If there were any plan in the universe...
any pattern to human life,
surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent
in those lives so suddenly cut off.
Either we live by accident
and die by accident...
or we live by plan...
and die by plan.
The day of the funeral, all Lima was in a state of a trance.
The bodies of the victims had been approximately collected, but...
only approximately separated.
It was a great service...
and a resolute rendering of hearts among soul-searchers.
"There but forthe grace of God..."
Why did this happen to those five?
Why not me?
On Friday at noon, the finest bridge in all Peru broke
and precipitated five travelers
into the gulf below.
We have all of us, since we have heard of the accident,
made the... the sign of the cross
and a mental calculation
as to how recently we had crossed by it
and how soon we had intended crossing by it again.
We live in a country, in a place,
where catastrophes, which are shockingly called acts of God,
are more than usually frequent.
Tidal waves have washed away entire cities.
Earthquakes arrive every week in some parts,
and diseases are forever flitting in and out of the provinces.
Old age carries away some of our most admirable citizens,
and towers fall on good men and women all the time.
But we have all of us been deeply impressed
and especially touched
by the rent in the bridge of San Luis Rey.
The bridge seemed to be among the things that would last forever.
It was unthinkable that it should just... break.
We've all had hallucinations of ourselves
falling into that gulf.
Within ten minutes... myself.
It would have been me.
Aah!
So I resolved to inquire into the secret lives of those five persons
falling through the air at that moment
and to surprise the reasons of theirtaking off.
For six years, I knocked on all the doors in Lima...
asked hundreds of questions...
cataloging thousands of little facts and anecdotes and testimonies
as accurately as I could.
The result, as we know, was this torrid testament,
as heretical in title as in content.
Sheer treachery.
It's but a book of findings.
Nothing more sinister.
The mere facts of these five Ionely lives so tragically cut off.
So, we may never know their central passions,
and you, who claim to have inquired after every detail of their existences,
isn't it possible that even you have missed the very spring within the well?
If you'll permit, what I wrote down were the particulars of these precious portraits.
I began in the Franciscan reading room at San Martin,
with a book that is bound between two great wooden covers.
It was there that I came upon the only copy of the volumes of letters
from the Marquesa de Montemayor
to herdaughter, Doña Clara.
I will write often. I will write every day, my love.
And when my little daughter has a little...
It must take six months at least, Marquesa,
to receive an answer to one's letter from Spain.
Left alone in Lima,
the Marquesa's life grew more and more inward.
So necessary was it for her love
that she attract the admiration of herdistant child,
she existed entirely in the endless dialogues
that evidence hereccentricities in her many letters to Spain.
"Rest easy, my love.
"I am sending His Most Catholic Majesty the perfect gold chain.
"He need never know that in orderto obtain it,
"I had to walk into a picture.
"Do you remember that in the sacristy of San Martin
"there is a portrait by Velázquez
"of the viceroy who founded the monastery and of his wife and brat,
"and that his wife is wearing a gold chain?
I have resolved that only that chain will do."
The most beautiful girl in Spain, you see,
wishes to present the finest golden chain that could be found
to the most gracious king in the world.
My mother, the Marquesa de Montemayor,
most insisted that you should have it...
...on the occasion of the christening of the infante.
It is the most perfect gold chain.
Isn't itjust, Your Highness?
She stepped into a Velázquez portrait to procure it.
I must meet this Marquesa.
Be sure she's invited to court.
We might pass an evening together in a Titian.
We cannot possibly entertain her at court.
You must rest easy, my love. It is done.
History may well revere her as one of the few great women of Peru.
Her indiscretions could get us both into a great deal of trouble.
We have interceded three times to ignore her from the Inquisition.
His Excellency has the gout again.
I say again because the flattery of court insists
that there are times when he's free of it.
He started out, this being Saint Mark's Day,
to visit the university,
where 22 new doctors were being brought out.
He had hardly been carried from his divan to his couch,
whereupon he broke the most delicious cigar.
And while we were listening to his long doctrinal address,
more or less in Latin,
he summoned for you,
more or less in Spanish.
All the while, in the same humor, the gout.
So...
She represents well the reports of her honor
made to the Inquisition, does she not?
My dear Marquesa, you have been denounced three times by the Inquisition,
and but for the influence of your son-in-law in Spain,
might have been burned at the stake.
Pass me the blessed See's maps of the New World.
"Dedicated to the Oondesa D'Abuirre,
daughter of the Marquesa de Montemayor..."
"...who is the admiration of her city
and a rising sun in the west."
- My dear Marquesa. - Hmm?
Having sustained the career of this can'tographer,
you daughter has a reputation
as one of the most outstanding women of intelligence at the Spanish court.
So, how is it possible that her mother,
the daughter of a conniving cloth merchant,
the wife of a ninny of a ruined nobleman...
how is it possible that from the womb of such witlessness
is born such wisdom?
You have my permission to travel to Europe...
and attend to her at court in Spain.
The King has issued your invitation personally.
Oh! Your Excellency!
And my next project is with the scientist Azuarius.
His treatise on the law of hydraulics was originally suppressed
by the Inquisition as being too exciting,
so it will take quite some funds
to dampen the criticisms of certain persons of the Ohurch.
My clever little Olara.
My allowance from you is simply not sufficient.
Am I literally to sustain
all the arts and sciences of Spain?
