Heavens on Earth

by Carmen Boullosa

  In these lands, those who serve most are usually least respected and are the focus of more slander, or the indiscreet zeal of those who persecute them, or the false testimonies that raise them, they are like stones for the Royal Palace that God allows to be cut with the pick of slander…26

  You all will ask: if, given that this Hernando de Rivas is not an imbecile (pardon my pride), and it is true, as he says, that these lands do not forgive the presence of something in them that might awake envy or burning hatred (what better pretext for both than intelligence?), why did the poison of these lands not do away with him before now? For two reasons I will give here: because my mother takes care of me from where she is because her love for me never ceased and there was no reason for it to cease upon her death, because her radiant kindness shines in my heart, illuminating the darkness, and (the second reason) because this poison is of recent minting and I am not of such recent minting, because this poison came to these lands with the Hispanics, not because they brought it, but rather because its presence here was brought to light with their presence here. Is this the way our land took revenge for our defeat? It seems to me rather that the poison arose because—just as my mother is still taking care of me after her death, just as my strength is my death, the one that accompanies me everywhere, just as her spirit accompanies and protects me and prevents them from tearing me to shreds—the dead of the Hispanics accompanied them as they entered this land, protecting them, but their dead do not coexist well with the dead of those who were already living here, and this clash brought about this exudation, this exuberant violence…The cohabitation of the dead of those who came from across the ocean with our dead generated this stubborn vileness and evilness, this poisoning exudation (as I have called it) that poisons every inhabitant of this land with ire and hatred.

  It is true that my mother takes care of me, but it is also true that they have done much to hurt me—we would not say that I have survived completely whole. How is it possible that they might have succeeded in large and small ways to destroy me if Mama takes care of me with her ceaseless love? Because of her own nature. My story would be different if her nature had been like that of the mother of Francisco Bautista de Contreras (who is presently the governor of the city of Xochimilco), a son of the Colegio de Santa Cruz, and a native of the town of Quauhnáhuac (who is very adept, particularly with a pen in his hand, who has written well-structured letters to me in the Castilian language, helped to complete the Contemptus Mundi, and is, moreover, the author of the introduction to the book of Las vanidades del mundo)…the very same Francisco Bautista de Contreras remained whole, as if nothing happened here, as if the fat leg of envy could not trip him along his crooked path.

  He lived as long as an oak and was always smiling and he managed it all because his dead mother, the one who protected his spirit, was a generous and good woman. If mine, instead of adoring me with such focused constancy, had loosened the knot that bound us, had looked around her and had been good to others, to her neighbors…if mine had had even an inch of the generous goodness of Francisco Bautista’s mother, she would have had the substance to take better care of me and protect me better. My legs would be good, my breath would not have the penetrating, acidic odor of bitterness so reminiscent of these lands, and my story might have been different.

  Francisco Bautista’s mother was generous with everyone, for even though she lost him in giving him over to the Colegio and lost her husband, as my mother lost hers, in the war we had here when the Hispanics arrived, instead of doing what mine did (shutting her eyes to the world and running headlong toward death), she hardly had the life of a single woman being such a devout woman, conscientious of all things related to religion and service to God our Father, she became a benefactress of the Franciscan order. Because of the good industry and diligence of this Ana de la Cruz, native of Tlatelolco, the things of Christianity were carried out with much fervor in that village. Instead of surrendering to the egoism that consists of satisfying her own pain, she practiced spiritual works, as now none of the matrons do, for the people who normally have done so have been much diminished and because they say they have plenty to do in looking for that which is necessary for their sustenance, and to pay their tributes and other taxes that are constantly being added,27 and also because goodness, it cannot be overstated, is not given in abundance.

  This Ana de la Cruz, mother of said Francisco Bautista de Contreras, helped greatly in teaching the Christian Doctrine and other prayers and devotions to the young ladies and other women who did not know them, she led the brotherhoods of the Holy Sacrament and of Our Lady, and constantly helped in the hospital, serving the sick.

  They say that one time, when a priest did not want to accept the alms she gave because he knew that she was not a rich woman but rather a hard worker, that everything she had was extended to the four women with whom she lived in the same generous act toward her neighbors, as well as to the Church, she replied: “Father, what do I need it for? I do not have a husband or children since I gave my only son over to the care of the Church. Who do I need to give it to other than God who loaned it to me?”

  When she died in holy peace, Francisco Bautista de Contreras had a kindhearted spirit to take care of him and protect him. Mine, the spirit who took care of me, is also good, but she did not know how to extend her goodness beyond me, so in that way she was egotistical and thus, her power to protect me was diminished. I do not blame her for anything; I simply observe the strength of the dead in the land of the living. And in doing so, I do not contradict the Christian Doctrine in any way. As for myself, I will have many to take care of and I am not sure that I know how to do it because I had so many students in the Colegio, not even counting my criollo students, whom I do not know if I will take care of from the place that awaits me in the near future because, though I was quite generous with them, I never received anything more than their ire as reward for my knowledge.

