The Scroll of Seduction

by Gioconda Belli

  Mine has not been a placid existence. I came into this world with too much impetus, with my chest laid bare. My thirst for air and space confounded those who live ganged up in pens and stables occupied with fattening their flesh or their pockets. I dread the long lonely days that await me, the battles I will still have to fight against confessors and priests who will try to tame my soul, since they were unable to tame my body. I am aware of the clerics that already have snuck into my room to practice exorcisms while I sleep. Because they are incapable and cannot understand me, they presume Satan inhabits me, that he lays with me at night, that it is he with whom I quench the legendary passions of my flesh. Little can I do to straighten out their tangled thoughts. It pains me though to imagine the dim echoes of the bells that will toll on the day of my death. Oblivion has already begun to grow around me like ivy covering ancient ruins. Juana the Mad, they’ll say. That deranged queen, the one who went mad for love. They won’t even acknowledge me for the queens and kings that issued forth from my womb: Charles I of Spain and V of Germany; Leonor, queen of France; Isabel, queen of Denmark; María, queen of Hungary; Catalina, queen of Portugal; and my little Ferdinand, emperor of Germany. A long, spiraling lineage coming out of me will leave its imprint in Europe and the vast lands of the New World. But all of that will be of no consequence to those who will hear the funeral bells or or see the sad, little cortege that will escort my remains. It is of no consequence here in in my tiny, dark room in Tordesillas, with the woman who embroiders by the door and the one who sits outside, tallying up each one of my sighs. They have gone through such lengths in order to keep me deaf and dumb; they fear that I might escape, wander through the village and speak to the villagers, that the court might remember I exist! Strange that they can be so afraid of a madwoman and choose to guard her so! They have chosen to bury me alive! As for me, I have no choice but to leave this imprecation for the centuries, these scrolls that I will hide, that I will keep writing, this ink that will be my blood speaking to the future.

  Perhaps I am mad. I have no doubt they will convince me of it one day, that I will end up hallucinating, seeing cats. One can end up believing in lies if the lies are repeated incessantly, especially if they are all one hears. Mad was, no doubt, my passion for Philippe. It was certainly madness to love him like I did. But love does not choose its object according to reason or convenience. Love beseeches love, that is what love does. Fire burns, but so does ice, and I chose the flame. I am neither the first nor the last woman who loves without measure, who bangs her fists against a door that won’t open, who pounces on a chest whose breath she needs to breathe. And I won’t be the last who sets down her heart like a pennant in the ground she has carefully seeded and watered, and who keeps vigil from the highest tower, arms and steeds at the ready, so that the enemy armies shall think twice before flaunting their blond manes in the wind, or unsheathing the smiles they hide behind iridescent fans. I fought every one of my battles. I waged war for all those whom I loved. It was for me that I did not fight for, and now I shall struggle to find liberty within my silence, within the vast fields of my indefatigable imagination, which will take me away from here to places where neither the Denias nor their descendants will ever manage to capture me. Perhaps I will lose myself as I wander through meadows and reedbeds, through the wide-open terrain of my imagination. So much have I lost that I no longer care. Yet I have one last endeavor: to win myself for myself. And I will prevail, even if no herald announces it, even if the centuries come crashing down on me like rumbling crumbling walls. Who will dare? I shall dare.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 26

  Juana went back to her silence. I opened my eyes brimming with tears. Manuel exhaled deeply and lit another cigarette.

  “My God, our intuition barely caught up with her,” I said.

  He turned back to the folders. I saw him pick up the newer one. Suddenly, I was doubtful.

  “Manuel, what you just read is what Juana wrote?”

  He didn’t answer. He was holding a legal-size sheet of typewritten paper. He looked at it and raised his hand to his forehead, again and again.

  “What’s the matter, Manuel? What’s wrong?”

  He stared at me, wide-eyed. In the candlelight he looked transparent, his lips blue.

  “This really is a night of surprises, Lucía. Do you want me to keep reading? Do you want me to read out this certificate that states that Águeda is actually my mother?”

