Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“And how do you know whether the Chronicler has not done the same: merely recounted them, without approving them?”

“Señor, these papers…”

“When I was young, I met a student. He, too, believed that there was no Original Sin. He lived, fought, and loved (perhaps died, I do not know; one day I thought I had seen his ghost in the profaned Cathedral), because he believed that God could not have condemned us to misery even before we were born. Others died in the halls of my father’s castle for believing what that student believed … but they were not redeemed by the grace of their thought. Not they, or those crude Teutonic soldiers who besmirched the altar of my victory. Imagine, Friar, that I had challenged those rebels and soldiers: explain in writing the ideas that move you to action, and you shall remain free; if not, you will be executed. None would have been capable of reply; none could have saved himself from death. On the other hand, the student and the Chronicler…”

This frail Señor seized my hand with great strength, squeezed my fist in his, and looked at me with terrifying intensity. “Brother Julián, we must have faith unto death in the values of our religion; let us condemn the idolaters and the infidels, but not the heretics, for they do not deny religion, rather they buttress it by revealing the infinite possibilities for combining our holy truths; let us burn the rebels who rise up against our necessary power in the name of a freedom that they themselves, should they obtain it, would be incapable of exercising, but let us not act against the heretics who in the saintly solitude of their intelligence fortify, unknowingly, the unity of our power by multiplying the alternatives of Faith.”

“But you yourself crushed the Adamite heresy in Flanders, Señor, how then…?”

“That heresy was a pretext employed by the Princes and merchants of the North in order to free themselves from the protection of Rome, and the payment of tithes and indulgences, and in order to name docile bishops who would work on behalf of the power of Mercury, not St. Peter. I acted at the behest of the Pope, not against the heretics, but against those who incited and manipulated them. Do you understand me, Friar?”

With the utmost respect, I bowed my head and then shook my head that I did not; I looked up, seeking my master’s eyes; he was smiling with acerbic pity.

“But you, better than anyone, should understand. Theological skirmishes, Friar, are less dangerous than political ones. Political contention first debilitates me, but then forces me to act, whereas theological arguments divert and channel energies that otherwise would be turned against the government of these kingdoms. I know that the extent and the unity of my power removes very vast powers from the hands of men, but still, that men maintain reserves of uneasiness and strength that someday might menace me; I know that, Friar. I prefer that these reserves be spent in arguing whether Mary conceived without sin, whether Christ was God or man, rather than in discussing whether my power is of divine origin and if, in short, I am deserving of it. Heresy, then, is tolerable as long as it is not employed directly against power.”

“Señor, the prelate who resides here in the palace might think differently.”

“And who will show him these papers, tell me that, Brother Julián … who?”

“You would discourage those of us who try to watch out for your interests. The cause is clear: the Chronicler is a heretic, a Jew reverted to his beliefs…”

“And it is your wish that he be delivered to the Holy Inquisition?”

“It is, Señor.”

“And you say you are safeguarding my interests? Is it your wish that I strengthen, by constantly offering it more jurisdiction, a power that I prefer remain marginal, expectant, dependent upon me, not I upon it? For if I nourish it, the Inquisition will grow at my expense. No, Julián. I prefer to be a little more tolerant in order to remain a little stronger. Our Chronicler does not deserve the renown you would accord him by prosecuting him before the Holy Office, nor do I deserve that for so slight a reason such a tribunal be aggrandized to the degree that someday it might impose its policies upon me. Always minimize your enemy, Friar, particularly if with that action you also diminish a dangerous ally.”

“Most Illustrious Señor: you were not tolerant with the other criminal, the young lad who is to be burned beside the stables. Is sodomy a worse crime than heresy?”

“It is simply a crime that is condemned with horror by the Holy Bible and by common opinion. Let us suppose, Friar, that this youth, in addition to being a sodomite, were also a relapsed and heretical Jew. For which of his crimes would you judge him? For the crime that promised vexatious proceedings, complicated religious debates, and even worse judicial complications? Or for the crime whose punishment everyone would approve and expedite? Let us suppose … just suppose, I say … that this youth is not going to die for his true offense … Is it not considerably more convenient for everyone that he die for the false rather than the true crime?”

El Señor gazed at me sweetly, sadly, wearily. And his visage was one of such utter exhaustion that I shall never know whether or not he actually perceived my own state of agitation. I struggled to say something, but no words came to my defense. El Señor seemed to experience no similar difficulty, either ingenuously or by chance; or, perhaps with perverse calculation, he was touching upon all the points of my own involvement in the intrigue.

“Do you still paint, Friar?”

“That is my vocation, Señor, although minor and expendable compared to my greater vocation, serving God and serving you.”

“Have you seen the painting in my chapel … the one painted … they say … in Orvieto?”

I trembled. “I have seen it, Señor…”

“You have doubtlessly noted the oddities and innovations within it?”

I stood without speaking; El Señor continued: “How would you have painted Christ Our Lord?”

I bowed my head. “I, Sire? As a sacred icon, unchanging since the beginning of time; a flat, fixed figure upon a nonspecific background, as befitting his eternity.”

“The anonymous artist of Orvieto, on the other hand, has surrounded the figure of Christ with the atmosphere of the time; he has placed Our Lord in a contemporary Italian piazza and paints him standing before naked and contemporary men, speaking to them and looking at them. What does the artist mean in this manner to suggest?”

“That the revelation was not made only once, Señor, but that it is through new figures being constantly fulfilled for different men and different epochs…”

“Would you burn the painting in my chapel, Brother Julián? Is its creator a heretic?”

My head bowed, I shook my head. El Señor attempted to rise, but he was racked with a fit of choking. He put a handkerchief to his mouth, and these were his muffled, subdued words: “Very well. There is no more dangerous enemy to order than an innocent. Very well. Let him lose his innocence. Send him to the galleys.”

The candle stub had burned out and the Chronicler had finished writing. Animated by an excitement that erased his fatigue, he arose and said: “Our souls are in continual movement.”

And he added, first stroking, then tightly rolling the parchment: “Here I am master of myself: here I hold my soul in the palm of my hand.”

He inserted the roll of parchment into a green bottle, tapped it with a cork, and sealed it with the still-warm drippings from the candle, crudely, but well, and placed it in the wide pocket of his slave’s breeches, then climbed to the deck.

What a marvelous spectacle lay before his eyes! The Christian fleet, spread out in the mouth of the gulf, formed a huge semicircle of galleys, their pennants flying high and all oars held at the ready; they were facing into a strong wind blowing from the land; the sea was choppy. Sixty Venetian galleys formed the right wing of the crescent; sixty more, Spanish, the central core; and another sixty, from the Maritime Republics, closed the mouth of the gulf; in each galley three hundred galley slaves faced the sun and wind and sea, manning fifty-four enormous oars in each ship. Their guns were installed on the prow; each galley trim from stem to stern, from topmast to hold; the impression of order and symmetry was perfect. But as the Chronicler stepped onto the deck of the brigantine and saw the disposition of the battle lines, he had a moment for other sensations; he could smell the odors from the dark brown coast, the odor of sliced onion and the odor of bread fresh from the oven; and he observed in minute detail, grateful for this marvel, the flight of wild ducks above both armadas, indifferent, these free, guiltless birds, to the Christian standard being raised at that very moment, and to the Turkish pennant already waving deep within the gulf. And the Chronicler observed the rough turquoise-colored sea, the swiftly dissipating clouds, the limpid skies. He gave thanks, in short, for life.