by Mary Morris
At the table sits the priest in a hooded cloak. Alejandro cannot see his face, let alone his eyes. He has been given sackcloth to present himself in before his inquisitor. “Why not save yourself from the flames,” the priest says. “You have nothing to do but confess.” The priest puts a sheet of paper on the table before Alejandro. “And tell us the names of others who are practicing the dead Law of Moses.”
“But, Honorable Sir, how can I confess if I do not know of what I am accused?” Alejandro knows what awaits him if he confesses. All his property and worldly goods will be confiscated. He will have to wear the sanbenito, the yellow holy cloth of the repentant, for at least two years or until the inquisitor determines that he is fully rehabilitated into the church. And then his sanbenito will hang in the church for all to see. All he has to do is kiss the cross and admit that he has been practicing the dead Law of Moses. If he does not, what awaits him is torture and death.
Even as he stands before the inquisitor, his mouth throbbing, his hands numb, his thoughts turn to Sofia. As he contemplates the torments that lie ahead, he knows that he can never utter her name. He can call out the names of those who have already fled New Spain, such as his brother Balthazar, or those already dead who will be burned in effigy. If his bones are being broken or his flesh ripped, he can say the name of Magdalena because she is already in this hell house. But he cannot implicate his beloved cousin or her family. In fact he can never see her or utter her name again.
His inquisitor passes a sheet toward him. It is his confession. All he has to do is sign it and implicate the members of his family and friends who are Judaizers. And then testify against them. And he can go free. Without bothering to look at it, Alejandro pushes the paper back. The inquisitor raises his eyes at a man who stands in the shadows. The man who wears a leather mask grabs Alejandro by the arm and leads him away.
He is taken to a room that has no light, but Alejandro can make out the glittering of the metal shackles, the rope hung over the rafters that will pull him up once his hands are secured behind his back. He cannot find the words to reach his God. Instead Alejandro begins to cry, pleading for mercy as he had not since he was a child. He thinks he will faint as they yank his arms behind his back and hoist him up by the wrists. As he screams and screams, they leave him dangling inches off the ground. His hooded inquisitor is in the room, asking the same question over and over: “Tell me who else is guilty of your sins, and you will be free.”
And Alejandro, gasping for breath, responds in kind: “Unless I know my sins, how may I accuse others?” Afterward he sits in his dark, dank cell, his arms hanging uselessly at his sides.
* * *
Hours go by. Or is it days? The passing of time is told by a faint flickering of light. The shuffle of his jailer’s feet. The clanging of the slop buckets being emptied at dawn and then again at dusk. In the nearby cells he can hear sobs, and once or twice he heard his name. At first he thought he was imagining it, but in the night it came to him more clearly. His mother and his sister are in cells nearby. In the night when the jailers are asleep, he calls back to them. Or with a stone he taps the refrain of the Sh’ma and listens as they tap a sad, faint reply.
Every few days the hooded inquisitor takes him into a room, ties him to a plank, and pours ewers of water down his throat. They ask him the same thing, over and over again. “Tell us who else is guilty of your sins and you will be free.” They pour more and more water until he is certain he will drown. And he always answers in the same way. “Please tell me my sins so that I may answer your question.”
When they are done with him, they toss him back into his cell where the straw he lies upon itches his skin. It smells of his own piss. He is certain that insects have burrowed into his flesh. He feels them, moving beneath the surface. Or is it his nerves? How long has he been here? For a time he etched the days on the wall of his cell. When the light came through the cracks, he made his mark. But then he began to forget if he had marked a day or not. And soon he doesn’t even notice the light.
Has he been here a week? A month? He is certain that a season has passed because when he arrived he was so cold, and now he is beginning to feel the warmth. The sound of scurrying feet makes him tremble. He fears the rats that come at night. He has seen prisoners with their toes and ears nibbled away. The guards joke that the rats work for the grand inquisitor. But Alejandro will not let them feast on his flesh. He has collected a small arsenal of pebbles that he culls from his crumbling walls. At night he hurls these into the darkness. Many nights he stays up until the first crack of light, hurling stones at whatever sound he hears, even if it is only inside his head.
