The priest’s thumb dipped into the oil and traced a cross on the bishop’s forehead.
A sepulchral silence followed. I approached the patient. His eyes were closed. His breathing was rapid. I sat back down at his side.
“How is he faring, Doctor?” his assistant asked in my ear.
I turned, whispering into the assistant’s ear, “Badly.”
The man covered his face with his hands and left to pass on the prognosis. After a few moments I heard the lashes of flagellation.
The bishop stirred from his drowsy state.
“Ah, you . . .”
“Yes.”
“Heaven is sending me new cramps—ay!” He contracted violently. “Ay!”
“Drink a little more milk.”
“No—” His body relaxed, though he was paler than before, and more agitated. “Milk is for children. It does nothing for me. In any case, I want to purify myself.”
“You’ve already done plenty,” I said, trying to console him, and rising to call for his assistant.
“Don’t go!” He held on to my clothes. “Please.”
I sat back down.
“You, you doctors, you only think about the body.” The reproach reinvigorated him for an instant. A curious temperament, his; he’d cling to me like an orphan, then immediately attack me like a gladiator.
“We don’t only think about the body,” I replied.
“And Jews—”
Again with the Jews! I bit my lips. What an obsession! I burst out from deep inside myself: “Why do Jews matter to you so much?”
His chalky face filled with surprise. “My son—that’s like asking why sin matters.”
“You associate them with sin,” I heard myself say.
He nodded, stroking his stomach.
“Some Jews can be virtuous,” I added insolently, unable to restrain myself.
He drew back suddenly. Another cramp accompanied his shock.
“What are you saying? Ay! Virtuous?” He raised his head, his blind and sinister pupils searching for me. “The murderers of Christ, virtuous?” His head fell in fatigue.
“Calm down, Your Eminence.” I stroked his arm. “Some Jews are bad, but others are good people.”
“Poisoning our faith?”
The sweat from my forehead had reached my lips. I glanced around me, happy to see that there was no one else in the bedroom.
“You are the ones who poison the faith!” I said, driven to madness. “Jews only want for you to leave us in peace.”
The bishop made a face and immediately released it, as if he were about to vanish. His white lips strained to speak. “Circumcised man! You cursed circumcised man!”
“I am not that,” I said, adding in a low voice, “yet—”
“Get back, Satan!” he whispered, shaking his head in desperation. “Get back—”
I dried my face. I had just committed suicide. I had denounced myself before the bishop of Santiago. Had I lost all reason?
I took his pulse again: more tenuous still. From through the walls and windows I could hear the prayers of those who had gathered to pay their respects. I stood up, just as several clergymen burst in. Now dozens of religious men would be witnesses to my self-betrayal. The bishop could sentence me to death in a matter of seconds.
“How is he doing?” his assistant asked.
I looked at the bishop one more time. He probably would not return to consciousness. My life now depended on his death.
They push him into the galleon’s hold. The briny dampness of the wood recalls the trip he took so many years before, from Callao to Chile. In those days, he was fleeing the hunt for Portuguese people and their descendants, his baggage consisted of two trunks full of books and a diploma, and his heart beat with the prospect of freedom. Now he is returning with shackled wrists and ankles, his baggage contains his confiscated assets, and, in his breast, there beats the prospect of a war.
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I took a long walk toward the east, admiring the wondrous mountain range. It was Shabbat, I was wearing clean clothes, and I was alternating moments of reflection with stirring recitation of the psalms. “The bishop had been buried with great pomp but,” I wondered, “had he said anything before dying? Might his old role of inquisitor been potent enough to shake him out of paralysis and make him mutter the terrible denunciation?”
