Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“My signature would mutilate the prolongation of the space that should extend, as one gazes, to the right and left of the canvas, behind, above, and beneath it, and also in a second perspective, the one that flows from the canvas toward the spectator: you, we, they. Let my figures gaze beyond the painting that temporarily emprisons them. Let them gaze beyond the walls of this palace, beyond the plain of Castile, beyond the taut bullhide of our peninsula, beyond the exhausted continent we have damaged with greed and lust, with numberless crimes and invasions, and saved, perhaps, with a handful of beautiful buildings and with elusive words. Let them gaze beyond Europe to the world we do not know and that does not know us, but which is no less real, no less space, and no less time. And when you, my figures, also grow weary of gazing, cede your place to new figures that will in their turn violate the norm that finally you will consecrate: disappear, then, from my canvas and let other representations occupy your place. No, no, I shall not sign, but neither shall I be silent. Let the painting speak for me.”

Hidden behind the tall chancel, Madre Milagros also gazed at the painting, but all her attention was centered on the white-clad Christ with the bleeding brow: it was he, it was he, the very one who had come to her that unforgettable night and claimed her for himself, and the Mother Superior was not surprised by the absence of a halo above that figure, for no light had crowned the Christ who had made her His wife. Madre Milagros sobbed; now she would not have to pray imploring the Saviour’s presence; now she knew where she could find Him: here, in this chapel, in this painting; all she had to do was come here in secret, by night or at dawn, and touch the figure of the Christ in the painting and He would descend to her, Milagros, the chosen, and would again take her upon the most sacred of beds, upon the bed of the altar itself, on this very altar. Madre Milagros sobbed, and quietly beat her breast, oh, unworthy woman, oh, prideful woman, why would the Lord come to me again after having done so once? Why would He not instead visit other women and confer honor upon them as He honored me? Pride, pride, and I presuming to think of coming here to see Him and touch Him and make love with Him, presumption, He would not remember me, He would turn his back upon me, pride, pride, torture me no longer, Serpent, I am afraid to return here because I am afraid the Lord my God will turn His back upon me, will banish me from His presence, will scorn my pleas and punish my presumption, my honor; my honor? no, my pride, I became a nun for the sake of honor, to guard it and keep it, and because there was no man whom I considered worthy of my bed or for whom I would change my name, only to become the bride of Christ, for the sake of honor, no man will stain it, not even Christ the Saviour, forgive me, forgive me, sweet Jesus, but I do not love you, I do not love you, why did you come to me and make me yours? I loved you while you were unreachable, incorporeal, and therefore the most perfect object of a love beyond human fetters, beyond the bonds of honor, pride, presumption, or the fear of being scorned, I no longer love you, Christ, I loved a sweet and pure image, I cannot love a real lover, forgive me, Lord, forgive me …

Different was the gaze of the nun Angustias, who was not engaged in scrutinizing the painting above the altar, but in scrutinizing the figures of the monks gathered in the chapel, and in guessing which was the man who had at last assuaged her hungers and her lacerations and given her in exchange the unknown pleasure and pulsing freedom of desiring more and more and more, but desiring now with the security of knowing she could have, have, have, have love, yes, but not a child, no, that was what she feared now, her trembling face hidden behind the iron fretwork of the nuns’ choir, oh, monk, if you made me a child you will not have given me pleasure with the freedom you promised, and pleasure without freedom is not pleasure at all, oh, monk, you took advantage of my delirium, of my shame, of my hunger for a man, oh, monk, if you have made me pregnant I will have to say that your child is the work of the Devil, and I will have to kill him at birth, before you yourself kill him, for you and for me, monk, I pray that you gave me only freedom and pleasure, not obligation, for it would be our mutual triumph so to have conquered the two laws that bind us — marriage outside the convent and chastity within — and be free, monk, free, to continue to make love with impunity, you to as many women as you desire, and I to as many men … No, I do not love you, monk, but I shall love the pleasure and the freedom you have taught me. May you do the same.