  “Águeda? What do you mean?”

  “Come on,” he said. “Come with me. I have a feeling I know where this staircase leads.” He snatched my hand frantically. He wasn’t letting go. I followed him down the short hallway to the dark stairs, which we felt our way down, me asking all the while, What’s wrong? Where are we going? I was afraid of his urgency, of his words. We reached the last step. We must have been on the second floor. Another door. He pushed it. It didn’t budge. He kicked it. And suddenly, we stood in the semidarkness of Águeda’s room. She was sitting up in bed, an expression of sheer horror on her face, covering her mouth, having been shaken so suddenly from the deep sleep she drugged herself into each night.

  Manuel let go of me. Águeda was staring at us. I stood up against the wall in the darkness, aghast, trying to make sense of what I saw before me: adorning the walls of Águeda’s bedroom, like decor in an actress’s dressing room, were dresses that looked like they were from Juana’s time. Three, four, five, maybe more.

  Manuel, meanwhile, rushed to her bed and threw the stack of papers on her lap.

  “Would you care to explain this? You have to explain it,” he shouted, and then snatched up the papers again, pointing at her. “It says here that you’re my mother. This certificate says that you gave birth to a child the very day of my birthday. What does that mean?” he repeated, pacing back and forth before her. “More deceit? What is it, some sort of genetic defect? Good God! How many lies will I have to unravel in this family? Why, Águeda, why has it become such a pattern?” His voice was deep, hoarse, almost howling. “My God, you can’t be my mother! You have been so many things to me, but please, you cannot possibly be my mother!”

  Águeda was whimpering, her face taut, totally distorted.

  “Damn your curiosity, Manuel. Damn it!”

  Manuel was livid. Calmer, but at the same time more enraged. I didn’t even know what was being hinted at, but I felt nauseated. I had to get out of there, I thought, had to breathe.

  Águeda spoke. I didn’t move a muscle.

  “Let me stand up,” she said, getting out of bed, pulling on her dressing gown, her slippers, smoothing her hair, turning on the bedside lamp. “Maybe we’re all wicked people, but the woman you thought was your mother–Aurora–admitted it. She had the bad blood of the Denias in her veins, she deceived people without scruples, she lived a dissolute life, intent on making the most of every day, every minute, saying that for her there was no past and no future. It took a long time before I understood her, and by then it was too late, she was gone. I couldn’t see that I was no better than her. But back then, when I was young, your Aunt Águeda,” she said sarcastically, “was the good girl, the introvert, the studious one, the obedient one. Like you, Lucía,” she said, looking at me. “I was the apple of my father’s eye, the one who straightened up his study, his papers, the one who discussed history with him, and then one day grew up and got pregnant. It happens. As you know. And to salvage the family’s honor, my parents decided that, since Aurora was already a lost cause, she would be blamed for it. They hid me away until the child was born, and then, Manuel, they passed you off as her son. What difference did it make, they said, if I was going to be the one to raise you anyhow? They spread a rumor about Aurora’s fall from grace, and they themselves took it so seriously that they disowned her and abandoned her to her fate. And you know how she ended up.”

  Engrossed in her story, paralyzed by it, I leaned up against the wall. It was trembling. I’m imagining things, I thought, it must be my body
that’s trembling.

  “Tell me who my father was,” Manuel commanded his aunt. They were staring at each other.

  “No, Manuel. I can’t do that,” she replied. Her face was a mask of horror.

  “Tell me.”

  Águeda ran from the room.

  Manuel ran after her, and I followed suit. The second we were out in the hallway I realized what the vibration I’d felt was. The house was on fire. The third floor had gone up in flames. The walls were making a terrible groaning sound. I couldn’t believe how fast it was happening, how quickly the fire was spreading. The burning smell was unbearable. Chunks of blazing wood were beginning to fall. The house was filling with smoke. The roof was on fire, it was going up like a torch.

  “Manuel, my God, the manuscripts!”

