Against the Inquisition

by Marcos Aguinis

  If at least the men of the church would not interfere with their sabotaging scruples. If they, who have been trained in the faith, would only help facilitate our task. Oh, Sacred Virgin, how many sins your supposed servants commit, and what resistance they put up to our just activities!

  75

  The mourning over the prior’s death deepened Francisco’s insecurity. Refuge in his rat-ridden cell and his ability to continue at the University of San Marcos depended on Brother Manuel Montes, who only acted under the consent of obscure superiors who never showed their faces. When Francisco crossed the threshold of the monastery—he no longer had to use the church’s side entrance—he braced himself for a monk to stop him with disdainful eyes and inform him that the hospitality was over. Nevertheless, he kept going to class, learning alongside Brother Martín in the monastery, and practicing with his father in the hospital.

  Martín treated him with esteem. Once, as they were healing the insect bites that had almost paralyzed a monk, the mulatto pointed out that Francisco had never complained about his cell. It was usually used for penance; garbage was often buried behind its back wall.

  “I have black blood, and you, Jewish,” he explained in resignation.

  Francisco could not muster a response to this grim observation. He couldn’t think of anything relevant. Martín caressed him with his gentle gaze.

  “It is a burden the Lord placed on us to test our virtue.”

  On another occasion, they attended to an Indian overseer who’d been struck by the mysterious illness that had felled the conquistador Pizarro. His face and body were deformed by tumors that appeared out of nowhere, as large as figs. Although they broke out in all places, whether visible or private, most of them were on the face. The growths hung from his nose, forehead, chin, and ears. Some grew more than others and reached the size of an egg. They hurt, bled, and became infected.

  “This Indian overseer realizes his evil treatment of the Indians,” Martín whispered. “Now he’s promising to be good to them and not hold back their pay.”

  Francisco helped him pinch the abscesses, appease the infected edges, and cover them with pigeon droppings.

  “Some doctors believe that these would heal faster if left alone,” Francisco offered, without mentioning his father.

  “I have heard that,” Martín admitted. “But here they order us to use powders, salves, and poultices. I have no authority to challenge that.”

  “We could try.”

  “That would be disobeying.”

  “But the patients would benefit—I don’t think it would be disobedience.”

  “What else could it be?”

  Martín placed his thumbs in his mouth, licked them, and then slid them along the Indian overseer’s pustules. Saliva was a liquid full of healing properties that Jesus himself had used in his miracles.

  “Saliva should be enough,” Francisco insisted.

  Martín stared at him. “You’re tempted by disobedience, eh?”

  Later, pausing near the pharmacy, Martín said, “Careful! Don’t spoil your merits. The Lord might be more troubled by your disobedience than by the Indian overseer’s laments. Perhaps He wants him to have the salves and suffer a few more days, so that his heart may soften.”

  “Sometimes I wonder whether the Lord likes for me to be silent all the time, for me to be humiliated and afraid.”

  “Your modesty is pleasing, do not doubt that. The Lord made you be born with wretched blood so that you might recall this. He did the same with me, and it’s a privilege, if you examine it carefully. We have a mark on us that unequivocally shows the way—to be inferior, to submit. That is how He wants us to be.”

  Francisco stroked his short beard. The ways of the Lord were so very complex.

  “You have been loved by your earthly father. You have him here, close, in Callao, and you can speak with him,” Martín said. “I, on the other hand, received my father’s just contempt at an early age. He was a Spanish gentleman to whom my mother, a black African, bore two mulattoes. He did not want to recognize us, of course, and he abandoned us. His contempt made me pour my love toward the Eternal Father. From another perspective, Francisco, I have an advantage over you. Because the gentleman returned when I was eight years old, as it seemed that I’d been spoken highly of to him, and he resolved to send me to school. But then he abandoned me again. The Lord helped me, as always. I ended up becoming a barber. When I reached adulthood I felt called to the cloister, and was accepted to this order.” He placed his hand on his knee. “My destiny is straight and clear. Do I have the right to demand new signs? I’m a mulatto dog, a horrible being, and yet I have the great privilege of living in a house of God, serving His ministers, and treating His patients. I believe that the Lord has favored me more than He has you because my lowliness is recognized immediately from the color of my skin. But you also have advantages. You should learn to discover them.”

