Of Love And Other Demons

No one knows why or how the Marquis' life ended up in this miserable state. He had inherited the power accumulated by his father, the first Marquis, through his business as a "pitiless slave trader " (34). In a flashback to his childhood, the Marquis is a slow learner, and illiterate until adolescence. At twenty, he falls in love with one of the female inmates at the Divina Pastora, Dulce Olivia, whose singing and yelling he's grown up hearing from his bedroom. Dulce Olivia is the only child in a family who make saddles for kings, and, therefore must learn the trade so that it doesn't "die out with her" (34). This "incursion into a man's trade" (34) is used to explain her madness and penchant for eating her own excrement. Despite her madness, she and the Marquis fall in love. She begins to write and send him notes on paper that she folds into tiny birds. The Marquis learns to read and write so that he can communicate with her. 

When the Marquis' father finds out about this, he orders his son to publicly deny his love for Dulce Olivia. The Marquis refuses, replying that he already has Dulce Olivia's permission to ask for her hand in marriage. His father tells him that the woman is crazy, but the Marquis argues otherwise. The Marquis' father banishes him to the family's country estates. 

In his exile, the Marquis lives in perpetual fear of the animals around him. He's only unafraid of chickens when he arrives, but soon comes to fear them, too, after imagining them "grown to the size of a cow" (35). At night, he wakes in cold sweats, and in the morning, he awakens breathless because of the "phantasmal silence of the pastures" (35). He also fears the hunting mastiff that stands guard over his room at night. In this state of fear, the Marquis develops the cautious, contemplative, and quiet disposition that characterizes him in the years to come. 

A year into his exile, a "noise like rivers in flood" (35) rouses the Marquis from his sleep. All the animals, except for the hunting mastiff, walk in a silent procession under the full moon, through the pastures and marshlands of the estate. They disappear from the Marquis' sight and never return to the estate. Terrified by this abandonment, the Marquis befriends the mastiff, and the dogs who succeed the mastiff, when he passes. The Marquis then goes to his father and renounces his love for Dulce Olivia. Obedient to his father's dying wishes, the Marquis marries "the heir of a Spanish grandee," (36) a beautiful, talented woman named Doña Olalla de Mendoza.

Doña Olalla tries to bring the Marquis into society, taking him to mass and other public events. She dresses in spectacular fashion, wearing Cordoban leather boots with pearl buttons rather than the "house slippers" (36) worn by even the most fashionable women. The Marquis dresses in comfortable cotton clothes, rather than the "anachronistic wigs and emerald buttons" (36) worn by other society men. Despite his forays into social situations, the Marquis never becomes accustomed to them. 

Doña Olalla has extensive musical training and brings many instruments with her from Spain, including a clavichord. She assembles a group of musicians who come to the Marquis' house to play music in the afternoons. The Marquis doesn't have any musical talent, but he becomes taken with the theorbo, a stringed instrument from Italy. Doña Olalla decides to teach him how to play it and the two of them spend their mornings in the orchard, engaged in lessons. Until this moment, the Marquis and his wife, a virgin, have never been intimate. Playing music together creates an emotional intimacy that encourages Doña Olalla to try to engage her husband physically. She comes to his room one night, insisting that, as the "mistress of half this bed" (37), she has come to lay claim to it. The Marquis refuses and stands his ground, as does Doña Olalla. They come to an impasse. 

Soon after this incident, the couple are playing music in the orchard under a clear, blue skywhen suddenly lightning strikes and hits Doña Olalla. The city sees this tragedy as divine retribution for "some unconfessable sin" (38). The Marquis holds a "queen's funeral" (38) for his wife. From this moment on, his complexion becomes pallid and he dresses only in black taffeta. When he returns home from the funeral, he sees a "storm of little paper birds" falling in the orange orchard (38). He snatches one, unfolds it, and reads the message from Dulce Olivia: "That lightning bolt was mine" (38).

