The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (43 page)

And now the stars are shining for me by day, and unhappiness is like a pain made of machetes and thorns. The taste of life is like piquia oil in the mouth, and perhaps I would spit but the bitterness would remain, and perhaps after all everything is for nothing, and I cry in the night like an owl and laugh without humour like the laughing hawk, and my soul flies hither and thither in confusion, and all I am made of is memory.

When I first saw you, my husband, sweet lover, my guardian, my dark fish swimming in the waters of my womb, you were handsome. You were like an old man, you were so serious, you were like a child, you were smooth and unmade. You were like a dolphin, strong and innocent, and how I loved you, lay awake at night for the thought of you, slept in the broad day for the sake of dreaming of you. I followed you in the forest and you never saw me, but in the not knowing of me you still loved me, and I was tempted. I tried to save you, but the jaguar killed you, and in death your soul rose up and the first sight of
your dead eyes was me, and you said, ‘Ah, I dreamed of you, and your name is Parlanchina,’ and I took your hand, and at that time I was so young dead that I scarcely sprouted breasts, and nonetheless you loved me. And you took me as I took you, and we grew love as Papa grows his maize in the clearing, and our love was like a quebracha, hard and strong, and we became invincible. And on the praias and savannas, amid our bones whitening in the tomb, in the stone chulpas of the sierra, running above the topmost trees of the montana, I fell upon your body and our hunger was unfed with devouring. I remember your eyes grew wild and your lips swelled, and the waves would start at my feet and head and meet in the middle, and my toes curled so that sometimes it hurt me even when I was adrift on delight’s canoe somewhere in the centre of a dark sun. ‘Federico, Federico, Federico,’ I said, and the name meant all things that I had ever meant, and, ‘Ay, ay, ay,’ I cried, and my happiness was such that I came out of the other side of happiness and began to weep, and you took my hair and wiped my tears with, ‘I love you Parlanchina, I love you. You are beautiful like Yemaya. For this, death was not so bad, and the jaguar did me a favour, thanks be to all cats, and all the gods bless them.’ And I was laughing as I cried, and I did not feel that I was dead, because this was life made better, like a knife that cuts sharper for the burning in Papa’s fire.

And sometimes I would go up into the mountains and surprise you as you watched the paths, and sometimes you would come down into the jungle and catch me as I ran among the trees, and always we would mate like dolphins, twisting and rolling, calling and crying, and my breasts grew, and my belly swelled. I remember how you would run your hands and kneel before me naked, kissing my legs and the baby’s door, saying, ‘Come little child, your papa is calling,’ and I would squirm, saying, ‘Get away, get away,’ and all the time you knew I was saying, ‘Closer, I love you, come closer,’ and you laughed and held me tighter, and the pleasure could have killed me.

And the daughter came in the night without my knowing, waking me up in my dreams, and there she was beside me before I had even woven a hammock for her, and she never cried, because she was born not to Parlanchina living but to Parlanchina dead, and Papa was happy, and you were her father, so proud to hold her that you scarcely gave me time to take her and feed her my body’s milk. And
now she can stand for a second and makes noises that could be words, if only they could be understood, and before my eyes you are fading.

I hug you and my arms embrace a nothing. I look in your eyes and they have no colours, they are dreaming. I kiss your lips and they have no response, like the lips of a man gone mad and disappearing in the jungle of his broken soul. Your mind is in fragments like the shards of huacos in a mountain tomb, I say, ‘Federico, Federico, where are you? Speak,’ and you blink and stand like an animal lanced with curare, and I do not hear even a sigh, and suddenly I think, ‘Parlanchina, you have stopped existing when Federico’s eyes have dimmed,’ and Papa says, ‘Be happy, Federico is being reborn,’ and that is all nothing for me, for your child has no father and I am undone. I am shredded by memories, I am empress of grey seas of mourning, I shall weep rivers until the gods hear me and for fear of drowning grant my request.