Some of your schemes seem so grandiose
as to require all the wealth of Peru to maintain them.
It is just too torturous of you to reproach my expenses.
I knew nothing good could come of your being called to Spain.
It's not my fault that nothing memorable has been produced in this time.
The knowledge that I may never be loved in return
is just too much to bear.
We have all of us fallen victim to the tyranny
of loving more for the sake of ourselves.
May God grant you the gift of a daughter who truly loves her mother
rather than dazzle her with secret indifference.
God go with you.
The visit was anticipated with resolutions well-nourished on self-reproach...
the one to be patient and the other undemonstrative.
Both failed.
It is almost impossible to imagine the pains Doña Maria endured
in order to seduce her daughter's affections.
She would force herself out into society in order to cull its ridicules,
insinuate herself into the company of the most celebrated conversationalists.
Too often, unfortunately, among harborers of heretical opinion.
Some of us harbored fears for her sanity.
False fears, as it happened, Archbishop.
Madness?
The devil's diagnosis.
Artistic more accurately describes her distracted nature,
though I know that the Archbishop paid great personal attention
to the perceptions of the Inquisition...
...as I discovered from the Marquesa's letters,
even when visiting the Convent of Santa Rosa de las Rosas on its behalf.
"That strange genius,
"the Abbess Madre Maria del Pilar, has fallen in love with an idea
"against the obstinacy of ourworld,
in herdesire to attach a little dignity to the lives of women."
Evening prayers. Forgive me.
So... Archbishop.
To what, at such an hour as this, do we owe the pleasure of your visit?
I have come, dear Mother, in search of a companion.
I'm well aware of the low opinion
with which the Archbishop regards this establishment...
No, no, no, no, no. Not for myself.
No, no. My own tastes are a little more sophisticated.
It appears that, in short, the Inquisition has recommended
that that madwoman, the Marquesa de Montemayor,
might not be quite so mad, they say, were she not always so alone.
I am therefore directed to find her a suitable companion,
and as no suitor in his right mind would have a widow such as she...
...I thought to approach you. - Humph.
Although I would do almost anything to obtain the good offices of my superiors
in my search for funds for this establishment...
Mother Maria, hear me out.
Here in your convent, in your establishment,
you have so many bright young girls...
Good girls, every last one of them a blessing from above.
...quite well-disciplined girls
who might benefit from the worldly experience
of living with... and after all, she is one of the wealthiest women in all Peru.
I thought she might borrow one.
I will think on it.
Think no more on it. Oonsider it settled.
The Marquesa herself will call upon you tomorrow,
and I suggest that in the interest of your work,
should you desire your little establishment to flourish according to your ambitions,
that you prepare one of your charges to take up the post.
Thank you, Pepita.
I'm sure the Archbishop has no call to command your curtsy.
Such courtesies only serve to demean the won'th of women.
As ever, I count the cessation of these meetings
as one of the compensations of dying.
Good night, Abbess.
The Archbishop has found positions for you both about the town,
that you may better consider your calling.
It's no fault of yours.
Rather, the nuisance that is nature
makes it impossibly distracting that you remain resident here at the convent.
She's coming! Shh!
You may or may not know that I'm something of a philologist.
I dabble in dialects,
and I'm storing up notebooks of quaint vowel and consonant changes
from Latin into Spanish and from Spanish into Indian Spanish
against an amusing old age,
so when I heard about your secret language...
Which one of you is Manuel and which Esteban?
Well, let us start by extracting verbs.
How would you... how would you say, say, "I saw"?
Do you have a preference for Latin or Spanish?
Do you, either of you, comprehend either language,
either spoken or written?
From the years when they first learned to speak...
Do you write?
...they had invented a secret language forthemselves.
Here.
This language was a symbol of their profound identity with one another.
Write something here.
Entirely unsuited to clerical work.
They neither read nor write.
They do write, very well.
They've copied endless parts of the motets of Morales and Vittoria
for the choirmasters.
Then let them become scribes.
But not apostles.
A virgirs virtue, then, is the most palpable miracle of Santa Rosa.
Pepita. Accompany me.
You know that even this work is as much an education for your future
as instruction on begging or how to plan contagious wards
or any spiritual direction.
Every task has its own tedium and reward.
I know that you value the way that we work here.
And someday, it's my wish that you may walk this way
and succeed me here.
You know there's a place for you among the sisters,
but before you put away the ways of the world,
you must know what they are.
You will leave tomorrow
and take up the position at the Palacio de Montemayor.
It will be a burden, I know,
but one that strengthens.
Ah, my child.
What is your name?
Pepita.
My eyes are tired.
Oan you read, Pepita?
Yes, ma'am.
Read this, then.
Let me hear it.
My imperfect letters, you see.
"They have Moreto's Trampa Adelante playing at La Comedia,
"where La Perichole gives a wonderful performance as Doña Leonor.
"You should know that I have decided to go to La Oomedia to find out for myself.
Pepita will accompany me."
Very good. Oarry on.
"Scold me all you like for a provincial ninny,
"but you have no such actresses in Spain.
"And that curious man, Uncle Pio, is by her side all the time.
Is he her father, her lover, or her son?"
Am I not assured of my daughter's admiration?
There's not another ship for a month.
She devoted herdays entirely to this quest for herdaughter's love,
sending daily missives to Spain.
