Against the Inquisition

by Marcos Aguinis

  In our home, after reciting the Songs, I gazed at my beloved’s profile in the twilight. She had fallen asleep, and a strand of hair rose and fell rhythmically on her breath. Her tender body stirred me. Her mere presence spilled optimism into my life. Thinking of her, of us, I went back through the books of Ruth, Judith, and Esther. “With her, I’ll build the family that, in time, will repair what I’ve lost,” I thought to myself. “I’ll have children, and enjoy unconditional surroundings.”

  The wedding ceremony had taken place with the austerity demanded by our circumstances. Isabel was a devoted Christian, and I duly respected her sentiments. She knew nothing of my Judaism, and it was essential that she never find out. There was not the slightest option of burdening her with my secret identity. This asymmetry was, of course, ethically objectionable.

  But, as Marcos put it, the alternative had not arrived. To maintain a certain amount of freedom—how ironic!—I had to chain my freedom; I had to concede to Don Cristóbal, be wary of Brother Ureta, and hide from my own wife.

  I was following in my father’s footsteps, but I was determined not to be defeated as he had been. It was a challenge worthy of a cyclops. Or of a reckless man.

  101

  Felipa and Isabel wrote to me again. They had considered my proposal regarding coming to Chile, and, after seeking advice, they had agreed to travel. And they allowed a heartrending phrase to leak onto the page: they missed me! They expressed their congratulations for my marriage and sent their affection to my splendid wife.

  In another letter, which arrived shortly thereafter, they told me that they’d begun to plan their departure. Isabel had to settle some debts and sell a few possessions that had belonged to her deceased husband. Her young daughter, Ana, was leaping with joy at the thought of crossing the highest mountains in the world and meeting her Uncle Francisco.

  Toward the end of the letter they added that they had succeeded in purchasing Catalina, who, using her one healthy eye, still made clothes very white when she cleaned them and prepared stew just as she had in their youth. They would bring her to Chile. Luis, on the other hand, had passed away after being arrested for another escape attempt; he’d been accused of witchcraft and sentenced to two hundred lashes. He died in a pool of blood.

  I put down the letter on the table and sank my head into my hands. That noble, magnificent man had never resigned himself to enslavement. I wept for him, for his repressed grandeur. I recalled his swaying gait, his ivory laugh, his courage, his suffering. They had killed him as though he were a mangy dog, when in fact he was the son of a tribal doctor, and himself a marvelous being. Those tormentors considered themselves guardians of the law and made out their poor victims as dangers to society. The prevailing order was in fact a disorder that roared with immorality. The death of Luis, relayed by my sisters as a humdrum fact, made me tremble. It inflamed me. But—against what? Against whom?

  I said the Hebrew prayer for the dead. The sonorous cadences of the Kaddish could represent the forest winds of his childhood. He had not been a Christian, or a Jew. He had believed in gods who would not be irritated by my Kaddish. It was true to his roots.

  “Be careful what you say!” Alonso de Almeida exclaims in horror. “You are speaking to an examiner from the Holy Office. In the name of God and the Virgin! I am obliged to repeat everything you tell me, word for word. Snap out of your diabolical trance! Put an end to this madness, for your own good!”

  “I am not mad.”

  “Listen.” His voice grows tender. “The Holy Office is waiting for you to repent and ask for mercy, and will be lenient with you. It will grant you clemency, I assure you, because you are in a place of God.”

  “Of God?” Francisco leans his head against the wall. “There is only one God, and He is merciful, to be sure. But I cannot accept the idea that He has delegated His place, or His power. It makes no sense whatsoever. Now that is what I call madness!”

  102

  Marcos Brizuela appeared at the hospital. He was checking on a silversmith who’d been injured in a quarrel. The smith was a highly skilled mestizo who had made him beautiful items. Marcos told me that it would be a shame for him to become disabled, as the city would be deprived of a great artist. I heard out this story and guided my friend to the nurse, who was moved to tears; his visit was an honor, a form of recognition. Marcos gave the nurse a bulky pouch.

  “Let him want for no food or medicine,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir, thank you.”

  Afterward, we walked as I escorted him out.

  “The stitches are progressing well, for now,” I remarked. “There are no signs of infection.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it. The man has a good soul, and exceptional talent.”

  “I’d like to see the wonders he creates.”

  He drew me to a solitary corner and glanced around him. “I’ll show them to you the day after tomorrow, in the evening, Francisco,” he whispered. “In fact, I came to invite you.”

  “The day after tomorrow?”

  “You’ll come alone, Francisco. And you’ll enter as discreetly as possible.”

  “To see the silver—”

  “To do something more important.”

  I stared at him.

  “To celebrate Pesach.”

  I pressed his hands, a shudder running from my body to his. We were bound by fraternal emotion and knowledge that we could share in the celebration known as pascua judía, or “Jewish Easter.”

  “Pesach,” I murmured.

