The Harp and the Shadow

by Alejo Carpentier

  The majestic actors in the Morality Play entered from stage left and stage right and seated themselves, in an order that observed hierarchy, rank, and function, around an enormous table covered with a crimson silk cloth, each of the actors assuming the medieval aspect of a member of the Holy Office by gestures and attitudes remembered from very old ceremonies. In the center were seated the president and the two judges who made up the collegial tribunal; at one end of the table, the promoter of the faith, critic of the canonization, the Devil’s Advocate, and at the other end of the table, the Postulator of canonization—in this case, not Roselly de Lorgues, who had died a few years before, but the erudite Genoan merchant José Baldi, expert on precious stones, well-respected and esteemed within the Vatican for his many acts of charity. The chief civil clerk of the Congregation of Rites, with his assistant, sat in between. Folios and sheaves of papers made their appearance from within satchels and briefcases, and after a prayer imploring the Holy Spirit to inspire them to make fair decisions and appropriate sentences, the judicial process began . . . The Invisible One felt his invisible ears prick up and hold still, like those of a wolf who senses danger, alert to all that would be said in this tribunal, which had been reconvened after such a long adjournment to consider the question of the beatification that, over the course of time, had accumulated more than the favor of the six-hundred-odd bishops who had signed the first petition, so that now eight hundred sixty had put their signatures at the bottom of the third petition—which would most likely be the final one. The president asked the Postulator to swear an oath to abstain from fraud at all times, to adhere to the truths he honestly believed in his soul and conscience in creating his arguments in defense of the cause. Speaking deliberately, drawing a breath between each of his phrases, separating his adjectives, carefully putting the capstone to each paragraph he constructed, José Baldi made an impressive summary of the case Count Roselly de Lorgues had expounded, with profuse appendices and preliminary documents, in the book commissioned by Pope Pius IX. As this discourse piled on the dithyrambs and vocatives, the Invisible One felt a sweet pleasure. In the face of this portrait of excellent qualities, of virtues, of masculine piety, of generosity, of disinterestedness and interior greatness; this portrait of miracles he had performed, although with the modesty and humility of a mendicant friar; in the face of proof that he had possessed supernatural powers that he had never even guessed he had, how could his judges hesitate? When, like Saint Clement who quieted tempests, like Saint Luis Beltrán, an American who made apostolic visits to Colombia, Panama, and the Antilles—his Antilles—he had wrested thousands upon thousands of Indians from the utter darkness of their idolatries, and when, just like Saint Patrick—Baldi said—“apostle to verdant Ireland, who heard the unborn in their mothers’ wombs calling him to Ireland, so he, Christopher Columbus, during the eighteen terrible years he wasted in useless efforts, had borne in his soul the incredible clamor of half the world’s population . . .” He was laying a magnificent groundwork. And so great was the Postulator’s enthusiasm that the Invisible One began to be impressed with himself: he discovered that what he had attributed to the powerful effect of another’s faith was actually his own work, the action of his own hands, of his privileged will, of his power to ask and to receive; and the most extraordinary thing was that, according to a certain Leon Bloy, who was frequently quoted by José Baldi in his panegyric, Columbus’s miracles surpassed those—simpler and more limited, if you looked at them properly—of healing the sick, making the lame walk, the dumb speak, and reviving a few dead. No. I think of Moses, said Leon Bloy, I think of Moses, because Columbus reveals all Creation, divides the world among the kings of the earth, talks to God in the Tempest, and the result of his plea is the patrimony of all mankind. “Olé!” exclaims the Devil’s Advocate, drumming his hands on the table as if he were accompanying a flamenco dancer, “olé and olé!” But his voice is drowned out by the Postulator: Count Roselly de Lorgues didn’t hesitate to put the Grand Admiral in the line that ran from Noah to Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist, and Saint Peter, granting him the supreme title of Ambassador of God. (Oh, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Christophoros, you’ve won the game, your halo is waiting in the wings, you will have a consistory, you will have altars everywhere, you will be like the giant Atlas whose powerful shoulders support the world that became round forever, thanks to you; you made it round where it had been flat, limited, circumscribed, and you surrounded it with the bottomless abyss of a firmament that was also underneath it, an identical and parallel firmament, so that no one can know for sure whether up is down or down is up! . . .) And when José Baldi ended his speech, the enthusiasm of the Invisible One reached its peak, and, like an ocean mist, invisible tears of gratitude began to form in his invisible eyes, at the shadows of the witnesses the Postulator had invited to make their statements, before the skeptical smile—why was he so skeptical?