Against the Inquisition

by Marcos Aguinis

  “Enough! I will interrogate him!”

  “Interrogate?” The captain dragged Luis to a pillar and tied him to it. He unhooked the riding crop from his belt and began to whip him.

  “One!” he roared.

  Luis collapsed against the pillar. A red stripe glowed on his back.

  “Two!”

  “Let me interrogate him!” the monk insisted.

  “Three! So that he tells the truth.”

  “Don’t hit him!” Aldonza begged, hands clasped as if in prayer.

  “Four!”

  “Stop, that’s enough!” the monk implored. “He will tell the truth.”

  “So he tells it quickly—five!”

  “Stop, stop!” Felipa screamed, covering her ears.

  Luis fell against the pillar and lay in an unnatural position. Drops of blood grew on his back. He was a curled-up ball of pain.

  Brother Bartolomé asked Francisco to bring him a chair. He was ready to start the interrogation. An inquisitor should always be seated. “What’s the point of sitting there,” the boy thought, “when it’s more logical to untie poor Luis and interrogate him in the living room.” But the priest had his reasons: he considered it effective to ask questions right there, without freeing him from the pillar or untying his hands, without letting his body unfurl from that crushed position to which he had been reduced by blows. Francisco brought out the chair. He was in obvious distress. The monk leaned close to the bruised head and whispered the prescription of a ritual. He interrogated him in a low voice, almost in the mode of confession. Luis moaned and said, over and over, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  Catalina stood trembling behind Aldonza. She held a washbowl full of warm water and healing herbs. She wanted to devour time so she could reach her husband’s side and ease his suffering. Brother Bartolomé sighed, his face ruddy, eyes violet. He turned to Valdés with a look of defeat.

  “I think he must have taken the instruments with him.”

  “Who? Núñez da Silva?”

  He nodded and, with great effort, rose to his feet. He adjusted the folds of his robe and told Diego to untie the slave.

  “You believe he took them to Lima, then?” the captain asked incredulously.

  “That’s how it seems.” He scratched the bulky nape of his neck. “But—how could we not have noticed? Why didn’t he tell us?”

  “Why?” the captain exclaimed. “To shit on us!”

  Catalina kneeled and with infinite love began washing the blood from Luis’s head and torso. Then she rubbed salve on the wounds. Felipa and Isabel approached, in solidarity, full of emotion. Luis moaned, eyes half-closed. Francisco caressed his strong arm. Luis gave him a sad smile of gratitude. They picked him up and, together, carried him to his room at the back of the house. He lay down on a hay mattress. His back was a dark page crossed with purple lines.

  Francisco wanted to offer him some additional reparation for such an unjust punishment. He went in search of a tray, one of the few still left after the Inquisition’s thorough pillage. He filled it with fruits and returned to the small room. He squatted down and showed it to Luis, who teared up again, mumbling, “Just like for the doctor.”

  “Yes, Luis. Just like we did for Papá. He liked for me to serve him this when he came home from work.”

  “He liked it—” he confirmed hoarsely.

  After a while, he asked about “them.” Francisco assured him that the house was now free, for the moment, of the elephantine monk and the violent captain.

  Brother Urueña rises, exhausted.

  “Son.” He joins his hands imploringly. “Do not allow yourself to be dragged away by the devil. Do not let yourself be tricked by his devious arguments. I beg you, for your own good.” The monk’s mouth has gone dry.

  “I only listened to God, and to my conscience.”

  “I have come to console you. But, above all, I have come to offer my help. Do not cling to your own deafness,” he insists. He is pale and hoarse. He pulls the chair back and moves toward the door. He asks for it to be opened.

  Francisco’s brow furrows. “Don’t forget your promise.”

  The clergyman blinks, bewildered.

  “You promised to keep my words a secret,” Francisco reminds him.

  Brother Urueña lifts an arm and makes the sign of the cross. The door creaks, a servant removes the chairs, a soldier takes the lamp away.

  22

  Brother Bartolomé had said that he would personally oversee the education of the Núñez da Silva girls. To “oversee” meant to impose his own will.

