The Dark Circus

by Ana Ballabriga

  The bishop scrutinized her, waiting for an answer. She spit in his face and spattered him with blood. He rose without wiping himself off. Now he looked like a demon from the very depths of hell.

  “Your jaw is resting on an iron bar,” he told her. “And the plate across the crown of your head is lowered by a screw we’re going to turn very slowly. It’s a press, exactly like a wine press—isn’t that delicious irony? But have no fear; you won’t die quickly. First to go will be your teeth, all of them, and then your jaw will break, and at last, very slowly, your skull will crack. As your head is crushed, your brain will be extruded through your eyes and ears.”

  But L was concentrating exclusively on slowing her breathing, disconnecting herself from the pain, from the sounds, from every stimulus internal or external.

  “But let’s not talk all day about it,” the pope said. “I have other matters to attend to.”

  L didn’t hear the bishop give the order to turn the screw. Her vital signs had ebbed away. As the plate over the crown of her head bore down and clamped her jaw shut, she stopped breathing. Her heart stopped. Her mind went blank. She felt nothing at all as she willingly gave up her life.

  53

  Twenty-two cards were arrayed across the table: three rows of seven and a last card below them. It was the only card still hidden. L had laid them out this way as instructed by her friend Isabela. This was the Romany method of casting the cards, Isabela had told her, and she’d turned them over one by one to reveal the secrets of L’s past, present, and future. Now one single card remained undisclosed, number twenty-two, the most important of all, the card that ruled the interpretation of everything that preceded it and explained what the client would have to do to achieve her objective. Slowly and deliberately, Isabela turned it over.

  54

  “The High Priestess,” Isabela announced with relish, then studied the card to find its significance. “She represents wisdom, meditation, and enlightenment. This card symbolizes a pragmatic and knowledgeable person who perfectly understands the laws of the universe.”

  “I think I’m far short of that.” L didn’t hide her dismay. “And according to what you’ve already said, it looks like the road ahead of me isn’t long at all.”

  “You haven’t grasped the essential message here. You’re not going to die because of an accident or an incurable disease. You will sacrifice your life for an important cause. That is your destiny. In order to achieve it, and certainly in order to understand it, yes, you do have a long way to go. You must experience and appreciate many things and acquire much knowledge. I’m sure that when the moment comes, you’ll make the right decision, because how you feel right now is irrelevant. You will, by then, be a completely different person.”

  “And what if I sacrifice myself for nothing? Jesus gave his life to save humankind, and all that came of his sacrifice were corrupt institutions exploiting his name. Even if I offer my life for a just cause, chances are the world will go on as it always has, ruled by greed and evil.”

  “Or perhaps your sacrifice will open people’s eyes to the corruption you describe and make them turn their backs on it. Or it might bring about a new Church, one that focuses on human beings instead of pursuing wealth and power.”

  “I always wondered what I wanted to do with my life. It never occurred to me to ask what I wanted to do with my death.”

  “Everyone’s like that. And it’s a mistake. The only sure thing in this life is that we’re going to die, and for most of us, that death accomplishes nothing. Isn’t it better to give your life for a just cause?”

  “And if they get away with it? What if I die and no one knows?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that for now. Your misgivings will vanish as you gather knowledge, and they won’t matter the day you become the High Priestess.”

  L accepted her friend’s words, but she couldn’t make sense of them.

  55

  Elías finished drafting the e-mail. After L’s departure, he’d gone home as agreed, averting his eyes from the spot where the rug had briefly been spread out. He copied the text and added the recipients, all of them journalists. They weren’t just traditional news reporters, but also bloggers who focused on art, the Church, or unsolved mysteries. Preparing the list had taken most of the day. He pasted the YouTube link into the message.

  He felt his guts heave at the thought of the video. He’d uploaded it exactly the way it was recorded so no one could claim it’d been faked. No cuts, no effort to impose a rhythm. The only liberty he’d taken was to clean up the sound, filtering out background noise and enhancing the voices so they were perfectly intelligible.

  The upload took almost half an hour. It seemed an eternity to him, and he expected the computer to crash at any moment. Or the connection to fail. Lightning might strike the apartment, and all their work, both his and L’s, would be lost. Everything would be in vain.

  When she’d asked him to install the cameras in the bishop’s cellar, he hadn’t understood. Even then, he had still thought she wanted to kill them, and why would she want a record of that?

