The Scroll of Seduction

M
anuel said he would tell me the story of the Spanish queen, Juana of Castile, and her mad love for her husband, Philippe the Handsome, but only if I agreed to certain conditions.

He was a professor at Complutense University. His specialty was the Spanish Renaissance. I was seventeen years old, a high school student, and from the age of thirteen, since the death of my parents in a plane crash, I had been at a Catholic boarding school run by nuns in Madrid, far from my small Latin American country.

Manuel's voice rose densely within me, like a surging tide on which floated faces, furnishings, curtains, the adornments and rituals from forgotten times.

“What conditions?” I asked.

“I want you to imagine the scenes I describe for you in your mind's eye, to see them and see yourself in them, to feel like Juana for a few hours. It won't be easy for you at first, but a world created with words can become as real as the shaft of light that at this moment illuminates your hands. It's been scientifically proven that whether we see a lit candle with our eyes open or imagine it with our eyes closed, the brain has an almost identical reaction. We can
see
with our minds and not just our senses. In the world I'll conjure up, if you accept my proposal, you will become Juana. I know the facts, the dates. I can place you in that world, in its smells and colors; I can make you feel its atmosphere. But my nar
ration–because I'm a man and, what's worse, a rational, meticulous historian–can never capture–
I
can never capture–what's inside. No matter how I try, I can't imagine what Juana felt when she set off, at sixteen, on the armada's flagship, accompanied by one hundred and thirty-two vessels, to marry Philippe the Handsome.”

“You said she didn't even know him.”

“She'd never laid eyes on him. She disembarked in Flanders, escorted by five thousand men and two thousand ladies-in-waiting, to find that her fiancé was not at the port to meet her. I can't imagine how she felt, just as I can't begin to conceive of her innermost thoughts when she finally met Philippe at the monastery in Lierre and they fell so suddenly, so thoroughly, so violently in love that they asked to be married that very night, so anxious were they to consummate a marriage that had actually been arranged for reasons of State.”

 

HOW OFTEN HAD MANUEL MADE REFERENCE TO THAT INITIAL
meeting? Perhaps he enjoyed seeing me blush. I smiled to dissimulate. Although I had spent the last several years in a convent, surrounded by nuns, I could picture the scene. I had no trouble at all imagining what Juana must have felt.

“I see that you understand.” Manuel smiled. “I just can't stop picturing that young woman–one of the most educated princesses in all of the Renaissance–who, after succeeding to the throne of Spain, was locked up in a palace at the age of twenty-nine and forced to remain there until she died, forty-seven years later. During her formative years she was tutored by one of the most brilliant female philosophers of the day, Beatriz Galindo, known as ‘La Latina.' Did you know that?”

“It's sad to think that jealousy drove her insane.”

“Well, that's what they said. And that's one of the mysteries you can help me unravel.”

“I don't see how.”

“By thinking like her, putting yourself in her place. I want you to let her story flood your consciousness. You're almost the same age. And, like her, you also had to leave your country and be on your own since you were very young.”

 

MY GRANDPARENTS DROPPED ME OFF AT THE BOARDING SCHOOL ONE
September day in 1963. Although the stone building was austere and gloomy–high-walled, windowless, an imposing front door with an old coat of arms on the lintel–its solemnity perfectly suited my frame of mind. I walked down the tiled hallway and into the stillness of the reception area feeling that I was leaving behind a noisy world that in no way acknowledged the catastrophe that had cut short my childhood. Neither day nor night, countryside nor city, managed to register my sadness the way the silence of that convent did, with its one lone pine shading the tiny central garden that no one ever visited. Four years I had lived there resigned and uncomplaining. And though the other girls were pleasant toward me, they also kept a prudent distance, influenced, I think, by the tragedy that had thrust me in their midst. The nuns' good intentions surely contributed to my isolation. They must have told the other girls to be compassionate and sensitive toward me, to avoid doing anything to reopen my wounds or to further sadden me. They even refrained from talking about their family vacations and their home life in my presence, thinking, I imagine, that talking about their parents would make me miss mine. Their restraint coupled with my rather introverted nature and my initial unwillingness to discuss the issue of having suddenly become an orphan, dramatically reduced my possibilities of forging new and close friendships. What's more, I got good grades, and the nuns held me up as an example of the triumph of will against adversity, inadvertently widening the chasm that separated me from the others.

