Against the Inquisition

by Marcos Aguinis

  Only José Yaru looked healthy, despite his constant sullenness; this was his homeland and the atmosphere sat well with him. He was marching toward an encounter with himself, a progressive harmony arranging his relationship to the world. His well-being was connected to terrible deeds—as well as splendid ones—that he could not communicate to anyone.

  Francisco gazed keenly at the spectral landscape. They were closer to the heavens and, perhaps, to God. His father had come through here in his youth, escaping Portugal and Brazil. He imagined Don Diego arriving from the east, through ferocious jungles, and finding himself suddenly on this extremely arid high plateau on the road to Potosí. Even back then it was said that, in only ten years, the Spaniards had milked more precious metals out of those mountains than the Indians had in two thousand. Many thousands of Indians were buried in the mines by the system of forced labor known as mita.

  Francisco reached the boisterous streets of Potosí. Neither were the walls made of silver, nor its rooftops of gold, but there were splendid carriages, and the men and women wore colorful clothing. The rich spent some of their earnings on vainglory and stashed the bulk of it in chests. Two entertainments dominated: brothels and puppet shows. The first one was condemned by the church, the second by the Inquisition.

  Almost all the sermons were devoted to sins of the flesh. Priests insisted that Satan took delight in the bordellos. From the pulpit they glared reproachfully at the irresponsible males and at shameless women, because all of them attended church, including the brothels’ madams.

  The Inquisition, on the other hand, focused its attacks on puppeteers. It held that it was evil to make dolls talk. Weak minds would confuse inert objects with the Spirit and might end up believing in the power of a profane image. Not long before, the entire region had been shaken by a plague—the song sickness. Thousands of Indians had surrendered themselves to esoteric singing and dancing because they had heeded a call to return to the huacas, ridiculous gods of nature: lakes, mountains, stones, trees. Even worse, they had been taught that the gods no longer lived in objects, but, rather, that they sprang into the mouths of Indians and entered their innards to make them dance frenetically for days and nights. The filthy preachers said that the huacas were returning to battle Christ. The song sickness—Taki Onqoy—rattled the mountain. Expeditions had to be sent to suppress it. A large number of sorcerers, sorceresses, and chiefs were discovered to be complicit.

  But the Inquisition was not only concerned with idolatry. The puppeteers were, above all, insolent people who tried to stir laughter at the expense of dignitaries. In oblique ways they referred to the minor sins of magistrates, the bribery of a judge, the mishaps of a bailiff, or the temptations of a priest. Abhorrent! These stories weakened faith. As a consequence the Inquisition prohibited puppets, but some daring practitioners still nurtured their craft in absolute secrecy.

  Lorenzo was not about to miss out on such revelry. A good warrior needed entertainment. His virtues began with kissing the cross and bowing to the sword, but good spirits called for ass, tits, wine, and laughter. That’s what his father used to say right in front of Brother Bartolomé’s round face. Nobody could convince him otherwise. Soldiers had a tough profession and deserved thorough compensation. The pay was remitted in taverns and brothels during times of peace and with rapes when war was raging. This was a well-known, accepted fact consecrated by custom.

  He dragged Francisco with him. The bordello blended in with the houses around it, though it was lower and darker. It was at the edge of the crowded city. The green door had a knocker shaped like the head of a monster sticking out its tongue. They were led to the parlor by a mestiza and invited to sit down. There, they met men who were busy receiving the caresses of several women, all of them laughing softly and playing with each other’s hands. A mulatto woman offered small glasses of pisco. Francisco and Lorenzo began to drink. Two women approached them immediately. The pearly-skinned one gently placed her hand over Francisco’s; she was tender and intoxicating. Francisco felt a current rush through him. Damp eyes watched him from behind dark eyelashes. Her rouged cheeks were as smooth as petals. Her painted mouth murmured turbulent words. She made him drink another little cup and recognized him as a novice, a rare thing. It would be fun for her to seduce him.

  Lorenzo, on the other hand, took his companion by the waist and asked her point-blank where they could be alone. She guided him to the courtyard that led to the chambers with straw mattresses.

