The Fan-Maker's Inquisition

by Rikki Ducornet

  “One could not hope for a better specimen of man,” the surgeon had said of Kukum. Indeed, each object was perfect in conformation; the surgeon found no abnormalities. Landa had taken up the brain, so like a thing one might find clinging to a fisherman’s net, the heart like apiece of ripe fruit, the viscera somehow familiar. The map-maker’s eyelids were perfect; with the skill of a pearl diver, the surgeon removed a lachrymal sac and placed it on Landa’s open palm.

  “I could not be on more intimate terms with him,” Landa muttered, “had I been his maker.” Despite himself, Landa was moved. The Maya were men after all, not hollow bladders bloated by smoke. Yet as the surgeon continued to prod the body with his knife, Landa hoped some flame might be seen, or a black pearl.

  “The body is like a maze,” the surgeon said, and he gave Landa the small bones of the ear.

  “A maze without a minotaur,” said Landa. “I expected you to find a minotaur.”

  The surgeon laughed. “Not aflame, nor a frog; not even a cold wind. And that is a curious thing.”

  Landa dreams that his bed comprises the entire world. He is surprised that God had made the world so small and flat. In his dream he hears the Lords of the Underworld clamoring for attention just under him. The surface of the world is very brittle and thin, and he—fully dressed in a miter and jeweled ring, a tunicle and purple gloves, and rich vestments laden with gold lace and gems—is very, very heavy. Immobile and fearful, he hears the pope’s voice worming into his ear: “Venerable brother! Heed the demons!” Indeed, the clamor beneath him has reached a fever pitch, and now he understands what they are shouting:

  His days will be dreadful. His clothes will be made of paper. There will be disputes! His lips will quiver. His bowl of chocolate will fall to the floor and shatter. His nights will be worse. He will be pursued by the night. His house will be a place of devastation where animals and men will be compelled to void their bowels.

  In his dream, Landa feels a crack, a fissure opening in the world beneath him.

  Six

  A Fish

  The night before Kukum was put to death, he had dreamed of a tree so verdant, so deeply rooted in the ground, that it repulsed Death. Death, like the shadow of night, circled the tree but was unable to get close. The tree was so broad that Kukum, sitting beneath it, believed he was not about to perish.

  The Indians said of Kukum: “His speech is like the Tree of Life. It is Precious Jade.” Because his sermons never ended, they called Landa “He who eats his own offal twice.” When Kukum took leave of his wife for the last time, she said: “Beloved, you walk too close to the fire.”

  Kukum’s final words to Landa were: “I would rather hit my head against a stone than attempt to reason with you.” Landa pointed to the wall of Kukum’s cell and said: “Here is an entire wall of stone. I offer it to you in parting.” Knowing he would be tortured, Kukum, already weak with hunger and loss of blood, and fearing he might divulge the secrets in his keeping, walked to the wall and hit his own temple so violently he cracked the bone.

  Landa looked down on the scribe’s body with bitterness. “Another who has cheated the Church out of a confession,” he said. “Another sinner for Hell.” Then he called the surgeon.

  The following day was one of marvels. First of all, Landa had been suffering from an intermittent fever. At midnight, he thought to inscribe the secret name of God on twelve holy wafers. Each hour thereafter, he took one of these on his tongue, saying:

  Hour One: “When the sun burns with brilliance, I do not gaze upon it with admiration.”

  Hour Two: “Nor do I admire the moon, even at its most majestic.”

  Hour Three: “My heart has never, not even secretly, glorified the sea.”

  Hour Four: “Nor the sunset.”

  Hour Five: “I have never once adored the stars as the pagans do.”

  Hour Six: “Nor sensually looked upon my own member.”

  Hour Seven: “Nor upon the naked body of another, unless that body was a corpse.”

  Hour Eight: “I have never delighted in flavors.”

  Hour Nine: “Nor perfumes.”

  Hour Ten: “Nor the faces of women, clean or unclean.”

  Hour Eleven: “I have forever banished all licentious thoughts from my mind.”

