Against the Inquisition

by Marcos Aguinis

  “First wrap them with a blanket,” he said, “so their pestilence doesn’t seep out.”

  He associated the books with the fate of Don Diego. “They filled his spirit with perverse ideas. They ruined his reason. Their pages do not transmit the word of the Lord, but, rather, the tricks of the devil.”

  Aldonza listened with close attention and hope. He was the authority who had torn her husband from her; perhaps he could also bring him back. It was he who would determine her children’s future. The scope of the harm he’d inflicted conveyed the scope of his power. Aldonza had been taught to bend in the face of power. And so she bent before the words of this monk, this commissioner, who in recent days had started to insist that his intention was to help.

  He extended his index fingers, musing, “Like this, straight, is the path of faith.”

  He stirred his fat fingers in the air. “Twisted and unstable, like this, are the digressions of heresy.”

  Aldonza hoped that her good, submissive conduct would be appreciated by the commissioner and that he would positively inform the Tribunal of Lima so that the judge might be merciful with her husband. For this reason, instead of wrapping the books with one blanket, she used two. She hated those books, and yet she touched them lovingly. Each of them had accompanied her husband for many hours.

  “They won’t leak any more pestilence,” she murmured, slamming the chest closed.

  “Nobody will read them. I never liked them.”

  Brother Isidro offered to resume lessons, as a form of distraction and solace. Diego resisted. The rest of the family was wary.

  “I’ve discussed it with Brother Bartolomé,” he explained. “There are no objections.”

  Diego got up angrily. He did not hide the repugnance on his face.

  “Brother Bartolomé will help,” the monk continued, as if he hadn’t seen, “to maintain the path of faith. He will supervise the lessons, and we’ll go over catechism each day.”

  “The straight path,” Francisco mocked, extending his index fingers.

  “If Brother Bartolomé has requested it, we’ll do it,” Aldonza decided.

  The following afternoon they sat down around the table. Brother Isidro moved from one subject to the next with the goal of raising his students’ spirits, but he failed. They were distracted, hard to engage. Then he suggested they read an edifying story from Count Lucanor.

  “Bring us that book,” he said to Felipa.

  “There are no more books in this house,” Aldonza said uneasily.

  “What?”

  “They no longer exist for us.”

  The monk scratched his wrists under his wide sleeves.

  “You didn’t know?” Felipa couldn’t hide her surprise. “Brother Bartolomé didn’t tell you?”

  “You weren’t informed by the sacred commissioner?” Diego added in a mocking tone.

  “If someone offers me money for them,” Aldonza said with fury, “I’ll sell them. I’ll sell them all. That very instant.”

  But who was going to waste money on such useless and dangerous volumes? They were locked away and destined to rot for having brought disgrace to the family.

  Francisco saw things differently. His sadness propelled him to visit the chest. It was a reunion with his father. When no one was around, he sat on the floor and gazed at it. Inside that chest there beat the heart of an immortal life. He saw it in the tenuous glow of the painted wood. Inside, mythological beings formed by letters communed with each other. Surely the corpulent Pliny was recounting part of his Naturalis Historia to sensitive Horace, and the inspired King David sang his psalms to the archpriest of Hita. His mother didn’t understand this, Brother Isidro would have been scandalized, and Diego would have made fun of him.

  Brother Urueña rattles out a prayer. Francisco watches him tenderly; what a shame that soon he’ll have to leave and he, Francisco, will be alone again in the stinking cell, bitten by the steel shackles. They had just reminisced about the few months he’d been living in the city. He had traveled south from Santiago de Chile with his wife Isabel Otáñez and his daughter Alba Elena. It was a similar trajectory to the one his family had taken from the oasis of Ibatín to luminous Córdoba just before he turned nine. His father had sensed the long arm of the Holy Office grazing the nape of his neck, just as he himself recently had.

  “The Holy Office looks after our well-being,” the monk insists. “I want to help you. We can talk for as long as we need.”

  Francisco doesn’t answer. His eyes glitter.

  “You are an erudite man. You cannot fool yourself. Something is clouding your heart. I’ve come to help you—truly.”

  Francisco waves his hands. The rusted chains clank together.

  “Tell me what’s the matter,” the Dominican encourages him. “I will try to understand.”

  For the captive, these words are a caress. The first affectionate gesture since he was torn from his home. But he decides to wait a few minutes before speaking. He knows that an intricate war has begun.

  18

  A shadow spread across the walnut table. The five students and their teacher startled at the sudden appearance of Brother Bartolomé. The class continued under his watch.

  At the end, a weary Aldonza offered the commissioner chocolate and fig pastries. Diego excused himself, gathered his things, and left. A few moments later, his sisters Isabel and Felipa did the same. The commissioner did not seem troubled; he stroked his cat and kept on smiling. Francisco preferred to stay in order to hear his mother’s conversation with the two men. He slid to the floor and pretended to focus on a map.

  “Are they still put away?” Brother Bartolomé asked between noisy sips of chocolate.

  “Yes, put away, exactly as you instructed.”

  “They are dangerous books,” he insisted, mouth full of pastry. “There are too many.”