Before the customary nine mourning days end, the Marquis donates to the Church that ministers the lands he's inherited from his father. These lands have reached legendary status and now have "imaginary boundaries, lost in memory" (38) to the city's residents. The Marquis retains only the family's mansion with its small slave courtyard, and a sugar plantation in Mahates. He gives "governance of the house" (38) over to Dominga de Adviento and keeps Neptuno on as a coachman, a role bestowed on the man by the first Marquis. 

Without his wife, the Marquis experiences solitude for the first time in his ancestral home. He can't sleep for "the congenital fear of American-born nobles" (38) that his slaves will rebel and kill him in his sleep. Paranoid, he watches for movement through his bedroom door's keyhole, and eventually "ejects the slaves"(39) who have made their way into the house. He keeps the lamps burning all night and brings in the hunting mastiffs. The Marquis closes the house's main entrance and sells anything of value in the house. He no longer attends any social functions, including Mass, and takes refuge in one of many hammocks he has placed around the house and property. When he sleeps in the orchard, the women at the Divina Pastora throw their refuse and shout "tender obscenities" (39) at him, but he doesn't mind, even refusing the government's offer to move the asylum to another location.

Dulce Olivia, meanwhile, begins covert missions onto the Marquis' property, spending time with the hunting mastiffs, which she tames with food. She enters the house at night, sweeping the floors with sweet basil and hanging garlic to ward off mosquitos. Dominga de Adviento never discovers how the floors came to be cleaner in the morning than when she left them at night. The Marquis, on the other hand, discovers Dulce Olivia's clandestine nocturnal actions within a year of Doña Olalla's death. They take up with each other "like an old married couple condemned to routine" (40). They talk all night, usually without strife, until one of them says too much or upsets the other. Only then would Dulce Olivia stay away from the house for a while. The Marquis tells Dulce Olivia that his "contempt for the goods of this world" (40) results from his loss of faith after seeing Doña Olalla struck down by lightning. Dulce Olivia tries to console him by offering her body and labor to him, but the Marquis denies her, saying he will never marry again. 

However, shortly after this, he marries Bernarda Cabrera in secret. The daughter of the Marquis' father's wealthy former overseer, Bernarda first meets the Marquis when she comes by his house with pickled herring and black olives for Doña Olalla, imported by her father. Bernarda continues to bring them to the Marquis after Doña Olalla's death. One afternoon, she finds the Marquis in his hammock in the orchard and reads his palm. Impressed by her accuracy, he begins to send for her at siesta time every day, regardless of whether he has food to buy. For two months, the Marquis doesn't make a move, so Bernarda does, taking the fifty-three-year-old man's virginity. 

They continue making love in this way, cheered on by the women in the asylum, who sing them songs and give them "stadium ovations" (41). Soon, Bernarda reveals that she is pregnant. She tells the Marquis that she's "not a black" (41), but a mestiza, the daughter of an Indian man and a white woman from Castille. As such, the only thing that can "mend her honor" (41) is to be married. The Marquis stalls for a while until the day when Bernarda's father appears at the house's main door bearing a gun. Without ever making eye contact, the Indian man asks the Marquis if he knows what this weapon is. The Marquis responds that he does and asks the man what he intends to do with it. The Indian replies that he uses it to protect himself from pirates, but, in this moment, has come to offer the Marquis the honor of "killing me before I kill you" (41). The Marquis understands Bernarda's father's intentions and invites him inside. 

Two days later, a local priest performs a marriage ceremony for the Marquis and Bernarda. Only her parents and their sponsors attend, though, at the end of the ceremony, Sagunta appears to crown the "bride and groom with wreaths of happiness" (42). Months later, "under the sign of Sagittarius" (42), Bernarda gives birth to their daughter, Sierva María de Todos Los Ángeles. Born premature, the girl looks like "a bleached tadpole" (42) and her umbilical cord, wrapped around her neck, nearly strangles her. The midwife tells Bernarda that the child is a girl but won't live. At this moment, Dominga de Adviento promises her saints that if they spare the girl's life, her "hair would not be cut until her wedding night" (42). Immediately, Sierva María draws breath and begins to cry. Dominga de Adviento sings out that the girl "will be a saint" (42), but the Marquis, upon seeing his daughter for the first time, declares that she "will be a whore" (42). 