SIBILA DID NOT
want to leave. She pulled one of those comical faces of hers and said, ‘But I have done nothing bad, and anyway, they are not the police.’ At that point I realised that I should go to the mayor and persuade him to call the militia on the telephone. I went to the alcaldia, and there was a group of people outside it who had all had the same idea. Outside the building the severed wire of our one telephone hung down the boards, and inside there were screams. It seems that the mayor had attempted to arrest the legate, had been seized by the bodyguard, and was being questioned about his orthodoxy. His father had been a Syrian, and he did not have a chance. He was flayed alive and left to bleed to death in the sun as a example to us all. It was said he would not denounce anyone else. His corpse was the most horrible thing I had ever seen up to that time.

On the Tuesday we all had to go to church and listen to the list of heresies all over again, and we were made to swear the same oath to support the Holy Office. Our priest was not allowed to say the mass, and instead it was said by one Father Valentino, a man with the face of a simpleton. We were invited to denounce the heretics known to us, and told to go to our houses to await our individual summons; they had taken the list of inhabitants from the offices of the mayor where he kept them for the purposes of the census.

The town was crawling with priests and bodyguards, so it was difficult to walk about without being stopped and questioned. Many people went into their front doors and out of their houses by the back windows. I watched Sofia do precisely that from my own window, and run off into the trees. I do not think that she was caught, but I know of one woman who was raped to death by the bodyguard when they found her in a barn. I was too scared to flee, and I sat in my house waiting for the knock.

My name comes late in the alphabet, and so I was not to be
interviewed for some time. I could not sit still, and I began to prepare a meal, as though I could delude myself that everything was normal.

There was a knock on my door after sunset, and I assumed it to be the Holy Office. Trembling and terrified I looked through the cracks in the planks and saw that it was our priest, Father Belibasta. He was not a good man, in the sense that he had a concubine and two children, but he was a good man in the sense that he had an unblemished soul. I was relieved, and I let him in.

He was plainly frightened, more even than I was, and he said he had seen terrible things, and that I must hurry. I said, ‘What things?’ but he would not explain in detail. He said that people were admitting to things that they had not done, and were accusing each other likewise. He sat on my truckle bed with tears streaming down his cheeks, and he told me that he had seen such horrors as had never been seen. I will not tell you the names, because they will mean nothing to you, but for example he told me that one man had denounced himself for using contraceptives. Another had denounced his best friend for urinating against the church wall when he was drunk. A woman made a delation against her husband, saying that he had made her cook meat and onions on a Friday, and the husband said that she had once observed that St Maria Corelli must have been very stupid. Someone else was accused of saying, during a game of tejo, ‘You will not win this game, even if God were on your side.’ It seemed that neighbours were turned against neighbours, families against their own members, because they were being told that it was not enough to denounce oneself when fully cognisant of others who deserved to be arraigned. Father Belibasta said that statements were being extracted by force, and he asked, ‘Where is La Perfecta?’

‘Sibila is in her house,’ I replied.

‘Almost everyone has denounced her and yourself,’ said the priest. ‘With all that talk about angels and diabolical creation, it was inevitable. You must go to her and try to get out of this place. Please do not tell me where you will go, because my turn will come perhaps. I am going to try to gather my flock and lead them to a place of safety.’

I knelt before him and I asked, ‘Pray to God to lead me to a good end.’ I do not know why I said those words, but they came of their own accord into my head.

‘God bless you, and make you a good Christian, and lead you to a good end,’ he said, and he laid his hand on my head.

I have never felt so courageous, and it was love that did it. I was like a bird who hops within reach of an ocelot to lead it away from her chicks. I climbed out of the window at the back, and I circled the entire village in order to go behind Sibila’s house. I was as stealthy and assured as a jaguar, and I forgot my crippled leg. It carried me as though it were healthy. I even stole a rifle from the side of a sleeping bodyguard, and I broke his head with the butt of it, I was so full of strength.

I tapped on Sibila’s shutter, and at first she refused to come. But I begged her, and I told her to gather all the food in the house. There was a terrible shriek that floated out over the darkness, and that persuaded her. We went to live in the caves where we used to go and eat picnics on hot afternoons.

