JUANA
I have incited the Indians to revert to the worship of their idols–
NÚÑEZ
Did you send out secret circulars, preach to them their pagan doctrines? Give me the specifics.
JUANA I
have brought the floods.
NÚÑEZ
Vomiting blasphemy!–boasting of an entire continent punished just for you. Tell me how!
JUANA
Couldn’t it be?
NÚÑEZ
It is just as I told them. She will confess responsibility for the whole but claim innocence in the particulars. What are you trying to deflect me from?
I know you. You still doubt this.
JUANA
I am the lock, you are the key.
NÚÑEZ
You are nothing but an empty vessel.
JUANA
Emptiness itself.
NÚÑEZ
Look into the pus-hole that is your self! You would disdain His Grace so as to nurture this? Purge yourself of this sick pride!
You rebel because you fear union with Him. You fear the tidal power of His Love. You fear annihilation yet long for it.
[with disgust]
But no, still you withhold your consent, still you would deny Him. You are utterly and absolutely unworthy of His Love!
Yet even now he offers it, while you cling to this abomination that is your self.
You claim you cannot feel His Love. But you are terrified you will.
You have spent a lifetime walling in this black beast of yours. Verses are the scraps you feed it on.
But now you wake in the middle of the blackest night of all, and discover even the beast of your nightmares has left you….
Now what remains inside–your tower of empty speeches.
With difficulty she rises, comes to the grate, standing before him yet looking past him to the light.
NÚÑEZ
Tell me about your lusts. Tell me about your dreams, this unspeakable hunger that possesses you.
[more gently]
Juana, do you think you are the first? I have taken the confessions of hundreds of nuns. Understand that in this, at least, you are not alone. You are just like them.
It comes into their sleep as a succubus.
JUANA
[voice faint]
Is there no limit to what He can forgive?
NÚÑEZ
No child, none whatever.
Tell me how it began. Juana, I warn you, this confession must include those events that brought you to me–to Mother Church.
JUANA
[very pale]
I have confessed this once.
NÚÑEZ
Yes, and had I handled things properly then, you might not have had to wander lost these past twenty-five years. It is the work of a Jubilee to till the fallow field, harrow it, root out all of its pernicious errors. Tell me about this black beast.
JUANA
[lips white, trembling]
I have gloried in the corruption of my flesh. And in corrupting others. My hunger has whored and defiled me–
NÚÑEZ
You will give me much more than this!
She raises a hand to the grate to steady herself.
JUANA
I have harboured thoughts–thoughts you know too well, Father.
NÚÑEZ
Tell me!
She kneels, clinging now with one hand to the grate, head and shoulders bent.
NÚÑEZ
This is not what I need! You will confess again to me in detail what happened and how it felt.
JUANA
I couldn’t breathe! It was as something gross and malignant–swallowing … me.
She slumps to the floor, body jammed against the grate, arm bent up and back at a sharp angle, fingers still clinging to the bar.
GABRIEL
Father Núñez!
NÚÑEZ
What is it Gabriel? What is happening? Fetch some water, quickly–and bread! Be quick about it.
Núñez, about to stroke her cheek, restrains himself.
NÚÑEZ
[whispering]
You will not escape me, child. You think I cannot follow, but I will wait for you … even on the other side.
GABRIEL hurries in with a pitcher.
NÚÑEZ
The bread!
GABRIEL
I sent them for it.
Núñez pours water over his fingers, using them to guide a trickle of water over her cheeks, her forehead, a few drops on her eyelids. With trembling fingers he parts her parched lips, letting the liquid run over his fingers into her mouth … She stirs.
NÚÑEZ
Learn from my errors, Gabriel. I have let her grow too weak–and at this most critical moment!
A NOVICE enters from inside the convent.
NOVICE
Bread, Father. Fresh.
NÚÑEZ
It will have to do. Give it to me.
Hands trembling, he tears off a piece, still warm, and holds it beneath her nose, presses it to her lips; her eyelids flutter.
NÚÑEZ
[whispering]
I will feed you, Juanita. From my hand you shall eat of this bread. Then you will rest.
The young novice who brought bread stands over Sor Juana, wringing her hands, face unsure. Núñez is trying to feed her through the bars though she is barely conscious. Blindly filling her mouth with bread. Sor Juana revives, coughing up bread.
NÚÑEZ
I will be back early tomorrow and we will finish what we have started here today…
Gabriel leads him away, the novice helping Sor Juana to a sitting position. At the door, Núñez pauses.
NÚÑEZ
Gabriel, have them bring back the chairs.
FADE OUT
JUBILEE, DAY 32: THE GRAND INQUISITOR
INSIDE THE CONVENT LOCUTORY–MORNING
A steady rain. From the roof’s water spouts, rainwater falls onto the courtyard’s flagstones. At the window, flowers bend double with their charge of rainwater. Inside … mood of gloomy intimacy.