 

“TO BE HONEST, I DON'T EXACTLY UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU EXPECT
me to do. Of course I can speculate about what Juana might have felt, but she and I are centuries apart. We're the product of two different times. I don't see how you'll be able to deduce anything about her by my reactions.”

“When it comes to feelings, what difference does time make?” he asked. I could read Shakespeare and Lope de Vega, the poetry of Góngora and Garcilaso, tales of chivalry, and still be moved by them. Time passed, settings changed, but the essence of passion, of emotions, of human relations, was surprisingly consistent.

“Think of this as making art, a piece of historical theater. After all, it won't be any different from what novelists do. They do their research and then try to inhabit the spirit of whoever lived through this or that historical event. The works of literature, painting, even music are but attempts of the human imagination to recapture emotions, bygone eras. And sometimes the result, the intensity and correspondence that is achieved, cannot be explained rationally. One reads descriptions of the creative process written by the authors themselves and inevitably there will be the passage where they talk about the mystery of being “possessed” by their characters, or by something inexplicable. There are those who compare inspiration to a trance and swear that when they write they feel as if they were taking dictation, or experiencing visions that all they had to do was put down on paper. Classical works are still current because essentially we're caught up in the same dramas, reliving the same stories. You might think more openly about love because you'll never be forced to marry anyone for reasons of State, but when you fall in love, the way you will experience that attraction won't be so different from Juana's. Let's just say, if you like, that you'll be closer to feeling what she felt than I can ever hope to be.”

“You're very persuasive.” I smiled. “But you talk as if you were trying to convince me to board a time machine. You're just going to tell me a story, after all. If you do it well, I won't have any trouble imagining it. I have an active fantasy life. So at least I can try.”

“It's not just about me, you know…there are those mysteries that concern you too, that you would like to see revealed…the issue of jealousy, for example. It could give you a better understanding of it.”

 

IN A FEW SHORT MONTHS, MANUEL HAD GOTTEN TO KNOW ME QUITE
well. I had met him in the spring, on my grandparents' last trip to Madrid. I remember I was wearing an English woolen suit and an Hermès scarf–a present from my grandmother. I first saw him in the hotel's lobby as I paced up and down, waiting for my grandparents to come down from their room. He looked like a character from another time. His hair was completely white. His skin was also so light it was almost transparent, and he had dark, thick eyebrows and blue eyes that seemed
to contrast with his full, pink lips. He was sitting with his legs crossed in one of the damask armchairs under the lobby's art nouveau dome, smoking with relish. His peculiar coloring, and the way he inhaled smoke from his cigarette, caught my attention. Later he told me that he had noticed me too. It was unusual in Madrid, he said, to see a young woman who combined a tropical café aut lait complexion with a tall, Nordic build. It wasn't the first time I'd heard that. I knew that at five eight I was striking, though I considered myself rather ungraceful, giraffelike. I even thought my eyes–large and melancholic–resembled those of that animal. When I sat down in one of the easy chairs in the lobby, he smiled at me with the knowing look of people who wait impatiently at train stations or airports. Finally, my grandmother emerged from the elevator and behind her, my grandfather. He was a handsome man in his seventies who seemed protected by an impenetrable self-assurance. He walked slightly hunched over, as if trying to make up for the difference in height between him and his wife. My grandmother was short, and she always walked very erect, with a learned elegance that appeared forced and struck those who didn't know her as arrogance. She wore a beige suit and she'd had her hair done at a salon. Her face softened when she saw me. My grandfather took me by the shoulders and looked me over before giving me a kiss. It was a typical gesture of his, but I couldn't help thinking he was trying to ascertain whether the time had come for them to stop worrying about me. After my grandparents and I embraced, Manuel walked up and introduced himself. He was the person that the agency had sent to take us on a private tour of El Escorial. He wore a navy blue, Burberry raincoat and a plaid scarf, and I remember noticing he smoked Ducados. He escorted us to his car, a polished, black Seat. During the trip he and my grandparents made comparisons between General Francisco Franco's dictatorship and the one we'd endured in our country. While my grandparents took in the sights from the back seat, he turned to ask me about my favorite subjects at school, my impression of Madrid, if I had many friends. It was during that conversation when I found out he was a university professor and that his research was on Juana the Mad and Philippe the Handsome. He asked me if I had any knowledge of those historical figures. Not much, I replied.
Wasn't Juana the queen that went mad with love? So says the legend, he said, sighing in resignation. The real story lent itself to other interpretations, but few were willing to delve into it. Juana was the mother of Emperor Charles I of Spain and V of Germany, on whose empire it was said the sun never set. Therefore, she was also the grandmother of Philippe II, the king who ordered the construction of El Escorial, which we were on our way to visit.

