Hunger's Brides

by W. Paul Anderson

  Isabel had only been waiting for me to leave. She had sent them away without so much as sending me word. I had been thinking precisely this when I saw her, riding fast along the maguey field, past the killing floor, slowing towards the house. In a moment or two, from where I sat among the trees, I saw her go in. She would have been waiting for me to come back to the house; but as the wagon staggered on, I ran to catch it, vowing never again to look back to Panoayan.

  I broke that promise to myself. I looked back once, from the convent of San José, my new home among the Carmelites. And when my mother did not answer my call for help, I believed she was paying me in kind for having returned to Panoayan only to leave without speaking to her. I had never forgiven Isabel for never replying, for not coming for me. We never spoke again. Not a word ever again passed between us, not a message; never had I a kind thought for her, never did I permit myself a fond memory.

  And I also believed Magda about Uncle Juan. He had promised to deliver it himself, the next day. He always kept his word. Some weeks later he was called to Acapulco on business. In the wide bay before the city, his body was found by a fisherman. Juan had not gone to Panoayan, had hesitated. He was still in love with her.

  My mother never received the letter.

  February 6th near dawn a light rain stopped. Father Arellano came not long after Prime. One by one the other black veils around our small patio went down to confess at the slots. Terce had come and gone. All that morning I waited for my turn to be called. María Bernadina was the last to come back from the craticulas. His Paternity would see me in the locutory. I wondered if he had conquered his fear of beauty, or had been told there was less to fear. He had not agreed to see me there for years. As I entered he turned his chair to face the window bars, his shoulder to the grille.

  We sat shoulder to shoulder looking into the garden, out over the rose bushes. It might have been pleasant, a visit from among the living. We might have talked about the passing of the years. I looked more closely at him. His body had run to fat, his jaw to jowls. His hair was still black at the crown, had greyed at the temples, whitened around the ears. I had forgotten that it was not just the thickness of the walls—Father Arellano, when in the presence of sin, mumbled.

  “Este … as of today, Sor Juana, you must no longer consider me your director.”

  He was very sorry, but it went hard for the confessors of heretics. He said this glancing sidelong, his voice high for one of his bulk. He did not think he could face it. This I could believe, if he could not even face me; just as I could believe him a man who had just recently made his first visit to the offices of the Inquisition.

  Was it true Sor Juana sought the protection of the Prefect of the Brotherhood of Mary? Yes? Then His Reverence had sent him, Father Arellano, to say that she would have to agree instantly, that day, to meet his conditions, meet them all, meet them fully, lest she soon come in for a more rounded discipline.

  By what token was I to believe he came from Núñez?

  Prefect Núñez had expected this. His terms were these, which Father Arellano would now try to present verbatim, that there be no misunderstanding. Having heard them Sor Juana could judge of their source for herself.

  First, Sor Juana was to cease all visits to the convent archives, all study of any kind. She was herewith forbidden to read even among the saints and learned doctors of the Church. The time for Augustine was past. For the moment, as a kindness, she was to be permitted one text. Father Arellano placed it on the table that spanned the grille. If she cared to, let Sor Juana read her John of the Cross as often as she could bear. Not the verses. These she was never to read again. But The Ascent of Mount Carmel. This was the only mountain left for Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to climb. All else was vanity. One candle per week would be permitted for this purpose, if she was prepared to meet the other conditions.

  Which …?

  Sor Juana was to cease all writing, except at the express command of her director. And this next point the Prefect had enjoined Father Arellano to make with some clarity: Sor Juana was never again to write poetry.

  Not in any form, no devotional verses, no carols for the Church. This condition was not negotiable, and was never to be rescinded under any circumstances, for the rest of her days. God did not need her poetry here, and in Heaven are enough who sing.

