Thus, in mid-January, 1824, the clergymen took to the road in two wide coaches, followed by a slow cart piled up with trunks, bags, and supplies—in addition to beds and essential cooking utensils that were hard to come by in the inns where they changed horses and where they often had to sleep for want of any better accommodations. Amply supplied by sympathetic citizens, who were incensed by the impiety and incivility of Rivadavia—who had not offered any official aid to the mission—the travelers carried abundant stores of food: grains, potatoes, mutton, salt pork, garlic and onions, lemons to take the place of the tainted vinegar of the country’s interior, as well as many casks of wine, aguardiente, and mistela. “And they say that prelates dine on nothing but fillet of trout and lark pastries!” commented Giovanni Muzzi, laughing. Mastaï said little but observed much. The country was unbearably monotonous, but its grand scale captured his attention. He had never seen anything like the pampas, these plains that seemed endless; no matter how far the travelers went, they always seemed to be surrounded by an unvarying vista—the pampas gave the traveler the impression of not moving, never advancing on his course, no matter how hard he drove his team. The vastness of the pampas—their perfect embodiment of the infinite, confronting man with an image of the limitless—made Mastaï think of a mystical vision, an allegory in which man is placed in a corridor without beginning or end and spends years trying, through science and learning, to push back the enclosing walls that limit his vision; gradually he succeeds, gradually he makes them recede, but no matter how far he pushes them, he can never manage to destroy them or alter their appearance or learn what hides behind them . . . As he crossed the pampas, Mastaï spent day after day immersed in himself lost in a vivid dream—sometimes disturbed by the shouts of a band galloping in a riot of bolas—from which he was finally shaken awake by the reappearance of scenes that caused this land to resemble the one across the sea: certain features of the landscape, such as arroyos and marshes, familiar plants and animals, houses like the ones back home, no longer dwarfed by the vastness of nature. But soon the horizontal infinity was transformed into a vertical infinity, that of the Andes. Compared to these incredible cliffs rising up from the earth, their summits hidden in the clouds—seemingly inaccessible (of course, they had only reached the first buttresses)—the Dolomite Mountains, which he had known as a youth, seemed no more than parks for strolls and picnics; the gigantic scale of America was so striking that the continent had already begun to seem unreal to him even though the people who lived in it usually appeared uncivilized, brutal, and mean. Such a landscape could not produce men who were otherwise—he thought—but in the future, when the continent matures and begins to be aware of its own possibilities, who could predict what kind of men, what promises, what ideas would emerge. Still everything he had seen up to now “lacked balance,” as the tasters of fine wines would put it.
And then began a slow and arduous ascent: to the peaks that divided the map, creating the rivers and their routes, forming paths along the edges of precipices or through ravines where thundering torrents crashed down from the crests of invisible snowy summits, amid the howling of snowstorms and the screeching of windstorms; and still higher up, to the desolation of high plateaus, and the aridity of punas, and the fear of heights, and the depth of the chasms, and the stupor induced by the granite immensities, the multitude of crags and peaks, the black slabs lined up like penitents in a procession, the schist staircases, and an illusory vision of ruined cities constructed of rocks so old, so ancient, that shards of minerals had been stripped from them, exposing the naked, polished skeleton of the planet. And climbing from one summit to the next, and then to a third, and to a fourth, ‘until they reached the pinnacle, the seventh heaven, as they called it, before beginning the descent to the valleys of Chile, where the vegetation achieved a greater verdure than above, among the lichens nourished by the clouds. The trail was almost impassable. A recent earthquake had caused a landslide that spilled debris on the bleak, patchy grasses . . . And happy to be returning at last to the world of trees and cultivated fields—after a journey that had begun nine months before in Genoa—the apostolic mission arrived at Santiago, Chile. “We have finally been delivered,” said Mastaï, with relief “from an extremely difficult labor!”
