A nun being a self-confessed murderer is something that seems worthy of a Hollywood script. If you add to this that he is a soldier and a gambling addict, more than one would put his hand in the fire that it is the protagonist of the next film by Quentin Tarantino or the new book that Stephen King is preparing. But Catalina Erauso (1592-1650), the Nun Alférez, existed and was one of the most legendary and controversial subjects of the Spanish Golden Age. His myth has remained intact throughout all these years, thanks in part to a novelistic autobiography that, although it raises doubts about its authenticity, has allowed his crazy adventures to live on and inspire novels, for 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 account to create her own fiction in Las niñas del naranjel. What would happen if overnight this particular Basque novice, willing to do anything as long as she can escape from justice, is forced to live in the jungle with two girls?
"I didn't always know that I would talk about her. Or it would be better to talk about him, since he lived life like a man. 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, which is the same thing, to become a man for legal purposes", points out the Argentinian author during her visit to Barcelona. Concessions that were granted to her, as the novice herself wrote in her memoirs, for her "miraculously" intact hymen. "Serial killer, but a virgin".
Interest in Erauso arose when he remembered "the watercolor that an old love had hanging in his house. It showed a person in armor killing someone and underneath it could be read "La Monja Alférez". Here I started asking myself questions. A manly-looking novice in armor and a dagger? I searched for information and was fascinated. I had to write something about this subject and it was clear that I would place it in the jungle. I finished my previous novel there and I had to start the new one there."
He didn't see himself able to write a line that sounded believable about something he hadn't experienced first hand, so he accompanied the nature photographer Emilio White in his task of portraying the fauna and flora. "He called me at half past six 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 ground. We couldn't bring perfume or bug repellant. We were motionless for five hours, without a phone signal and trying to breathe in an interrupted manner to pass unnoticed. That day I came to understand the difference between a mosquito or a fly or a bee walking on your skin. It seems like a trifle, but it's these small details that help make a novel". The experience led her to wonder what would happen if someone like Erauso stayed still in one place. That she stayed there with two girls "is part of the fiction and my discovery of care networks".
The new project took him six years. They are not so many if you consider that she faced a pandemic and the pressure that came with writing something new after becoming one of the finalists for the Booker for Las aventuras de la China Iron, the queer version of Martín iron "Too much was expected of me and I had respect for the blank page, but, luckily, it happened to me soon."
