That a nun is a confessed murderer is something that seems worthy of a Hollywood script. If you add to this that she is a soldier and a gambler, more than one would put their hand in the fact that she is the protagonist of the next Quentin Tarantino film or the new book that Stephen King is preparing. But Catalina de Erauso, the Ensign Nun, existed and was one of the most legendary and controversial subjects of the Spanish Golden Age. Her myth has remained intact throughout all these years, in part thanks to a fictional autobiography that, despite raising doubts about her authenticity, has allowed her crazy adventures to endure and inspire novels, movies and even comics.
The writer Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (San Isidro, Argentina, 1968) joins this fever for the character but moves away from the biographical story to create her own fiction in The Girls of the Naranjel (Random House). What would happen if, overnight, this particular Basque novice, willing to do anything to escape justice, was forced to live in the jungle with two minors?
“I didn't always know I was going to talk about her. Or it would be better to talk about him, since he lived his life as a male. The Pope himself came to recognize him as such. Also the King of Spain, who granted him the right to wear a military uniform and collect a pension. Or, what is the same, becoming a man for legal purposes,” says the Argentine author during her visit to Barcelona. Some concessions were granted to her, as the novice herself left written in her memoirs, because her hymen was “miraculously” intact. “Serial killer, but virgin.”
Cabezón Cámara's interest in Erauso arose when he remembered “the watercolor that an old love had hanging in his house. In it, a person in armor appeared killing someone and below it you could read 'La Monja Alférez'. That's when I started asking myself questions. A manly-looking novice wearing armor and a dagger? I started looking for information and was fascinated. I knew early on that I had to write something about this subject and I was clear that I was going to place him in the jungle. There I finished my previous novel and had to start the new one.”
He did not feel capable of writing a line that sounded plausible about something that he had not experienced in the flesh, so he accompanied the nature photographer Emilio White in his work of portraying the fauna and flora. “He summoned me at half past five in the morning because the animals' activity is at very specific times. We covered our bodies with foliage and sat on a very small piece of land. We couldn't bring perfumes or lotion to repel insects. We were motionless for five hours, without a telephone signal and trying to breathe slowly to go unnoticed. That day I came to understand the difference between a mosquito or a fly or a bee walking on your skin. It seems trivial, but it is those small details that help make a novel.”
The experience led him to wonder what would happen if someone as adventurous as Erauso, who escaped from the convent to see the world, stayed still in one place. The fact that he did it accompanied by two indigenous girls “is part of the fiction and my discovery of the networks of care. It's not that I hadn't belonged to one before, but it's not something I would have paid attention to. I feel like my life was dark until some kids and a little dog ended up crossing my path, and everything started to get better.”
It took him six years to put an end to his new project. There are not so many if you take into account that she had to deal with a pandemic and the pressure that came with writing again after becoming one of the finalists for the Booker Prize for The Adventures of China Iron, the queer version of Martín Fierro. “Too much was expected of me and I respected the blank page, but, luckily, it passed quickly and I think I have left that fear behind.”
