Against the Inquisition

by Aguinis, Marcos

  “The internal enemy’s name is Marrano,” Gaitán said.

  85

  “A fine thing they’ve done to me!” Montesclaros reflected months later, on the galleon taking him back to Spain. While I was fending off Spilbergen, Felipe III was designating my successor. What an injustice! That’s how loyal functionaries are rewarded. I owe this to the Holy Office, which has been sabotaging me from day one.

  My successor is called Francisco de Borja y Aragón, Count of Mayalde. He comes from a family plagued by scandals and illicit unions, including with Moors and Jews. That family had the good fortune to produce a man like San Francisco Borja, whose saintliness disguised the stains. My successor sold his testicles to marry the daughter of the fourth prince of Squillace and take on that undeserved title. Now that good-for-nothing makes people call him “the Prince of Squillace.”

  My sense is that this so-called prince arranged this post so he could come have fun in Peru, and to fill his coffers, without considering the conflicts that reign over here. A shining ceremonial sword hangs from his belt, but his hand must tremble before touching any weapon. I knew that when Spilbergen and his ships were far away, he and his entourage of eighty-four servants were hidden in Guayaquil, awaiting more security. He didn’t want to enter Lima until the defenses I’d been preparing were ready.

  Those who accuse me of nepotism should watch this one, too. They say that he even imitates me: that he’s a poet. He boasts of mastering the art of humor. He’s one of those men who thinks that making a man laugh is the same as disarming him, and making a woman laugh is like getting her to the bedroom. Idiot.

  As soon as he disembarked in Callao, an imaginative and obsequious local author wanted to gain favor by praising his lineage. His name is Pedro Mejía de Ovando and the work is called La Ovandina. As the new viceroy showed no interest in offering any compensation, the poet in question exacted revenge by including, in his written lineage, the names of Moors and Jews. This denunciation upset the inquisitors Francisco Verdugo and Andrés Juan Gaitán, who immediately prohibited the text. It was the first stumble, and surely there will be more, and even better ones.

  The defenses I had worked on seemed adequate to him, but he disliked their cost. He wanted to please Madrid by sending more funds than the ample amount I’d been sending, keeping a fat portion for himself. But the maintenance of troops and squadrons demands many pesos, because the sails and hulls of ships deteriorate in the damp air and briny waters. The panic set off by the Dutch attack has translated into an emigration to towns further from the coast.

  Why bother thinking about this Prince of Squillace, who will soon be drowning in problems? The Holy Office will make his life impossible, as they did mine. I need to turn my mind to the trial of residence awaiting me in Madrid. They’re ungrateful shitheads—my favors were never enough for them. Luckily, trials of residence cause little more than the anxiety of the trial itself. The verdict and sentence are delayed, diluted, and forgotten. It’s enough to have good friends in the corrupt court.

  86

  The tavern near the university shook with laughter, liquor, and tangy stews. Lorenzo Valdés, Joaquín del Pilar, and Francisco had begun meeting up there. Lorenzo liked to pinch the serving women’s bottoms as they moved between tables with steaming bowls, asking his friends not to be effeminate, to do something risky. Then he pushed Francisco to a dark corner where they could talk alone. They were both holding mugs of liquor.

  “I’m warning you”—he stared at him in distress—“that bad times are coming for the Portuguese.”

  Francisco held his gaze. His pupils shone between the smoke and shadows.

  “I’m a Creole. I was born in Tucumán.”

  “Don’t play games, not now!” Lorenzo suddenly grew sad. “Something ugly is happening.”

  “I’m willing to hear you out.”

  “I think, Francisco”—he swallowed—“here, in Lima, doors will be closed to you. Your father—”

  “I know,” he broke in.

  “Soon you’ll graduate and have your degree. That’s what you wanted to achieve here. After that—”

  “What?”

  “You go where they won’t bother you! That’s what you should do.”

  “Does such a place exist?”

  “Lima is a whorehouse. No?”

  “You don’t like it anymore?”

