Against the Inquisition

by Marcos Aguinis

  “Not all dreams are nightmares.”

  “Do you speak of pleasurable dreams? Those are the worst ones!” His white eyes shone like metal spears.

  I held my silence.

  “Those are the worst. The devil tricks us and makes us fall into sin. Inside that shell we become slaves of temptation—and so, these friends intervene, my only friends, the only ones who know nothing of lust: bedbugs. They bite my flesh and break the shell, break my sleep. They return me to armed vigilance.”

  “They might wake you in a moment when you’re not dreaming,” I heard myself venture.

  He moved his lips irritably, searching for a response. “We are always dreaming! The devil takes advantage of our rest. When we loosen our muscles and exchange the tension of defense for relaxation, then we are trapped in that impermeable shell and corrupted. In addition, he makes us forget many of our dreams so that we won’t be able to clean off their grime. We are hurled into lust, and then wake up believing ourselves clean. When in reality, we are dirtier than pigs.”

  “Are we guilty of a sin when what happened was against our will?”

  His bony hands folded the edge of the blanket. The vertical crease between his brows deepened. “We are guilty of allowing temptation to survive in our spirit. And the devil takes advantage of this. Our fault lies in not combating it with the constancy required. We are sinners, my son. The flesh is weak.” He pressed my hand. “For this reason, you should marry soon.”

  “Thank you, Your Eminence.”

  “Priests, on the other hand, must persist in our solitary battle. The vow of chastity is not only fulfilled by abstinence, but also in forbidding women from invading our senses.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “The Lord has blessed me with blindness; at least I can no longer see them. But the devil carries them into my dreams. It’s horrible.” He broke off, frowned, and felt for my hand. “I wish to get up, Doctor. I feel ready.”

  Before I could respond, he burst out, “Women are worse than Jews and heretics!” He made a sound with his lips, and went still, wanting to hear my response.

  “Do you wish to exclude them from the world, Your Eminence?” I finished his thought with sudden unease. This man was subjecting me to a skillful investigation. Did he suspect my origins? Had he sensed my Judaism? His abrupt question about my marriage and his no-less-sudden reference to Jews had me worried.

  91

  I had seen the beautiful Isabel Otáñez at Sunday Mass. She was in the front row, beside her adoptive parents. I watched her take communion with great devotion. After the service I stood in the center aisle, where dignitaries exited with slow and solemn steps. They wore their best clothes, and their faces combined sanctified nobility with the demonic impulses of exhibitionism. She passed near me and our eyes met. Hers were the nostalgic color of honey. I followed her without realizing that I was mingling with officials. The delicacy of her figure seemed extraordinary to me. A councilman’s elbow pushed me out of the regal line so I walked toward the side chapel and tried to reach her in the street. She was surrounded by her family and several arrogant courtiers. To me, she was the most beautiful woman in Chile. I wanted to gaze into her sweet eyes again. I was as maddened as a bee near nectar, not responsible for my actions. I adjusted my shirt, cape, and hat, and smoothed my trim beard and hair. I kept fragments of her body in sight as they flashed in and out of the crowd around her, and approached decisively. Sunlight embellished the embroidery and jewels of the colorful group of women around her. A soldier barred my way so firmly that several heads turned. But fortune wished for her to look at me one more time. Her gaze was brief, but intense. Swollen with absurd hope, I walked slowly away.

  Two weeks later an armed messenger appeared at the hospital. He bore a note from Don Cristóbal de la Cerda y Sotomayor, interim governor of Chile, who had recently become my patient. He was inviting me to his residence for a social gathering. I turned the paper between my fingers incredulously. My name was clearly written, and the bulky seal identified the highest authority in the country. Even though I had begun to attend to his ailments, I intuited that this invitation was not professional in nature, but rather implied something with regard to his daughter, Isabel.

