Lucena (2 page)

“But you're not a Jew. You're a Christian!” she asserted.

“I'm Jewish and Christian,” he responded.

“I'll stay here,” she concluded. “I'll spend time by the seaside. I'll do some shopping in Málaga and then rest. Have a good trip.”

“At three in the morning both wandered about the room, fully awake as though it were noon.

“I had a dream,” he related. “A strange dream. I dreamed that they were making a lot of genetic modifications in man and that at first they made mistakes and some strange kinds of beings were born. So, to keep them from being seen, they were left in a remote village away from the world. I walked around in that village and saw men with female genitals on the knee, or persons with hands on their ears, others with intestines on the outside, many with only one eye or three legs....and then I woke up.”

“Well those are just nightmares,” she dismissed.

“Once I wanted to be a writer, you know,” he reminded her. “It was before I started studying law. There are a lot of writers who studied law and later abandon the profession. Maybe I should make my dream a reality and become a writer. It's now or never.”

“And what would we live on?” she quavered.

“That's easy,” he said reassuringly. “I can sell my law firm for at least a million dollars and start writing.”

“A million dollars spends real fast,” she whined. “So then what?”

“It can also spend slower if we learn how to waste less,” he asserted.

“What good would it do for us to learn to waste less?” she hissed.

“Then your husband would be happy and could do what he wants to do,” he declared. “I am fed up with representing unpleasant people. I'm tired of files, I could write a good book with my dream. I can tell a lot of things about the family...a long story, I could be a renowned writer.

“I don't think this is the time to make such a decision,” she declared. “I would like to order a tea, but in this hotel they don't even have room service. Is that what you are referring to when you say waste less? We have to survive without room service?”

“If we go out,” he said. “I'm sure we'll find one of those places that are open twenty four hours.”

“I don't feel like going out on such a stormy night,” she sniffed.

“Stormy? There's only a slight breeze,” he said.

“You know I don't like a draft,” she griped.

“That's fine,” he said. “I'll go out and I'll bring you a tea. Do you want anything else?”

“Something to drink,” she ordered. “A Sprite, maybe a snack. A Spanish tortilla.”

“OK I'll see what I can find,” he agreed.

Isaac took the car toward the beach. It was a night of full moon. There was a strong wind coming down from the mountain and the moon illuminated the water. The wind bunched up the waves and tossed them from the coast to the deep sea. He stopped at the first bar that had a sign “Open 24 hours.” But it was closed.
They must be on vacation. Tourist season is over.
He struck out toward the car but the wind was so strong it was hard for him to walk. He got to the car, an Opel Corsa and felt a strong hand grab his shoulder.

“Isaac Benzimra!”

“Yes.”

In front of him were two civilian guards dressed like in the time of Franco with the typical three cornered caps, and green uniform. Obviously there was a problem.

“Please come with us,” one said.

“What?” he asked, puzzled.

Before he could say anything more he was in a Ford Escort traveling toward Málaga.

He tried to talk to the guards but there was a closed window between him and them. He couldn't even think during the whole trip. He pictured himself in jail.

“Your trial will begin immediately,” he heard them say.

“I have the right to talk to a lawyer!” he shouted immediately. But nobody listened to him.

As the voice had announced, a few seconds later two persons asked him to accompany them and he suddenly found himself in a room with a ceiling up at least six meters. There were three judges dressed in robes, standing about three meters from him.

A man on one side announced: “Archbishop Juan José Torres!”

The one in the middle, with the most elegant robe, ordered Isaac to stand and then said:

“Session 99/88 of the Málaga Municipal Inquisition Court in session. The accused is Isaac Benzimra, who is asked to repent his sins.”

“What?” asked Isaac. “Surely this is a practical joke for television.” He started shouting, but right away somebody came up and struck him.

“Be silent and answer the Archbishop.”

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” said the Archbishop.

“About what?” asked Isaac.