And where should the novitiate Doña Inés look, she who found so many points of interest among the motley throng? There, making his way toward El Señor, was her aged father, the usurer, the marten-skin cap in his hand obsequiously extended in a sign of respect more toward El Señor than to this sacred area, chapel and tomb; there was El Señor himself, seated upon a curule chair at the foot of the altar: there was Guzmán, who had one night led her to the nearby bedchamber of El Señor. Everyone was there except the one she sought: Don Juan, he who had given her the pleasure El Señor was unable to give, but also a scourge: the flower opened by Don Felipe had been enjoyed by Don Juan and then closed again; who had condemned her to this punishment? who could secretly have desired such misfortune? who was it who wished that she belong to no one, or who wished that she belong to him alone? She did not understand, her head whirled, her eyes were unfocused, seeing nothing, until her gaze, with vague and tortured dreaminess, wandered along the rows of royal coffins raised upon truncated pyramids the length of the chapel, and lighted upon him, it is you, Don Juan, the half-reclining, chaste youth resting upon one arm, it is you, oh, yes, it is you, I would know you anywhere, my lover, oh, it is you and you are stone, you are a statue, a statue has made love to me, I invited a stone statue into my bed, that is my curse, I have made love with stone, so what is to prevent me from turning into stone myself? and if we are both stone … I see it now, then of course we shall be faithful to each other, you, Juan, and I, Inés, you have blood like ice, I knew it, I told you so: do not fear my father, do not fear El Señor, fear no one, Don Juan, because no one can kill you, one cannot kill a statue, one cannot kill death; Doña Inés’s fingers clung to the grillwork of the chancel and with a stony gaze she stared intently at the stony figure of her lover lying motionless upon the stone sepulcher. And when you and I are stone, Don Juan, the entire world will be stone, stone the rivers, the trees, and beasts, stone the stars, the air, and fire: creation will be a motionless statue, and you and I its unmoving center. Nothing moves now. Nothing. Nothing.

And while Doña Inés’s gaze of stone was directed only at what she believed to be the stone figure of Don Juan, Don Juan merely feigned immobility; that was easy for him, he recognized it as one further attribute of his person: a will of iron that allowed him to simulate the most delicious impassivity. Not one nerve of the semi-reclining figure upon the stone slab moved, and like Inés, everyone present at this ceremony convoked by El Señor thought he was a statue. The youth did not even blink. With indifferent eyes, indifferent to the confused ceremony about to begin without any perceivable cause, insofar as those present could note, Don Juan, remote, unconcerned with the reunion of the court, disguised as a statue and disguised, too, by the shadows, gazed toward the painting in the chapel: for the first time he gazed at the painting that dominated El Señor’s private chapel, and as if in a mirror saw himself in the Christ without a halo, a Christ, like him, on the periphery; it is I, it is I, someone knew me before I knew myself, why did someone paint my image before I arrived here, why? why? that painting is … more than the heart of La Señora, more than the eyes of Doña Inés, more than the jewels of Lucifer, my mirror … Oh, that painting, why was I so long in seeing it? how I wish I had first seen myself in it and not in the mirror of La Señora that held our superimposed images; it is no wonder I so easily deceived the Mother Superior and enjoyed her favors; it is no wonder that I deceive all women, for each always believes I am someone else, a husband, a lover, a father, a Saviour, and each loves someone else in me; who will love Don Juan for himself, not because she believes he is someone else and that she is making love to someone other than him, a husband, lover, monk, Christ himself, but never Don Juan … never? Azucena and Lolilla love me because I promised to marry them, Madre Milagros because she believed I was the Divine Spirit, the nun Angustias because she confused me with her confessor, no one has recognized me, no one has loved me … except Inesilla, for only she knows who I am. And I do not love her, because no woman interests me unless she already belongs to a lover, a husband, a confessor, to God; no woman interests me if as I make love to her I do not stain another man’s honor; no woman interests me if my love does not liberate her. I shall never love any woman forever, I love her only to make her a woman, and Inés is already a woman, Inés does not belong to El Señor, who deflowered her; El Señor is master only of this palace of death; Inés is the only one who loves me because she is already mistress of herself, and if my logic is correct I cannot love her, for then someone like myself would come to take her from me; I shall insult the honor of other men, but no man shall insult mine, for I shall have none, no honor and no sentiments; and if a scrubbing girl, a novitiate, a Queen, or a Superior should bear my child it will not be mine, it will be the child of nothingness and I shall condemn it to nothingness; I shall devour my children, castrate them, stab them to death; the nourishment of the ordinary man, honor and fatherland, hearth and power, is forbidden me; I have no nourishment but women and their offspring; I shall eat the cunt of the women and the heart of the children, and Don Juan will be free; he will sow disorder, he will inflict passion where passion seemed dead, he will break the chains of divine and human law; Don Juan will be free so long as a slave to law, power, hearth, honor, or fatherland exists upon this earth, and be captive only when the world is free … never.