Hunger's Brides

by W. Paul Anderson

  I was afraid Antonia would try to stop me. She was stronger, angry. I explained that it had been shorn thus twice before—surely harder on those who would have to look upon it than it was for me. I could not stop her cutting her own in turn. I was not strong enough. I had loved her hair.

  We helped each other, in the end. The places farthest back were hardest to reach.

  I sent Antonia with an apology to Father Arellano. He did not come for weeks. It amused Núñez to send him on April 13th, the Feast of Saint Hermenegild.

  I could see Arellano dreaded coming now. I had won that much from them.

  Would Father Núñez be coming soon?

  If and when Sor Juana had given positive signs of her will and disposition, the Prefect would come to examine them himself.

  But had I given no indication considered positive?

  The cutting of the hair was positive.

  What other sign had I failed to give? Arellano was sorry, but as Sor Juana herself had said, he was only a messenger. No, Sor Juana’s apology was unnecessary. Her criticism had been correct. The Prefect had indeed said ‘circular,’ and said now that there was perhaps time yet to choose between a cell and a closet, to follow a circular path or one still more tortuous—neither should she imagine such pleasant quarters as had held John or Hermenegild. Ne Plus Ultra. Here the Prefect had instructed Father Arellano to ask Sor Juana if she understood. Yes. To repeat it. Yes, I had understood. No, to say it.

  Ne Plus Ultra.

  Perhaps this talk of signs had been misleading. Sor Juana, as a natural philosopher, a master of navigation and circular paths, would prefer to think in terms of treatises, observations. Evidence. In the absence of which, the Prefect continued to believe that a path without poetry and philosophy would be far too narrow for one such as she. Now if the message had been communicated adequately, the messenger should be going.

  Circular paths … closet or cell. In the last century Teresa had written to Philip II about Juan’s abduction to Toledo and his imprisonment by the unreformed Carmelites, his former Order. She said she would have preferred to see him fallen into the hands of the Moors, who had more pity. Had he not effected a daring escape in the night, he would almost certainly have died there.

  He was kept in a cupboard. It was not high enough for him stand upright in. Juan was not tall. In the refectory he was made to eat sardine scraps from the floor. There where he knelt, the monks went round him flaying his bared shoulder blades with leather thongs. The circular discipline.

  In purgatory God purges the soul with fire. In this life, with love. The same love with which he purges the angels of ignorance. The monks of Carmel crippled Juan’s shoulders for life.

  The ignorance went in roughly where the wings would have been.

  Some paths were narrow. How straitened a path could I be made to follow, how narrow were the straits I could be made to pass? Núñez was taunting me. He mocks my work, he mocks me through my works. How silent the machinery that turns the tides. How now at the antipodes? Great Herakles, now that we have you here, explain it to us. Now that you have decided. We have time. How did one such as you come to take up Ne Plus Ultra for your banner? You who stole the milk from Hera’s own breast, milked a goddess like a cow, who dammed the Nile, freed Prometheus, raised the pillars of Calpe and Abyla.

  Even of such gifts your shining Bridegroom, rich beyond imagining, has no need it seems. Look around this cell, Sor Juana. Tell us what you see. For twenty-four years you have worn the habit of a clown, the King’s fool in the ermine, with sceptre and crown. The Queen’s handmaiden posing in her gowns. Or would you rebel even now—pull pillars, sky and pedestal all crashing to the ground?

  Look once through the chronoscopic lens: Hera’s Glory, Theologian’s Muse.

  Now Herakles, look again, two dozen years along: Hera’s lunatic, God’s clown.

  How differently the poetry of prison rings now. And these echoes from the future, in these cells, how unlike themselves they sound. But that should not surprise us, after all, for so it is with echoes that what one mostly hears is the end.

