The Canonical Visit

The warden did not bring down the staff of justice. He held it suspended in the air for three or four heavy heartbeats, his elbow rigid and his jaw clenched until the grinding of his own molars forced a sigh of air through his teeth, broken by a dry rasp that came from the darkness of the spiral staircase. On the upper landing, where the draft from the cloister lashed against the bare stones, the Visitor General showed no haste to tread the saline silt of the crypt. He clutched his black cloth clerical cassock with two fingers encased in dark kidskin to avoid brushing the low ashlar blocks, stained by that whitish efflorescence left on the joints by brine and saltpeter after the estuary tides. Below, Sister Benigna de la Maza had left her niche without anyone seeing her move and waited at the foot of the stairs, holding the heavy dossier of inventories against her chest with the mechanical stiffness of a rustic altarpiece figure. The air that came down with the prelate brought no relief: it mingled with the stench of the quicklime boiling in the maceration pits as it met the tidal seepage.

By ancient custom, ecclesiastical judges always stopped at the third step of San Lázaro, where the cadaverous stench still allowed them to feign devotion without resorting to perfumed handkerchiefs; from there they called out the obituary rolls, listened to the chaplain's reading, and stamped the capitular seal without looking directly toward the dissection slabs. But that night the Visitor carried the haste of one who fears being cheated before dawn. His crossed eyes did not seek the blessed shrouds, but rather the dark corners where the washing benches dripped into zinc basins.

"Before lauds, Brother Julián," the Visitor said with a thin, cracked voice that seemed to scrape against the damp stone like a nail on slate. "The chapter's great bell will not wait for your assistants to clean the remains. I want every body cross-checked with the lazaretto ledger, the saltpeter marks measured in thumbs, and sworn testimony that no galvanic fire has been lit beneath these vaults."

Julián Caunedo had wrenched himself free of the hanged man's hand while the prelate cleared his throat on the stairs, and the dead man had left four bleeding half-moons on his forearm; he covered them by pulling down his sleeve. He did not yield an inch. He kept his head high, displaying that insolent, professorial calm that drove the choir vicars mad. With a slow movement, he pulled a greasy rag stained with mutton fat from his apron pocket and parsimoniously wiped the pads of his index and thumb, though the whitish crust of alum had already devoured the sensitivity of his skin until it was as smooth and shiny as polished ivory.

"The obedience of this chair is as punctual as the tide, Your Grace," Caunedo replied, tilting his torso in a bow that bordered on academic parody. "Though if His Grace insists on examining the beds of the north nave, I must beg him to walk close to the pillars. The river seepage has made the marble slabs brittle and the drainage basins tend to overflow at this hour."

A dull, intermittent clicking punctuated his words: they were drops of saponified grease falling from the slot of one of the central tables into a metal tub, a rhythmic beat that marked the seconds at the back of the nave with the monotony of a butcher's clepsidra.

"The ink in the traveling inkwell thickens with this dampness," Sister Benigna murmured suddenly, stopping two paces from the warden without lifting her gaze from the wrapping paper.

"Blow on the nib, sister," Caunedo said without even looking at her. "Saliva helps the iron flow when the cold sets in."

"I have not come down to blow on feathers, Don Julián," the nun cut in, passing her dry thumb over the folded corner of the folio. "There are seven open entries since Candlemas that still bear no burial signature."

Silence.

The warden took a clumsy step to the right to dodge the oily puddle surrounding the leg of the first cot. On the vaulted ceiling, the tallow lamp emitted a yellow, dirty, and flickering glow that barely managed to dispel the shadows in the corners. The Visitor advanced dragging the folds of his garment; his breathing had grown short, interrupted by the irritation of the alkali floating in suspension.

Brais Mújica de Lema seized upon the entourage's hesitation to slip toward the western aisle, seeking the thick shelter offered by the oak vats loaded with four-thieves vinegar. The acrid stench of crushed garlic, rue, and wormwood macerated in sour wine struck his nostrils with a beneficial violence, momentarily numbing the raw ulcer festering in his cartilaginous nasal septum. He pressed himself against the rough wood of the casks, making sure the brass buckle of his pouch did not clink against the iron hoops. From that dense gloom, where spiders wove webs clotted with dead lime, he could see Caunedo's sharp profile silhouetted against the lamplight.

