Free The Fan-Maker's Inquisition by Rikki Ducornet Page A

her.”
    “And fearing for her! When I see how our armed constables threaten her with their swords and sticks when she approaches the gate.”
    “All week she has come,” Landa agreed. “She has offered me the best she has: a fat fowl, black honey in the comb, large brown eggs, chocolate, and—these past three days—flowers. These things, with my permission, the constables share among themselves. A scribe has written a letter for her, and this is placed in the basket, along with her gifts for me. A friar brings me the letter; I toss it on the grate; I will have nothing to do with her, and yet she persists. But tonight, at sundown, Kukum’s body will be doused with wax and set on fire, along with the few books he, in his vanity, shared with me in order to teach me of his people’s so-called ‘excellence.’ Yes, you look surprised, but ‘excellence’ is the word he used. I cannot tell you how dismayed I was by his presumption. And tonight she will be told the truth .
    “But now,” Landa continued, “let me tell you a story so that you will appreciate the danger you are in. Come—” Landa designated the stool upon which Melchor, whimpering with pain, eased his bony ass. “Rest, poor fellow! What a state you are in!” Then Landa told Melchor the following story.…

Seven
Tamales
    “Once, Satan devised a scheme to subvert God’s authority over his angels. Disguised as a soul released from Purgatory, the Enemy of Man stood before the gates of Heaven until persistence got him across the threshold and inside.”
    “The thing is impossible!” Melchor was aghast. “Why would God allow it?”
    “The Cosmos is so vast”—Landa sighed deeply as if in pain—“and there is so much for Him to see! He cannot attend to everything Himself. Besides, if He cannot trust his own Gatekeeper, whom can He trust?”
    “I thought He was everywhere!” Melchor insisted, more and more out of sorts as the fish continued to manufacture atmosphere. “I thought He trusted no one!”
    “He is!” Landa agreed. “He doesn’t! But that does not mean He’s got a finger in every pie and a thumb on every plum! Rest assured, however. That Gatekeeper was disposed of.”
    “I’m famished,” Melchor moaned. “For I have taken only eggs in drink since dawn and twelve seeds of spurge.”
    Landa gave him a biscuit from a gilded vase to suck and resumed his tale: “Satan moved among the angels, stirring them up and driving them to distraction. He had taken the form of a beautiful youth and in seductive tones described the pleasures of the material world: silk vests, foaming cups of chocolate, and, above all, the buttocks of pretty women .
    “Zélamir, always the most curious, said: ‘What is Woman? And what is this Nature which you say has endowed her with Perfection? And how can this be? For God has taught us that Perfection is to be had in Paradise alone.’
    “‘If you call Perfection an endless expanse of time unrolling like a clean bandage to infinity, then indeed Paradise is perfect, and from me you have nothing to learn. But if your existence is like a thin soup without salt, meat, or marrow; if, in the middle of a dark and silent millennium, you awake taunted by the thought of a palpable husk; if a static pallet of cold vapor seems a poor substitute for an animated existence upon the world’s stage (so endearingly finite!), then a corporeal body and a woman are what you need. In all the Universe, she is the one object to excite cravings as delicious as is their satisfaction.’
    “‘We have,’ said Cupidon, ‘encountered Ecstasy.’
    “‘Well, then, imagine Ecstasy Manifest. An Empirical Fact. Imagine you have a Sensible Body and a prick as thick as my arm. Imagine a woman sprawled on a velvet counterpane, as eager to be fucked as you are to fuck her!’
    “Relishing the prospect, the angels beamed .
    “Now, with cunning, Satan had made a small tear in the walls of Heaven, which—as everyone knows—are not