  Hour Twelve: “My love for the Cross has not once wavered.”

  These last words were spoken just before the bells sounded. His fever broke, not to return.

  After Mass, Landa wrote upon the air, evoking the Divine Unity with one finger, the Trinity with three, and the Five Wounds of Christ with his entire hand, so that the air would be received within his lungs as the Holy Book is received by the eyes. Then, just as he returned to his rooms, Melchor, whom he had not seen all morning, appeared like Merlin with a miraculous tuna clearly marked with what Melchor supposed were kabbalistic characters.

  Landa had the fish—which was so large that Melchor had hired two Indians to carry it all the way from the market to the friary—laid out on a large piece of clean white linen, exorcised, and blessed. Then he stood in silence for what seemed an infinite time, looking at those fantastic letters—letters of light, of shadow, of fire—which danced over the fish’s flanks. An hour passed. The heat in the room was intense, and the corpse began to smell. More time passed. The sun in its turning dipped past the roof and flooded the room with light. Melchor’s feet, always sensitive, pained him horribly. Still, Landa could not tear his eyes from those letters. So intently did the Inquisitor stare at the fish that it dissolved. For a moment he looked into a deep pool of nacreous water. The day grew hotter. Melchor, feeling dizzy, as quietly as he could, fetched himself a stool, as with a whisper, a large black bird dropped down from the sky and perched at the window.

  The fish appeared to swell a little. However, there was progress. As the stench, more and more palpable, informed every particle of air, the letters, elusive yet seemingly infused with life, stuttered across the bright scales with greater precision until Landa was able to read:

  “Tophet!”

  “Tophet?” Melchor was as perplexed as he was astonished. “Tophet?” Had he heard the word before? He thought not.

  “Such as Isaiah’s Tophet: broad and deep. A pyre, Melchor. A fiery trench. This is what the fish, and our Lord, say we must prepare.”

  “But not to roast the fish!” Melchor cried in dismay. He did not wish to eat the fish, rotting as it was before his eyes. A number of birds, all black, had settled on the window ledge to gaze attentively at the corpse.

  “To roast heretics, what else? To roast pagans, stubborn as mules, mocking mysteries, worshiping stones, fornicating in the manner of hares, Visigoths, and Turks. For buggering their wives, as Mahomet did; for having no laws against bestiality; for going at it like Templars.”

  “Templars?”

  “In other words, for coupling in the manner of Cathars.”

  “Like snakes!”

  “Until now I melted them down in humble fires in twos and threes and fours. But an exemplary Tophet is in store: This is what the fish means.” A flock of birds, black as ink, as irrefutable as friars, carpeted the window ledge and the balcony.

  “Torment!” Melchor exclaimed, suddenly excited. “I believe the fish says ‘Torment.’ “Indeed, the letters, spilling this way and that, had shifted; shuddering like beaten metal, the body was strangely animate. “I fear,” Melchor whispered in awe, “that having spoken so eloquently, the fish is about to explode.”

  Landa made the sign of the cross with all five fingers before swaddling it well in its cloth.

  “Or is it my own heart,” Melchor whispered, just loud enough for Landa to hear, “that is wanting to explode?”

  “A thing said to happen to hearts bewitched…” Landa gazed at Melchor thoughtfully.

  And Melchor, letting out a cry and falling to his knees—knees already bruised and bloody from praying—took up the hem of Landa’s gown, weeping: “I must confess!”

  Hearing this, L
anda scowled. Then, with exaggerated delicacy, he rested his fingertips on the top of Melchor’s shaved and greasy head.

  Barely audible, Melchor continued: “There is a woman…one of their small females…to tell the truth, not much bigger than a dwarf. But lovely. She has come each day this week to the gate with a gift of flowers. Yesterday, I approached to see if she is as bewitching from near as from far, and to see if she is real, not one of their sorcerous illusions. Never have I smelled anything as sweet as the flowers she carried—”

  “Tixzula,” Landa spat. “A seductive fragrance.”

