Miss Buddha Read Online Free Page A

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