Miss Buddha (3 page)

This time the Gotama Buddha took birth as an
Italian: Giordano Bruno.

::
4 :: (Renaissance Rome)

He had trouble breathing.

The year was 1600, the month was February,
and its third Sunday had barely risen.

The procession making its way from his Nona
Tower prison to the Campo dei Fiori was headed by the pike men
guard followed by an enthusiastic trumpeter shooting fanfares into
the air to let everyone know that Bruno, the heretic, was
approaching.

And after the trumpeter came he, secured to
a donkey.

He hugged the animal’s neck with difficulty,
for his arms were too short for the robust neck. He was, however,
not in danger of falling off, for his helpful jailors had ensured
his embrace of the animal’s neck by wet leather straps linking his
hands, straps now drying and tightening, shortening, and sending
streams of pain his way. Not that he really cared, for these pains
were as if nothing—barely whispers of those to come.

Flames and death were only half a procession
away.

His feet, too, were tied by drying straps
under the beast’s belly, sending sister streams of pain up his legs
and sides for him to savor.

And he had trouble breathing, for his nose
was clogging with mucus and terror and the wooden block they had
forced into his mouth made passage of air all but impossible.

He could not cough.

Nor could he talk.

Nor could he scream.

Each clip and each clop of donkey hooves
brought him closer to death, and for a while he listened to them as
if they were part of some natural clock counting down the seconds.
Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. Then he twisted his head a little to his
left to see what could be seen.

What he saw was that even at this hour—the
sun was not yet risen—the route was lined with the curious, the
awe-struck, the grinning-in-relief that this was not they tied to
this donkey, heading for death.

He was naked under the large canvas they had
dressed him in, a sack painted with devils and flames of hell—his
eventual destination a foregone conclusion.

And beside him, easily keeping pace with the
slowly clop-clopping donkey clock, walked the mercy men, members of
the Confraternity of San Giovanni Decollato—Saint John the
Beheaded—whose task it was to stage a last ditch effort to save his
soul from eternal damnation by shoving crosses under his nose and
urging, begging, imploring him to repent. This was a ridiculous
exercise of futility, of course, since even had he wanted to—which
he did not—he couldn’t speak, could hardly move, could not even
meaningfully nod his head; it was too tightly forced against the
pungent hide of the ass who seemed to resent being pressed into
this revolting duty—it was Sunday after all, and his rightful place
this day of rest was in the fields, or in the stables, helping
himself to a day-long lazy meal of grass or hay.

And here they came again, these idiots and
their crosses, dancing the dance macabre to impress the abbots and
priests who had gathered, too, to make sure that Filippo Giordano
Bruno, also called the Nolan, did indeed suffer the ultimate
indignity this morning for trying to make a fool of the Mother
Church.

He knows that all will be ready for him at
the Campo. The brushwood and pine logs will be piled around the
stake in a gruesome welcome, soaked with fetid oils the better to
burn. On arrival they will cut him free of this animal and then,
unceremoniously, as if he were some thick-skinned fruit, peel him
naked of this sack for all to see before they strap him to the
stake and set fire to the wood, but not before making sure the
wooden wedge remained secure in his mouth: for screaming is not
allowed.

::
5 :: (Renaissance Rome)

It is said that a man can review his entire
life between the moment he leaps—or is thrown—off the cliff and the
moment he lands, heaping into life-departed flesh and broken bones
on the ravine floor. Bruno had heard it said more than once, but he
had never stopped to consider whether it might be true or
false.

But as the donkey
grudgingly clip-clopped between the ever-thickening files of
anticipating—if not salivating—celebrants, his life came rushing
back and it simply
made
the time to be re-lived, in scope if not in
detail.

When the Pope’s tribunal finally, and
officially, pronounced its sentence—the dark and pendulous thing
which had hung over him as an all but certainty for over seven
jailed years—he nonetheless almost fainted, his knees almost
buckled, his heart almost stopped. Almost, but not quite. Not the
Nolan. He refused to give them the satisfaction. Instead, he had
found the will and the resources to stiffen, to gather voice, and
to hurl it at the arrogant asses that had the audacity to judge
him—fools to a man, slaves to the dogmatically triumphant beast of
ignorance and blind doctrine they all served.

Hurling it thus, with severity, loudly,
clearly, “You, I can see, pronounce sentence against me with a fear
greater than that with which I receive it.”

And he was pleased that even with death now
a certainty, his voice had held firm, without even a trace of
quiver.

It had fallen upon Flaminio Adriano, the
Notary of the Inquisition, to do the final honors: the putting into
words what long since had already been decided by the Pope, and so
by the tribunal as well; and it was not without relish that the
absurdly self-important little man almost sang in high-pitched
Latin from the document he held high before him for all to see:

Having invoked the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and of his most Glorious Mother Mary ever Virgin, in the
cause of the aforesaid causes brought before this Holy Office
between, on the one hand, the Procurator Fiscal of the said Holy
Office, and on the other hand, yourself, the aforesaid Giordano
Bruno, the accused, examined, brought to trial and found guilty,
impenitent, obstinate and pertinacious; in this, our sentence,
determined by the counsel and opinion of our advisers, the Reverend
Fathers, Masters in Sacred Theology and Doctors in both laws, we
hereby, in these documents, publish, announce, pronounce, sentence,
and declare you, Brother Giordano Bruno, to be an impenitent
heretic, and therefore to have incurred all the ecclesiastical
censures and pains of the Holy Canon, the laws and constitutions,
both general and particular, imposed on such confessed impenitent,
pertinacious and obstinate heretics, wherefore as such we verbally
degrade you and declare that you must be degraded.