Juana enters on her knees, makes her way towards the grate. Shadows in the gaunt hollows of her face. Eyes unfocussed. Takes no heed of the two men waiting for her. Nor of the chairs that have been returned to their places.
Gabriel steps back as she reaches the grate.
GABRIEL
Father, her mouth.
NÚÑEZ
Tell me.
GABRIEL
Horrible sores–on her lips, tongue …
NÚÑEZ
You would make yourself mute to escape me, woman?
You would consume your own tongue?
JUANA
Does this not–
[wincing as she looks up]
make me a cannibal, too, Father? Another charge to add to your list.
NÚÑEZ
Good. We are back to this. Cleverness. Poetic talk.
I have lost my appetite for your false confessions. As have the people, for your learning and your poetry. Your people burn with questions, they thirst with doubts. So many catastrophes coinciding, befalling one city. How to explain it? What is the machinery, Sor Juana? You were always one to look for that. Will you tell them it is coincidence? Surely you can better us in this. Queen of the Sciences–the people have no need of your beautiful questions. Questions they have enough of on their own.
But no answers?–we do not have the luxury. And our doubts, we are thanked for keeping to ourselves. We have responsibilities–as do you, who have been granted so many privileges denied others of your station. And yet you have taken so many liberties even with these.
V.O.: Then there will yet be ages of the confusion of free thought, ages of their science and cannibalism. For, having begun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end of course with cannibalism.30
NÚÑEZ
Get up.
GABRIEL
She is feverish, Father. The infectio
n–
NÚÑEZ
This science of yours infects more than your tongue.
JUANA
Not my science, Father.
[rising to her knees, a hand at the grate]
Mine would be different.
NÚÑEZ
Your insistence on feeling His Love, experiencing it, this also is a contamination from your science.
JUANA
Through the body there are ways of knowing.
NÚÑEZ
Our Inquisitors would agree.
JUANA
A kind of scepticism.
NÚÑEZ
Perhaps, then, they are poets too.
JUANA
A kind of eternity….
NÚÑEZ
It is doubt that eats at your heart.
Not only does your Narcissus make the divine a profanity, you would make the vile profanities of experience out to be divine.
JUANA
I only looked for the sublime within Creation. If we could but open our minds, we would find the beyond … already here.
NÚÑEZ
Yes, tell them there is so much more to know than Churches, there is so much more to God than priests. No wafer, no wine, only knowledge–congress, communion with nature–these are the sacraments now. And they are free. How the humble people will love this, who toil so for their daily bread–so sorely taxed–the rents, the indulgences. How they will love you for this.
And how, Sor Juana, do you imagine my colleagues feel on this account? The anachronisms who are my confreres?
V.O.: Ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages and men of science that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger …
NÚÑEZ
By now you probably believe you can multiply the loaves and fishes, in your house of bread. Do that. Feed the masses on the manna of miracles. It is a kindness we also do.
JUANA
You would make us hungry enough to eat stones from your hand.
NÚÑEZ
Command, then, that they be made bread.
JUANA
We are not nourished. We are not fed.
[she winces, swallows]
The bread you feed us is our own flesh.
NÚÑEZ
You would teach them to feed themselves, perhaps. No, you would feed them on attributes.
Yes by all means, gorge them on the delicacies of your subtlety, fatten them on scepticism. Tell them He is only a non-count noun–let them be nourished with that. Salve their hunger and their fear by telling them He is not substance at all–and not Verb but Adverb–isn’t that your latest heresy?
Any lunatic can speak for a god, Juana. Ruling humanity for seventeen centuries is quite another matter.
Using the grate, she pulls herself unsteadily to her feet, ignoring the chair.
JUANA
They will not follow you forever.
NÚÑEZ
[disdainful]
We try to take things a millennium at a time.
JUANA
You only protract your defeat for so long that it passes for victory.
NÚÑEZ
While you would correct His work–resurrect Him, if ever so briefly.
End his perfect silence, then!
Who but the strongest can follow you?
V.O…. Freedom, free thought and science, will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves; others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning at our feet….
JUANA
Your confreres mistake their contempt for strength.
NÚÑEZ
Your own strength is your weakness.
And our greatest strength, over time, has proved to be your despair.
JUANA
What the soul hungers for most of all is not transcendent Truth but meaning–a human meaning in the face of this.
NÚÑEZ
The soul!–what an ungainly, unbelievable, unnecessary appendage. Your science will soon disprove its existence …
V.O.: … Bathed in their foolish tears, they will recognize at last that He who created them rebels must have meant to mock at them. They will say this in despair, and their utterances will be a blasphemy which will make them more unhappy still, for man’s nature cannot bear blasphemy, and in the end always avenges it upon himself.