  Another woman approached Francisco, very fat, missing teeth, wrapped in a cloud of lavender. The young man feared that she was coming to replace the young woman who had touched his hand. The old woman smiled and her wrinkled mouth became a horrific black circle. Francisco backed away. She massaged the nape of his neck.

  “My son,” she said, to calm him, “I’m here to charge you. I want you to have a good time. You like our beautiful Babel?”

  He looked at the young woman and nodded. The fat woman extended a hand that was heavy with rings and bracelets. The young man dug into his money pouch, while the prostitute and the old madam watched him carefully. Loud laughter burst out at the opposite end of the parlor and a man in a silk doublet ran after two women who were fleeing toward the courtyard.

  “Do you want to chase me?” the girl whispered.

  “What’s that?”

  “You chase me and—when you catch me—you catch me!”

  “I catch you?”

  “Yes.” She half closed her purple eyelids in an imitation of defeat. “You do what you want with me. What you’d like to do to me.”

  Francisco stared at her, stupefied.

  “What would you like to do to me?” Babel asked.

  Francisco shrugged and smiled.

  “What would you like? Come on, tell me.” She brought her hot cheek closer. “Would you like . . . to touch my face? Would you like to touch my neck? Look.” She raised her head and stretched her snowy throat.

  He was tense. A shudder rippled through his belly. His feet were cold, his hands sweaty.

  “Would you like to put your fingers under my skirt? If you catch me, I’m yours. That’s the game.”

  “I don’t want to chase you,” he said hoarsely.

  “Caress me?”

  Francisco looked at her with mistrust, excitement, and rage. Rage against himself. She touched the back of his hand again. Her fingers made soft spirals there and then they ventured to the palm. It tickled. Francisco laughed a little. She seized the moment to place the shaking hand on her naked throat.

  “Touch,” she invited him.

  His eager hands lost themselves in the warm smoothness of petals and, as directed by the kind and charming Babel, they touched her nape and shoulders, then slipped cautiously toward the marvel of her breasts. Francisco’s head became inflamed. He had to possess, press, kiss, spill out. He clumsily embraced Babel and bit her hot plum lips. She put her hands under Francisco’s shirt and rummaged under his breeches. She confirmed that he’d ejaculated.

  They slowly let each other go. Francisco was ashamed. The dizziness that had been drowning him now loosened its grip. She tried to get up, but he held her back.

  “What do you want now?” She tidied her hair. “What do you want? Again? You’d have to pay Doña Úrsula again.”

  As if Doña Úrsula had been watching the scene, she appeared, large hand extended. Francisco did not hesitate. He was calmer now and could imitate Lorenzo.

  “Let’s go where we can be alone,” he demanded.

  Buxom Babel guided him to a small room. There, in the candlelight, he finally had full access to the vibrant body of a woman.

  As they lay on the woolen mattress she asked him about his recent virginity.

  “Are you proud of having taken my virginity?”

  “I didn’t take anything from you!” She laughed. “You’re the one who lost it, in any case.”

  “Why were you baptized Babel?”

  “It’s not my name, just my nickname.”r />
  “And how did you get such a strange nickname?”

  “I know words in many languages. I learn them immediately: Quechua, Tonocoté, Cacán.” She began to dress.

  49

  José Yaru requested permission to spend one of their two days in Potosí visiting some relatives who had come from Cuzco years before. Many Indians had been brought through persuasion or force to serve in the silver mines. Some were obliged to work through the night. Any rebels were whipped, sheared of their hair, and sent to harsh prisons, not only to return them to their underground workplace in a tamed state, but also to maintain a state of terror in the others.

  The mines devoured the workforce so that more Indians were requested from Indian overseers and other nearby communities. They were to pack their rustic clothes and a single animal skin blanket, say goodbye to their neighbors on a sad drunken night, and take the path to slavery. They were received like cattle to be examined and redistributed. The men—and vigorous boys—were pushed toward the tunnels, and the rest formed marginal neighborhoods in their tiny cabins, barely more than holes in the mountain slopes; a reserve that was occasionally visited by priests, there to teach them to be good Catholics.

