“My God, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!” I murmured again. “With this Brit Milah I am an inseparable member of Israel. Accept me in your flock. And protect me.”
I drank another glass of pisco.
That night, I woke frequently. But there was little pain, which proved what was essential lived in my spirit.
It was the only storm on the journey. There was no shipwreck, or loss of human life, or pirate attacks.
On July 22, 1627, Francisco disembarks in the port of Callao. He glances around him and the familiar landscape pinches at his entrails. He wears a rough, stained tunic and imagines that he must look as miserable as that beggar crowned with flies whom he’d confused with his father near this very place, on the esplanade, when he first set foot here.
A few yards away the captain of the galleon formally turns over the prisoner and his belongings to a few officials. Now he is only separated from Lima by the path he took so many times when he was a student.
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I could urinate without any trouble and was only bothered by tension and a light itch. I changed the bandage on my penis, which was no longer bleeding. I had my customary breakfast and left for the hospital. At noon, I felt fatigued, and returned home to lie down for a few hours.
My sister’s voice in the courtyard gave me the idea. That night, the one following my circumcision, I convinced her to accompany me for a few days to the baths that lay six leagues from Santiago. Both of us needed relaxation.
She looked at me in surprise and praised me yet again for my generosity.
There was no need to take much clothing, I explained. I had no wish to compete with my father-in-law’s fortunes. I was inviting her to a simple getaway, wanting to enjoy some time with her. The baths were not like the famous ones at Chuquisaca. They were not in a remote plateau, but in green plains with the blue mountains behind them. The waters were hot springs, and a Spanish family lodged visitors in their modest farmhouse. A small legion of servants cleaned the pools, saw to the rooms, and served food.
Things I brought with me: books, paper, ink, and the decision to speak frankly to Isabel. I wanted our bond to stop relying on fragile threads and uncomfortable silences. The circumcision had thrown my excess caution to the wind, as I had imagined it would. Now I felt strong and resolved. But I had to act intelligently.
One afternoon, as we strolled through the shaded surroundings of the farmhouse, I decided to broach the subject that gave my life meaning.
“Isabel. Our father—”
She kept on walking without paying attention.
“Do you hear me? Our father—”
She grazed my arm. “I don’t want to know. Don’t speak to me about him, Francisco.”
“You have to know!”
She shook her head energetically.
“In Lima, I was with him for several years,” I pressed on. “He told me important things.”
Her eyes took on a tragic luminescence. They were terribly similar to my mother’s eyes at the end of her life.
“Did he tell you that he denounced Juan José Brizuela?” she blurted out.
“You know that, too?”
“Who doesn’t?” she said angrily.
“Yes, he did that, but under torture. They burned his feet—he was almost paralyzed.”
“His sin was great.”
“Don’t talk that way. You’re not a familiar of the Holy Office.”
“It’s because of his sin that he had to abandon us, and because of it we lost our brother.” She began to cry. “Because of his sin our mother died.”
“It wasn’t his fault. He suffered enormously.”
“Then whose fault is it? Ours?” The edges of her lips were trembling, and her cheeks were wet.
I offered her my handkerchief. “I want to explain.”
She blew her nose. She shook her head again. “Don’t explain.”
“Isabel, I need your help!” The child in me burst out, the one who longed for his mother’s warmth, and I heard myself saying dramatic words. “Isabel, my future depends on you.”
She raised her glassy gaze.
“I’m so alone,” I added.
“Alone?” Her hand brushed against me. “I can’t imagine—” she stammered, confused. “Are you having marital troubles?”
“No, it’s not that. Since I married and our daughter was born, and then you all came, it seemed that my dreams were coming true. But in my spirit there is something deeper, something that goes beyond family—a fire.”
“God has been merciful with us. Stop, Francisco!” Tears streamed down her face. “Don’t ruin what is going fine.”
I kissed her hand. “My sister. Things are not fine.”
“What’s the matter, then? Are you sick?”