T
he young canon saw so many churches and convents in the city of Santiago that he decided it resembled certain Italian villages, which had twenty belfries for every hundred roofs. If Buenos Aires smelled of hides and tanneries and harnesses—and (why deny it?) of horse shit—here one constantly inhaled clouds of incense rising from the walls and cloisters of Santo Domingo, San Antonio, San Francisco, Las Recoletas, Las Clarisas, Los Agustinos, La Compañía, San Diego, and La Veracruz, not to mention the crowded convent that occupied the main square. Just as Mastaï was congratulating himself on beginning a splendid career as an auditor in such a propitious setting, the uneasy travelers were presented with a new setback: there had been a revolt two months before against Bernardo O’Higgins, Chile’s Director, the man who had asked Monsignor Muzzi to bring his mission to the country, through the intermediary of his ambassador Cienfuegos; O’Higgins, hero of the hard-fought and glorious war of independence, had been overthrown by his right-hand man, Ramón Freire, Lieutenant General of the Armed Forces of Chile. And Freire was not in the capital; military matters had called him to the distant island of Chiloé . . . (“The true generals, who rule by the sword, are not yet dead, and generals of the sheath have already begun to emerge,” thought the young ecclesiastic.) All prior commitments were nullified. No one knew what Freire’s policy would be. And so began an exasperating period of waiting, during which Mastaï wrote a letter that revealed how frustrated he was by this turn of events: The present American governments are convulsive governments as a result of the continual changes to which they are subjected. (“Without wishing to be, I became the Pale Angel of Vatican Sorrows,” murmured His Holiness Pius IX—once an obscure canon—when he reread a copy of the letter he had preserved for so many years, a letter that presaged so many dramatic developments.) But Mastaï did not succumb to this first serious blow to his ambition. As he waited to begin his work, he cultivated the friendships that the cordial and cultured people of Santiago were quick to offer him. He was a frequent visitor to the Cotapos household; the young ladies there were fond of music and helped him pass his hours of waiting—in deference to his tonsure, they played him Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. (“It is curious,” thought Mastaï, “that with a single melody a composer who died at twenty-six achieved greater fame than the aged Palestrina did with his enormous body of work, written over the course of a long life”) “His opera La Serva Padrona is equally popular here,” said the Cotapos ladies, “and we know some parts of it. But the plot would shock Your Reverence by its daring” Mastaï acknowledged their scruples with an indulgent but somewhat hypocritical smile, since he recalled that he and his sister Maria Tecla had passed one extremely pleasant afternoon in Sinigaglia softly singing the two principal parts of that delightful entertainment (the third part was silent) from sheet music propped up on the battered family piano. From the Chilean girls he learned some of the carols that brightened the city—which they said was melancholy and gray enough the rest of the time—once a year, at Christmas. One of these carols, quite a popular melody, enchanted him with its fresh if rather foolish ingenuousness:
Señora Doña María
I have come from far away
To bring your little one
Some bunnies
When Holy Week arrived, the new auditor was amazed at the medieval drama of the somber procession of penitents filing through the central streets of the city, celebrating the agony of Our Lord on Good Friday: each barefoot man was wearing a long white tunic and a crown of thorns, carrying a heavy wooden cross and a whip, and each was furiously flagellating the shoulders . . . The religious fervor in this country could not help but further the goals of the apostolic mission, thought Mastaï. But at the
same time he was aware that this city, just like Buenos Aires, had seen the insidious incursion of the so-called new ideas. Watching the flagellants bloody the ground with their expiatory worship were some dandified young heathens—”young Turks,” they were called by the natives—who wanted to see Mastaï squirm: they told him that freedom of the press would soon be reestablished—it had been suspended during the recent war—and that Freire had a secret plan to secularize the Chilean clergy. As Mastaï awaited developments, he adopted a new tactic to deal with the people who dared to express liberal sentiments in his presence: a tactic that consisted of pretending to be more liberal than the liberals themselves. Following a strategy he had learned from the Jesuits, he praised Voltaire and Rousseau as extraordinarily talented men—he could not hold to their views, of course, since he was a priest—but then went on to remind his listeners, with subtle perfidy, that those philosophers belonged to a generation whose outmoded notions had been supplanted by a new generation of thinkers: it was time to get in step, to adopt the rhythm of the new era, time to put aside those moth-eaten texts, those old ideas history had already discredited, time to adopt a “new philosophy.” And the French Revolution? Time had passed it by; it had failed in its most fundamental principles—which were discussed entirely too much on this continent, when nobody remembered them anymore in Europe. “Sclerosis, senectitude, superannuation—people from another century,” he said, describing the Social Contract and the Encyclopedists. “Utopian zeal that accomplished nothing, unfulfilled promises, betrayed ideals . . .
