Chapter 14 The Sinner of Toledo

The Sinner of Toledo Chekhov translated from spanish "Here is a succubus who calls herself Maria Sbaranzo, and if anyone points out where she is, or if the succubus is brought before the court, dead or alive, that person will be pardoned for all his crimes." The proclamation was signed by the bishop of Barcelona and four judges.The days of the proclamation are long gone, but that period has forever left an indelible stain on Spanish history, and perhaps even on human history. The whole city of Barcelona read the notice.The search begins.Sixty women were arrested because they looked like succubuses.The banshee's relatives were all tortured. ... There was an absurd yet deep-seated belief that banshees had a knack of turning into cats, dogs, or other animals, and that they must have black hair.It is said that hunters often cut off a paw from a pouncing animal and took it home as a trophy, but when they opened the game bag, they found only a bloody hand in it, which they recognized as the hand of their wife.The inhabitants of Barcelona beat black cats and dogs to death, but Maria Sbaranzo was not found among these needless victims.

Maria Sbaranzo was the daughter of a great merchant in the city of Barcelona.Her father is French and her mother is Spanish.From her father she had inherited the French carelessness and the boundless joy of mind which is so charming in French women.She had inherited a purely Spanish body from her mother.She was beautiful, always cheerful, and wise, and spent her days in the gay leisure and art of Spain until she was twenty without shedding a tear. ... She is as happy as a child. . . . she was married to Sparanzo on the very day she turned twenty.The man was known throughout Barcelona as a navigator, was extremely handsome, and was said to be a very learned Spaniard.She married him because she loved him.Her husband swore to her that if she were unhappy with him, he would kill himself.He was madly in love with her.

On the second day after the wedding, her fate was decided. In the evening, she went out from her husband's house to look for her mother, but she got lost.Barcelona is a big city and not every Spaniard can show you the shortest way to get from one end of the city to the other.She meets a young monk. "How do I get to St. Mark's Street?" she said to the monk. The monk stopped, thinking, and began to look at her. ...the sun has long since set.The moon had risen and cast its icy light on Maria's beautiful face.No wonder poets of women often speak of the moon!A woman is a hundred times more beautiful in the moonlight.As Maria walked so fast, her beautiful black hair fell over her shoulders and covered her heavily breathing, protruding breasts. ... She reached out and grabbed the scarf around her neck, her arms bare to the elbows. ... "I swear by the blood of St. Jan Valli, you are a banshee!" The young monk suddenly said for no reason.

"If you weren't a monk, I'd think you were drunk!" she said. "You are a banshee!!" The monk gritted his teeth and spit out a spell. "Where is that dog that ran ahead of me just now? That dog has become you! I can see it! . . . I know. . . . Fifty banshees. You are the fifty-first. I am Augustine. After saying this, the monk crossed himself on his chest, turned around, and disappeared. Maria knew Augustine...she had heard a lot about him at her parents' house. ... She knew he was passionate about banshee extermination and had written a scholarly book.In that book he curses women and hates men because men are born of women.Maria had walked half a mile, and once again came across Augustin's mansion, with a long line of Latin characters engraved on it, and four black figures came out of the gate.The four figures asked her to walk in front of her, and then followed her.She recognized one of them as Augustine and they kept sending her to the door.

Three days after she had met Augustine, a man in black, with a puffy, clean-shaven face, arrived at the Sparanzo's house, who by all appearances must have been a judge.The man told Sparanzo to go at once to the bishop. "Your wife is a banshee!" the bishop declared to Spalanzo. Sparanzo turned pale. "Thank God!" continued the Bishop. "There was a man, God gave him the precious talent of finding demons in people, and now he opened our eyes and yours. He saw how she became a black dog, and how the black dog became yours. Wife..." "She's not a banshee, she's... my wife!" murmured a stunned Spalanzo.

"She can't be a Catholic's wife! She's Satan's wife! You poor man, haven't you noticed that she's changed her mind more than once for the devil? Go home and bring her here at once." Come..." The bishop was a man of great learning.He thinks that the word femina⑤ is composed of the two characters fe⑥ and minus⑦, which seems quite reasonable: women are not very religious. ... Sparanzo turned paler than a corpse.He came out of the Bishop's room, holding his head.Where are you going now, and to whom are you going to tell that Maria is not a banshee?Who can not believe what the monks believe?Now all of Barcelona would believe that his wife was a banshee!All of Barcelona!Nothing is easier than to convince a fool of absurdities, and the Spaniards are all fools!

"There is no people more stupid than the Spaniards!" said his father, a physician, to Sparanzo when he was dying. "Scorn the Spaniards and don't believe what the Spaniards believe!" Sparanzo believed what the Spaniards believed, but not what the bishop said.He knew his wife well enough to believe that women only become succubuses in old age. "The monks are going to burn you, Maria!" he said to his wife, returning home from the bishop. "They say you're a banshee and tell me to take you there. . . . Listen to me, my wife! If you're a banshee, God be with you! You turn into a black cat, Run away somewhere else. But if you don't have a demon in you, I won't turn you over to the monks.  … They'll put a dog collar on you and keep you from sleeping until they beat you to death. If you It's a banshee, so run away!"

