Limpieza de Sangre
Baird looked down at his knee, neatly folded over his leg, and quietly brushed a white peck onto the floor with the back of his hand. Doing this he noticed a thin black line that ran under the finger nail of his index finger. He had read that morning, and that was his baton, allowing it susceptible to grime. He decided it would have to be cleaned but first took a moment to find pleasure in the crisp geometry of the line down the centre of his trousers. His new housekeeper was everything he could have wanted. Mrs Netherton was shrewd, experienced, organised, too old to find attractive and too young to worry about her retirement and having to go through the interview process all over again. Her presence around the house was ghost-like. Trousers pressed without any hint of the chore being undertaken, meals cooked without even the smell of the meat exploring the long low-ceiling corridors of the cottage. It was not unusual for Baird to see nothing but the fruits of her toils for days on end. It was the perfect union. An oiled machine. He could see a time when all people interacted this way. No need to doff caps and stand in front of classrooms, all of society created like a perfectly woven garment.
He looked up to his class of pale faced vessels. He no longer felt the shame that he felt as a young teacher whenever the sight of a room of students turned his stomach, knotted his throat and cloaked him in such a feeling of nausea that he would have to bark out the title of a poem for them to read and go for a cigarette around the back of the south library. Those were the days where the world seemed like a bubble. He had returned from the quagmire of Passchendaele with a shrapnel wound in his thigh that had made him dependant on a stick for the remainder of his days. He had been told he was lucky to survive, but that was an opinion, and even in those days opinions meant very little to him.
On returning to England he had found that there was little for him to do, less that he wanted to do. His degree in Medieval History from Magdalene had sent him into battle as an officer, sent him first over the top. On his return, with the war remembered in the same way he remembered the images from a novel, it was going to send him back to the evenly cut grass and crisp frosty mornings of Magdalene. But even now, thirty-five years on, the scarred dappled roughness of his thigh hung from his leg like a gruesome garland, his stick sweated the palm of his hand as coldly as the butt of his revolver once did. That day on the ridge had never left him, could never leave him. And there in front of him sat another class of young things, eager enough, respectful enough but each year they became less and less familiar to him, further away from anything he recognised. What use would they have for anything he could teach them? Knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It meant very little to him. A life within the walls of a university had taught him the oxidising effect that knowledge could have. It could clear your path like ventolin, rub the sleep from your eyes, but it could also rust your beliefs and rot your insides. The certificates, the letters after the name were part of another world, an earthly vignette that opened doors to (more often than not) drab and dysfunctional rooms. He was aware that after his doctorate was secured that he could have moved into the private sector, maybe even politics and made far more money than he had done, his debt long paid to academia. Most colleagues and all friends of note had moved on, left behind the anaesthetised corridors of university life. They had discovered family life, discovered the intrigue of the complications of a technological world, discovered ambition.
That boy with the permanent startled look on his face leaned forward as if to speak, wanting to raise his hand, a habit that all the students brought with them from the schoolroom, a habit that Baird did nothing to discourage but which vanished with blushes after the first few days. Baird tried never to encourage a participatory atmosphere in his classroom. He preferred to imagine he was thinking out loud rather than teaching students. He would occasionally call upon one of the more attractive young girls to recap on a topic for the benefit of the others, but only if there was one. He liked the softness and the gentle naivety that a beautiful girl could coat her voice in. If they were blonde with rosy cheeks gifted to them by the Oxford morning, so much the better. He felt enormous guilt at this attitude, his attraction to youth. But he could be honest with himself when he assured that none of this was sexual, it was a longing for purity, a longing for the world to be more beautiful than it was. It had long passed sex.
He pointed at the boy and wiggled his chin. He had no idea of the boys name, it was only his fourth time with this group. The boy stuttered out the words, “cleanliness of blood”, and leaned back in his chair as if a great pain had been relieved him. Baird had asked the question knowing that it would go unanswered but it seemed he had someone in his grasp who liked to research on the subject before the lesson. Such students were few and far between and whereas at one time it would have breathed life into the dim flame that piloted Baird, now the sight was sickening. He resented such eagerness. He despised such young and agile minds. He was far more comfortable with the lazy eyes looking up through him from the pews. No trouble, no challenge. He could just think out loud and start over again every September. It was cold outside across the fields. The crisp dew of winter was laying its hat across an England that welcomed it like the landlord of a sleepy inn.