—of the Devil’s Advocate, whose job was to wear such disturbing smiles on his diabolical face. “And is there no ordinary judge here, or, lacking that, an ecclesiastical delegate?” the Devil’s Advocate inquired. The president answered him drily: “Idle question. It’s true that whenever a normal beatification proceeding is being held, only an ordinary judge is allowed to officiate, or else a dignitary who enjoys episcopal jurisdiction over the place where the person whose life is being examined died, or where he worked miracles . . .” “Who is called the Local Bishop,” noted the Devil’s Advocate. “Don’t lecture us about something we already know perfectly well,” said the President severely. “But on this point, I believe we should again refer to Count Roselly de Lorgues: Neither the local bishop of the place he was born—he tells us—nor the local bishop of the place he died can appear in court in this case . . .” “I believe it would be a little difficult . . .” “The remarkable navigator moved to Genoa at the age of fourteen,” continued the president. “He died in Valladolid, while visiting there, and his remains were moved elsewhere. His legal residence was in Córdoba, but he never went there. He had an official residence on Santo Domingo, but he was continually absent from it. Thus no bishop is in a position to supply us with any information.” “Fine, we already knew that nobody lives four hundred years . . .” “It seems to me that with that statement you impugn the reliability of the scriptures,” said the chief clerk quickly, seeming to come awake at this point, “because, in fact . . . In the fifth chapter of Genesis we are told that Seth lived 912 years, that Enoch lived 815, that Quenan reached 910 and then died.” “Phew! About time, too!” exclaimed the Devil’s Advocate, provoking a few barely suppressed laughs from the acolyte and the two adjunct judges. “Order. Order,” said the president. “All I ask is that to save time we skip to the Deluge,” said Beelzebub’s lawyer. “Someone made that joke before you did, the French poet Racine.” “In the comedy Les Plaideurs,” the chief clerk pointed out. “I see you know your classics,” said the always cunning minister of Belial. “But, to return to Columbus: if he died in Valladolid, why didn’t the bishop from there leave some written testimony we could rely on?” “The bishop of Valladolid would scarcely be informed of the death of a poor stranger, tired and sick, who happened to get stuck in his city,” said Baldi. “And is there no written testimony from a local bishop somewhere he worked miracles?” “I’m tired of repeating,” said the Postulator, “that the miracles Columbus performed were of a unique type, unlike most miracles. We could say that they are not located in any particular place; they are universal.” “I can see that the pontifical decree got here by an unusual route,” said the Devil’s Advocate in a sharp voice. “Caiaphas!” cried a voice behind the Invisible One. He turned to see a hairy man, his face almost hidden by a dense hedge of a beard, smelling rather foul, who had rolled his eyes, which were inflamed with anger, under bushy eyebrows, crying: “Caiaphas! Caiaphas!” The Devil’s Advocate now took aim at José Baldi: “The Postulator’s panegyric rests entirely on the book by Roselly de Lorgues, which, as I understand it, is a work of hon
est intentions, but which is terribly biased and lacks historical rigor. And the best proof is that a prize of thirty thousand pesetas has just been created to be awarded to the best biography—solidly documented, credible, modern—in an open contest intended as a general commemoration of the quadricentennial of the Discovery of America, which will take place shortly. And do you know who has created this prize, out of dissatisfaction with the book by Roselly de Lorgues? None other than the very illustrious Duke of Veragua, Marquis of Jamaica, Governor of the Indies, Senator of the Kingdom, and three times Grandee of Spain, the only direct descendant of Christopher Columbus.” “The miserable wretch!” howled the hairy little man, who, fired by his indignation, had leaped over two rows of chairs, landing at the side of the Invisible One. “The ingrate! A trainer of bulls for the ring, who sells them to