  Sor Juana would first draft a preliminary statement of guilt, in preparation for a full examination of her conscience, of all the unnumbered crimes and vilest sins of her worldly life, from the beginning…. Father Arellano was sorry. These had been the Prefect’s exact words. Nothing had been forgotten. Nothing is ever forgotten under the eyes of God. Gaps, omissions were no longer to be tolerated. With even this simple condition the Prefect doubted very much she could comply, after so many years of evasions, for the thing that hath been is that which shall be … and there is no new thing under the sun. It was the Prefect’s view that she could not change, would not. And even if Sor Juana might delude herself for a while, he was not given to delusions. Too much of the Prefect’s time had been wasted on her already—his time, and that of so many others working on her case. So much waste and vanity and vexation of the spirit.

  No doubt Sor Juana would want some time to make her calculations.

  Vexation of the spirit….

  It was with Magda I had first seen the Palaces of the Inquisition, the banner above the front gates, two girls flirting with the sentries … the rose-coloured church on the plaza, the workshops, the forges. It was with Magda and María that I had first learned of the great auto of 1649, retraced the route to the burning ground, heard described the uncanny likenesses of the effigies. It was in Magda’s voice I heard whispered the names of the Grand Inquisitor and his nephew Sáenz de Mañozca, and those of the family Carvajal, Ana and her brother Luís. Magda had even learned the brother’s poetry. And from myself, without You, who would deliver me, And to You, without You, my Lord, who would carry me? … Magda, too, was a scholar. A chronicler of family and the familiar. And it was on that day that I had first heard of the book collector Pérez de Soto, who had also too little respected the Holy Office. She talked then of a smaller auto, more suitable to the edification of children, the auto of 1656 … the year Pérez de Soto was arrested.

  Magda had made it clear from the first that she was prepared to bear witness against her own father’s parents. Nor was I sure it was untrue that they had been secret Jews. If they were convicted of Judaizing, their remains would be exhumed and burned, sambenitos hung in their parish church, in Mexico, and in their birthplace in Spain. I did not know if even Magda could give evidence against a father she had loved, though he was beyond hurting now; but she would not hesitate against mine. Others would believe. Was this truly why he had left us, as Magda said, to escape the auto of 1656?

  No, I would not let myself believe it, because she would know how I wanted to—which from Magda would make it false. What else did the scholar Magda know, what had she told, to whom? What lies could I refute? What truths …?

  1663. This was the year, according to Gutiérrez, of the first testimony against me. For Magda, her first visit here would have been a kind of anniversary. Thirty years … perhaps to the day. There are many working on your case, Juana. You would be surprised to know just how many…. Núñez had said this to me a dozen years ago. Núñez too would have known about those first files—had he been warning me even then about Magda?

  But though she might be an asset to Dorantes and to Santa Cruz, as her files had been to Gutiérrez, Núñez had never needed Magda. Father Núñez had other assets. And so in the night after the first candle burned down I saw Núñez come to stand vaunting over me, brandishing his war tools, felt the rasp of his mockeries, heard him boasting of his advantages, of the perfection of his memory. It would be as with the second inventory of Dorantes—I would need to remember all I had told him, every confidence in a dozen years of confession—even how I had told him, and everything I had not, beginning twenty-five ye
ars ago. I could face the Inquisition or else Núñez; I could face the Dominicans or my own conscience. This was the challenge in the message, which he had always believed me too cowardly to accept. At least before the Holy Office I could protest my innocence. Vexation … no new thing under the sun … remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Three times Núñez had recalled Ecclesiastes, and in doing so, warned me of where we might make a beginning….

  On the day of the service, the old men of the town had come out. The priest from Chimalhuacan read gently from the Gospel of John; then Brother Anton from Texcoco came forward and recited beautifully from Ecclesiastes. My grandfather would have liked it. It made me think of Hesiod. Uncle Juan had not come. I had not met him yet, and had not imagined they had been friends. Across the hole in the ground stood Magda, behind her my aunts and other cousins, my sisters beside my mother. I had been furious to have been asked to choose the place, had refused to—choose? I choose that he still be here with us. Amanda cried quietly beside me, her arm about my shoulders. Xochitl sighed once, and stroked my hair. There came my turn to read, from an old book with a broken spine. Kneeling in the fresh-turned earth I read the first four stanzas without crying or so much as pausing, it seemed, to breathe. But when I did pause, I did not go on.