  He came in the afternoons to talk to Aldonza, sitting in the half-empty living room. He savored her chocolate and fruit pastries. Catalina had to obtain the ingredients from some neighbor or another, especially the flour.

  “How can he enter that room?” Francisco thought with uncontrollable hatred. “He himself ordered the removal of the mirrors and icons, the cushions and armchairs, and for the chests and candelabra to be sold.”

  “What does he want to take from us now?” Diego murmured each time he saw the monk enter their house with his huge cat.

  Aldonza was deteriorating. She could endure great physical suffering, but she could not bear such profound moral subjugation. Her husband had been torn from her; before their betrothal he had told her that he was a New Christian, but he had never confessed to practicing Judaism. Was it true? If he had committed heresy, how should she behave now as his wife and as a Catholic mother?

  When Brother Bartolomé came to call, Diego would immediately flee, as the man’s presence repulsed him. Francisco, on the other hand, did the opposite: he tried to approach. In this fat, friendly, and severe commissioner there was something mysterious that Francisco had to discover. At the very least, he was the one who could best inform him about his father’s fate. Because, in Córdoba, from the bishops on down, the only response ever uttered on this matter was “I don’t know.” His father had been taken to Lima to await trial. But for how long? “I don’t know, I don’t know.” The commissioner could not say, “I don’t know”; he was the commissioner.

  The monk would enter with his belly swaying and his white ball of a cat at his side. Aldonza, as always, offered him something to eat as proof of her submissiveness. With his thick fingers he broke off pieces of fruit pastries, then threw his head back as he stuffed them into his mouth so as not to lose a crumb, sucking the ends of his fingers. He would immediately drink chocolate, as he liked to mix the pastry and the liquid on his tongue. His cheeks would puff intermittently as though he were practicing his swigs. Snorts of pleasure escaped him as he chewed and swallowed. His robe stank of sweat, and his cat of urine.

  When he finished, Aldonza would offer him another round.

  “Later,” he would sometimes say, suppressing a punctual burp.

  Then came a monologue on his favorite topics: food and faith. Completely oblivious to the privations she suffered, he told the anguished woman about outlandish combinations of meats, sauces, vegetables, and spices. Meanwhile, Francisco kept his ears open as he traced shapes on the ground.

  Why did he come so often? A few days earlier, Diego had said, “To plunder us.”

  “To eat,” Felipa said, indignant.

  “I come to prevent the resurgence of heresy in this house,” said Brother Bartolomé that afternoon, emphatically, as if he had gotten wind of the insults spoken in his absence.

  Aldonza stared at him with zealous hope, making herself believe his every word.

  “Do you suppose, my child, that it did not hurt me to take him away?” he asked, without mentioning Don Diego’s name. “Do you believe that it didn’t affect me to send him to another city in chains? Did I not suffer when I had to confiscate some possessions?” He leaned back on the creaking chair and placed his huge hands on his round belly. “I did it for Christ. I suffered as I did it, my child, but I did it with firm conviction.”

  Francisco almost retched when his nose inadvertently touched the
robe and grazed the cat. The animal did not flinch. The commissioner’s hand descended to the boy’s bronze hair and gently rubbed his scalp. This had a somnolent effect. He understood why the cat was always dozing. But Francisco did not want to sleep; he wanted to accost the man with questions. He would do so that very afternoon. And, as he waited for the right moment like a stalking beast, he learned about his sisters’ fate.

  “Do you see, my child?” the monk repeated. “It is what’s best for them, for you, and for all of you.”

  “Where will I get the dowry, Father?”

  “We shall see, we shall see. But first things first: Have you decided?”

  Aldonza twisted her fingers. Brother Bartolomé leaned forward and irreverently patted her knees, while his left hand kept on stroking Francisco’s hair. There was something in that gesture, an excessive confidence, that scared the boy.

  “Remember that danger looms over them,” he added. “Their father is being prosecuted by the Inquisition, and—”

  “What will they do to Papá?” Francisco burst out, pulling away from the hypnotic hand.