Alejandro dreads the darkness. It is his greatest tormenter. He can’t bear that time of day when the tiniest shard of light that comes through a crack in the ceiling above begins to fade. It’s a flame of hope extinguished inside of him. In the darkness his solitude is complete. There is no sound of his jailers shuffling from cell to cell with trays of thin gruel and crusts of stale bread, a bucket of water or another to pick up their slops. Not even the terrible sounds of men and women being dragged off to meet their interrogators, to suffer the endless sessions of tortures. Or to be taken on their final walk to the flames or, if the interrogator shows mercy or if the prisoner confesses his sins, the garrote. These entertainments are reserved for the day. Now it is only the blackness of night, the silence, or perhaps the faintest hint of weeping.
Like a blind person he learns to distinguish the cries. He can tell his mother’s from Magdalena’s. His mother’s are silent gulps of air whereas Magdalena sobs loudly, not even trying to stifle them. Only a wall of thick stone stands between them. Still they cannot talk; they cannot speak to one another. Not even in the quietest of whispers or their suffering will be worse. Though it brings him some comfort to know that they are there, he cannot bear to think that their suffering matches his.
He ponders the flames. He cannot imagine what it will be like as his flesh burns. But the pain bothers him less than the abomination. For a Jew is intended to have his flesh returned to the earth, not blown as ash into the wind. He cannot bear the fact that his body will not be bathed and wrapped in white linen, that he will not be placed into a plain pine box, left open for the worms. No one will accompany his soul as it passes from this world to the next. No one will be there to guide him except his enemies. More than anything he worries that his soul will not reach his God.
Of course Alejandro is guilty of his crime. He knows that. He could easily confess. Hadn’t he turned his father’s face to the wall, washed his dead body in cold water, and trimmed his hair and nails? Doesn’t he refrain from eating pork and continue to keep the Sabbath? And hasn’t he, with a barber’s razor, removed his own foreskin when he learned he was a Jew? But his mother? What has she done? To Alejandro her only sin has been to embrace Christ.
The only thing that interrupts his monotony are the parcels of food that Sofia leaves for him with the guards. If there is a note, he never sees it, but he is given a tin of stew or handful of fruit from time to time that has been brought to him by the sad, dark-eyed girl, as Gaspar, his jailer, refers to her. One morning Gaspar brings Alejandro an alligator pear that Sofia left for him. It is soft and green and creamy. Alejandro fondles its flesh. In the hint of light, he examines the green pulp. “You may share this if you like,” Gaspar says. Alejandro has no idea what he means, but he eats only half of it, then summons his jailer and asks him to give the other half to his sister and mother. The next day the jailer brings him another alligator pear of even softer flesh. The natives call it an avocado. It is so green and fleshy and Alejandro wants to devour it in one bite. Instead, he eats a quarter of it and scrawls with a piece of stone he has sharpened a note to his mother on what remains. “Te Quiero, Mama.”
The jailer takes it to her, and on the portion she does not devour she writes, with her hairpin, “Yo tambien.” Every day Gaspar brings Alejandro an alligator pear that Sofia leaves, and on its green fles
h Alejandro speaks with his mother and sister. Day after day, despite their hunger, they pass the pear between them with their messages inscribed.
On the day that will be his last, Alejandro Cordero inscribes one final note. He writes in the smallest letters he can: “This is the road to paradise. There is none other. It is a better journey than the one back to Castile.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE VISITOR FROM THE MOON—1992
After her last class Elena decides to walk home. It is a crisp fall day and she wants to be out in it, to stroll and think. If she can, she’d like to avoid seeing Derek for at least another hour. He is making her nervous. He seems to be hovering, watching her every move. She has been on the brink of leaving him so many times, but now it feels as if she will. It is difficult for Elena to stay with a man for more than a few years. It is almost as if once they get close, once they actually think they know her, she breaks away. Except that this time part of her wants to stay. She would like to think that this is the man with whom she will grow old, but it is hard for her to imagine. Whenever Elena thinks of herself in the future, she is always alone.