  Elías had been completely baffled until he sat before the screen, transfixed by the live spectacle transmitted by the four cameras. Then he’d fallen from the chair and vomited. He’d lain there, continuing to retch and heave, long after his stomach was empty.

  When he saw L lose consciousness, he couldn’t stand it anymore. L had told him when she left that he had to let her see things through, no matter what, but this was too much. He grabbed the phone and called his friend at the Guardia Civil.

  “The pope and the bishop are torturing a woman in the basement of the bishop’s palace, and they’re about to kill her! I’m not joking! I’m texting you a bunch of photos. Send someone quick!”

  56

  She felt an electric shock jolt her entire body.

  She felt her heart stir. Her pulse resumed.

  She became aware of the oxygen mask over her face, the strong hands working on her, the needle jabbed into her arm.

  A long time went by before she began to make out voices. Then, she heard the siren of the ambulance transporting her.

  What had happened?

  This wasn’t right.

  If she was still alive, her plan had failed.

  57

  Elías watched via the hidden cameras as the police burst into the torture room, took L out on a stretcher, arrested the two young priests, and stationed themselves there, not daring to cuff the bishop and the pope until a superior officer arrived.

  He reread the e-mail. He tested the YouTube link for the tenth time to make sure it was correct. He went over the subject line. With a trembling hand, he positioned the cursor over the Send button. He hesitated still, expecting something to go wrong at the last moment. The building might collapse on him or he might have a heart attack; whatever it was, he was sure something would block this venture. He clicked the Send button. The text disappeared from his screen.

  It was gone. He was sure it must have disappeared or exploded, leaving millions of bits and bytes scattered across the Internet. He held his breath and checked the sent folder.

  There it was, right on top. It had gone out without a hitch. His job was done, and nobody could stop it now.

  He closed the mail program and found himself staring at the YouTube window with the video of L talking to the pope and the bishop. He frowned at the title and wondered if he should have refined it a bit. After all, it was going to be viewed by everyone on earth with access to a television or the Internet. He took another look, and this time it didn’t seem too bad. It was forceful and left no room for doubt.

  The Bishop of Cartagena Tortures His Own Daughter with the Assistance of the Pope

  L would have approved. If a bishop wasn’t permitted to marry or have children, how could he possibly torture his own daughter? The title was perfect.

  A perfect oxymoron.

  He took out his mirror cube and began massaging it. To his ut
ter astonishment, the pieces snapped into place like magic. He stopped, realizing that one last turn would complete the puzzle. But he didn’t feel the least bit satisfied. It occurred to him that if he did make that last move, the whole thing would lose its significance. It would become a meaningless shape composed of twelve straight lines and six featureless faces, a cube like hundreds of millions of others. Surely this wasn’t the right solution. At least not for him. Not anymore.

  He hurled it against the wall. It rebounded, struck the floor, and broke in two. He stepped on it, trampled it, and left disjointed pieces all across the floor. Then he leaned over and regarded his own reflection in each of the small mirrored squares. He took a photo and uploaded it to Instagram. He felt an unexpected surge of emotion. His solution to the mirror cube had nothing to do with geometry or aesthetics. It had turned out to be a candid depiction of his feelings. A solution L would appreciate. His first work of contemporary art.

  He went back to the computer and reloaded the page with the video. So far, just one view.

  Ten minutes later, there were a hundred.

  An hour later, millions.

  AFTERWORD

  The Dark Circus is obviously a work of fiction, but we have incorporated various real-world themes into it.

  When we began planning the novel, we decided that Elías would be an art sleuth. Art fascinates us and so does the archetypal detective portrayed in American noir films, so we made this a twofer. The plot required Elías to investigate something before L entered his life, so we had to decide what that would be. While looking into actual cases involving art in the Murcia region, we came across the theft of the Cross of Caravaca. We were intrigued, for although it hasn’t been hushed up, neither has it been much discussed. So it seemed perfect for the novel we wanted to write. We began our research, traveled to Caravaca to see the actual sanctuary, and talked to people there. If you’re lucky enough to visit the city, you’ll find there are many theories concerning the theft, but one in particular is widely held. We’ve incorporated an aspect of that theory into the novel. The descriptions we provide in the opening chapters are based on documents in the judicial record, news published at the time, and oral history narratives we were able to collect.

  Certain historical figures appear in the novel, and we mention them because they achieved uncommon prominence in their day, just as L does in the story. Thus, we included the Marquis de Sade, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Maya Angelou.

