Catalina

by Markus Orths

  The Pope granted Francisco Loyola permission to continue living as a man. He could go on wearing those clothes. Certainly, for a verified virgo intacta there was the option of entering a convent again. But the decision was entirely his, Francisco Loyola’s. And Francisco’s response? How one wishes he would rise from his kneeling posture and say: ‘Why not both? Why not a life without this rigid separation? Instead of two poles that exclude each other, why not two points on the same scale? Not merging into one, and not set apart as opposites, but steadily moving closer. Always seeing otherness as part of oneself.“ But that is not what he said. For Francisco Loyola had made up his mind, and he announced his decision in forceful terms.

  The Pope nodded benevolently and dismissed him. “Most graciously,” Francisco adds to the account recorded by Juan, “His Holiness gave me his permission to go on living as a man, while impressing on me that it was my duty to lead an honest life from this day forward; that I must refrain from harming my fellow-men and that His commandment, Thou shalt not kill, carried with it the vengeance of God for those who disobeyed it.” Francisco kissed the ring and left the Vatican, and as he came into the city he ‘heard the giggling of two “ladies” who were leaning against a wall and had just accosted two young men. They looked at me and I looked at them, and one of them said, “Senora Catalina, where are you going, all by yourself?”—“My dear whores,” I replied, “I have come to give each of you a hundred strokes on your pretty little necks, and a hundred slashes with this blade to the fool who would defend your honour!” The women fell silent and then hurried off.“

  *

  While Juan Bautista de Arteaga set off for his home town of Vitoria, Francisco was enjoying the high life. “My fame had spread, and it was remarkable to see the crowds that followed me everywhere—famous people, princes, bishops, cardinals. I found doors open to me wherever I went, and in the six weeks that I spent in Rome hardly a day went by when I did not dine with princes. One Friday a gentleman invited me to dinner and I was given all manner of presents, and then, by special order of the Roman Senate, my name was entered in a book as an honorary citizen of Rome.” Which name, he does not say.

  People wanted to know all about him. What intrigued them more than anything was how Francisco Loyola had managed to keep his body hidden all those years. Francisco answered their questions patiently, describing his meticulous precautions and extreme vigilance. He had often simply not washed, and had smelt abominably. He had made a little tube to urinate through and learned to pee standing up. The wounds he had received had generally not been in places that posed any danger of discovery, and he had treated minor wounds in the chest and posterior himself. Above all, however, he emphasised how blind people were: they were influenced by what they saw, what they wanted to see and above all what they were accustomed to seeing. Eventually his listeners began to lose interest. The public’s curiosity ebbed away, and people went back to their everyday concerns. This was something of a relief to Francisco. Once he had soaked up all that respectful admiration and been introduced everywhere as a novelty, it became increasingly burdensome to be constantly recognized in the street. Suddenly Europe seemed to him like an ink-blot in comparison to the huge land masses of the American continent. He yearned to go back to the New World, where he had become the person he was, back to the vastness and immensity that would give him one thing: anonymity.

  First he made one last visit to the Basque country, starting with his home town, San Sebastian. His parents had died. The Whale was now occupied by his sister Mariana and her husband. Francisco signed—as Catalina de Erauso—a document in which he renounced his share of the family inheritance in return for one thousand reales and several letters of credit to be redeemed in Seville. Then he went to a gambling den in San Sebastian, where he embraced his brother and namesake Francisco de Erauso, the masturbation attendant. After that he set off for Vitoria. This was the last of the farewell visits he made before returning to the New World.

  He met Juan Bautista de Arteaga in his old family home. Both of them recalled words they had spoken long ago.

  “I’m going to Seville,” said Francisco, smiling.

  “When?” asked Juan.

  “Right now.”

  “So you’ve come to say goodbye?” asked Juan.

  “I’ve come to ask if you’ll come with me. To Seville. And from Seville to the West Indies. The fleet sails in four weeks. What is there to keep you here?”

  “No, Francisco, I’m staying here.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Then we shan’t see each other again?”

  “It’s unlikely.”

  They were sitting in Juan’s room.

  “When are you leaving?” asked Juan.

  “Very soon. When it gets a bit cooler.”

  Juan sipped his chocolate.

  “You don’t want to go back to Huamanga?” asked Francisco.

  “No. What I want now is peace. Look at this house of mine. As soon as I came back I felt sure that nothing could ever persuade me to go away again.”

  “Nothing?”

  Now Juan turned his head towards Francisco. The slowness of the movement made Francisco uneasy.

  “You always knew more than I did,” said Juan.

  Francisco nodded. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”

  Juan drew a deep breath. It sounded like a groan. “Before you go,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s one more thing I need to know.”

  “Ask away!” said Francisco, sitting up straighter in his chair.

  “That time, on the beach, when we were both lying there in the sun, and I was unconscious. You came to before I did.” Juan made a long pause, then continued. “You said, you know, when you were telling me everything, your life story, on the Santa Barbara, you said you saw me then, you saw me lying there, you looked down at me, you said something about a feeling. Tell me what sort of a feeling it was.”