add some excitement to circus games, while he doesn’t have the balls to be a torero, to confront his own herd. He prefers to peek out at his bulls from the hallway the bullfighters use to escape from the plaza, because he breeds vicious bulls so that they will kill the most fighters.” “The prize of thirty thousand pesetas. . .” continued the advocate. “Are the thirty denarii of Judas!” screamed Leon Bloy, the eternal terror, whom the Invisible One had now identified. “Silence!” shouted the president, “or I will call the Swiss Guard.” “Whatever new history will be written,” the Postulator went on, “it will in no way diminish the greatness, the obvious sanctity, of this amazing cosmographer, of whom Schiller said: Proceed without fear, Christopher. If what you are looking for has not yet been created, God will make it appear in the world, from nothing, to justify your audacity.” “He wasn’t such a great cosmographer,” said the Devil’s Advocate, “or not according to Victor Hugo.” And at this point it seemed to the Invisible One that Victor Hugo leaned on the bar and said: If Christopher Columbus had been a good cosmographer, he never would have discovered the New World. (But I had the nose of a sailor, which is worth any and all cosmographies, murmured the Invisible One.) “And to bring in Victor Hugo, who never sailed any farther than the Isle of Guernsey, to tell us about seafaring!” roared Leon Bloy through the thicket of his beard. And now—a theatrical coup!—Jules Verne entered the bar, looking like Robur the Conqueror, and with all his aplomb. “This is the last straw!” someone exclaimed, protesting forcibly. “A charlatan! Why not call Phileas Fogg and the children of Captain Grant, too?” “It’s enough that you’ve called the father of the children of Captain Grant,” said Jules Verne with dignity. And he continued: The truth is that a group of facts, systems, and doctrines was being developed during Columbus’s era. It was time for a single intelligence to come and propound and assimilate them. All these disparate ideas came together in the mind of a single man who possessed, in the highest degree, the genius of perseverance and of audacity. “What about Providence?” asked Leon Bloy. “Where does this wretch leave Divine Providence?” But the novelist didn’t seem to hear him: Columbus had been on an Island3 . . . and possibly on Greenland. (An island, yes; but I was never in Greenland, muttered the Invisible One.) During the entire voyage, the Admiral was careful to hide from his companions the true distance they had traveled each day. “If he imagined it did any good . . .” mumbled Bloy. Until the cry of “Land” was sounded! But the true glory of Columbus was not that he reached land, but that he set sail. “Imbecile! Captain Nemo!” yelled Bloy. But now Verne’s speech became as dry and precise as that of a mathematics professor: Through this voyage, the Old World assumed responsibility for the moral and political education of the New World. But how could it rise to this task, burdened with so many narrow-minded ideas, semi-barbaric impulses, odious religious doctrines? . . . Columbus immediately began to take Indians captive, with the intention of selling them in Spain. “I call to the attention of the tribunal the fact that Columbus instituted slavery in the New World,” the Devil’s Advocate cried triumphantly. (The Invisible One felt his invisible body turn cold, as cold as the icy advocate’s in any season.) He swore that the Indians were cannibals. But the navigator did not encounter cannibals in Baracoa or anywhere else. “That’s what we wanted to get to,” the agent of Beelzebub said, bad-temperedly. “And I ask permission of the tribunal to introduce Father Bartolomé de las Casas to testify to that charge.” (“I’m screwed,” moaned the Invisible One, “now I’m really screwed.”) And he was already coming in, the bald, ascetic Jacobin, his forehead wrinkled in a frown so he looked just like one of Zurbarán’s monks, appraising the tribunal with a look both gloomy and hard. “Atrabilious megalomaniac! Trickster!” shrieked Leon Bloy, his fury at its peak. And immediately a chorus of reproaches sprang up from some others who came tumbling into the room. “Hypochondriac! Opportunist! Falsifier! Calumniator! Big bag of bile! Serpent in sandals! . . .” “You will be giving your testimony in vain!” blared one, in a voice like a bugle in a ballroom. “Absalom! Ugolino! Judas Iscariot! Scum of the earth!” shouted the rest of them. “Who are these agitators?” asked the president. “They are Objectors to the Black Legend of the Spanish conquest,” explained the chief clerk. “There are a lot of them these days . . .” “Silence! Or I will have to throw out the troublemakers,” said the president. Then, seeing that order had been restored: “What proof do we have that the Indians were cannibals? I accept what Father Bartolomé claimed: To