  “My husband,” Aldonza said timidly, “used to say there were too few. That they were nothing compared to the libraries of Lima, Madrid, or Rome.”

  “Well, well!” he laughed, crumbs flying from his mouth. “Such comparisons make for absurd conclusions. We are not in Madrid, nor are we in Rome. We live in miserable lands full of sin and infidels. Nobody owns a library. It’s an eccentricity!”

  Brother Antonio Luque, that small, harsh man, had said the same thing. Aldonza lowered her eyes, still swollen from crying.

  “It is a collection that evokes other collections.” Brother Bartolomé shook the crumbs from his cassock and raised his eyebrows. “That is true. Despite everything—” He cut himself off, took another bite of pastry, and immediately swigged chocolate to wash it down.

  “Despite everything . . . ?” Brother Isidro tried to remind him of his interrupted thought.

  “Ah!” He shook off crumbs again. “I was saying that, despite everything, it is a valuable collection.”

  Aldonza blinked. Francisco looked up from the colorful map and turned toward the black-and-white mass.

  “Valuable?”

  “Yes, my child.”

  “I’ll sell it now, Father. You know that I’ll sell it.”

  “There’s no need for haste,” he said, stroking the cat’s plush fur.

  “I don’t want that library in our house anymore,” Aldonza protested. “I’m afraid that it might hurt us, might bring on more disgrace. It’s poisonous. You said so.”

  “If you sell it, you might poison whoever buys it.” He pulled the feline’s fat tail.

  Aldonza bit her lips. A lock of hair fell to her cheek. She hid it quickly beneath her black head scarf.

  “We need money, Father,” she implored. “I have to feed my family. I’m alone with four children. That’s why I suggested selling the books.”

  “We’ll find a way.” He drained the cup of chocolate, licked its inside with gusto, and placed it back on the table.

  “I can’t see the way. I can’t imagine it.” Aldonza wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “For now,
don’t mention the books to anyone. Are they hidden in a chest?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  The monk leaned his head toward her, whispering, “You have to keep them hidden until the right moment.”

  Aldonza didn’t understand what moment he was talking about.

  “The moment to sell them, or turn them over, or trade them for something, or give them away. Without their affecting anyone.”

  “We’d be better off with a few coins to show for them,” she lamented.

  “How many? Who would give you five, who ten, who twenty? Do you know how to negotiate? I will help you negotiate.” He turned suddenly to Brother Isidro. “Do you agree?”

  The monk was taken unawares, and his terrified eyes bulged from their sockets, darting everywhere. “Yes, of course!”

  The woman picked up the empty cup and carried it to the kitchen. She had to do something; this commissioner was disconcerting. In the kitchen she pinched her arms to punish herself for lack of composure, until the spiritual pain turned into the cheap tears of physical pain. It was easier to control physical pain. She returned in a better state.

  The commissioner waited for her to sit down again, then knitted his brows to share a profound revelation. “Aldonza, I have come here to comfort your soul.”

  She shrank back like a small animal before a predator.

  “I have always been a devoted Catholic—”

  “I don’t doubt it. But the Lord has decided to test you. He chooses men and women to give testimony. And each of those who are chosen should feel flattered. Don’t forget that you are an Old Christian. Your blood is free of impure ancestors.” He raked his gaze over Brother Isidro, who instantly pretended to be focused on his wooden crucifix. “God loves just people, the best people, and makes demands on them.”

  She leaned her elbows on the table and her chin on her fists. Her face was full of distress.

  Brother Bartolomé pressed on. “Don’t you understand? It’s easy: only the best can reach the extremes of fidelity and obedience. Only the best, with their suffering, augment the glory of the Lord. Sinners and the unworthy, they don’t know suffering. They even commit the blasphemy of trying to reject it. God has chosen you, my dear Aldonza. And so something has happened to you—we know what.”

  She began to tear up. Brother Bartolomé let out a long sigh, put his hands on his knees, and rose. The cat fell to the floor and walked insolently over Francisco’s map, which made him want to pull out its whiskers. Brother Isidro and Aldonza also stood up. The two priests left together, and the house sank back into emptiness.

  Francisco tries to touch kind Brother Urueña’s hand, but the chains make it a herculean effort.

  “What do you want to say?” the monk asks encouragingly.

  “A priest is prepared to keep secrets, right?”

  “That is right, my son.”

  “If someone asks you to do so are you even more obliged?”

  “The secrecy of confession is inviolable,” he says.

  “Before I confide in you,” Francisco says slowly, “I have to ask whether you will keep the secret I am going to tell you.”

  The clergyman fingers his cross. “I am a priest, and I am obliged to fulfill the commands of the Lord.”

  Francisco sighs again. Deep in his anguished soul he does not believe him. But the war presses him forward. He stretches his shackled legs, puts his hands on his chest, looks up, and starts to draw back the heavy veil.

  Brother Urueña’s mouth hangs open and his eyes grow very, very wide.

  19

  The books stayed in the trunk for six more months, untouched. Six months. Francisco counted them in the church almanac.

