Hunger's Brides
Page 122
I can stay! and my world is an oystergleam and the moon is full but the dragons I see are stone with flower ruffs and roar silently like roaring twenties socialites in serpent skirts fusing knees, and this comes as a low-relief to me as I walk the Avenue of the Dead and start to climb the Moon’s Pyramid. And I cling shortwinded to these steep steps with such elation—here at least I am admitted—to climb among the dead elect.
Stairs not just steep but narrowing. Masses despatched near the bottom’s wide marches—ever dwindling candidature / fused taper up to the apex. But way up there only the flowery sacrifice of the fittest—bent back over a grisly effigy of Darwin on his head. What if the Beagle had landed here? what of evolution’s evolution then?
Up and up this steeped stepness—just a half-dozen more—as the night pulls back at my shoulders and if I turn it will pull me screaming into its ribthroated well. At the top the string parts and pitches me face-first and gasping onto the platform still sunwarm under my palms. At last I turn to look down and out over this city long lost past longing, half a millennium back already just a rumour of lost greatness to the Aztecs—its tracings out below me now so unlike the coffeetable books and diagrams.
Avenue of the Dead that runs past the Pyramid of the Sun, yes yes it is larger, but ending here—ending here, this deadroad, at the Moon’s Pyramid. Over there, all along the Avenida de los Muertos sprawls an alphabet of children’s blocks. Lintels cracked friezes split / chapped frescoes cob-webbed porticos. A sliver of moon crests the hills—all agleam! the glyph bestiaries, precincts of jaguar temples and dragon and eagle trembling now with creamy light ashimmer as if with heat released as light. Dustdevils of light / helical moonbeams in a bright miasma whispering up from a boneyard of graven stone….
Feel the stillness here … feel its hard pull down at the bone.
Stop. Look.
Feel.
See the full moon draw its clinging sheen clear of the tent-top ridge of hills. The light flares briefly as at the parting of a film of silk.
I could stay
here
forever.
Nothing can reach here, nothing touch me ever just this air so calm. Just this tremulous convection of moonlight not wind, sovereign sway of stillness I breathe shyly in, that fills my mouth … taste it run thick like buttermilk down my throat.
Warm stone … feel it ebb its heat into me. Pyramid of the Moon. Pyramid / Pyre—find the shape of flame in stone, crayon-traced, stability’s hieroglyph, see? Count the sides, count to five. Stablest configuration of lines in three dimensions. Unshakeable. Do you remember, Juana, summing the angles in your head? Do you remember the pyramids you dreamt? we dreamt together.
I lean back on my palms, texture of pumice underneath, and under my heels too—sandals kicked free. Between the stones, here and there small pale blooms, grey in the moonlight.
Gone the city’s copper taste—an hour away. Only the smell, the tonguecloak of dust. I tilt my head back to a sky washed of all but the brightest stars, red and white blink of landing lights above, no sound. At the corner of my eye a firefly’s phosphorescent wink. Two, three. Out.
Shooting starstreak—swift, serious—to the south. Into the faint glow of Mexico City.
East—strobe of headlights rounding a far bend on a hill.
Pulsefade in my ears … fade, fading still, barely audible … to the faintest shriek of sharpening steel.
Time passing. My penlight spills its dirty yellow across this glowing page. A dog tests the air, one bark without echo, issue. One roostercrow, dispirited.
Somewhere a rooster slips into the dream of a child, a dog into the dream of a hen.
The sky, a bowl of cream overturned. A landscape battered, chipped, jumbled—spent volcanic cones, moonlit spires of earthcrust—all now slump subside like ice cream melting.
Brief abeyance of the bright solar storm—Nemesis met.
And sleeping at last in me—for a minute or two this melancholy bloodhound questing baying—scenting on a solar wind. Far, how many hours of unplanned flight at a thousand kilometres an hour? faraway the city where I was born. I come to rest in a desert on a pyramid built to the moon. What am I doing here?
