—to 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 own—my own fountain, oracle and deeps.
¡Sí, 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 Walls….
Déjame ver … how shall I title it? Something, like … Allegorical Neptune.
Sí, plus ultra, mas ultrajes, hay. More comedies.
It was another November. Not long after my birthday. 1680.
†probably Sor María de la Agreda, abbess, spiritual advisor to Philip IV
†‘nevertheless it moves’—words attributed to Galileo at the close of his trial
†cathedral musical director
JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ,
“Allegorical Neptune”
B. Limosneros, trans.
… This other canvas paints in bellicose
hues the Triton5 goddess,†
once-engendered, twice-conceived,
never-born inventor
of arms and sciences;
but here in lucid rivalry
with the deity†† who adores the tireless
Ocean—the Sun’s foaming tomb—
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 which—if but lightly pressed—
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 …
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 Neptune8 and Amphitrite, naked on sea shells à la Botticelli, and elsewhere as Neptune and Minerva contending in wisdom for the guardianship of Athens….
†Minerva / Athena
††Neptune
TENTH MUSE
Tonight, 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 use—the most no
torious parlour in Christendom, as he is so fond of calling it—lies dark. But Father Núñez is not a man to be placated.
New Spain’s most relentless mind—bright like a blade. Tragalibros,† 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 exact—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 me—and how he rasps and scours, mi escofina escolastica,† 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 now—even our Viceroy admits to his own fear openly. At the Jesuit college the novices are reduced to whispers as their rector approaches—Sssh, el Tragalibros, hide your books and pamphlets. Sssh, Sor Juana’s confessor …
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 barber—his 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?9 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 lighthouse—the panopticon of Pharos—the greatest glory of God….
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 gratitude—because 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 candle…. 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,10 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 …
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 many…. 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?”
“Manuscripts may be suppressed for many reasons, Sor Juana, and not solely by the Holy Office …”
“What are you getting at?”
“The proposals you and Carlos sent over created a great stir in Madrid.”
“You know even this.”
“Very bold, very inventive. Refinements to the pendulum. A musical clock—admirable. Your idea, I understand. Other notions for marine chronometers—such stunning breakthroughs for navigation, strategic advantages to the Crown … if they could be made to work, if the proper studies could be funded, tests of your designs. A pity to have destroyed them.”
“What?”
“Your Queen buys bread on credit, Juana. Perhaps you think the Crown’s bankruptcy a figure of speech. There is no money for studies. Yet if those designs were to end up with the Portuguese, or the English, or worse yet the Netherlanders … So you see, you divide not just the Jesuit scientists, Juana—you and now Carlos—but the Queen’s scientific soothsayers also. About half were in favour of saving them, no doubt with thoughts of brokering a quiet sale. Yes, I am surprised your don Payo did not think to tell you. As are you, I see. But Carlos must have made copies, yes?”
“Even from Madrid, don Payo reports to you.”
“To us, Sor Juana, he writes to us. Always this exaggeration of my influence. In some quarters, I think, your imagination hinders you. You imagine you know him, but do you know His Grace left Mexico in such a hurry so as not to miss the auto in Madrid? No, I thought not. By all accounts—and I have read several—it put those of our poor Mexico to shame. Thirty-four burned in effigy, nineteen more in the flesh, twelve burned alive. Twelve. And two women, this time…. You do know he sat with the Queen Mother. No, not even that? In the royal box, with that dwarf of hers your Leonor prated on so about. What was her name? It was so long ago.”
“Had I told you a century ago, you’d still know.”
“Yes. ‘Lucillo.’ I imagine them that day discussing your Martyr of the Sacrament together, at breaks. Now. You have called me here, you have come this far. Am I expected to offer my help?”
“Help, Your Reverence?”
“You stall but do not refuse it outright. Well then. How shall I oblige you—by asking how you and our new Vice-Queen are getting on? Something of a poet, this one, though I am a poor judge. And she is a Manrique! Countess of Paredes, no less. How perfect for you both.”
“The knighthood of the Manriques was not always such an amusement, Father. Your saintly Loyola did not jeer at the Order of Santiago, nor did he refuse it. At least I don’t recall your ever saying so. Need I remind you?—when the Marquis and the Countess first announced their intention to visit me here, did I not plead for two days to be allowed to remain secluded in my cell?”
“But the Mother Prioress denied you—”
“At your insistence—why was that?”
“And how assiduously you have been attending them, Sor Juana, to have missed confession so often lately—and how many of our Thursdays together?”
“Two, Father. Only two.”
“Countess of Walls! Marquis of the Lake! How Fate makes Life convenient to your poetry—how your poetry bends you towards your fate. Allegorical Neptune! Water, again.”
“The arch was a cathedral commission, the Chapter approved it—unanimously, as you well know.”
“And do you call her María Luisa yet? Have you explained to this new one about your past? How it was with the other one? Queen of the Baths.”
“Always these imaginings of yours, Reverence, about the baths at El Péñon.”
“Have you explained to her your new aqueous theology?”
“Is it impious on my part that duty has blossomed into loving friendship for her, whereas Your Reverence guides the immortal soul of her husband, though you harbour no feelings for him whatever? And once again you confess Viceroy and Vicereine both.”
“It is not a question of feelings.”
“This too has changed with you, Father. It was n
ot always so.”
“I suppose you profess some admirable depth of feeling for the Archbishop-elect.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Only to say your manoeuvring with the Bishop of Puebla carries risks. But no, forget I mentioned it. He is after all another protégé of don Fray Payo.”
“Is there a problem with the Bishop’s election? What do the Jesuits know of it?”
“As for whom I confess, it will be the new Archbishop’s privilege to confess the Vice-Queen, if he wishes it. But as you say, the Viceroy will likely remain with me. Or do you call him Neptune now?”
“How unlike you, Father, to misspeak. Do the Jesuits have another candidate?”
“Was it the comet, Sor Juana?”
“Was what the comet—the comet is gone.”
“Yes, precisely. Two days ago. And here we are. Like sorcery.”
“No magic I possess tells me on which nights Your Reverence will deign to appear. And on that subject might we not try the everyday magic of a lantern, Father? It is getting rather dark.”
“But you have been busy reassuring the Vice-Queen.”
“She spoke to you of this.”
“We have conversations, much as you and I—”
“Told you in confession.”
“Conversations.”
“Intended to terrify her—‘God’s Wrath.’”
“And how did you reassure her, Juana? With Galilei’s rubbish about comets hiding behind the moon? Did you show it to her in your telescope, show her the moon’s face—poxed like a whore’s? Did that reassure? Nothing divine about it, nothing heavenly in the heavens!”
“That, Father, you will never hear me say.”
“Tell me—I never understood it, why they hide behind the moon…. Great elliptical orbits, was it not, out among the heavenly spheres? How helpful the Chair of Mathematics and Astrology could have been in comforting your new friend. A shame you and Carlos are not getting along.”
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