“Ah, if only it were that—”
We walked in silence along the winding path. We were both tense now, like strings on a lute. I had to open her mind, remove her fear, and show her what belonged to us. I had to pull out the prejudice that poisoned her soul. But she had hardened her ears against me.
“Our father was reconciled, but—” I pressed on.
“You’re back to that again? I don’t want to know!”
“Our father did not betray his true faith. He deserves admiration.”
“Be quiet, for God’s sake, be quiet.” She put her hands up to defend herself from my assault.
“He was always Jewish!”
She covered her ears.
I embraced her.
“Isabel, my dearest. Don’t flee.”
She shrank into herself.
“What are you afraid of?” I caressed her head, leaned it against my chest. “You already know.”
“No!” She shook herself in fright.
“Our father was a just man,” I said. “He was the victim of fanatics.”
She stared at me reproachfully and hissed, “Why are you speaking to me this way? We’re brother and sister!”
I was surprised.
“You’re trying to drag me to hell!”
She backed away from me as if I were her enemy.
“Isabel, what are you saying?”
“You’re ignited by the devil, Francisco.”
I grabbed her wrist. “Listen to me. There’s no devil here except the inquisitors. I believe in God. And our father died speaking his unshakable loyalty to God.”
“Leave me alone! You’ve gone mad.”
“I’m not mad,” I insisted. “I’m Jewish.”
She stuffed a fist into her mouth and let out a suffocated scream. Then she covered her ears again.
“I want to share it with you, with someone from my own family,” I said, shaking her by the shoulders.
“Leave me alone, please!” Her cries were draining her of strength.
I embraced her again.
“Don’t be afraid. God sees us, and is protecting us.”
“It’s horrible!” Her words were broken up by sobs. “The Holy Office persecutes Jews—takes all their belongings away. It burns them!” She beat her fists against my chest. “You’re not thinking of us, of your wife, your daughter!”
“I don’t want to involve them, I have no right.”
“Then why me?”
“Because you belong to the people of Israel. You have the blood of Deborah, Judith, Esther, Mary in your veins.”
“No, no.”
“I’ve read the Bible several times. Listen to me, please. It says, clearly, insistently, that idols should not be made or worshipped. That anyone who proceeds that way is offending God.”
“That’s not true.”
“It also says in the Bible that God is one, one only, and they want to impose the notion on us that God is three.”
“That is what the Gospel says. And the Gospel is truth.”
“It doesn’t even say that in the Gospel, Isabel. If only they would comply with the Gospel!”
She broke away from me and ran toward the farmhouse. Her skirt snagged in the bushes a
long the way.
“Would you say that blessed are the meek because they shall inherit the earth?” I shouted, pursuing her. “Are the afflicted blessed, the merciful, those pure of heart, those who hunger and thirst for justice? Listen to me!” I was gasping. “What about the peacemakers, are they blessed? Can you say the same about the persecuted—like our father? They deny Jesus himself, Isabel!” I followed her, index finger held high. “Jesus said, ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets, for I have not come to abolish them, but to perfect them.’ And now they say the law is dead.”
She stopped, suddenly. Her face was devastated by tears, burning with reproach.
“You want to confuse me—” She was gasping, too. “You’re inspired by the devil. I want to know nothing, absolutely nothing about the dead Law of Moses.”
“The law of God, you mean to say. Is the law of God dead?”
“I believe in the law of Jesus Christ.”
“Which one? The one they say belongs to Jesus Christ? The one of the jails? Denunciations of friends? Torture? Fires for burning people alive?”
She resumed her flight.
“Don’t you realize that the inquisitors are like pagans?”
She was tripping. She couldn’t stop crying. I kept calling after her, reciting verses, comparing prophecies with reality. My words fell on her like whips. She’d contract a shoulder, lower her head, wave me away with her hands. And she kept running. She was a terrified creature striving to protect itself from my implacable hailstorm.
She shut herself into her room.