Bernarda rejects Sierva María after nursing her for the first time, so Dominga de Adviento brings her up instead. She nurses the girl, baptizes her, and consecrates her to "Olokun, a Yoruban deity of indeterminate sex" (42) whose horrifying face is always hidden behind a mask. Dominga brings Sierva María to live in the slaves' courtyard, where Sierva learns to dance before she can talk. Sierva learns three African languages, adopts the slaves' practice of drinking rooster blood before breakfast, and learns to pass by Christians "unseen and unheard" (42). Dominga and a group of "black slave women, mestiza maids, and Indian errand girls" (42) tend to Sierva María with protective care, both physical and spiritual. 

With the Marquis convalescing in his orchard hammock, Bernarda resumes the business operations of her father-in-law, the first Marquis. While running things, the first Marquis had a license to sell "five thousand slaves in eight years," (43) and import two barrels of flour for each black slave. He sold the flour, but also smuggled an additional three thousand slaves, making him "the most successful individual trader of this century" (43). Bernarda realizes that selling imported flour is more lucrative than selling slaves, and so, she smuggles in more flour, creating "the largest smuggling operation of the century" (43). During Sierva María early childhood, Bernarda spends half of her time at the Mahates sugar plantation, from where she conducts her smuggling operations. 

When, as a young girl, Sierva María moves from the slave courtyard into the house, she occupies "a stable position in the house for the first time" (44). She's given lessons in math, science, and reading and writing "Peninsular Spanish" (44). Sierva refuses to read or write, saying that she can't understand letters. Her tutor instead shows her music. Though it intrigues Sierva, she hasn't the patience to learn to play it. The tutor resigns, telling the Marquis as she leaves that Sierva isn't unfit for everything, she's just "not of this world" (44). 

Bernarda wishes to reconcile her hatred for Sierva María but finds it impossible. Sierva's stealthy movements around the house frustrate Bernarda. She often turns around or wakes up to find Sierva standing behind her in silent observation. Frightened by her daughter's habits, Bernarda tries to remedy the situation by tying a cow bell to Sierva's wrist, but her movements don't even jostle it. This convinces Bernarda that the only thing white about Sierva "is her color" (45). 

One morning, Bernarda awakens in a cacao-induced thirst to find one of Sierva María's dolls in the bottom of her water jar. Bernarda convinces herself that this is not a child's game, but "an evil African spell" (45) cast by Sierva María. Because of this, Bernarda decides that the two of them can't live in the same house. The Marquis tries to stand up for his daughter, but Bernarda gives him an ultimatum: "It's her or me" (45). Sierva María moves back to the slaves' courtyard and remains illiterate. 

In her desperation to keep Judas Iscariote as a lover, Bernarda allows herself to slip up in her business and personal life. During one of their forays into the brothels and bars for merchants and slaves, Judas approaches Bernarda and tells her to close her eyes and open her mouth. He puts a "magic chocolate from Oaxaca" (46) onto her tongue. Bernarda initially spits it out, as she's hated the taste of chocolate since childhood. However, Judas convinces her that this "sacred substance" (46) will bring her joy, physical strength, and increase her libido. Bernarda is no stranger to drugs. She became addicted to fermented honey in her adolescence, and, with Judas and others in his hedonistic world, has used cannabis, coca, peyote, turpentine, and opium. With Judas' encouragement, Bernarda begins to use the cacao regularly. Judas, with Bernarda's financial support, becomes a thief and a pimp, and eventually loses his life when he starts a fight with some galley slaves over a card game.