Be back, won't you, before the next ship sails.
But she rarely received a letter in return.
She felt less than a little loved.
One of life's Ionely souls.
I make no mention of martyrdom,
merely marking the everyday miracle
that is present in so many unexpected acts of selflessness.
You see, I first found mention of Uncle Pio, and later Don Jaime,
mysteriously among the Marquesa's letters.
Hercharacterization of Uncle Pio did not contradict
the store of unsavory testimonies that he had acquired elsewhere.
"Our aged harlequin Uncle Pio.
"If only he would write my letters for me...
"then generations would rise up and call me witty.
"Isn't it a pity he is so moth-eaten with diseased bad company
"that I shall have to discard him like a soiled pack of cards
and leave him to his underworld?"
Pepita, see how like an ant he is.
Don Pio.
Señor Pio.
Send word to Uncle Pio to drop in and see me at sunset.
My daughter must know of everything, and know it first.
La Marquesa de Montemayor requests you call upon her at the Palacio.
My dear Uncle Pio,
you are the most delightful man in the whole world...
my daughter's husband excepted.
So, I must be the second most delightful man in the world?
Utterly enchanting. Exquisitely spoken.
Years of hearing nothing but the conversations of Oalderón at the Oomedia.
I, uh, I hear the Archbishop has just returned from a visit to Spain
with tomes of masses and motets and many ballads.
- New pieces by Palestrina. - Yes.
- Motets by Morales. - Oh?
And the latest Moreto.
Oh.
We should put by a box for you at the Oomedia,
where I have a mind to make the latest Moreto
with the Perichole.
The Perichole is the only actress in Lima who can interpret this beauty.
Yes. There is a long and flowery part in it, I know.
The lover. Doña Leonor.
That should test her talent.
I've had the piece presented to the Viceroy.
You will have to press there for patronage.
Your Excellency.
They say you could have been connected to the court in Spain
procuring provisions for the army and inciting insurrections on instruction,
your discretion being so profound
that the French party used you,
even when they knew that the Spanish party used you, too.
They say you were a circus trainer and an antique dealer,
a trader in Italian silks,
or a merchant in many a manner of dissipations and pleasures,
but that you have a reluctance to own a single thing.
You've sold bales of deep red porcelain from Persia,
chests of Ohinese artifacts, even Ming vases to collectors of virtu,
and although you started a smart trade in pills
you purchased from the sovereign remedies of the Incas,
as soon as any endeavor threatens to prosper enormous gains,
you abandon it,
even when making investigations for the Inquisition,
inspiriting halfhearted rebellions on behalf of governments
so that they can presently arrive and wholeheartedly crush them...
an anomaly the Viceroy finds most amusing, sir.
Please keep up.
As La Perichole's maid or errand boy,
they say you were once her singing master.
Some say her coiffeur.
Her masseur.
Others insist that you are her father.
His Excellency most needs a little reassurance, however,
that you are not, absolutely not... her lover.
Hmm?
I am surrounded by oceans of boredom!
A boredom, Uncle Pio, so pervasive it is like a pain.
I wake up with it, I spend the day with it,
it sits by my bedside all night watching me sleep.
There are no aims in my existence.
Are there any aims in yours?
My life has three aims, Your Excellency.
The first is a need for independence,
out of a desire to be varied.
The second is to always be near beautiful women.
I worship them all.
They torment me.
And are singularly comforted here at court, I hear,
by the discretion of your dogged devotions.
I can come and go in their rooms,
and foolish friend that I am, I never expect to be loved in return.
For that, I carry my money to the obscurer parts of the city.
And thirdly,
I need to be near those who love the literature of Spain.
You cannot be careless to the lack of contempt His Grace carries
for the verses of Oervantes and Oalderón.
There are affairs on which I would judge it tactful to engage your services.
You see, and although I make little use of my position
for the perpetual pursuit of power or frivolous fantasy,
and I delight little in dalliance, there still is a little Oastilian salt in me...
for the verses of Oalderón and such,
and for the fashionably rich and reverential rendition of them,
by the performance of them by La Perichole.
My discovery of La Perichole
combines all three of the great aims of my life.
Perhaps you could procure her presence
for a little private, uh... une petite performance some evening?
After La Oomedia?
Doña Leonor in Trampa Adelante?
In all Spanish literature, the most legendary lover ever.
The interest of the Viceroy is also assured.
And if he is pleased tonight,
he may well entertain patronizing a performance of Moreto.
Look.
"For the amusement of the gracious La Perichole."
"Her Ladyship is commanded
to sup with His Excellency after the Oalderón at midnight."
Oh, my!
Oh!
"Her Ladyship," no less.
My love...
What passion!
- Do you really think so? - Ah!
You know, there is such a paucity of passionate womers roles
in the classic Spanish theater.
All gentlemen heroes torn between the conflicting claims
of honor and the Oross.
None of the rich studies in... in wit and... and charm,
passion and hysteria of the French,
and the, uh...
and the Venetian theaters.
He's a delightful man.
Don Andrés de Ribera.
You mean His Excellency?
Yes. At least a remnant of one,
being broken a bit by the table.
On which no doubt he gained his gut.
He also collects coins, with which he gains debts,
and wines, which gave him the gout.
But books made him myopic.
And actresses...
Give him what?
A tendency to convulsions.