“It could have been great,” he said, “but it never lived up to its originators’ dreams,” speaking of the French Revolution. “I am only a priest, whom you might imagine would be hemmed in by dogma and old-fashioned ways of thinking, but even I know these things.” No, no, no. Liberalism is not what you young men think it is, not anymore. Today there is a new kind of liberalism: a liberalism—how shall I put it?—situated to the left of the left—bearing in mind that in the convention hall, the Jacobins always occupied the leftmost rows. “Should we be more Jacobin than the Jacobins?” they asked him. “It is possible that these times call for a new way of being a Jacobin,” responded the future author of the Syllabus, whose knack for manipulating his opponents’ arguments allowed him to ascend to the papacy with a reputation as an extremely liberal friend of progress.
In the months that followed, the delegates were filled with hope as well as with impatience and irritation, anguish and agitation, depression and dismay, in the face of Freire’s hostile cunning; elevated to the highest office, to the great annoyance of the ecclesiasts, he was simultaneously hospitable and inaccessible, a protector who became increasingly rude—ceremonious when he first met with Archbishop Muzzi, apparently friendly and forthright, but in the end he did exactly the opposite of what he had promised. Santiago’s ancient aristocracy came to the aid of the apostolic mission. But meanwhile, calumny swelled into an aria of accusation against the foreigners. Muzzi was blamed for applying a law dating from colonial times when he refused to marry a widower to his stepdaughter. The young Mastaï was rumored to have charged an exorbitant sum for performing his ministerial duties in the mansion of a wealthy family. Innuendo, gossip, lies, quarrels and accusations, intrigues and slander—day by day, they became harder for the eminent mandatories to bear. The final blow came when the prophesy of the “young Turks” was fulfilled and freedom of the press was decreed—even though Freire had assured the Roman archbishop that he would never commit such a liberal excess. From that day on, life was impossible for the apostolic delegates. Printed claims were circulated that the inoperative mission had cost the public treasury fifty thousand pesos. The delegates were accused of being spies of the Holy Alliance. And finally, there was a decisive announcement: plans were being made for the secularization of the Chilean clergy, including the nationalization of the Church, which would be exempted from any obedience to Rome . . . Confronted with the reality of the situation—the betrayal of his confidence and good will—Muzzi had no choice but to inform the government that he would be returning to Italy immediately. So, after wasting nine and a half months, the prelate, his young auditor, and Don Salustio traveled to Valparaíso, a tumble-down fishing village surrounded by a circle of mountains, where one heard as much English as Spanish, since the port had several flourishing British businesses to supply the ships—especially the increasingly common North American clippers, trim, sleek ships that amazed everyone with their four-poled masts—stopping there after long, difficult voyages across the South Pacific. Mastaï was already discouraged by the failure of the mission and then suffered the unspeakable agony of losing his stability—a feeling similar to vertigo—when he experienced the telluric effects of two earthquakes, which left him unharmed, but envious of the equanimity of some blind musicians who never stopped playing lively dance tunes during the brief tremors, more concerned about their alms than the geologic furies. The priest was invited to a seaport inn to sample the glorious flavors of foods from Tierra del Fuego—piure, loco, cochayuyo, and the giant centerfish—before finally departing on board the Colombia, a fast ship with sleek lines and a solid hull, which had already proven herself numerous times, surviving the oceanic furies of the always arduous circumnavigation of the southern tip of America. The air grew colder and two whales appeared as soon as the ship had sailed as far as Valdivia. By November tenth they had reached the island of Chiloé. And on the seventeenth the sailors prepared to brave the terrible passage around Cape Horn.
