Black Flower (18 page)

Disappointed, Juan Diego returned home, and on his way he met the same woman. When he told her of the bishop’s disbelief, the Blessed Mother said that she would give him a definite sign and that he should to come to the hill the next day. Only, waiting at home was his uncle, dying of fever. The next morning, after much debate, this kindhearted man went to find a priest to perform the last rites for his uncle instead of going up the hill to meet the Blessed Mother. But the mysterious woman was waiting for Juan Diego in an alley. She told him not to worry, that his uncle would be healed, and that he should take her sign to the bishop. With that she filled Juan Diego’s tilma (a traditional Indio garment similar to a shawl) with roses. There was not a single rosebush anywhere, and furthermore it was December. Excited, Juan Diego took the roses and ran to the bishop. When he gave the tilma full of roses to him, the bishop was shocked, and he fell to his knees and bowed. The image of the woman who had appeared before Juan Diego, the brown-skinned Blessed Mother, was imprinted on the tilma like a photograph.

While Juan Diego was with the bishop, the mysterious woman appeared before Juan Diego’s uncle, healing him of his illness and instructing him that she be called the Blessed Mother of Guadalupe. The Indios were awed by this event, and during the next eight years, more than eight million Indios converted to Catholicism. The Indios called her Tonantzin—Our Mother. It was the appearance of a new goddess.

Three years after this miracle, Ignacio de Loyola, who had been a warmongering soldier in his youth and had become a zealous Counter-Reformationist after he was wounded in a battle against France, founded the Society of Jesus. In the eyes of this ambitious apostle, who had resolved to drive off the Protestants and expand the power of Catholicism by force, the New World was truly the place for him to realize his ideals. He trained as soldiers of the pope young men whose judgment was clouded by the gold and silver pouring in from the Americas, young men who had an abundance of energy and passion (those who most resembled him in his younger days), and young men who had no thought of revising the system of faith they had inherited from their parents. Ignacio sent these young men to Asia, Africa, and the New World.

José Velásquez was one of these. Having gone to Mexico as a Jesuit priest, he was not particularly moved by the appearance of the Blessed Mother of Guadalupe. In fact, he had not believed this miracle from the start. To think that the Blessed Mother would appear in the guise of a such a lowly Indio woman! The way he saw it, Bishop Juan de Zumárraga was a surprisingly realistic and clever person. The bishop had imitated the story of Thomas in the Bible, the apostle who was filled with disbelief. It was clearly a parody of the scene where Jesus told Thomas that if he so doubted his resurrection, he should put his hand into his, Jesus’, side. The reversal of disbelief and belief and the miracle were indeed sufficient to delude the foolish Indios. This first bishop of Mexico had given the Indios their lost mother. The Blessed Mother of Guadalupe was also well suited to the tradition of goddess worship on the Iberian Peninsula. Miracles and icons—were not these truly the two pillars that supported Catholicism? If it were not for them, this ancient religion of the Old World would not have lasted long.

José Velásquez loved Mexico in a different way from the bishop. Mexico did not like his way of loving, but at least his love never cooled. He quickly realized that the Blessed Mother of Guadalupe, whom the Indios insisted on calling Tonantzin, differed greatly from the Blessed Mother he knew. Most of the Indios showed an interest in talk of the Blessed Mother, but they were not interested in core doctrines like the Trinity. They understood everything in a slightly different way. Thus they turned everything upside down. They were always seeing Jesus’ disciples or the saints as gods in themselves. To them, the Blessed Mother was a goddess and Jesus was merely her son. And they placed too great a meaning on that son’s death. They enjoyed carving images of him lying in a coffin or hanging on the cross and bleeding. They were always adding severe self-mutilation and horrific penances to the Church rituals, making the complex and solemn Gothic-style ceremonies similar to the ancient Aztec system of human sacrifice. José Velásquez spent far too much time trying to convince them that just because it was a day commemorating Jesus’ carrying the cross up the hill, it didn’t mean they needed to drive nails into their own hands and hang themselves on crosses. He could not help but admit that his calling was to fight the traditional shamanism of the Aztec Indios. When he became aware of this calling, he realized that there were far too many foes around him. In each tribe, magicians cured the sick and oversaw the rituals. Only on Sunday were the Indios under the influence of the Church, and most of them remained loyal to the village shamans. There were many idols and totems that José had to destroy. The atavistic custom of drinking intoxicants like the fly agaric mushroom, to plunge the whole tribe into a trance, was as strong as ever. First the magician would drink the infusion, and when he entered into a trance the next person would drink his urine and fall into a trance as well. The fly agaric drink became more potent after being filtered through the body. After passing through three bodies, it would lift the whole tribe into an intense ecstasy. In the process, the Indios claimed that they met the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but really they often saw a great dragon or worshiped a feathered serpent.