As a result of one of those quarrels that arise
so naturally in brothels, his life became too complicated
and he removed to Peru,
where he found me singing ballads in cafés at the age of 12.
No!
He took me in, wrote songs for me,
and taught me how to listen to the quality of my tone,
and even bought me a new dress, but never asked for anything in return,
so nothing in the world would surprise me now.
You shall have your Moreto... Doña Leonor,
and my personal patronage with it.
The ghost of passion,
which can make even a whole lifetime devoted to irksome duty
pass like a gracious dream,
was destined to desert them all, it seemed.
It seemed to you, did it not, brother Juniper,
that it was high time for theology to take its place among the exact sciences?
That what you had lacked hereto was a laboratory, a sheer act of God?
And that the collapse of the bridge of San Luis Rey
provided a perfect control?
Here at last you thought you could surprise God's intentions?
Coincidence confounded reason at every turn of this endeavor.
Fate unfolds as capricious the seemingly most inconsequential of events.
Ah, La Oomedia! Thank you.
- A letter from Spain? - No, ma'am.
An invitation, I believe, to La Oomedia.
Uncle Pio.
And yes, I am to go to the Comedia to attend the Moreto.
Three parts each for the principle players, immediately.
Put the Perichole's name above the title.
In the name of passion...
I dedicate this bull...
to the actress...
La Perichole.
Never!
Never have I ever been so... so humiliated!
May I proffer to His Excellency
La Perichole's most distinguished good wishes
and commend him for his patronage of our play,
the marvel that is the Moreto.
You may return such wishes as La Perichole extends
and add to them my own humble indignation
that a matador might commend a bull to her
in the name of passion while l...
I'm simply lost for words.
Pray, silence.
The siren on that matador's horns.
Oome with me, sir.
His Excellency doesn't tolerate rivals. You understand me?
The vulgar love affairs of the theatrical warehouse
can never prepare a performer for the playing of such a legendary lover.
The mastery of passionate entrancement such as this scene requires
demands all the colors of love one could experience.
Once experienced, the actress can much more truthfully encompass
the required effects into her performance,
alluding to the new and rich wisdom in her heart...
recollecting some amorous moment from memory.
Doña Maria.
The Marquesa de Montemayor.
Her daughter is a condesa, and connected to court.
Bravo!
She's drunk or demented or something.
How dare she mock me in such a manner?
- How dare she?! - Now, now, my crescent moon.
Last call. One minute to final curtain!
- Oamilla! - One minute call.
And where's the Viceroy?
Why, the royal box is distinguished only by his absence.
Manuel.
Perhaps we should leave now.
Is it over?
Ahh.
Love is an inadequate word to describe the tacit, almost ashamed oneness
of these brothers.
Side by side there existed a need of one another
so terrible that it produced miracles as naturally as lightning.
Separation was a devastation as eerie as the calm that follows a ferocious storm.
My most triumphant night. Oh, if only you had been there.
I heard all about it, your performance this evening,
and there's a little task I would like you to perform for me,
well within the requisite range of your charms.
Oh. His Excellency does not find me attentive enough.
Well!
Oh, what would he fancy? A little verse?
Perhaps a song.
Take off your shoes.
A dance!
Barefoot.
Like a gypsy woman.
Oh, well, your poor throat.
It must be choked with the weight of this necklace.
I do so love our little games.
And how can you breathe, corseted up quite so tightly?
Oh! Is that for me? Oh.
Oome on, open it. Put it on.
Why... what little game is this?
This is no game, my dear.
There is nothing funny about baiting a member of the aristocracy in public.
It is offensive... an offense, and it must be publicly punished.
You will call upon the Marquesa and apologize,
and you will make the trip barefoot
wearing this humble black smock.
But I am the Perichole.
I am the Viceroy of Peru!
One of the first men of the world.
As for the Marquesa, whom you so roundly humiliated
at La Oomedia this evening,
even if she is a half-wit, she is also a member of the aristocracy.
But...
As is her son-in-law,
who is an increasingly important personage at court in Spain.
Neither must be vexed. Nor I!
What reason have I for giving His Excellency...
And I hope, for your sake,
there is no truth to the rumor that you are deceiving me with a matador!
Or is it an actor?
You forgot your slippers!
Whichever!
This was the first time that his will and imagination
had been overwhelmed.
Which of you waited for La Perichole by the stage door tonight?
He had lost that privilege of simple nature...
Follow me.
...the dissociation of love and pleasure.
Pleasure was being complicated...
by love.
Oh, Manuel.
Is it you? Yes.
You must do another letter for me at once.
Write this.
I, La Perichole, am not accustomed to wait at a rendezvous.
Have you finished that?
Have you gone completely mad?
Don't ever think of dedicating another bull to me again!
You are only a cholo, and there are better matadors than you,
even in Lima.
I am half Oastilian,
and there are no better actresses in the world.
You shall not have the opportunity...
have you got that?...
to keep me waiting again, cholo.
And I shall laugh the last.
For even an actress doesn't grow old as fast as a bullfighter.
La Perichole desires an audience
with Doña Maria, la Marquesa de Montemayor.
Wait here, please.
Tell the lady that I have a letter from the Viceroy himself
presenting me to her.
Very well, ma'am.
The lady says...
I know what she says. Thank you.
Bid her wait outside, and I'll see what I can do.
Very well.
La Perichole's here to see you.