  The governor had been in the position for a few months. He had ten years of experience in government service, and his ancestors had been part of the glorious legions that had conquered the New World. He had studied jurisprudence at the University of Salamanca, where he was honored with a doctorate. Despite scarce resources, he had advanced public works—buildings for the town hall and the Royal Court, a prison, and an ample stone levee on the Mapocho River.

  I arrived at his official residence in the midafternoon. At the door, I presented the note to a group of armed soldiers, two of whom led me inside. I thought of my distant ancestors, who fearfully entered the castle of kings and caliphs only to later be elevated to the status of magnificent princes. They were tormented by fear of illegitimacy. They were commoners; they were Jews. But they offered great services; they had education and good intentions. Some, nevertheless, stirred envy and came to bad ends.

  I was guided to the parlor, in which quite a few people were gathered. As I grew accustomed to the dimness I saw a group of women at the far end.

  The governor received me with exaggerated gestures of affection, but he did not rise from his armchair, in accordance with his status or comfort. One leg rested on a flat cushion, and his fingers caressed the ends of his armrests as if they were fruits. He had recently been shaved around his fine mustache and small triangular beard. His eyes pierced like needles and missed nothing. I could feel him examining me from head to toe, calculating my assets from my style of dress and my temperament from my bearing. Then he paid attention to my words. The accounts of his wisdom were not false.

  Don Cristóbal introduced me to other guests: a toothless theologian, an infantry captain, a cross-eyed mathematician, a fat notary, and a young merchant whose face gave me chills. At the far end of the room were his wife, his radiant daughter Isabel, and a few more ladies. I focused my eyes to devour the image of Isabel and take in the melody of her eyes. The governor asked me to tell him of my studies in San Marcos. I began to speak. A servant approached with a tray of chocolate and assorted sweets. The men standing there, listening to me, concentrated their gazes on my mouth. I thought they made a grotesque ensemble, so I sipped the thick chocolate to stall and consider what to say next.

  “The University of San Marcos hierarchically organizes the queen of sciences,” I said, addressing the monstrous theologian. “The knowledge that flows from other sources must be reconciled in the great central river, which is knowledge of God. In all the years one is there, those studies are deepened and expanded.”

  The theologian moved his tongue around his empty mouth; his flaccid cheeks stretched, first one side, then the other. He spoke a few concepts in Latin, with errors in his declensions and terrible pronunciation, to show that he was not surprised. He, too, had studied at a university.

  Then I referred to the courses in mathematics. The cross-eyed man seemed enthused. He wanted to know whether emphasis was placed on algebra or on trigonometry. He had studied in Alcalá de Henares.

  “Tell us something, too, about the art of notaries. We have an illustrious figure here with us.” The governor gestured courteously at the stiff gentleman, who, on hearing himself mentioned, forced a smile and raised up his nose.

  “I have no words for that profession.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed. Don Cristóbal moved his hands in a request for help. A muffled laugh rose from the group of women. The notary squirmed in his chair and adjusted the footstool in front of him. He seemed to be preparing for a violent physical reaction.

  “What are you insinuating, Doctor!” he exclaimed in the tone of a challenge.

  “That my studies did not include a notary’s matters, nothing more.”

  The hidden laughter rose again. Then I added, “We s
tudied theology, mathematics, anatomy, astrology, chemistry, grammar, logic, herbalism. But not notary, I am sorry to say.”

  “In Santiago we still have very few professionals,” the governor said, to change the subject. “We don’t even have a library.”

  “I brought many books,” I remarked.

  They stared at me in surprise.

  “Approved by the Holy Office?” the theologian asked, in a low, confidential voice.

  “Of course,” I answered sonorously. “I bought them in Lima.” I did not say that I had inherited most of them from my father.

  “Many?” The mathematician grew even more cross-eyed.

  “Two trunks full—almost two hundred volumes.”

  “Have they been duly registered?” The notary turned up his nose even further.

  “What do you mean?” The question unsettled me.

  “I am referring to your passing through customs.”