  By that evening the last of the guests had left. My aunts were not guests, as my mother pointed out, but had grown up in this house. They were to have my sisters’ room, which had once been their own. Josefa and María were to be in my room with me. It was just for one night.

  Late that night I was still in the library, asleep in the corner armchair where he had used to sleep. I thought it a dream, at first. I saw my mother standing before me. The lantern guttered, its oil run down. Her veil was drawn back. I thought it strange she had not changed, though the dress was beautiful. She had bent slightly, then seeing me awake, seemed to hesitate.

  “I wanted to be sure it wasn’t him.” She smiled faintly, embarrassed. It might have occurred to me, she had bent to pick me up.

  “I thought you never came in here.”

  She straightened, the swelling of her belly formidable, pronounced.

  “Who do you think put him to bed all these years?”

  It was the kind of hidden knowledge that I had always known lay all about me, and had always sensed about to rush in at me from some unexpected quarter. “Your eyes are clear, Inés, for seeing far. But up close you’re as blind as the rest of us.”

  I looked away, to the floor, the cold hearth, the desk in the shadows behind her, unshelved books in a jumble on the near side. On the other, stacked neatly, the four books he had been reading, on them a thick envelope. A mi hijita Isabel My eyes had lit dully upon it that morning, but it had lain there for the week since. Embarrassed, I slipped past her and went quickly to the desk.

  “This was for you.”

  It did not occur to me to offer to read it for her. She started down the aisle toward me, casting shadows over the ceiling ahead of her. I could not see her face against the flicker of lamplight. She would be angry that I had forgotten. It would seem typical of me. “I don’t know when Abuelo put it there. It wasn’t there … that night.”

  She came to stand very near, very tall, waiting perhaps on a better explanation. Her fingers touched the envelope but did not quite grasp it. I did not know what she was feeling, but craning up with her so near I saw it was not anger.

  “Did you really paint those angels for him …?”

  Startled, she looked up into the shadows of the cross-beams, which divided the composition into three, the figures crudely painted but finely drawn. Cherubs, seraphim—the thrones and principalities, the seven choirs …

  She stood a long moment, remembering. “Your grandfather loved angels, like a child. I was a child myself. I thought it was … nice.”

  Unable to stop, I asked why she had given up drawing. Her eyes left the ceiling, glanced over the desk covered in books, at the map above it of the southern oceans. She looked at me finally, in their hollows her eyes large in the unsteady light. She drew in a long breath. “Inés … no matter how clever you are, no matter how—”

  “A library is no place for a woman—you’ve told me.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  It was only partly because of what she said then, that I told her about the last night with him … to give her something more of him than a letter. And so we sat up late, and I told her the stories he had told, how animated he had been, how his eyes had seemed like emeralds once again. How I had woken up as he put me to bed. I told her because of the angels, and because he loved her. I told her because I needed to tell her, more than anyone. When I had said that the library was no place for a woman, she had started to replace her veil, but then gently placed her hands on my shoulders.

  “No matter how clever you are, hija, no matter how hard you work or you try, you can never bring them back.”

  Núñez would not care why my father had left. Núñez would not ask me about the auto of 1656. He would demand to know why I had left her—left refusing to speak to her, twice. He would ask why things were not better between us, even after this night. He would ask how in a rage, just three months later, I could accuse her of driving my father away and ask if she had ever loved anyone.

  Quen uel ximimatia in teteocuitlamichi. Things slip, things slide in this world.

  Fish of gold, what happened to you?