  José knew the place. His feet touched the gravel that the conquerors had turned into an inferno. Not a tree, not a plant. Nothing but a few giant cacti standing like candelabras. Males were only seen on Sundays, when everyone had to attend Mass. The women glided like punished souls; they tended the few narrow corrals, ground with the mortar and pestle, and distilled the chicha corn drink. They did not look up as José passed them in the winding alley. Nothing happened nor could happen to change their destinies. They waited for their men’s fleeting returns, a joy as brief as a passing comet. The children grew against their mothers’ wills. When their muscles were ready they would join and replace their fathers in new legions of laborers for the mines to consume.

  The doors of the shacks were so low that one almost had to crawl to enter. They were protected by nothing more than a rush curtain. José separated the fibers and looked inside. The rancid smell spread through his body; he crouched against the outer wall. The small space before him, all the way to the wall of the next hut, was dotted with little black pellets of goat feces. After a while, an old woman’s head looked out. She dragged herself out of the squat hut and sat down beside the Indian. They did not speak. After several minutes she rubbed her face, which was as dark and wrinkled as a grape. José waited, ecstatic. Then she put her hand in the folds of her skirt and took out a white bundle. It was a shawl that she slowly unfolded on her knees, uncovering a few pieces of black fleece. She murmured a few words and reached under the fleece to reveal an oval-shaped stone.

  José gazed at the stone, spellbound. The sorceress turned it as though she were a priestess holding the sacred host. Then she reached back with her left hand and grabbed a bottle full of chicha. She closed one eye for better aim and poured the liquid over the stone.

  “I’ve already fed it,” she said, breaking her silence. “Now it needs chicha. Look how it drinks, how it likes it.”

  José nodded with respectful gravity.

  “I found it for you. You asked for it.” She wrapped the stone in fleece and then wrapped the whole mass back in the white shawl. “And don’t forget the requests. I fed it well—it has spoken to me.”

  They went silent. The air whistled in that miserable labyrinth. A few children dripping with snot passed them like shadows.

  “What did it tell you?” José asked after a while.

  “That the time of the huacas has arrived. The huacas are resurrecting by the thousands. They will defeat the Christians and return us to freedom.”

  The children passed again. This time they lingered for a moment, staring at the still figures leaning against the wall and at the white bundle the old woman held with both hands.

  “Did you ask them why they haven’t already won?” José pressed.

  She turned to him with an air of reproach.

  “Because they haven’t finished entering all of our bodies,” she said. “When every one of us has a huaca inside of us, we’ll be invincible.”

  “What should I do?” He gestured toward the wrapped stone with his chin.

  “Feed it with more maize and chicha.” She handed him the bundle. “Serve it. In Cuzco you will give it to the Indian chief Mateo Poma. It’s a powerful huaca and it wants to be in Poma’s body. The huaca will thank you for this service.”

  José affectionately pressed the deity and slid it under his clothes. It was the vehicle for a boundless force. The huacas were returning to restore justice in the world. José and the sorceress lingered until twilight unfolded its poncho over the hills. Many huacas slept there, and beyond those hills there were more mounds and peaks and amazing ravines. There were streams and rivers; there were tears. Each of these was a huaca. They were all descended from one of the two greats: Titicaca or Pachacámac. All the huacas had once been alive, until the Incans took power a few centuries ago, establishing the cult of the single Sun and abolishing the worship of huacas. In that remote time, were they defeated, or did they allow themselves to be so? The sorcerers said that they allowed themselves to be beaten so that the people would not be harmed. They decided to surrender to a slumber deeper than a lizard’s. They seemed dead, but they were not, as each huaca is an immortal god. The Incas failed when the sun god abandoned them. Then the white men arrived on horseback, rising to the peaks. They killed the Incas and destroyed the altars, imposing their rule and exhorting all to obey a new god called Jesus Christ. They ordered memory to be lost, for Indians to change their traditional names and take on ugly new Spanish names, and for them to bury their dead at the church instead of keeping them with corn seeds in comfortable clay pots, and for them to kneel before a doll nailed to a stick. The conquistadors turned the world upside down, bringing illnesses, killing people, offending, and raping. So much pain penetrated the slumber of the huacas that they awoke. The desolation around them stirred their rage. Each one set about resurrecting the next one to come to the aid of a people subjected to tyranny.