In order to effectively fight this ancient religion, José gave up his duties as a priest and organized a standing army that was stronger than the Jesuits. He invaded Indio villages, tearing down idols and burning them. He slaughtered those in ecstasy, powerless as they were, and raised red crosses. His name was one of terror on the plateaus of Mexico. Even amid countless battles and the threat of assassination, he lived to the age of ninety, and in the end he died peacefully in his own bed. He never officially married, but he left behind countless illegitimate children, who devoted themselves as one to the Counter-Reformation movement and to converting the Indios. They also had many offspring. As time went by, the violent zeal of José Velásquez was greatly diluted, but slaves to this fanatical faith still sometimes appeared.

Ignacio Velásquez could truly be called proof of atavism. The owner of both Buena Vista hacienda and a small bank, he rose at five o’clock in the morning and went to a small prayer room in a corner of his house. He knelt on a wooden board prepared for that purpose and, as always, offered up his earnest morning prayers. Then he carefully cleaned the rifles hanging in his living room with an oiled rag. This was the only thing he did not leave to his servants. These rifles were a sort of legacy that proved that Ignacio was the legitimate child of José Velásquez. He had fought with José’s numerous descendants and claimed the rifles. They were a record of the history of his family’s struggle against the aimless idol worship and Satanism of the Yucatán. His heart welled up when he cleaned the scar-pocked barrels, and he had to calm himself several times. When he had finished polishing the rifles, he got on his horse and circled the hacienda. It was a long time since he had done so. He headed toward the dwellings of the Koreans he had hired a half year ago. It had been two years since he had conquered with hoof and whip the Mayans in his hacienda, who had painted the heads of stone idols with sap and made a small circle of pebbles and then burned incense and spun around in that circle. When it was all over, not only did the Mayans go to church each Sunday and attend Mass, but they also stopped their suspicious nightly activities. Yet he had no idea what the fifty or so newly arrived Koreans might be doing. He had heard that a few of them were Protestants (of course, these too were targets of conversion), and one of them (thanks be to the Lord, let His mercy pour down even in this backcountry) was said to be a Catholic. The rest of them were unknowns. So it was only natural for this descendant of an apostate priest, who believed in his family’s sacred duty to obliterate superstition, to decide to convert every one of the Koreans on his hacienda.

He looked around the pajas of the Koreans, who had gone out to the fields. At first glance, he saw no idols. Pots and kettles, filthy clothes, and a hideous stench were all he found. Still, they must have some religion. He held his nose and slowly searched the pajas one by one. Finally, in the last paja he found a small altar, inscribed with strange letters and a colored portrait of a man wearing a hat drawn on paper. He searched further but found nothing except a few carved wooden figures. Having discovered that some of them worshiped idols, Ignacio became lost in thought for a moment, but the odor was so bad that he could stay no longer and went straight back to his house. Their idols were completely different from those of the Mayans. The letters looked like those of the Chinese, and they were written in red, the color of the devil. Once again he heard the sound of his blood commanding him from within.

He called the overseer and the Korean interpreter and said: “From this Sunday, all Koreans must attend Mass. In return, there will be no work on Sunday. Mexico is a Catholic nation, so the act of privately serving and worshiping idols is forbidden.” This was a lie. There were many Catholics in Mexico, but it was not a theocracy. “Accordingly, let it be known that if you keep idols in your homes or worship superstitions, you will be driven away without receiving a single peso. If you convert and are baptized, I will raise your pay.” The interpreter Gwon Yongjun, who had been called to Buena Vista hacienda, conveyed the hacendado’s intentions to the Koreans. Most of them welcomed the news. They would not have to work if they went to church and sat for a little while, and that was not such a hard thing to do. There were those who said they would study the doctrines and be baptized. Their pay would be raised by one tenth, and they might even be able to rest a bit while they were learning the doctrines. Yet only Father Paul understood exactly what the hacendado meant by not worshiping idols. When Father Paul heard what Gwon Yongjun had to say, he turned to the shaman and said bitterly, “I think you’re going to have to clear out the things in our room.” The shaman looked at him in surprise. “Mr. Bak, what do they have to do with the hacendado?” “The god of his religion is very jealous and does not like his followers believing in other gods.” The shaman said, “My god and his god are different. What if I don’t want to serve his god?” Father Paul scraped the ground with his foot. “Anyway, that’s what he believes. His religion is one that does not look favorably on ancestor worship, and this hacendado seems to be a believer to the bone. Be careful.” The shaman had looked worried at first but quickly adopted an indifferent attitude. “I’m not putting a curse on anyone, so what could go wrong? But say, weren’t you a Catholic?”