  I was going in circles, not knowing what to do. Manuel too had stopped short. It was as if he couldn’t react. Suddenly, he turned around and ran back toward Águeda’s room. A second later, I heard the locks being deactivated.

  “Go, Lucía, run,” he said, absurdly calm and determined. “Go. I’m going to find Águeda. I can’t leave her in here. I’ll see if I can save the manuscripts.” And he pushed me, shoved me, toward the back door.

  “No, Manuel. Come with me.”

  “I’ll be right there. Now go, run,” and he gave me one final shove. I thought the house would keep standing until the firemen arrived. I ran toward Recoletos, the main avenue, but stayed on the sidewalk, as close to the house as possible.

  The flames kept spreading. The crashing sounds were deafening. Beams fell, walls crumbled like paper. The house roared like an animal. In the distance, I heard the sirens approaching. I prayed, implored the firemen to hurry up. Flames were shooting up everywhere and Manuel was not coming out. He wasn’t coming out. There was no sign of Manuel. Nothing. No sign of Manuel. Or his mother.

  CHAPTER 27

  I’ve seen pictures of the fire. It went down in Madrid history as a tragedy in which fabulous works of art were lost forever. When the sun came up, the house was still on fire and onlookers crowded around to see the damage firsthand. Dressed in my long, red, square-necked velvet gown, wearing Juana’s cross on my chest, I was in a state of shock. All I could do was replay the scenes from that night in my mind, a kaleidoscope of choppy images dancing before my eyes. I stood motionless, glued to the sidewalk, trembling from both cold and fear. I told one of the firemen I was a friend of the marquess and her nephew, and he handed me a blanket. Around six in the morning, they brought Águeda and Manuel out in black body bags. I wondered if any part of Manuel had been saved from incineration, if, like my father, a hand or an arm had remained intact. I pictured him chasing Águeda through the huge house, her trying to save things from the fire, him maybe running back for Juana’s manuscripts. Had Águeda revealed his father’s identity? Was that what had killed them both? Was Manuel’s grandfather also his father, did that explain the passageway from his office and her bedroom? What had happened between Manuel and his aunt? Why could he not accept that she was his mother, why was he so horrified at the thought of it?

  I wandered down Recoletos for ages. Every possible explanation I came up with seemed more horrifying than the last. I had been saved. Maybe from a fate worse than death. But the fire haunted me. I couldn’t get rid of it, couldn’t stop seeing it, stop smelling it. My eyes were still burning. Even in the fresh dawn air, I couldn’t get free of the soot, the smoke. One blaze had left me an orphan, now another left me as the sole custodian of the last, innocent Denia descendant. I wondered if the baby now growing in my womb would somehow, without seeing, without hearing, sense the strange universe it came from: a father obsessed by a love as mad as that of the woman he was obsessed with, in love with ghosts, both of them. And grandmother Águeda, a captive in the prison of her undisclosed offense, unable to claim her son as hers. Such dreadful ancestry, steeped in lies, silence, and captivity.

  WITHOUT KNOWING WHERE I WAS GOING, I ENDED UP AT THE FOUNTAIN of Neptune and then in the lobby of the Hotel Palace. I took advantage of my privileges, my grandfather’s name. I asked them to call him, to authorize payment for a room. The concierge could not help staring at my outfit. I am an actress, I finally managed to tell him. I have been playing Queen Juana’s role in a play. Juana the Mad? he asked. No, I said, Juana of Castile.

  EPILOGUE

  When I was sure that my pregnancy was not one of Manuel’s fabrications, I debated as to whether or not to end it. After what I’d been through, I thought it might be best if I put an end to the Denia line. I suffered over Manuel, but I also feared the traces of his ancestors feeding off my blood. In the end, it was Mother Luisa Magdalena, who came to the hotel when I called her, who made me see the baby as a vindication of Juana. After all, the baby’s father had died because of his obsession, trying to right the wrongs of history. His daughter would be a clean slate, a new page, she would have another outlook: the one I’d provide for her, the history that Juana’s brave, unrelenting spirit had revealed to me, the voice that Manuel had brought to life from within me.

