by Howard Fast
Alvero considered this thought and then nodded. He felt strangely objective as he said, “So that you may lash me to a stake and burn me alive?”
Now the Inquisitor to the far right of Torquemada, an old, old man, cried out, “The mortal body is burned. Fire strengthens the soul. Only this disease we call life is burned away—”
And the man sitting next to him said, “The mortal body – which is filth, dirt and sin. Do you hear, Don Alvero?” The old man at the far right smiled. He was almost toothless, a single yellow tooth in the bottom of his jaw, two yellow fangs on top. It made him lisp as he spoke. “The mortal body goes in purification. You lose it, Don Alvero, but think of what you gain. The gain is life everlasting.”
At the other side of Torquemada an Inquisitor intoned, “Purged by fire of all sin, purged and pure. Pure and full of grace, full of grace.”
Torquemada shook his head impatiently and Alvero had the feeling that the Prior was both annoyed and embarrassed by the comments of his colleagues. “Become one with your God,” Torquemada said. “Give up your torment, Don Alvero.”
“No, Thomas,” Alvero replied. “My torment is one thing I will not surrender easily.”
Now the old man on the far left found reason to be indignant and demanded how Alvero dared to address the Grand Inquisitor in so familiar a manner.
“He despises us,” another Inquisitor said. “It is obvious that he despises us.” And then addressing himself to Alvero, “Do you despise us, sir?”
“I remembered a friend,” Alvero said. “Do I sin by calling him Thomas?” He addressed himself directly to Torquemada and asked for an answer. “Does it go with my other sins? Shall I no longer call you Thomas?”
“I too remember a friend,” Torquemada said. “Call me Thomas so long as you can, God help me – God help both of us. I speak to you as a friend, Alvero. Give up your torment and be at peace with yourself.”
“But I have found something precious in my torment.”
“Something precious? What have you found, Don Alvero?”
“Myself.”
“As a heretic? As a Jew? How have you found yourself, Alvero?”
“As a human being.”
“And what does that signify, Alvero? That you are a thing of flesh and blood? That you eat, that you sleep, that you breathe? An animal performs all those functions. An animal is flesh and blood. A Jew is flesh and blood. I was speaking before of your immortal soul.”
“And if the body needs flesh and blood how does the immortal soul nourish itself? With mercy and pity? Or is all that I was taught a lie?”
“We are mercy and pity – ourselves, the Holy Inquisition.”
“Mercy and pity,” Alvero said, unable to keep the astonishment out of his voice. “Oh no, Thomas, you take me as a fool. You mock me and you play games with me.”
“I offer you something precious.”
“What do you offer me? A stake where I can burn? A prison cell where I can rot?”
Now the Inquisitor on the far right cried out shrilly and impatiently, “Our Lord hung from a stake. A stake will free you of your heresy. The purification of flames will be wrapped around you like a cloak – a cloak of love and thoughtfulness—”
Alvero could contain himself no longer and pointing to the old man he cried out at Torquemada, “Thomas, whatever I must endure before you I must endure, but I will not stand here and listen to that old idiot!”
Torquemada turned to the old man and said to him harshly, “Enough! No more from you!” Torquemada looked at the others. “All of you – leave it be or you will do penance sufficient unto my anger. This man stands before me and I will examine him.”
“You go too far, Prior,” one of the Inquisitors said.
“I will not have you tell me how far to go,” Torquemada replied coldly and angrily. He turned to Alvero now and said to him harshly, “I pleaded with you, Alvero, but I can plead with you no more. Confess yourself!”
“I have no sins to confess.”
“What is it your wear around your neck?”
Rising now Torquemada pushed back his chair and strode around the table to Alvero. They stood face to face and Alvero asked him in a whisper, “Why? Why, Thomas? Why are you doing this to me? What devil drives you?”
Torquemada reached out, grabbed the chain that was around Alvero’s neck and lifted it over his head. “Still you wear it,” Torquemada said. “Nothing can change you and no danger can teach you the meaning of fear.”
“As I wear my honour.”
