Her absence in every stone.
Whirl and waiterswarm of white tuxedos brandishing cocktails party favours canapés. S and B and all the gatecrash actors toasting Paz! toasting Drama! toasting convent life to end the 20th century. The actors making believe this party is for us. Only the playwright nursing the drink / the grudge / the sting of being the last to see the moment of epiphany. In his own play. And now stepping forth in all theatricality! the goateed actor of Núñez who made us see his humanness—even his, even me—toasting the greatest night that felt like a century of their careers that felt like the end of the world, didn’t it old friends?—slopping glass on high, wiping goatee agleam with martini dry very dry—toast! one more toast—to you, my family—if I’m around for the end of the world let it feel like this, with all of you … rousing thespiate cheer from the company … this crazed hilarity effervesces fireflies in this space where once she moved and dreamed.
Would she approve? who so loved to laugh—are you watching, Juanita, can you hear the music here? though we are made deaf to you…. See all the cells now? empty and dark. They’re classrooms. Your sisters have all gone home. To their rest. To sleep now….
Will you give me leave, Juanita? To let you go. This one night at least?
What is this I see in your face, B? Is this happiness? And S, her arm across my shoulders, says Though Paz is no saint and all this expense is obscene when you think of the poor, in Mexico at least a great poet is still great—as in Sor Juana’s day. Paz doesn’t have much more time, his health is failing so badly the President of Mexico has asked to pay all the expenses. Until the very end. It is one of the reasons I can still love this country, still live in this city of shit and autocrats with complicated European names.
Are you ready to meet him? This is your one chance.
Wait S not yet—a toast—a toast to the imperial city of Mexico, long live every unloved emperor dead or alive—salud!
And just how many glasses have you had?—quit stalling B you know you have to meet him, you can quote me half his poetry. Look, there’s so handsome Andreas who played don Carlos already in the receiving line.
Up next to the dais—next to this planter of orchestral anemones plucked by all the little silverfish of Melody—and under the warp of a white pavilion, the great man sits / his own statuary. From out behind this green-eyed Medusa of the all-seeing eye enNobelled that turns all to stone, snakes a line of supplicants, books clutched—white foreknuckled crook that marks the page for The Signing.
After a minute of eternity, up to us sways smiling blue/blur eyed Andreas—I got Paz to sign my book and stole his pen. Want it? See? Seascrawl of signature all over the frontispiece: Five Decades of Poems by Pablo Neruda. Do you think Paz noticed, did he like Neruda? Do you want to dance?
By the elbow now S takes B for a tutorial stroll through love’s academy.
Come B, come meet Paz. I have a friend who can introduce us, I don’t think he’d remember me. I was a little girl and he the god of my father. See that tall grey-haired man with the boyish smile? Yes very handsome. Yes he is married too. Maybe you should set your glass down now. He has been a friend to Paz, one of the few writers his wife trusts. He will present us.
I want to say good-bye. To Octavio Paz. Beulah, will you come with me?
Fidgeting S and flinching B—hanging flitches of harem beef in a chorus-line of twenty young women all in pale blue suits tight-skirted like stewardesses—turquoise colour guard of the Air Force of Poesy.
Waiting, waiting to draw near—what’s this, S, are they selling his books even here? No no, B, giving them. The one thing he will sign. Once a woman from California asked him to sign her breasts, she was already lifting her shirt. You have no idea how strange is this life of his. Everyone in the world sending him books, his name in a thousand special dedications from total strangers all across the world. He has a special desk in a special room. His secretary piles up all the books seeking benediction. Once in a while he sits down there and when he can’t see out the window sweeps them into an old laundry hamper. For years like this. He must understand Sor Juana in ways no one else can.
And that house of his, full of cats, running wild, knocking down lamps. A fire hazard, as everyone knows but he says let them be. The President wants to give him a new house to die in. Luxuriously.
And suddenly we are near—thank you S for distracting me did you think I wouldn’t stay for you? First S whispers a few words to the Oracle, a hello years-old from her father, kiss on the cheek, her hand squeezes the soft round shoulder. Then S’s writerfriend with the sad sad eyes of a beautiful hound steps close. Your name is Beulah, yes? You are from Canada? Let me introduce you to my friend. Octavio, this is …
And time stands still.
