The prisoner rises with the muffled creak of tired joints. Then he utters words that provoke an exclamation of shock and horror.
“Swear on the cross? Why not swear, then, on the rack, or your ropes and spikes, or the brazier that destroys feet? Any instrument of torture would do. The cross was an instrument of torture, Illustrious Ones. Or has it had any other goal? The cross was used to murder Jesus and many other Jews like him. Then Christians kept on murdering Jews, brandishing the cross at them like a bloodstained sword. On the cross, we Jews have died, not Christians. Has any inquisitor died on the cross? Or an archbishop? Someone should finally say it, hurt as it may: for the persecuted Jews, the cross has never symbolized love, but only hate, never protection, but only cruelty. To demand that we venerate it, after centuries of murder and contempt, is as absurd as asking us to venerate the gallows, the vile cudgel, the stake at which you burn us. Christians praise the cross, and they have their good reasons! But we’re the ones who carry it, we the persecuted. The cross doesn’t offer us well-being; it brings us anguish, offends us, and destroys us.” Francisco raises his right hand, and the long chain shines briefly like a filigree of stars. “I swear by God, creator of heaven and Earth, that I have told the truth. My truth.”
When the proclamation is spread, on Wednesday, December first, a new atmosphere falls over the City of Kings. The punishment and death of sinners should be cause for rejoicing. While the prisons fill with the poisonous breath of tragedy, the streets grow excited and enthused. While fear rises in the darkness of corridors, the light of the metropolis swells with a longing for the feast. While despair unfurls in suffocating cells, out in the plaza, the spectacle begins. Death on one side, and revelry on the other; the two will unite, embrace, and dance together. Reason will dress up in madness, and madness will adorn itself in reason.
All the familiars exit the Inquisitorial palace in their fearful habits, riding steeds with lustrous harnesses and saddles amid a forest of tall batons, to the sound of lutes, trumpets, and kettledrums. They parade around the plaza then begin their majestic route through Lima’s central streets. They are followed by the main officials of the Inquisition, in a rigorously imposed order: the representative of the pope, the head of the treasury, the accountant, the receiver general, the cadaverous notary, and the senior clerk. Colors and sounds inflame the city. Neighbors drop what they’re doing, women peer through lattice windows, and noblemen, youths, and servants invade the streets. Such a display stirs great curiosity.
“The Holy Office of the Inquisition,” a solemn voice declares, “informs all the faithful who reside in and beyond the City of Kings, that this coming twenty-third of January, the Day of Saint Dominic, we shall celebrate a spectacular Act of Faith at the public plaza of this city to exalt our sacred Catholic faith. All the faithful are called upon to attend, so they may gain the indulgences that our high pontiffs grant to those who witness such acts.”
The following day, construction begins on the elaborate stage. A legion of carpenters, ironsmiths, and builders distribute boards, nail stakes, and lay out beams to make steps and walkways hemmed in by sturdy handrails. Several strategically laid-out blocks are made to fit the multitude expected to attend, not only from Lima, but also from surrounding areas. The work does not let up, not even “on the solemn feast days.” The inquisitor Antonio Castro del Castillo is in charge of overseeing the work. He sees that neither the many steps nor the strength of fences will prevent chaos from spreading through the torrential crowds, and he orders another proclamation demanding that no person “of any kind whatsoever, except for gentlemen, governors, ministers, and other officials,” dare step on the official stage. And, to contain any possible overflow, he calls on many gentlemen and instructs them to patrol the crowd with staffs bearing Saint Dominic’s coat of arms. To keep the main platform cool, twenty-two towering trees are brought in and cloth awnings are tied between them with pulleys to create refreshing shade.
Two days before the Act of Faith, the tribunal gathers all its ministers and officials in the chapel of the Holy Office. Juan de Mañozca speaks gravely to them, exhorting that they appear at each of their assigned tasks with love and punctuality. They should dress resplendently, draping their bodies with the expensive liveries they had made for this very occasion.
In the dungeons, security is higher than ever. The monks who selflessly visit prisoners use their last reserves to try to save their souls. They know that in the following days, all will be consumed. Words and prayers vibrate in the gloomy caves during the day and deep into the night.
