Toribio bowed his head and walked toward the table where the ustorious mirror stood. He did not speak for a long time. The day burst forth and the rays of the sun began to play upon the icy crystal. Finally he spoke: “I do not know what to answer.”
“They will say that if the universe is ruled by its own laws, the powers of the Holy Father are not important, or those of powerful Señores like our own, or…”
The supplicant friar began to stammer; Brother Toribio spoke reluctantly. “I imagine nothing of this; no; that is what God does; it is God who made man mortal, for had He made him immortal, neither the world nor the presence of man in the world would have been necessary; man is mortal, therefore the world exists as the abode of mortality. Is this true, Brother?”
“They will condemn you, Brother; this is true: man was created immortal, in the image and semblance of God; and only because of Original Sin did he lose his divine attributes. Our religion is based upon these three stones: Original Sin, inherent corruption, and divine pardon. Destroy these foundations and you destroy the very edifice of the Church, which would then have no reason for being; for if man did not sin originally, then he is still God-like and can commune directly with God, without need for the mediating grace of the Church…”
“… Was the proposal of creation to bind the feet and hands of man and then immediately condemn him because he cannot walk? No, Brother; for me, man’s mortality is part of the divine plan of Creation; for me, dying is part of man’s freedom, of God’s loving paternity, and of the law of movement and change; these are my three foundation stones, it must be so; God made the earth in the form of a sphere and set it spinning in a uniform revolution with other celestial bodies that alter the earth and consequently are themselves alterable. If this is the eternal law of the universe, how could the law of the tiny man inhabiting a tiny planet be any different? how? how, Brother? if the universe changes and decays and dies and is renewed, why would we be the exception? No, man was conceived mortal, he was born to die, and there is no inherent corruption in him, but rather corporeal and spiritual perfectibility.”
“And if there is no sin or corruption, divine pardon is unnecessary. No, Brother! They will judge you, they will condemn you, they will force you first to retract, and then they will burn you, Brother; the earth does not spin as you say it does, or rise or descend, because above the earth is Heaven…”
“I tell you that the earth is in the heavens!”
“… and beneath the earth is Hell, and it will not be you who crumbles the hierarchies of established truth.”
“And nevertheless, man’s death is the condition of his eternity.”
Brother Toribio placed the face of the concave crystal of the ustorious mirror toward the sun, and the sun obeyed, casting its rays with fury upon the crystal. The friar placed the folios of El Señor’s testament beneath the lens. Brother Julián ran to stay the hand of the uranographer: “Brother, what are you doing, what new madness is this? Guzmán will ask me for these papers, they bear the seal of our Señor…”
The sun’s rays began to burn the papers, clustered together in the ring of the lens, a tightly bound fascine of fire. “Do not worry about Guzmán, he is an unimportant lackey; place the blame on me, Brother; say it was my carelessness, an accident…”
The smoldering, curling flames devoured the folios.
“You are right, Brother. I shall say nothing.”
“Let these condemnable papers be burned, Julián, and the volumes of my library be saved. Look at them; their pages are in Arabic and Hebrew script. They could be considered more culpable than these dark blasphemies and foolish heresies dictated by El Señor to Guzmán, and delivered to you by Guzmán … under what pretext, by the way?”
“The same I used when I gave the papers of the Chronicler to him, which was how El Señor discovered these dissident heretics that today so delight and perturb him. Go, Guzmán, I told him, let El Señor see these papers, he will understand their contents. Guzmán said the same thing to me today. That he understood nothing. That I judge.”
Julián looked at Toribio with great affection. “I shall say nothing.”
The two friars embraced, and Toribio whispered to Julián: “I shall write nothing, as the disciples of Pythagoras wrote nothing. But not because of fear, oh, no, Brother…”
“You do well; believe that my spirit is relieved, knowing your resolution.”
“But understand me: not from fear…”
And Julián, embracing his comrade, not seeing his eyes, but feeling in the encompassing embrace the trembling of the astrologer-priest, did not wish to ask: Are you weeping? is it then because of pride since it is not fear?; but Toribio himself spoke: “Because of my scorn. There are more drones than bees in this world. I shall not reveal what I know to the mockery of mediocre men. I have spent much time, much love and care, in understanding a few things that for me are beautifuclass="underline" I shall not expose myself either to the scorn or the mockery of miserable charlatans … Mockery, Brother: ‘Look what this squint-eyed Chaldean has seen through his powerful crystals, with his celestial spectacles…’”
“Brother … sit down … wait … rest.”
“I shall disclose nothing; we will wait. I shall disclose nothing, but neither shall El Señor. The sun will devour both his words and mine.”
“And if El Señor himself asks an accounting of the destruction of his papers?”
“As is my courtly custom, I shall draw him a happy horoscope; there I shall demonstrate that the destructive sign of Scorpio determined the fatal loss of his testament. He will accept his unfortunate loss in exchange for the many false ventures that with eulogies and dithyrambs and comparisons to the gods and heroes of antiquity I shall announce to him. And that will be that, Brother. Come; let us go drink; let us go laugh … although he who laughs last, weeps first.”
A pilgrim without a country, the son of several lands, and therefore the forgotten orphan of all lands, Celestina’s companion, the blond youth with the blood-red cross upon his back, attempted to recognize in the feeble light of this dawn the place where he had been led; he walked to the foot of the astronomer’s tall stone tower which reminded him vaguely of other buildings similarly oriented toward the stars. The youth’s desire soared upward with that of the ascendant, supplicant tower. He looked about him; he saw the flat land of Castile, the calm dust of early morning, the even and shadowless silhouette of the mountains at dawn standing darkly against the first rays of the sun; he saw the swift passing of black horses, and the slow step of steaming oxen dragging carts heaped with straw, hay, and blocks of granite; with an early-morning flock of storks, he flew in search of a nesting site, he heard the cawing of the crows circling above the roofs of this interminable palace, he smelled the burned skin and dripping fat of a lamb roasting in some tile shed on the work site, and he listened to the first cattle bells of the day; he touched the gray stone of the tower and there, in spite of the recentness of the construction, his fingers felt an ancient and persistent sign of life, a hollow mysteriously worked in the stone, and in that sheltered place a tiny sprig of wheat was germinating. The pilgrim looked toward that land to which he had returned and asked himself whether it was so inhospitable that wheat was forced to grow in stone; and he tried to recall other fields, in another world he had known where tall green stalks grew bearing thick, flexible, hard, and yellow leaves, he thought of a different bread, the bread of the other world, the red and yellow grains.
He raised his arms above his head, he held his open palms to the sky, to the tower, not knowing as he did so whether he was praying, giving thanks, or attempting to remember; and in the instant he held his hands toward the dawn sky, two stones fell from the top of the tower, one large, the other smaller, the larger upon his left palm and the smaller on the right; the stones were cold, as if they had been all night in the cold night air; but as he closed his fists around them, the youth, excited by this miracle, quickly communicated warmth to them; the skies of Spain rained stones.