  “Small as she is, she is wondrously comely—”

  “Smoke!” Landa pulled away from Melchor’s grasp. “Smoke vomited from the mouth of a snake!”

  “She is a dream, then!”

  “The whore is Kukum’s wife—or, rather, his widow. She thinks her husband is alive. She hopes the fragrance of the tixzula will soften my heart.”

  “She is marvelous fair,” Melchor wept. “I am mad with longing. This I say with shame!”

  “Fool! Do you fancy I am ignorant of your desires?”

  “Do not think I have not scourged myself,” Melchor cried, his knees oozing blood. “For the past week I have eaten green fruit and drunk brackish water! I do not sleep but each night work on a vast illuminated map of the Holy Land for the instruction of the many orphans in our care. And I am painting the procession to Calvary around the border as you asked—”

  “Good.”

  “—as well as the comprehensive map of the Yucatán, which, as we speak, becomes ever closer to the truth. Yet, although I exhaust myself and feel I am about to collapse beneath the weight of my humiliation, I—”

  “You cannot keep yourself from following her.”

  “And fearing for her! When I see how our armed constables threaten her with their swords and sticks when she approaches the gate.”

  “All week she has come,” Landa agreed. “She has offered me the best she has: a fat fowl, black honey in the comb, large brown eggs, chocolate, and—these past three days—flowers. These things, with my permission, the constables share among themselves. A scribe has written a letter for her, and this is placed in the basket, along with her gifts for me. A friar brings me the letter; I toss it on the grate; I will have nothing to do with her, and yet she persists. But tonight, at sundown, Kukum’s body will be doused with wax and set on fire, along with the few books he, in his vanity, shared with me in order to teach me of his people’s so-called ‘excellence.’ Yes, you look surprised, but ‘excellence’ is the word he used. I cannot tell you how dismayed I was by his presumption. And tonight she will be told the truth.

  “But now,” Landa continued, “let me tell you a story so that you will appreciate the danger you are in. Come—” Landa designated the stool upon which Melchor, whimpering with pain, eased his bony ass. “Rest, poor fellow! What a state you are in!” Then Landa told Melchor the following story.…

  Seven

  Tamales

  “Once, Satan devised a scheme to subvert God’s authority over his angels. Disguised as a soul released from Purgatory, the Enemy of Man stood before the gates of Heaven until persistence got him across the threshold and inside.”

  “The thing is impossible!” Melchor was aghast. “Why would God allow it?”

  “The Cosmos is so vast”—Landa sighed deeply as if in pain—“and there is so much for Him to see! He cannot attend to everything Himself. Besides, if He cannot trust his own Gatekeeper, whom can He trust?”

  “I thought He was everywhere!” Melchor insisted, more and more out of sorts as the fish continued to manufacture atmosphere. “I thought He trusted no one!”

  “He is!” Landa agreed. “He doesn’t! But that does not mean He’s got a finger in every pie and a thumb on every plum! Rest assured, however. That Gatekeeper was disposed of.”

  “I’m famished,” Melchor moaned. “For I have taken only eggs in drink since dawn and twelve seeds of spurge.”

  Landa gave him a biscuit from a gilded vase to suck and resumed his tale: “Satan moved among the angels, stirring them up and driving them to distraction. He had taken the form of a beautiful youth and in seductive tones described the pleasures of the material world: silk vests, foaming cups of chocolate, and, above all, the buttocks of pretty women.

  “Zélamir, always the most curious, said: ‘What is Woman? And what is this Nature which you say has endowed her with Perfection? And how can this be? For God has taught us that Perfection is to be had in Paradise alone.’

  “‘If you call Perfection an endless expanse of time unrolling like a clean bandage to infinity, then indeed Paradise is perfect, and from me you have nothing to learn. But if your existence is like a thin soup without salt, meat, or marrow; if, in the middle of a dark and silent millennium, you awake taunted by the thought of a palpable husk; if a static pallet of cold vapor seems a poor substitute for an animated existence upon the world’s stage (so endearingly finite!), then a corporeal body and a woman are what you need. In all the Universe, she is the one object to excite cravings as delicious as is their satisfaction.’

