Torquemada

by Howard Fast

  The table was set for supper for the rabbi and his wife. There were two plates, a bread, some cheese and olives and onions; and as Torquemada entered the room, the rabbi who was seated at the far end of the table rose and faced him. Silently the rabbi waited, until Torquemada asked impatiently.

  “Don’t you recognize me, Rabbi Mendoza?” Torquemada threw back his cowl.

  “I know you, Prior,” Mendoza said.

  “As you know Don Alvero de Rafel.”

  To this Mendoza made no response by any sign or gesture. He simply stood at the end of the table, watching Torquemada.

  “I say that you know him,” Torquemada insisted.

  Now Mendoza pushed the chair away and walked around the table to face the Prior. “Why do you confront me with these things?” he asked Torquemada, his voice almost desperate in its enticement of reason. “If I say that I know him – what then? You will send your soldiers to seize him. You will bring him to what you call a trial in the room of the Inquisition. You will accuse him and he will deny the accusations. Then you will take him into that hellhole which you call the room of faith and you will torture him until his mind and his spirit break—”

  Flatly and without apparent emotion Torquemada replied, “All that has been done, Rabbi. Now he lies in a cell of the Inquisition.”

  Shaking her head, Señora Mendoza sat down in a chair. The rabbi closed his eyes for a moment, his face full of pain. Then he controlled himself and asked softly and carefully, “What are you, Prior Torquemada? Our sages say that we are put upon this earth to comport ourselves in terms of our fellow man. All my life I have tried to understand men like you. Where even the cruellest or the dullest peon feeds on meat and bread, you feast on suffering.”

  “Feast? Oh no, Rabbi. There is no feast when you feel every twinge of pain in yourself.”

  “Do you, sir?” Mendoza asked. “And when you stand face to face with the Almighty, will you dare to explain the torture and death you have inflicted on so many by claiming that you felt their pain? Is this the sophistry that you render your God? Really, Prior, this kind of thinking is less than worthy of you. What do you know of pain, Prior?”

  “I serve my God as he commands me, and I did not come here to argue theology with a Jew.”

  “Then why did you come here?”

  “Because Alvero de Rafel pleaded with me to bring you to him—”

  “And out of human kindness you agreed? Is that what you are trying to tell me? Am I a child? Am I a fool? Do you expect me to believe this incredible nonsense?”

  “Are you God that I must explain myself?” Torquemada exclaimed. “For twenty years Alvero de Rafel was my friend.”

  “And out of the love you bore him, you arrested him and put him on the rack of torture – and presently you will tie him to that cursed stake in your place of faith and as further proof of the love in which you hold him, you will burn him and smell the stink of his burning flesh—”

  “For his soul’s salvation!” Torquemada cried.

  Mendoza shook his head, turned away and walked across the room to where his wife sat. He put his hand upon her shoulder, sighed and said to Torquemada, “The thing we do most poorly is to hate. God help me, I pity you, Prior. All right, take me to him.”

  Now suddenly his wife rose and placed herself in front of him. “No!” she said. “No! I don’t want you to go with him!”

  “Don Alvero asked for me and I must go to him,” Rabbi Mendoza explained.

  “Not to the Inquisition,” his wife begged. She turned to Torquemada, pointing a trembling hand at him. “Look at him. You know who he is and what he is.”

  “No, my dear,” Mendoza told her patiently. “I don’t know who he is or what he is. If only I knew that, I would have some peace. Even in this hellish nightmare-time that has fallen upon Spain I would have some peace. But I don’t know who he is. I don’t know what he is. May God forgive me, I don’t know why he is. Nevertheless I must go with him.”

  The rabbi put his wife aside gently and went to the door. Torquemada followed him.

  They walked together through the streets of the town, side by side. A moon was rising and there was light enough for them to see their way. For a time they walked in silence and then Mendoza asked Torquemada whether or not he felt fear when he walked alone in the night with a rabbi and a Jew. The question contained a note of sad mockery. Yet Torquemada took the words upon their face value and replied firmly.