“Do you speak Spanish?” Baird uncrossed his legs. His left leg, the arched leg, was stiff. His supporting leg was his maimed one. He remained seated for a moment, spoiling the dominant pose that he had intended, that he was well practised in.
“No, sir.” The boy accepted the question with trepidation.
“Then how would you know that answer?” Baird immediately felt a little vulnerable.
“I read about it.”
“You read about it? I’m impressed that you thought it necessary to turn up to my class at all. You seem to be quite the scholar, already.”
The boy prepared to mouth a response but Baird’s eyes were wandering away from him. He was not thinking of the boy. It was inconvenient that the boy had known the answer. But next year there would be a class where nobody would know. It was not all that important.
Baird stood and walked over to the book case by the rear window. He had always resented the fact that that afternoon on the ridge at Passchendaele had robbed him of everything he had envisioned his life to be. He had been forced to stop playing rugby and cricket so his midriff had sunken and widened much earlier than most men of his generation. When he would have usually walked the grounds of the University or the streets of Oxford, the effort now was a miserable experience, he would sit at home or in his quarters and read. It was not long before he needed reading glasses. Ill health due to lack of exercise and depression made his hair thin and his skin turn ashen. By the time he was thirty and teaching at Oxford he looked like an old man. He looked no different now to students he saw in the street that he had taught thirty years ago.
At the book case he examined the spines of the volumes that were regimented in front of him. Edmunde Burke, the writings of Josephus, a history of Spain. The air in his hallways.
“Limpieza de Sangre: The cleanliness of blood.” Baird lifted the window about three inches and felt the cold air scratch across his knuckles. He loved this time of the year. The frost, the bright chilled early mornings talking about European history as the icy draft wafted around the room. It was his time of year. He turned to face the class. They weren’t so bad looking. Half of them seemed to be listening, the other half were respectful enough to have masked themselves with attentiveness. “When the Spanish reclaimed the south from the Moors they were horrified to discover that many Spaniards had been forced to convert to Judaism or even Islam. Limpeiza de Sangre was how they converted back to Christianity.” Baird sighed and turned back to the window. The draft was cold against his crotch. There was a thin beautiful mist rising from the Cherwell in the near distance.
Baird heard a whisper from over his shoulder.
He turned to face the inquisitive little faces once again. “Does someone have something to offer?” Baird had always been proud of his voice. He was the star of a revue when enrolled at Cherbourg House, mainly for the depth of his vociferation, the “velveteen boulder” as one of his classmates described it. But there were times when he over indulged it. He was not a large man, no goliath, but an elderly looking gentleman with a heavy limp and thick glasses perched on the end of his grey nose. His voice was the only thing that time had not had the opportunity to cripple. Indeed, Baird sometimes thought with a wickedness, his heavy smoking had improved it to the point of incongruity to his physique.
“I just had a question, Professor Baird.” It was one of the girls. She had thick eyebrows and greasy hair bunched under a woollen hat. Baird could hardly bear to look at her. He raised his arm in a gesture to continue.
“I was just commenting,” she continued happily with a frown, “how Christian history is littered with stories of people dying under the influence of Christianity. That is the greater good for a Christian. But why would the Catholic church want these people back who had converted to other religions? If they convert back just as easily who is to say what faith they truly hold.”
Baird had fought with this himself when he was younger, although he reminded himself that he had articulated it infinitely better. He looked down at the dirt under his nail. He could explain the various arguments, the controversies surrounding such a view, he could have lectured for the rest of the hour on that topic alone. But instead he looked over the students.
“Anyone?” They had started it, he thought, this callous self-dependency, they could run with it.
A good looking young man from the back of the room raised his hand.
“No need to raise your hand, young man.” Said Baird leaning back against the book case.
“Well I was going to say that the issue the Catholic church faced during the Inquisition was not so much one of faith but one of power. It was far more important that the people recognised the authority of the Vatican than whether or not they were sincere in their faith.” The student did not look pleased with himself but rather he looked serious and imposing. Baird sighed and stretched his maimed leg. We can all read books. He had always had a distrust of students that looked as serious as this one. The boy had made a good point, if a little clumsily, but he had spoken as if it was fighting talk, as if knowledge was a sword rather than a water flask.
“The Inquisition was about power, you are not wrong. But the lady’s question was deeper than that. If you think that the perpetrators of the Inquisition were not religious men, that they did not carry out their actions with the Divine Grace, then you are wrong. The young lady’s question is as much about psychology as it is about history.” The faces in front of him all looked awake and alert. Brains were moistening. “But how can we answer those types of questions?” Baird moved slowly back to his desk. He had answered these questions for many years without them even being asked. The answers were not constructed from sentences or even words, but they were constructed of half glances and uneven portraits of uneven people. How could these young faces ever understand the motives of those that lived in not just different times but times so far removed that they were unapproachable.