The actress from La Oomedia.
The lady from last night in the Moreto.
She's outside.
She's wearing the rags of public humiliation.
She says, La Perichole, that she has a letter of presentation
from the Viceroy himself.
Bring me a bowl of snow.
And a veil.
Your Grace is... is not offended by her humble servant?
Offended?
Offended at you?
My gifted child, you are a great artist.
My handkerchief, Pepita.
Oh, you... you are so kind, señora...
I mean, Your Grace... to overlook my childishness.
Permit me, please, to kiss your hand.
Who am I, an unwise and unloved old woman, to be offended at you?
I feel as though... as though you were my own daughter.
My daughter's very beautiful. Everyone thinks so.
Did you know my Doña Olara, señora?
I knew the Oondesa well by sight.
Why do you remain so on one knee, my child?
Thank you.
One day, we fell out.
I forget over what.
We both said hasty things and went off to our rooms,
then each turned back to be forgiven.
Finally, only a door separated us, and...
and there we were, pulling it opposite ways.
But at last...
she took my face...
like this...
in her two white hands...
so...
She had not a warm and impulsive nature, I know that, but...
she... oh, my child, she has such a store of intelligence
and graciousness and...
any misunderstandings between us were plainly my fault.
Is it not wonderful that she was so quick to forgive me?
Oh, truly wonderful.
The fault was mine.
And the... the look she gave.
Is it not some mistake
that made me the mother of so beautiful a girl?
I'm difficult. I'm trying.
You and she are great women.
- Oh, Your... Your Grace. - No. Don't stop me.
You are a rare lady, and I am a foolish and stupid old woman.
Let me kiss your feet.
I am imposs...
- I am impossible! - Your Grace.
I am impossible!
Such blind and excessive love,
though it gave birth to letters of great poetry,
remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest.
Such anecdotes belie the notion of a guided world
and encourage those who derive some joy from the conviction
that much is wrong with our world.
Precisely why I persisted with the project,
to explain why such stories hold no difficulties for faith.
And this was not the first time
that brother Juniper had resorted to experiment.
Often, on the long trips he had to make between his far-flung parishes,
he would fall to dreaming of ways to justify the existence of God.
For instance, a complete record of the prayers for rain and their results.
Splendid rituals, but not a cloud in the horizon reported.
For further tabulated proof of his convictions,
when a pestilence visited his dear village of Puerto
and carried off a large number of peasants,
he secretly drew up a diagram
of the characteristics of 15 survivors.
Here is a fragment of that ambitious chart.
So, brother Juniper, when you add up the total for victims
and compare it with the totals for survivors,
you discover that... that what,
that the dead are five times more or less won'th saving?
Yes.
But the pestilence seemed to have been directed
against all the really valuable people in the village of Puerto,
thus totally confounding your theory.
What do you extrapolate from this finding?
Only that the discrepancy between faith and the facts
is greater than is generally assumed...
though there are some who say we shall never know,
and that like flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods.
They kill us fortheir sport.
La Perichole wants Manuel.
There are some who say, on the contrary...
She needs a letter. Urgently!
...that the very sparrows do not lose a feather
that has not been brushed away by the fingerof God.
Where is he?
"Manuel respectfully informs the actress,
regretfully, that he can write no more letters for her."
How dare he?!
La la la la la la
Get rid of them!
Who?
Those dumb, half-wit orphan freaks,
with their insane sniveling!
How dare he deign to disrespect me in this way?!
It's disgusting!
Get them out of my house! Out of this theater!
And they're never to darken this door again! Out! Out!
Do you hear me?!
Oaptain.
You, you. You.
Oome with me.
Will these do?
We will be unloading until dawn.
Double quick, double time.
Oome on, come on!
Quickly! Quickly!
Get all that aboard!
Heave!
Oome on!
Oome on, come on!
Hey!
Every hour on the hour...
until the pain subsides.
Do your work well, and the miracle of science
will work wonders on his leg.
Don't forget the prescriptive order for each of the ointments in drafts.
In nomine Patris, et Filii...
Although always they had been silent...
Amen.
...all the world was remote and strange and hostile
without one's brother.
La Perichole had cast a shadow across his path, too.
The coincidences were so extraordinary that one would suspect an intention.
Perhaps it was just an accident.
Perhaps.
Perhaps it was the devil's own work.
Perhaps this too was the devil's own work,
where you, brother Juniper, were his willing accomplice
in mind, body, and spirit.
This is why we are here, is it not,
to protect the fundamental theological tenets of faith?
Without question, this book of yours
is undoubtedly the work of the devil!
Evil! A feeble Franciscan composition
exalting the incidence of coincidental facts over faith...
belief in an act of God...
subversive at best,
superstitious at the very least.
It invites an Inquisition at the highest level,
every copy... every copy... to be burned at dusk.
This task of memorization, it's too much!
Oamilla...
And I cannot depend on the prompter's box!
Oamilla, come to walk with me.
Are you not the most memorable actress in all Lima,
far above the attention-seeking tantrums of a mediocre talent?
I've had enough of this life.
And... what of the Moreto I brought back from Spain?
Here's the thing...
La Perichole is wretchedly unappy.
Actresses!
What now?
In the wake of all her humiliations,
her humor has left her.
We will need to produce a pair of parents...
perhaps a cousin or two, if they can be procured.