  “All of my belongings have been monitored by customs.”

  “Of course!” the governor intervened, slapping his thigh. “And I celebrate that this city has been enriched by its first library! I am a man who loves and values culture.”

  “If Your Excellence will permit me,” the notary said, coughing, “I would like to note that this is not the first library. I have quite a few books. There are also books in the Dominican, Franciscan, and Jesuit monasteries.”

  “I have about forty,” the theologian remarked.

  “I have filled a shelf with twenty-five tomes,” the mathematician pointed out.

  “How wonderful!” the governor applauded. “In my study, I’ve only cobbled together ten or fifteen. But those are—how to put it? Collections. A library, my dear friends, consists of at least two trunks.” He winked at me.

  But his complicity made me uncomfortable. It was too much praise for someone he’d just met. It provoked envy, and I had no need to compete for this title. My books were intimate friends, not some sort of entourage to be put on display for reasons of vanity.

  The infantry captain’s name was Pedro de Valdivia.

  “The same name as the conquistador and founder,” I said in amazement.

  “I am his son.”

  I looked at him sympathetically, thinking of Lorenzo Valdés, who would surely come to resemble this man over the years.

  On the other hand, who was the merchant? I had seen him somewhere. He said that we would see each other often.

  “Why is that?”

  “I supply the hospital pharmacy.”

  “Ah!” I exclaimed in relief. “Then you must bear with my requests; the pharmacy is a desert.”

  The governor clapped again. “That’s what I like! For order and virtue to come to this mad kingdom!”

  “I am not responsible for the pharmacy, Your Excellency.” The merchant placed his hand on his chest. “I am only its supplier.”

  “I know that,” said the governor, making a calming gesture. “I only wanted to praise the attitude of Doctor Maldonado da Silva.”

  “Thank you, Your Excellency.” I glanced at the corner where the women sat. Were my possibilities with Isabel improving?

  “He has demonstrated energy, resolution! We need more of that.”

  “Your Excellency is a decisive, valiant man,” remarked Captain Pedro de Valdivia. “This is why you also value energy in others. You demonstrate this daily. Ever since you arrived among us, it is as if we have been infected with your strength.”

  “Not everybody thinks this way, my friend.”

  “There are those who think with meanness.”

  “That is true,” the theologian broke in. His toothless elocution made it difficult to understand him, as did his habit of interspersing his speech with short Latin phrases. “I praise Your Excellency’s recent ordinance as the justice of God.”

  “I admire Your Excellency,” the notary put in, “but your justice is not of God. It is secular.”

  “Of God!” the old man shouted. “The ordinance against the servitude of Indians is like a jubilee.”

  “Explain yourself,” the mathematician said. “I do not connect the ordinance with God, and it doesn’t sound like a jubilee to me. Is it correct to use the word ‘jubilee’ to understand this ordinance?”

  An irrepressible impulse set my tongue in motion. “Let us recall what a jubilee is,” I said. “It is the divine mandate to reestablish the original conditions of the universe. Leviticus says, ‘You will count seven weeks of years, a length of time equivalent to forty-nine years. You will declare the fiftieth year sacred and proclaim freedom for all the residents of Earth. That will be, for you, the year of jubilee. Each will reclaim his property, each will rejoin his clan.’”

  The theologian shivered.

  “A powerful memory!” Don Cristóbal reveled.

  “It is the jubilee of indigenous people! Do you realize?” the theologian crowed. “I am right.”

  I regretted having spoken more than necessary. A reputation for carrying the Bible in my head would not keep me safe. Excess love for the Bible raised suspicion. Other virtues sufficed to be considered a good Catholic. My father had insisted that I be careful.

  “My ordinance regarding the servitude of Indians is not exactly a jubilee,” the governor clarified. “It attempts to abolish the personal service that has so often been condemned by the kings of Spain and by the church. But I will be honest with you, do not be afraid. I sense that it will fail. I am a man of the law, and I recognize that an abyss exists between word and deed.”

