Hunger's Brides (130 page)

‘Yes, my dear Lord, and it is why you have so few.'

The great gift of the saints is not sanctity but to take from us even the humblest instruments of our everyday humanity—a bowl, a scrap of cloth, a gesture, a doll—and return it to us immensely enriched. Teresa was one who could immeasurably enrich even the most precious of gifts. Illumination, friendship, laughter. The paths did not separate unless we let them. I had tried to make this a matter of faith since then.

All these odds and ends I remembered the day I learned the carols were not sung.

That afternoon, a man in the Archbishop's livery was waiting in the locutory. It appeared I still had a place in the Archbishop's calendar. It had been almost five months since two of his men came, requisitioning the inventory. Unlike the others, this one met my eyes. Good news, he
said kindly. The inventory had been reviewed and the cell purchase approved. No, Sor Juana needn't get up, he would set the papers right here. For me to look at when I was ready. I had only to file a full statement of savings and assets, to be used for purposes of collateral in case of default. It was not for him to say if the cell's price was excessive, but who could say the funds raised were not needed, how much charity was excessive in these times, who could be sure of not one day needing His Grace's goodness and forgiveness? His Grace's secretary would expect a response by the 31st of December or the application would be voided.

Gutiérrez came that same afternoon. The omen did not seem a good one at the time, but not everything was a sign. The sky was lightly overcast, the air very cold. Though it had not rained yet, there was still time. He was sitting by the window, the enormous black hood pulled back from his face. He no longer felt the need to come hooded to see me. No more games of
capa y espada
, no further pretense of having smuggled copies out in the black folds of his habit. His face was serious, composed, the pale blue eyes mirthless. Resting on his knees was a small scrip of Inquisition documents.

“You know you cannot come here anymore,” I said before he could speak.

“Yes.”

“Good. You may begin now.”

“After the Philothea affair, you asked if things had become awkward for me yet. Lately I have been trying to tell you that they have become so. You have been slow to suspect.”

“You do not know that.”

“I am the third examiner, Sor Juana. Dorantes, Macías and I. I am to judge Palavicino, and will be forced to follow this through. I am here to tell you now that my verdict will be the same as that of Dorantes. We can both see where this is going now, and no, I cannot come here any longer. If I have to come again, it will be because I will have been given no choice. I can go now if you like. But because this visit is still
ex-officio
, I have come … let us not say as a friend, but prepared to tell you everything I know or can anticipate, knowing what I know, hearing what I hear. And in return, if you have anything for me, any information, a manuscript, any statement to offer, I believe this will be your last chance to choose your ground. Once it becomes official, you can only choose how to respond. The offer I am about to make expires at the end of this year.”

Before continuing, Gutiérrez retrieved two folio pages from his scrip and passed them through the grille. He sat back, giving me time to read.

Dated that day, November 25th, 1691.

Gutiérrez waited until I had looked up from the page.“Henceforth, Sor Juana, anything concrete I say will be regarding Palavicino's case, whereas anything regarding a hypothetical case against you will be precisely this, hypothetical. I have persuaded Dorantes to let me bring
you an offer. I would like you to consider it seriously. A statement from you, ideally an expression of contrition and conformity, but in fact discussing anything you like—any manuscripts that might still come to light, or your negative
finezas
, or responses to the leaflets attacking you—even a denunciation of Bishop Santa Cruz, though I would recommend against this. Technically, the statement would be entered into the proceeding against Palavicino, which is ongoing—we have begun to look into his other activities. Your statement, however, may be on any matters likely to come to our notice,
before
they do … in the event, for instance, that damning pages of your spiritual
Vida
should be found in the possession of anyone who had failed to report them. As you write your statement of contrition, you might construe such earlier writings as indiscretions of youthful pride, since regretted—an excuse not available to your spiritual director. Any deposition freely given before a notary of the Holy Office will be scrupulously accurate—you can count on this—every word you say, every pause, every expression of your face, every gesture of your hands. There are one or two precedents for this, and advantages. Conversely, an interrogation would leave you considerably less latitude in your replies, less still in the choice of topic. And in your gestures, no choice at all. Similarly, the Holy Office can at any time simply order you to write a new
Vida
—a recapitulation of what you had written for the Jesuit Núñez—with great insistence on its completeness, and to be then scrupulously examined for evidence of evasion, culpable imprecision or falsification.”

“When you speak of an interest in my
Vida
, you are speaking hypothetically….”

“It is the only way I may speak—and even this is the most dangerous thing I shall do today. The penalties for discussing an actual proceeding with its subject are extreme.”

“But we have had many such conversations.”

“If you will examine your memory, Sor Juana, you will note any mention I have ever made of your theological views made no reference to the Holy Office, and any mention of the views or cases of others only ever pertained to the interest these might hold for certain individuals within the Inquisition, never to the actions of the Holy Office itself. Now, you may remember things differently, and I could not hope to match your memory or the mind that contains it, but if, hypothetically we are ever asked to compare our accounts, I will be consulting not my memory but
the field notes signed, dated, and filed with my superiors after each of our meetings over the years. It is not personal, Sor Juana. Most of us do it, even when we are not encouraged to. It is the path of success at the Holy Office. Generally we fear each other more than we do outsiders. Please do not reject out of hand this olive branch. I went to some trouble to convince Dorantes. It will be offered to you only once….”

