Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

During the scrubbing maids’ next absence Don Juan dressed in the white tunic, stained it with his own blood, and placed the crown of thorns upon his head. And thus robed, by night he went to the cell of the Superior, Madre Milagros, and finding the door open, he entered with great stealth and found the sainted woman kneeling upon a priedieu, her hands folded in prayer before the sweet image of Jesus the Redeemer. On tiptoe, Don Juan silently approached until he stood between the divine image and the dazzled eyes of Madre Milagros; in the midst of the shadows he was the living incarnation of the Christ to whom she was directing her prayers. The devout woman choked back a cry that was almost a sob; Don Juan raised one finger to his lips, and with the other hand he stroked the Mother Superior’s head and murmured softly: “Wife…”

Madre Milagros’s eyes filled with tears, and her weeping betrayed a battle between incredulity and faith.

“Hail, you are filled with grace, the Lord is with you,” Don Juan said sweetly. “Do not be afraid, Milagros, for you have found favor with God, and you shall conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son. He shall be great, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob unto the ages, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”

The confounded woman automatically repeated the words she had learned as a young girl: “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”

“Are you not wedded to me?” Don Juan smiled. “Did you not take a vow to love me?”

“Yes, yes, I am the bride of Christ, but you…”

“Look carefully … behold my tunic … behold my wounds … behold the crown of my torment…”

“Oh, Lord, you have heard my prayers, you have honored the most undeserving of your servants, oh, Lord…”

“Rise, Milagros, take my hand, come with me, the virtue of the Most High shall cover you with His shadow, come with me to your bed, Madre…”

“I am the handmaiden of the Lord; do with me according to your word.”

And, Madre, Don Juan said in the bed of the Superior, the Lord honors those who are most deserving, and no one more than you, holy and beautiful, most fair and pure; pure, yes, Mother Milagros said, sighing, but not beautiful. I am an old woman, Lord, a woman thirty-eight years old; governess and shepherdess to this flock of young Sisters; no, Milagros, old, too, was Elizabeth, Mary’s kinswoman, who believed she was barren but who gave birth to the Baptist who was called John; and shall I, too, give birth, Lord? are you the Holy Spirit come down to visit me?; oh, Milagros, Madre Milagros, the duty and the honor of the elect has always been to be made fruitful by the Divine Spirit before belonging to any mortal man; I shall belong to no one but you, Lord, I swear it; then you will have a long wait, Madre, a long wait then; but I am the handmaiden of the Lord, do unto me according to your word.

Our mistress, Señor Don Juan, sent us out to the difficulty and danger of collecting animals, some within the confines of the palace, others in the nearest foothills; for some it was necessary to set traps, and at times we fled with terror before some stalking beast; at times it was necessary to spend the night waiting to hear the trapped cry of some animal, the two of us grumbling and complaining, Señor Don Juan, clutching each other in the shadow of huge rocks or holding each other tight from fear of the black forest, abandoning you those nights, longing for your so amiable company; we captured a kid and an owl, a dog and a mole, one black cat, and two serpents: when we were finally able to take these creatures to the bedchamber of La Señora, she had placed an inverted crucifix upon the mummy’s bed which she had surrounded with red candles, ciboria she had made us steal from her husband’s chapel, and Hosts made from black kale, and with her cypress wand she wrote in the sand the letter

V

and then I

T

R

and I

again, and an O

and finally an L and then she covered the mummy with a black sheet, and on the sheet there was a circle and a cross within it, and La Señora said it was the cross of Solomon; then she knelt and asked us to hold the kid very tightly by its horns, and exposing herself to an early death from its sharp hoofs, she kissed its ass and then, crazed, her forehead wrinkled by that tightly fitting crown, she plunged the knife we stole from Jerónimo’s forge into its belly; and before the jets of blood stopped spurting from the kid, as if to startle fear itself, she jabbed at the owl’s eyes, the dog’s neck, the black silk of the cat, the yawning jaws of the serpent, and the scurrying figure of the mole which was trying to bury itself in the sand; the beasts defended themselves in their own manner, scratching, barking, digging, pecking, fluttering, writhing, but they had no chance before the awful fury of La Señora, who was screaming: Veni, Veni, Veni, as she slashed, slit, ripped, and disemboweled the beasts.