Will things ever be the same will they? Will I come away from Sinai blinded thunderstuck speaking in tongues? What can I tell him say how lonely it would have been these years—without him—who never knew I existed? Will I tell him I couldn’t have failed without him? Written any of this? No this is nothing for a dying man’s conscience.
What will I say in this the only moment left? That none of us has much time and we two just this one instant—he is dying—see it knotted there, his dying in his eyes? The letters neveranswered don’t matter. To anyone, not even me.
Thank him, tell him … but all sound the whole world over is dying out …
All senses reduced to vision, all vision narrowing to this one face edged in black felt. Jowls pulling down the mouth that once spoke so brilliantly—eyes once like precious jades in the photographs yellowed to the lour of mashed peas—it’s so unjust what is happening to you, this slow wasting—and I am speaking at last but with no idea—jaws working, tongue of burlap flap—am I deaf, am I shouting?—as the light, the greensmoke glow in those ancient eyes gutters lanternyellow down to dim as he looks at me unspeaking. Is it the poison in my mind that is killing him? I look up to S who stands on the other side worryfaced and I say God S I am killing Octavio Paz.
Eyes widening, hand to her mouth / instant of pause a peal slips unsnuffed through her fingertips—hard she grabs me by the arm we stagger off simpleton smile smears across my mouth. What is this S, this giddiness this heart tickle/lift—is this happiness? Carcajadas—blasts of bellylaugh, hers, ours together. Ours … So this is laughter.
This place hasn’t killed us, S. Not yet.
S—head bent to my breasts—gasp/hitch of little sobs, helpless cling to my shoulders sliding down my arms. I am killing Octavio Paz, oh B, your face, you should have seen—
Oh Beulah, I haven’t laughed like this in years.
Midnight anti-climax of NewYear horns bugling revelry. The band packs up their strings. Paz gets up to leave, a hundred eyes filing after as to a tiny shuffling iron mountain of enormous drawing power. Heavy lean on the arm of his empress, he passes where we sit, falters, turns. Disengages. Shuffles a doddering step toward us, then another. Ten metres over uneven stone. We are all frozen now … the anguish—will he stumble will he fall? is he coming to make me answer for my laughter? Is he coming to answer my letters?
But no he comes for her not me, little brass soldier—for her, for the tall dancer Sor Juana, looking up now at the platinum stars. She doesn’t even notice—oh but she does. Coqueta. He comes to stand before her, straightens, puts out a hand—carajo Beulah I don’t believe this, look at them—
Buenas noches, señora, my name … is Octavio Paz.
Moment of magic … O remember this instant, take this with you to the end.
Breathing again, S whispers, I’m sure he hasn’t introduced himself in thirty years….
Little bent dwarfgod in a rumpled black suit, shuffling shyly out through the gates of horn.
Good-bye.
Green Eyes.
She loved to dance—did Juana ever dance out here? Under these stars three hundred years younger then—dreaming maybe of her own queen, the Countess María Luisa?—dancing as S and B are, in each other’s
arms losing track losing count…. Is she watching us, smiling down from Sirius? At S, blackbright eyes, falcon mask, body so beautiful in this dress, my breasts’ green satin glide over hers of red velvet.
Couples around us now dancing … over the speakers a song a duet—an African man a woman, American. Seven Seconds tick past … I am humming contented cricket into the shell of her ear. You know this song? S whispers.
Oh yes S I know, this song I have loved…. This night, I know every song ever sung.
O if I could just cease upon the midnight with no pain….
Juanita, will you let me? With so much left undone, unsaid these three hundred years? Give us this night at least, will you give me leave? Give us this last dance, two hands clasped at her redvelvet hip, mouths filled with jasmine….
Oh S, What can go wrong now? nothing can touch us. Not in your arms. Not in this bliss. Is this joy, rapture—this?
Arms that protect, her eyes pent with a need so long deferred … mingled in a diffident grief that will not forget, will not release her, to me. He’s gone, S, it’s not your fault. Hunger-eyed but so patient in her aching. Oh S I can bring you the sweetest relief, for an hour. I can do this for you. For this, your gift of laughter to me.