  That night, I opened the Book of Exodus and read it from beginning to end. It was not spring, as it was in the northern hemisphere, but fall. The placid air bore the scent of ripe fruit. A cautious coolness flowed in through the open window.

  On the night of Pesach I put on clean clothes, without taking the precaution of wrinkling them as it was not Saturday, and I took my black cloak out of its trunk. I told Isabel that my obligations would delay my return. I kissed her mouth, and her carmine-flushed cheeks. How I longed to share this old, ever-relevant festivity with her!

  On the street, fallen leaves crackled under my cautious steps. I wrapped myself in my silky cloak and took the necessary detours. I approached Marcos’s house on the sidewalk across the street. When I was absolutely sure that no one could see me, I crossed the road. I did not use the knocker, only grazed my knuckles against the wood. The shutter over the peephole opened slightly. I recognized the slave who served as messenger.

  I spoke the password: “Sauté.”

  The door opened just enough to let me slide inside. The courtyard was dark, barely lit by a lamp that hung among the colonnades. The parlor was also dim; one candelabra bearing three candles allowed me to make out the furniture. It gave the impression of a house whose residents had gone to bed. The enslaved man offered me a chair and disappeared, leaving me alone. The music of cicadas ebbed in from the courtyard. I waited anxiously. The mother-of-pearl inlay in dozens of small bureau drawers glimmered tenderly. Beside my oak chair I made out a lectern with an open book on it, surely brought in from a Spanish monastery. I stretched out my legs over the ceramic floor.

  After some time the dining room door opened. Marcos’s head seemed to float over the lights of the candelabra and he asked me to follow him. We entered a solitary enclosure in which I could just barely see tall chairs around a table. We moved through a double door—was this his deceased mother’s bedroom? I was disoriented.

  No sign of people. Then he illuminated the ground, and, with the tip of his shoe, lifted the edge of a black wool rug, which had, sewn to its underside, a cord whose other end disappeared between the floorboards. An iron ring appeared. Marcos handed me the candlestick, pulled hard on the ring, and uncovered a narrow stone staircase that led into the dark depths. He gestured for me to descend. He followed behind me, closed the trapdoor, and pulled on the cord that would pull the rug back over us. The candlelight gleamed on the bottles and pitchers in the wine cellar around us. The place was cool and wel
coming. I was intoxicated by the scent of wine. He leaned his hands on a shelf and pressed until it emitted a creak, then he pushed with his left hand and a row of bottles began to turn. Light poured out of the hidden alcove. I was stunned.

  On a table draped with a tablecloth, a large bronze candelabra burned. Around it, a few people stood, among them Dolores Segovia, Marcos’s wife.

  I took them all in with a glance. My heart raced. Next to Dolores stood the cross-eyed mathematician whom I’d met at Don Cristóbal’s house. He was speaking to a man with an ash-colored beard, dressed in a white tunic and gray belt. He held a tall staff and had the look of a hermit. I’d never seen him before. The last member of this clandestine gathering forced me to rub my eyes. He was watching me from his inscrutable corpulence with a soft, friendly smile: it was the ecclesiastical inspector Juan Bautista Ureta. My brain exploded; so he was a Jew, too!

  Marcos closed the secret door. The hermit extended his arm around the circle; he was at the head of the table, and was inviting us to take our seats. The chairs were supplied with thick cushions.

  Marcos placed a deck of cards on the table, saying, “We can begin.”

  “The cards will remain here all night,” the stranger explained. “Better for us to be accused of playing illegally than of celebrating the Easter of Unleavened Bread.”

  “They won’t discover us,” Ureta reassured him. “This place is impregnable.”

  Dolores reached under the table and pulled out a silver platter. It was heavy, both because of its metal and the various items carefully arranged on its surface. She raised it to eye level and then placed it reverently at the head of the table. It bore slices of unleavened bread, a piece of roasted lamb from which bone protruded, various herbs, a hard-boiled egg, and a tiny bowl of cinnamon-colored puree.

  Marcos took out clay pots and cups and distributed them to his guests.

  “I received them yesterday,” he said. “They are completely new, as it should be.”

  “And they will be duly broken for our next Easter,” Dolores laughed.

  “As it should be,” the stranger murmured, adjusting the flat bread on its platter.

  Marcos leaned his hands against the edge of the table and faced each person solemnly.

  “My brothers, we are reunited this evening by a Seder for Pesach. ‘We were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord, with His strong hand, guided us to freedom.’ The centuries of despotism were redeemed by the renewal of the Pact, the gift of the Law, and the journey to the Promised Land. Today”—he paused, and his tone became grave—“we are slaves of the Holy Office and the new pharaoh is embodied in inquisitors. We are oppressed by something worse than the building of the pyramids: we are oppressed by their hatred and contempt. Our ancestors suffered abuse and punishments but they could be open about what they were. We, on the other hand, have to hide everything, even our sentiments.”

  He reached his hands toward the hermit.