  Who thrives in these lands? Who keeps their bodies from illness and strengthens their intellects? Only those who devour good reason or those who become enraged against intelligence? Not even them, if I remember one of those solicitors of evil who held the position of the same name. It is true that he is fat and healthy, which is a pleasure to see, but did he perhaps write a book for his people that might have appeared to be the work of Fray Melo? Perhaps he wrote what appeared to be a Mendieta, or perhaps a Zumárraga. Neither Mendieta, nor Zumárraga, nor Valeriano, nor de la Cruz, though I remember the bad jokes that he told us and that we praised him highly for it, but we cannot even compare those jokes with Fray Melo’s unpublished work that was crucified by envy, or with that written by Pedro Juan Antonio, or with Fray Elejos’ two widely unknown manuscripts, or Fray Juan García’s innumerable works and thoughts; there is no comparison because they are nothing but bad jokes. So even though he delighted in tormenting others (helping, like everything in these lands, to destroy the good; in his case through mocking and coaching others to mock what was once healthy and once intelligent, favoring the pernicious power that these parts exude), it did nourish his own intelligence. He is fat and looks healthy, and survives where it is difficult to do so, but what is survival if we compare Fray Juan García’s unhealthy body with his work and his writing? Or am I looking at it wrong? Am I also aiding the exudations that are trying to destroy everything good and fertile taken as intelligence in these lands? Am I confusing fat with good and he who has worked with the one who has done nothing good?

  But why have I let myself fall into these useless ruminations? Remembering that these lands have a facility for destruction serves no purpose. Ah, headland of greedy people, army without weapons! Your jealousy destroyed the best of me, cut me at the root with allegory. Ah, bevy of envy that clouds the sun in the sky…And what if this is to be given into your hands? I might have muddied these pages with excrement, with nothing more than feces, rather than make a gift of my entire story, which is a flower and a bud—it is a flower that contains me, it is a bud
because I was born from it—it is better than my old body, this sack of bones that the years and my pain have turned me into…

  Slosos keston de Hernando

  19Quoted in Spanish in the original. Estela’s note.

  20In Spanish in the original. Estela’s note.

  21Quoted in Spanish in the manuscript. Estela’s note.

  22In Spanish in the manuscript from here until the end of the poem quoted by Hernando, with the exception of that which I left in Latin. Estela’s note.

  23This was left in Latin by Estela, without translation into the Castilian, and I have left it in my version. Lear’s note.

  24According to what the translator tells us, this poem was in Spanish in the original and appears to be the Canción a Nuestra Señora by Damián de Vegas. Lear’s note.

  25In Spanish in the original. Estela’s note. (Editor’s note: These words are almost identical to those of Henrico Martínez in the “Prólogo al prudente y curioso lector” from his Repertorio.)

  26In Spanish in the original. Estela’s Note. (Editor’s note: the words are practically identical to Vetancourt’s in his Menologium, where he sketches Gante’s biography.)

  27This, which is in Spanish in the original, seems to be quoted from a text that I haven’t managed to identify. Estela’s note.

  EKFLOROS KESTON DE LEARO

  The men from the time of History would have said that I received a visit from Lilith. I was asleep and felt a tingling on the back of my neck, a feeling that was something between erotic and repulsive and which, upon seizing control of me, continued to move down to the level of my kidneys. It might have gone lower, I don’t know, but when it arrived at that level, I woke up. The electric quality of the pain (if it was pain) was quite intense on my neck. I remembered Lilith and shook my head to scare her away, as if she were capable of sowing or spawning the seeds of one of her sons in me. I thought that if our living space was a house like the men from the time of History had, the curtains of my room, frightened by Lilith’s breath, would have plastered themselves against the windows and the walls and danced a macabre dance of terror.

  After I finished piecing together the details of the imagined visit from that evil spirit in my head, I realized it was probably the alarm that had snatched me from the arms of Morpheus and that the back of my neck was bothering me because of my exhaustion, which is a manifestation of sleep deprivation.

  I got up, a bit agitated, and left to go to the Punto Calpe. I needed a change of scene to calm myself down. The discomfort in my neck kept me from going back to sleep. The night was unusually dark. The moon wasn’t shining, and a widespread weather system had raised a dense dust storm that blocked out the glow of the Earth. The winds blew with such force down there that you could hear them howl.

  There weren’t any clouds either. The stars were shining. The sky was dark blue. It would have been impossible for me to count all the stars.

  I passed puddles without falling into them. At one point on the Punto Calpe I stopped and sat down on a step. I started to think about Lilith for a minute and felt that tingling on the back of my neck again.

  I heard footsteps approaching me from behind.

  —Who’s there?—I called out as I stood up.

  —It’s me, Ramón.

  —Ramón, what are you doing here at this hour? I see I’m not the only one who can’t sleep. Let’s sit here together, I’ve been looking for you for days.

  —Lucky me. Why were you looking for me?—He replied, without sitting down.

  —I wanted…—I faltered—I wanted to ask you why they’ve been ringing my alarm every night for days now.

  —I don’t know. I guess somebody wants to see you. I had hoped to find you here. I didn’t expect to see you, but now that I found you, I realize that I didn’t want anything more than this…Cordelia, look how beautiful the sky is, the stars…

  —Lear.

