Blasphemous Beasts

Tuesday, 15 May 1543

Producing his rustic spyglass from the inner pocket of his frock, Padre Bohórquez commenced his daily monitoring of the painting of the cathedral ceiling. A dozen Zapotec painters stood high above him on the scaffolding, their brushes at their sides, awaiting his approval. Apprentices, they had been rendering the sacred images of saints and angels as instructed at the studio workshop of their maestro José Bene Chhbe', who stood among them.

Even though his aging hands trembled, the padre could still see through his spyglass that the beatific face of San Juan Bautista had been filled in since yesterday, and a layer of anil blue had been added to the Virgen María's robe, just as he had instructed. He nodded approvingly.

Turning slowly, Padre Bohórquez panned through other canonical scenes--the martyrdom of San Antonio, the conversion of San Pablo--until he found the freshly sketched cartoon of Adam and Eve, chastely concealed behind shrubbery in a paradisaical forest.  They stood under the Tree of Knowledge, the padre assumed, but then why were the apples so green and wrinkly? The serpent--those garish colors--and in the tree, macaws and toucans? Spider monkeys hanging from their...?

"Blasphemy," Padre Bohórquez croaked. He cleared his throat and yelled, "Blasphemy!"

José Bene Chhbe' began to climb down the scaffolding. "Why do you shout this word, Your Reverence? Why do you make such a serious accusation?"

"These beasts!" The padre gestured with his spyglass. "These parrots and monkeys are not mentioned in the Bible! They did not board the ark with Noah! To say nothing of these awful pears! They have no name in the Book of the Word of God!"

"Does Your Reverence mean that the migu with his fantastic tail and the be'ewe with his splendorous plumage, to say nothing of the heavenly taste of the ya'shu, are not God's creations?"

"Of course not!" fumed the flustered padre. "We are all God's creatures and God's children! But these migu and whatever you call them live here. They do not live in the Holy Land."

José turned and winked at his apprentices. "Then does Your Reverence mean that the Lord our God has no dominion over this land of La'a, this land you call Oaxaca, Nueva España?"

"Our Heavenly Father rules the Earth and Skies!" fulminated the padre with a cough. "You know that! Why do you persist in these blasphemous expressions!"

"Padre Bohórquez, the bishop will come to visit on Saturday, no? We will leave this section be until he can see it."

The spyglass shook in the padre's hands. "On top of everything else you've done, you are challenging my authority? The insolence..."

"Padre, how long have we been working together? Three years? You know that I was trained in the capital under the patronage of the diocese. You know that my apprentices and I do good work. We paint from what we know."

"When the bishop arrives on Saturday he will support me unconditionally. If you leave that painting as is, it's only because I can't climb up there myself to erase those creatures." The padre shook his fist in frustration and walked out of the cathedral.

José broke into an epiphanic smile. "Friends, we need to do some trapping before Saturday."

Saturday, 19 May 1543

"Yes, of course I'd like to see the paintings, padre. Isn't José Bene Chhbe' in charge?"

Padre Bohórquez stepped from the street onto the threshold of the human-size door carved into the huge portón. "Please understand, Your Excellency, that his apprentice painters have taken exuberant liberties."

"Padre, if it helps the children of God find their way to mass, so much the better."

Padre Bohórquez opened the door and caught sight of a flash of crimson. He heard hooting and shrieking coming from beyond the vestibule. Brandishing his spyglass, he entered shouting, "What disturbs the House of the Lord?"

But he was not prepared for the answer. His eyes first registered that the rough-hewn pews had been upended in a corner by one of the altars, next  to the scaffolding pushed out of the way. His ears registered a human voice hushing other voices.

The two men-of-the-cloth rounded the corner of the vestibule into the nave. Standing in the vacant Paradise-painted altar niche, José greeted them. "Your Excellency, Your Reverence, behold: The Garden of Eden!"

On this signal, some of José's apprentices, crouching to the sides of the scene, pushed potted trees and other plants to the middle of the floor while others began playing drums and a wood flute. One of the apprentices stepped quickly past the dumbstruck padre and bishop to close the street entrance.