  We were extremely interested in the theme of the Catholic Church and the way it took advantage of its protection by those in power to commit all manner of atrocities. This was especially true for one issue hotly debated a few years ago: the question of property registration.

  Property registration is the procedure by which all properties not already documented in the official rolls (including public spaces that belong to no particular individual or group) may be claimed and registered by anyone, provided that the necessary documents are reviewed by the registrar of properties or examined in a judicial proceeding. The requirements of evidence are strict and difficult to meet. Despite this, thanks to the directives and support of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, the Catholic Church was authorized from 1946 on to record its own deeds asserting ownership of properties. And these were accepted without question by the Property Registry. In this way, the ecclesiastical authorities secured deeds to village churches and chapels financed by public contributions, residences constructed by the local population to house teachers at rural schools, hostels along the pilgrimage route to Santiago, and a great number of other properties. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the Church’s effort to assert ownership of the Córdoba Mosque. The resolution of that particular issue did not, however, signify any willingness of the Church to contemplate restitution of other properties acquired in this contemptible fashion.

  As we were imagining L’s village, including the question of deeds and all they implied, we took a trip to the south of France. There, we discovered a church with two entries (one of normal dimensions and the other very low and cramped), two baptismal fonts, and two very different areas within the church designated for those attending Mass. Despite our deficient French, we asked the church warden about them. He told us about the Cagots. Back in Spain, we looked into their history a bit more and learned of the Agotes, a community of individuals in Spain subjected to discrimination until well into the 1700s. Their origins are unclear. Some claim they were of Neanderthal origin (a fairly farfetched notion) and others held that they were the only survivors of the Albigensian Crusade ordered by Pope Innocent III in the thirteenth century. That crusade practically exterminated the Cathars. The hypothesis is that those who managed to escape the massacres made their way to the north of the Iberian Peninsula and, in particular, to the Navarra region. We thought that L’s village could have Cathar origins, which would make it even more distinctive and provide a justification for their division of the world between an immediate community that offered shelter and security and an outside world rife with danger and threats. So we put this into the story. Everything we relate in the novel concerning the Agotes comes from the historical record. When we visited the area we found that information about Cathar communities is now virtually nonexistent in the region.

  The Dark Circus is the result of three years of work during which we were steadily compiling information about many facts, prominent personalities, and historical events. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this story as much as we enjoyed writing it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Serafín Zaplana, Pilar García Rivas, Blanca Eulogio Blázquez, Paco Contreras, Natalia Carbajosa, Antonio Gómez Ribelles, Antonio Parra Sanz, Flori Celdrán Martínez, and Alfredo García García, who reviewed our drafts and responded with comments and criticism that helped us improve them.

  To Paco Contreras for his guidance concerning contemporary art.

  To Aitor Ziubizarreta Iztueta (with his six additional names, all of them Basque) for information about his watch and the Agote people.

  To Emilio Hernández Molina for his contacts and advice about how to drink Cava sparkling wine.

  To Marga Estrada, Águeda Maldonado, Manuel R. Llamas, and Javier Villalba for sharing their visions of Catholicism.

  To Fuensanta del Río Baeza for introducing us to the profession of the private detective.

  To Francisca Hernández Blázquez for guidance concerning the government of Spain.

  To Rodrigo Fernández for information about the archives of Murcia Cathedral.

  To Antonio A. Martínez for several conversations.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Photo © 2017 Carmen Ballabriga

  Ana Ballabriga and David Zaplana ran into one another for the first time in Valencia when he was studying engineering and she was a student of psychology. Their shared passion for the art of storytelling inspired them to spin the tale of their first novel, After the Cartagena Sun. A few years later they also tried their hands at video production, with results that inspired them to establish their own firm, ADN Visual, for which they’ve received several prizes for short features and documentaries. Ana and David are also the authors of Gothic Morbid, Switched in Time, and The Dark Circus, which won the Amazon Indie Prize in 2016.

  Both live in Cartagena, Spain. They’re busy with work, writing, and taking care of their two children.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Photo © 2016 Steve Rogers Photography

  Michael Meigs reviews theater and translates literature from Spanish, Swedish, French, and German. Since 2008 he has published the online journal www.CTXLiveTheatre.com, which is dedicated to live narrative theater in Austin, San Antonio, and the rest of central Texas. He served as a foreign service officer with the US Department of State for more than thirty years and was assigned abroad to Africa, Europe, South America, and the Caribbean. He has graduate degrees in comparative literature, business, economics, and national security studies.

   

  Ana Ballabriga, The Dark Circus