  “It was lust,” said Francisco.

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing else. It was no different from feelings I had later— towards women.”

  “It wasn’t…stronger?”

  “Do you mean love?” asked Francisco scornfully. “That only exists in people’s imagination.”

  “Tell me something else.”

  “Well?”

  “What would you have done if I—‘

  “The Indians have no way of saying ”would have“, do you remember? With them everything is clear-cut: either a thing happens or it doesn’t.”

  Francisco set out alone and rode to Seville, as he had done all those years before. Now and again he looked round to see if Juan Bautista de Arteaga was following him, but he knew that this time he was not. Francisco Loyola reached Seville. His last sight of his homeland was of the fortress of Santa Catalina.

  *

  What kind of a death can a person like Catalina de Erauso, the Lieutenant Nun, expect, after a life like hers? A violent one, no doubt. One of her many enemies, we may be sure, will finally track her down and corner her. At some point in the past Catalina will have taken from him someone he loved. Probably she herself has no memory of who it was or when it happened. But, like the Cid before him, this enemy is hot on her trail, hell-bent on retribution: she has done him an injury and he is going to take his revenge. The insatiable cycle of killing that never ends. Like a desert wasp, the enemy never stops searching for the tarantula’s burrow in which Catalina hides, desiring only to be left in peace. He runs her to earth and her last battle begins.

  Even before they start Catalina knows that she will lose. And yet she fights for her life with all the strength she can muster. But this time she is the one into whose body the notches are cut. Her adversary is younger, stronger, more agile, more implacable. He can play with her as he likes. He is certain of victory. Eventually Catalina hears the flapping of the cloak that she recognizes all too well. Her last cry is to Santa Liberata, who will help her to die with a quiet min
d. There it comes now, the wasp’s deadly sting. As the sword is plunged into her she sees, in a single image, all the bodies she has pierced with her own sword, and knows that she has brought this death upon herself.

  But none of this is certain. We are not able to relate how death overtakes her. How her body jerks convulsively. How the blade is forced into her. There is no evidence whatever of that last—and first—penetration, that orgasm of death, that cruelly symbolic confirmation of what seems to be her true identity. For the fact is that we know nothing of how she died. Her trail simply peters out, somewhere in Mexico. Like a trickle of water, the life of the Lieutenant Nun seeps away into the ground. Our last glimpse of her comes from a man by the name of Nicolas de la Renteria, who dictates an account of his meeting with her to a fellow Capuchin friar. He last saw Catalina de Erauso, he says, in 1645, in Veracruz. The Lieutenant Nun was calling herself Antonio de Erauso, and was a person of courage and skill. She worked as a mule-driver. She wore male clothing and had a sword and a dagger ornamented with silver. She was then about fifty years old; strong build, dark complexion, a few hairs on her chin. The work suited her: she compared herself to a weary mule which only the blows from her stick could induce to set one hoof in front of another.

  Epilogue

  And yet—we do know the date of her death. The evidence is not of a kind to convince scholars, but that does not matter. The person we have to thank for the precise time of her death is none other than Juan Bautista de Arteaga. Who else would it be? Essentially it is Juan we have to thank for everything. It is there in just one sentence that he wrote. A tiny sentence. Easy to overlook. Not even the concluding sentence of his memoirs. It is tucked away, surrounded by a mass of tedious description, and is neither striking in itself nor accompanied by any comment. Perhaps Juan himself did not realize the significance of that sentence.

  Juan had grown old. He was living in Vitoria, having settled in his parents’ house. Still writing. Since nothing much happened these days, since everything seemed steeped in monotony, he would often pursue his own thoughts—and Catalina figured prominently in them. Again and again Juan recalled those years of his life that had meant the most to him. Chances that had passed him by. Losses that no earthly search would ever restore. You have to hand it to him, he could write the same thing in endless different ways.

  Juan now worked only sporadically. He still had a few patients left, just enough for him to scrape a living. He seemed content with that. Age had taken away his appetite, and life had robbed him of his hunger. He spent most of his time at home. Friends were thinner on the ground now. He had few visitors. Contemporaries died. A new generation was launching itself into the world. Only one colleague from earlier days occasionally looked in on him.

  “How old am I?” Juan would ask him every year. Every year his friend told him the figure. And every year Juan muttered, As old as that?“

  Pleasure of any kind was a thing of the past. None of life’s diversions held any appeal for him. Every evening’s bedtime was burdensome, for the dreary days ahead cast the gloom of endless sameness before them.

  One night Juan woke suddenly. As if something had startled him. He peered into the darkness. Nothing there. Not a sound. Nothing stirring. He went over to the window and leaned out. He could see two stars. They seemed to him like eyes gazing at him from infinitely far away. At that moment it started to rain. It was 30 August 1649.

  “And I had the feeling that something was wrong.“