Against the Inquisition

by Marcos Aguinis

  Days later, Francisco learns that something serious happened: Manuel Bautista Pérez had hidden a small knife in his sock, and when he recovered from the torture, he tried to kill himself. He stabbed himself six times in the abdomen, and twice in the groin.

  132

  For the first time, Francisco receives corn, a ration he requested instead of bread. It’s astonishing to see the way the crush of new inmates has overwhelmed the guards and eased the strictures that had reigned throughout the fortress. Francisco looks at the corn enthusiastically and, when he is free of spying eyes, with the door bolted shut, he sets to work. He pulls the husk from each ear of corn and hides the leaves under his bed. With the yellow kernels laid bare, he cooks the corn in a pot he is now allowed to have, over a small stove. He is glad to be recovering his appetite, and he stretches his body. The wounds on his torso are healing. But he can’t hear as well as before, and sleeps a great deal. He is stabilizing, like a hurt bird abandoned in the wild.

  Francisco ties together many corn husks to fashion a long rope. Nobody pays attention to him anymore. At night, he drags the brittle table to the wall, places the stool on the table, and, holding on where he can, climbs to the ceiling beams. His left hand grasps a beam firmly, while the other uses the tiny iron knife to gnaw at the adobe around one of the small window’s bars. He tires and grows dizzy. He knows he’s in no condition to overexert himself. He descends, puts the furniture back—though he knows it’s unlikely that anyone will come at this hour—and dozes for a while. Then he resumes his task. The small window looks out on an inner courtyard surrounded by cells. Over the roofs, he can glimpse the high outer fortress walls.

  At last, he succeeds in moving the bar. He pushes it this way and that, twists and turns it, pushes it again, and finally yanks it out. He smiles at it as if it were a helpless victim and places it on a beam.

  Back down on the ground, he picks up his rope and tests each knot to gauge its strength. He climbs up again and ties the rope to one of the immobile bars. He sticks out his head. He feels the cool night air, a crazy caress of freedom. Slowly, grasping the rope, he slides his body out and climbs down the high wall. His dungeon seemed to be in a pit, but the courtyard’s firm earth truly feels like an abyss. He can’t understand the effect: it’s part of the irrationality imposed by the Holy Office. He reaches the ground and crouches in the shadows, glued to the wall. He looks around cautiously. The air carries the scent of the Rímac River. He sees no guards, no servants, no dogs, though they must be lying in wait.

  After all these years in prison he has managed to create an imaginary map in his mind of this labyrinth, and he knows there are traps, false doors, and corridors with hidden holes to devour those who try to escape. For this reason, he walks silently, exploring the uneven earth, brushing past bushes. He glimpses the vegetable garden, tended by the slaves of the Holy Office. It is a square in which plant life breathes, deaf to the prison’s tortures. The smell of vegetables is intoxicating. He strokes the polished skin of a tomato, presses it gently, and imagines its red color in the daylight; he picks it, bites it, and enjoys its flavorful flesh. How long has it been since he’s touched a plant or plucked a piece of fruit? He keeps moving, toward the nearest wall. His imagination has not failed him. He finds the corridor through which enslaved workers reach the garden. A torch languishes at one end, allowing him to reenter the detested labyrinth. To the left, a newly built archway leads to the recently added dungeons. Francisco stays close to the wall, and his hands sense a vibration: someone is approaching. He has to hurry.

  The doors along the hall are identical, and he chooses one. He lifts the bolt very slowly. He enters, closes the door behind him, and makes calming gestures to the two prisoners, who spring up, startled. He stays silent with his index finger over his lips, until he is assured that no one has entered the hall. He hears nothing but the frogs out in the courtyard. The silence becomes physical, a thick presence. Francisco lights a candle. He speaks to the prisoners in a whispering voice, expressing solidarity. The captives are stunned. They think they are targets of another trap set by the Holy Office. Is this nocturnal apparition trying to trick them, to make them confess? Perhaps, so they confess: one says he is a bigamist, and the other is a monk who married in secret. Francisco is disappointed, because he’s not looking for people persecuted for such reasons, but rather those who will be sent to the fiery altars for loyalty to their beliefs. He blesses them in the name of God and returns to the dim corridor.