“Could it not be the case that these poor people, illiterate, uneducated,” already the hands no longer rose. “just believed the better argument.” The girl with the thick eyebrows seemed to be enjoying herself without any physical manifestation of pleasure.
“The better argument?” asked a faux outraged boy with shaded complexion.
“The better argument,” Baird interjected, “is always the reasoning of the victor.”
Silence, a contemplative hum abroad the room. Baird carefully removed the spectacles from his nose and breathed upon the lenses. He was moved by the fact that some minds in the room were sympathetic to these uneducated inhabitants of the past. And by educated he meant always those ignorant of situations that went on around them. Half of the room may well have died rather than give up their faith (not that he assumed the room was all that faith full). He had met many like that before. He was sure that he wasn’t one of them.
“So they didn’t believe in anything really,” A girl with thick designer glasses spoke with a metallic rasp that was hinting at some winter ailment. “Just whatever kept them alive.”
“But that could be the whole point, couldn’t it? The true faith would be the one that kept them alive.”
“So it would be the current one?”
“It would be whichever one appeared to be doing the job.”
“That all seems so wrong to me.”
“I don’t think it’s wrong. It’s more like, perhaps, an evolution of their faith. Of their understanding of their faith.”
“It just seems wrong.”
Baird searched in his pocket for a handkerchief. There was none. He looked over the faces. Some seemed to be re-arming, others wondering why Baird had not said anything for so long. He felt as though he should say something.
“If this were a theology class you’d all be making in-roads.” The remark was flippant and yet he still could not allow himself the frivolity of a compliment. As far as theology went, they were approaching a very tall ladder but had yet to place a foot upon the first rung. It didn’t matter. He could have made a joke. Baird was uneasy in his repose. This was not the teaching that he enjoyed. It was maverick to him, almost bohemian. He had seen professors with this attitude, this swagger, creeping onto the premises more and more in the years after the Second War. The defeat of the Nazis seemed to have released British youth of some kind of discipline. It was all building up to something, some great change that he had hoped would keep to its own side of the wall. He had fought hard in his conflict and set foot back on British soil without any concern for his place in history. He was to carry on the path that he had left. But something different had happened to the new crop of conscript. There was a professor in the English department who rarely wore a tie. He had often tried to introduce himself to Baird with an approach of such politeness and respect that Baird could not help but feel suspicion and disgust. His hair was too long, his shoulders too low. He looked not much different to one of the students. What had the conflict in Europe done to the youth of Britain, he often thought. Where were the ties slowly disappearing to?
The room had been in silence for the longest time that Baird could recall. It always held the gravelly notes of his voice or the more shrill cogitations of one of his students. But for the previous few moments Baird had said nothing and his congregation were waiting.
“There was a saying when I was young, your age or thereabouts,” he began with a surprisingly light brush, “It was more of a mantra, actually. It kept us all whistling on many a cold night. To belong is to be free. That was it. Sometimes you fulfil a role so that the next generation can decide what is right and wrong. But they need to be able to have the space for debate. They need to be able to exist. You will all make sacrifices in your lives. And on occasion it will not always be clear what the benefits of the sacrifice will be. But if you belong you will be free.” His voice was softer toward the end, it had lost its dominance. The faces were fixed upon him, half fishing for the meaning in his words, half creating, each of them, a different meaning for themselves. “It is not a question of giving up what you believe. It is a much more grand question than that.”
Baird was tired, he had been tired for a long time but each day breaths were becoming harder to reclaim. He could see from the cold white clock that hanged on the oak panelled wall like a pimple that the seminar was all but over. He had covered but a fraction of what he had intended to that morning. The girl with the thick eyebrows had followed his gaze to the clock and was beginning to arrange her paraphernalia into a manageable parcel. On seeing her others began to follow suit.
“Thank you, Professor Baird.” Said one of the boys, and someone else repeated it softly. He raised his arms signifying they could leave. One of the girls smiled at him as she passed. He smiled in return.
Out of the window the mist was leaving with the morning, slowly but gracefully. He picked the line of dirt from under his fingernail with the letter opener that was lying on his desk. The sun was beginning to overshadow the crispy frost. He was looking forward to the next morning.