Satisfaction: A Comedy

Dedication:

To Gary Csillaghegyi (November 11, 1942 – July 10, 1995), friend and mentor, who helped me with the research that went into this novella: requiescat in pace.. We never appreciated you enough when you were alive, Gary. Maybe this dedication will go a little way toward rectifying that.

Chapter 1: Las Doña del Mysterio

“I tell you, Father Luis, it is true! There is a woman living close by my village who is almost certainly at least a century old, if not much, much more than that, a very, very *wealthy* woman, a woman who owns and controls a vast estate, filled with cattle and rich crops tended by many, many workers ─ and does it all with no man of her own station in evidence whatsoever.” The speaker hit the table before him for emphasis, though with a great deal less heat than he would have if the man he was now speaking to had not been a priest. In spite of his emphatic tone and eerie tale, however, his hard little eyes stayed level and focused unwaveringly on the other man with the steady, considering gaze of an experienced businessman driving hard to close a deal. The priest, a young Dominican who acted as a secretary for Sevilla’s local office of the Holy Inquisition, was sick unto death of dealing with hysterics braying about Satanic invasions, running like terrified children to hide behind the skirts of Mother Church, and spiteful neighbors or relatives out for revenge by bringing accusations of heresy and crypto-Judaism against the targets of their wrath, hoping thereby to plunge them into the hideous torments of the Question. This weasel-faced little rodent of an informer didn’t seem to fall into either class, however; he was almost certainly out for whatever material reward the Church might give him for his Judas-work. Even so, that didn’t necessarily mean that he knew what he was talking about, or that he was telling the truth ─ or, for that matter, that he had all his ponies secure in his corral, either. The story he had been telling the priest for the past several minutes certainly didn’t say much good about his mental stability.. “Jorgé,” he asked the other man, sighing wearily, “what ─ what evidence do you have for this fantastic assertion you have just made? ─ Not that I doubt your word, my son, but these matters involve a great deal of checking and ascertaining matters of fact. Before we can act on any such claim, we *must* have reasonable grounds to do so ─ that is, the Church must have some sort of definite, ah, indications, something we can *point* to, that would convince a disinterested observer that there is at least *something* to the claim, that it is worth following up and acting upon. Do you see? 

“Whether I, personally, believe you or not – and of course I believe you, my son, I see that you are a true son of Mother Church” ─ a greedy little pig who would sell his own children to the Moors for a handful of silver, and who may be stark, raving mad in the bargain, Father Luis thought sourly, mentally crossing himself for lying, albeit that he was doing so to this vicious, shifty-eyed little monster whom he doubted was loved even by Our Lord ─ “still,” the priest continued, “I have to follow forms and carry out the orders of my superiors. This helps us to weed out ambiguous cases, so that we may concentrate our efforts and our resources upon those cases that clearly involve true heresy.”

“Father, perhaps if I were to tell you, in detail, how I drew the conclusions I have just related to you, it would be helpful?”

“Surely, my son. Please begin.” Luis leaned back in his chair, steepled his hands, and put on a faint, polite face that artfully concealed the weary disgust lying beneath it while Jorgé began his tale.

“For many, many generations,” Jorgé began, “across the river from the village where I live, about ten leagues north of Sevilla, there has been a vast estate, the wealth of which is nearly inconceivable, even in comparison to the holdings of the Crown or the many fine holdings of Mother Church herself. On it is a splendid villa, a place of great beauty and substance. As far back as anyone has memories or accounts from grandparents still remembered there, women have owned that estate and managed it themselves, all alone.

“Now, the people of my village are peasants and small-holders. They farm, run cattle and sheep on their lands, cultivate vineyards or orchards bearing those fine little olives that grow so well here. Generally speaking, they are not wealthy people, but neither are any of them poor, for the land there is bountiful, the weather generally good, and life rich and rewarding for most of us who live there . . . .”

As Jorgé continued his tale, the young priest gradually lost his bored inattentiveness. He sat up, becoming more alert with every word, and soon began to take notes. Jorgé’s tale unfolded like something out of a fairy-story, but the salient points were exactly the sort of thing in which both the Church and the Crown were highly interested.