JUANA
You take your disdain as the heaviest burden of all.
Your Inquisitors use their cruelty and contempt to make martyrs of themselves.
NÚÑEZ
If you truly believe your way is better, you, who have been consumed by doubt all your life–if you are who and what some say, go forth and preach your message to your fellows. I can arrange easily for your release.
I offer you much more than your freedom, I offer you the world.
Conquer them yourself. Give them death-defying feats. But by all means, cast thyself down, from a great height, that the angels bear thee up. Pilot your chariot. Give in to all your fantasies. Your pagan heroes will surely protect you from us.
No? Do you leave your people to find their own way?
JUANA
I will not escape.
NÚÑEZ
But you could. To your precious María Luisa in Madrid, or to France. You know we can arrange it. Anywhere you please. And think what a trophy you would make the Lutherans.
JUANA
My place is here.
NÚÑEZ
You could return in triumph when we are all dead.
JUANA
I will not live so long.
NÚÑEZ
Still playing at prophecy.
JUANA
My place is here.
NÚÑEZ
Then it shall be decided here….
CUT TO: THE VALLEY OF MEXICO–LATE AFTERNOON, CLEARING After the rain, water glinting everywhere … shallow lakes, sloughs, canals. Dry hills to the north and west. The eye rising, moving slowly east. Pine forests mounting the slopes of the two volcanoes. Snow at the peaks. Clear blue sky above. Steam and pale smoke billowing from the southernmost cone. View of another white cone farther off, the eye is speeding east–over jungles, another white cone near the coast, a ribbon of beach, glint of sea …
JUBILEE, DAY 34: REQUERIMIENTO
MEXICO CITY–MORNING
Indian crouched in a mud hut, kindling a tiny fire. Skeletal street dog standing dazed in the sunlight outside the door.
INSIDE THE CONVENT LOCUTORY–MID-MORNING, BRIGHT SUNSHINE Juana enters to wait for him. Her lips move soundlessly. She hardly notices his arrival. She stands at the grate, again disdaining the chair.
Núñez has begun to shuffle back and forth along the grate, leaning heavily on his cane. A shaking hand reaching out to steady himself. He will not sit before she does. Gabriel has moved to stand just a step or two behind Núñez, afraid he might fall.
NÚÑEZ
How is your cannibal tongue today? Does it hurt you to speak? It should hurt you very much now to speak. I forbid you these mutilations!
JUANA
If you would have me find such pain in pleasure …
Pauses to wipe her mouth roughly with the back of her hand. It comes away streaked with blood.
JUANA
… why not pleasure in pain?
NÚÑEZ
Do you see, Gabriel? Do you see what we are up against here?
JUANA
There is a Dutch Jew … who has said pleasure is not evil but inherently good, while pain–
NÚÑEZ
Word games, equivocations, digressions–
JUANA
Is evil itself.
NÚÑEZ
Self-justifications! Take note, Gabriel. All the heretic’s tricks–
JUANA
You, Father, think pain
[coughs then swallows]
/> is your ally–
NÚÑEZ
Feigned bodily weakness at critical moments–
JUANA
But pain is still more fickle–
NÚÑEZ
Faking even ingenuousness–
JUANA
More fickle than pleasure … it serves whom it chooses–
NÚÑEZ
Giving herself saintly airs–
The backs of her hands and wrists are smeared. Though she still wipes at them, threads of a dark liquid run freely now down her chin and throat and into the hairshirt’s neck, blackening it.
JUANA
Your superiors think to baptize my silence. But what will it say … if God takes me from you before you finish their holy work?
[turns to face him at the grate]
You look unwell, Father. You should eat something.
NÚÑEZ
[he casts about for Gabriel]
Where are you, boy? Come.
JUANA
Empty threats, Father. Bring him his chair, Gabriel. Sit down!
You will not leave me now. As you said: we are in new territory. No more evasions. Conquer my doubts.
Instead of leaving, Núñez sits heavily, begins reciting, voice betraying an old man’s quaver.
NÚÑEZ
‘Representing Charles V, his most Catholic Majesty …31
I, his servant, notify and make known to you as best I can that the living and eternal God, our Lord, created the heavens and the earth–’
He continues proclamation. Her bitter smile of satisfaction.
JUANA
Cortés’s Requerimiento. You know it by heart, por supuesto.
NÚÑEZ
‘… And God gave charge of all these people to one called St. Peter–that he should be the head of all the human race, and should love all men of whatsoever land, religion, and belief–’
JUANA
But now let another faculty–reason–serve you who have served it, too, so well, Father. So obediently.
NÚÑEZ
‘And one of his successors, as lord of all spiritual matters, made a donation of these lands you occupy, to the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabela, so that they now belong to them–’
JUANA
You who have been its instrument, use reason now to force this conversion–this confession from my infected lips–
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