“Honour?” Torquemada repeated, raising a brow and holding the ampule up before him.
“I care nothing for that,” Alvero said fiercely. “That thing you hold in your fingers means nothing and it never meant anything. It is a memory, that’s all it ever was, a meaningful memory. It was my father’s and before him it belonged to his father and so when I kept it I had a memory of both of them. But in the nightmare that you and your kind have made of Spain, it becomes more than a memory. In this madness with which you hunt down anyone who has a spoonful of Jewish blood in his veins—it becomes a matter of pride. Shall I repeat that word for you, Torquemada? Pride! There is a Spanish word for you, Thomas. A good Spanish word. Do you know, my dear Thomas, I am a Christian but I am also a man and a Spaniard. If I threw away that thing that you are holding in your hand I might remain a Christian but I would cease to be a man and I would become the kind of Spaniard that Spain has sufficient of.”
“You doom yourself,” Torquemada said sadly.
“Goddamn you to hell!” Alvero shouted. “I was doomed the day the King of Spain asked you to taste my blood and share my wealth!”
10
AFTERWARDS THE THING THAT ALVERO REMEMBERED most about the torture chamber of the Inquisition was that time ceased. He was taken there first on the day before Holy Week began. The first time he was there they did little to him that was of any importance in terms of what became his existence – the method and meaning of torture. They pricked his skin with needles and they burned the flesh on his back with a hot iron, but it was enough to distort his time sense, and after that he had no idea nor was he ever able truly to recollect how many additional times they took him to torture.
He remembered things but he did not really remember the pain. Out of one time he remembered Thomas’ face, cowled, expressionless, lit by a moving flame that passed back and forth like the pendulum of a clock. All the time that he, Alvero, stared at Thomas’ face someone was screaming. It came as an afterthought to Alvero that he himself had been screaming, and that what he heard was the sound of his own screams.
Another time, all the while they were torturing him his gaze was fixed on an image of Christ on the cross which hung upon one wall of the torture room. This was a Gothic Christ, very lean, very realistic, red blood pouring from a wound in the image’s side.
When he remembered, it always seemed to him that the image moved, tilted crazily and finally crashed upon the floor, but he knew that this was hallucination.
Most of his memory was of the ceiling of the Inquisition torture room. The ceiling was stone, and it was always wet and on its wet surface some sort of mould grew. Alvero remembered the ceiling very clearly from the time they had him on the rack. He would be looking at the ceiling and screaming with pain, when suddenly his vision would be blurred by the masked face of one of the torturers. That was the total symbol of the room. They were all masked with a black hood that had two eye holes and a third hole for breathing.
Another memory was of a single masked man. In Alvero’s memory he was naked from head to foot, although in actuality he wore an apron of sorts over his nakedness. He was very heavily muscled and so strong that he often substituted his fingers for the instruments of torture. Even though he wore a mask Alvero always remembered him laughing with pleasure.
There was a time when they whipped Alvero and all through that time in his memory there was the sound of church bells. After they whipped him they left him for long enough
for his back to heal. That was the last of the torture. He remembered that one day while his back was still healing he managed to lift himself from his prison cot and go to the window – a tiny window high up in his prison cell – and to look out of it. That brought his eyes into a position a few inches above the ground level. Not far from where he was, a very young child played. This was a naked little boy of two years – one of the orphans who had been given shelter in the monastery. The little naked child played with a pigeon. The pigeon was without fear, and apparently he knew the child very well. He hopped over to the child and fluttered up onto the child’s head, while the little boy giggled with delight.
Once during this period of torture, Alvero recalled to himself the letter he had written to Catherine. Strangely he remembered every word of the letter and he repeated aloud what he had written to her,
“You will remember my dear Catherine that once you said to me that of all the knights in Spain I was the finest. That was your judgment just as in my judgment you are the purest and the most beautiful’ of women. So I take this opportunity to remind you that even a knight bereft of all his weapons is defenceless. I sometimes feel that this is the way I stand at this moment. Defenceless and naked too. As I came into this world, so do I go out of it with all that I own surrendered to the King and the Inquisition. This has not yet happened but it will happen and nothing can stop it. Had I a son I would have managed at least to leave him my sword so that he might have with him always the knowledge that his father was a Spanish knight. But to you, my daughter, I can leave only a memory and that is a thing both precious and dangerous—”
He stopped remembering. It had become too painful.