start, I will say that the Indians belong to a superior race, as far as beauty, intelligence, and creativity . . . They fulfill Aristotle’s six essential conditions to form a perfect republic, which is sufficient unto itself (“Now he’s going to tell us that they built the Parthenon and gave us Roman Law!” Leon Bloy exclaimed.) “But did they or didn’t they eat human flesh?” asked the president. Not everywhere, although it is true that one will find instances in Mexico, but more for religious reasons than for other causes. But Herodotus, Pomponius Mela, and even Saint Jerome tell us that there were anthropophagi among the Scythians, Masagetas, and Scots. “Long live the cannibals! Long live the cannibals!” the shout went up, with Leon Bloy and the Objectors to the Black Legend crying in unison. “If there were cannibals among the Indians in America,” said the Devil’s Advocate imperturbably, “that’s twice the reason Columbus had for not bringing the Indians to Spain, because the cannibals would present a constant danger to the children playing in the public gardens. And it could have meant that some Indian would get a craving for the loins of a pretty little girl.” “I call the attention of the tribunal to the absurd allegations of the Devil’s Advocate,” said the Postulator. “Prosecutor, withdraw those ‘loins of a pretty little girl,’ “ said the president, furrowing his brow “I withdraw the loins and the pretty little girl is left with a bone,” said the Devil’s Advocate. “Now let’s see if the prosecution witness can provide us with proof that the postulant deliberately instituted slavery among the American Indians,” said the president. Suffice it to say that when Queen Isabella, who is glorious in our memory, learned that Columbus’s men were selling American slaves in the market in Seville, she flew into a rage and asked: “WHAT POWER HAS MY ADMIRAL TO GIVE AWAY MY VASSALS?’’ And she ordered that a public announcement be made in Granada and Seville that all those in Castile who were given Indians by the Admiral must return them to their place of origin in the first ships departing, or face a penalty of death. Now José Baldi asked to have a word and began to speak in dulcet tones, in a conciliatory manner: “The eminent French philosopher Saint-Bonnet . . .” “He was my teacher,” murmured Leon Bloy. “. . . in his treatise Misery, wrote, at the end of Chapter XXIX, these words, which I submit for your consideration: Slavery was a school of patience, meekness, abnegation. Only Pride prevents Grace from entering the soul, and it is Humility that removes this obstacle and opens its path. Therefore, in his wisdom, ancient man considered slavery something like a necessary school of patience and resignation, which brought the slave closer to Renouncing Satan, to the soul’s virtue, and to the moral goal of Christianity.” “Long live chains!” shouted the Devil’s Advocate. “I ask leave of the president of thi
s tribunal to remind everyone that while we don’t live in the days of Ferdinand VII of Spain, this lawsuit takes us back to the days of the Catholic kings,” said the chief clerk, waking up, and then, as soon as he had spoken, falling back into a sound sleep. “Since we are in the days of the Catholic kings,” responded the Devil’s Advocate, “all the more reason to point out that Queen Isabella, in her famous codicil of 1504, asked and then ordered her husband and his children not to consent to the molestation of the Indian inhabitants and dwellers of the Indies, in either their goods or their persons, that they be well and justly treated.” José Baldi addressed the tribunal urgently: “Just a minute . . . Just a minute . . . It’s interesting to call attention to the fact that the Catholic queen ordered her husband and his children, not the Admiral to whom she gave no instructions in this regard . . .” “Ingenious!” exclaimed the Devil’s Advocate. “Very ingenious! Almost as ingenious as Christopher Columbus’s egg!” (“He has pulled that one out already,” muttered the Invisible One.) José Baldi threw up his arms with feigned disgust. “That childish story! That nonsense! Columbus with his superhuman dignity would never have stooped to that kind of foolishness! Voltaire himself. . .” (“Oh oh, if he brings Voltaire into this, I’m burned!” moaned the Invisible One.) “. . . Voltaire himself before Washington Irving, explained that the famous Egg of Columbus was really the Egg of Brunelleschi . . .” (“So now we’ve got two of them! . . .”) “The genial architect used this sally, which was good for livening up dessert, to explain how he had conceived the design of the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore.” (“This is getting better! . . .”) “I would have to see if. . .” “Let’s not fight over one egg, more or less,” said the president, “and let’s return, please, to the question of slavery.” Father Bartolomé stood up in