  Their first manifestation occurred in the region of Ayacucho, near the criminal mines of Huancavélica. Shamans possessed by visions of huacas barged into the diocese of Cuzco and Lima, describing the rituals that should be performed in the face of imminent change. They instructed the people: “Don’t believe in the god of the Christian, or in his commandments, and don’t worship the cross or any of their images, don’t enter their churches, and don’t confess to their priests.” They also ordered, “Purify yourselves with traditional fasts, don’t eat any salt or garlic, don’t copulate with your women, and only drink the feverish chicha.” They had to be strong for the great battle.

  They said, “The god of the Christians is powerful because he made Castile and the Spaniards, and because he supported Pizarro when he arrived in Cajamarca and conquered this kingdom, but the huacas were also powerful because they made this earth and made the Indians and the things that grew here, and because they were patient enough to wait in slumber until this moment in which they will battle and win.” One potent preacher was called Juan Carlos Chocne. He promised, in the name of the huacas, that “It will go well, your children will be healthy as will your crops.” And he said those who remained doubtful and submissive would “die and their heads will be on the ground and their feet to the sky. . . . Others will turn into deer, guanacos, and vicunas, and will fall from mountains.” Many huacas began to manifest in men and women who suddenly emitted falsetto sounds or growls, while others surrendered to interminable dances. Hundreds of mouths intoned songs that were not from this time, or from that of the Incas, but, rather, that came from the time in which the huacas sustained the harmony of the universe. This was the Taki Onqoy, the song sickness.

  The white men were infuriated. What seemed like another idiotic indigenous custom now threatened to become a revolt, and they denounced it with one terrible word: idolatry. For them, the
resurrection of the huacas could be reduced to a disgusting cult. They didn’t want to know about the deep feelings that were stirred. They only knew to do one thing—stamp it out! The song sickness was a plague. The Indians were not only denying the true faith but were also attempting to reclaim their pre-Incan roots. They were changed by a hope so ridiculous that it could only feed Satan. That’s when the ruthless persecution began. The ecclesiastical leader Cristóbal de Albornoz launched a merciless war, overturning sorcerers, chiefs, and preachers. Juan Chocne, along with other accused leaders, was taken to Cuzco, where they were all subjected to the torments of the rack.

  The defeated preachers stopped speaking the truth; they begged forgiveness and said that they had lied. Many were sentenced to lifelong hard labor building churches. The punishments included insults; they were feathered, shorn of their hair, and mocked in public. The repression cracked down on thousands of indigenous people, and all rites involving the cult of huacas were prohibited.

  The god of the Christians reestablished his unjust order. But not forever. José was sure that the huacas had not been defeated; they had merely starred in a first skirmish, a warning. The renewed cruelty of the tyrants would be doubly punished. Every Indian in the Viceroyalty was still “conversing” secretly with the invisible reality. Behind their trivial appearance the huacas hid a wondrous power. In the valleys and mountains, along the coast and on the high plateaus, a great battle was coming. José had had to flee the raids unleashed by the exterminators of idolatries. His trip to the south had been providential, as his family war was the war of the indigenous family of this part of the world against the usurping family that had arrived from the high seas.

  50

  Francisco’s nightmare re-created the walk of monks through the Dominican monastery in Córdoba. Santiago de La Cruz was offering him a chain with which to flog himself, but on taking his hand, Francisco saw that it was a lancet, with which he immediately opened a vein on the apoplectic Brother Bartolomé; then the shouts around him conveyed that he was dead. He felt afraid, and said, “I didn’t kill him.” The monstrous cat stared at him with its yellow eyes; it grumbled, showed its teeth, and was about to leap on him when the fat hand of Doña Úrsula massaged the back of his neck. He turned violently and woke up. Other men were sleeping around him. Coughs and wheezes echoed through the collective bedroom of the tavern, and the cold air barely curbed the smell of flatulence. The pale dawn slipped in through a skylight. The fragments of his dream still clung to him, along with images of Babel’s smooth face. He rubbed his eyes. He had to go back, to touch and possess her. He adjusted his erect member and sat up, irritated to discover his reality.