  The monk froze: his fingers, tongue, breath. Only his eyes moved, searching for the boy in surprise.

  “What will they do to Papá?”

  The man crossed his fingers over his mountainous chest.

  “I will explain it to you another time. Now I am speaking with your mother.”

  “But—”

  “Go, Francisco. Go and play,” Aldonza begged.

  “I want to know.”

  “Another time.” The monk now spoke with a caveman’s tone.

  “Go, Francisco.”

  The boy lowered his head. He was glued to the floor. This time, he would not obey.

  “Fine,” the monk said. “He may stay, but he must not interrupt.”

  Brother Bartolomé touched the feline with the tip of his shoe. The animal opened its golden eyes and, with a single leap, settled on the man’s warm lap. He stroked him lavishly; all of his tactile love was now for the cat.

  “Do you understand?” he continued, addressing Aldonza. “Your daughters are in danger. Let us use the word ‘danger,’ as it is the correct one. However devoted they may be, however pure your own blood, they bear the contamination of a Jew. That is not the case for you; nobody questions your legitimacy as an Old Christian. But the children you created with him—yes, they are questionable.”

  “Where will I get the dowry?” she asked again, full of anguish.

  “The other danger is that, exactly—that of poverty. What can you do with these girls if you barely have enough money to subsist?”

  “Oh God, God—”

  “And the third danger—why emphasize this!—is the temptation of the flesh.”

  The woman crushed and ground her rosary.

  “All right, I have decided!” she exclaimed. “But—what about the dowry?”

  “We will begin to speak of that tomorrow. For today, it is enough to have made a decision. It is a good decision, worthy of a good mother.”

  He rose, making the universe creak, as was his custom. Francisco clung to his black robe.

  “Tell me about Papá.”

  “What do you want to know? There is nothing to tell—not yet.”

  “What are they doing to him?”

  “What do you think they are doing?”

  “Nobody tells me, no one explains. Why hasn’t he come home? When will he be back?”

  The monk gazed at him with unexpected tenderness and leaned his heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Your father has committed heresy. Do you know what that is?”

  He shook his head.

  “Your father has betrayed the true faith, and has exchanged it for the dead Law of Moses. Do you know what the dead Law of Moses is?”

  He shook his head again. The hand was hurting his shoulder.

  “Better for you not to know. Better that you never know! And that you never stray from the righteous path,” he sighed.

  “But—but what will they do to him?”

  He stroked his double chin and took a deep breath. “They will try to make him return to the true faith. That is what they will do.”

  He walked to the door. Aldonza followed him like a soul doing penance. Francisco ran to his side, tripping over the cat and stepping on its tail.

  “He will return!” Francisco shouted with the falsetto that broke through whenever he was on the brink of tears. “He will return here and he will return to the true faith! I’m sure of it!”

  Aldonza crossed herself.

  “He will return!” he called out over and over, pulling on Brother Bartolomé’s robe.

  The monk picked up his cat and murmured, “That—only the Lord can know.”

  Francisco stamped his feet briefly and then ran to the back door, toward his impregnable hiding place.

  The notary Marcos Antonio Aguilar unrolls a sheet of parchment and dips his quill, while the commissioner, Martín de Salvatierra, listens closely. Brother Urueña fulfills his duty by testifying to his terrible conversation with Doctor Francisco Maldonado da Silva, word for word. While he may have failed in his goal of reforming the prisoner, he can offer the Holy Office an accumulation of horrific facts and conclude that the man is a most persistent rebel.

  23

  The prolonged sobs of a dog in the night would not have had any special significance if Aldonza hadn’t linked them to the sudden deflowering of their peach tree. “This portends misfortune.” Her children tried to minimize the drama of it; the dog was from the neighborhood, and had been stepped on by a horse.

  “It portends misfortune,” Aldonza insisted, standing in the sea of pink surrounding the bare fruit tree. A brief spring gust had torn off all its petals.

  Francisco thought that the only misfortune this could prophesy was his father’s death. Diego asked Aldonza to move away from the peach tree. She raised her darkened gaze and said that she was tormented by a horrible premonition.