The days passed and his back healed. There was no more torture. Twice a day bread, water and onions would be left in his cell. This was his diet and finally one day he slept and he awakened and there facing him at the foot of his bed was Torquemada. At first Alvero thought it was a hallucination, an illusion. During the time of his torture hallucinations had become a common occurrence in his life, and so he closed his eyes and waited a little while and then opened them again. Torquemada was still there.
Alvero reached out for the jug of water that stood on a table next to his bed. Torquemada handed this to him. Alvero drank and then sat up.
“Is there much pain, Alvero?” Torquemada asked.
“You ask me?”
“I ask you, Alvero – yes.”
“What shall I tell you about pain, Thomas, my Father?” Alvero asked incredulously. “Shall I tell you what Christ felt when he was nailed onto the cross? I know.”
“I also know.”
“Do you, Thomas?”
Torquemada nodded. “God in heaven, what do you think, Alvero? Do I love suffering? Am I a monster who feeds on death and misery?”
“Tell me – are you?”
Almost shrilly Torquemada cried, “I serve God!”
“I know.” Alvero nodded. He filled his mouth with the rancid water from the jug, swallowed slowly. “You must forgive me, Thomas, because it is not easy for me to talk now, but as I said, I know. I have become a part of your devotion, Thomas. I know how you serve God. Oh how truly I know how you serve God!”
“I pleaded with you before, Alvero. I beg you now confess yourself and cut me down from my own cross.”
“No!” Alvero shouted fiercely.
“You are without remorse and you are without pity.”
“For you, Thomas? Pity for you? Is that what you are asking me to do – to pity you? Perhaps to pray for your salvation? Is that it?”
“God help me, do you think I have no love for you?”
“Love? No, Thomas – you put love away too long ago and you have no love for anything on this earth.”
“I don’t want you to die without grace or hope! I plead with you again,” Torquemada said desperately.
Alvero smiled bitterly. “So you plead with me, Thomas.”
Torquemada breathed deeply and then, nodded. “As you will, Alvero.” He sighed and turned toward the door. Alvero’s voice stopped him.
“Thomas!”
Slowly Torquemada turned to Alvero. Alvero was amazed at the fact that the Prior’s face was lit with hope.
“When must I die?” Alvero asked him.
“Soon, and may God have mercy upon you?”
“Do you have mercy?”
“I cannot change it or stop it, Alvero. You know that. Don’t think of what I would do or what I would not do. There is nothing that I can do.”
“Do you have mercy?” Alvero repeated.
“What do you want, Alvero?”
“You know, don’t you?”
“Perhaps.”
“Send me the Rabbi Mendoza.”
“So that both of us may be damned? Is that it, Alvero?”
“Send him to me,” Alvero said softly. “As you value your own immortal soul, Torquemada, send him to me.”
11
IN SEGOVIA AT THAT TIME THERE WAS A PLAZA CALLED El Plaza de Fé which meant that it was the place of the Auto de Fé. The Auto de Fé is the act of faith and the act of faith is the burning alive of a human being for heresy. Even so long ago in Segovia people had forgotten who performs the act of faith, he who is burned or he who does the burning. In any case this plaza on the edge of the city aroused mixed feelings in all who passed by it; and there were times after an act of faith had been performed when the stench of burning flesh lay about it so awfully that only those with the strongest stomachs could venture into the place.
On this night however when Torquemada walked past the place of the act of faith and paused there for a little while, the air was sweet and clean. There had been no burning for heresy in eleven days. The raised platform of stone, which was called the pedestal of faith was swept clean and around the heavy, fire-blackened stake that rose out of it there were no ominous bundles of faggots. Instead a monk stood upon the stone platform with a scroll of parchment in his hands. Behind him stood a soldier of the Inquisition holding a pitch torch and giving him light to read. About thirty or forty people had gathered around to listen. For the most part, as Torquemada observed, they were beggars and sweepers, prostitutes and cutpurses – and among them, in and out of their legs, a dozen ragged, half-naked children ran and shouted and played.