I stayed outside her door, recovering my breath. I heard her sobbing. I waited for her to calm down before calling to her. But in the end I did not call. I went out for a walk. I’d been harsh, I thought, and emphatic. I hadn’t taken into account her delicate nature, her fears, or the strength of the teachings with which she’d been inculcated. She’d been subjected to a spiritual cleansing that had washed away her love for her father, or had changed that love into its opposite. In my passion I’d taken the wrong path. I had to act more prudently, to speak of these matters in a long, tranquil way, to give her time. I was making her swallow stones, and this required patience.
I walked, burdened, until wrapped by night. The starry sky awoke the fireflies of the plains; they winked far and wide, beckoning seductively. Were they an alphabet? I’d been obsessed with this idea since childhood. I caught an insect in my hand. Its green glow pushed between my fingers, and its tiny, desperate legs scratched at my skin. I let it go so it could be reunited with its multitudinous family and the party could continue. It was unconcerned with my despair.
The following day, Isabel stubbornly avoided me, and would not even greet me. She was yellow, gaunt. Later, I found a note under the door of my room that said, “I want to return to Santiago.”
The officials wait until night falls and the city streets empty of people to take the prisoner to Lima. Francisco recognizes his surroundings despite the darkness. He immediately identifies the fearful plaza of the Inquisition, and the imposing building with the engraved words Exurge Domine et Judica Causam Tuam.
They advance toward a sinister wall and stop before the door, which is guarded by soldiers. This is the mayor’s residence, and its depths—this is well known—lead directly into the secret prisons. He is ordered to dismount. Then he is ordered to cross the threshold.
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I made the mistake of attributing feelings to my sister that, in fact, only beat in my own chest. She was not ready, and even the longest, most tranquil talk in the world would not change this fact. What I’d expressed had struck her brutally, and I had hurt her deeply. Despite the years that had passed, she had not overcome the blows our family had received. Nobody had helped her see, in our misfortune, anything other than a punishment, and she could not stand the thought of being punished again. To practice or believe in Judaism, for her, was ridiculous and bad. It was to make a pact with the devil. In this light, my mouth was no longer mine, and the words I spoke did not come from my heart. She began staring at me as if I were a stranger. When my gaze caught hers, she’d avert her eyes and she could not bring herself to speak to me again.
Back in Santiago, I found a piece of paper under my bedroom door. I recognized her handwriting and leapt to the joyous conclusion that she had understood me a little and wished to talk more. But no, she was begging me to abandon my madness, that for the love of God I must disavow the ruinous thoughts that had made my head sick. Under no circumstances would she believe what I had said to her.
I tried to see her resistance in a positive light. What if it hinted at a struggle that had begun to take place in her heart? She was a sensitive, affectionate woman, and she had suffered terrible losses. It was logical for her to start with a rejection, but perhaps that rejection soon would transform into slight understanding and then into complete understanding. I preferred to suppose that she would not have written to me if my words had not had an impact on her. Something had clearly broken inside her. Our conversation at the baths, though rushed, had functioned like the trumpets of Jericho. Sounding them one more time, I thought enthusiastically, would be enough to make the walls collapse.
So I dipped my quill and began to write. I had to be lucid and precise, illuminating each concept with plenty of candles. I had to show her that the devil actually dwelled in the Inquisition, not in the persecuted—in those who silence and asphyxiate others, not in those who think. I spoke of histories, martyrs, wise men, beautiful works. And the burning need to connect with our roots. I told her that I was trying to become more consistent every day; I fasted, honored the Sabbath, and prayed to God. That a year ago, I’d stopped confessing at the Society of Jesus, the most intellectual of Catholic orders, because it was enough for me to tell my sins directly to the Lord.
I reread my letter, corrected a few phrases, and folded the pages. I was satisfied. I was like a man in love who’d succeeded in pouring the fever of his passion into a poem. I left my bedroom in search of my sister. I found her in the courtyard.
“Here.” I extended the folded sheets toward her. “Read these carefully.”
She raised her eyes, which were red from crying. She didn’t dare take my letter.
“It’s a well-thought-out response.”
I raised her reticent hand, opened her fingers, and pressed them around the pages.