  “I fear only God.”

  “Yet people see us,” Mendoza continued. “Even in the darkness they will recognize you and they will recognize me. Suppose one of them should whisper to another – Torquemada Judaizes? Suppose the whisper took wings as whispers do—”

  “Only the devil would say that,” Torquemada replied.

  Mendoza nodded. “Yes, the devil. What a burden he bears! And tell me this, Prior. If one should remember that only a century ago there was a good and pious rabbi in Barcelona whose name was Torquemada? The devil remembers everything, does he not, Prior?”

  “You dare too much, Jew!” Torquemada said angrily.

  “We all dare too much, Prior,” Mendoza agreed. “It is the penalty for existence. However, we Jews do not put the same trust in the act of confession that you do. Therefore I do hot ask you to confess yourself.”

  “Ask me nothing, Jew! And keep quiet! I have no need of your talk.”

  “As you will.” Mendoza shrugged. “My talk is witless and far from entertaining, and as for Torquemada, well, let me tell you, Prior, there are a thousand men in Spain who have that name. It is a very common name. So you see that my cunning is rather childlike and entirely wasted.”

  12

  THROUGH HIS SLEEP, HIS DREAMS, HIS NIGHTMARES and his twisted pain-filled memories, Alvero heard Torquemada’s voice. He saw Torquemada’s face. His mouth burned with thirst and Torquemada held a glass of cool wine in front of him, smiling. Then the face disappeared and there was only the voice. Dry, nasal, imperious, it issued its commands. Alvero heard the voice say.

  “Give me the key and the torch. You can find your way to the door in the dark.”

  Alvero opened his eyes. Through the tiny window in the door to his cell there was a flickering flow of torchlight. Torquemada’s voice again, “Yes this is his cell.”

  A key turned in the door and it ground open. The torch entered. Alvero sat up in bed rubbing his eyes and then he saw that Torquemada stood in his cell holding a flaming pitch torch and that another man stood next to Torquemada. The light of the torch was almost blinding and at first Alvero could not face it. He closed his eyes and then opened them to slits. He rubbed them, opened them wider and forced himself to look at the dancing light of the torch. It seemed to him then that the man with Torquemada was the Rabbi Benjamin Mendoza, but of this Alvero was not sure – just as he was not sure that what he was seeing was not an illusion or a dream.

  Then the apparition that appeared to be Mendoza spoke to him and asked him whether he was in pain. Alvero managed to get to his feet and to cover the two steps that separated him from Mendoza. He touched Mendoza and convinced himself that Mendoza was real. Then he touched Torquemada. Torquemada did not move, only standing there with the hissing, burning torch, and then Alvero reached up and pushed away Torquemada’s cowl so that he could see the man’s face.

  Torquemada nodded to him. “So it is, Don Alvero,” Torquemada said.

  Then Alvero turned away and sat down once more on his bed. He looked at the rabbi for a while before he answered him. “Pain? There is pain. But I am learning to live with pain, and I think I am learning to die with pain. I thank you for coming here.”

  The rabbi nodded and Alvero asked Torquemada whether he would leave the two of them alone.

  Torquemada shook his head. “I jeopardize my soul enough by bringing the Jew to you.”

  “Then take him away,” Alvero said petulantly. “Take him away before he says anything. Whatever he says will be evidence given against himself. Then yo
u will accuse him.”

  “I will not accuse him,” Torquemada said.

  “I don’t believe you!” Alvero spat the words out with contempt.

  “I give you my word!” Torquemada cried.

  “Believe him,” Mendoza told Alvero. “Believe him, my son. He gives you his word. Do not question his word.”

  “Do you believe him?” Alvero asked.

  “I believe him – yes, I do,” Mendoza replied.

  With this Alvero leaned back against the wall for a long moment closing his eyes. When he opened them again the two men still stood there. Alvero felt very tired. “Rabbi,” he said hopelessly, “will you tell me something?”

  “Yes, my son?”

  “Am I Christian or Jew?”

  “Christian, my son.”