  I sent for Arellano on February 23rd when Núñez had still not come. I had given a statement of my guilt, agreed to the terms, and I had requested—no, I had been hoping that he might come for the 24th of February, for the twenty-fourth anniversary of my profession, that we might begin my noviciate together, my year of trial. Why had he not come?

  Father Arellano was sorry, but he did not decide for Prefect Núñez, nor did Sor Juana. He would come when it was time, when there were signs that she had truly understood what she had been given to read, had truly heard this time. I reminded Arellano that he and I had spoken of Juan de la Cruz in confession not so very long ago. His Paternity might remember the rain. Did he have some new direction for me now?

  “Sor Juana, that is the day I was referring to, when I communicated to you a final warning from Prefect Núñez … that while there was yet time, you should study the writings of John of the Cross for a path to God that still included a little poetry.” Even so recently as then, the Prefect had indicated he was prepared to confront the Archbishop and defend Sor Juana’s practice of poetry on purely devotional topics. “But the Prefect’s warning went unheeded, and that time is now past.”

  Unheeded? No, Father, I had not heard. Would it have made any difference, you ask? How, Father, could either of us know that? And why had I not heard?—because His Paternity had been unable to bring himself to meet with me in the locutory. So why, I wondered, did he come now? Was it not true he had been forced to, as a punishment? And how could Father Arellano make accurate report of me, if he could not look at me, if he did not examine me? Why would anyone send a messenger to give messages I could not hear, or who warns me that I might next come in for a discipline ‘more rounded’ when Father Núñez had in fact said circular? Was that not true—yes? Why, then, should anyone rely on such a messenger?

  As he rose, he glanced at me without wishing to, his eyes round and dark. They looked as mine might. He had not slept, looked more frightened than I, or I hoped he did. It was as I had guessed, that he was being sent for his negligence. And if they so chose, his penalty could be the same as mine. And it could be death. He had confessed a heretic for almost a dozen years without raising the alarm. To defend himself he would have had to admit what I had guessed all along. That he had been unable to bring himself to listen, had been too frightened to.

  I sat for a time when Arellano had gone, and looked out into the garden. What could it mean—that I had tried on my own to take the very course of action Núñez had urged upon me through Arellano that day, two years ago? What was it they
thought I had not heard, had not yet grasped? I understood that the poet I had loved, whose echoes in my own poetry Núñez had most despised, whose voice was never far from my mind, was to be turned against me. For the one book I was to be permitted, now, was of the night of trials, not the poems. I understood also that this was to be done to demonstrate that everything could be turned against me, to make an enemy of a friend, to remind me of how much Juan de la Cruz had endured not for his poetry but for his faith.

  Núñez would say that God had guided his hand in this choice of book, but then why had I not heard his messenger—had I been guided not to hear the warning? If He has guided the hand of Núñez to triumph, has mine been guided to fail? Was I to be returned to the beginning only to be shown that the night of trials never ends, but only opens into deeper trial? I had looked down that path, into a darkness that Juan had made beautiful. I had drawn from the springs of his sources to bring comfort to others, to bring some sense to their suffering, but I could not make that path my own.

  If only Núñez had come, we could have talked together. With him I would have spoken my heart, I would have tried again, in a manner more sincere than with Arellano. Father, why have you offered this path now, you who warned me from it, the path of the ecstatic, you who said it would lead me to destroy myself? Why send Arellano to me, when for twelve years he and I have been as strangers? It would be better to have left me to myself, to turn on myself, than to send such as these to me, who are afraid even to look upon rose bushes without startling.

  But Núñez had not come. And to this last question at least I knew the answer. We had been sent to punish each other, Arellano to me, for his concupiscence and fear of sin, and I to Arellano, to mortify my pride.

  The next day, for my twenty-fourth anniversary, I put on again the rough sayuela of the novice, much as Antonia wore, and cropped my hair. I chose the evening, after Compline, so as to have some hours before being seen. My vanity cost me much of the week’s candle.