“Please, reflect on what I’ve written. And answer me thoughtfully. Take three days.”
Her eyes remained anguished. I pitied her. She was suffering. And she seemed very afraid. She moved away from me, head bent, elbows glued to her body, smaller somehow. She was like my mother when the avalanche of misfortune had rained on her. I followed her for a few paces, hands in the air, wanting to offer her a caress. But she broke into a run toward the refuge of her room.
“Hopefully, she’ll find serenity,” I prayed, “and read my frank thoughts again and again. Hopefully she’ll find the courage to talk more with me.”
Again, I was wrong. Isabel was in no state to reason calmly. The mere thought of calling into question what had been consecrated by years of indoctrination horrified her. It didn’t matter what I said because any hint of rebellion against the power that had lashed at our family made her suffocate in panic.
She shut herself in—I found this out later, when it was too late—and began to cry. She cried and cried without solace. Between hiccups, snot dripping, she opened my letter. She read the first few sentences and abruptly balled it up. She could not tolerate expressions that sounded like outright blasphemy. She kept on crying until dinnertime. She washed her face, took a walk around the garden, and tried to hide her anguish. She entered the kitchen, ordered the servants to go find fresh vegetables and, when she was alone, took my long, unread letter from her clothes and threw it in the fire. The flames twisted the folds like edges of an effigy, blackening them and making them glimmer with drops of blood. Isabel had the intense impression that she’d just burned one o
f Beelzebub’s hoofs.
It wasn’t enough. She was disturbed. Sorrow bit at her heart. I had told her that my future depended on her. It was a real warning, because I had put my fate in her hands, in her weak hands, without registering the consequences that step would have. Why did I do it? A vast question. It was the same as wondering, why did Jesus enter Jerusalem and show himself in public when he knew the Romans wanted to seize him? Why did he let Judas Iscariot leave the Seder to fetch the soldiers? Had I spoken with my sister to indirectly make the Inquisition arrest me? Was I pushing her to become my own Judas Iscariot, that tragic link who spurs on the decisive battle? Had I done this so I could be brought before the present-day Herod, Caiaphas, and Pilate to show them that an oppressed Jew mirrors Jesus better than all the inquisitors put together?
In her torment, Isabel prayed. Her knowledge was a burning coal. She urgently needed to expel it, or share it with someone. She recalled my warning: “My future depends on you.” I was already in the arms of death—to her mind—and I would drag along others with me. She went out in search of Felipa. Halfway there she stopped, wrung her hands, sighed, and turned back. But before she arrived home, she turned again. She walked back and forth so many times that she felt on the verge of fainting. Hours later, my two sisters sobbed together because once again misfortune had befallen our condemned family.
“What will we do?” Isabel pleaded.
Felipa paced her cell, worrying her rosary beads. In a hoarse voice suffocated by tears, she finally said, “There is one thing I cannot avoid.”
Isabel stared at her, trembling.
“I must tell my confessor.”
Francisco casts a last glance at the black street of the powerful City of Kings, which represents a false, elusive freedom. He crosses the threshold, and, with his head held high, descends into hell.
BOOK FIVE
DEUTERONOMY
DEPTHS AND HEIGHTS
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A damp stench creeps through the thick wall. They cross a desolate room, enter a hall, and cautiously descend several uneven stairs. The lantern draws out the creases in the plaster walls and ceiling, which resemble the skin of an endless monster, breathing, waiting to devour its prey. Francisco trips, and almost falls, tangled in the chain that connects the shackles to his blistered limbs. The black man carrying the lantern guides him into the depths. They are lost in a gloomy labyrinth. Where are they going? The man stops in front of a wooden-slatted door, opens a lock, lifts the bolt. An official grasps the prisoner’s arm and forces him through. The door closes and the last tremors of lantern light slip through the slats. Francisco is left in darkness. He feels through the emptiness until he reaches the adobe walls and discovers a stone bench. Now that nobody can see him, he collapses in exhaustion.
Against the Inquisition Page 42