Let me clasp this falcon mask between these two cool palms, probe those ebon eyes with mine, coax groans deep from the place where your laughter comes. Let me. Sweet S who rescued me, let me ease the furrows of your brow.
Let me shift them to your panting throat, work the delicate bellows of your ribs.
S, let me stoke you, notch you on my tongue. Like an urgent errand knocked to a bow. Score each bump of gooseflesh with a tongue of arrowsong—scale a shy breast, gather it in, the clustering of a single grape—let me, S—try its resistance between teeth fastidious as the stepping of a deer … into wine.
Ruin everything, S, how could we?
O, S, let me feel your small hands on me, submit me … to the blind imperium of a single fingertip, chart its long decline on the scroll of one vellum hip. Touch me. Cover me with salt seashell glyphs. Scorch me with Ss—quick brushfire of your lips.
S, O S, who says we’re not ready? A year for me, two years for you he’s been gone. Was he kind? Was he true was he good to you? No no S, no—we don’t need even the best of them—swarming explorers planters of their million teeming little flags, steeping in the green of our need. All that bumping, the lunging, the caliper eyes, the chiselling tongues, mouths caved in marble.
We let them into our guts. Invitation that becomes an invasion—invictus—enough! let’s evict them now cough them up. Oh S, it’s been so long. You don’t know how to begin? let me show you.
It begins like this….
Dawn.
Ruin everything—how can we?
Why do I always insist? Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Always this sick sick hunger consumes all that is dearest to me. One night of sweetness is all I asked. One night in this dying century. Of bliss. No. Bliss would be much too much. One night of mercy, that’s all, no more than this.
I came here to love her loss, adore it, find her silence beautiful, make it all so lyrical. Now is everything else to be stripped from me too—is this the price of one night’s rapture? Why do I never learn why can’t I accept—of course I must lose everything!—the crystal drift of her music in my ear, now my Eyes of wonder for a day restored … my own poetry.
Now S.
I’ve ruined it, between us, haven’t I S?
No no of course not B just a little awkwardness. I never imagined doing that. Let’s just give it a day or two. Flatblack coals her eyes, where is her laughter gone? Fled that brightness, musical gleam.
But S what about our film, our tour to the Museum of Medicine, to the Inquisition exhibit? Ah you meant postpone but said cancel. No S I know what you meant. You stay here fingering your relics, I’ll find another perfect guide with two doctorates and a red velvet dress. Meanwhile I’ll go alone instead to Teotihuacan, ruined city old as Rome. The recipe for obsidian wine let me find on my own. Like I was meant to all along.
Recipe—make these filed teeth fastidious.
1 Jan. 1995
The filmscript goes/swell. I have made my resolution. This is to be the screening that starts after the last book is burned. I want this horror show to make us run screaming through the streets. I want to make us gnaw our tongues for pain. I want to make it feel like hell.
*From out of the sky strange sucking creatures
†Horrible epidemics—an obsession with the grotesque and the disfigured—
‡Hunger and insurrection
§If the Archbishop of Mexico want to attack Octavio Paz, he should have to stand in line and wait, like the rest of us
DE-CANTING THE BLACK LEGEND
PEDRO MARTUROS (ED.),
INQUISITIVE MINDS20
… It is a fact well known to many here at this symposium and, indeed, a common-place among twentieth-century historiographers of the Spanish Inquisition, that its notorious evils (mass burnings at the stake of witches and other innocents, a plague of sadistic tortures of diabolical cleverness …) have become, in the public mind, grossly distorted into ‘the Black Legend.’ Having shrouded itself in secrecy and mystery throughout its history, the Spanish Inquisition must bear its share of the blame.
The unpalatable truth however is that the Spanish Inquisition’s only true innovation was the auto de fe, the ‘act of faith.’ A piece of state theatre that has wrongly become synonymous with the burning of heretics at the stake.