Peace, I’ve begun to make a prayer for you here. When I am done, when I have written it, will you finally come?
And what will make you stay?
[2:34 A.M.]
Ah, love, let us be true to one another …27 What are you doing now, this minute, Professor, do you ever think of me? Remember our last night together … did you dream of me watching you sleep, your nose bent, face puckered against the sheet? You said my name, I never told you. When I slipped my hand into yours, you held it there. Skin so smooth.
I never told.
It is beautiful here tonight.
I move with your breath-ing …
I breathe with your beau-ty …28
At this moment, as I shiver through this night of shooting fireflies and boneglow pyramids are you smiling, reading, weeping—making love with her? To someone else? Do you need anybody, ever? Are you like me a little after all? Do you need your lovers at all, what are we to you? Do we keep you from this emptiness even for an hour?
Or does the iceman just need to come.
What would it take to make you break? How much truth can you bear? Bait the dancing bear….
Did I give you anything you really need—comfort? peace? an instant’s happiness—furtive, fleeting, guilt-fleeced? Are you smiling now, indulgently, reading me, or have you torn this up—do you hate me more for what I’ve done to you already or for what may still be done?
Are you playing with your daughter as I write this down? I know you named her Catherine—I wonder if you chose the name. It’s your mother’s, isn’t it—oh you thought I’d forgotten. And why did I think you’d have a son? You know, I’ve seen her…. She is an angel, Donald. Are you reading to her now, is she still too young are you a good teacher a good father to her—will you be? Can you still learn?
[3:50 A.M.]
This chill desert is manmade too. It reminds me of your heart. The valley of Mexico was once a chain of lakes. Now look at these stripped Saharan hills—cracked-rib forest of galleys—O Glory of Rome! Sunken barnacle on the seafloor. And what have these fallen trees built here in México that survives … us?
Feel the breeze stir now at this pyramid’s peak—feel the cold—as I whirl round and round arms out spinning on this pyramid top. Happy shades of you and me dancing glass figurines on a music box. We are that music—who holds the key who winds us up? Universe of glass supercooled time, viscid, freeze-dried—tremulous turning on a music box winding down to
pure
flux
Who winds the clockworks? calls the megaton tune of sky and earth—waltzes mountains weds seafloors to horizons rolls us in his palm makes us round? Do we make the trickster laugh, does he want ice cream, is he bored?—with you me with everybody? And truly does this prankster / thanatical joker really just dance us in his palm as he dances himself to death / alone on time’s pyramid—staggersided like a wedding cake / whirling as I am now in his drunken wedding dance / in the empty arms of coldskied eternity teetering—
this flawed palindrome / inconfigurable flux
volcanic glass that shatters minds at the touch
that bridge too far / that frame too much
Who will teach me this, Donald? The old man in the poncho sleeping down below? Or do I go alone as Juana went, schooled on paradox and pyramids?
I shudder with cold. Cold claws my hand as I make myself write—and my fingers cry out for rest their talon screech but there will be time soon very soon for the gnaw and clench of surcease—quill as dagger as ignition key under this clenched fist-heel, I scratch my graffiti into the world’s enamel coat….
Dawn. I wanted promised poncho man to be down before the first sunray broke the ridge / pierced the sky but my cold-drugged knees won’t carry me—time to try these stumpy wings? or not quite yet. Pyramid c
limbs used to be one-way trips, on obsidian wine.
Hail! there All hail—rise to toast the sun!—blue hummingbird whose blood is blinding light! There where it rises beside the Pyramid of the Sun. Manmade rock-heap miming mountain. At its tip I stand, heart in hand—a clutch of precious eaglefruit raised to lure the Ascending Eagle—BlueHummingbird! unhooded now—to the jesses.
The sun warms my face, though I don’t want it.
Pyramid of the Moon teach me how to live with loss.
Pyramid of the Sun teach me to die.
Well.
To love it, as you do. Without desire.
