Chapter 11 The Heresy of Purity

MERCEDES

My knees protest with a dull, sharp ache that shoots up my thighs. I spend two hours on the marble tiles of my living room, the hem of my gray skirt pulled up so my bare skin hits the cold stone directly. Physical pain is the only anchor I have left—the only punishment my body truly understands.

I hold the wooden rosary between my numb fingers. I should be on the third part of the Sorrowful Mysteries, but the wooden beads slip through my hands, heavy as lead weights.

"Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death..."

I close my eyes, and instead of the Virgin Mary, the darkness of my mind fills with a white, blinding light that does not belong to the Madrid sky.

It is a fantasy that begins to germinate in my chest like a sweet, poisonous ivy.

I imagine us far away. Far away from San Griselmo, from the gray cassocks of the confessors, and from Clara Leguina's judgment.

I imagine us in a white-washed house facing the Caribbean Sea, in one of those Antillean missions I used to read about in brochures when I was a teenager.

There, the sun is not an enemy; it is a constant caress that forces you to shed your layers of wool and tailored suits.

In my delusion, Claudia and I live together. We share a library open to the sea breeze, we eat fresh fruit, and we walk along the damp sand at twilight. But we do not touch.

In my mind, we voluntarily submit to a pact of absolute chastity.

A mystical union. We look into each other's eyes through the pages of Saint Augustine, uniting our souls in infinite theological debates, but our bodies remain intact temples.

A spiritual marriage. The ultimate purity achieved through conscious deprivation.

If there is no contact of the flesh, God cannot damn us.

We would maintain our sanctity, and at the same time, I wouldn't have to spend a single day of my life without her presence.

I open my eyes suddenly, terrified by the boldness of my own madness.

It is a heresy. An absurd trap I am trying to negotiate with the Creator to avoid keeping my promise to the confessor. I stand up awkwardly, swaying from the numbness in my legs. I lean against the dining table, breathing deeply.

I have to tell her. I have to lay out the new terms of our existence. I am not going to push her away; I am going to save her from the mire by elevating our minds.

CLAUDIA

Dr. Almeda’s message arrives at eight in the morning—brief and formal as always, but with a postscript that makes me bolt upright in bed: Miss de la Vega, come to my office at three in the afternoon to establish the new schedule for tutorials. Your presence is indispensable.

I spend the entire morning in the library, completely unable to focus on a single line of my theoretical framework.

The memory of the student restroom, of Mercedes's trembling fingers intertwined with mine over the damp sink, burns me like a branding iron.

And then her flight. The way she let go of me as if I were poison.

When I give the customary two knocks on her door at three sharp, my heart hammers against my ribs with savage force.

"Come in," I hear from the other side.

I enter slowly. Mercedes is sitting behind her mahogany desk.

She wears a dark blue tailored suit, buttoned to the very last button, and the gold cross stands out against her chest with an almost aggressive shine.

However, she doesn't have the icy glare from our days in Salamanca.

Her gray eyes are hollow, ringed with subtle dark circles that betray that she hasn't slept either, and a strange, almost feverish light burns in her pupils.

I close the door behind me. This time I don't lock it, fearful of her reaction. I stop two meters from her desk, my leather folder clutched tightly against my chest.

"Good afternoon, Doctor," I murmur, searching for any sign on her face.

Mercedes observes me in silence for a few seconds that feel eternal. She swallows, and I watch the subtle movement of her throat.

"Sit down, Claudia," she says. Her voice is a perfectly modulated whisper, but entirely stripped of its usual academic authority. "We need to talk about our future."

I sit in the leather chair, intrigued by her use of that word: our.

"I am not going to expel you from the department," she announces suddenly, resting her knuckles on the desk. Her hands, bare of rings, tremble ever so slightly. "Nor am I going to change your thesis committee, or cancel our tutorials. I have... reconsidered the situation."

I feel an immense relief expand through my chest, but her gravity prevents me from smiling.

"Really?" I ask. "I thought... after what happened yesterday... you would want to get away from me. That you hated me."

"I don't hate you, Claudia," she confesses, and for a split second, her gray eyes drop to my lips before snapping back to mine with a desperate intensity.

"But what happened in my office, and later in the restroom.

.. it was a weakness of the flesh. A disorder we cannot allow to happen again.

If we fall into the physical mire, we will destroy our lives and damn our souls.

But I have found a solution. A middle path. "

I lean forward slightly, fascinated and bewildered by the direction the conversation is taking. Her cool orange blossom perfume seems to fill the space between us.

"A middle path?" I inquire in a whisper.

"Yes." Mercedes leans forward too, reducing the distance across the mahogany desk.

Her eyes shine with a mystical intensity that gives me chills.

"The spirit is stronger than the body, Claudia.

What binds us... what we feel when we are together, is not a mere whim of the flesh.

It is an intellectual communion, an affinity of souls that classical philosophy already contemplated.

We can live this truth. We can be everything to one another.

.. but under a pact of absolute purity."

I blink, processing her words. What is she proposing to me?

"I don't understand, Mercedes..."

"I am talking about a spiritual surrender, Claudia," she says, her voice carrying the urgency of someone trying to convince herself of a miracle.

"We will work together. We will spend hours in this office, we will debate, we will share our minds.

And in the future... when you finish your thesis, we can find a destination together, far from here.

A shared life of silence, study, and devotion.

Like the ancient unions of the saints. Without touching.

Without allowing the baseness of physical desire to soil what we have.

A voluntary asceticism to maintain the sanctity of our bond.

Do you understand? We can be together... if we renounce the body."

I am left completely speechless, my mouth slightly agape.

I look at her marble face, her burgundy lips pressed into a line of absolute determination, the gold cross gleaming between us.

It is the most beautiful, unhinged, and desperate proposal I have ever heard in my life.

Mercedes is willing to exile herself with me, to renounce her entire world, on the sole condition of not touching me to keep her pact with God safe.

Her love for me—because now I know, with absolute certainty, that this is love—is so immense that she would rather invent her own religion than lose me.

Tears blur my eyes at the tragic beauty of her madness. I raise my hand over the mahogany desk, stopping just inches from hers, respecting her invisible line for the very first time.

"And do you really believe you can stand it, Doctor?" I ask in a thread of a voice, looking at her with a consuming tenderness. "Do you think you can be by my side, look me in the eye every single day... and never touch me?"

Mercedes locks her gaze onto my hovering hand. I watch her catch her breath, her chest heaving beneath her blouse, and a single tear of pure desperation slips down her cheek, shattering the perfection of her mask.

"I have to, Claudia," she whispers, her face twisting into a grimace of sacred pain. "Because if I touch you... I know there will not be enough heaven to forgive what I am capable of doing to you."