  “Why so much pessimism?”

  “We wipe our asses with the law here—begging the pardon of the ladies present.”

  The theologian tried to soften the harsh remark by citing, incorrectly, a maxim against the skeptical philosophy of Zeno.

  In the shadowy corner, Isabel Otáñez held a sewing basket as her eyes flowed toward me. I wanted to commit the mad act of going right to her side, to bow deeply and kiss her hand. God restrained me.

  When we rose, the silent merchant sidled up to my ear and whispered his name. I was paralyzed. I stared at his severe face, known and unknown at the same time. Almost twenty years had passed.

  “I am Marcos Brizuela, of Córdoba,” he had said.

  Francisco is almost asleep with the heavy shackles on his wrists and ankles when he is startled by the sudden clash of iron. A key turns, the outer bolt slides back, and the door creaks. A hooded figure appears. It is a well-known examiner of the Holy Office, Alonso de Almeida, illuminating himself with a three-pronged candelabra. Francisco knows this man. He is about forty years old, intelligent, and energetic.

  At last, the awaited combat will begin.

  92

  It was still light when we went out to the spacious Plaza de Armas. In front of it loomed the Cathedral of Three Naves. The crests of Santa Lucía Hill grazed the garnet clouds. A couple of nuns hurried past, headed back to their convent. Marcos Brizuela was sullen; almost nothing remained of the tender, expressive boy I had met in Córdoba. We touched on that brief and long-past encounter, and he asked, disinterestedly, as if for the sake of having something to say, about the hiding place behind the house that he had bequeathed to me. I recalled its entrance hidden by thick roots, the warm darkness, and the many hours of solace and fantasy it had provided me. I said that I could never thank him enough for it. He made no comment. Clearly, he was bitter about something.

  “We could have run into each other earlier,” I lamented. “Santiago is a small city.”

  “I knew of your arrival,” he answered, to my surprise. “I’m on the town council.”

  “They made you a councilman?”

  He raised the brim of his hat and looked at me coldly. “I bought the position.”

  “Is that better than being elected?”

  “Neither better, nor worse. If you buy it, you have money. If you have money, you’re respectable.”

  “What merchandise do you work with, Marcos?”

  “All kinds.”


  I glanced at him questioningly.

  “Food, furniture, animals, slaves, belongings.”

  “Are you doing well?”

  “I can’t complain.”

  We walked. When we were boys we had gotten along. Now we were separated by suspicions. I could not recall having inflicted any damage on him, but he behaved as if I were guilty of something. At the corner, I told him that I needed to make my last rounds with patients for the evening.

  “I voted for the endowment of your hospital to be improved,” he remarked. Was that a reproach?

  “Thank you. We lack many things. It’s difficult to work without minimal resources.”

  “I also called for the general attorney to be sanctioned over the matter of your salary,” he added, in the same cold tone.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The council placed him in charge of negotiating with citizens regarding their contributions to your salary. That scoundrel made two accounts: a tidy one to show, and a second one to keep hidden. He meant to keep two thirds of your pay.”

  “What did he say when you uncovered the scheme?”

  “What did he say? He offered me half.”

  “Thief!”

  “A functionary, nothing more.”

  We arrived at the place where we were to separate, only steps away from the rustic door of the hospital, a lamp already lit just beside it. Our faces blurred in the sooty darkness.

  “I’d like to see you again,” I said. “We have things to talk about.”

  His jaw clenched.

  “I only just learned that you live in Santiago,” I added.

  “I have to confess, Francisco, that I’d rather avoid you.”

  I was going to ask him why, though I already suspected the reason. It was horrible.

  I turned to the left and bypassed the hospital door, to give myself time to digest the blow. I passed the church of Santo Domingo, then La Merced, and the Jesuit college. The twilight rebuilt the shadows of that marvelous hiding place Marcos had given me.