  Lorenzo grasped his arm even harder. “When Spilbergen attacked, you felt uncomfortable holding a spear. Are you going to feel comfortable under suspicion and slander? Here, intrigue is people’s daily bread.”

  “I have no stains. And I am not involved in intrigues.”

  “You’re trying to convince me? I’m not your enemy.” His accusatory index finger pointed around the room. “On the other hand, many of those who are now drinking with us, tomorrow would celebrate your sentencing.”

  “Should I leave this city?” Rage rose inside him. “Should I flee tonight?”

  “I’m worried about everything being said about the Portuguese: that they called on Spilbergen to come here, that they’re traitors and betrayers, that they’re all Marranos.”

  Francisco drained his cup. “Where can I go? To Córdoba?”

  “Would you return to Córdoba?”

  “No.”

  “I agree with you.”

  “Panama? Mexico? Havana? Cartagena? Madrid?”

  “You don’t have to decide right this moment.”

  “Is there a favorable place? Do you know of any remote arcadias?”

  Lorenzo pressed his lips together and patted his friend’s back affectionately. “It must exist.”

  “In Pliny—”

  “Where?”

  “In the books written by Pliny. There are monsters with backward feet and teeth in their abdomens.”

  “They say they’ve been seen in the south,” Lorenzo said, laughing, “in the land of the Arauco Indians.”

  “Talk about imagination!”

  “Seriously. The Jesuit Luis de Valdivia has dazzled the new viceroy with tales of Chile.” Lorenzo raised his own mug of liquor. “You see? There you have an excellent place.”

  Francisco felt something important taking shape in his spirit. Might Chile be where he reached his zenith?

  BOOK FOUR

  NUMBERS

  CHILE, BRIEF ARCADIA

  87

  Papá taught me more medicine than those stuck-up university professors. We reread the classics and experimented with indigenous recipes, which often led to surprising results. He engaged me with the discoveries of an attentive clinical exam and demonstrated the importance of carefully documenting the developments of each person’s illness. I’ll never forget his analogy between the human body and a temple. He said that professionals should approach the human body with devotion. So many enigmas dwell in its compressed space that all the wise men in the universe are not enough to decipher them. That machine composed of bones, nerves, muscles, and humors is the visible seat of the spirit, with which it is mysteriously interwoven. The machine’s imbalances alter the spirit, and vice versa. Just as a temple is constructed from materials found in all buildings, the body is made of elements that also give life to animals or plants. But it contains something that doesn’t exist in animals or plants. To harm it is to profane it. The body is, and at the same time reflects, an unfathomable mystery. No two bodies are identical, just as there are no identical people. Though people’s similarities are infinite, so, too, are their differences. A good doctor sees similarities between one body and what he’s learned from another, but he should never forget that each human being has a quota of singularity that must be recognized and respected. Each individual is unique. To care for a person’s integrity is a hymn of gratitude. To torture or kill someone is blasphemy. It is to barge into a temple, knock down the altar, dirty the floor, break the walls, and let scoundrels ransack what’s left. It mocks God.

  Our discussions of medicine frequently ended on topics involving Judaism. He acquaint
ed me with the opinions of Philo of Alexandria and Maimonides regarding the dietary rules observed by Jews when not suffering persecution. He taught me the Hebrew alphabet on paper that he later burned. He also taught me about the feast days and their meanings.

  From Friday afternoon on, we’d prepare to welcome Saturday; it was a secret we shared in jubilant complicity. For us, it was a celebration. In the trunk, we kept clean clothes that we wrinkled as a form of disguise, in case an informer intruded on us, and a white tablecloth with an old stain. We prepared different dishes using quail, duck, or chicken, always well seasoned, with side dishes of fava beans, cooked onion, olives, and squash, and dried fruit or a sweet pudding for dessert. The hut was no different in appearance, but it bore an air of dignity. Saturday, my father always said, is a queen who visits the home of every Jew; she enters with her tulle, invisible gems, perfume of flowering valleys, and harp’s melodies. The candelabra exudes energy as its arms transform into tall torches. For six days, one is a scorned Jew who has to flee, hide, or disguise himself to survive. On Saturdays, one rises to the heights of a prince. A man can rest as God rested, and celebrate as God celebrated.