For many generations, on the whole the people of Jorgé’s village had been kindly people who tended to their own business, lived virtuous, quiet lives, went to Mass on Sunday and Holy Days, and spent their days in productive pursuits. Thus they did not trouble their minds about the occupants and owners of the beautiful villa on the great estates just across the river from the village.

For generations, as far as the villagers knew, a series of great ladies had lived in the villa, mother passing the land down to daughter, who in turn passed it on to her daughter, unendingly, through the terms of some ancient title. These ladies rarely appeared in public, but they were always ready to help out with goods, money, and skilled labor when need arose among those who lived in the village, such as occurred during times of unusually harsh winters, flooding of the mountain river that tumbled through the valley where the village lay, or some other crisis. They were very grateful for the aid, and greatly appreciated the lack of interference with their lives by any of the ladies. And they repaid the kindness and respect which the ladies of the villa showed to them with such small kindnesses they could offer in return ─ above all, their respect for the privacy of the villa’s inhabitants, in return for that shown to them by those same inhabitants.

For nine-and-ninety years this relationship between the people of the village and their wealthy neighbors across the river persisted unchanged. But now a new wind was blowing through Spain and, indeed, all of Europe. Catastrophic change was in the air. Europe’s population swung from plague-ravaged remnants to dense concentrations of people and back, up and down, like a wildly gyrating pendulum. New ideas were beginning to permeate the oppressive, unchanging consensus of previous centuries like sunlight breaking through an eternal, iron weight of cloud. Church and Crown became intertwined like lustful vipers, and even arguments in bars over obscure points of religion or law in some cases became fuel for the flames of the Autos da Fé, the greasy smoke of which often filled the air across Europe like that from vast, continent-spanning pork roasts as those condemned for heresy or treason (though there wasn’t much difference between the two, now, in the eyes of the authorities) screamed out their last agonized breaths amid the leaping fires of theocratic judgment.

And almost overnight, it seemed, a new breed of men sprang up in Spain, as elsewhere, like a plague of two-legged toadstools. A few of them even appeared in the isolated little village next to the river. Opportunistic men, with their eyes on the main chance and little concern for almost anyone or anything else other than their own hides, they began to snuffle around like jackals looking for choice scraps of carrion, ferreting out juicy secrets and tasty tidbits of information and casting about for potential buyers for the morsels of scandal, innuendo, hint, and rumor which they had gathered in this way.

One such was this same little hyena, Jorgé, who now stood before Father Luis, telling his incredible tale. Jorgé, a man of dubious antecedents, had come to the village from places unknown, tattered, tired, and hunted-looking. Most of the villagers, like their ancestors before them, were still kindly, generous-hearted people; so Jorgé was duly taken in, fed, and given work with a farming family. Gradually, through one bit of chicanery and sleight-of-hand after another, he somehow acquired enough capital and/or influence ─ it was never quite sure which ─ to acquire title to a piece of land of his own, in that part of the village closest to the river, and thus as close as possible to the villa on its vast estates across the river from the village.

Jorgé thereupon set about trying to establish a successful farm. But he knew little about farming ─ or indeed, any other productive, respectable occupation ─ and his experiment in land-ownership and -management was now definitely foundering. Perhaps at least partly to rescue himself from the financial and other binds he was now in, he wanted very much to marry the daughter of the village butcher. For this, he needed to be able to convince her father, a pious, virtuous, affluent man, well-established and highly respected in the parish, that he could provide well for the girl’s future. In any event, he now needed money. A great deal of it. And he wasn’t the sort of man who would have very many scruples about how he got it.

As Father Luis had already concluded, Jorgé was the sort of greedy pig who would have sold his own mother to the Devil for a clipped gold real and not wasted so much as a tear or a thought about it afterward. Somewhere along the way, it obviously must have occurred to Jorgé that certain scraps of information he’d been slowly piecing together over the previously several years since he’d come to live in the village by the river might be very attractive to certain parties ─ attractive enough to make him, if not actually wealthy, then at least very well off.