My spirit lacked the peace of prior years. I suffered a conflict that didn’t come from outside myself, but from within. I now had more clarity on many subjects that made my outlook more definitive. Before, I floated among the clouds; now I walked under the sun. I had to recognize that I was a soldier who didn’t want to fight, and as such, I didn’t wear my armor well, and I didn’t have a firm grip on my sword. But was it true that I didn’t want to fight? Or had I not yet found the mission that would give meaning to my whole existence? Just as a good Catholic is energized by confirmation, because he fully embraces his identity, a Jew should be energized by the full ownership of who he is. My condition as a Marrano was devastating. How could I bear to continue denying my own self? For how long would Marranos keep being Marranos? My doubts were proof of my fragility, and my fragility, in turn, was a punishment I deserved for not daring to battle on behalf of my convictions. I couldn’t stay like this forever—it was dissolving my spirit’s peace.
I sat down on a few stones. An idea returned to my mind that often frightened me with its risk and near absurdity. Around me, the countryside spread out, scattered with clusters of cypress trees. In the distance, the branches of olive trees rippled in the breeze. The fragrant atmosphere brought to mind the exalting joys of creation celebrated in the virile poetry of the psalms. If I bled a great deal, I said to myself, I could resort to ligation. Abraham was circumcised when he was a grown man. It had been practiced for so many generations, and there were never any problems. Did I dare carry it out myself, on my own body? I thought through the technical steps as if I had to perform them on someone else. I calculated the time I’d need to section the foreskin, cut the frenulum, and free the glans of membranous remains.
Then I asked myself, again, whether my judgment was perhaps impaired. Marranos avoid circumcision for obvious reasons. Still, it had become known that in secret prisons, some Jews had been revealed because they had been circumcised. The bishop had synthesized his horror and scorn with the phrase “circumcised man,” perhaps because he had discovered a few in Cartagena. I, however, did not feel diminished by this insult because it sounded like the opposite: a recognition of an ancient pact with God. Perhaps I even felt remiss because I wasn’t circumcised, making me only somewhat Jewish. Perhaps he had made me see, as no one else had, my essential lack.
If I circumcise myself, I thought, I mark my body indelibly. Any future hesitations would have a reference point that couldn’t be ignored. There would be no doubt as to my deepest, inalienable identity. I’d have the same body that Abraham had, and which was then borne by Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Saul, David, and Jesus. I’d be irreversibly joining the great family of my glorious ancestors. I’d be one of them, not someone who only says he is.
The trip from the southern port of Valparaíso to Callao is shorter than the same trajectory in the opposite direction, because the ocean currents from the icy southern seas push ships northward as if their sails were perpetually full of wind.
Francisco overheard that they would arrive in thirty days. They don’t undo his shackles, and don’t let him out to the deck. Are they scared that he might escape? Or that he might leap overboard into the waves, taking refuge in the belly of a marine monster like the prophet Jonah?
107
As our family expanded, the flavor of home life became intense. My wife appeared before my eyes with growing beauty; I had desired and waited for her all my life with such precise patience that it seemed unreal to have found her. It moved me to see her with our little daughter, Alba Elena, in her arms, tickling her nose. The baby’s small fingers would grasp my short beard or manage to get int
o my mouth, and she squinted her little black eyes and closed her lips in the shape of a heart. Catalina, ever attentive, would come in with a tray, and my daughter and I would share some blackberry water. Her tiny teeth not only bit my fingers, but relished tearing crumbs from bread fresh from the oven. Isabel and Felipa also played with her, as did her cousin Ana. When she took her first steps, we all wanted her to do it again and again, until she was exhausted. I had chosen her name: Alba means dawn, a luminous beginning, purity, optimism. I had married a beautiful, intelligent woman, was gaining prestige in Santiago, had brought my two sisters and young niece over from Córdoba, and had even been reunited with old Catalina, which was like the preservation of a relic. Harmony reigned, but not all harmony is eternal.
My sister Isabel looked so much like my mother that her delicacy and self-denial made a great impression on me. I felt closer to her than ever. It also felt easier for me to talk with her than with Felipa, whose habit formed a barrier between us. And I saw Isabel every day. We shared food and even games with her daughter Ana and with Alba Elena. Once, I sat staring at her for so long that it startled her.