And there a miracle occurred: the sea was as glassy calm as an Italian lake! There, at the storm-swept end of the continent, a place marked by gigantic black granite monuments under constant attack by a howling southern wind. The captain and sailors of the Colombia marveled at this tranquillity—even the saltiest “Cape Homers” could not recall seeing the like of it. A clear, pleasant night descended, in which the happy ship rocked to the regular creaking of the rigging and the gentle swaying of the lanterns. Mastaï leaned against the port gunwale, sensing rather than seeing the southernmost point of the continent, which lay in front of the ship; his thoughts went back over his fitful journey, a peripeteian adventure full of incidents the equal of any in the most popular sea-stories—like the spine-tingling tale of the life raft of the Medusa: there had been terrible storms, contrary winds, paralyzing calms, encounters with rare aquatic creatures, even, in the Canary Islands, a raid by buccaneers—who boarded the ship with terrifying screams, slashing the air with their swords, only to suddenly turn respectful and withdraw, contrite, once they realized that the only valuable objects on board the Héloise were the monstrance, reliquary, ostensorium, and chalice, which they left in the hands of Archbishop Muzzi, since they were good Catholics, not stinking Protestants. And after that had come the revelation of America, an America more fascinating, varied, and striking than the canon had expected, an America where he discovered so much more than gauchos and gauderios, wild Indians, brave bola-twirlers, splendid horsemen, inspired cowboys strumming their guitars and singing of brave deeds and challenges, of love and death and infinity The biggest surprise was the population: lively, intelligent, and spirited, always productive, if occasionally misguided; Mastaï believed America’s population could forge a future the equal of Europe’s—especially now that the gap between the old and the new continents had been widened and deepened by the wars of independence. Perhaps the Faith would help to unify the two continents, the young man thought, recalling Chile’s many convents and churches, as well as the humble chapels of the pampas, the outpost missions, and the Andean calvaries. But actually—increasing the difference between the two worlds—here in America the Faith centered around local cults and a specific constellation of saints who were almost unknown over there, in Europe. In fact, when the canon had studied American hagiography in preparation for this trip, he had been astonished at the number of exotics who had become American patrons and saints. Apart from the ineffable mystic Rosa de Lima, whose fame had spread
far and wide, American saints were of purely local interest. There was an Andean trinity composed of Rosa and two other (much less well known) figures: Toribio de Lima, born in Majorca, who had served as inquisitor of Philip II and later as archbishop of Peru, in which role he had spent seven years traveling his vast diocese, baptizing an incalculable number of Indians; and Mariana de Peredes, the “Lily of Quito,” who emulated Rosa in respect to the mortification of the flesh—during the terrible earthquake of 1645, she had offered her own life to God so that the inhabitants of the city would be spared. After Toribio de Lima came a saint who was little known in the Old World, Francisco Solano; he was in the shipwreck of a slave ship and was responsible for the rescue of the slaves, who had been abandoned by the cowardly crew and left to face the furies of the Atlantic, helpless, without lifeboats or rafts. Next came the famous catechist Luis Beltrán, who had been canonized for the conversion of many Colombian and Panamanian Indians, even though those conversions were said to be almost worthless, having been made through interpreters because the sainted gentleman was ignorant of the local languages. The conversions made by the patron of black slaves, Pedro Claver, were considered more significant; according to his contemporaries, this energetic adversary of the Holy Office of Cartagena of the Indies baptized more than three hundred thousand Africans during his long, exemplary ministry. Next came some lesser patrons and saints, the objects of merely local cults: Francisco Colmenario, the Guatemalan preacher, for example, whose blessed life is little known; and Gregorio López, former page of King Philip, whose canonization had gotten nowhere in Rome, even though he was revered in Zacatecas; or Martín de Porres, barber and surgeon of Lima, the first mestizo to be beatified; or the Galician holy man, Sebastián Aparicio—object of a local cult in Pueblo de los Angeles—who led a secular and mundane life during which he buried two wives, who was director of the postal service and built roads between Mexico and Zacatecas, and who had only received the Faith at seventy. As for Sebastián Montañol, killed by the Indians of Zacatecas (Zacatecas, like Lima, is definitely a preferred site for the manifestation of transcendental vocations!), and Alfonso Rodríguez, Juan del Castillo, and Roque González de Santacruz, the Paraguayan martyrs, their memories were only preserved in extremely limited areas, in the most remote regions—there was probably not a single man of the Faith in the world who remembered them, other than young Mastaï.
The Harp and the Shadow Page 3