José began to narrate the second chapter of Genesis, and from behind one of the trees Adam appeared on cue, contriving to cover his groin with a belt of leaves. Adam acted out the naming of the animals, in Zapotec, as they were released from cages and nets by his fellow painters: monkeys and coatis, macaws and toucans. A spider monkey came to tug on the robe of the padre, who made to protest but was stifled by the bishop.

Then Adam pantomimed the sleep of the excised bone, and from behind another tree appeared Eve, wearing the expected leaf belts and looking quite apprehensive.

At this the padre could no longer contain himself and queried, "You there, Adam, is this your wife?"

Adam bowed. "Yes, Your Reverence."

"Proceed," said the bishop, with an irritated glance at the padre.

Both men were soon startled by an apprentice holding a snake, playing the part of the Serpent. Eve and Adam were tempted with an avocado, seduced, and reprimanded by the voice of José as God. Another stage helper brought crude clothes for Adam and Eve to hide their newly conceived shame, but at that moment paradise lost: there was a loud thunk as a coati knocked over the large cross on the chancel. All eyes turned and observed a macaw splashing and preening in the baptismal font, two spider monkeys fighting over some communion wafers, and the coati proceeding to rip and devour a page from the Bible laying open on the altar.

"Blasphemous beasts!" the padre spat out.

But the bishop began to chuckle as the padre and the painters ran and climbed all over the nave trying to catch the animals. They were soon joined by Adam and Eve, whose leaf coverings quickly disintegrated even as they chased the particularly noisy and irate howler monkey who had stolen their clothes. By now the bishop was doubling over, searching for a place to sit down, he was laughing so hard. José brought him a chair.

The padre managed to corner the heretic coati, but just at that moment a spider monkey filched his spyglass. The disheveled padre sputtered and coughed in desperation. He leaned against a side altar rail to regain his breath, only to cringe and recoil when he noticed the snake slithering toward him.

"It's only a sunbeam snake!" yelled José. "Harmless!"

But the frightened padre lurched against an upended pew and was promptly pelted with an avocado by the spider monkey perched precariously on top. As the padre backed away, wiping green paste from his robe, he knocked over one of the potted trees, from which a startled toucan flew in raucous protest.

The bishop, and now José too, were gasping and heaving, tears streaming down their cheeks. Everywhere around them was confusion and disaster, shrieks and howls and thumps, feathers and fur and bare skin: Eve and Adam had re-assumed their original innocence as they continued the hunt for their coverings. This chaos lasted for another good hour until the animals had been contained and José's crew lay or sat on the cathedral floor, exhausted.

Sunday, 20 May 1543

Sweating and gasping, Padre Bohórquez awakened from a disturbing dream. He had been walking naked through a wasteland inhabited by winged monkeys and prehensile-tailed parrots...

Smiling and humming, José Bene Chhbe' awakened from a pleasant dream. He had been walking nude through a paradise inhabited by winged monkeys and prehensile-tailed parrots...

The cathedral bell rang for morning mass. The curious joined the faithful filing through the vestibule; all Oaxaca had learned of the painters' bold but failed staging of paradise. As the congregants entered they saw and heard the animals, once again in their cages and nets and placed around the chancel.

Padre Bohórquez began the service. The congregation noted that the incense, once lit, seemed to calm and quiet the animals. The padre introduced the bishop, who first made a point of blessing the animals as representatives of all God's creation on this continent. Then the bishop called forth José Bene Chhbe' and his craftsmen, to commission the completion of the murals and to bless their work to that end. Finally, the bishop gave a sermon on the Fall of Man and Woman, and God's Forgiveness, before officiating communion.

The painters kept the animals for a few days as live models, then they returned the animals to the wild. They finished their murals, to much acclaim, by the end of the year.

Postdata: 1936

Oaxacan artisan Pedro Linares, ill with a high fever, dreamt of uncanny animals. They were mixed beasts, among them a winged donkey and a horned rooster, living in a kind of paradise. Perhaps in his dream he intuited an unorthodox interpretation of the Garden of Eden as a legacy from the cathedral's first painters. Their work, imagined here in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in Oaxaca, would have long since been destroyed by fire and earthquake over the centuries, given the particular history of that cathedral. But many Baroque churches of Latin America are still adorned with Neotropical wildlife alongside Biblical figures. Linares' dream inspired his creation of those riotously colored, wondrously blasphemous beasts, the ever-popular alebrijes.