  “I’d never thought about it that way.”

  “It moves me to hear you say that. I am happy to help you.”

  “You’re a very good man, Martín.”

  “Only for the glory of the Lord.”

  “And you are pious.”

  “For the glory of the Lord.”

  76

  Potatoes, corn, cabbage, dried beef, garlic, onion, and beans boiled in the sooty cooking pot. Father and son gazed at the concoction in the relative intimacy of that home, where the walls had ears.

  Diego had had an exhausting day of work due to the arrival of a galleon whose crew had been accosted by an illness marked by hemorrhaging in the digestive system, gums, and even respiratory tracts. He was able to get dried fox lungs, considered ideal for combatting such symptoms, and had called for spiderwebs to be placed over the gums to stop the bleeding. He also ordered something even more important: a good diet, as they were consumed by starvation.

  Francisco, on the other hand, bore more unsettling news. The viceroy had visited the university, accompanied by his retinue and guards. He wanted to be informed regarding the progress of that house of study, and to pay it tribute. This last part was emphasized because the University of San Marcos was already “a jewel of the West Indies,” and “gave wings to the learned soul.”

  Joaquín del Pilar was a friendly classmate who had witnessed a past visit.

  “He warned me that I’d see the light of fireworks in broad daylight,” Francisco recounted. “According to him, this was not a threatening inspection by civil authorities, or a report on academic authorities. The main concern was not knowledge or how it is taught. There was no genuine interest in professional training or the richness of the library. It was a visit to the university that had nothing to do with the university. ‘With what, then?’ I asked. My colleague answered: ‘With putting on a spectacle.’”

  Don Diego dipped his ladle into the pot and filled two bowls with flavorful stew.

  Joaquín del Pilar was older than Francisco, and was about to undergo the tests that would earn him his degree in medicine. The theoretical exam had to be preceded by another in natural philosophy, which he had already passed. The ceremony would take place in church, in great solemnity, before the altar of Our Lady of La Antigua, patroness of academic degrees. Francisco gathered this information with a mix of hope and fear; could he—an Inquisition prisoner’s son—complete his studies, testify to the practical knowledge he was truly gaining, succeed at the test in natural philosophy, a subject he loved, and, finally, command the attention of the academic body in his graduation exam?

  “It’s another spectacle,” Joaquín assured him. “I approach it that way to keep calm about it, and also because it’s true. Listen.” He counted on his fingers. “The Acts of Faith are a spectacle, processions are another spectacle, the inauguration of the viceroy, the same, the inauguration of the archbishop, and so on. They’re all spectacles. So is the election of the university rector. As you’ve seen, that’s pure spectacle, too, because the election is followed by a speech lasting
several hours, plagued by repetitions, exaggerations, strikes of the fist for effect, promises, threats, and boundless praise.

  “I will be the protagonist of my graduation,” Joaquín added, “just as you, Francisco, will be of yours. But in reality, we are puppets of a spectacle that would have gone on without us. I’ve already told you the sequence of events. You’ll take vows before the altar of Our Lady of La Antigua. There will be a high canopy bearing the insignia of the university and the crown. The rector will sit in a high-backed, ornamented chair before the altar. You will have to call on the dean and accompany him to church, just as the mayors call on the inquisitors for the Edict of Faith. When everything is ready, the ceremony . . . sorry, I mean spectacle, the spectacle begins. They will open texts at random for you, especially those by Galen and Avicenna. You will have to read a paragraph aloud and comment on it. Demonstrate in beautiful Latin that you know it, accept it, and love it, before a public that will spend hours listening to you or waiting for you to be tricked.”