No. I could not give a statement—it would not be the end but a way to begin. The Inquisition needed no help with the end. I could not afford to trust him.

“How clumsy of you, Gutiérrez. This should have been left to someone else. This can't have been your idea. Are they trying to humiliate you? You've been the third examiner for some time now—the time to tell me was when you first knew.”

This won me a change of tactics, all pretense abandoned now. And it came as a relief, it came as a consolation. Was it too late to tell Sor Juana that her mulatta had been meeting for almost four years with Bishop Santa Cruz? That she had come to me as his spy? Yes, Gutiérrez, you should have told me that last
year
. Did I really believe she had stopped?
Liar
. And was it too late now for him to tell me she had been delivering my letters to the Holy Office for inspection before posting them?
Liar!
And was it too late to mention that once a month for the past four years the Holy Office had held meetings on the circle of those closest to me?

Then, though I had not asked and would rather not have had it enter my mind, he described many of these evenings in the Master Examiner's office across from the rose-coloured church. Who had attended. Santa Cruz many times. The French Viscount twice. And so Gutiérrez took pleasure next in anticipating for my benefit the conduct of a plenary session of the Holy Office, nine days hence, when the Dorantes verdict would be read, along with the other examiners' rulings. Yes, including his own. Prosecutor Ulloa would then be allowed to read the sentence he had already written a month before the verdicts were handed down, not being able to help himself. To which, on December 4th, he intended to add a further request: that Palavicino be excommunicated, banned from receiving the sacraments anywhere in the archdiocese, defrocked and banished from New Spain. He might be permitted to go to Quito or Manila—but never again to Spain. Palavicino's sermon would be recalled—the entire print run to be accounted for and burned in the plaza before the chapel doors of San Jerónimo. This was the best that
Xavier Palavicino could hope for.

On the other hand, the matter lay largely in his hands, for the way ahead was straightforward, if narrowing. Should he refuse to abjure, all available methods of persuasion would be brought to bear. In any event, before he departed he would be forced to give information on his other associates and activities, after which, the path of his salvation was clear: The appellant should state his guilt with expressions of sincere humiliation, declare himself convicted, beg in all earnestness for pardon in appealing to the judges for special leniency, express his sincere and vehement desire to purge his sin and offence, beseech the saints to intercede in his behalf….

Gutiérrez asked next if it was also too late to tell me my carols would not be sung in Puebla that day, in the cathedral, or anywhere near it, or on any other day. This, I had guessed without his help. It was foreseeable. So why did this hurt so?

Whatever Santa Cruz's true purpose in publishing my carols, the result of not allowing them to be sung was foreseeable also, that those verses touching upon Catherine's audacity, her defiance of imperial authority, her pride and learning—all published in my name—could not but further madden all those shocked by my Letter Worthy of Athena. Even the printer was the same, if anyone needed reminding. A year of pressure, a year of leaflets and quiet warnings from every imaginable quarter had done no good at all. She would not be stopped. Catherine, Athena. Alexandria, Athens. The names might change and the places, but not Sor Juana's impudence, her willful pride and disobedience. And this time there was no preface of kind admonishment from a loving friend. Here
was
a difference, not in my attitude before God but in the Bishop's toward me. A shift Santa Cruz could not have signalled more clearly than by barring my carols from his cathedral.

“Sor Juana is pensive. She will want time to think. The Holy Office's time is limitless, but its charity is not. The offer, as I say, expires on December 31st.”

Two visits on November 25th, two deadlines of year's end—not everything was a sign, but neither was everything a coincidence. For if it were I would have to call coincidence the next piece of information Gutiérrez brought: the date of the judgement filed by Master Examiner Dorantes, and which I had just read. November 25th, 1691. Yes, Gutiérrez, today, the Feast of Saint Catherine. I was quite aware. No, he
was afraid it was not quite that, or not just—but rather one year to the day from the publication of the Letter Worthy of Athena by Bishop Santa Cruz in Puebla.
This I had not seen
.

Santa Cruz had been planning to forbid the singing of my carols for a year, had awarded the commission purely to cancel it, and Dorantes by dating his ruling on that anniversary was telling all, telling me, the Holy Office had been part of this all along. The Palavicino case at the Inquisition and the publication of my letter had one sole object. The interests of the Master Examiner of the Holy Office and the Bishop of Puebla had one sole object. The same hypothetical object, one point of convergence: one Juana Inés de la Cruz. One hypothetical nun. Not everything was a coincidence. These were signs. And the visit from the Archbishop's man on the same day was another—but of what? Santa Cruz wanted my annihilation and my adoration, Núñez my subordination, Archbishop Aguiar my public humiliation, preferring this even to my private destruction. And their wishes were not the only ones in play. Núñez was accountable to the Archbishop, but also to the Jesuit Provincial, his Inspector General. Dorantes to the Dominican Provincial, perhaps to Santa Cruz, and both Núñez and Dorantes to the General Inquisitor. Yet now I was to believe that they had laid down arms and were working together—fist in glove—in a miraculous convergence of hostile and competing interests. All joined now in a sort of fraternity, along with a dozen scurrilous and anonymous pamphleteers, and Velasco of the Brotherhood of Mary, the denouncer of the sermon. And at least one Augustinian. Most of them detested each other—what could possibly bring all of them together? I did not believe it. I would not. Why would they want me to believe this? I could not bear to.