  One morning, Brother Bartolomé’s servant arrived to announce that, in the afternoon, the monk would be paying them a visit. Strange—he never announced his visits. But this time he was doing so because a learned man who recently arrived from Lima would be accompanying him. A beam of optimism lit up their house. Finally, they would have news of Don Diego. Of course he would be bringing them something; why else would a learned man visit the bankrupt home of an impure family?

  Later that day Brother Bartolomé, with his cat walking under his hem, made a gesture, and the esteemed learned man crossed the threshold. He paused a moment to study the courtyard, the grapevine, and the well, then searched for the way to the living room, which was usually found to the right in most homes.

  He wore a black pointed hat, fine cloth shoes, and an ample jet-black cape. Without greeting anyone or acknowledging those who were watching him expectantly, he went to the living room and sat down. His bored eyes roved across the coarse walls that once held mirrors and paintings. He did not rise to greet Aldonza, restricting himself to a movement of his head. She, in her consternation, offered to serve him something but the learned man coldly asked to be shown the books.

  “The books?”

  “Yes, the books you are selling. Brother Bartolomé told me about them.”

  The priest put his cat on his lap and, stroking his fur, made a gesture of approval. His gaze seemed to say, “Hurry up, woman, I’ve brought your buyer.” But Aldonza sought news of her husband. Had he gone to trial? Would he return soon? Her children were clustered in the doorway, also anxious.

  The gentleman scratched his neck and said that he knew nothing about her husband’s fate, and so had no information for her. Aldonza, crossing her fingers, begged him not to be upset; she wasn’t asking for information, just some kind of news. The gentleman added that he had not come to Córdoba to deliver the mail. He could only tell her—and this he said disdainfully—that word had spread in Lima about a Portuguese doctor who had been thrown into the Inquisition’s secret prisons. “That could be the same man.”

  Brother Bartolomé moved his head and thanked the man for such an important and amiable service. Then he addressed the distraught woman. “The chest of books, my child. We’re going to show them to him.”

  Diego summoned Luis, and the two of them carried in the heavy trunk. Aldonza found the key and slid it into the lock. She looked at the priest. She didn’t dare lift the lid: it was a tomb full of pestilence. Brother Bartolomé lost his patience and angrily demanded that she open it. She did so, clumsily, afraid that poison might spill out or the devil’s claw might spring up at them. The gentleman was surprised to see an earth-colored shroud. Luis and Diego pulled out the heavy bundle with both arms. Brother Bartolomé unfolded the blankets and the room lit up.

  The arrogant learned man twisted his head back and forth like a jeweler appraising a gem and reached for the closest book. He picked it up, gauged its weight, looked at its covers, and flipped through the pages. He chose another one, read a paragraph, traced a finger down its spine, reread the title, and placed it beside the pile. He picked up the next book and went through the process again.

  Brother Bartolomé relaxed. He stroked the cat and wondered whether the learned man would place more importance in the title, the author, the condition of the book, the quality of the printing, or the perversity of the paragraphs trapped inside. And he wondered, too, how much money he would offer.

  Diego returned to the group of siblings spying from the door. Silence reigned in the living room, disturbed only by the gentleman from Lima paging through the books. Aldonza stood nearby, watching uneasily. He was rummaging through her absent husband’s intimate things; it was as if his very eyes, teeth, neck, or nose were being touched. When he put down the last volume, the stranger started to separate out a few, until six were in a pile.

  “What have you decided?” asked the priest.

  The learned man stood up. “We’ll talk.”

  He bowed slightly and went to the door. Brother Bartolomé walked briskly to keep up. The learned man had six volumes under his arm. He was buying them, or so it seemed.

  The room had emptied. This was how a city must feel after an invader’s departure: fear still in the air but mixed with the happy certainty that the threat was gone. Francisco app
roached the brilliant pile. He recognized some of the books by their size and color. They breathed again. He sat beside them. He didn’t try to open them. He wanted to caress them, to caress his father. Aldonza let him do it.

  Francisco explains to the stunned Brother Urueña that he has decided to completely embrace his faith, and that, for many years, he has been practicing it in secret. This allowed him to satisfy the demands of his conscience.

  “I have the living sensation of God!” he exclaimed.

  The Dominican begs his saints to provide him with arguments to refute this heretic’s demonic elation; he has to break apart the shadows that have overtaken his soul.

  “You are saying,” the monk interjects, “that you have the lived sensation of God.”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you deny Him.”

  “Deny?”

  “You deny God. You deny Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

  Francisco Maldonado da Silva’s arms fall to his sides. The chains shake noisily.

  “This man hasn’t understood a thing.” He sighs to himself. “I’ve been speaking to a puppet.”

  20

  They never found out how much money the learned man paid for the six books; the funds weren’t for the family, but to “defray the costs of the prisoner.” They would go directly to the treasury of the Holy Office.

  Diego muttered through gritted teeth, “I want to kill him. I’ll kill him one day.”

  “Me, too,” said Francisco.

  “Boys, boys,” Aldonza begged.

  Diego clapped his brother’s back. “Let’s get out of here.” He gestured to Luis. “Bring the mule and a sack.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Francisco.