The Scroll of Seduction

by Gioconda Belli

  “This room used to be bigger when your grandfather was alive, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

  “Because of this picture. It seems there were two more windows in this room.”

  “It seems we found the nativity scene,” he exclaimed. I got up, photo album in hand, and walked over to him.

  He was taking the little figurines out of their protective straw packing and showing me the sixteenth-century Castilian-style, polychrome religious images. I put the photo album down on a table and sat down to admire them one by one. They were gorgeous. Fine, angelic faces, sweet, pious expressions in their glass eyes, rich satin and velvet gowns embroidered with gold thread. There was the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, baby Jesus, the mule, the ox, and the manger. Afterward, I helped him repack everything back in the box, since he said it would be easier to carry it downstairs.

  Finally we turned out the light, Manuel locked the door, and we took the box down with us, along with the photo album.

  For Christmas Eve dinner, his Aunt Águeda announced that she’d prepare roast leg of lamb, trout mousse, and the traditional Christmas almond turrón for dessert. She and Manuel would go shopping so that we could also have some champagne along with caviar, Serrano ham, Manchego cheese, and I don’t know what else before dinner. I’d stay home to set the table, complete with tablecloth, candles, and the silverware that Águeda had polished. Excited at the prospect, I said good-bye and planned to get down to work. I don’t remember exactly what I was doing when I heard the alarm system that locked the house at night start up. It was a sound that always scared the daylights out of me, the sound of all those antiques being sealed, lock, stock, and barrel, in an airtight vault. I jumped, as I always did, and then realized that they had left, and I was locked up with their treasures. I ran to the kitchen door and tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge. Nor would any of the windows or other doors I tried. Breaking into a sweat, I told myself to calm down and not lose my cool, that Manuel and his aunt wouldn’t be gone long. Getting hysterical wouldn’t do me any good. But I couldn’t calm down. I was panting, and I knew I’d hyperventilate if I took in more oxygen than my lungs could process, but I couldn’t stop. I remembered there was a girl who fainted a lot at school, and Mother Luisa used to put a paper bag over her mouth. So I got a paper bag and started breathing into it. I couldn’t understand why they had thought it was necessary to leave me shut up under lock and key inside that big old house. What if something happened to them and they couldn’t come back? What if a short circuit started a fire while they were gone? The electric wiring in that house was ancient and dysfunctional. In the kitchen, you couldn’t use the toaster if someone was running hot water. The circuits were always getting overloaded. Even my hair dryer was a problem. When I used it at night, it made the lights flicker. “Old houses have their ticks, child,” the aunt would say, undisturbed.

  I looked out the window. The winter garden was laid bare, lifeless, full of withered, dry leaves. On the ground, the shadow of the naked trunk of the chestnut tree with its branches spread out looked like a deformed monster lurching toward the house. It was a sunny day, at least, and that consoled me somewhat. Suddenly, my willing confinement was forcefully imposed on me. They’ll be right back, they’ll be right back, I kept thinking. Better to convince myself nothing dramatic was about to take place. The Denias were going to return in a few hours. There wasn’t going to be a fire. I had to calm down. I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of wine. It did me good, warmed me up. My cheeks were burning. Slightly more composed, I was suddenly possessed by the ridiculous fear that I might bump into Philippe the Handsome’s ghost wandering about the house. You can’t be such a fool! I told myself repeatedly. Philippe is in Granada! And I recalled my trip to the mausoleum and the glib tour guide who explained the sculptor Domenico Fancelli’s intention in making the head of Philippe’s effigy–in contrast to Juana’s–barely make an indent on the marble pillow where both their heads lay. “As you can see, he was an airhead!” he had exclaimed when someone commented on it. I decided to go into the library, but when I was halfway there, my feet took me to Manuel’s room instead. I started humming to block out the silence. I didn’t want to think about Juana, or about the fact that I had just been locked up by her jailers’ descendants. The house in Jane Eyre, Thornfield, with the crazy lady in the attic, was also creeping into my fears. What if I suddenly heard someone cackle? What if there was another girl like me locked up in the room that I suspected lay at the top of the stairs? I thought how easy it was to go crazy, how narrow the margin between sanity and insanity. I felt my eyes widen, bulging out of their sockets, barely blinking, my mouth parched, dry. I don’t know what I was expecting to find in Manuel’s room. His bed was made. Books were piled on his nightstand. One was a medical book, with a scrap of paper marking the place where his reading had stopped. Then there was Homer, and Dante’s Purgatory. I opened his dresser drawers. Socks, underwear, sweaters his Aunt Águeda had knitted. Lots of them. Way too many. Instinctively, I smelled them. Clean smelling. His shirts were hanging in the armoire. I went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Cologne, shaving cream. I went back to the bed and sat down. I was trying to find something, anything, to fix my attention on. I picked up the medical book and opened to the page that was marked. It was a gynecological section. There was a part underlined in pencil, with a little asterisk beside a word in bold. Pseudocyesis. I read:

  False or imaginary pregnancy, usually associated with a strong desire to procreate. Though conception has not taken place, menstrual periods cease, the abdomen becomes enlarged, breasts swell and secrete milk, simulating a genuine pregnancy. The uterus and cervix may also show characteristic signs and urine tests may give a false-positive. In some cases, women report feeling fetal movements. Those suffering from pseudocyesis may be so convinced of their pregnancy that they fall into a deep depression on realizing no birth will take place. It has been suggested that depression can sometimes alter the activity of the pituitary gland to such an extent that it causes hormonal changes that mimic those occurring during genuine pregnancies. Both Mary Tudor and Isabel de Valois, the second and third wives of Philippe II of Spain, suffered from the condition.

  I reread the paragraph countless times. Then I closed the book and left Manuel’s room. I didn’t want to touch my belly, but I did. I felt the slight bulge that I had taken to stroking, because it promised an end to my orphanage, one achieved by my own means, because in the end that was how I’d resolved the issue of whether to let it live or free myself from it. My choice not to have an abortion, more than fear or guilt, was based on a feeling of complicity with that tiny creature that–still in its larval state and more aquatic than mammalian–was a biological tie to another human being, my only family. But just reading a simple paragraph in a medical textbook was enough for my bubble to burst. Was Manuel afraid this might be my case, or did he think that was all it was?

  I hadn’t fully recovered when I heard them return. I heard the voices along with the sound of the locks being released.

  I WENT TO THEM AND TOLD THEM I NEVER AGAIN WANTED TO BE left locked up in there. Never, never again, I repeated. I had never been so scared in my whole life.

  “But it was for your own safety, child. Did you think we were going to leave you here alone with no protection? How could that scare you, after all those years in a convent?” asked Águeda.

  “I hope you didn’t think we were imprisoning you, like Juana,” Manuel said, smiling.

  Nothing more was said. I helped them unpack the food. The aunt pulled out Christmas puddings, candy, chocolates, chatting away about how much she was looking forward to preparing a proper Christmas Eve supper, one that would make me forget all those Christmases I had spent alone in Málaga. Although my irritation slowly wore off, I was left with an empty feeling down inside. And yet, if it was true, if my pregnancy was false, imaginary, pseudocyesis or whatever it was called, everything could revert t
o the way it had been. I would regain my freedom, even if it meant I would go back to being alone.

  Manuel suggested that for Christmas Eve dinner I wear Juana’s red velvet gown with the black front panel, and even managed to get Águeda to agree to lend him the gold crucifix locked up with all the treasures upstairs. When I saw myself in the mirror–my hair pulled back, wearing a gold-trimmed headdress–I was astounded at how much I resembled Juana’s portraits. Dressing up like that was a concession to my hosts’ obsession, but that night I didn’t care. I preferred to feel like a princess or a queen rather than an orphan. I preferred Juana’s ghost over the many other ghosts that stalked me, determined to prove, perhaps even through what was going on in my womb, how deceptive reality could be.