Maria didn't turn into a black cat, and she didn't run away. ... She cried first and began to pray to God. "Listen to me!" Sbaranzo said to his weeping wife. "My dead father said to me that a new age will come soon, and people will laugh at those who believe in banshees. My father didn't believe in gods, but what he said is always true. Then you have to hide in a Where to go, wait for that time to come. . . . It's easy! My brother Christopher has a boat which is currently in port for repairs.I hid you in that boat, you don't get out of the boat, you have to wait for the time my father said to come. ... That time, in his words, will come soon.

..." Maria was already sitting in the bilge of that boat that evening.Trembling with cold and fear, she listened to the roar of the waves and waited anxiously for that wonderful time that Spalanzo's father had spoken of. "Where is your wife?" the Bishop asked Sparanzo. "She turned into a black cat and ran away from me!" Sbaranzo lied. "I've expected it, I've had a premonition of it! But that's all right. We'll find her. . . . Augustine's great talent! Ah, marvelous talent! Take it easy, next time." Don't marry a banshee! There have been examples in the past of the transfer of demons from wives to husbands.... Last year I burned a devout Catholic who died because of contact with a demon-possessed woman You involuntarily handed over your soul to Satan. . . . You go!"

Maria stayed in that boat for a long time.Sparanzo visited her every evening and brought her everything.She lived for one month, two months, until the third month, but the time she was looking forward to did not come.What Spalanzo's father said was true, but months are not enough to deal with superstition.Superstitions live as long as fish, and last for hundreds of years. ...Maria gradually got used to her new way of life and began to laugh at the monks, calling them crows. . . . but for some terrible and irreparable misfortune, she would have lived a long time, and perhaps sailed away from foolish Spain in a repaired ship, as Christophe said, To a distant country.

The bishop's proclamation was not only circulated among the inhabitants of Barcelona, ​​but was posted in all the squares and markets, and even Sbaranzo got one.After reading the notice, Sparanzo was silent.The proclamation ended with a promise of forgiveness of sins, which caught his attention. "It's a good thing that the guilty can be forgiven!" Sbaranzo sighed. Spalanzo considered himself a great sinner.His conscience was burdened with a mass of sins, for which many Catholics were burned at the stake, or died under the torture.Sparanzo lived in Toledo as a youth.At that time Toledo was the meeting place of warlocks and magicians. ... Mathematics was more developed there than anywhere in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.In Spanish cities, it's just one step from math to magic. ...Sbaranzo also practiced magic under the tutelage of his father.He dissects animals and collects rare weeds. … Once he was crushing something in the iron mortar, but there was a terrible explosion in the iron mortar, followed by a light blue flame, which meant that the devil had come.His life in Toledo was full of such crimes.Shortly after his father's death, Sparanzo left Toledo with a very disturbed conscience.An old and learned monk-physician told him that his sins would never be forgiven if he did not perform a merit of some magnitude enough to absolve him of his sins. Absolved of his sins, willing to sacrifice everything if his soul would escape the memory of his shameful life in Toledo and escape from hell.If Spain sold amulets at that time, he would be willing to spend half of his property to buy them. . . . If his work had not hindered him, he would have set off and walked to the Holy Land. "If I hadn't been her husband, I'd have given her up..." he thought to himself after reading the bishop's proclamation. He thought over and over in his mind that he only had to say one word, and his sins could be forgiven.The thought haunted him day and night. ... He loved his wife, loved her very much. . . . If it were not for this love, this weakness, which monks and even Toledo physicians despise so much, perhaps things would have gone so well. . . . He showed the proclamation to his brother Christopher. ... "If she's a banshee, and not so pretty," said his brother, "then I'll hand her over. . . Well, we won’t suffer any loss if we hand over her dead body to those crows.... Let them burn the dead.... Anyway, the dead don’t feel pain. In the future, when we get old, she will die, and we Well, we need to have our sins forgiven when we reach old age..." After finishing these words, Christopher laughed loudly and thumped his brother on the shoulder. "I probably died earlier than her," Sbaranzo said. "But on God, if I hadn't been her husband, I'd have given her up!" A week after this conversation, Sparanzo walked up and down the deck of the ship, muttering: "Oh, if only she were dead! She's alive, I can't give her up, I won't! But she's dead, and I'll hand her over! Then I'll trick those damned old crows and get a pardon from them!" So the stupid Spalanzo poisoned his poor wife. ...Maria's body was sent to the court by Sbaranzo, and was cremated by the court. Sparanzo was pardoned for his crimes at Toledo. ... In fact, the sin he was forgiven was that he had studied to treat people and studied science, which was later called chemistry.The bishop praised him and gave him a copy of his own book. ... In this book the learned bishop writes that the devil often possesses black-haired women, because black hair is the color of the devil. ①②The city name of Spain. ③This surname alludes to Augustine (354-430) in history, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, a crazy propagandist of religious dark forces, called on the church to brutally suppress heretics, and wrote the religious book "City of God" and so on. ④ is the devil. ⑤ Latin: woman. 6 Latin: Faith. ⑦ Latin: a small amount.