  “Spectacle—” Diego mused.

  “Didn’t you have to do the same, Papá?”

  “Yes, of course. That’s the model for graduation that is replicated everywhere. I believe it comes from Salamanca. Perhaps it would be more apt to call it representation, or”—he searched for the right word—“appearance.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because it’s like a game of cards. Some cheat others.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Pomp, lectures, ceremony—to win. To win spaces of power, Francisco. Each of those spectacles, from graduation to an Act of Faith, is the sand where the bullfighters flaunt what they have to differentiate themselves from the bulls.”

  “But in graduation, the purpose is to evaluate the future graduate.”

  “Graduation is performed to give a title, it’s true, and the Act of Faith to punish sinners. There is always a stated objective.” He refilled Francisco’s bowl. “But, as it happens, that objective is used to set paraphernalia in motion for a different, hidden end—the power of those who are, or aspire to be, on top. Not a recent graduate or a sinner. They’re hypocrites.”

  “Do they publicly adhere to Galen and accept Vesalius?”

  “For example.”

  “Or they express their nonexistent love for the viceroy, Papá. I heard that. It was incredible.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Joaquín confided in me, before the Act began, that the rector despises the viceroy.”

  “There has always been tension between viceroys and clergymen.”

  “Nevertheless, Papá, the viceroy gave a lecture full of grandiose, ridiculous poetry.”

  “They say the marquis is a poet.”

  “If he’s any good at writing verses he must have been bored.”

  “Were the viceroy’s poems so poor?”

  “Nothing but foam.”

  “A spectacle, you might wish to say.”

  Francisco frowned before saying, “Do you know who was part of the Marquis Montesclaros’s personal guard?”

  “No.”

  “Lorenzo Valdés.”

  “Your traveling companion?”

  “And the ambitious son of the captain. Amazing. We exchanged glances the whole time. He climbed the ranks fast.”

  “He must be good with weapons.”

  “The uniform suited him.”

  “Who else spoke?” Diego asked a while later, as he took the pot from the embers.

  “The master of arts, the head doctor, and Inquisitor Gaitán.”

  A shadow crossed his father’s face. “What did Gaitán say?”

  “He was brief. He exalted ethical and creative virtues.”

  “Aha! Ethical and creative virtues,” Diego said, dragging himself toward the mattress.

  His son helped him lie down. The day had depleted him.

  “Do you know what? I met your classmate’s father,” he murmured as he opened a book to settle into his bedtime reading.

  “Joaquín’s father?”

  “We prayed together, at a height of four thousand feet, in Potosí.”

  “What a surprise I’m going to give him! Is he also—was he also—Jewish?”

  “He died when Joaquín was small.”

  77

  The afternoon turned tempestuous. Father and son sought privacy on the beach. The sea was choppy, sending crests into the dark distance. Seagulls circled, indifferent to the autumn weather. It was an ideal place for confessions, as they had painfully proven a few days earlier. Both of them felt the urgent need to communicate on subjects they could not broach under the threat of denunciation.

  “The sea, nevertheless,” Diego said, “is not a favorable place for revelation. Not even when it opened before the staff of Moses.”

  Francisco listened tensely as that reference brought back memories of Ibatín.

  “Moses parted the Red Sea and the people witnessed an incredible miracle,” he added, “but the revelation took place later, in the desert and on a mountain.”

  “Deserts inspire spirituality,” Francisco noted, looking at his father. “Jesus went there, too, after His baptism.”

  “I also went to the desert,” Diego confessed.

  The young man paused in his walk. They took stock of each other, beside the sea, where revelations didn’t usually occur, and yet one was about to unfold.

  “Which desert?”

  “I mentioned it the other night. It’s at an altitude of four thousand feet. It’s a replica of Sinai.” He covered his head with his cloak, giving him the look of a prophet. “Do you know who was guiding us?”

  His son put two and two together.