  “The Inquisition,” Alvero said painfully, the act of speech becoming increasingly difficult, “accused me of the heresy of Judaizing. I wore an ampule on the chain around my neck. I wore it with a cross. The ampule and the cross lay side by side upon my breast. It was my father’s. Inside it on a bit of parchment were the words: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy might. Do you know what this is, Rabbi?”

  “I know.”

  “Is it a curse?” Alvero asked.

  “No, it is not a curse.”

  “I am a Christian,” Alvero said, “yet I must die for this thing, for this cursed idiocy I must die – I wore that ampule around my neck.”

  “Why did you wear it, Don Alvero?”

  “I don’t know,” Alvero said.

  “Yet you knew the danger?”

  “I knew the danger,” Alvero agreed, looking at Torquemada. Torquemada avoided his gaze, stared straight ahead of him, a carven black figure holding a burning and sizzling torch.

  “Did you want to be a Jew?” Mendoza asked.

  “I don’t know. The notion never occurred to me. I never said to myself, Alvero de Rafel, do you want to be a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim. Why should I say such a thing to myself? I was a Christian knight of Spain. I had all that a man could desire for happiness. Tell me, why should I desire to be a Jew?”

  “I cannot answer that, Don Alvero.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you can,” Alvero agreed, “but the man who felt that way, Rabbi Mendoza, no longer exists. What exists sits before you in this cell. Look at me. Look at me – because now I say to you, Rabbi, make me a Jew!”

  Without moving, Torquemada said violently, “No!”

  The rabbi turned to Torquemada and said quietly, “Peace, Prior. Can I make him a Jew?”

  “You can and you must!” Alvero insisted.

  “Why?” Torquemada asked Alvero. “Why?”

  “So that what you are and what I am will be set apart forever!”

  “To burn in hell for all eternity?” Torquemada demanded.

  “Yes! Joyfully! Gladly!” Alvero cried fiercely.

  “Don Alvero,” Mendoza said, shaking his head. “Is it as simple as that? If God chose the Jews – and one can’t imagine why except to suffer so that we bear for eternity what the man, your Saviour, bore for a few hours on the cross – if this is truly the case it does not hold within it an invitation. We happen to be Jews – in a mystery that preoccupies us beyond solution. I cannot make you a Jew—”

  Alvero rose to his feet and standing there unsteadily pleaded his case, held out one hand to the rabbi and insisted, “But you can! You must!”

  “Listen to me, now,” Mendoza said. “Please, may I beg you, listen to me. There was a Jewish sage of blessed memory who was called the Rabbi Hillel, and to him there came a heathen who said, ‘Rabbi, make me a Jew.’ Rabbi Hillel answered, ‘I cannot make you a Jew, for only he is a Jew who knows the Law and follows it.’ Then, with great distress, the heathen answered, ‘How can I know the Law when men study it for a whole lifetime and even then do not know it?’ To which the Rabbi Hillel then replied, ‘Truly, to know the Law a lifetime is little enough, but that is in one manner of speaking. I can teach the Law to you in a single sentence. This then is the Law,’ said the Rabbi Hillel, ‘to love thy brother as thyself. That is the whole of the Law, and all the rest is commentary.’ So said the most blessed of all our sages.” The rabbi paused now, and it seemed to Alvero that he was attempting to recapture what he had just said, to contemplate it and to use it in some way – and it also seemed to Alvero that in this he failed as he said, “Do you understand me, Don Alvero?”

  “No more than you understand me,” Alvero whispered.

  “I understand you,” the rabbi said.

  “Then in the name of God – your God or my God, do what I ask!”

  “Out of hatred for him?” Mendoza inquired, pointing to Torquemada.

  “Shall I love him?” Alvero demanded. He too pointed to Torquemada now. “Look at him! Only look at him! The anointed!” The effort left Alvero exhausted. Trembling, he sank back onto his bed.

  “There is no more to do here,” Torquemada said to Mendoza. “Let us go.”