  Twice more that month I sent to ask when he would come. Always Arellano instead. The second time the memorized message carried a suggestion. If Sor Juana was in a hurry, if Sor Juana insisted on knowing when, she should practise her sciences of prophecy, by which the nuns in Madrid had so ably served the Crown. Thus did he summon to my mind Sor María de la Agreda, spiritual advisor to Philip IV, and the book of her prophecies banned across Christendom, recalled and burned. Thus did he recall to my mind the Inquisition’s power to erase, which I feared more even than their power to silence me.

  How it must have amused him on the Feast of Saint Hermenegild to remind me of my Martyr of the Sacrament, and its verses on natural magic. For by now I must have seen: that it was the holy officers who mastered the arts of illusion and the sciences of uncertainty.

  The more that is stripped away, the less that remains to be taken.

  I began to use the stairway again, late at night, while Antonia pretended to sleep. One did not need a telescope for stars in such multitudes.

  The weeks passed quietly. Father Núñez was a subtle man. Four months since Magda’s visit, four months since I had first sent for him. Time and quiet in which to brood on each message, to solve the riddles each concealed—to wonder if they had ever been there, if Núñez had taught this game to Santa Cruz or learned it from him. Time and quiet in which to ponder the completeness of my acquiescence, the emptiness of my rebellion, the contents of his messages, the terms of my defeat, to let these grow to cover me like a second skin, to all but heal and then be torn again from me. Four months without poetry, four months with one book. Four months in which to wait for the most terrible riddle to be answered, of the beata’s identity, the secret dread that Magda’s visit had awoken.

  What did he still want from me? Evidence of what—that I had found the path on my own? But the path is another’s, this path is not my own. I lacked the faith to follow wheresoever it led, I lacked faith in the administrators of the circular discipline.

  Late one night, the light of the candle almost spent, I thought I found in the pages of the one book permitted me an answer. When the understanding lay in darkness, the will in dryness, the memory in emptiness, the affections in bitterness, and the feelings and the faculties lay stripped. When, all senses consumed, the soul lay as helpless as a prisoner bound hand and foot, able neither to move nor to see nor to receive any consolation from earth or from Heaven.

  And had been thus bound for years.

  Then, and then only, would Father Núñez come to examine what he had wrought.

  On May 18th the Archbishop published an edict against the insufferable disorder of women’s friendships in the convents, in particular among women of different quality, between nuns and servants, between the sisters and their favourites. Penalties for those who persisted could vary, banishment, lashes, excommunication. In some quarters the edict would be met with satisfaction, in others taken up to revive the rumours of sodomy. Unless I preferred not to heed it, I could take it as a warning, that Antonia would be the next to suffer for my sins.

  The more that is stripped away, the less we may offer in surrender. What was left to offer them that was not Antonia. I was not sure how much I had still left. But if I could do nothing else—I could perhaps force the moment.

  Arellano came quickly, as one who had been readied for the call.

  So it was true. How long had Sor Juana’s eyes been banded like this?

  Father Arellano would please convey any messages, before he became distracted. Of course, yes, it was no longer his business to inquire. The Prefect had asked—would Father Arellano please raise his voice?—The Prefect asked if in these twelve years in which Sor Juana had had her perfect freedom, she had accomplished what she had set out to do. Her poet had his Canticles, her Velázquez his great canvasses. Had it been worthwhile, that so many others, the lowly, should have suffered so and might su
ffer yet more? Had she worked enough magic, had she had enough of fame?—for who knew what new triumphs her countess would bring her to, what bold lyrics she would next publish. Truly, having achieved so much or so little, could Sor Juana be content now to give service as an ordinary nun?

  Had Father Arellano brought no other word? No, that was all. Then to His Paternity’s own question: First, he should notice that my secretary had served to guide me here, and note that if anything were to happen to her, I would lose my way entirely and never find the path. Second, the question was not how long but how much longer, for the next time Father Arellano came, he would find my writing hand splinted and bound, not just my eyes. And if on that occasion he could still not announce Father Núñez’s arrival, then he would return to find them put out, as evidence of my sincerity. Father Núñez would of course want evidence. Now if His Paternity would try very hard to remember the gist …? That there were orbits within circles, and circles without orbits, and if I was to walk a circular path, perhaps I was also to take this as a sign that in the circular manner of things, Father Núñez sought in me a Christian Herakles. I had shorn my hair, I would bind my hands, as I had my eyes. And next I would offer up to the Prefect of the Brotherhood of Mary the final evidence that he and Mexico lacked—so that we might together take sightings of these fresh new orbits by the light of our mutual darkness.