Continuing to mentally translate and edit Jorgé’s words into something closer to the truth as he listened, Father Luis was now taking in the little man’s tale in enthralled silence. Between Jorgé’s report and Father Luis’s inward translation thereof, in essence the story was as follows.

Since Jorgé had come to the village, he had heard much about the mysterious ladies who lived in the great villa across the river, their wealth, their charity, their aid to the village. He himself had only seen anything of those great ladies but once, and then only from a great distance ─ which, he gathered, was the general experience of the villagers over the past century or so. Mysteries intrigued Jorgé, not only because they might at some point make opportunities for wealth through the careful exploitation of the secrets of others, but also for their own sake, for the subtle pleasure which unraveling them brought him. Jorgé was a man who loved to ferret out secrets as others loved chasing women and, still others, strong drink. So he began to ask around the village, here and there, and soon learned the following fascinating facts:

The ladies of the villa all bore a striking family resemblance ─ all of them had smoky-gray, moonstone eyes, skin white as ivory, lips and nails the color of dawn’s first blush on a summer morning, the ripe, full bodies of young women in their prime. All of them also, however, had hair, lashes, and eyebrows the color of new-fallen snow ─ but full-bodied, lustrous, silken hair, like that of a young woman, not the poor, thin remnants of an old crone. Curiously, the daughters all seemed to inherit the estate well before their mothers had died or even aged noticeably. For six or seven generations, now, mothers abdicated the management of the estate while still in their prime to daughters who had just reached their first maturity. And in all cases, the daughters looked enough like their mothers to have been their twin sisters, instead.

These ladies never seemed to suffer any misfortune. Apparently they led charmed lives ─ and perhaps immortal ones, too, since none of them ever seemed to age a day before she was replaced by the next one in line. Finally, there was the odd fact that no men ever put in an appearance on the estate, other than the common laborers who did the heavy work there, or professionals such as physicians, whose services the residents of the villa required from time to time (rumor had it that at least one of the physicians who were occasionally called to the villa was also an alchemist ─ and perhaps a sorcerer, Jorgé added in a parenthetical aside). Didn’t any of those great ladies ever marry, for Jesus’ sweet sake? Or have sons? Or other male relatives? And how could mere women hold title to land like that? These weren’t abbesses, with jurisdiction over an abbey, or Mothers Superior, similarly empowered to govern the lives of their cloistered charges. Surely the Church hadn’t sanctioned their establishment ─ nor was it likely the Crown had, either! And my, what lovely, lovely holdings they had, too ─ hundreds, perhaps thousands of acres of prime land for grazing cattle or sheep, vast orchards and equally vast croplands, vineyards that seemed to turn the entire eastern horizon purple during the summer! And the gorgeous carriages they rode during their rare visits in person to the village ─ why, even Their Majesties could have possessed nothing more splendid for their royal processions, displaying for all the might and majesty of Spain!

And the horses that pulled the ladies’ carriages ─ once, just *once* he had seen them, from afar, but it was clear that even the fabulous Moorish steeds legend said had been taken from the Alhambra when Spain finally recovered it were nothing compared to these incomparable beasts, who had the conformation of the horses of Moorish kings and the color of the full Moon! And the tales he had heard about the ladies’ gowns, virtually dripping with silver trim, and their coral and moonstone jewelry, and the enormous pearls with which their gowns and shawls and even the upholstery of their carriages were brocaded, and ─ 

Jorgé thought over all he had learned about the ladies of the villa, carefully sifting through the logic of the patterns emerging out of the intelligence about them he had amassed over the years. When he was completely sure about what he had come to suspect from circumstantial evidence, he went to talk with a priest ─ and the words on the tip of his tongue was Alumbrada, mystic or magician, Illuminata . . . or even Marrana, a secret Jewess, and perhaps one of the dreaded Kabbalistos, to boot!