After this, Bernarda retreats to the sugar plantation, where she keeps herself sedated with honey and cacao. The Marquis' house falls into disrepair, Bernarda loses the business that brought her so much wealth, and Dominga de Adviento continues to raise Sierva María. The Marquis knows nothing of his wife's fall into abjection via her addiction, though rumors circulate about her predilections. All she has left of her former wealth are two urns filled with gold doubloons, which she buries under her bed. When she finally returns to the Marquis' house, just before Sierva María's dog bite, the Marquis no longer recognizes her. 

Now March, three months after Sierva suffers the dog bite, it seems that she won't contract rabies. The Marquis, thankful for his daughter's health, decides to follow Abrenuncio's advice by reconciling his relationship with Sierva María and showering her with love. He tries to learn to comb and braid her long hair. He tries to teach her to "be a real white" (47) and discourages her taste for "pickled iguana and armadillo stew" (47). Never once did he ask himself whether anything he did was how to make Sierva happy. 

Abrenuncio continues to visit the Marquis' house, talking at length to the Marquis, who seldom pays attention or understands. Bernarda interrupts one of their visits with a "baleful lament" (47). It surprises Abrenuncio, but the Marquis ignores it. Bernarda lets loose another groan and Abrenuncio declares that whoever is making that noise needs help. The Marquis says that it's his second wife. Abrenuncio replies that she has a diseased liver, he can tell because "she groans with her mouth open" (48). The physician then goes into the house and charges into Bernarda's darkened bedroom without knocking. 

He opens the window shade and finds her on the floor, naked, "enveloped in the glow of her lethal gasses" (49), her skin "the pale gray color of full-blown dyspepsia" (48). Surmising the situation, Abrenuncio tells Bernarda that her only chance to live is to submit to an emergency blood-purifying treatment. Bernarda's eyes adjust to the room's sudden brightness and she recognizes the doctor. She pulls herself up to sitting and begins yelling curses at Abrenuncio. He closes the window shade and leaves the room. Returning to the Marquis' hammock, Abrenuncio tells him that Bernarda will die September 15th, if she doesn't take her own life by hanging first. The Marquis remains impassive, remarking that the "only problem" (48) is that September 15th is too far away.

Meanwhile, the Marquis keeps up Abrenuncio's "prescription of happiness for Sierva María" (48). He takes her to the top of San Lázaro Hill, showing her the swamps to the east and the sun setting over the ocean's horizon to the west. Sierva asks her father what lays on the other side of the ocean and he replies, "The world" (49). For the first time, Sierva begins to show interest in the things her father shows and tells her. 

One afternoon, from the top of San Lázaro, the Marquis and Sierva María see the Galleon Fleet pulling into the harbor. For the two months that the fleet stays in town, Sierva and the Marquis, with a complete change in his nature, revel in the entertainment and wares brought by the importers. Sierva María learns "more about white people's ways" (49) in these two months than ever before. At the house, the Marquis even brings out the Italian theorbo, then plays it, singing along tunelessly. The songs he plays prompts Sierva to ask whether it's "true that love conquered all" (49). The Marquis tells her that it's true, but she would "do well not to believe it" (49). 

The Marquis plans a trip to Seville, Spain to continue Sierva María's education. The trip, however, gets put on indefinite hold when Caridad del Cobre brings bad news to the Marquis during his siesta. She tells him that Sierva María is "turning into a dog" (49). The Marquis calls Abrenuncio to the house. He tells the Marquis and Caridad del Cobre that contrary to popular belief, rabies victims don't turn into the animal that bit them. The doctor diagnoses Sierva with a fever, which, though not a symptom of rabies, is "a disease in itself" (50). He tells the Marquis that all they can do is to wait. Frustrated, the Marquis asks if there's anything else the doctor can tell him. Abrenuncio replies that science hasn't given him "the means" (50) to tell them anything else. He advises the Marquis that he should put his trust in God. 