  There is a false peace, when for a time it seems the Enemy sleeps while we wake, wakes while we sleep. One day this peace must be cast out, back into the darkness whence it springs, and as it leaves there comes a spirit of dizziness in its wake.

  Solve the riddle. How he had tormented me with his knowledge—my childhood love of riddles—to set my mind riddles whose answers were in the book, so that I would be forced to read it only as he wished me to. The circular discipline. When the mouth was pierced with sorrows, the vitals were consumed with hopelessness, the heart lay gasping, like a fish on hot coals, and the eyes blinded as those of an owl in the sun of noon—and when I had read the poet I had loved, read him not with my eyes but through those of Núñez—then would he have me believe he was to come.

  But I would not be deceived. No, what would more surely bring him was the threat to put them out, his eyes. The poetic solution.

  Little fool.

  Antonia tried to help. Cook, talk, draw a bath. Yes, she could draw me a basin of cold water to wash in, leave it on the table, go to bed herself, leave me in peace, not come up again until she was called. I said again, perhaps she should not live with me. Her only answer was to bring me a vase of flowers. Iris, marigold, rose. She set them on the window ledge. If I did not want them, shove them off. Her anger was better for both of us.

  He had not come. Núñez was not a poet.

  For two days now, Antonia had respected my wishes, left me to myself, the upper floor to me. Two days to contemplate where pride had brought me, the prideful threat by which I had trapped myself, the narrow road out. Two nights to turn about from room to room, up to the roof and back to this.

  Perhaps Sor Juana would prefer a closet.

  Bed. Table. One fresh candle. Materials for writing—what? another plea that would not be believed—one upon which he might look favourably? Table, vase, basin, light silvering on the surface, breaking through my fingers. Whose hair was this, whose black eyes, who was this novice? Núñez had heard the hollowness in the threat, the weakness within it, and had not bothered to answer. At the table I picked up a pen, dipped it, idly trailed a thread of black across a page. How was I to do this, with a quill tip?

  Once I had used the years to mark his absences, and exulted. Since February I had marked the months, then the weeks. Now the days. Soon I would be counting off the hours. They could wait decades.

  Late in the night I rose, moved into the next room, simply to listen to my steps moving through the empty studio, then soft on each stair to the roof. I went cautiously to the ledge to sit above Calle de las Rejas, looked down past the windows of my cell to the portería grate, a single lantern flickering. Warm night. Stars. Lean into the light to see down, lean out to see up.

  The chapel bell tolled once, quietly. In the distance others sounded. A noise from below—una india arriving to set up her stall beneath the lantern at the grate, an infant sleeping in the sling of her rebozo. Fresh tamales and atole for the worshippers at Lauds.

  What more could I be instructed in dispensing with? I did not need their books, if there could be only one—I did not need this book, which Núñez had poisoned now. In my mind I had the verses. Juan’s and many others, many hundreds. But what of the rest?

  How many stars did one require? I thought over how many I might remember, more or less, over how I should recall them, as they had been on some other night or as they were tonight? If I could fix them in my mind, tonight, hold them fast, glowing still in the simple sketches they traced in the sky, as if a finger a thousand years ago had traced them behind my eyes. Perhaps it was the constellations one remembered, not the stars. After all these years I still could not connect them, knew so few of the names by which they had been called by other peoples in other places and times. Fire-Bow, Los Astillejos, Orion. Taurus, Gemini. How many constellations would suffice? I wondered how I would remember Night itself. Like this, or as I had once feared it as a child? And this new night, as final and complete as the living may see, there was no way to know if it was more to be feared.

  Poetic nonsense.