She likes walking along Central Park West. She loves the huge apartment buildings and tries to envision the people who live inside. The wealthy New Yorkers who have their doorman hail a cab, whose dry cleaning and groceries are delivered to their door. Elena wonders when, if ever, she’ll feel like a real New Yorker. She’s lived in the city for almost fifteen years. She danced with its premier ballet company. She eats in its restaurants, gets drunk in its clubs. She wears black. She pushes people out of the way to get on the subway. So when will she start to feel as if she is actually from here? Soon? Never? But aren’t most real New Yorkers from away? Men still find her exotic. She does have a slight Spanish accent when she speaks. She walks with her feet turned out the way dancers do. At parties people like to guess where she is from. Mexico? Spain? Argentina? Once when she told a man she was from New Mexico, he asked what kind of visa she had.
The sun comes peering through the trees, the foliage turning to orange and gold like the aspen in the mountains where she is from. It is always this time of year when she thinks of home. When the leaves are turning and there is that crispness in the air. She never knew spring or summer the way it is here. That sweet smell of daffodils and tulips. Or those hot, humid summer days. And winter is too gray. But if anything makes her homesick, it is the fall. Though until her accident five years ago, she almost never thought of home. Except when her mother called, it was as if that place had been somewhere she’d dreamed about, not a real place, and certainly not one where she’d grown up. That was then and this, this city, this life, was ahead of her. But now on a brisk fall day with the leaves turning, her thoughts are of home. And Miguel.
She tries not to think of him, but sometimes she can’t help it. She’s kept only one photo of him that Roberto has sent over the years. Miguel as a toddler, learning to walk, his arms outstretched, holding on to someone’s hands. Elena often wondered whose hands those were that helped him take his first steps. He is dark the way she is and smiling the way she once did. In his letters that always go unanswered, Roberto tells her about him. How he has grown tall and lanky. How he is interested in the sky. And now he has built his own telescope.
These thoughts make her happy. But they also make her wonder. She wants to know what he is like as a person. Does he have a girl? Has he made love to her yet? Does he know how to treat her? She hopes he does. She hopes he will treat a girl well. Still she barely knows Miguel. And she assumes she never will. But more than anything she wants him to be happy.
Elena wanders through the park. There are mothers out with strollers, kids playing ball. She comes to Strawberry Fields where she pauses to pay her respects. She often lingers here because it is a quiet zone, but today an out-of-tune musician is singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” A sign reads, “No Music.” Still, would-be musicians come here all the time to pick up some cash. Then the tourists come as well. There are a dozen, snapping pictures. A young woman in tight green pants with red streaks in her dark hair kneels on the mosaic, inside a ring of rose petals, her hand touching IMAGINE as someone clicks her picture. Elena had moved to New York a few years before John Lennon was killed. The whole city had mourned. She wondered what it would be like—to have a whole city, a whole world, mourning your passing. It occurs to Elena that if she dies tomorrow, no one will mourn for her.
She walks on, past the artist selling his watercolors of John Lennon with a sign that reads “Feel Free to Look.” If she looks, he’ll try and convince her to buy, so she continues on, taking the path that leads her into the park. Rowers are in their boats on the lake and others sit basking on the rocks. Squirrels are foraging, burying their nuts. A woman on the rocks is doing yoga. Another man, half-naked, basks in the sun. In one of the pagodas, people are sitting, reading. Still as she descends on the lower path, the darker side of the city emerges. A used condom, flung into the bushes, hangs from a branch and needles and vials line the path.
Elena knows about that dark side. It seems as if her life is made up of mistakes, accidents that become turning points. One night in particular. The night when everything changed. The one when she numbed herself with booze and drugs, and once with turning, twirling, leaping. It is a foggy picture, something at times she can barely recall. At other times it seems as if she can think of nothing else. A cool spring evening, hanging out with the gang that managed to buy fifths of Scotch from old man Roybal who knew better than to sell to the kids, but what the hell. There weren’t exactly any policemen in Entrada—except those who drove down from Taos or up from Santa Fe. Or the occasional state trooper who stopped on his way back from some domestic disturbance in Española.