  If a familiar of the Inquisition had broken down the door, his eyes would have seen nothing different: father and son ate at a table with the same dinnerware as always, a few books open around them, as was also their custom. These everyday appearances glossed over the reality that father and son were enjoying a feast because they had spoken the blessing in a low voice—so that the ears in the walls might not hear—and they ate with the elegance of a banquet, hearts happy, conversing about the sacred texts the Lord had placed at the feet of Sinai.

  Saturday night was glorious. Intimate, secret, calm, and brilliant. Before we got up, Papá would suggest that I not ignore my circumstances. We were Marranos, that is to say, flesh for tormentors. The following day we’d have to don our disguises again. I therefore had the obligation to take care of myself, so that the temple of my body might not be profaned.

  On those nights of tranquil joy, we studied the strange privilege—and obligations—involved in directly receiving the infallible word. We reflected on envy, and specifically on the enormous fear produced by the possession of that word. It was like holding dominion over lightning. That word had been taught to Jews in a systematic matter since the ancient times of Ezra the Scribe. Each week, an excerpt was read so that in the turn of the year, the whole text would be perused. But the rabbi was not the only one who read it: the faithful themselves rose in the synagogue and took out the sacred rolls, opened them, studied the tidy Hebrew characters, and enunciated the resonant words.

  “That’s why I created the academy in the orange grove. Study is our obsession.”

  We had fun together, doing acrobatics with the texts; one of us said a few lines from memory, and the other found them in the appropriate book. My father liked to recite the psalms. I preferred the prophets, because those pages catalogue the virtues and miseries of humanity.

  “Francisco, do not repeat my horrible path,” he often insisted.

  In the final weeks of his life he stayed in bed. His feet hurt, and his lung condition worsened; he had never completely recovered from the water torture. His life was slowly coming to an end.

  One afternoon, his trembling hand stroked the brocaded case and he said, “This key symbolizes the hope of return—perhaps it also symbolizes something even stronger: hope. Simply that.”

  He kissed the case and gave it to me. Then his index finger ran over the shelves, indistinct in the dim light. With his savings he had kept on endlessly buying books. He had formed another respectable library, with a scope not inferior to the one confiscated in Córdoba. He had recovered several of his most beloved authors. There were Hippocrates, Galen, Horace, Pliny, Vesalius, Cicero. He had also included Treasury of True Surgery, General Antidotes, Treatise of the Drugs and Medicine of the East Indies, Ten Privileges for Pregnant Women, and a medical dictionary. Along with these stood treatises on laws, the qualities of stones, history, and Christian theology. One long stretch was occupied by works of literature, among them Lope de Vega’s comedies.

  “They’re yours,” he said.

  Finally, he pointed at the Scrutinium Scripturarum by Pablo de Santamaría.

  “I bought that for you, so you may have the pleasure of refuting it. But do it mentally—don’t write it down. That could get you burned alive.”

  His breathing worsened. I adjusted his pillows and added mine to his bed. This did not bring relief. His skin became discolored; his lips and tongue were dry. I offered him a spoonful of water. Even the whites of his eyes darkened.

  He was dying. He pressed my hand, clearly tormented by suffocation. He wanted to tell me something. I brought my ear to his indigo lips. He mentioned Diego, Felipa, Isabel. And I promised to search for them; my sisters were still in the convent in Córdoba and were surely all right.

  I went to refresh the herbs boiling in the pot. In truth, I did so to dry my tears, so he would not see my devastation.

  With the little breath he had left, he managed to smile. It was a strange, profound smile. He inhaled for every word, solemnly uttering, “You remember?—Shema Israel . . . Adonai . . . Eloheinu . . . Adonai Echad.”