Meanwhile, the City of Kings is exalted by the procession of the Green Cross, which includes members of religious orders, secular and ecclesiastical officials, noble gentlemen, priests, merchants, craftsmen, soldiers, learned men, students, and women, who fill several streets and crowd on roofs and balconies. Musicians intone rousing hymns. The procession walks majestically to the main plaza and grazes the enormous platforms that will brim with people during the imminent Act of Faith. A chorus sings the verse Hoc signum crucis, and lamps are left burning beside the place where sinners will soon be displayed.
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Francisco has resumed his fast, but now time is not on his side. The days he’s spent without a bite of food are only enough for him to feel weaker and more somnolent. A monk and two servants beg him to eat with such a friendly tone that they manage to confuse him about his circumstances. He is growing more and more deaf, and he uses this disability to exempt himself from the Dominican’s whining insistence. Staring right at the monk he blurts out, “I’m not trying to get you to stop being a Christian, please—let me keep being Jewish! Don’t get tired, don’t wear yourself out, please, just stop talking.”
The clergyman’s eyes fill with tears. How is it possible that he can’t break through this man’s shell? But, at this point, Francisco is not so different from a corpse. Where is he hiding the source of his pride? His head is little more than a pair of dark eyes, sunken cheeks, and a strangely shining forehead; his long hair is parted in the middle and has gone almost completely gray, as has his beard. His thin lips tend to move as if in prayer. The monk laments that he should pray to a dead law that will take him to perdition. He wants to shake the man like an empty basket and fill him with the substance of his own faith. But the devil has possessed this prisoner’s mind. He realizes that he’s developed a kind of fondness for this man—a shameful, unspeakable fondness—and he can’t resign himself to watching him twist and turn in the flames. He has conversed on other topics with such clear logic that he seems to be a sensible and highly intelligent man. Francisco has told him about his family with such emotion as to reveal pious corners of his soul, where the devil has not yet entered, and these glimpses stir hopes of returning him to the faith. But in matters regarding his abominable roots, he always hardens again, like a lion, and his tender lips let out a sharp, untamable force.
Francisco, for his part, fears that he might soften at the very last moment. Everyone in his family succumbed to terror: his father and brother through torture, and his mother and sisters through their feelings of defenselessness. He knows that they will pressure him until the very last minute. Before the tormentor sinks his torch into the pile of straw and logs, they will shout at him to cede, to save his soul. They will not resign themselves to losing the game.
Someone shakes his shoulder. Has he been dreaming? Several lamps burn in the miserable dungeon, and their flames lick the adobe ceiling. From his horizontal position on his bed, he thinks he sees a multitude. He sits up with great effort, startled. He blinks. There before him, pressed against each other, are soldiers armed with pikes, priests holding up crosses, and, among them, the tired Dominican monk. Suddenly those strong bodies—so numerous that they barely fit in his cell—make way, forming a hole. Francisco rubs his bleary eyes and, when he takes his hands from his face, he sees the metallic face of the inquisitor Andrés Juan Gaitán. He backs against the wall and draws his legs up; he doesn’t hav
e the strength to stand, and there isn’t space to do so.
The inquisitor avoids his gaze and unfurls a roll of parchment. Slowly and victoriously, he reads the sentence aloud. Francisco doesn’t move. He doesn’t try to respond, comment, or beg; his eyes are fixed on the inquisitor’s eyes, which do not waver from the page. When he is done, he rolls up the parchment and turns to avoid seeing his victim’s face. He searches among the crowded men for the Dominican monk and whispers an order.
The cell empties.
Francisco murmurs, “My God! It’s happening!”