They’d all been hanging out, even Roberto was there, her brother, just a year and change younger than she was, so close in age that people asked if they were twins. Irish twins, people joked. Especially the year when Roberto is held back, but by the end of that year Elena was gone. There had been four or five of them. The numbers blur as did the faces and the hands and the bodies. Tommy Aguilar was there because he had egged them on. And Juan Ramirez. And maybe the Hernandez brothers, who were both friends with Roberto. And Pascual Roybal, that tall high-school senior. The football hero. The one they looked up to. She had a crush on him. She wanted to impress him with her taut dancer’s body, the way she could glide through rooms, slip easily into a boy’s arms. Was she asking for it? The way some people said?
Maybe someone slipped something into her drink. Or maybe it was just the heat and the whiskey—stronger than what she was used to. Because she was a tiny girl. A lithe dancer, barely sixteen. She’d known these boys since grade school. She knew their mothers. They all went to the same church, listened to the same tired priest chant the prayers. She was friends with their sisters. And they were having a good time, weren’t they? All laughing, joking. Punching one another in the arm. It was all in good fun.
They led her toward Pascual’s car under what excuse? She couldn’t be sure. Were they going out for burgers? Were they taking her home? But when she didn’t want to go, they dragged her. She struggled, tried to pull away. And maybe she shouted. When she called out, she caught a glimpse of her brother, looking her way, a smile on his face. Her brother, who never came to her aid. “I thought you wanted to go,” he’d say to her later.
They were drunk and joking around. They had a bottle of whiskey in the trunk that Pascual had stolen from his father’s store. So they took her down to the arroyo where rocks and even cactus spines dug into her flesh as she’d thrashed and tried to pull away, but she couldn’t because there were too many of them. Too many hands. Too many boys. “You want it, don’t you, Elena?” they whispered into her ear. “You’re just asking for it.” She tried to remember, but she lost count. All she knew was the bleeding, the feeling that she was being broken in two. And when they were done, they loaded her back into the car and dropped her off somewhere near her
mother’s trailer.
It was Roberto who heard her crying. She was glad it was he because she wanted him to hear her crying for the rest of his life. Her brother who had done nothing to stop them. Who had watched them take her to that car and drive away. And it was her mother who, when she received the School of American Ballet scholarship, didn’t hesitate. Her mother who put her hand on Elena’s cheek and told her, “Go.”
She leaves the park at 79th Street and cuts across to the Museum of Natural History where she finds herself drifting over to the side entrance to the planetarium. When Elena first came to New York, she made a point to go to every museum, see every show she could afford, learn where every bookstore was located. This was part of her mission to become a New Yorker. But she’s never been to the planetarium. She doesn’t know why. Perhaps because she’d lived long enough beneath the big western sky. Why would you need a planetarium when you lived inside of one? But now she goes in and buys a ticket. She walks past the huge Willamette meteorite that fell to Earth in the Pacific Northwest thousands of years ago. The Clackamas tribe worshipped it as a spiritual being and called it Tomanowos, “Visitor from the Moon.” In the early twentieth century, treasure hunters stole it from them. They have been fighting for decades to get it back.
Elena pauses at Tomanowos. Her hands touch the hollows that mottle the meteorite’s surface. It looks as if it has been melted and perhaps it was. Some extraordinary collision knocked it out of the sky. Then it burned as it entered Earth’s atmosphere. No one knows where it landed but glaciers carried it to Oregon where the native people discovered it and claimed it as their heavenly visitor.
As she walks into the main hall, Elena notices that a laser show is starting in a moment, featuring Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. But she’s heard you have to be pretty stoned to enjoy it. She heads to the Hall of Meteorites instead, and along the way comes to the History of Man. Here there are skeletons of early man, some diminutive, some with huge chests, others with simian features. In a glass case she pauses at a facsimile of two tiny hominids, walking side by side, his arm draped over her shoulder. The footprints of hominids were discovered in Africa. They were so close together that paleontologists determined they could only be walking like that if they were touching.