On drugged knees I start down, clinging, crawling, face to the pitched steps. But I will walk the deadroad on my feet. This shameroad the FeatherSerpent walked in failure to the burning ground. From here I start down the road to the Red Lands, the Black, land of knowledge and death.
JUBILEE, DAY 24: THE BODY OF A NUN
THE PLAZA OUTSIDE THE CONVENT–MORNING
Flowers clasped in both hands, an old woman comes from the building opposite Juana’s cell. Replaces yesterday’s flowers in the niche altar beneath Juana’s window, makes her way unsteadily back to her door. Pauses in the doorway and, frowning, watches a ragtag collection of boys playing a ball game against the convent walls. The game grows raucous. Old man comes out from a few doors down, chases the boys off. As he turns, his eyes meet the old woman’s, who turns away.
INT. INDEFINITE LOCATION, INDEFINITE ERA–MORNING
Young girls in school uniforms receiving instruction from a nun. Bright, fresh faces. Intent, innocent.
INSIDE THE CONVENT LOCUTORY–MORNING, BRIGHT SUNSHINE
Before, Juana had been able to approach the window. The new grate cuts the room lengthwise. Núñez stands now between her and the light. It costs her an effort to look at him as the sun spills over his shoulder.
NÚÑEZ
Be warned that I will come twice every day until this is finished. Evening and early morning.
[turning to Gabriel] Stop hovering over me!
JUANA
Gabriel is afraid we are killing each other.
GABRIEL
Father, her tongue is infected.
NÚÑEZ
As I have been saying for years.
[squinting in satisfaction]
It hurts you to speak.
JUANA
[under her breath]
More than you can know.
NÚÑEZ
[to Gabriel]
I am told she started out before dawn to meet us here. They say she has licked clean a path of stone from her cell right up to this locutory.
[turns on her with violence]
You will never be mistaken for a saint–not under me!
We are now compiling dossiers on three extáticas. Teresa de Jesus, Antonia de Ochoa, Juana de los Reyes. Three more women passing themselves off as saints–
JUANA
I am no saint.
NÚÑEZ
The others will get off with a hundred lashes, or two. Not you….
[conjuring rage]
‘The body of a nun should be dead to the world! Dead to any love but that of a jealous Husband. Christ shares his bed with no one–least of all the pitiful, narrow cot that is a nun’s soul!’29
V.O.: Yes, Reverend Father, quote yourself as though it were Holy Writ.
‘… And is there any other that a bride of Christ should love?–Jesus alone, and in what terrifying disproportion to His own love! Not only this, but she must not allow herself to be loved–against all the natural inclinations of women! Woman–who so gladly suffers being loved and celebrated. Unlike her, the true bride of Christ abominates in equal measure both loving and being loved.’
JUANA
How can I accept this? Father, show me how.
NÚÑEZ
Accept it? Arrogant wretch! You persist in treating your soul like some crown of jewels.
On his feet now, he lifts a face of blind rage to the dark rafters. Turns back on her furiously.
NÚÑEZ
Before being vanquished and made a captive, the bride is first to be stripped of these and clapped in infamous irons, in the dark dungeon of her own flesh, a vile slave to her appetites.’
From the folds of his cassock, Núñez draws a leatherbound book, opens it, presses it flat against the grate.
NÚÑEZ
Castalian Flood–I know who emboldened you to publish this filth. And I know all about her appetites.
JUANA
It’s been five years. The Inquisition has made no complaint–
NÚÑEZ
Because they do not yet know what your words conceal! Divine Narcissus. Was Christ’s martyred body not beautiful enough for you? That you should make him Narcissus!
You have sinned more than a thousand whores. He does not need your love! Do you hear? And He does not need that His Love be returned.
JUANA
But is it so wrong to fear that this vast difference–the self-sufficiency of His Love and the superfluousness of our own–
NÚÑEZ
[his face contorting with fury]
Stop!
JUANA
To feel that this disproportion debases and enslaves us–though this defect of the heart is all our own?
NÚÑEZ
How has this piece of heresy so taken hold of you?!