“Mr. Isaac, this is something very serious. We want to save your soul from hell so don't scorn us.” cautioned the Archbishop.

“Hell? It's not here,” countered Isaac.

Again, someone charged out from the wall, striking him. Isaac began to understand this was not a television Inquisition. He feared his wife might have done something to receive his life insurance.

“Do you repent, or not?” enquired the Archbishop.

“Of course I repent,” asserted Isaac. “The question is, of what?”

“That, you will tell us.” announced the Archbishop.

“I fucked my secretary.” admitted Isaac.

“Do you repent?” asked the Archbishop.

“Of course,” asserted Isaac.

“What else?” asked the priest at the side of the Archbishop who had the simplest robe, a brown color.

“I need more light,” said Isaac. “It's dark.”

“It is as dark as your soul,” intoned the Archbishop. “Only by repenting will you see the light.”

“What else must I repent of?” questioned Isaac.

“Everything.” Said the Archbishop. “Everything. Only then can you save yourself from the fires of hell.”

Isaac asked himself what “everything” meant but right away he realized there was no end to this. He had to know what they wanted to hear because it didn't seem that they were concerned with extramarital affairs. What should he say?

“This is a democratic country and I have a right to an attorney to defend me,” announced Isaac.

“Democratic?” said the Archbishop. “What does that mean?”

“Uh, if you guys don't know that, that means I'm in real trouble,” concluded Isaac.

The Archbishop began to show interest. “Democratic? Such as in depraved Greece?”

“More or less. It means the accused person has basic rights and that one can choose his leader,” mentioned Isaac. “That people can elect a leader.”

“Why would an accused person need rights?” sermonized the Archbishop. “We are here to defend your rights; to make you repent and save you from hell. You say this is a democratic state? Here nobody has ever elected a king. God, and in part, we, elect a king.”

“Not a king,” corrected Isaac. “In a democratic government there is no king.”

“If that is the case, you are not in a democratic state because here we have a king,” commented the Archbishop. “King Juan Carlos de Borbón the Catholic. That...is not here.”

“It was just a few hours ago,” murmured Isaac. “Has there, perhaps been a revolution?”

“For your own good I suggest you use another line of defense,” commented the Archbishop. “Your stupidity might cause you to be decapitated for speaking like a sorcerer.”

“Sorcerer?” said Isaac. “I thought they didn't exist anymore.”

“Very few,” hissed the Archbishop.

The three judges began to debate in low voices and then said to Isaac:

“We propose to interrupt this session until tomorrow and let you rest. You are surely tired and shocked, so you will have time to think about what you want to repent of.”

“I am not a Spanish citizen,” said Isaac. “I am a Mexican citizen. I want to see my ambassador.”

“Mr. Benzimra,” reminded the Archbishop. “Mexico is part of Spain. No such ambassador exists.”

Two men gently took Isaac to his cell. On the way he tried to talk to them. “What is happening here?” But they acted like robots and didn't answer his questions.”

In the cell he found another man who, like him, awaited a second debate. As an experienced attorney, Isaac tried to get as much information out of him as possible.

Fernando María, (that was his name) answered in a magnanimous tone.

“There is no possible way that you will ever know what to say to them nor what to confess to. I have already confessed millions of things but the only thing they do is look at me and ask me to repent to save my soul from hell. Where is hell? Wouldn't it be better to arrive there instead of having to go through these millions of confessions? I think that what they want is for me to confess some ancient Jewish custom but I don't know anything about Judaism any more. Maybe my grandmother's grandmother might have known something. I've already confessed some time ago that I don't eat pork, even though I eat it daily. I have confessed that I light candles, and that I am circumcised, although they themselves could verify that it isn't so.”

“One day they will seat you on the horse and drip, drop by drop, boiling oil on your head. Olive oil, an excellent olive oil, at one hundred seventy degrees. And then you will be disposed to confess anything. I myself am ready to confess that I raped Mary. I would be disposed to confess everything if they told me what I was suspected of, but it's no use. The boiling oil fries your brain. You start to see your life escape in front of your eyes. But they have excellent doctors, and they stop, just in time, when you are at the point of death. And they send you fainting to your cell.”