Putting his trust in anything "that might offer some hope" (50), rather than in God, the Marquis calls upon the city's three other doctors, eleven "barber-surgeons" (50), and "countless magical healers and masters of the arts of sorcery" (50), many of whom suffered persecution at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. The methods of these practitioners run the gamut: opening the closed bite wound and applying a "caustic poultice" (50), applying leeches to Sierva's back, bathing the wound in urine, and having Sierva drink her own urine. After two weeks of treatments, including "two herbal baths and two emollient enemas a day" (50), and being brought to "the brink of death" (50) by various concoctions, Sierva María's fever breaks. No one, however, will admit that the rabies has been avoided. 

The treatments take such a toll on Sierva's body that, though no longer ill, she feels as though she's dying. She suffers burns on her skin, a "fiery ulcer on her ankle" (50), vertigo, deliriums, and incontinence, which make her writhe on the floor, "howling in pain and fury" (51). This convinces "even the boldest healers" (51) that Sierva is "mad or possessed by demons" (51). Sagunta's reappearance, bearing "the key of Saint Hubert" (51), causes the Marquis to lose all hope for Sierva. Sagunta strips Sierva nude, then applies "Indian ointments" (51) to her skin and begins to rub herself on the girl's body. Sierva resists the treatment and Sagunta subdues her "by force" (51). Hearing the "demented screams" (51) from her bedroom, Bernarda runs to Sierva's room to find their source. She finds Sierva thrashing on the floor with Sagunta astride her body, wrapped in the girl's copper hair, and "bellowing the prayer of Saint Hubert" (51). Bernarda whips them with the knotted part of her hammock until they stop. 

Disturbed by news of Sierva María's "vicissitudes and ravings" (51), Don Toribio de Cáceres y Virtudes, the bishop of the city's diocese, summons the Marquis to his office, without specifying a day or time. The Marquis goes to see him right away. The two men have never before met, as the bishop took office after the Marquis withdrew from public life. The Bishop's poor health, due to obesity and asthma, has kept him absent from many events that required his presence. The Marquis, having only seen him for a distance, at which he looked like an overweight old man, realizes that, in person, the Bishop has a "magical aura" (52) and an "ageless beauty" (52). 

The Marquis arrives at the crumbling two-story palace in which the bishop lives. Though it's attached to the cathedral and has an "imposing façade of stone" (52), the building shows its decay. An Indian deacon greets the Marquis at the main door, and as they walk inside, the Marquis gives "meager alms" (52) to the beggars crowding the palace's entrance. The deacon guides the Marquis through a hallway so dark that the Marquis can't see in front of himself. Stopping in a small anteroom light by a high window, the deacon asks the Marquis to have a seat and wait for the bishop. The Marquis continues to stand, admiring a large oil painting of a young soldier in Spanish military dress. He reads the painting's bronze plaque and discovers that it's a portrait of the Bishop as a young man.

The deacon opens the door to the adjoining room and presents the Bishop. He's so physically large that the Marquis doesn't need to move closer to see him. The Bishop sits in a rocking chair, fanning himself, and wearing "peasant sandals and a tunic of coarse linen" (53). When he sees the Marquis, he gestures to him with the fan in a welcoming way, telling the Marquis to come towards him. The Marquis wipes the sweat from his palms and enters the Bishop's room. He realizes that's it's less of a room and more of a patio, covered with "yellow bellflowers and hanging ferns" (53). It overlooks the church towers, houses, dovecotes, and "military fortifications" (53). The Bishop offers his hand to the Marquis, who takes it and kisses the Bishop's ring.

Though his asthma makes his breathing "heavy and stony" (53), the Bishop speaks with eloquence. To the nervous Marquis' relief, the Bishop engages him in a lengthy exchange of pleasantries until the church bells chime five o'clock. The Bishop remarks that each "horrible" (54) hour resonates inside of him "like an earthquake" (54), something that the Marquis had expressed to the Bishop at four o'clock. This doesn't concern the Bishop, who says that "ideas do not belong to anyone" (54), rather they float around in the air "like the angels" (54). 