  “You should leave, my son—although it hurts me to my soul, you are the one who should go far from Córdoba as soon as possible.”

  Diego’s mouth twisted. “Leave?”

  “Yes, before we come to regret your not doing so.”

  “I don’t understand. Where would I go? When?”

  She reached out her trembling arms and embraced him like a small child.

  Diego thought that suffering might teach one how to see the future. His mother had reasons to worry, even if she didn’t know the whole truth. Perhaps he should go to La Rioja, near the Andes, for a few months.

  Brother Isidro arrived unexpectedly. Aldonza was alarmed, thinking that he, too, must have had the premonitions, but he said no; he had felt the need to visit them simply because he missed them, and because he knew they were sad.

  That afternoon, Brother Bartolomé came to the house. Aldonza received him with her customary gestures of submissive obedience. In a few minutes, the monk’s fingers were pinching pastry and his voracious lips were slurping chocolate. She mentioned her awful feeling. The commissioner said that he hadn’t heard any dog’s prolonged sobbing, and he was not at all concerned with superstitions over a blossoming tree. However, he did ask to speak with Diego. Aldonza dropped the tray that held the rest of the pastries.

  “Diego?”

  Francisco was tracing another map at the priest’s feet; he offered to go find his brother. He searched the courtyard, looked in the garden, and asked the servants. Diego was nowhere to be found. “How lucky,” he thought.

  “He’s not here,” he told the commissioner.

  Aldonza had already begun to pinch her rosary. Brother Isidro gritted his teeth, caressed his crucifix, and said to himself, “Thank you, Lord, for saving him.”

  Brother Bartolomé’s mood changed. His round figure no longer expressed goodwill, but uneasiness.

  “If he flees, it will only make things worse,” he murmured.

  The woman seemed about to fall to her knees. She mana
ged to stutter, “Flee? Why would he flee?”

  “Captain Valdés is waiting on the street.” The commissioner pointed toward the front door. “If he doesn’t appear immediately he will be taken by force.”

  Aldonza burst into tears and Francisco ran to the back. Captain Valdés and a couple of assistants marched into the courtyard and stationed themselves before the doors. The atmosphere from a year ago, when Don Diego was arrested, had been brusquely re-created.

  Brother Bartolomé became extremely severe, the captain overbearing, and the family terrified. Behind the henchmen, the lugubrious familiars of the Holy Office appeared; they had been informed and invited to witness the edifying task. The only ones who hadn’t been apprised were the prisoner and his family. Just like one year earlier. The Holy Office made a cult, an exercise, out of secrecy. They did the same with insensitivity, when purity of faith was at stake. Aldonza’s despair didn’t matter. She fell to the ground and clung to the commissioner’s sandals. They were unmoved by the absence of the head of the family or the ruined state of this home. They went through the rooms in search of Diego. They pulled off the tablecloth to inspect under the table, opened the few trunks that remained, dragged aside beds bereft of mattresses, and scoured the servants’ quarters. Finally they found him in the corral, from which he had been trying to escape next door. A fierce struggle broke out. The accused refused to submit and shouted at them to let him go. Four men dragged him to the first courtyard, where Brother Bartolomé awaited. Diego was shaking like a ship at sea. He fought his captors every way he could, but did not escape. The captain put a dagger to his neck.

  “You’ll behave decently, you stinking Marrano!”

  The young man became still. They let him go. He straightened up, pushed his hair back from his face, and pulled at his ripped shirt.

  “Come closer,” Brother Bartolomé ordered from his chair.

  Diego looked around him. He took two slow steps forward. Then lightning struck—he pushed one of the familiars of the Holy Office against Captain Valdés, kicked a henchman’s shinbone, and disappeared down the street. He mounted a horse and flew off at a gallop. By the time they ran out after him, nothing was left but a cloud of dust. The soldiers crashed into each other, searching for their mounts, and chaotically prepared to pursue him. Helmets clanged; the men cursed. “That reptile will pay for this,” the captain kept saying.