– He did not go with his dread surmise to Father Diego, a good-hearted old soul who had been the village’s parish priest for nearly forty years. Father Diego, like most of his parishioners, had no slightest suspicion that their neighbors to the east, across the river from the village, might not be all that they should be, or was generally claimed for them. Perhaps his very good-heartedness, or the encroachments of old age, blinded the sweet old priest to the presence of peril and true evil in the world. . . . No, Father Diego just wouldn’t have understood, somehow, Jorgé felt. So instead, he went to the good fathers in Sevilla, to the court of the Grand Inquisitor, Fernando de Valdeo, himself, a whole day’s journey away, to ask them what they thought of his suspicions.

What Jorgé had come to believe was that, rather than a succession of women, mother followed in turn by daughter, then granddaughter, occupying the villa and managing the estate, there had been just one woman all along, who had somehow managed to escape not only the ravages of age and illness but indeed any sort of major trouble at all for a century of residence there, and who in addition held land in her own right and power. This was the only scenario which fit all the facts. But how could any mortal woman ever manage to preserve her youthful beauty and her health unchanged for so long a period, or evade all trouble and woe all that time?

It was impossible ─ unless, Jorgé speculated, unless that woman had somehow established communion with those alien, shadow realms which Mother Church so wisely forbade all her children to traffic with! Could that be it? Had she ─ had she, long ago, begun dabbling in Black Magick, and made a pact with some foul minion of the Evil One? Was that it? If so, she was an Alumbrada, indeed ─ and a soul in mortal danger of eternal damnation! Why, it was his bounden duty to save her from herself! Yes, that was it ─ he would go to the learned brothers in Sevilla, the Dominicanos, and he would tell them about her, and ask them what they thought. Surely they would have an answer, with all their learning and their experience of spiritual matters!

. . . It was unfortunate, he reminded himself, that the priests he was thinking of also happened to be part of an arm of the Holy Inquisition, the Scourge by which the true children of Christ were protected from heresy and the wiles of Satan. Oh, yes. But they were, indeed, the most learned men anywhere around, weren’t they? Certainly far, far more so ─ at least on such fine points of moral theology as he had been debating with himself ─ than poor, senile old Father Diego was or ever could have been. (And, unlike Father Diego, they would not be apt to tell his neighbors in the village just who it was that had made it known to the officers of the Holy Question that they might have an interest in the generous benefactresses who had for so long constantly protected, aided, and abided with the village and its people through all weathers. But of course, that was the last possible thought on Jorgé’s mind concerning this matter. Of course it was!)

Accordingly, Jorgé saddled up his best mule and loaded his second-best one with provisions for several days, and off he went to Sevilla to talk with the good priests established there at the Dominican Monastery of San Diego, which just happened to house the Office of the Inquisition. He felt very good about his mission of mercy. (Of course, that had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that if his suspicions turned out to be correct, Mother Church, as she generally did in such cases, would reward him for the virtuous concern over whatever devil-possessed person actually lived in the villa across the river from his village with a very respectable portion of her land and goods, the latter of course being forfeit to the Church as they always were in proven cases of unrepentant heresy. Of course it didn’t!)

So here was Jorgé now, standing before Father Luis, reporting his mad-sounding tale with such unctuously innocent concern. The nasty little man was neither stupid nor mad, however, and was quite clearly very sure that when the Church came to investigate the facts, the facts would bear him out.

“My son,” Father Luis solemnly told Jorgé, “I would like you to put up here in town for a few days, so that you may talk with my superiors about this. We will be more than happy to stable your mules and provision you for your ride home, of course. Would this be agreeable with you?”

Jorgé quickly agreed, bobbing his head rapidly in thanks like some scruffy, manic little bird. Father Luis then rose from behind his desk and, bidding Jorgé wait for him there is the study, went to find his superior and ask him to come in and listen to Jorgé’s tale.

Chapter 2: Una Problema de Innocencia

Several days later, Jorgé returned to his village looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his primly smiling mouth, his hind mule nearly staggering under a load of tools purchased in Sevilla for his farm. Neither avoiding nor seeking out his neighbors, as was his usual wont, he went about his business as he always did, bothering no one but neither doing much to help anyone, either ─ and with his ears always glued to the nearest neighbor’s wall, his shifty little eyes prying everywhere for unguarded indiscretions. No one had reason to remark upon his absence, since he had made such trips several times in the past, for business reasons.