  “‘We have,’ said Cupidon, ‘encountered Ecstasy.’

  “‘Well, then, imagine Ecstasy Manifest. An Empirical Fact. Imagine you have a Sensible Body and a prick as thick as my arm. Imagine a woman sprawled on a velvet counterpane, as eager to be fucked as you are to fuck her!’

  “Relishing the prospect, the angels beamed.

  “Now, with cunning, Satan had made a small tear in the walls of Heaven, which—as everyone knows—are not built with mortar and stone, but are more like a silvery membrane—”

  “—Similar to the goo that allows the eggs of frogs to float on the surface of a pond, or so I’ve been told,” said Melchor.

  “Very like that,” Landa agreed. He continued: “One by one the angels slipped from Heaven to follow Satan, who was already sailing toward that dark corner of the Universe where the edge of the world rises up from the muck and slime of First Causes. In a trice they were skimming the skies over Venice and then, with a great flapping of wings, came to settle at the naked feet of a courtesan, who, like the stars, had an irresistible influence over the bodies of men. Her ass, her breasts, her elbows and knees, were perfect spheres, her cheeks were like apples, her—”

  “And her cunt?” whispered Melchor. “Surely she must have had a terrific cunt!”

  “Her cunt was burning to the touch and well oiled, because she was a whore.”

  Melchor tugged at his chin with such zeal that he pulled out a handful of hair.

  “Satan introduced himself and all the angels—Céladon, Cupidon, Zéphyr, Zélamir, Antinous, and so on—who lost no time but embraced Hyacinthe—for that was her name—wanting to enjoy her before she vanished like a dream, before they themselves would go up in smoke. For such is the nature of corporeality: here today and gone tomorrow.”

  “And God?”

  “God looked about and saw He was alone. There was no Zéphyr to rub His feet, no Céladon to comb the curls of His beard. In a moment, he saw the rent in His walls, he saw Hyacinthe and all His angels; He saw what was what. Rising from His throne in all His terrible majesty, He condemned His angels to perpetual banishment. And because He had lost them to a woman, He proclaimed that no woman would ever enter the Kingdom of Heaven, not ever—even though Time is infinite and Eternity without end. Mark my words, Melchor,” Landa continued, “Woman is Satan’s most lethal instrument. The one who has bewitched you is no better than the rest, and surely worse. She is a pagan, after all, who worships the corn of the field on her hands and knees, just as the brute animals worship grass.” To complete his argument, Landa intoned an Inventory of the Feminine Faults, starting with Avidum Animal, passing through Vanitas vanitatum, and ending with Zelus zelotypus.

  “To look on a woman with desire is to be polluted through the eyes.” Landa kissed Melchor on the top of his head before sending him on his way. “For did not Saint Matthew say, �
��Formed of a bent rib, she is by Nature bent’?”

  Melchor tarried at the door. Although he had listened to the story attentively, and although it had impressed him, he thought that perhaps, as the Indians were creatures neither of God nor of Satan exactly but special cases, perhaps governed by laws of which he and Landa had no clear knowledge, Kukum’s widow might well be as she appeared: the embodiment of modesty.

  Seeing how Melchor lingered and the look of confusion he wore, Landa spoke again: “What does Woman do when she awakens, Melchor? Have you a notion?”

  Sadly, Melchor shook his head.

  “How could you, poor sod! A celibate in spent weeds all your miserable life. Here is what you need to know to kill the snake that gnaws at your testicles:

  “Woman, having passed the night dreaming of fancies and fornications, racks her throat, snorts and spits, pisses like a sow, and, still reeking of sleep, plumps herself down before her mirror, arming herself with tweezers, hair dye, the fat of bears, paring knives, the wax of bees, cobwebs, the milk of asses, brushes, combs, and sponges. She attaches her teeth with hooks and wire, dresses her hair like a salad, and glues on whatever won’t stay stuck or was never there.”