  During dinner, as Águeda and Manuel chatted away, reminiscing and stirring up innocuous or pleasant memories, I debated whether Manuel’s refusal to take a urine sample to the lab reflected his suspicion that I might be suffering from a false pregnancy. But then, why bother to claim he was so certain I was pregnant as to dismiss the need to confirm it with a scientific test? It didn’t make any sense, the logic was beyond me. I shouldn’t have champagne, they said, it would be best if I had fruit juice at dinner, given my state, but I insisted on having a glass of champagne. I didn’t finish it, though, plagued by new doubts. What if Manuel had just come across that description while he was reading up on pregnancy? The asterisk might just have been his way of acknowledging his surprise. Maybe he wasn’t aware cases like that even existed. It didn’t mean he thought it was my case. At some point, watching the two of them eat and laugh, I felt ashamed at having felt they could be so mean as to want to imprison me, and I was relieved they had no way of ever discovering my private conjectures. Dread gave way to my urgency to love them with that youthful energy that constantly tries to make reality match wishful thinking.

  When it was time to say good night and go to bed, I hugged Águeda. Manuel got into my bed that night, and when I told him again how frightened I’d been when I heard the locks click into place that morning, he looked at me flirtatiously, imitating my little-girl pout very seductively. Now, you’re not identifying a little too strongly with Juana, are you? he wanted to know. I ended up laughing at myself. I was going to ask him about the book in his room, but then I decided not to. After all, I couldn’t just say that I’d been in there, rummaging through his drawers, looking for proof that I was his only star pupil. We made love languidly, almost lazily, taking our time to cuddle each other like a pair of vulnerable children that quickly evolve into felines grabbing and going at each other in a passionate contest. My waist was hardly wider, although it was losing its definition slowly but surely. My breasts, on the other hand, were undeniably bigger. And my nipples darker, like eclipsing suns. On the bed, next to Manuel’s light skin, mine looked like brown sugar. I told him I wanted to go ahead with the urine test right after Christmas.

  Manuel went to his room to get cigarettes and a snifter of cognac. He came back barefoot, wearing sweatpants, and laid on the divan. I stayed in bed, curled up under the blanket. He had been thinking about the picture of the room on the third floor, he said. He blew the smoke from his cigarrette, making rings in the air. It was intriguing, he admitted.

  “Do you realize that nobody outside of our family has ever been up there? You’re the only one. That’s precisely why I find your observation bewildering. You know, once you get used to your surroundings you don’t even notice the obvious. Remember how I told you about Juana’s trunk, the one that disappeared without a trace? My mother, who I met furtively a few times when I was a teenager, told me that there was evidence that proved that Juana had not been mad, but that our family hid it, fearing it would discredit them–not so much because of what had taken place in the distant past but for preventing the information from becoming public domain. It tends to happen with lies and secrets. Keeping a secret can end up becoming a worse shame than the secret itself. My mother used to draw a parallel between that secret and the one related to my birth, but the relationship between the two always escaped me. Both were family secrets, I guess. Because until I turned thirteen, I was led to believe that Águeda had adopted me from an underprivileged family. Only when my grandfather died did she come clean and reveal to me that my mother was her sister.” Manuel took a sip of cognac.

  I was befuddled. I didn’t know what to say. I felt sorry for Manuel.

  “A strange family you have. Maybe all families are strange, full of secrets.”

  “The trunk I was telling you about disappeared eight days before Juana died. There was such an uproar when they found out it was missing. A papal nuncio went as far as writing a bull of excommunication for whoever had dared to take or destroy it, a thing I find rather odd. For all I know, once Juana died my ancestors might have feared the wrath of God. Maybe I’m just speculating and the trunk no longer exists, but it is a sort of archaeologist’s dream for me. I picture myself discovering it, opening it, reading all the documents inside.”

  “What kind of documents do you imagine?”

  “Diaries, letters, accounts. I sometimes imagine that my intimate understanding of Juana comes from knowing that if I were to read all those papers, they would resemble the reality you and I have been weaving together. It is as if I had already read them. I imagine this story is the same Juana would have written, the same that has been kept hidden, waiting for someone to come along and discover it, so that justice can be done to the kingdom of her memory.”