And pray, what possible business is this of mine,
or of yours, for that matter?
Have you not indiscretions enough for your fees?
Well, you see, she is about to bear the Viceroy a brat.
And he knows nothing of it.
This play is closed, by order of the Viceroy!
I can find nothing nowadays more nourishing to the soul
than the notion or anecdote
that the poor, never having known happiness,
are insensible to misfortune.
Look at their houses and their clothes.
Only the widely cultivated could be said to know that they are unappy.
There's a fashionable watering place in the hills.
It's not far from...
from Santa Maria de Oluxambuqua.
It's reached by the bridge of San Luis Rey.
I will give her...
La Perichole...
a little Vichy villa
in that vicinity,
and she can sip the hateful waters during herconfinement...
until her health returns.
Let me!
Oome, my dear.
"My dear."
We won't be raising the curtain tonight.
Inform the company.
We can't compete with the carnival...
and neither can I countenance that we play to yet another empty house.
Your indiscretion is really trying my patience.
Perhaps I could spend my hour in the nursery with Don Jaime.
You are mad, Uncle Pio,
if you think you can make me come back to the stage.
I look back on those days with horror...
the daily payment of insults in that filthy place.
You're wasting your time.
Dear Oamilla, just suffer me for a few moments.
I would be no good to you now, Uncle Pio.
You never even come to see the theater,
and they all notice it.
The audiences are falling away now, too.
They only put on the Old Masters twice a week.
We were foolish to try and keep alive the Old Masters.
Wonderful Oamilla...
I was notjust to you when you were on the stage.
It was some foolish pride in me.
You have always been a great artist.
If you come to see that you are not happy among these people,
you might think about going to Madrid.
You could have such a triumph there.
No. I shall never see Spain.
All the world is alike...
Madrid or Lima.
Oh, if we could only go to an island
where the people would know you for yourself.
And love you.
You are 50 years old, and you are still dreaming of such islands?
There is no such thing as that kind of island
or that kind of love, Uncle Pio.
It's only in the theater that you find such things.
I must go in.
Now he discovered that secret from which one neverquite recovers...
that even in the most perfect love,
one person loves less profoundly than the other.
There may never be two people
that love one anotherequally well.
Some sorrowful secret escaped me in the piecing together of their lives.
In compiling my book, I was pursued by the fear that,
in omitting the slightest detail,
I might lose some guiding hint.
So you put down every insignificant detail
on the notion perhaps that, to the reader,
these countless facts would suddenly start to move,
to assemble and betray their secret?
I did not intend to betray the secrets of the dead,
for those are surely forgiven...
even if their lives were forsaken.
The Apostles, if you recall, in the New Testament
rightly reserve such an accolade for Ohrist our Lord.
He alone was forsaken,
crucified on the Oross for the forgiveness of sins.
Doña Maria knew that she, too, sinned...
and that though her love for herdaughterwas vast enough
to include all the colors of love,
it was not without a shade of tyranny.
She had loved herdaughter,
not for herdaughter's sake,
but for herown.
She longed to free herself from this ignoble bond,
but the passion was too fierce to cope with.
How could she rule herdaughter
when herdaughter saw to it that 4,000 miles lay between them?
All she could ask of her God orof immortality
was some sign of herdaughter's devotion...
a kind word, an affectionate aside...
a letterfrom Spain.
I will bring it in to her.
Pepita?
Is that a package from Spain?
Let me see.
Here, quick. Read it to me.
"My dear mother...
"the weather here has been most exhausting,
"and the fact that the orchards and the gardens are in bloom
"only makes it the more trying.
I could endure flowers if only they had no perfume."
Pass on to the end. Is there nothing of more consequence?
"If Vicente returns before the post leaves,
"he will be delighted to finish out the leaf
"and supply you with those tiresome details about myself
"which you seem to enjoy so.
"I shall not go to Grignan in Provence as I expected this fall,
as my child will be born in early October."
What child?
How could she be so casual?
Santa Maria Rosa...
Take that knot out of your hair!
Go tell the maids they are all to take the knots out of their hair.
And get me some red chalk!
Mother of God.
Oh!
Quickly, take it off!
Every single one!
Will all be well,
sweet, sweet Mother Maria Santa Rosa of Cluxambuqua?
Will all be well?
And while I am making my pilgrimage,
you must be sure not one foot falls on any of the red-chalked steps.
At last, the supreme rite of Peruvian households.
Looking foreword to this happy event...
she set out on her pilgrimage
to the shrine of Santa Maria de Cluxambuqua
to pray for a safe delivery.
My friend.
God give me praise.
Let me help you.
At least eat a little.
If you won't let me help you,
will you tell me which you are?
Manuel...
God has taken him into His hands.
For the Oaptain Alvarado.
He is the diamond of sincerity.
I will deliver it directly.
Go with God, Don Pio.
Go with God.
Bring me to him.
We do what we can!
We push on, Esteban...
as best we can.
And it isn't for long...
as time keeps going by.
You'll be surprised at how quickly time passes.
Wait! Wait!
Whoa!
His Excellency, Don Andrés, needs to speak with you urgently.
What in the devil about?
The epidemic, you old fool!
What epidemic?
Hundreds have been struck down with a pox,
and the cup of the envious fairly overflow
with the rumor that the Perichole has it, too.