  He took me by the waist. He gave me a kiss. He gave me another. It took a couple of minutes for me to respond to his show of desire, but once those few moments passed I made myself his without reservation and we were expelled from the sensible world by the awful wind and the darkness, given over to the Levitical adventure of the flesh, aided by the floating stars. We seemed to be hovering above the earth. Me, Ramón, the stars, and L’Atlàntide seemed to be part of the same body, the same act. I would say the sex was perfect, but it would only be half true because something strange occurred during the act. The complete suspension I described was there, but, at the same time, we were distant from each other. Ramón and I observed one another with complete coldness. It wasn’t happening simultaneously, but I would say that each tiny fraction of time had two parts and that in one we surrendered to lovemaking and in the other we were distant from each other, disconnected from what was happening. You would say that’s impossible because moments do not have two parts and two people cannot have sex suspended in perfection unless they’re not really doing it or unless they’re intermittently distracted. It’s not that we were distracting each other, it’s more like in half of each moment we weren’t doing it. In the half that we were doing it, the act was not only complete, but it was sublime, perfect, and my very soul, my mind, my memories, and even the memories I’ve made while reading—everything I’m made of—was completely given over to the act of lovemaking. In the other half of each moment, not even my hand was touching Ramón.

  When we finished, Ramón hugged me and we went back to my room arm in arm. Once there, without saying another word to each other, we lay down and went to sleep in each other’s arms. When I woke up, Ramón wasn’t with me.

  When I was just about to leave to go to my workplace, Rosete intercepted me:

  —24…Ramón can’t see you. He left three days ago to sleep temporarily at El Oasis.

  —He left?

  —He left, but he’ll be back.

  —Thanks, Rosete. —I don’t know how I even managed to speak, and meanwhile I tried to think of something quick, something rational that would explain things to me. —Was there anything else?

  —That’s all.

  —The alarms that ring at night.

  —I don’t have an answer.

  He left. I came here. I did see Ramón last night, I’m sure of it. And the fact that we were and weren’t there together has nothing to with what Rosete told me. Are they lying? Or is it that Ramón being there was here?

  Slosos keston de Learo.

  EKFLOROS KESTON DE HERNANDO

  It might have taken longer for me to drop the cover concealing my non-crying, if it were not for the visit we made to the Church of San Francisco in Mexico City.

  Now then, it will take some effort to explain the importance of that visit, which was not an effort in and of itself, but rather it served to sever me from the blindness of my crying. After that visit I was somehow able to settle myself into the Colegio, I managed to look around me, to go from mourning, or better said, from being a crier (since there is a big difference in consciousness between mourning and crying), to being student. I did not get used to not having my mother with me, but my crying stopped and I saw where I had landed, attached to a false name, noticed the people who had received me, learned what their names were, the story we were woven into, and the kinds of knots that were being tied to form and support us.

  It turns out that in a little chest kept in the sanctuary of San Francisco, in nearby Mexico City, they kept the relics of the Church. One of the monks had the idea to take us to see them, I do not know if it was because they had recently arrived or for another reason; that being said, I was crying my eyes out and was out of sorts because not long before that they had completely prohibited my mother’s visits and I could make very little sense of things so I do not have the faintest idea why they took us there, whether they gave us explanations as to where they were taking us, or if they lectured us before we left.

  The fact is that a little more than a year after I entered the Colegio we went to the church of San Francisco
to visit the relics. All the students chosen for the visit entered the sanctuary and squeezed close together so that everyone could fit inside. The sacristan of the church, whose own story I will leave for later because I learned it after that visit, raised his voice to silence us and then solemnly opened the little chest, telling us that it contained priceless treasures—bodily remains of holy beings who were deceased—and that the relics inside the chest instilled the place they occupied with holiness. Without taking anything out of the chest he explained to us what it contained in his friarly Nahuatl that was peppered with Latin and Castilian terms.

  THE RELICS PRESENTED BY THE SACRISTAN

  “First”—began the sacristan—“a bone of one of the eleven thousand virgins. Do you all know the story of the eleven thousand virgins? There is no reason you should know it since it occurred many years before you were born and in places very distant from here, farther away than where we—who came here to bring you the word of God—came from. The eleven thousand virgins received the palm of martyrdom for being the strangest army to ever walk the face of the Earth.

  “Maurus, the king of Brittania, had a daughter named Ursula who was famous for her beauty and discretion. As luck would have it, Ethereus, the only son of the monarch of England, wanted to ask Ursula to marry him—in part attracted by her famed beauty and in part by the interests of his father, who was an extremely powerful king who had subjugated many nations to his empire, skilled as he was at war and insatiably ambitious in his conquests. For this purpose, Ethereus’ father sent a magnificent delegation to Britannia, with the charge of advising King Maurus of the intentions of the prince of England and the recommendation of bringing them to fruition, promising that if the King of Britannia complied he would be lavished with presents upon the return of the delegation, but that if he failed to comply he would be punished unmercifully.