During that week I came to know her even more intimately. At night it grew very cold, and we used to sleep wrapped up in each other’s arms, fully clothed, to keep warm. I can still smell her hair and feel the slenderness of her limbs. I was so happy. During the day we would look for wild fruit, and we would talk and talk until we lost our voices with laughing. I told her things about myself that I have told no one, and she told me all about every man she had ever loved. We made up stupid songs and sang them in rounds, tirelessly. I honestly believe that we would eventually have become lovers. I would look into her face and see her candidly gazing back, and that is how I know. I also know that she was an angel who was daily breaking further from her imprisonment.

I was growing accustomed to my newfound bravery, and every night I would creep back down to the village to see whether the barbarians were still there. I saw horrible things, even in the dark, because by night they continued the work of the day by the light of torches and vehicles. Many people were hanged. I heard the sound of pleading and wailing. I saw Gil. He was saying, ‘I am innocent, I am not a homosexual,’ but they castrated him and stoned him whilst he was tied to a post. I know that Gil was not homosexual, because he used to borrow money to go to the whorehouse. Who could have accused him? Guiralda, whose husband had died, leaving her pregnant, was thrown down the well, like Patarino.

Because my nose is slit and because I have lash marks all over my body, you will have guessed that I was caught. I was taken from behind by three men, one night as I was watching through the leaves. I could not run from them because of my leg, and when they grabbed me all my strength left my body, and I was like a child. They said, ‘Ay, this is the cripple,’ and they took me straight to the church.

In the church El Inocente was sitting behind a long table, looking more like a vulture than ever. At first he was kind to me. He pointed to the priest who had said the mass and told me, ‘Father Valentino will defend you in this court. Did you know that you have been denounced, and that is why we have brought you here?’

I played dumb, and said, ‘No, Your Grace. Who has denounced me?’

‘We do not reveal the names of witnesses, to spare them from reprisals after we have gone.’

‘Of what am I accused, Your Grace?’

‘If we tell you that, then you may guess who has accused you. We require you to search your conscience. Were you at the Edict of Grace?’

I nodded, and he said, ‘Then you have sworn a Holy Oath to help us. What do you have to confess?’

I searched in my mind for small offences, and I said, ‘I do not often go to mass, and from time to time I have doubted that God becomes bread.’

This was noted down by another priest, and El Inocente asked, ‘And do you have a confession
in caput alienum
?’

I asked him to repeat the question, and he explained that I should confess the evil I knew of others. I had a brainwave, and I named him some people who had already died and were out of harm’s way. I said, ‘These people went to candombles, and practised santeria, but now they are dead.’

‘And are they buried here?’

I nodded again, and the list of names was handed to one of the bodyguard, who went out with it. ‘You have more to confess, do you not?’ asked the Monsignor, and I replied, ‘No, Your Grace.’

‘Put him
in conspectu tormentorum
,’ said the vulture, and Father Valentino took me by the arm and led me into the room of the church where the priest robes himself. In there I saw whips and instruments
made of iron, and a system of pulleys mounted upon a hook in one of the joists. I said to the priest, ‘How will you defend me?’ and he replied, ‘There are four forms of defence. In the first place you can prove that witnesses are accusing you out of malice.’

‘Who are the witnesses?’

He shook his head and said, ‘It has already been explained that we cannot reveal the identity of witnesses. You may call favourable witnesses. You may plead extenuation, such as insanity, or you may resort to recusation, and that is something that I do not advise, under the circumstances.’

‘What is it?’

‘Objecting to the judge. Do you see this? This is the garrucha, or strappado. You are hauled to the ceiling and then dropped; it greatly agonises the arms and shoulders. This is the toca; you are tied down, a cloth is put down your throat and water is poured over it which soaks down the cloth and fills your stomach. How much it hurts depends upon how much water is used. This is the potro; it is a system of ropes that are wound upon a crank, and which cut into the flesh and crush the bones. If you do not confess, you will suffer until we are convinced that you have told everything.’