And we hereby ordain and command that you
shall be actually degraded from all your ecclesiastical orders,
both major and minor, in which you have been ordained, according to
the Sacred Canon Law; and that you must be driven forth, and we do
drive you forth from our ecclesiastical forum and from our Holy and
Immaculate Church of whose mercy you have become unworthy.

And we ordain and command that you must be
delivered to the Secular Court, that you may be punished with the
punishment deserved, though we earnestly pray that it will mitigate
the rigor of the laws concerning the pains of your person, that you
may not be in danger of death, or of mutilation of your
members.

Cursed with nearly perfect
memory, he could hear sentence drone on while little echoes
confirmed and confirmed it from among the walls and windows as the
little man continued his pompous singsong, to in the end even
officially wash the hands of the Holy and Immaculate Church of the
fate that was to befall him; “though we earnestly pray…” what
gibberish. What play-acting and pretense, since they all knew that
once he was handed over to the Secular Court, the Holy Standing
Order was but one: to enforce as strictly as possible “the rigor of
the laws concerning the pains of your person,” and the lay court
would certainly ensure that he
was
put in danger of death, if not, in this particular
instance, of mutilation of his members.

And so, in vivid memory—as it continued to
make its own time atop the donkey, the little man droned on, now
taking aim at all his writings:

Furthermore, we condemn, we reprobate and we
prohibit all your aforesaid and your other books and writings as
heretical and erroneous, containing many heresies and errors. We
ordain that all of them which have come, or may in future come,
into the hands of the Holy Office shall be publicly destroyed and
burned upon the Square of Saint Peter, before the steps, and they
shall be placed on the Index of Forbidden Books.

And as we have commanded, so shall it be
done.

And thus we say, pronounce, sentence,
declare, degrade, command, and ordain, we chase forth and deliver,
and we pray in this, and in every other better method and form,
that we reasonably can and should.

Thus pronounce we, the Cardinal General
Inquisitors, whose names subscribe this document.

And then there was silence.

Down to the last scurrying echo, echo, gone.
Silence.

The little man done braying, and now sitting
down, Bruno took solace and strength from his anger, from his
detestation of farce, and that kept him erect and standing, that
let him find his voice, and his words, and quiver-free retort.

But within: the final traces of hope took
dark wing, for now only the Pope could halt the rush of this
deathly river, and Bruno knew that Pope Clement VIII would do
nothing to slow, much less halt, the onrush of his death, that the
Pope had in fact made it abundantly clear that he wanted Bruno
erased, not only from the annals and memories of the Holy Church,
but from the Earth. Bruno was to die, he, the Pope, willed it
so.

And so he recalled—cursed
memory atop the donkey—the prediction he had made in his own
De Monade
so many years
prior:

I fought a lot; I thought I could win, but
fate and nature repressed my study and my efforts. But it is
already something to be on the battlefield because to win depends
very much on fortune. But I did as much as I could and I do not
think anyone of the future generation will deny it. I was not
afraid of death, I never gave in to anyone, I chose courageous
death instead of a coward’s life.

I chose courageous death
instead of a coward’s life
. This was not
exactly true, but a fine sentiment nonetheless, and an even finer
prediction— uncanny, in fact.

For he
had
in fact recanted and repented and
apologized and retracted as much as his conscience allowed, and he
would most likely have—though now somewhat relieved that this was
never actually put, or would never be put to that test—he would
most likely have retracted
every
thing, would it have made a
difference. But he had seen, known in his battered heart, that no
matter what he said, no matter what he did, no matter what books or
comments or view he recanted he
would
burn, so why give these asses
the satisfaction. That was the truth of the matter. He saw that,
acknowledged that, knowing self-deception to be man’s deepest
vice.

Truthfully, courageous death was not his
choice. Here, strapped to the donkey, he’d rather live, anything to
live, anything to continue as the Nolan, in whatever shape or
circumstance. Death was not a pleasant prospect, and he could not
accept it peacefully.

And here they came again with their crosses
and sanctimonious faces pleading again and again—what
hypocrites—that he would recant and so avoid the eternal flames of
hell. Ah, if he could only spit.

And all of this in perhaps ten or twenty
donkey clip-clops toward the still distant square.

:

The animal rocks a little one way, and then
the other, as it lifts and then brings down yet another hoof, clip,
and then another, clop, and now Mademoiselle Francoise Solanges
appears for him: the only woman he truly loved.

And the one woman he never took to bed.

“I want your instructions to set them
dreaming,” she had told him when they first met. She was referring
to the girl students in her charge, which he had agreed to tutor.
But Bruno, blinded and deafened by her beauty, had not registered
those words and still did not hear, though she was still talking:
“I want you to open a garden in which they can walk for the rest of
their lives.”

Finally, he found the thread of her request,
and then his voice, “And what makes you think I can do that,
Mademoiselle?”

“Monsieur Gorbin calls you a cloud walker,”
she said. “And I would like you to take my girls on a walk among
them, and then through the blue beyond, and then to the stars even
father beyond.”

“Why?” he heard himself ask.

“They need a future of hope.”

When he looked perplexed, she laughed, and
her laughter sounded to him like silver bells that rang as with
understanding of what he had to give. And then he, too, understood
what he was to give.

And so he gave, as often as he could, her
charges all the wonder, all the knowledge, and all the fascination
he possessed; and she, often as not, would sit in a corner,
listening in, smiling to him, smiling to herself. By all accounts
happy with his gifts.

In the end, when he could no longer contain
his love for her—for it threatened to rupture him would it not
reach air; when he could no longer suppress his honest passion for
this woman, he declared it, to another of her beautiful smiles and
slow movement back and forth of her head. “My dearest friend,” she
said, taking his warm, moist hand in her two fine and cool ones,
“there is no place in my life for a man. My needs, and gifts, are
different.”