  He gave up, the effort too great. He closed his eyes. I dampened his lips and tongue. I fanned him. His pain agonized me.

  He felt around the edge of his bed until he found my hand, and stroked it.

  “Take care of yourself—my son.”

  Those were his last words. His head was blue, his eyelids swollen. His accelerated breathing ceased. His gaze was immobile, seeming startled by an object hanging by the door. The shameful sanbenito.

  I closed his eyes and removed a few pillows. His skin began to thin and he seemed to sleep. I let out sobs. In absolute privacy, without restraint of any kind, I could shake, gasp, let out moans, and bathe in a river of tears. Later, relieved by the release, I whispered, “Now you can relax, Papá. Spies and tormentors won’t persecute you anymore. God knows you were good. God knows that Diego Núñez da Silva has been one of the righteous of Israel.”

  I washed my face and paced the room. Papá had died as a Jew, but he’d had to pretend otherwise. His wake and burial would have to follow the norms of his disguise. It would be very suspicious that he had not confessed before dying, or received the oil of last rites. He had died, but the farce to which he was condemned had not.

  I left his head uncovered, arranged his blankets as if he were asleep, and went in search of a priest. My pain, on the other hand, required no impossible containment; the tears that fall for a dead father are no different than the ones that fall for a dying one. The priest was impressed by my face. I said that my father was suffering intense cardiac pain and implored him to hurry. I made him run through the black streets. The priest, in his agitation, shouted words of comfort.

  When he faced the corpse, he looked at me, bewildered, and I cried again, this time with no reservation at all. The ceremonies that followed went well, under the attentive gaze of witnesses: a couple of barbers, the inflexible pharmacist from the hospital, the frustrated priest, and two gravediggers.

  The assistant to Sergeant Jerónimo Espinosa receives an order in Concepción when charged with the prisoner: he should enter Santiago de Chile under the cover of night so that the presence of the captive—a famous man in that city—does not generate turmoil.

  And so he waits for the shadows to gather. In an hour, he’ll be free of this complicated mission.

  Francisco Maldonado da Silva rides at his side. He is an unusual prisoner. His incredible elegance unsettles those around him.

  88

  My father appeared in my dreams, wearing his denigrating sanbenito. He walked jerkily and dragged his burned feet. Fragments of Ibatín and Córdoba floated by, and his brutal arrest occurred again, along with Brother Bartolomé’s condoned looting of our home, escorted by the sheep-like cat, and the whipping of heroic Luis.

  The
only person in whom I could confide, in those days, was Joaquín del Pilar. He listened patiently. A few weeks later, he proposed to relieve my pain with a visit to people whose suffering exceeded mine.

  “The pain of others will calm your own. Also, a good doctor should see, up close, the most punished people of the world.”

  Then he told me that his family had also had the help of a black couple. Joaquín loved them dearly because they had played with him, and cared for him when his father died suddenly. One day, the woman cut her finger deeply while cooking, but felt no pain. That privilege was her doom—she was diagnosed with leprosy. The medical council sent a team to investigate and discovered that her husband had already contracted the disease, though he had been keeping it secret. Both were immediately exiled. They were not considered bearers of a pestilence, but rather as living pestilence. They were pushed at spear point toward the neighborhood of outcasts. Lepers had to stay isolated in one section of Lima, the most miserable part, until they died. Even their corpses would never leave.

  Joaquín suggested I help him with amputations and treatments.

  “Hippocrates lives in that neighborhood,” he assured me. “Not in boring readings.”

  My grief was so intense that I didn’t have the energy to either accept or reject the offer. I let myself be pulled along.

  We crossed the stone bridge with its proud turrets. Instead of heading in the direction of the fragrant Alameda, we turned toward the lepers’ enclosure in the neighborhood of San Lázaro. From afar, I could smell the anguished odor. As we entered, I saw that all the lepers were black. They were suffering from the oldest of illnesses; they were morbid proof of divine rage.