On Sunday, the Koreans wore their cleanest clothes and went to Mass in a small place prepared on the hacienda. A priest from Mérida rode in on horseback and officiated at the Mass. The hacendado and the overseers sat on mahogany pews made in Belize, and the Korean and Mayan workers sat on the ground as they listened to the incomprehensible Latin. They stood up and sat down a few times and the Mass was over, and then the hacendado brought out watermelon. The children were excited to have watermelon after so long, and they ran around the hacienda.

Father Paul’s heart ached at hearing the Latin and the hymns. Kyrie Eleison. Lord have mercy. He watched the white priest reciting the Latin prayers and remembered how he himself had performed Mass in Korea. I may never again stand up at an altar. I don’t even remember much anymore. Yet when it came time to take the Eucharist, he felt a strong temptation to go forward and accept it. But he did not. There was likely no Mexican priest who would offer the Eucharist to a foreigner in filthy clothes. And they would find it hard to believe that he was a priest.

Choe Seongil had stared blankly and said nothing all morning, but he was unable to resist the urging of the overseers and foremen and had gone to where the Mass was being performed. He had stared wordlessly at the Mexican priest at the altar until the ceremony was almost finished, and then he shot up and ran forward. The neatly dressed Gwon Yongjun and a young Korean boy, Yi Jinu, also shot up. Gwon Yongjun and the overseers ran toward Choe Seongil, but he flew toward the platform. Then he knelt in front of the cross and beat his body and wailed as if mad. It was neither Korean nor Spanish but a strange language. The overseers, foremen, and Gwon Yongjun rushed in and tried to lift him up, but Choe Seongil resisted with a frightful strength. Tears flowed down his face and he screamed at the priest.

The hacendado stood and made the sign of the cross. Then he approached the priest and whispered something to him. He told the foremen and overseers to leave Choe Seongil alone and spoke: “Those who were possessed by demons approached our Lord and shouted, ‘Son of God, why have you come to interfere with us? Have you come to torment us before the time has come?’ And he sent them into a herd of swine. And this herd of swine ran down a slope and drowned themselves in the sea. This fellow is just such a one.” When the hacendado glanced at the priest, the priest wet his brush with holy water and sprinkled it on Choe Seongil. Choe Seongil writhed as if he were splashed with acid, then he foamed at the mouth and collapsed. “Isn’t that epilepsy?” the Koreans said, tilting their heads, but the hacendado and the priest looked solemn. “In the name of Jesus you shall be saved!” The priest continued to splash him with holy water. Then he poured whole glasses of holy water over him. Only then did Choe Seongil open his swollen eyes, as if he had just woken from sleep. He looked around as if to figure out where he was. Ignacio embraced him in an exaggerated fashion.

Ignacio, who believed that they had driven out the demon with holy water and prayer, was once more aware of the noble calling with which he had been entrusted. After the Mass, Choe Seongil ate lunch with the hacendado in his house. It was a sumptuous feast that seemed like a dream. Pork boiled in the Yucatán fashion, with black beans, cilantro, onions, and tomatoes, and sopa de lima, cooked with lime and onion, awaited him. He ate like a glutton. Gwon Yongjun, who sat next to him, relayed the hacendado’s words. “Mr. Choe. The hacendado thinks that he drove a spirit out of you.” Choe Seongil bobbed his head and expressed his thanks. “Now that you mention it, I was told that some old man had been sitting on my shoulders.” But these words, when translated, were embellished and conveyed as: “He says thank you for driving out Satan.” The hacendado urged Choe Seongil to join the army of Jesus and fight Satan with him. Choe Seongil agreed unconditionally.