“What is it, Francisco?”
“Nothing. I was thinking.”
“While looking at me?” She smiled. “Now you have to tell me what you were thinking.”
I struck the arm of my chair.
“Córdoba, Ibatín. That’s what I was thinking about.”
She looked down. Memories disturbed her. She had never inquired after my father, or about our disappeared brother Diego. The little she knew was because I had told her almost by force.
“Now we are fine,” she said gravely. “You are generous, we are an exemplary family, you’re appreciated. There is no point in looking back on a time full of misfortune.”
I pressed my lips together. Marcos Brizuela and his wife Dolores sprang to mind. They, too, were a beautiful family, only they were grounded in the truth of their own history. This was forbidden to me. I would never try to question the faith of my beloved Christian wife. But my two sisters were daughters of a Marrano, and their grandparents and great-grandparents had lived and died as Jews, so they did have a commitment to something greater than all of us, as did I.
A sudden storm rattles the ship. The hull and masts shriek with pain, and a lashing wind tears off a sail. Francisco falls into the growing puddle in the hold. The crew runs back and forth as waves toss the galleon as though it were made of paper. Watery mountains spill onto the deck, sweeping it with savage force.
“Could it be God’s will for us not to reach Lima?” wondered Francisco. He thinks again of Jonah, the prophet, his adventures and grandiose mission before the powerful men of Nineveh.
For a few hours nobody pays him any mind; that is exactly why he’s kept in chains.
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Don Cristóbal de la Cerda decided to travel to Valparaíso to await the arrival of a brig bearing officials from Peru. He would spend a few weeks in that beautiful bay as a well-deserved break from his judicial endeavors. He would be accompanied by his wife and a good assortment of servants. He looked forward to gorging on the coast’s extraordinary seafood and enjoying the incomparable landscape, far away from files and stress. He had earned a lot of money and needed to win over the people coming from Lima.
In a burst of affection, he made an invitation to my wife as we all sat together one evening.
“Would you come with us, Isabel?”
“But—what about Alba Elena?”
“Bring her with you.”
“And Francisco?”
“Oh, that’s up to him.”
“I can’t abandon the hospital for so many days. Thank you, Don Cristóbal.”
“Would it bother you for Isabel to join us?”
“Not at all. Isabel deserves such a gift, and Alba Elena will enjoy the sea.”
“It’s only a few weeks,” Don Cristóbal assured.
It was our first separation: a prelude.
The former interim governor, now a respected judge, charged a gentleman with searching for a large house for them in the port city of Valparaíso. Then he dispatched a caravan with rugs, beds, blankets, tables, chairs, cushions, dishware, candelabras, and even sacks of flour, corn, potatoes, sugar, and salt, determined not to suffer any privations while also being able to offer a lavish welcome to the officials who’d be arriving from an exhausting journey by ship.
They left on the western route.
Our house echoed with emptiness, reminding me of the echo that had terrorized me when we left Ibatín. Here, though, there was furniture. But absence settled in. Absence has its own voice; it can breathe, and frighten. The departure of my beloved Isabel and Alba Elena stirred thoughts of other departures that had not exactly been joyous. I shut myself into my bedroom to read. But my thoughts wouldn’t let me concentrate, flowing swiftly toward an inevitable resolution. A fierce energy impelled me to press on, to correct my body in order to harmonize it with my soul, to cut my flesh so as to unify my spirit. I would divide myself, as Brother Martín had done with his flagellations. My hand would be the surgeon and my member the patient. I’d lock my jaw to drown the pain, and so the scalpel could stay steady. Perhaps a part of me might faint, but the other part would keep working to the end. Circumcision is a rite that draws accusations of barbarism, linking it to a Jewish taste for blood: first the foreskin’s blood, then that of one’s fellow man. Circumcision, one clergyman had said, stirs cruelty. Christians are not circumcised and for this reason they are stirred by love. “Of course,” I thought ironically, “that’s exactly why they persecute us, slander us, and burn us at the stake—to duly punish our cruelty.” But this line of thinking, I realized later, was not a good one to follow, as it expresses resentment and is fed by the attitudes of those who hate us. What really matters and counts was a full connection to my roots.