He hurls her collection at the window. As it strikes the iron bars it splits. Part falls into the dirt beneath the window.
NÚÑEZ
Gabriel. See that no one touches Sor Juana’s book. We will see how well her work endures.
[shakes his head in disgust]
You have made a mockery of the articles of Our Faith. You have violated a sacred trust, the holy sacrament of confession, and for twenty-five years harboured these abominations of the imagination and the flesh.
Speak!
JUANA
Yes.
NÚÑEZ
Leave me now…
If I return we will see about curing this sick soul of yours. We will come to the end of your lusts. This is the source of these crazy ecstasies.
And in the meanwhile, take care of that tongue.
JUBILEE, DAY 28: BLACK BEAST
INSIDE THE CONVENT CHAPEL–NIGHT
The chapel is empty but for her. Dozens of votive candles flicker on the altar. Juana stands. Clasps a single candle in her hands. Faintest starlight through stained glass windows. Camera slowly circles her….
Just audible now the first bars of Arvo Part’s Miserere. … counter-tenor, oboe, counter-tenor, oboe, countertenor, bass clarinet, counter-tenor, oboe counter-tenor bass clarinet counter-tenor tenor camera accelerating oboe counter-tenor bass clarinet oboe counter-tenor tenor clarinet counter-tenor organ tenor camera rising circling circling counter-tenor organ tenor counter-tenor organ tenor countertenor bass clarinet oboe counter-tenor tenor clarinet counter-tenor oboe bassoon camera rising–TENOR COUNTER-TENOR SOPRANO BASS OBOE BASSOON KETTLE DRUM
Rising wheeling wall of sound–light receding–altitude volume rising sheer–altar to nave, stars to heaven–camera the eye of god–far below a soul is dying a great spirit is struggling for life very far below–at last a pillar of sound and lightlessness rising up from the altar to heaven drives her to her knees….
FADE OUT
INSIDE LOCUTORY–GREY MORNING
NÚÑEZ
[beckoning to her]
Come closer.
Juana kneels close to the grate as he stands on the other side.
NÚÑEZ
Gabriel, how does she appear to you today.
GABRIEL
Worse…
NÚÑEZ
As I expected. She hardly knows now when she is defying me.
[to Juana]
The Prioress says your mortifications have become excessive.
JUANA
Precision and rigour … rigour and precision.
NÚÑEZ
You think you can es
cape me as you did the Carmelites.
JUANA
There is no escaping.
NÚÑEZ
Confess your ambitions.
JUANA
Wherever I run my enemy is waiting.
NÚÑEZ
Confess your ambitions.
JUANA
I have no ambitions left.
NÚÑEZ
Confess.
JUANA
My ambitions were grotesque.
Her lips move slightly, but no sound emerges.
NÚÑEZ
Speak! sinner. Make yourself heard.
JUANA
… They watch my every gesture.
NÚÑEZ
[sneering]
Yet they do not see you, do they? Do you even exist any longer? They see only the brazen idol you have built for them. Only I see you now as you really are. Deny it!
JUANA
These past months … It’s as you said, my example has the power to do great evil.
And it is as I told you…. I have brought down upon myself and upon the capital a flood of debates and envyings, wraths and strifes and backbitings–
NÚÑEZ
Stop these blasphemies!
JUANA
Whisperings and swellings and tumults. These are mine, for He has given them to me, the penalties of my adulteries–
NÚÑEZ
You would drive me away now that we have come this far?
JUANA
Every crime, every sin and fear, each cloud of ignorance, each hurt and cruelty–
NÚÑEZ
You would flee into a feigned lunacy!
JUANA
These months of calamity are mine. The weevil that infests the crops is the worm in my soul.
NÚÑEZ
It is just as I predicted.
JUANA
The blight is the blight on my flesh. The riots and rebellion begin with me–
NÚÑEZ
Preposterous. Have you communicated with the leaders of the insurrection? Do you even know their names?