  “Don Alvero,” Mendoza said, “listen to me. Think about what I said to you. If you came to me and said, ‘Make me a man,’ then what could I say to you? What you are, God made you, and you are no more and no less—”

  “You talk in riddles,” Alvero muttered hopelessly.

  “As we all do,” Mendoza admitted.

  “Enough,” Torquemada said. He walked through the door and waited for Mendoza. When Mendoza had left the cell, Torquemada closed the door and turned the key in the lock.

  13

  AFTER TORQUEMADA HAD LEFT THE PLACE OF THEACT of Faith, the monk had continued his reading of the proclamation for the recognition of Judaizers. However, the proclamation was very long, and as the monk continued to intone the endless signs and symbols by which one could recognize Jews, the crowd began to disperse. First the children lost interest and went home to whatever suppers awaited them and to whatever piles of rags constituted their beds. Then the prostitutes drifted away because this was the beginning of their working day, the hour when the first customers would come to seek them out. Then, one by one, the thieves, the purse-snatchers, the loafers and the cut-throats departed.

  Only a single person remained as the monk finished reading, rolled up his parchment, delivered his blessing and then walked away into the darkness with the soldier of the Inquisition. This single small person left at the edge of the stone platform was wrapped from head to foot in a dark cloak. She sat upon a low stone with her back against the platform. Perhaps an hour passed and still she sat there and then a voice cried out.

  “Catherine! Are you here? Catherine! Is it you?”

  Juan Pomas came into the Place of the Act of Faith. The moon was rising now and there was enough light for him to see the small figure huddled at the edge of the platform.

  “Is it you, Catherine?”

  The cloaked figure rose and stood waiting. Juan Pomas strode over to her and then she opened her cloak and uncovered her head.

  “My God, Catherine,” Juan said. “My God – you made me sick with fear – looking everywhere for you. It is late at night. Don’t you realize that? You can’t stay here alone. This is no place to be alone. It swarms with cut-throats and thieves.”

  “Where shall I go, Juan?” she asked simply.

  “I’ll take you home.”

  “Home? Whose home will you take me to? Where is a home that will open its doors tome?”

  “Your own home,” Juan answered impatiently.

  “I have no home.”

  “You make no sense when you talk like that, Catherine. What do you mean you have no home? You don’t know how troubled your mother is. She is sick with fear – so sick with it that she had to take to her bed.”

  “Are you troubled, Juan?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Did you betray him?”

  “Catherine, what has come over you? I don’t know you any more. Sometimes you say things that I don’t understand at all. I don�
�t know what you’re saying now.”

  “You know what I am saying,” Catherine nodded. “I am asking a very simple question. Did you betray him, Juan?”

  Juan stared at her without replying. He swallowed, opened his mouth to speak, allowed the words to die unspoken and looked at her again.

  “Go away from me,” Catherine said in disgust.

  Instead he moved towards her. He reached out his hand to her arm and she shook it off, leaping back away from him. He came towards her and she stepped onto the rock where she had been sitting and from there onto the platform, crouching there and crying out at him.

  “No! Don’t touch me!”

  “You’ll wake all of Segovia shouting like that,” Juan said hoarsely.

  “Just go away from here,” she said. “That’s all, go away.”

  For a minute or so more he stood there, and then he turned round and walked off into the darkness. Catherine collapsed onto the stones of the platform. They were still warm from the sun. She curled up there on the stones, her cloak over her. She must have slept for a while. When she opened her eyes it was still night. There was no sound in the Place of the Act of Faith. The night was cool and she shivered under her cloak. She dropped off again, and a ghastly dream awakened her. In the dream she saw her father on the rack in the torture chamber of the Inquisition. He was screaming and pleading for her to release him from his pain. She woke up weeping. Dawn had come, the first pink colour of the sun over the rooftops of Segovia. The place of faith was empty, silent and abandoned.

  Catherine climbed down from the platform and walked into the streets of Segovia until she came to a common fountain. She felt terribly dry and when she reached the fountain she drank and drank. However, she was not hungry. She continued to walk then through Segovia in the opposite direction from her home.