  “It’s as if you were pregnant with Juana,” the nun told me. “Think of it that way. A Juana who will be loved, who will never be locked up.”

  I said we didn’t know that it was a girl. It is, it is, she said. You’ll see.

  A few days later, Mother Luisa Magdalena said good-bye to me at the airport.

  My daughter was born in New York.

  I HAVE BROUGHT MY DAUGHTER JUANA HERE TO TORDESILLAS TO show her the place where the queen lived, the same queen her mother so often talks about, the one her father loved. This is where she was held prisoner, I tell her. She flaps her arms. She wants to chase the birds on the balcony. She stares at me with her blue eyes. The wind lifts her skirt and she giggles. Look, I say, you can see the storks’ nests on the roofs, look at their long legs, see that one flying off, spreading her wings over the river.

  While she plays on the balcony at the top of the church’s spiral staircase, I sit on the little stone bench in San Antolín’s tower, the same one Juana must have sat on to let her soul follow the wind out the window.

  Now I will be the one to gather the memories of her reign. The schoolgirl who used to write letters at study hall in a neat, round hand, the one who was captivated by the bridges that her words built and the way they took her out of that tiny, constricted space, will collect the threads, exorcize her demons, and write another story, another truth to defy the lies.

  She is the one who still owns the red velvet dress. And who wears it some nights, the nights when she remembers Manuel, and Philippe.

  Santa Monica–Managua, January 2005

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The many contradictory accounts of Juana of Castile’s mental health and lucidity that are found in firsthand historical references have allowed historians–males for the most part–ample freedom to interpret the queen’s behavior according to their own subjective perception and–why not say it?–prejudices. That is what prompted me–as a twenty-first-century woman armed with a different understanding of the motives and reasons that lead us, women, to act one way or another–to try to imagine Juana’s inner life from a female perspective and to draw the conclusions this novel suggests.

  In the process of researching this book, I found that many analyses of the illness that might have afflicted the queen concluded she was schizophrenic. Nevertheless, none of the psychiatrists I consulted agreed with this diagnosis. Schizophrenia does not improve or worsen depending on whether a patient is or is not in a pleasant environment. The data that is available on Juana shows that, when she was treated well, the queen went through long periods “with no episodes of madness.” This does not fit with a schizophrenic diagnosis. Juana’s crises–when she refused to eat, bathe, etc.–always corresponded to times when she was forced to accept others’ decisions or restrictions, or was separated from her children. They happen to coincide, curiously enough, with her rebellions. This is not standard schizophrenic behavior. Ac
cording to those who so generously offered me their medical interpretations, Juana might have been bipolar, suffering from a manic-depressive condition, or she might simply have suffered from chronic depression, which would be no wonder, given her circumstances.

  Personally, I think that any woman with a strong sense of self, confronted by the abuse and the arbitrary injustices she had to withstand, forced to accept her powerlessness in the face of an authoritarian system, would become depressed. We all have our own ways of showing depression, and it is easy to see how Juana’s lack of inhibition when it came to expressing dissatisfaction and unhappiness would be interpreted as madness, especially at a time when repression was the norm.

  And then too, as I have already mentioned, it’s important to consider the standpoint of those who were doing the interpreting. My reading of the documents, essays, and books on Juana points to the existence–even among male historians–of an unresolved controversy as to whether her behavior was pathological or simply the result of the tangled web of intricate conspiracies she was forcibly embroiled in. For the majority of scholars to lean toward the madness theory is not surprising, given the light in which female historical figures have been seen for such a long time.

  It’s obvious that Juana did not have the wisdom, political savvy, or willpower that her mother did. It’s also true, however, that her circumstances could not have been more unfavorable. Like Juana la Beltraneja, who ended up cast off in a convent despite her legitimate claim to the throne of Castile, Juana of Castile fell victim to interests of State and the ambitions of those conspiring against her.