What no one knew as yet — what he had not whispered to himself as yet in the pages he had written — was that he had planned, in any case, to come here. Long before he met her. He had planned it in London and New York. He was looking for the foundations of a vanished nunnery in these parts that may have been blown sky-high or lake-deep.
There was another hidden convent close at hand in Puebla (the hidden Convent of Santa Monica it was called) which was well known to travellers and their guides alike and this had been converted into a museum. Whereas the vanished order he sought might never have existed for all the world knew and it was this, those lost vocations, with implications beyond a dead past, a dead future in the museum of the mind, which drew him to the spot, this very spot perhaps, within the globe.
Yes, he could see reason in all this. Legitimate reasons, hopes, ambitions. Except that now he felt illegitimate, desolated. Something had happened to him, something to do with the woman he had picked up or by whom he had been picked up the day after he arrived in Mexico City; something that made him question his own motives now in coming to a site he intended to visit all along but which in a flash shrank into nothing it seemed as he dreamt brutally, vividly of possessing the woman again. It was a repudiation of himself on one level and confirmation at the same time of compulsions that ran deeper than plans like an inexplicable tide embodied in action.
And having confessed it, having implied it openly now he felt himself falling anew into the site (chosen site?), into re-arranged naked premises, re-arranged naked features, rearranged exposures of the susceptibility of the future to the past …
There was a rumour he had heard, or she had whispered to him, that she was related to a nun …
Buried in that thought it came almost as a shock to feel a sleeve brushing against him. Hosé the guide had appeared. The Idiot turned and saw he was smiling. A cold smile he felt. Like someone in a frame of mind perhaps at this moment which made him distant, which drew him to stand with one foot in the grave, the other in the past. Was it the style of his dress? Or the length of his hair, the trim of his beard?
The Fool saw now he had not taken him in quite like this before when they met and discussed the present expedition. It was his dress perhaps, the sense of involuntary fashion, involuntary time-lag, a cruel past, a cruel present.
Late twentieth-century man dressed in early twentieth-century obsessions.
Early twentieth-century obsessions dressed in late nineteenth-century paint.
Late nineteenth-century paint dressed in early nineteenth century hate.
Early nineteenth-century hate dressed in late eighteenth-century skin.
Skin-within-glove-within-skin …
Was it the length of his beard or the rings he wore on his hands?
A man of seventy stockily built (peasant? aristocrat?). Either way both feet in the past.
Guide-within-paint-within-obsession …
“How alone would one be,” the Idiot murmured, “if one saw one’s obsessions, glimpsed one’s susceptibilities (age to age, future to past)? How alone.?”
“How alone.?” the guide echoed.
The Idiot saw his lips move to a painted lesson, as if he were repeating a parrot’s tongue. As if he were immersed in the living fate of all guides into the past — to which one succumbs — to settle for the past as if it were the moral paint and skin of the present, as if the past reflected in the present had no bearing on the present except to adorn the present with facts, figures, appearances, commodities of love like a solid unbroken mirror through which one glimpses nothing but reflects everything.
“Oh my god, Hosé,” said the Fool. “I feel suddenly naked and yet it is possible to be naked and not to be alone. To be dressed naked which is a monstrous self-deception.”
“Are you quite well sir?”
“I felt…. Oh nothing. It will pass. I am glad you have come.”
“It’s a bit of a tramp sir. That wood. Over there. I know these parts like the back of my hand. I am sorry to see you fell. Your knees are all muddy. There was rain last night. Are you sure you still want to go.?”
“Quite sure. Yes I slipped. It’s nothing really. I did mention yesterday, Hosé, that I am curious about an artist’s model who lives in this area. Perhaps you may know of her.”
“Are you a reporter sir?”
“In a manner of speaking yes. I suppose I am.”
“I am glad. You see we have wondered for some months if anyone would come. She deserves to be remembered. A great lady.”
“Great lady? Remembered?” The Idiot was confused.
“Why,” said the guide. “I thought you knew. She died last autumn.”
“That is impossible. I slept — that is, I was with her a couple of nights ago.”
The guide stopped for an instant. His eyes flicked over the Idiot’s face with an edge of rage, edge of resentment for the first time. “I am referring to Sister Beatrice,” he said stiffly, “who died last autumn. You must be referring to her granddaughter.” The resentment remained though on the surface it had faded. “I am sorry, sir. We are at cross-purposes I see. I thought you knew of Sister Beatrice when you spoke of the vanished convent. She was a young woman — hardly more than twenty-five I would say — when the hidden convent was exposed. That would be fifty years ago perhaps. The other nuns fled. Some to Europe. Some to the States.”
“I have met one or two”, said the Idiot, “before I came here.”
“She remained. And began …” he spoke in a smooth voice now, “to involve herself in the rituals of the day.” He paused. “An artist’s model if you like to refer to her as that. It was she who dressed herself up as Christ — yes, Christ, imagine that — in his bullet-ridden vest for the very first time. A dangerous thing for a woman to do. She was seized, exposed in the procession. And raped.”
The word “raped” rang through the wood and possessed for the Idiot the force of terror — naked force, catastrophic aloneness — but on the lips of the guide it seemed nothing but a bridge he embodied unthinkingly across a stream over which the Christ Nun moved for him as if she were reflected naked, dressed in the callous of the day, her skin. Mirrored callous. Mirrored dress. Commerce of soul.
Once again the Fool was displaced by senses of standing abreast of his age (and therefore about fifty years ahead of his time), stripped of callouses, utterly alone, horribly aware how vulnerable it was to be truly exposed …
“As for the granddaughter,” the guide spoke with rising tongue, “I hope you’ll forgive me if I say it. She is accursed. Nothing but a whore. Artist’s model indeed. Nothing like her grandmother. She’s a whore I tell you. There’s neither glory nor money in it for her. Who would pose as ex-priestess, ex-virgin, god knows what, for nothing—except the child of a child bornfrom rape?”
The Fool stopped. He had suffered an assault. How to begin … how to begin he cried inwardly — how to begin to repudiate the devil? “I take it,” he said as if he were speaking from a great distance with another man’s cracked lips, “I take it Hosé you were a young man when it happened.”
“Happened? What happened?”
“To the young nun. Dressed as Christ. Raped. Exposed.”
The guide looked suddenly virulent, inquisitorial. “Yes,” he cried. “She should never have done it. A mere strip of a woman playing such a part. A violent part. A man’s part. She should never have done it. Why even today …” he stopped. Bewildered. Aware he had said what he had never intended to say.
“I wonder”, said the Idiot under his breath, “of whom do you now speak, of grandmother or of granddaughter?”