  “Our celebration is gladdened by the rabbi Gonzalo de Rivas. He is a learned man who has made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visited the scattered people of Israel. Welcome to our home and to our city, Rabbi! You honor us, and you lift us.”

  I stared obsessively at Juan Bautista Ureta; it seemed unreal to have him here in his Mercedarian robes, participating in a Jewish ceremony.

  The stranger caressed his curly beard and gazed around at our faces with damp eyes.

  “All parties require time to prepare,” he said. “Marcos took care of the new clay dishes, and Dolores baked the matzo, lit the candles, and blessed them. Each and every one of you made arrangements to be able to attend, and I was able to adjust my travel so that the two weeks of my stay in Santiago could coincide with the Seder.”

  He opened the bottle of wine and poured it into the cups.

  “I believe that everything is now ready for us to begin.” He raised his gentle gaze and seemed to understand that we needed more clarification. He stroked his beard again and then said, “Brothers, this is the oldest living festivity of humanity. Many other festivities have disappeared, while others still have emerged more recently. The celebration of Pesach and the traditions of the Seder are three thousand years old. It is notable that such a distant, long-ago event should deal with an aspiration as desired as it is difficult: freedom. Difficult, desired, and never forgotten—freedom. Because today, in 1626, we do not say that, millennia ago, some unknown ancestors, whose remains are no more than dust, suffered slavery in a distant land called Egypt. We say that we were slaves and that we experienced the turbulent passage from oppression to freedom. The experience is not over, rather, it is renewed, because, now, under new guises, slavery continues and we must dream of our freedom with renewed hope. These extraordinary facts invigorate us, and show that, in the most desperate circumstances, the prospect of a solution ever dwells.”

  He looked at the tray.

  “Here, symbols are placed: The matzo recalls the bread of misery that our ancestors prepared on the scorching stones of the desert. The lamb represents the animal that was sacrificed for the last, decisive plague, and whose blood saved the lives of our ancestors. The bitter herbs make us taste the anguish of life for the oppressed. The puree, made with apples, wine, nuts, and cinnamon, recalls the clay our grandfathers kneaded in Egypt.” He raised his index finger. “Finally, the egg: it symbolizes the cycle of life, and the resistance of the Jewish people, because the more you boil it the harder it gets. But the egg is also an object of mourning; we eat eggs after burying a loved one, and now we do so for the Egyptians who drowned in the Red Sea and who indirectly played a role in our epic story. In this manner, Jews remember that we must not hate our enemies because all men are made in the image of God.”

  He pointed at the central cup, a chalice brimming with wine.

  “From that cup, the prophet Elijah will drink. He is our symbolic guest. A carriage of fire bore him to heaven, and now, in a carriage of mist, he goes to the caves and cellars where we Jews celebrate the Seder.”

  He settled into the cushions on his chair.

  “We sit like princes. On this special night, we are free men.” He smiled and reached out his arms. “The table is white and glowing like an altar. We shall drink wine and share unleavened bread. Then we will enjoy the food Dolores has prepared for us.”

  The rabbi Gonzalo de Rivas stood, and we respectfully followed suit. He raised his cup of wine and blessed it. He took a sip and then offered us the cup. Each of us accepted it with both hands. Then he picked up a fistful of vegetables, sprinkled them with salty water in a bowl, and distributed them. He broke a piece of matzo in two, returned one half to the tray, and placed the other half among the cushions.

  “This gesture of hiding one portion recalls the anguish of the oppressed, who must deprive themselves of food and save it for later. It is also the sublime teaching that bread must be shared.”

  He placed both hands under the tray of matzo and other symbols, raised it to eye level, and said in a sonorous voice, “Behold the bread of misery eaten by our ancestors in Egypt! May he who hungers come and eat, whoever is in need, may he come and celebrate Pesach. Now we are here, next year may we celebrate in the land of Israel. Now we are slaves, next year may we be free.”

  He put down the tray and turned to Dolores and Marcos, who were staring at him, spellbound.

  “I know that children cannot participate. It’s dangerous. In Rome and Amsterdam, where Jewish communities enjoy a few rights, children are central players. The ceremony begins with the youngest person present asking four questions. This leads to the reading of the Haggadah, the story of Exodus. Tonight, the four questions can be spoken by Dolores. I invite you to say them, my daughter.”

  Dolores blushed and read, with emotion, “Why is this night different from all other nights? One: on all other nights we eat leavened or unleavened bread, but on this night we only eat unleavened. Two: on all other nights we eat many different vegetables, but on this night we only eat bitter herbs. Three: o
n other nights, we do not season our food even once, and on this night we do so two times. Four: on other nights, we eat seated or reclined, but on this night we all eat reclining.”

  “These innocent questions,” the rabbi said, smiling, “based on the novelty a child sees, invite us to answer transparently. It could be said that we exercise our memories so that the grand events that marked the birth of our people may bring their strength to bear on our current times. We were and are slaves; we won and will win our freedom. For three thousand years, on this night, the formidable epic has been told and embraced.”