  He drags himself in the opposite direction. He tries another cell. Two men startle there, too. Francisco introduces himself. He says his name is Eli Nazareo, he who was once known as Francisco Maldonado da Silva. Elijah is the name of the prophet who battled the idolaters of Baal, and the name means “my God is Yahweh” in Hebrew; Nazir, Nazareo, is he who is consecrated to service to the Lord.

  “I am an unworthy servant of the God of Israel,” he exclaims, with a self-humiliation true to its time.

  The captives exchange a glance, full of doubts. Who doesn’t know about the spies and provocateurs contracted by the Holy Office to break their resistance? No code or password is guaranteed; the trick can include words in Hebrew, references to feast days, or moving stories. Francisco insists that he is really a prisoner. His presence stirs a sacred fear, with his long, graying beard, and his hair parted at the middle and falling softly over his shoulders. He resembles an aging Jesus. He is tall, perhaps appearing even more so now that he’s so thin. His strong nose and penetrating eyes make his voice and words all the more persuasive. Finally, one of the two says that he recognizes him.

  “You recognize me?”

  The old man nods and invites Francisco to sit down beside him, on the tousled bed. His face is as wrinkled as a nut.

  “My name is Tomé Cuaresma,” he says.

  “Tomé Cuaresma!” Francisco clasps his dry, cold hands. “My father—”

  “Yes, your father.” He raises his eyes, which are swollen with pain. “Your father knew me, and spoke of me, right?”

  In the new section of the secret jails, these two men connect deeply in a belated reunion through the depths of the night. Tomé Cuaresma is one of the most popular physicians in Lima, and yet Francisco, curiously, was never able to see him in person. His father had often spoken of this tireless professional, to whom noblemen constantly turned for help. But he was also the doctor who secretly served the city’s Jews.

  The old man recounts his sudden arrest on the street, as he was leaving home to attend to a patient. He was assaulted like a common thief; his wrists were tied with rope, and he was forced into a carriage. The warden interrogated him first, and then he was locked in this cell with another victim, as it seemed that there was no longer enough space for solitary confinement.

  The other prisoner introduces himself, in turn.

  “I am Sebastián Duarte.”

  “Brother-in-law of Rabbi Manuel Bautista Pérez,” Cuaresma adds.

  “Of Manuel Bautista Pérez?” Francisco says, astonished. “I have to see him, to speak to him.”

  “He’s ordered me to confess everything.” Sebastián Duarte opens his hands in resignation. “And to beg for mercy.”

  “Confession has no limits,” Francisco replies, disturbed. “They want facts and names and then more facts and more names. The rabbi is mistaken, because begging for mercy is futile; it heightens the inquisitors’ arrogance, and does not lessen the victims’ suffering.”

  They stare at him in alarm.

  “That is what Pérez suggested?” Francisco insists. “He cannot be so naïve. He must have done so in the thrall of torture. It doesn’t count.”

  “He tried to kill himself,” his brother-in-law says, by way of justification.

  “My father begged for mercy,” Francisco tells them. “He asked for mercy, and he was reconciled, but with sanctions, forced to wear the sanbenito. Know this: confession will not erase our guilt, and neither will mercy give us back our freedom. Either we submit
to the whims of the Holy Office, or we confront it until God decides. No freedom remains for us except for freedom of the spirit. Let us protect it, and defend it.”

  Tomé Cuaresma and Sebastián Duarte stare at him skeptically. It is a surreal inspirational speech, spoken by a surreal man. Francisco presses their hands, utters the Shema Israel, and recites verses from the psalms. He enjoins them not to surrender. He reminds them, passionately, of Samson’s battle against the Philistines.

  “If it’s a matter of dying, may our deaths weigh heavily upon them.”

  He blesses them, puts out the flame, and silently opens the door.