In fact, the execution of heretics was already common practice throughout Christendom, not just in Spain. It is to the credit of the Holy Office (that is, after the first 60 years of holocaust up to 1540) that of the 44,000 cases tried in the Spanish Dominions, the ratio of accused sent to the stake fell to below four percent.18 Of these, at least half burned in effigy, having fled, died in prison, or (among those tried posthumously) had their remains exhumed from hallowed ground and incinerated. Of those burned in the flesh, only a small minority were burned alive; most took the opportunity to repent at the last instant and were garroted before their pyre was lit.
These figures compare very favourably with the rate of executions ordered by secular tribunals of the same period. Further, acquittal rates for heresy rose from zero, under the Medieval Inquisition, to between two and eighteen percent in certain jurisdictions of the Holy Office in Spain. In Valencia, nine percent of cases were suspended outright, while a further forty-four percent were penanced: meaning some combination of fines, banishment, imprisonment, and only rare cases of sentencing to hard labour in the galleys. Another forty percent were reconciled: occasioning more severe penalties. Confiscation of estates, flogging, life in solitary confinement (though often commuted), and, not infrequently, the galleys—but still, never for terms longer than ten years.19
True, in the face of wave after wave of denunciations, the mill-wheels of the Holy Office did grind slowly, yet prisoners waiting more than 15 years for trial, while not uncommon, were still very much in a minority. And the Black Legend notwithstanding, the secret prisons of the Inquisition were often models of cleanliness and humane treatment, at least in comparison with their secular counterparts.
In its special treatment of witches, often considering these cases to be of mental disorder rather than heresy, the Spanish Inquisition—a few outbreaks of intolerance excepted—was a beacon of enlightenment and forbearance, especially in contrast to the furious and bloodthirsty campaigns of the Parliament of Bordeaux, the Spanish Inquisition’s neighbouring secular jurisdiction to the North.
Concerning torture, the figures are undeniable. After the first sixty years of unrestrained excess, fully ninety percent of all prisoners were never tortured, at least physically. And fewer than a third of accused heretics saw threats of torture eventually carried out.
Only three techniques were ever sanctioned: the garrucha (‘pulley’), the potro (‘colt’), and the toca (‘cloth’). Novel methods were actively disco
uraged, even as innovation flourished in the secular sphere. Church Inquisitors supervised torture but were never to participate: customarily, it was the public executioner who, after stripping the prisoners naked, conducted events.
Even here, in many cases allowances, if not exceptions, were made for heretics over seventy years of age or under ten, especially females. Physicians were often made available, and few prisoners actually died of their injuries. More than a few made a full recovery from their physical symptoms.
Perhaps the Black Legend has persisted and even grown in the face of recent objective and scientific demystifications because for 350 years, thousands died, fled, or suffered imprisonment, torture, banishment, confiscations, desecrations of family burial sites, defamation—and perhaps millions more, intimidation—for acts and thoughts that in our liberal times we would consider not quite criminal.
Continually and conveniently overlooked is the fact that such abuses, regrettable though they may have been, are dwarfed by the subtle omnipresence, creativity, and sheer efficiency of modern methods of social control … of this century’s Inquisitions.
JUBILEE: A SHOOTING SCRIPT—DAY 1
FADE IN:
EXT. 17TH-CENTURY MEXICO CITY–LATE AFTERNOON
View from massive dome of the Jesuit College of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Luxurious carriages waiting curbside jam the street. Footmen stand together. Bantering, calling out to women passing by. Change of guards taking up positions around the building. Mood relaxed.
INSIDE THE BUILDING
Chambers of the Brotherhood of Mary: opulent boardroom, richly appointed. Twelve men—powdered, wigged, dressed in silks—sit in chairs drawn up along opposite sides of a long, gleaming table. On it a single glazed pitcher and twelve crystal water glasses.
Late afternoon light streams over one end of the table. At the other stands an old man, hunched, bald, nearly blind. Cassock dirty, threadbare, worn through at knees and elbows. The voice, though, is clear and firm. New Spain’s twelve most powerful men come here each week to hear it, and receive their spiritual instructions. The Spanish King’s sovereign representative in the New World, the Viceroy of New Spain, sits humbly, expression rapt, at the old man’s left.
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