The sands of her chamber, Señor Don Juan, are still soaking up the spilled blood; La Señora, our Señora, scratched, wounded, and exhausted, lies amid the new corpses. We brought two serpents from the hills, but she killed only one, Señor Don Juan, help us; we do not want to go back to the mountain to look for more animals; that’s a job for the master huntsman, Don Guzmán, and even he runs dangers among jackals and wild pigs, and we, poor little scrubbing girls, we’re not good for anything but collecting lizard droppings, certainly not for finding the snake still hidden in the sands of La Señora’s room, oh, oh, oh…”

But besides being so frightened we wet our underskirts, nothing happened, Señor Don Juan; the mummy still lies there, motionless; and La Señora opened her window and is listening to the sad lament of a flute coming from the forges, the tile sheds, and the taverns on the work site.

With eyes of dark resignation, the Mad Lady regards the somber crypt and seignorial chapel; her resignation is a triumph; everything is as it should be; like precious metals, pain and joy, mourning and luxury, shadows and light are here alloyed; give them eternal rest, Lord, and may your eternal light illumine them, alleluia, alleluia; propped upon her little cart the aged and mutilated Queen was, on the other hand, paying no attention to the cavorting of Barbarica, who leaped from tomb to tomb, all profaned, so that every cadaver resembled her cruel and generous mistress, for one lacked an arm, another a head, that one over there a nose, this one an ear, and Barbarica could only murmur: Oh, my beloved husband, my poor foolish but handsome Prince, do not hide from me, why won’t you come out and play with your tiny playmate? come out of your hiding place, don’t be cruel, you freed the unworthy prisoners on our wedding night, don’t humiliate me while you’ve favored vermin crawled out of nasty Jewish and Arab hovels, don’t deny me the great mandrake I so desire, don’t let my wedding night go by without a prodding from your pike, don’t make me believe you’re a boy-loving sodomite, I offer you my bulging painted tits and my greatest prize, a purse of a normal woman’s size, out of all proportion to the meanness of my other parts, oh, my little Prince, oh, my darling Idiot, who was it who took you from your beggarly state, from your sad condition as a tattered sailor, the day we found you on the dunes about to be torn apart by the crowd? who was it who had brought in her wicker trunk the cosmetics, pomades, pencils, paints, and false whiskers that transformed your appearance? who, my handsome Idiot? You could see nothing in the darkness of my mistress’s leather carriage, you heard her but didn’t see me or sense my presence; no, you didn’t see or hear me, and you believed the hands that disrobed you were those of my mistress the Mad Lady, who has no hands, so it was my hands that removed your doublet and your breeches, and it was I who slipped from the hole in the floor of the carriage hidden by my wicker trunk, I who nimbly slipped out and ran between the wheels and the horses’ slow hoofs to the funeral carriage, carrying your wretched clothes rolled into a bundle I had thrust in my bosom, and it was I who removed the clothes from the cold corpse of the Prince called the Fair, who in life was the husband of my mistress and the father of our present Señor, and in death was embalmed into incorruptibility by the science of Dr. del Agua, it was I who put your robber’s rags on him and then ran back to the carriage of my Lady and dressed you in the cap and medallions, the fur cape and brocade breeches, the hose and slippers, belonging to the cadaver, and it was thus the miraculous transformation took place that caused such clamor and amazement among our following; and you owe to me the fact that you are a Prince and not a beggar; and I was rewarded, for my mistress gave you my tiny, pudgy, loving hand in matrimony; and you, who owe everything to my craft and my artifice, now want to deny me the pleasure of your beautiful dingalingdong between my chubby little thighs, oh, you wicked boy, oh, you rascal, why won’t you come play with your poor Barbarica, your wife before God and man, come out where I can see you, come out where I can love you, you be my sweet pickle, come play with my pears, you darling idiot boy …