He will no longer see dawn slide in through the three holes in the wall; in a few hours, they will come to take him away forever. He touches the edge of the mattress he’s used for almost thirteen years and asks himself again whether he’ll have the strength to keep defending his rights until the culmination of the Act. He lets himself fall against the bed. The candle they left with him emits a light that he appreciates for the first time, soft and pink. The uneven walls are full of pictures, shapes that, even in such a tiny space, are infinite. Through one of the three holes, eyes appear, the eyes of a rat. It’s not even coming to say goodbye to him, only to watch his departure. Suddenly, he’s assaulted by a flood of memories: the rats in the monastery in Córdoba, the rats in the monastery in Lima, the spiritual director Santiago de La Cruz, his learning of catechism, the biographies of the saints, his confirmation, the enormous Bible in the chapel, his first flagellation, the embrace of naked torsos, the appearance of Luis with his father’s medical instruments and the Spanish key. The Spanish key! Where is it now?
The door creaks, and two servants hold out a tray.
“Lunch,” they say.
Lunch? At this hour of the night? The Dominican invites him to pray and eat. Francisco understands: those who are condemned to the flames are piously served a feast. It’s a morbid courtesy, but more eloquent than the bureaucratic reading of the sentence. For the first time, they offer him food fit for a prince—a late and pointless form of recognition. The Dominican raises his voice to make up for the prisoner’s deafness, and tells him—how he longs to reach the man’s hidden heart—that the Holy Office has contracted a pastry chef for the past three days to secretly prepare his final meal.
“Secretly,” Francisco murmurs. “Always secretly, everything in secret, so abuse may never be brought to justice.”
He sits up and walks the few paces he can in that small space. The monk shrinks back to give him room; he wants to help, and to be agreeable. He gestures to the tray again.
“Eat.” It is Francisco who makes the offer to the priest.
“Oh God, oh my God,” the monk implores, “How can I make you understand that they are going to burn you alive, that your feet will be bitten by hot embers and your skin will be peeled off, your face crushed, charred like meat? How shall I make you see that you’re a victim of the devil’s tricks and that you’ll suffer the tortures of fire only to fall into the endless tortures of hell?”
He falls to his knees. “Save yourself! Save yourself!”
Francisco flees into his inner world. He needs to call the psalms to mind, those words that nourish his hope. He must stay calm so he does not tremble or break at the last moment. As the minutes pass, as the verses raise his spirits, he feels the monsters of defeat clawing at him. In one way, his strength is growing; in another way, his weakness. “Don’t repeat my trajectory,” his father said to him. Was he repeating it, then? He doesn’t think so. His father denounced his fellow Jews, humiliated himself before the judges, and lied about repentance. He mutilated his own dignity. He didn’t go back to being a Christian, or a free man, or a dignified Jew; he became a shell of a man, full of shame. He gave his oppressors the most sacred part of his being, for the glory of the Holy Office, and only kept a litany of taunts. That was his trajectory: fear, submission, abandonment of his own truth.
Francisco presses his eyes closed to keep the tears from falling. The image of his defeated father fills him with a terrible pity. He utters psalms as an antidote to that sad, broken image. “I won’t repeat your trajectory!” he says to himself. He’s at the verge of death and hasn’t denounced a single person, hasn’t broken before the judges, hasn’t faked repentance, hasn’t given an ounce of glory to his oppressors.
The monk presses on with his task of persuasion, holding out the tray of delicacies and uttering potent prayers.
At five in the morning, two infantry regiments in their best regalia complete their formations, one in the Plaza de Armas and the other in front of the Palace of the Inquisition. The tall doors of the Holy Office open to let in four huge crosses shrouded in black cloth, brought from the cathedral and accompanied by an entourage of monks, priests, and sacristans in surplices. The “honored gentlemen” are gathered too; they have been chosen to accompany the prisoners and keep preaching at them about the mercy of the Holy Office on their way to the Act. In the bewildering labyrinth of the dungeons, bolts bang open, doors moan, and shouts begin. The firmness of the monks, soldiers, and gentlemen must contain the desperation.
Through the torch-lit corridors, the captives advance toward the chapel of the condemned. There they will be taught another pious lesson.