  And having taken out his eyes, could I at last be free of his voice in my mind?

  I had thought to force the moment—but had left myself no way out. They who could wait decades had only to wait now a little while, a week, a month, to see if I would follow through. If I could, nothing in their files had changed—I was only where I had been—but if I could not, they would have the measure of my weakness, would know that I am beaten. Would know that I know it.

  I wondered what it was that led me to this. Was it only pride, or weakness? No, there was something more.

  It was in his messages, his taunts … prediction, natural magic, divination. He had something more in store, something better, someone else, after Magda—I had to know. What—charges they could bring against Antonia? But she had done nothing. Or the trial, it was to be any day now, was it the beata—was that it, that the charge against her was to be divination? But I could not see how that was to make for a more devastating discovery. What had I missed? Were these to be the charges against me? Divination, sorcery? There was the hex on Sister Paula, the sorcerer who passed through the classroom in Nepantla, but it was only an expression—this was childishness. What else would Magda testify to? Or had they found someone else …?

  Another possibility had slipped into my mind, into the quiet, with a dread unlike anything I had ever felt. The one final truth the holy officers were only waiting for the moment to reveal. One last discovery. That in the Inquisition’s secret prisons, in a cell whose occupant had been held for years, only to be used one day as an instrument against me, as Magda had been … a holy woman from the country, a healer, half-Indian, a midwife … that the secret within the secret trial, was that the beata was Amanda.

  And within this vertiginous spirit there dwell such intolerable blasphemies that even in desolation it were better not to pray. Far better to kiss the dust with one’s mouth … for the remembrance of past evils, the ignobility of past actions, reveals such vileness as to make the soul believe God its Enemy, and itself the enemy of God….

  How long they have instructed me in uncertainty, how long I have been fed on doubt. When was the first lie told that brought me here, now? Days, months, weeks, thirty years, three thousand. I cannot wait longer. It must be tonight, while I have the strength to pray for strength.

  I thought the answer hidden in those pages—that to know what would bring him, I had only to read with care, closely, deeply enough. But I have not solved it, because the answers were never in the book. The solution is the book itself. This is not about evidence or messa
ges or instructions. It is not a question of my willingness to change or submit. It is not that he disbelieves I could be made to follow the path, but that he is afraid I could, for a time. For if it goes so hard on the confessors of heretics, how much harder on the director of the heresiarch. There is a safer path. It is as Gutiérrez said. A convergence of interests. The paths are not separate. Núñez will come when I have destroyed myself in search of answers to the false questions he has planted. This too is a kind of divination, circular discipline, a natural magic. The book serves as both method and sentence. It is his instrument. This book is killing me.

  And when the work is done, the magic course is run, together will they come to pick over what is left, strip off whatever yet has worth, put away the rest. In a cupboard, or a closet.

  I do not know what else to do, what else to pray for. I have lost faith that he will come at all. He may leave this work to others. How am I to pray for answers when I know no question I can trust?

  No, there is one. One question … for all the answers I will never get. Who is the beata? One name I would give anything to know, one face I would give everything to see.

  To know, to see. Can I give my eyes to see?

  No one sees more clearly than blind Núñez how much I fear this place he has led me to. My mind. An empty room, a night with nothing in it. How much strength need I pray for, to lift a feather? Twice. To let the madness out.

  Christian Herakles, set me free.

  I will not rise from this table until I have chosen, will not leave this room until it is decided, till I have done it, or discovered I cannot and know that I am beaten.

  Table. Basin. Vase.

  How small has the world become. Brown. Turquoise. Red. How plain the palette. For twenty-four years I have sat at these windows overlooking the spectacle of other lives passing by. The neighbours across the way whose routines I know so well—I have never heard their voices. Never spoken with the old widow lodging in the lower rooms, helped her with her packages, exchanged greetings with the wheelwright. And I will never see more of their lives than I have seen until tonight. The chapel bell chimes the hour. Two past midnight, three to dawn. How brief, how few the hours ahead … how long, how many, those behind.