So when the Dominicanos suddenly appeared in the village a fortnight later, accompanied by a full company of Archbishop Fernando’s soldiers, looking for the inhabitants of the estate across the river, no one connected the disastrous invasion with weasely little Jorgé, nor even took notice of him. Their entire concern was with the terrifying thing that had suddenly overtaken their formerly pleasant, orderly, fruitful little world, soldiers bursting in everywhere, followed by the Inquisitores, interrogating all and sundry, even small children, threatening people with the most horrifying tortures if they did not turn the people of the grand estate across the river over to them at once. The soldiers appropriated all the winter stores of the village for their own use, killed off livestock belonging to villagers to provision themselves, fouled the lovely little river when they rode through its shallows on their great horses or used it while voiding their bladders or bowels, and, in not a few cases, made lewd and improper remarks to the girls and women of the village, as well. But only for a day or two. For soon it became clear that there was nothing to be learned about the owners and tenants of the estate from the villagers, who really had very little knowledge of what went on across the river or who really lived there. And so the priests and monks and their soldier escort finally left the village, casting dire threats at the villages in their wake as they went, and made their way across the river to the vast, wealthy estate with its splendid villa that lay there ─ and whoever or whatever it was that denned there.

Soon they were returning through the village, making their way down the road to Sevilla with their captive, a beautiful, ivory-fleshed woman with a great silken mane of pure white hair and moonstone eyes who wore only a thin white shift that barely covered her nakedness, trussed up in a mule-cart like some common felon. She was Doña Ynes Ana Ysabel Gabriel Miguel Sanches y Lopes, and her family had lived there on that great estate next to the river for uncounted generations, good, God-fearing Christians and loyal Spaniards, every one. ─ Or so said she and her retainers, the latter now either scattered to the hills, or lying in bloody, broken heaps on the devastated grounds of her estate, or, like her, prisoners of the Archbishop, chained together wrist-to-wrist and ankle-to-ankle and marched along at sword’s-point in the same column of soldiers and monks guarding the mule-drawn cart now carrying Doña Ynes inexorably toward the dungeons of the Inquisition.

But if Doña Ynes and her people were all such good Christians, where were the baptismal records, the family annals, that would have proven her claims? Where, for that matter, were the documents of title to her land from the Crown that gave her the right to her land? Nowhere had any such proof of her claim been found, nor had anyone yet come forth to present it.

Behind the ranks of marching soldiers and priests and monks and their charges the gates of the great estate lay smashed and broken, the cattle, sheep, and goats that had grazed on its far-flung pasturage scattered or slaughtered as provisions or rounded up and taken along in train by the soldiers. The courtyards of the splendid villa that had graced the estate lay in chaos, overturned furniture mingled with shards of shattered porcelain, chunks of broken marble, shredded clothing and drapery, and overturned tuns of wine and containers of food. The graceful alabaster pillars that had upheld the porticos and arched colonnades and the ceilings surrounding the skylights of the atria lay in shattered ruins beneath the sagging ceilings and entablatures they had supported for so long, so well. The numerous paintings, of every conceivable subject (more often than not those which Mother Church in her wisdom had made off-limits to the faithful) that had lined many of the interior walls of the villa had been hacked and slashed to ribbons and broken pieces of wood, or obscenely defaced with black paint. Yhe lovely hardwood paneling over those walls had been cruelly defaced as well with blade and fire and offal and even slops from the latrine. Before the huge barn that had housed the beasts of the estate the priests and monks had set blazing a gigantic bonfire fueled by countless books and scrolls, part of an enormous library discovered within the villa. (There were whispered rumors among those that had been in the Dominicanos’ retinue that fateful day that many of those books had had to do with dark arts and alien worlds, devil’s work ─ and others which, however diabolical the ones that had been decently burned in the bonfire before the barn might have been, carried away by the Inquisitores to study later on, were far, far worse. Many of the latter, it was told, were in strange, snake-like writing, the language of the Moors, the learned Dominicanos had said, a sure sign of heretical leaning.)