A nun enters the room with strong wine and chopped fruit, and a basin filled with steaming water that gives off "a medicinal odor" (54). The Bishop inhales the vapor, and his demeanor shifts from casual conversationalist to "the absolute master of his authority" (54). He tells the Marquis that he was summoned because they knew he was "in need of God" (54) and pretending not to notice. Gulping half a glass of wine, the Marquis replies that he's faced with the "greatest misfortune a human being can suffer" (54): he no longer believes in God. The Bishop replies, without surprise, that he already knows this. In fact, the Bishop continues, he himself had lost his faith as a young King's Cadet when surrounded by "the din of battle" (54). The important thing for the Marquis is not to worry about losing faith in God, but keep in mind that "God continues to believe" (55) in him. 

The Bishop tells the Marquis that rumors of Sierva María's condition, rolling on the floor "in obscene convulsions" (55) have spread. He asks the Marquis whether these symptoms aren't "the unequivocal symptoms of demonic possession" (55). This shocks the Marquis, but the Bishop replies calmly that demons often enter "an innocent body" (55) under the guise of an illness. Once this happens, "no human power" (55) can remove the demon. The Marquis explains how Sierva María's bite was treated, but the Bishop continues to find explanations that confirm his suspicions. He finally asks the Marquis if he knows who Abrenuncio is. The Marquis replies that he was the first doctor to see Sierva María. The Bishop says that he just wanted to hear that from the Marquis' own lips. 

The Bishop rings a small bell and a priest in his mid-thirties enters the room. The Bishop introduces him as Father Cayetano Delaura. Like the Bishop, Father Delaura wears peasant sandals and a simple cassock. He has pale skin, "spirited eyes" (56), and black hair with a white streak at his forehead. He breathes rapidly and moves his hands nervously, giving the impression of an unhappy man. The Bishop asks Father Delaura what they know about Abrenuncio. He replies without hesitation by stating Abrenuncio's full name: "Abrenuncio de Sa Pereira Cao" (56). Father Delaura then asks the Marquis whether he's ever noticed that Abrenuncio's last name means “dog” in Portuguese. He continues, explaining that no one knows if that's his real name. The records of the Holy Office show only that Abrenuncio is a Portuguese Jew, living in exile under the protection of "a grateful governor" (56) whom Abrenuncio cured of a "two-pound hernia" (56). Father Delaura enumerates Abrenuncio's offenses as a man "without God" (56), including his use of magic, prophecy, and "probable pederasty" (56). He mentions the tailor whom Abrenuncio resurrected, a transgression only forgiven by the tailor's testimony that he never lost consciousness, even in his shroud and coffin. Father Delaura concludes his litany by talking about the burial of Abrenuncio's horse on holy ground.

The Marquis tries to intercede, explaining that Abrenuncio loved his horse "as if it were a human being" (56). He says further that he thinks there's a good distance between that love and heresy. The Bishop returns their conversation to Sierva María before it gets out of hand. He tells the Marquis that rabies in humans is often the Devil's work. The Bishop explains that though Sierva María's body may be lost to the Devil, at least God has "provided us the means to save her soul" (57). The Marquis looks out at the stars emerging in the twilight sky and thinks about Sierva María at home, dragging her foot "through the botched cures of the healers" (57). In earnest, he asks the Bishop what he should do. The Bishop tells the Marquis step-by-step what he must do, ending with confining Sierva María to "the Convent of Santa Clara" (57). The Marquis should use the Bishop's name at each step. He urges the Marquis to put Sierva María in the Church's hands and let God do the rest. 

Returning home, the Marquis feels uncertain of what to do. He begins to pray the Angelus aloud for the first time since Doña Olalla passed away. From inside the house, he hears the strings of the theorbo. Following their sound, he finds Sierva María in her bedroom, seated at her dressing table, playing an exercise the Marquis had taught her. She's dressed in a white tunic, with her hair unbraided and reaching the floor. The Marquis wonders if "a miracle had occurred" (58) since he'd left her at noon, writhing on the floor in pain. When the girl sees her father, though, she stops playing and falls "back into her affliction" (58). 