  He enters the next cell, where the prisoners’ fright is repeated, as are Francisco’s calming gestures. One of the captives falls to his knees, having confused the visitor with Jesus.

  “I am not Jesus.” He smiles and helps the man to his feet. “I am your brother. A Jew. My name is Eli Nazareo, servant of the God of Israel.”

  He encourages them to resist and reminds them that each human being carries a divine spark inside. The Holy Office displays great power, but it is not omnipotent.

  “The judges are men, and we are men. We are the same. We are equal.”

  He returns to the corridor, where the torch flickers and trembles, and he glides toward the inner courtyard. It is enough for one night. He is content, and decides to celebrate his victory with another tomato. Then he moves toward the wall, stays glued to it, and finally reaches the rope that still hangs from his tiny window. He climbs, using his bare feet and knees to grip the knots on the wall, as Lorenzo Valdés had taught him as a child. Before entering the ominous cell, he fills his lungs with night air. He removes the bar he hid among the ceiling beams and puts it back in place. It’s essential to cover his tracks, so he can do it again.

  No records exist to document the meeting between Francisco and the great captain Manuel Bautista Pérez. But it’s notable that Manuel Bautista Pérez sends messages to fellow prisoners that ordered the opposite of what he’d said before. Now he asks them to resist and to retract any confessions made under torture. His brother-in-law Sebastián Duarte reads the coded text that a bribed servant brings him and is stunned to see the same words spoken a few nights ago, in this very cell, by the fantastic apparition called Eli Nazareo: “Do not confess, or beg for mercy! Let us defend our freedom of belief!”

  Eli Nazareo moves through the prison like the prophet Elijah visiting the Passover table: almost invisible, like a marvelous mist. If he had not talked, written, and resisted for years, if all his achievements had been reduced to nothing but this reckless stirring of his people, Francisco Maldonado da Silva would have paid his debts to history and to the principles of solidarity. The analogy his father once made between a temple and a human being is put into practice by this man who extracts gold from adversity.

  The inquisitors are vexed to find that several prisoners are revoking their confessions, because, in their words, they were made under duress. They are forced to repeat hearings, summon more witnesses, and mobilize spies to dig for hoarded truths.

  Francisco is discovered crossing the garden. A servant pounces on him and shouts for help. Francisco falls. Immediately, the eyes of other guards emerge from the walls. With a superhuman effort, the prisoner pulls at the ankles of his opponent, who unleashes blasphemies and a punch that is lost in the empty darkness. The prisoner leverages the missed hit to slip away into the brush, while his pursuers collide against each other.

  “Where is he, damn it?”

  “That way—he went that way!”

  Francisco throws a piece of rubble to distract them.

  “That way!” they shout, lurching toward the noise.

  He hurls another piece of rubble and rushes toward the rope. He starts to climb, lacking air, lacking vigor.

  “I have to get there!” he commands himself, staring up at the unreachable little window, channeling his remaining strength into his hands and feet. They still haven’t recognized him.

  A guard grabs him by the ankles. Francisco can no longer resist. He loosens his grip and falls on his captor.

  Gaitán, fists shut on the wide table, proposes to send him immediately to the torture chamber, with the hope that this will kill him. But in the interrogation Francisco undoes his plan. True to his nature, he acknowledges what’s taken place. The notary writes up his account with the fear produced by proximity to demented people.

  133

  The warden rearranges the prisoners to free up an extremely isolated dungeon in one of the pits reserved for punishing the most perverse captives. It is so narrow that neither a table nor a stool fits, only a stone bench where a dirty straw mattress is laid out, along with a chest into which they press the rest of his rags. In place of a small window, there are three holes through which nothing larger than an orange could pass. The door has a double bolt, the corridor is guarded night and day by the warden’s assistants, and a selfless Dominican is obliged to visit him weekly in an effort to break his perseverance, monitor his food intake, and uncover any plans to hatch new crimes against order and the faith.

  The prisoner is suffocated by the lack of space and the constant vigilance. Although his olfactory sense has deadened, he can’t bear the nauseating sewer smell.