“Boiling olive oil. Then it is the water torture. They drip freezing water into your ear one per minute. You will scream, but you will go insane. The blows are nothing compared to that.

A few blows, a bit of blood and that's it. I'd advise you to confess nothing. Try to find out what they suspect you of. I don't think it's possible. They know every technique. All of them.”

“What about an attorney?” interspersed Isaac. “Can't you ask for an attorney to defend you?”

“Nobody can defend you,” said Fernando Maria. “Think about it. It's been five hundred years since there have been any Jews, yet they keep searching for us.”

“For us?” responded Isaac quickly, a typical legal reaction. “But I'm not a Jew.”

“Nor am I,” responded Fernando María, “Nor am I. It is just an expression. They search for them. I wish I were a Jew, or at least a little Jewish, a little bit “Marrano”, because then at least this suffering might have some kind of meaning. If I really were, I would refuse to eat pork. I would have been able to pray to the god of the Jews and stop begging Jesus to save me from his priests. Oh Isaac, I don't know how we are going to get out of this. The problem is, that here, in the gloomy cellars of the inquisition, nobody dies. Here nobody dies, the suffering goes on for years but they don't kill you. I pray every day to die.”

Isaac needed to absorb this. “I propose that we sleep until tomorrow.”

“Sleep, Isaac,” said Fernando Maria. “I wish I could sleep. I can't sleep. They wake you up constantly, and here in these damp walls you don't know if it's day or night. I wish I could sleep even for a minute. To die, to die would be my only dream. I can't even close my eyes. It's as if two tweezers held them open.”

“Great,” murmured Isaac. “Well, I'm going to sleep.”

“Sleep,” said Fernando Maria. “Sleep my friend. It may be your last chance to do so.”

But Isaac didn't manage to sleep while thinking about how to get out of that judicial labyrinth, that strange situation. None of his vast trial knowledge, not even what he had learned about international law were at all helpful. He saw himself as a subject to a state of nonexistence, not because he had disappeared, but because he had never existed in this new world. Perhaps, he thought, the best solution would be something the judges never expected: to attack them by any means possible to shatter their righteousness. Perhaps...perhaps...perhaps...until he dozed off.

It is hard to say how long he slept. He awoke tired. Maybe he slept an hour, or ten, but the guards left no doubt that it had not been a dream. They escorted him through the passageways to a room where there was only one man, not a tribunal.

Without any preliminaries the man said: “You will be immediately transferred to the Lucena Inquisition Tribunal. It has been decided that they will be the ones to try you.”

“Can I say something?” blurted Isaac. “I am going to appeal to the UN and to the Human Rights Tribunal in Prague.”

Nobody responded. He was covered in a black sack and placed in a vehicle which took him to Lucena.

The trip took hours. It is as though time had been bottled, or simply put, as if the car had sunk. Isaac didn't know and nobody told him anything.

What was the difference between Lucena and Málaga? But there was. There was, and he knew it. He had come to Spain precisely to visit the city of his ancestors which was, none other than Lucena

On the road he now saw that things had changed a bit. Maybe it was the way they put him in the car or the atmosphere inside. He was taken directly to a room where there was a man in a magnificent robe different from the previous judge.

“I don't agree to proceed like this,” began Isaac. “According to the Treaty of Geneva you are violating my basic human rights and I don't even know why. I don't accept your tribunal or your laws. I demand an attorney immediately.”

“I am Cardinal of Lucena, Martín de Jesús y Ibera, Mr. Benzimra, Please sit down.”

“I don't have to answer any questions,” declared Isaac. “Your attitude is offensive and disgraceful.”

“I am sorry if you haven't been treated well,” said the Cardinal. “You may submit a written complaint and we will review the issue.”