"This unfortunate entered on Tuesday of last week," Caunedo explained, pointing the tip of a pair of cartilage scissors at the sheet Brais had thrown over the hanged man. "Male, fifty-two computed years, shoemaker from the outer beat. Lungs drowned by marsh fog and subsequent somatic failure. Three frictions of alum and sal ammoniac were applied before closing the box, just as the preliminary examination rite prescribes."

Sister Benigna passed a blunt nail over the book's entry, checking the date with exasperating slowness. At last she raised her head; her face, lean and yellowish beneath the starched coif, looked as though it had been sculpted in wax that had begun to melt near a brazier without ever losing its severe expression.

"The ordinance requires the eye sockets to remain uncovered during the blessing," the nun said, pointing with the bone handle of her stylus at the lump in the linen where the corpse's eyes were meant to be guessed. "Those eyelids are sewn with waxed linen thread. Why did you go to the trouble of sealing them with a double stitch?"

"Ocular necrosis disfigures Christian piety before the chapter grants burial bail," Caunedo replied, keeping his voice so flat it seemed devoid of breath. "We spare the laymen scandals, sister. Nothing more."

The Visitor thrust the ferrule of his staff between them, making the old wooden floorboards creak.

"The rule does not ask for considerations of decorum, Caunedo. It demands that the face be visible so identity is recorded in the fabric register. If you sew the sockets, I will draw up a writ of contempt before leaving this vault."

No one answered. Caunedo blinked once, slowly.

Had anyone carefully examined the master's composure at that moment, they would have noticed the oblique flash in his gray pupils, that almost voluptuous fixity of the surgeon who sees the incision open precisely where he traced the chalk line. He was not looking at the prelate. He was looking toward the blind angle where the vinegar vats cast a uniform mass of shadow across the flagstones.

"If His Grace wishes to verify the purity of our methods," Caunedo continued, stepping back two paces to clear the passage toward the back of the nave, "he should not waste time with the shrouded bundles of common charity. The working notebooks and the anatomical pieces of highest esteem always rest in Bachelor Mújica's workshop."

Brais's mouth went dry. The cold of the stone seating chilled his doublet through his shoulder blades, damp and piercing, and he had to press his knuckles against his thigh to keep his legs from trembling.

The nun stepped forward first, without waiting for the prelate's consent. Her wooden clogs sounded with a dry snap against the slippery flagstones, scaring away flesh flies that buzzed, dulled by the cold, near the blind skylights. The Visitor followed her, covering his mouth with a handkerchief bearing the purple embroidery of his canonical dignity.

Brais, crouching behind the saline belly of the largest vat, looked toward his own dissection table.

It was stripped of its usual instruments.

His pear-wood-handled scalpels were gone, nor were the spring-loaded pressure forceps he had himself cleaned with juniper alcohol at noon; even the tin basin where he usually rinsed his fingers before sewing was missing. In its place, devoid of the coarse-cloth shroud the ordinance demanded for any remains awaiting a responsum, rested a rectangular tray of tinned zinc that shone with a greasy pallor beneath the tallow wick.

Upon the metal lay a mass that no ordinance coroner would have admitted for burial. No surgeon from the poor hospital would have tolerated such an assembly without crossing himself.

A human calf stripped of skin down to the tendinous plane, the muscular tissue macerated in an alum brine so concentrated that the fibers had acquired a brittle, waxy stiffness, like old jerked beef exposed to frost. But what made Brais catch his breath was not the fan-like dissection of the nerve bundles, but the three silver pins driven into the insertion of the Achilles tendon, joined together by a thread of purest copper that spiraled downward until it plunged into a small glazed clay basin filled with antimony.

Barely four inches from the preparation, Brais's leather-bound notebook lay wide open, his own slanted handwriting pointing out the phases of the experiment under the turbid light of the lamp.

Caunedo stopped beside the head of the table, crossed his hands over his belly with beatific meekness, and waited for the Visitor to raise the dark lantern.

"Come closer, Bachelor Mújica," the master called out with a thick, almost cordial calm toward the vats. "Come show His Grace the notes of your own hand."