  “You imagine correctly,” Diego said. “But you should know the whole history so you can understand that decisive pilgrimage.” He reached a hand out toward the horizon. “I came from Portugal, a country that could have been a pious refuge, but was instead turned into a battlefield by fanatics. I even witnessed, at an Act of Faith, the sentencing of the father of a friend, someone you know.”

  “Diego López de Lisboa?”

  His father’s face contorted. The memory still hurt like a knife in the throat.

  “We fled to Brazil. This wasn’t original on our part,” he said, forcing a smile, “because we were forbidden to travel to any destination not governed by the crown. They hated us and—a curious thing!—insisted on retaining us.”

  “To exterminate them!” Francisco deduced, using the third person to convey that he did not include himself among the Jews.

  His father raised his eyebrows. “That’s right—so you know, too. Exterminate us, as if we were insects.” He coughed. “They were drunk with hate.”

  “López de Lisboa dared tell me of his trip to Brazil, and of the disappointment you experienced when you arrived.”

  “You say it well, my son—‘he dared.’ When fear enters us, it puts down roots.”

  “He abhors his past.”

  “It’s terrible—he wants to forget.”

  “He wants to be a good Catholic.”

  His father’s brow furrowed. Was Francisco reproaching him?

  The drizzle had ceased. Light that could not fully express itself struggled through the thick, dark clouds. Brushstrokes of ochre appeared across the cinnamon-colored cliffs. They pulled their cloaks around themselves tightly.

  “I was telling you,” he said, inhaling briny air, “that I walked toward the peaks, toward proximity to God. I had powerful sensations. As I rose, my strength grew. The hard blue sky made me smile for the first time in years. I had stopped smiling in Lisbon.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “No. We were in a group. There were several whom I . . . remembered . . . in the torture chamber.”

  Francisco gulped.

  His father broke off. A wide stone beckoned him to sit. He picked up an oyster and drew something on the sand that he immediately erased with his foot. Then he drew the letter shin, the same one that gleamed on the handle of tha
t venerated Spanish key.

  “We took the pilgrimage to the desert to read the Bible,” he went on, “because it was in the desert that the word of God was received. We went there to understand that word. To study it. Love it. We were a dozen people who had been converted by force. The idea was conceived by Carlos del Pilar, your classmate’s father. You know several of my daring companions: Juan José Brizuela, José Ignacio Sevilla, Gaspar Chávez, and also Antonio Trelles, who settled in La Rioja.”

  “Most of them ended up in prison.”

  Don Diego’s brow furrowed again. Another reproach?

  “Trelles,” he said, clearing his throat, “was arrested in La Rioja, Juan José Brizuela in Chile, Gaspar Chávez you saw—he runs a prosperous business in Cuzco—and José Ignacio Sevilla has settled in Buenos Aires, or, perhaps, as he hinted during your journey, he might decide to settle in Cuzco.”

  “Papá, why did you all go to the desert? Is there something you haven’t told me yet?”

  Diego erased the letter shin and threw the oyster into a crowd of birds. Francisco feared that he might go mute again.

  “We were crushed with pain, my son.” He loosened the cloak around his neck. “Each of us carried baggage of the dead and of humiliations. The New World had not brought peace, as we had hoped it would; there were intermittent clashes with converts, with Indians, with black people, with the Dutch. In addition, the Indians clashed with each other, Catholics with each other, mestizos with Indians, and mulattoes with mestizos. The authorities executed and transgressed on the one hand and, on the other hand, acted with too much leniency. Nothing was stable. Carlos del Pilar incited us to search in the silence of the highest peaks for the light of the Lord.”

  “That was not sinful.”

  “Sinful, you say? Of course not, but some denounced it as a sign of heresy to read the sacred texts without the guidance of the church.”

  “Did you confess this to the Inquisition?”

  “Yes. But they were not satisfied. I already told you that they demanded the names of everyone who took that journey with me.”