No one in the village saw Doña Ynes, whom the Inquisitores had taken from them so disastrously, ever again. None ever heard exactly what happened to her, though rumors concerning her fate abounded for many years afterward. The diffident, polite distrust with which most of the villagers had always regarded the authorities of Church and Crown now quickly turned to hate ─ a matter which went almost unnoticed by those august men, however, so many were the troubles of Spain at this time.

It was not long after her arrest before Doña Ynes was being chivvied along by several of the soldiers to stand before the man who was to be her judge. This man, a Dominican protonotary apostolic, was noted for his unusually harsh judgments and lack of leniency even among the Dominicanos, who were famous for the tenacity with which they worked to protect Mother Church and her people, and their unswerving dedication to their cause ─ with very little regard for whatever damage they might do in pursuit of their objectives.

Now, Father Bendito, for so the judge was named, surreptitiously flicked his tongue across his full, red lips like a hungry cat sighting a baby bird just fallen from the nest upon seeing the beautiful Doña Ynes standing sullenly before him, all but naked in her thin, ragged, white penitential shift. Doña Ynes had the manners of a great lady ─ and the voluptuous body and looks of some legendary courtesan. Bendito found the combination irresistible. Even her chronic habit of calling him, with some sarcasm, “Padre Bendicho,” failed to detract from her overwhelming charms.

The charges against her were read out to him by an assistant, one of the friars that had accompanied the expedition to arrest Doña Ynes: “Alumbrachismo, consisting of trafficking in unsavory arts to gain earthly immortality, against God’s law, and suspicion of practicing rites of Musselmanic origin, thus repudiating the conversion to Christianity of your ancestors and furthering the abominable worship of Satan promoted by the evil Mahound and his damned followers.” These were followed by the details of the circumstances of the case, related to the court by Father Luis, who had accompanied the detail that had gone to take Doña Ynes in charge. While Luis droned on, Bendito, steepling his hands before him, appeared to ponder the matter. When Luis had done, rolling up the parchment on which he had written up the brief of the case with a rather melodramatic flourish, Bendito waited a few more moments in silence, stretching out the suspense, then said, “You know, these Alumbradas can be very dangerous. Very dangerous. We must get to the bottom of this, and as soon as possible. I therefore wish to put Doña Ynes to at least the preliminary form of the Question at the earliest possible time tomorrow, in a special chamber here near the dungeons, below this very room. I will have my regular assistants aid in the process, as usual ─ but there will be some necessary irregularities due to the special nature of this woman and the risks involved.”

The eyebrows of many of those present were elevated at this last declaration. But Bendito’s only added to it, “I will explain more tomorrow. In the meantime, take this, ah, woman down to a cell and secure her there, and then we shall adjourn for a meal and our regular duties and devotions until the morrow.”

Grumbling a little at not being made privy to Bendito’s strategy, the others left, all save one. This was a very young priest, rather new to his vows, Father Inocente, whom Bendito asked to remain behind for a moment.

“Yes, Father Bendito?” asked Inocente, once the others had gone. “What did you want to see me about?”

“Come here, my son, and I will tell you.”

Bendito beckoned. The younger man came over to him, and they began to talk in low tones. As they did, Inocente, a beautiful young man with the face of a Botticelli angel and the brimstone eyes and soul of a true son of Satan, began to grin, more and more widely as they conversed. Finally Bendito joined Inocente, his perfect, porcelain-white teeth flashing ironically between his cherry-stain lips. Finished at last with his instructions, Bendito clasped the younger man’s broad shoulders with fierce affection and bade him a good rest, so that Inocente would have all his strength for tomorrow’s exertions. As the bells rang the Angelus, the two priests shook hands and went their separate ways, both still smiling broadly in anticipation of tomorrow’s work.

Continued in Chapter 3

Submitted July 26, 2019 at 09:22PM by Furshlugginer492 https://ift.tt/2GsJiVV