front of the tribunal again: I am quite certain that if he had not been prevented by the great adversities that befell him, he would very quickly have removed all the people from all the islands, because he was so determined to load them in the ships he had brought from Castile and from the Azores, so he could sell them as slaves wherever he could find acceptance. This time Leon Bloy faced the president: “You are prosecuting his intentions . . . I am quite certain . . . I am quite certain . . . How much credence can we give to the suppositions of this humbug?” “Columbus has been thrown to the beasts!” clamored the Objectors. “Savage! Barbarian!” spat out the Devil’s Advocate, laughing, and he made a fist with the thumb pointing downward. “Is there any proof that Columbus established slavery deliberately?” asked the president. “Because there is some evidence that it was his brother who was guilty of sending the Indians to Spain. Was the Grand Admiral informed of this fact?” “I should say so! Informed enough to write a letter to this fine brother of his, recommending that he overload his ships with slaves and take a fair share of the profits made by their sale.” “Who saw this letter?” asked Baldi. And the Bishop of Chiapas answered in a firm voice: I saw it, and it was his hand and his signature. “Worm! Perjurer! Imposter! Pharisee!” shouted Leon Bloy with such force that he almost split his throat and ended up out of breath. Whoever steals the fruit of another’s sweat is like a man who kills his neighbor, shouted Father Bartolomé de las Casas in a terrible voice. “Who’s quoting Marx?” asked the chief clerk, shaken out of his sound sleep. “Chapter 34 of Ecclesiastes,” declared the Bishop of Chiapas . . . “Let’s drop this, and move on to the question of the morality of the postulant,” said the president. “I ask the court’s permission to introduce the poet Alphonse Lamartine, as witness for the prosecution,” said the Devil’s Advocate. (“What kind of crap will the man who wrote Le Lac tell us about maritime matters?” grunted Leon Bloy under his breath.) Self-important in his tribunal frock coat, a lock of hair draped across his forehead, Lamartine quickly became embroiled in a long explanation, the only part of which the pained Invisible One could understand was the reference to his wicked habits and his bastard son. “That’s enough,” said the Devil’s Advocate. “Because it brings us to one of the most serious issues that we have to consider here: the Admiral’s illegitimate relations with a certain Beatriz who was—and this is public knowledge—his, I won’t say mistress or concubine or lover, so as not to insult the memory of that woman, rather, I’ll use the delicate term favored in the Spanish classics, and call her his beloved.” (At the sound of the name Beatriz, the Invisible One was visibly moved, and he made his own the strophe Dante used to express his emotion when he saw Beatrice appear on the banks of Lethe: the ice that had hardened in my heart turned into sighs and tears, flowing from my heart, forced through my eyes and mouth . . .) The Postulator, Baldi, got to his feet, asking, with an exasperated gesture, to be recognized: “What we’re dealing with here is nothing more than slinging mud at a perfectly human, but pure love . . . Yes, esteemed solicitor for the devil, stop making that sign that is only fit for a muleteer with your irreverent hand, so you can listen better to what Count Roselly de Lorgues tells us about the autumnal idyll of this great man: In spite of the fact that he was forty-some years old, a widower, poor, with a foreign accent, and gray hair, a young woman of great nobility and rare beauty chose to be his companion. Her name was Beatrix and in her were united all the virtue and refinement of a Cordoban woman. But this ray of light who came to bring a little joy to his troubled heart did not deter him for an instant from the mission he was destined to perform . . .” “Shouldn’t some violins accompany this pathetic romance?” asked the Devil’s Advocate insolently. “Settle down!” cried the president. “This young woman, a model of virtue, whom the great man loved and respected . . .” “He respected her so much he gave her a son,” Lucifer’s lawyer let loose, rather crudely. “And Columbus felt so responsible for this little peccadillo that he sought to offer some consolation for the sadness and loneliness of the widow saddled with a little Cordoban son, and that is why when Rodrigo de Triana gave the famous cry, ‘Land! Land!’ he might just as well have shouted: ‘What a romantic tangle!’