Francisco is grabbed by the elbows and forced to rise. He doesn’t have the chance to cast a final glance over the hole that sheltered him for his last days in prison. He is guided through a threatening hall, up staircases, and through doors. The monk is at his side, blathering nervously, repeating imprecations into his ear and shaking his arm. The gentlemen standing guard keep their gazes forward, puffed up by the powerful implications of guiding a human being to his death. They press him toward a group of officials, without letting him go. Suddenly, a cloth glides over his head. He touches it and looks: a sanbenito. It’s a disgusting yellow color, barely reaches to his knees, and is as wide as his shoulders. A big red X has been painted in the area covering his chest, which symbolizes an extreme sinner. The lower portion has been painted with flames pointing upward: an eloquent sign that he will be burned alive. An official picks up a large cardboard cone, a coroza, adorned with clumsy paintings of horns, claws, and fangs that bring to mind the devil, and with braided ribbons hanging from its tip like snakes. Irreverently, they place it on his head. Francisco automatically raises his fist to knock it off, but countless hooks hold him back. He feels ridiculous. All that’s left is for the soldiers, later, when he’s tied to the stake, to mock his clothes the way soldiers did sixteen hundred years ago when the clothes were a purple robe and crown of thorns. He is pushed forward again, into the painful procession heading toward the plaza.
The crosses sway, with their floating black rags, surrounded by copious clergymen. Penitents follow with their heads down, guilty of various minor crimes: sorcerers, bigamists, blasphemers, thieves. Each of them is duly controlled by a guard who prevents them from speaking to anyone. Then come the practitioners of Judaism, the main course of the feast at hand. They are all wearing vulgar sanbenitos. There are dozens of them, arranged into categories: the Jews who repented quickly walk in front, thick ropes at their throats. Those who repented late and will be executed walk behind them with green crosses in their hands.
The torches and candles zigzag across the crowded plaza, making shields flash with light. A hemorrhage to the east announces the stirring of a new day.
Francisco is aware that he is leaving his last confinement; never again will he be shut in between four walls. The dawn air cools his cheeks. He has imagined this instant many times; it is familiar, sinister. A few paces away, he sees the old doctor Tomé Cuaresma, hunched over in his sanbenito and the cone-shaped coroza, painted with flames, snakes, and dragons. Francisco gives back the cross that was placed in his hand.
“You must carry it,” he is told.
He shakes his head.
The official opens his fingers and urges him to obey.
Francisco stares at him as if his gaze were a sword. “No.”
“You’ll go in re
bellion!” the Dominican says, alarmed. “Don’t make your situation worse, for your own good!”
Francisco refuses to hold the green cross.
“I’ll let it fall,” he declares.
The monk picks up the cross and kisses it.
Behind the procession, the manager of the Holy Office rides on horseback, carrying a closed silver trunk that contains the sentences. He is followed by the notary, also mounted on a steed draped in green velvet. Alongside them ride the senior clerk and other solemn officials. The streets slowly fill with morning light, and a cautious exultation reigns. Doorways, balconies, and terraces fill to overflowing. The river of people that accompanies the sinners is a wide, long monster that glides lazily toward the main plaza, confined by the building walls. The crosses and candles sway through the arduous march until the river widens as it nears the gallows.
The monks and gentlemen in charge of the captives force them up to the platform in order, arranging them in their reserved places. The murmur of the multitude grows louder as the victims emerge into sight. The fervor grows as the Jews arrive, with their cone-shaped corozas and their sanbenitos covered in painted flames. And it is scandalous, the jeering and booing, when a man steps up whose hair is long and who lacks even the piety to carry a green cross in his hand.
The gentlemen with black batons bearing Saint Dominic’s coat of arms now beat back the people, striking them on their shoulders, necks, and torsos to restore the order required by this Sacred Act. On the central platform, the inquisitors are already seated, as is the viceroy. Castro del Castillo gazes happily at the brocaded canopy, fringed with gold, that he had installed at the last moment, on which there undulates an image of the Holy Spirit that represents “the spirit of God that governs the actions of the Holy Office.” The viceroy has been given three amber-colored cushions made of fine cloth, two for his feet and one to sit on, while the inquisitors enjoy one velvet cushion each. Castro del Castillo had the good manners to adorn the balcony of the viceroy’s wife with banners, standards, tapestries, and plenty of yellow tassels. All around them, as far as the eye can see, the mob swarms and hums. The older people in attendance insist that Lima has never before seen such a crowded Act of Faith.
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