  Near the fortress, Archbishop Fernando Arias de Ugarte resists the Inquisition’s attempts to take his chaplain and majordomo, who are both suspected of having cultivated friendships with the main Jewish prisoners. The archbishop has lived in La Plata, where he met that calm, trustworthy man who, on becoming a widower, studied theology, gave eloquent proof of his devotion, and was ordained as a priest. He is Portuguese in origin, but lived in Buenos Aires and in Córdoba, built a reasonable fortune, and wanted to live and die as a good Catholic. His name was Diego López de Lisboa, and he had traveled in the caravan to Salta with Francisco. At that time, he’d decided to erase his roots. But when the mass arrests of Jews took place, a group of agitators shouted in the cathedral’s atrium for the authorities to “arrest that Jew.” The bewildered old man sought refuge in the Episcopal residence, but the multitude gathered in front of its windows. “Your Honor, throw that Jew out of your house.” The prelate resolved to protect him, but the jester Burguillos, seeing Diego López de Lisboa enter the church wearing the archbishop’s skirts, mocked him with words that became popular across Lima: “Even if you grab your own bottom, the Inquisition will get you out.” The prelate risked his own life and honor in deciding to protect this man. He knew that Diego López de Lisboa’s four children had already renounced their compromising paternal last name and instead used the surname León Pinelo. He would not add any more offenses.

  Meanwhile, the tribunal conducts the trials that will culminate in an inevitable Act of Faith, scheduled for January of 1639.

  Months before the Holy Office unleashed this turmoil in the Viceroyalty, Isabel Otáñez arrives in Lima with several letters of recommendation and the frightened wish to speak to the esteemed judges. Timidly, she makes her way through the interminable stations of their via crucis. She consults with the mother superior of a convent, meets with two familiars of the Holy Office, and finally ventures into the plaza of the Inquisition. The severe building exudes its icy breath, and she is paralyzed before the tall door.

  She addresses the guards, hesitantly, and requests an audience. She shows the letters and explains her helpless situation. She is made to wait, then told to return the following day. Then to return the next day, and the next day, and the next. She has been waiting for years, so the wait does not make her angry but drives her to think that all her actions will be useless. They tore her husband away in the middle of the night, then took all the cash they had, later the few jewels she owned, and then the furniture. Her pregnancy progressed, and she was defenseless with her little Alba Elena and the faithful Catalina. Her parents had been scandalized, or else terrified, it was impossible to know which, but they abandoned her. They wanted nothing to do with someone contaminated by heresies and lo
oked upon poorly by the Inquisition. Her tear-stained letters had no effect, neither did her sacrifice of going all the way to Santiago in one carriage after another, because they did not welcome her. She had to return to faraway Concepción, surrounded by the threat of Arauco Indians.

  The lieutenant Juan Minaya, who had arrested her husband, returned to take more of her furniture, two trunks full of books, the surgical instruments, and the silverware.

  When her son was born, two priests reminded her that contact with her husband was forbidden, and that she shouldn’t even think of trying to relay the news. Helpless in the remote Chilean south, she came to wish that the ferocious Indians would attack the city, slit the residents’ throats, and put an end to her misfortune.

  She received no news from Lima. The local commissioner of the Holy Office helped her see the nature of her tragedy, hard as granite; she had to accept this blow from heaven and grow used to living like a cactus in a wasteland. It was unlikely that her husband would return to freedom and, even if he did, it would be many more years before he’d be authorized to reunite with her. With time, the commissioner took pity on the long-suffering woman. He reread her dowry letter and discovered that Cristóbal de la Cerda, the ex-governor, had taken wise precautions in defense of his goddaughter. The money he held for her, just like the money her future husband had handed over at that time, was not subject to confiscation. If she could recover those funds, she could relieve some of her economic pressure, would be better positioned to raise her children, and could await her husband’s uncertain return with some relief. He thought that he was carrying out an act of charity and started preparing her to take her claims to the only place where they could bear fruit: Lima. It was difficult to fund her passage and persuade her to abandon her children for many months. Nevertheless, he succeeded.