Every gift I ever gave to her,
returned without comment.
I must go to her at once.
Oh, I've tried.
Has anyone seen her?
She will see no one at all but her maid...
and will neither confirm nor deny the rumors that she has been marked.
His Excellency has made repeated attempts
to contact her, to no avail,
save a large sum of money...
Ha!
...and a letter compounded
by all that's possible in bitterness and pride.
And now this angry little dispatch.
And like many beautiful women
who have been brought up amid continual tributes to their beauty...
she assumed, without cynicism,
that it was the basis of others' attachment to her.
And what? That any future attentions
must spring from a pity so full of condescension
as to be sodden with the satisfaction
at such a complete reversal of fortune? Please.
You patronize His Excellency and the court.
Allow him his thesis.
I am curious as to how he can conclude the matter.
There are not sufficient words to explain
the events that might or might not have been the same
without the fall of the Bridge of San Luis Rey.
La Perichole had removed with herchild, Don Jaime,
to a farmhouse in a valley between there and Cluxambuqua.
And thitherthe Marquesa was carried,
high up into the Andean hills on her pilgrimage...
reciting all the glorious and sorrowful mysteries
of her rosary along the route...
Pepita, devoutly devoted to her prayerful purpose,
followed behind on foot.
"Dear...
"Abbess.
"Though I never see you, I think of you all the time...
"and I rememberwhat you told me about my future with the sisters.
"Sometimes I do not know if you have forgotten...
"for I would like to leave this world forever
"and take my place at the foot of the Cross of Christ
and follow His way."
"Mother in God...
"I want only to do what you want...
"but I am so alone here.
"I'm not talking to anyone,
"so if you could let me come back to the convent,
"just for a few days, maybe,
"and if you could find a minute to write me a little letteror something,
"I could keep it,
though I know how busy you are."
Read me what you've written.
Is it a letter?
I must go downstairs and get you some new charcoal.
It can wait.
I would so like to hear how you write.
"Dear Abbess,
"Though I never see you, I think of you all the time,
"and I remember what you told me about my future with the sisters.
"Sometimes I do not know if you have forgotten,
"for I would like to leave this world forever
"and take my place at the foot of the Cross of Christ
and follow His way."
My dear Pepita...
it's very beautiful.
Believe me, I know.
It isn't.
It isn't brave.
And at last she wrote what she called herfirst letter...
herfirst stumbling, misspelled letter
in courage.
It is the famous letter LVI,
known to the encyclopedists as her I Corinthians
because of its immortal paragraph about love.
"Of the thousands of persons we meet in a lifetime, my child,"
and so on.
This, the last of her letters,
is at the very least immortal,
though I know now that her daughter barely glanced at any of them.
In spite of their appeals for her attention,
every one was returned.
And that it is to Pepita...
that we owe their preservation.
Let me live now.
Dear God...
let me begin again.
Two days later, they started back to Lima...
and upon crossing the bridge of San Luis Rey...
the accident which we know befell them.
I'm looking for some strong fellows to go on my next trip with me.
Hard work, good wages.
A long way from Peru.
Well?
I said...
do you want to go on my next trip with me?
Ah.
That's settled, then.
You may not be used to the cold.
I have a mind to sail between the islands of ice.
Imagine the prow pushing through a sea of weeds...
stirring up a cloud of fish...
like grasshoppers in June.
You see, son,
I had a daughter.
And many times she waved me farewell...
and welcome.
There was no way of knowing if she was more intelligent
or more beautiful than the thousands of other girls about.
But she was mine.
And God took her from me...
just when I wasrt looking.
It sometimes seems to me now
that she is away on a long voyage,
and that I shall see her again somewhere.
So I wander about the hemispheres
to pass the time between now and old age.
He was the most awkward speaker in the world,
apart from the lore of the sea.
Though there are times when it requires a high courage to speak the banal.
And so they started out for the far-flung ports on the Atlantic coast
by way of the Inca trail,
having trekked the Andes forgoods to trade on theirtravels.
Oome.
That's it.
She will not allow you in here.
I shall stay out here most happily, then.
It is just her pride, that I might pity her.
Tell her I respect her discomfort at this time,
and that I love her all the more for her humility of spirit.
I might make myself useful with the child,
or take a hand with the management of the yard here.
Go away!
Get away from me! Get out of my house!
I never wanted to see you again!
I gave you orders! I told you he was forbidden to come in!
Get out! Leave me alone!
Oamilla!
Dear God, when shall I ever be free of you?
Just listen to me!
Just once, I beg of you.
What is it, then?
Oamilla...
let me take Don Jaime...
for a year, to live with me in Lima.
Let me be his teacher.
Here he is among servants. He will never learn anything.
No.
- Oamilla, what will become of him? - No.
I shall love him and cherish him and take every care with him.
Did I not teach you well?
Did I ever harm you?
You are too cruel to keep urging gratitude!
Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude! Yes, I was very grateful! Good!
But now that I'm no longer the same woman,
there remains nothing left to be grateful for.
If Jaime wishes to go with you, very well.
You will find him at the inn about noon.
Hup!
Stop!
Whoa!
Señor Pio.
When they reached the Bridge of San Luis Rey...
the Captain descended to the stream
in orderto supervise the passage of some merchandise.
But Esteban crossed by the bridge...
and filing behind Doña Maria...
la Marquesa de Montemayor...
and her little companion Pepita,
he passed in front of Uncle Pio.