. . .” “Let’s not talk about Rodrigo de Triana and the question of the ten thousand maravedis, which were better off in the hands of a young mother, than in those of any sailor, who would have gambled them away in the first tavern . . .” (“es, yes, yes . . . Let Rodrigo de Triana rest in peace, because after they finished with him they’d drag in Pinzon and my servants, Salcedo and Arroyal, who, in my absence, told the cursed Biscayan Juan de la Cosa about my secret maps, and then I’d really be beaten.”) And now the Devil’s Advocate, with a diabolical smile, brought the debate to a diabolical close with this poisonous remark: “Apparently the sons of love—by which I mean love made flesh in a bridal bed that has not been sanctified—are the object of a very special affection on the part of the parents. So that Christopher Columbus always showed a marked predilection for his illegitimate son, Don Fernando . . . But the fact that this father felt a particular love for a son conceived out of wedlock hardly makes him a fit person to assume the aureole of sainthood . . . Because if it did, there would be so many haloes lighting up the world that every night would be as bright as day” “That would be a magnificent system of public illumination,” stated the chief clerk, who had given more than one sign of mental weakness during the trial. “It would be much better than the one invented by that Yankee Edison, who, as a matter of fact, made the first electric light the same year that His Holiness Pope Pius IX died, after he introduced the first petition to canonize the Grand Admiral.” “Fiat lux!” the president said conclusively. And the images began to fade away: Bartolomé de las Casas, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Jules Verne. And the Objectors to the Black Legend of the Spanish conquest disappeared—this time without an untimely outburst. The tenuous mists, made up of phantasmagorical shapes, which obscured the Invisible One’s vision of the room, began to dissipate. And the figures of the tribunal came into focus, with the clarity of a drawing, in front of a large oil painting showing the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, pierced by arrows. The president rose: “Has the chief clerk made a record of all we have seen
and heard?” (The chief clerk answered in the affirmative, regarding the scraps of paper he had arranged, smallest to largest, on the green blotter at his place—a tiny green meadow on the red silk of the table. The acolyte made a discreet gesture, and everyone understood that he was the one who had taken it all down . . .) “After everything is said and done,” continued the president, “two major charges still stand against the postulant Columbus: the first, extremely serious, of having a mistress—all the more inexcusable when we consider that the navigator was a widower when he met the woman who gave him a child—and the second, no less serious, of having instituted and promoted an inexcusable slave trade, selling, in public markets, several hundred Indians captured in the New World . . . In view of these transgressions, this tribunal will have to make a final decision regarding whether the said Columbus, postulated for beatification, merits the great opportunity such beatification opens for him, access to canonization, which proceeds without debate.” The chief clerk’s acolyte circulated a small black urn in which each member of the tribunal placed a folded paper. The president then uncovered the urn and proceeded to the tally. “Only one vote in favor,” he said. “Therefore, the motion is denied.” Still José Baldi protested, futilely citing Roselly de Lorgues: Columbus was a saint; a saint offered by the will of the Lord where Satan was king. “Shouting will accomplish nothing,” the promoter of the Faith said with irony: “It is over.” They packed up their notebooks, folios, and bundles of paper, the president adjusted his skullcap as a breeze suddenly filtered through the room, and the Devil’s Advocate disappeared like Mephistopheles through a trap door in an opera by Gounod. His beard shaking from rage, Leon Bloy rushed to the exit, snorting: The Holy Congregation of Rites never had an inkling of the grandeur of this project. Little it cared for a providential mission! From the moment that the Cause deviated from the ordinary, instead of established fact, weighed, signed, certified, and sealed with episcopal wax, everyone became uneasy and worked to prevent that cause from progressing. And, moreover, for them . . . what kind of genius was this Christopher Columbus? Nothing but a sailor. And what has the Holy Congregation of Rites ever cared for maritime matters?4 “I’m screwed,” the Invisible One murmured, leaving his seat to head for the main door, on a path that would take him, after a long passage through corridors and galleries, outside the immense edifice-city. Before leaving the building, he cast a last look at the picture that showed the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian: “Like you, I have been pierced . . . But the arrows that have entered me were propelled, after all, from the bows of the Indians of the New World whom I tried to chain and sell.”