The Fan-Maker's Inquisition by Rikki Ducornet

venomous serpent; it is like a dream in which the dreamer is seduced and cleaves to the beautiful body that appears to be natural and delightful to all the senses but that, upon awakening, is revealed to be an illusion, the handiwork of Satan, and so the dreamer himself is revealed to be Satan’s thing! Mani! Even the name causes dismay! For it is the name of that most seductive of all heretics, the eloquent Babylonian who claimed that the Living Paraclete had spoken to him, saying that Adam’s eyes were opened by the taste of the fruit Eve fed him, not closed. As if to taunt him, more fruit falls from the trees, splattering his sandaled feet with scarlet juice .
    In Spain, the Devil’s work was often carried out in concealment—in the dark woods at night, in attic chambers, in bell towers illumed by the stars, in barns while cattle slept, in cellars and graveyards. Here in the Yucatán, the Devil’s work is in evidence: brilliant, concentrated, and amassed. The people are not like dogs at all, but well formed and comely, perfumed, their eyes like fire; the markets overspill with gleaming and curious things tempting greed and imagination. The temples, so wonderfully executed, but brimming with their idols of wood and clay, spread out over the land like a pox. Even their music unsettles his spirit, evoking lassitude and sadness, a crippling regret. Shameful to say, the little girls, dressed only in a shell and incomparably charming, cause him to falter. It seems to him that everything in the Yucatán shifts shape and meaning. Nothing is fixed. Not his own moods, nor his own understanding. The sky, too, is mutable, unlike the sky of Spain. Burning hot, the stillness of the afternoon is shattered by thunder, and the heavens, splitting apart, inundate the land with a driving rain and even hail the size of fists—spectacular storms such as those conjured by witches and described by Saint Isidore. Once, without warning, the wind lifted his robes, and six little boys were dismayed by the amount of hair that grew in places no one was intended to see. Once he was picked up by the wind and held briefly airborne. Often the wind would carry pollen from the forests in such quantities it littered the streets for weeks on end, causing him to weep. Fruit like genitals and tongues tumbled onto the roof making it impossible to sleep. In broad daylight, spiders crossed the road like furry hands, and large snakes were often found cooling off in the basins of holy water .
    Sometimes, when he saw a bell rope hanging, Landa imagined himself dangling at the end. But then he recalled the nefarious influences under which the imagination—that most dangerous of human faculties—fell sway. Unchecked, it is the imagination that causes the most havoc, he would remind himself. And so he chased this image from his mind. Just as a man walking across a narrow bridge may fall into deep water and drown because of the fear the water inspires in his heart, so might he become glamorized by the idea of his own death .
    “I must never forget that I have been sent to the New World to battle Satan and destroy the lost tribes of Israel,” he scolds himself aloud. “I must be as strong as Cortés when he destroyed Tenochitlan, which was the most beautiful city in the universe.”
    —Everything you have said thus far is an offense to the Truth, exotic and extravagant. Had there been cities in the New World, the Comité would know about them.
    —Cortés’s words were: “a city so remarkable as not to be believed.” If he could not believe his eyes, citizen, why should you believe your ears?
    —And you. “When you learned of Sade’s brutality, did you believe your ears?
    —“Exaggerations,” Sade assured me, the inventions of his rival, Restif de la Bretonne, “who like a dog leaves his stench and his signature—which are one and the same—all over Paris,” and the lies of his mother-in-law, “a hag who likes nothing better than to chew on soiled