Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Four men on horseback and eight on foot had returned with the exhausted hounds, confirming the news: this hart had been hunted before. Guzmán, fingering the moustache that fell in two thin plaits to his Adam’s apple, stood in his stirrups and issued commands in rapid succession: ready more hounds than usual, and use only four dogs for each foray; the hunters must be very quiet and strongly discipline their dogs so their growling will not alert the hart.

From his saddle, El Señor pondered the paradox: the timid hart requires more precautions than the pursuit of a courageous, if ingenuous, quarry. Innocent movement, cautious cowardice. Fear is a good defense, he said to himself as he rode forward under the sun, his face hidden beneath the sheltering hood.

They unleashed twelve dogs to cover the mountain and locate the hart’s territory; riding beside El Señor, Guzmán told his Liege that the hart was seeking new feeding grounds but because it was summer any new feed would be found in the haunts of the previous summer: where there was water. “It will be easy, Sire, to follow the only stream bed in this arid land and find where the water collects in marshy ground.” El Señor nodded without really listening, then cautioned himself he must be more alert … his indifference, the burning sun … Guzmán still waited for an answer, and as El Señor studied the bronzed face of his chief huntsman he realized he was awaiting not only the practical answer his present duties required but also another, more intangible response involving hierarchy: Guzmán had suggested what should be done, but El Señor must give the order. The Liege reacted, and told his deputy to prepare a replacement of ten dogs for the moment when the first dogs, flews frothing, should return from the search. Guzmán bowed his head and repeated the order, adding a detail El Señor had overlooked: a band of men should immediately climb to a high position where they could oversee the whole operation in silence.

He pointed to this one, that one, another, until he had selected ten men. A mutter of protest rose from the huntsmen chosen to form the party that must climb still higher. When he heard the rebellious murmuring, Guzmán smiled and raised his hand toward his dagger. El Señor, flushed, checked the movement of his lieutenant, who was already caressing the hilt in anticipation; he stared coldly at the men, who felt themselves diminished by an order to fulfill a task that held no danger. Their barely veiled expression of rancor changed now, revealing the anticipated fatigue of that climb to the highest, most rugged parts of the mountain, and also their dejection at not being able to kill the hart they would be the first to sight but the last to touch.

Angered, El Señor spurred his horse toward the band of rebels: the action alone was sufficient; they hung their heads and ceased their muttering. They avoided looking either at each other or at El Señor, and from among them Guzmán chose three men he could trust; those three lined up their sullen fellows and posted themselves one at the head, one in the middle, and one at the end of the line, like guards leading a chain gang to garrison.

“Do not take the crossbows” was Guzmán’s final order. “I see too many impatient fingers. Remember, this hart has been hunted before. I want no sound of voices. I want no shots fired. Signal only with smoke or fire.”

El Señor no longer listened; he continued up the hard-baked mountainside, displaying nobility in his attitude, although to himself admitting indolence. That rebellious muttering, immediately quelled by Guzmán’s actions and his own presence, had drained him completely. Then his eye caught the majestic outlines of the mountains, and as he fingered his reins, he reminded himself that he was here to give a rest to his powers of judgment, not to make them more keen. How many times, as he knelt before the altar or walked about the cloister, had the memory of the obligation he was now fulfilling interrupted his most profound meditations. He spent more time secluded than he should: he needed to be in the field performing heroic feats to be witnessed and remembered. But until now he had always managed to dominate his natural inclinations; he had always given the order for the hunt before Guzmán had to remind him of it, or before his wife’s ennui yielded to mute reproaches. And to El Señor’s pragmatic reasons, his wife had contributed another of purest fantasy: “Someday you may find yourself in danger, some animal may threaten you. You must not lose the ability to take physical risks. You were young, once…”

More judicious now, El Señor consciously exaggerated his noble attitude and gallant posture to gain respect. For long hours in the saddle beneath the burning sun he would not ask for water, so that his vassals might feel the strength of his royal presence, so that when he was once again in prolonged seclusion they would ignore the counsel divulged from mouth to mouth, dark mysteries, imagined disappearances: has our Liege died, has he secluded himself forever in the holy sanctuary, has he gone mad, does he permit his mother, his wife, his deputy … his dog, to govern in his stead?

Squinting, he peered up the mountainside. The lookouts, forbidden the use of horns, were excitedly signaling the sighting of the buck. The hounds were brought up from the rear; they would follow the scent of the prey sighted by the men high on the mountain. As they passed by his side, straining but silenced by their handlers, El Señor could sense the trembling strength of their bodies, compounded by restraint and enforced silence.

The hounds raised a light cloud of dust and soon were lost from sight in the rough terrain. El Señor felt lonely, his only company the mastiff Bocanegra, following him with sad small eyes, and the faithful guard of men who, like the dogs and the men stationed on the mountainside, were panting to participate actively in the hunt — but whose duty obliged them to stay behind El Señor, to carry the bags with the curative agaric and mistletoe.

Then, unexpectedly, the sky began to darken. El Señor smiled: he would have respite from the terrible heat without having to ask for relief; all the planned maneuvers of his chief huntsman, as definitive as the authoritative voice in which he had ordered them, would be reduced to naught by the fortuitous change of weather, by the willful caprice of the elements. Double relief, double pleasure; he admitted it.

In this way the storm completes the labors of the sun and the sun those of the storm; the one returns burning bodies, unable to advance a hundred feet beyond the dunes, to the sea; the other offers the ruins of its shipwrecks to the devouring sun. The blond and beatific youth might lie there forever, unconscious and abandoned. Half his face is buried in wet sand, and his legs are licked by soul-less waves. His arms and long yellow hair are tangled with kelp; his widespread arms resemble a cross of seaweed, or one covered by a clinging ivy of iodine and salt. The visible side of his face — eyebrows, lashes, and lips — is covered by the black dust of the dunes. Tattered dun breeches and strawberry-colored doublet cling wetly to his skin. Crabs skirt his body, and someone watching from the dunes might say this is a solitary voyager who like so many before and after him has prostrated himself to kiss the sandy beach, to give praise …

“What country is this?”

If outward bound, he will kiss the foreign soil he never thought to encounter beyond a stormy, interminable sea expected to end in the universal cataract. If returning home, the voyager will kiss the prodigal earth and whisper his exploits to her, for there is no better partner than she in these dialogues: the adventures of the pennon he carried into battle and on to new discoveries, the fortunes of armies and armadas of men, like him exiled and liberated by an enterprise that although undertaken in the name of the most exalted sovereigns was secured by the humblest of subjects.