I will let you down to rest when we have crossed the bridge.
But it turned out...
not to be necessary.
Aah!
In love, it seems,
their very mistakes did not seem able to last long.
That was its grace.
And in compiling your book about the people who fell
from the bridge of San Luis Rey, what did you divine?
In my final calculations, I concluded with a passage
that tried to describe why God had settled upon that person
and upon that day
for His demonstration of wisdom.
I have read your conclusions.
You seem unable to determine that there were any characteristics
common consistently to all of the victims.
I suppose the art of biography is more difficult
than is generally supposed.
And, interestingly, those who knew most...
Captain Alvarado, for instance...
ventured least.
Perhaps if I could have interviewed La Perichole.
She at least was in some way associated with all of the victims.
Mocked, she believed, from afar,
she wandered the hills in her memory,
searching forthe souls of her loved ones.
She was convinced that for a second time
the skies had commented.
First there was the smallpox,
and then the fall from the bridge.
These were not accidents.
It wasrt until she had endured significant servitude
that she came to understand some sense
of the loyalty of true and devoted love.
- For six years, while I worked... - Mother.
...and pieced together the lives of those who had died...
Mother.
...she shut herself out from the world
at the Convent of Santa Maria Rosa de las Rosas.
Do I know you, my daughter?
I was the actress La Perichole.
Oh, I've wanted to know you for a long while.
You too, I know, lost in the fall of the bridge.
I lost two who had been children in here at the orphanage,
but you, I know you lost a real child of your own.
Yes, Mother.
And a great friend.
Yes, Mother.
Oome into the garden. You can rest here.
All of us have failed.
Oome.
The Abbess of the Oonvent de Maria Rosa de las Rosas.
Sister Oamilla, La Perichole, will take the stand.
Is she La Perichole?
She is.
Were you the actress Oamilla Micaela Villegas,
known as La Perichole?
Kindly identify yourself. Remove your veil.
I said kindly remove your veil.
Abbess.
She has, Your Excellency, a God-given fear
of appearing in public.
An actress, a God-given fear of appearing in public?
Your Excellency, surely we cannot accept evidence from...
from an actress masquerading in the habit of holy orders?
Your Excellency, I can vouch absolutely for her...
Talent or reliability?
The more able the actress, the less won'thy the witness.
Your Excellency, can you confirm that this is...
forgive my calling on you, but do you recognize La Perichole?
No.
I cannot say that I recognize her.
What... sir?
I do not know this woman.
For all her passion...
La Perichole had no love in her eyes.
There are none so blind, Your Excellency...
who will not see.
Silence.
Silence!
Archbishop, pray continue in your summing up.
And be brief,
please, before we all of us suffocate in this hellish heat.
You, Your Excellency, and I
can see clearly now how this plan of brother Juniper's
was intended to sow the seeds of a flower of perfect skepticism.
It is entirely evident,
and as I have never been obligated to go so long without smoking...
As a plan, it resembles the efforts of those presumptuous souls
who wanted to walk on the pavements of Heaven
and who built the Tower of babel to get there.
For our Franciscan,
our Doubting Thomas,
faith was not enough.
He wanted tabulated proof
of the hand of God...
historical proof,
mathematical proof.
Doubt springs eternal...
even in countries where the Inquisition can read the very thoughts in our eyes.
Spare us your thesis on the merits of the Inquisition, if you would.
You are here to implement our statutes,
not to praise them.
I shall spare you brother Juniper's generalizations,
save to say that he thought he saw
in the same accident the wicked visited by destruction
and the good called early to Heaven.
He saw pride and wealth confounded as an object lesson to the world,
while at the same time poverty and humility
were crowned for the edification of the forlorn.
But brother Juniper wasrt satisfied with his reasons.
The book, being done, must be judged and pronounced heretical,
and with that, undone.
I submit, Your Excellency,
to the Inquisition that brother Juniper here
has been put to use to do the devil's work,
that this testament, this tome of his,
is heretical, and should be pronounced for the evil that it does
as the work of the devil.
Therefore, any copies still in existence
should be burned at dawn,
along with their author.
Your submission is accepted.
Prepare the stake for tomorrow morning at daybreak.
Is this God's design?
The pattern that escaped me in the lives of those five who died
eludes me.
Even now.
Will you do me a kindness, my daughter?
Mm-hmm.
Will you let me show you my work?
God forgive me, for I did not know
how to love.
I never knew any love, save love as passion.
Forgive me.
My husband, el Oonde D'Abuirre,
it is he who has sent and charged me to command to you
all that has been taken and confiscated
from the Franciscans in the name of the Inquisition.
He does not wish to remove this wealth back to Spain,
but would rather would prefer that you should have it
to enance your work here.
If you will excuse me,
I will go into this room of the very sick and dying
and say a few words for them to think on when they cannot sleep.
Even now, almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita but myself.
Sister Camilla, La Perichole, remembers her Uncle Pio and her son,
and this woman, her mother.
Soon we shall all die...
and all memory of those five will have left the earth.
And yourselves shall be loved for a while...
and then forgotten.
But that love will have been enough.
All those impulses of love return to the love that made them.
Even memory's not necessary for love.
There's a land of the living and a land of the dead...
and the bridge is love...
the only survivor.
The only meaning.