To be honest with him, I said, keeping track of so many queens and kings was confusing for me. He laughed. But Juana was very special, he said, very special indeed.

“You look like her. She was a brunette too, with black hair, like you,” he said. “I have never seen such an uncanny resemblance before.”

I guessed that Manuel was probably about forty. He said he'd been orphaned when he was young too. His mother's sister, Águeda, was the only family he had left. And although he was there to give my grandparents and me a private tour (during which I caught a glimpse of his erudition), it turned out he was no tourist guide. The man who was supposed to accompany us was a friend of his. Something had come up, he explained, so he was doing him a favor by standing in.

 

I HAD BEEN TO EL ESCORIAL SHORTLY AFTER I ARRIVED IN SPAIN,
with a guide who hurried us through all the salons. It was a totally different experience this time, seeing the palace with a history professor who not only knew all about Philippe II and the period he and his ancestors lived in, but who also seemed somehow to feel transported back to that period, sweeping us along with the fervor of his gestures, the deep, mellifluous tone of his voice. I even found Manuel's erudition moving. He seemed to regret not living in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and being limited to having to conjure that period with his imagination. As I watched him, standing in front of the portrait of Philippe the Handsome, in the shaft of light falling from the window, I had the disturbing sensation that there was a physical resemblance between the two. It was there, next to that painting, that he told us about Juana and Philippe's first meeting. And the way he spoke, it was as if he had borne witness to the instantaneous, irrepressible love that drove them to consummate
their marriage that very night. My grandmother must have noticed his intensity, because she interrupted him to ask about the sedan chair on display near the portrait. He explained that it was the same chair in which Philippe II made his last journey from Madrid to the palace, after he had fallen ill. Then Manuel told us about Philippe II's diseases, his gout, his religious devotions, his four wives, who all died one after the other. The king practiced self-flagellation, he said, and wore a crown of thorns. He made love to his wives through a sheet that had one crucial hole cut in it, to insure procreation. He made his wives recite the rosary while they had intercourse. He begged for the Almighty's forgiveness for any pleasure that might slip in between the linen and the darkness. (My grandmother stared at the floor, my grandfather at me, as if to apologize for the guide not censoring his language in front of a young lady such as myself, but the professor was oblivious, lost in his own world, swept away by the passion of his own tale.)

Before she left for London, my grandmother gave me a stack of old papers I had asked for, which had come from my mother's desk. When my parents died, I went with Mariíta, our old housekeeper, to clear out the house. Even though she had begged me,” child, let me take care of all this, there's no need for you to go through all that pain,” I insisted on being there, along with the housekeepers temporarily on loan for the occasion from my aunts and uncles. I was there when they cleared out the closets, emptied the bookshelves, kitchen cabinets, desk drawers, and nightstands. People's lives are full of papers, and I insisted on keeping the ones we found scattered around the house. “Your grandfather already has the insurance policies and the deeds. No one told me what to do with the other papers. Who am I to say no, if you want to save them for when you're older,” Mariíta said. I had no trouble going through the clothes, shoes, belts, and scarves and sorting out the things I thought I might want one day, and putting the rest in boxes to take to the Sisters of Charity, but I could not force myself to look at my mother's precise calligraphy or my father's handwriting without bursting into tears and feeling overcome by sorrow. Now, almost five years later, I felt prepared to do it. I read through those papers at boarding school, in the silent dormitory where I had a small bedroom with an iron bed, an armoire, a
sink, a chair, and a high window overlooking the trees in the garden, their new leaves resplendent in the fresh, spring air. My first years there I had slept in a large dormitory with a hallway separating the cubicles on either side, which were closed by starched white curtains. A nun woke us up every day at seven o'clock, clapping loudly. After a few minutes, she would rush from cubicle to cubicle, jerking back the curtains to make sure we had gotten out of bed and were standing before our sinks. It was a routine more suited to military barracks and it never ceased to unsettle me. Luckily, the previous year, I had been moved to a room of my own. It was like going from a boardinghouse to a five-star hotel. Because I suffered from insomnia, and in light of my tragic circumstances, Mother Luisa Magdalena, who was in charge of the dormitory as well as the infirmary, had given me permission to leave my light on at night until I was able to fall asleep.