Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

But this traveler still dreams he is struggling against the sea, knowing his efforts are in vain. Gusts of wind blind him, spume silences his cries, waves burst over his head, and finally he mumbles he is a dead man, deposited in the depths of a cathedral of water; a cadaver embalmed with salt and fire. The sea has yielded up the body of this survivor, but it has confiscated his name. He lies there upon the sand, his arms tangled in kelp, and from the heights of the dunes watching eyes discern through the ragged shirt the sign they wish to see: a wine-red cross between the shoulder blades. A face buried in the sand, outstretched arms. And a fist clinging — as if to a lifebuoy — to a large green bottle, rescued, like the youth, from extinction.

Rain drums upon the canvas tent. Inside, seated on his curule chair, El Señor is stroking Bocanegra’s head, and the mastiff looks at him with those sad bloodshot eyes, as if revealing in that gaze the eagerness for the hunt that fidelity to his master forbids him. Bocanegra may be condemned to domestic company, but he nevertheless wears an iron breastplate and heavy spiked collar. El Señor strokes his favorite dog — short silky hair, smooth skin — and imagines how that sadness would disappear were the mastiff, accustomed to watching the other dogs depart as he remained by his master’s side, solicited for a different hunt: perhaps, sometime, El Señor might ride too far ahead, lose his way, be attacked. Then Bocanegra would know his hour of glory. From his eternal position at his master’s feet, he would rise and follow the scent of his master’s boots to the farthest gully of the mountain and with a savage bark rush to his defense. Once the father of El Señor had been attacked by a wild boar; his life had been saved solely by the fine, fierce instincts of the dog that was always by his side, which sank its ferocious canines and spiked collar into the eyes and throat of the boar — already wounded, it must be acknowledged, by rutting rivals.

At times like these, El Señor repeated that story to the mastiff as if to console him with the promise of a similar adventure. But no, it wouldn’t be on this occasion. Guzmán knew his office well and had ordered the tent raised in this narrow gorge, the hart’s only exit from his haunts in the marshy little valley. All afternoon the servants of his personal guard had been cutting brush and madroño branches so that, if the rain let up, El Señor could sit in a blind higher on the mountainside and watch the outcome of the hunt; other servants, with picks, had set up the tent in the gorge so that if it was necessary El Señor could spend the night on the mountain. No, Bocanegra, it wouldn’t be this time. But perhaps it was also true that when the opportunity for risk and valor presented itself the domesticated mastiff, his instincts forgotten, would not know how to respond.

It was raining. The snares Guzmán had ordered set up close to the tent were soaking wet. Cords and strips of linen cloth sealed off the narrow stream bed the driven hart must enter — where he would meet his death at the feet of El Señor. Guzmán had placed the greyhounds in position. Guzmán had situated the horses that must await the end of the hunt. Guzmán had stationed the men that were on foot. If the hart attempted to change its course it would run into the lines and cords; in turning from them, it would fall into the hands of the hunters.

“Guzmán knows his office well.”

El Señor patted his mastiff’s head, and as the dog moved, the spikes of the studded collar scratched his master’s finger. Quickly El Señor put his finger to his mouth and sucked the blood, praying it would stop, don’t let me bleed, a bit of good fortune, just a light scratch, don’t let me bleed like so many of my forebears dead from the bloodletting of wounds never healed; he tried to concentrate upon an immediate recollection in order to block out that ancestral memory: yes, the men who had been on the verge of rebelling that morning. There was no reason the incident should continue to upset him. Guzmán had merely demonstrated he knew his office well, an office he performed in the service of El Señor. It was natural he should choose from among the lowest ranks the men who served as lookouts; no others would lend themselves to such an unrewarding task. What he could not accept, because it could not be explained, was the fact that it was the most unpretentious men who showed signs of rebellion. But neither he nor his deputy could possibly be responsible for that; and after all, the brief uprising had been instantly quelled. Nevertheless, the question remained unanswered: why was it these most humble men, raised from nothing in their villages to a station in the palace, placed in a situation that was clearly an improvement for them, why was it they who muttered through clenched teeth and tried to evade a responsibility that they of all men should know they were chosen for in the first place? Wasn’t pride a privilege to be enjoyed by the enlightened, and those of noble lineage? Why did men who were nothing and who had nothing protest once they were given something? El Señor did not dwell upon this enigma beyond a well-remembered maxim of his father the Prince: Give the most beggarly of the beggars of this land of paupers the least sign of recognition, and he will immediately comport himself like a vain and pretentious nobleman; do not dignify them, my son, not even with a glance; they are entirely without importance.

For the moment, the party of lookouts high on the rocky mountainside would have to suffer the rain. The fog would blind them, and their voices would be twice silenced, once by their orders, and again, by nature: a wind that could drown the most penetrating blast of a hunter’s horn could certainly muffle the shouts of these rough mountain men. Perhaps they would be thinking of their Liege, who had for one moment deigned to look at them, who without words had destroyed them with a glance. Perhaps the men were cursing, imagining El Señor’s privileged position, a site chosen so that he more than any other could experience the supreme pleasures of the hunt: watch the hunters leave, direct the progress of the hunt, determine whether there were any miscalculations and how they might be remedied; preside over the entire process and then enjoy its culmination. And it would be he who assigned the rewards and punishments of the day. If missing the excitement of the hunt had caused those men to climb the mountain with such reluctance, then surely they would be imagining anything except that El Señor — sheltered from the rain in his tent, his only wound the accidental scratch from a spiked collar — was also suffering the anguish of the wait, that he like them might be unaware of the progress of the hunt. El Señor wrapped his scratched finger in a linen handkerchief; it was barely bleeding, it would heal; this time I will not die, I thank you, my God. Had those rough men seen him sitting with his dog inside the tent it is possible they might have muttered anew: the family line has lost its taste for hunting, which, after all, is but a practice game of war; perhaps the smoke of the sacristy and the soft life of devotion have exhausted the vitality of their leader, and he is leader only because he knows more, can do more, risk and bear more than any of his subjects. Were that not so, the subject would deserve to be the chief, and the chief would be the servant. And when El Señor dies, who will succeed him? Where is his son? Why does La Señora constantly announce pregnancies that never reach port safely but always founder in miscarriage? These were the murmurings in the mountains and the inns, in forges and tile kilns …

Suddenly the mastiff Bocanegra scrambled to his feet, displaying short, thick claws. His collar and breastplate shone in the feeble light of the tent; the dog slipped beneath the canvas and, barking, ran off into the night. But El Señor did not want to think of anything now, not even the reason for his mastiff’s strange behavior; easier to close his eyes behind the handkerchief-bandaged hand, easier to sit alone, his thoughts subdued; better to drift off into a milky vacuum than dwell on memory … surprise … premonition. He murmured a prayer in which he asked God whether it was sufficient, if God and his vassal El Señor found there was any pleasure in the hunting and killing of a hart, that the vassal, even though he not feel it, reject such pleasure for the greater glory of his Creator.