  WHEN I WOKE UP AND WENT DOWN TO THE KITCHEN FOR BREAKFAST, all I found were Manuel and Águeda’s coffee cups in the sink. It was late, almost eleven o’clock. I got scared for a minute, thinking they might have locked me in again. But when I tried the door to the garden, it opened right away, much to my relief. The neighbors could see into the backyard from their windows, but it was sunny, and the fresh air was too tempting for me to resist. Wearing my slippers, clutching my flannel robe tightly across my chest, I went down the two or three steps between me and the gravel path that led to the fountain under the chestnut tree. It was cold, but the blue sky was dotted here and there by white, puffy, clouds. It was a beautiful, luminous day. I rushed out to the fountain and back, like an inmate escaping into the prison yard. When I got back, just as I closed the door, I felt Manuel behind me. He took my hands. “You’re going to catch cold,” he said, obviously annoyed. Nothing would come of it, I said. It had been just a brisk outing to get a breath of fresh air.

  “This isn’t child’s play, Lucía. You and I have to be careful, or we could put my aunt in a very awkward position. I don’t think that’s how she deserves to be repaid for all the hospitality she’s shown you.”

  I didn’t answer. I thought he was being overzealous, but I also felt guilty. I filled the teakettle with water and put it on to boil.

  “I’m sorry, Manuel. It won’t happen again.”

  “Come to the library after you change your dress.”

  Manuel knew exactly how to make me feel silly and small. Changing the tone of his voice and his gestures, he could, in an instant, establish a distance between us, and I could not rest easy until I felt I was back in his grace–which could happen in the same inexplicable manner: all of a sudden he would be affectionate and gentle again. Occasionally he remained distant for long stretches, leaving me to wonder whether he was silently cursing the day he met me. Back at school I had already noticed these sudden changes, but now that we saw each other every day, I became aware that this behavior pattern for some strange reason made me docile, submissive.

  I took a bath, got dressed, and rushed down to the library. Then I became Juana again, this time imprisoned in Tordesillas.

  CHAPTER 24

  On February 14, 1509, three hours before dawn, my father stormed into my room in Arcos, shouting. Imperious and harsh–as he was in my worst childhood memories–he made me scurry out of bed and forced me to depart for Tordesillas.

  Clearly, he’d counted on taking me by surprise.
How could I be anything but surprised by that peremptory order that shook me from a deep, predawn slumber and forced me to be on my way? I assumed the plague was at our doorstep or that a rebellion had broken out and our lives were in danger. Thinking of Catalina’s safety, hoodwinked by the joy of seeing little Ferdinand arrive with his grandfather, I agreed to proceed to the move, caught up in the urgency of those scampering around me, packing and rushing off with furniture, tapestries, and curtains.

  By the time I reached the patio, the horse-drawn carriage was already there, waiting with Philippe’s coffin, the torchbearers, and the clerics from my retinue. Doña María de Ulloa, still wiping the sleep from her eyes, carried Catalina, who was frightened and crying. I took my daughter in my arms and sat her on my horse, Galán, with me. And then, under my father’s personal vigilance, our long procession hauled out. The villagers came out to wave me off, many still wearing nightshirts beneath their jackets. We made slow progress through the rugged Castilian plains, dotted here and there with dark pinelands where we stopped to rest. Flocks of birds would suddenly take flight above us, flying to and from the Duero River, whose rushing song began to be heard in the distance. I can distinctly recall the silhouette of the Convent of Santa Clara, to the right of the stone bridge we crossed as we entered Tordesillas. Before it housed the cloistered nuns, the convent had been a beautiful palace, built by Alfonso XI to commemorate the battle of Salado. Pedro the Cruel had lived there his romance with María de Padilla. When she died, the king ordered his daughter Beatriz to bequeath it to the Santa Clara nuns. Philippe and I had visited it on our first trip to Spain. We’d sat beneath the Mudejar chapel’s gold-plated ceiling, and even Philippe had to admit that no church in all of Flanders boasted such magnificent coffering. Neither he nor I could have know then that his body would lay beneath it for sixteen years.