As the monk began to read, Torquemada paused to listen. He stood on the edge of the crowd, half hidden in the shadows.
“These are the signatures of the devil,” the monk read from the parchment scroll he held. His voice resonant and confident he cried out, “Open your eyes lest the sin be upon you, and by this shall ye know the Christian who is a Jew at heart, a Jew in secret, a Jew by night and in the darkness. By these things he will be recognized. Now heed me well. First of all if he celebrates the Sabbath, if he wears a clean shirt or better garments, if he spreads a clean cloth upon his table or lights no fire during that day or rests on that day, you will know him, and as God knows you so will you denounce him and call down the fires of wrath upon him—”
With the last of this the monk’s voice rose to a high pitch. The crowd joined in screaming, hooting and clapping their hands. “God be praised!” someone in the crowd shouted. Others joined in. The children cupped their hands about their mouths and screamed with delight.
Finally the monk gave his parchment to the soldier to hold and spread his arms for silence. When it came he read from the parchment again.
“And by this too you will recognize him – if he eats meat during Lent, if he takes neither meat nor drink on the Day of Atonement – if he celebrates the Passover—” Now the monk interpolated. “Ah now there is opportunity for you. Always on the Passover the opportunity is greater. On the day of the Passover you watch him, you follow him, you notice him. Tempt him, offer him bread and see whether he puts the bread in his mouth. See whether he will touch the bread. Press the bread into his hand and see whether he drops it the way you would drop a hot coal. That way, cunningly, you will trap him and clothe your own im
mortal souls in specific grace—”
Torquemada walked away with long steps. He shivered a little and tried to throw off the great despondency that was gathering about him. He walked through street after street in Segovia, looking for a place he thought he remembered, and when he could not find it he called out to a boy. The child turned to run away, and Torquemada’s voice lashed at him and caught him like a noose of cord.
“Boy – come here!” Trapped, enmeshed, the boy hesitated. Then he walked slowly to the grim towering figure of the Prior and stood in front of him waiting and silent.
“Boy, where is the house of the Rabbi Mendoza?” Torquemada asked.
The boy shook his head silently.
“Do you know who I am, boy?”
Still silent the boy nodded.
“Then do as I say and take me to the house.”
Now the boy walked in front of Torquemada. The Prior followed and presently they came to a doorway in a wall, at which the boy pointed. Then the boy fled and Torquemada rapped sharply upon the door. He stood there waiting. A long time seemed to pass, so long that Torquemada began to wonder whether or not the boy had led him to an empty house. Then the door opened slowly, and a middle-aged woman stood in the doorway – a small plain-looking woman who regarded Torquemada without alarm but also without welcome.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I am Prior Thomas de Torquemada.”
“I know the name,” the woman said, nodding slowly. “What do you want here, Prior?”
“To speak with the rabbi.”
“We are Jews, Prior. Not Maranos – not converts or apostates or heretics. Only Jews. You have no business with us. Your Inquisition has no jurisdiction over Jews.”
“Will you teach me the Law of the Church?” Torquemada demanded in sudden anger; and then catching himself, said more gently, “Still, I must talk with the rabbi.”
For a moment longer the woman hesitated, observing Torquemada thoughtfully. Then she opened the door wide and stood aside, and Torquemada entered. She closed the door behind him. The hallway in which Torquemada stood was lit only by the light from the next room. In the pervasive darkness Torquemada stood and waited. “Follow me, please,” Señora Mendoza said to him. She led him then into a plain room, which was about nine by fourteen feet. There was a small hearth at one side, a tile floor, plaster walls and windows on the inside wall which, Torquemada knew, would overlook whatever tiny courtyard they possessed. The furnishings consisted of a table, some chairs and a cupboard.