The Marquis stays the whole night with Sierva María. He dresses her with "the clumsiness of a borrowed father" (58), putting her nightdress on backwards. Seeing her naked for the first time, he notes with sadness that her ribs are "so close to the skin" (58). Through the night she lets out a continuous, "almost inaudible moan" (58). Moved to pray for the first time since losing his faith, the Marquis goes to the oratory and tries to "recover the god who had forsaken him" (58). Praying does no good to restore his faith, he finds. Hearing Sierva María cough in the cool dawn air, he goes back to her room. On his way, he notices Bernarda's bedroom door ajar. He opens it and stands in the doorway, looking at his wife sleeping on the floor and snoring loudly. Without waking her, the Marquis says to himself, "Your life for hers" (58). He then corrects himself and says, "Both our shit lives for hers, damn it!" (58).

Returning to Sierva María's room, the Marquis finds his daughter still sleeping. He wonders whether he would rather see her dead or suffering from rabies. He then adjusts the mosquito netting to keep the bats from sucking her blood and covers her with a blanket. As the Marquis watches her sleep, he feels "the new joy" (59) of knowing he loves Sierva Maria more than anything in the world. At this moment, he decides what he will do.

Sierva María wakes at four in the morning and the Marquis tells her that it's time for them to leave. She gets out of bed without asking for further explanation. The Marquis finds in her dresser a pair of velvet slippers to keep her boots from chafing her inflamed ankle. Next, he finds a gown that had belonged to Bernarda when she was Sierva María's age. Though only worn twice, age has rendered the dress faded and stained. The Marquis pulls it on over Sierva Maria's Santería necklaces and baptism scapular. He completes the odd outfit with a ribboned hat pulled over her braided hair. Finally, the Marquis packs a small suitcase with a nightgown, a narrow-toothed comb, and his mother's mother-of-pearl plated breviary. 

It happens to be Palm Sunday, so the Marquis takes Sierva María to five-o'clock Mass before they begin their journey. Sierva takes the blessed palm frond "without knowing what it was for" (59). The sun rises as they leave in the Marquis' carriage. Sierva María still hasn't asked where they are going. After traveling for a while in silence, the Marquis asks Sierva if she knows "who God is" (60). She shakes her head no. On the ocean horizon, the Marquis sees a storm coming. Just then, they arrive at the Convent of Santa Clara. It is a three-story white building with many blue window blinds facing the "rubbish heap of a beach" (60). The Marquis tells Sierva that she'll be able to see the ocean "all day from the windows" (60). She doesn't respond. The Marquis then tells her that she's going to "spend a few days with the good Sisters of Santa Clara" (60).

Because of the religious holiday, many beggars, including some lepers, crowd the convent's entrance, arguing over kitchen scraps. The Marquis gives them each a single coin. The nun at the entrance, seeing the Marquis in his black taffeta and Sierva María dressed like Queen Juana la Loca, moves to greet them. The Marquis tells the nun that he's brought Sierva María to the convent "by order of the Bishop" (60). Accepting this explanation, the nun regards Sierva María and removes her hat, telling her that "hats are forbidden" (60) in the convent. The nun won't take Sierva's suitcase when the Marquis tries to hand it to her, telling him that the girl won't need anything. Taking off the hat undoes Sierva's carefully-arranged hair and the Marquis tries to fix it for her. Sierva brushes her father aside and does it herself "with a skill that surprised" (61) the nun, who says it needs to be cut. The Marquis tells her that Sierva's hair is "pledged to the Blessed Virgin until the day she marries" (61). Again, the nun accepts the Marquis' explanation. She then takes Sierva by the hand and leads her through the convent's gate without giving her a chance to say goodbye to the Marquis. As she walks, Sierva takes the velvet slipper off of her left ankle. The Marquis hopes that his daughter will turn and say goodbye to him, but she doesn't. His last memory of his daughter is watching her cross the convent garden, "dragging her painful foot" (61), to be committed for life to the convent.