After a while, I told myself that if I was still hesitating, it was because I had doubts. I recalled that a passage in the Book of Kings insinuated that the Jews had wanted to abandon circumcision long before Christ and the prophets condemned this renunciation as a betrayal of the pact. The Books of the Maccabees mentioned the tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes’s order forbidding the circumcision of boys, but the people’s rebellion defeated the tyrant. Long after that, Emperor Hadrian also tried to prohibit the procedure and suffered, as a response, the Bar Kokhba revolt. Centuries later, Emperor Justinian tried again, but various communities responded with systematic insubordination. Each of these decrees had a deeper, unspoken goal: to erase Jewish difference. They were not based on a sincere horror of blood; their armies spilled rivers of blood. Rather, they were based on a horror of Jews.
Why, after dozens and dozens of generations, were Jews still born with foreskins? The heroism of the patriarchs was enough to make us emerge circumcised from the womb. I sought out new answers that afternoon, and I liked one that took the shape of a question: Who says that circumcision, the pact, and choice are a pure privilege? All privilege, if it is not spurious, demands an exchange. God chooses Israel, and Israel sacrifices itself for God. Commitment on both sides: a pact. Also, I had learned something at the Seder of Pesach: each generation had to commit itself. It was necessary to be and act like them, to reprise the epic: “We are slaves in Egypt,” and “We are free men,” “We cross the Red Sea,” “We receive the Law.” Abraham began the pact, and celebrated it. We renewed it, gave it currency and momentum. My circumcision, then, meant as much as that of Isaac, Solomon, or Isaiah.
I opened my clothes and pulled at my foreskin, which had come as part of me so I could amputate it in a painful gesture of commitment. I gauged its sensitivity, going over the surgical techniques in my mind; I’d sit on a thick cloth bunched between my legs, ready to catch any dripping blood and, in arm’s reach, I’d have my instruments ready, along with gauze, scarring powder, thread for a possible ligation, and bandages.
I would do it this very night.
I gathered all the necessary items in my be
droom, placed fresh candles in the candelabra, filled a bottle with blackberry water, and gulped down a glass of pisco liquor. I bolted the door closed, noisily, to convey that I did not wish to be disturbed. I arranged my instruments on the table and made sure they met the specifications described in the Book of Leviticus. I then removed my clothes. I placed a thick cloth over the chair. I brought the candelabra close. Everything was ready for me to begin.
“My God, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” I murmured, “I do this to renew our pact, to seal my loyalty to You and to Your people.”
With my left hand I pulled back the foreskin. The thumb of that hand could feel the glans. I held the instrument tightly and carefully cut, like a scribe taking great pains to trace a perfect line. The blade descended into the red wound at the edge of the thumb; in this way, I avoided damaging the glans. I felt very sharp pain, but my attention remained focused on the surgical task. My fingers held on to the separated foreskin. I placed it on a small plate and applied warm, wet gauze to my bleeding penis. A few hemorrhaging spots emerged from the vermilion ring, but they were all weak. No ligation would be needed. I pressed my penis so the glans would surface, but it did not. As I had predicted, there was a piece of frenulum and transparent membrane in the way. I chose a pointed pair of scissors and completed the resection.
I was perfectly unfolded; the complaints of a patient don’t make a doctor panic, they only make him long for excellence. The more it hurt, the more I applied myself to do my job well. I held the membrane with tongs as the scissors worked at it gently. I cleaned it again with damp gauze. There was very little blood. I dusted it with scarring powder and wrapped myself with a bandage.
Against the Inquisition Page 41