Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

I told him I could respect his faith, but that he needed proof to sustain these questionable convictions. He asked me to bring him a lime from the sack. This I did. We knelt on the deck and he asked me to stand the lime on end. I was convinced of the old man’s madness, but again resigned myself to my bad fortune. I tried to do what he asked, but the elliptical faded green fruit again and again rolled over onto its side. I looked at Pedro in silence, not yet daring to point out his error. And as I say, I was resigned. The old man took the lime, held it high between two thick fingers, then smashed it down against the planking of the deck. The base of the lime split open, its juice ran out, but it stood on end.

Pedro handed me the lime: “Your lips are white, Pilgrim. You need to suck one of these little limes every day.”

That night neither of us slept. Some wretched suspicion kept us awake until the appearance of our early-morning star. I had nothing to fear but certain death, the fatal moment when we’d be tossed into a foaming cemetery to perish, crushed beneath the monumental opaque waters, black as the deepest rivers of Hell. Nevertheless, as the star appeared, announcing another day of heat and calm, I fancied I’d struggled against sleep to prevent Pedro’s worrying that as he slept I would take advantage of his rest to strangle him with a cord, throw him overboard, and undertake the return to the coast from which we’d set sail.

But in truth I’d also feared that as I slept, the old man, for fear of me, would do the same, would kill me with the broken knife he kept beside him at the helm, throw me to the sharks that had for days been following in the wake of the ship, and then continue alone, assured, without misgivings, his willful voyage to disaster.

The disquieting star — sister to dusk and to the dawn — glimmered, seeming to confirm in her round the old man’s circular reasoning. And it was he who resolved our fears, he the valiant one who first lay down in a corner of the deck, shaded by the canvas that protected our casks of sweet water.

“Aren’t you afraid of me, Pedro?” I shouted from the helm in my white and briny voice.

“The death you foresee for us is a worse risk,” the old man said. “If you believe so strongly we’re going to perish, why would you kill me now?” And after a brief pause he added: “I want the first person to set foot on the new land to be a young man.” And closed his eyes.

I imagined myself master of the ship, free of the old man and his fatal race toward disaster: I imagined returning to the coast we’d left behind twelve days before. And as I pictured myself there, I tried to imagine what I would do once we’d returned to the starting point. Well, Sire: I could imagine only two courses. One would carry me back to an earlier point of departure, and from there to the one before that, and so on, until I’d reached the place and time of my origins. But if I began again from that forgotten origin, what road offered itself to me but the one I’d already traveled? And that road, what could it do but lead me to the shore where I’d found Pedro, and from there, with him on this ship, to the same point we find ourselves, in this very instant, on the sea? I reflected in this way about the sad fate of a man in time, for the great abundance of the past obliged me to forget it and live only this fleeting present: but caught in the memory-less succession of the seconds, I was given no choice: my future would be as obscure as my past.

With my eyes closed I stood thinking about these things. And as I thought, the struggle between survival and risk began to trouble the quiet resignation of my soul. Pedro had closed his eyes. I opened mine.

“Guide me, star, guide me,” I fervently pleaded.

I followed the path of the sun, the will of the old man, and my fatal destiny, toward the motionless Sargasso Sea.

WATER CLOCK

And so, Sire, we measured time by water. The saltiness of the sea increased, and we consumed the sweet water in the casks, but everything, except Pedro and me and our ship, was water. We devoured a goodly portion of our provisions, but kept some of the jerked meat, and baited hooks with it, and threw them into the sea. Since sharks abound in all the seas, it wasn’t long till one took the bait, as speedy and voracious in falling into the trap of the astute as in attacking the defenseless sailor.

It was with great joy we captured the first squalus, and gaffed it and dragged it over the side; Pedro killed it by beating it on the head with the side of the ax, and with a knife I cut it into thin strips, which we hung from the rigging. We left them there three days to dry, in no hurry now, sure of food and in no way troubled to postpone our banquet. Few things bring two men closer together and force them to forget past quarrels more easily than these fraternal tasks, helping each other to confront a danger, and overcome it. Then we can see how foolish are the disputes of human wills, for nothing can be compared to the menace of nature: nature may lack will, but it abounds in a ferocious instinct for extermination. In this, nature and woman are alike. And here is their greatest danger: their beauty tends to disarm us.

On the thirtieth day of our voyage we ate the savory strips of shark meat, and we laughed heartily upon discovering that our fierce shark had a double reproductive member, that is, that he steered with two virile weapons, each as long as a man’s arm from elbow to the tip of his middle finger, and in addition we were cheered by a discussion of whether, when he coupled with the female, the shark exercised both members at one time, or one at a time, in separate couplings. Perhaps that is the reason the female of the shark is known to give birth only once during her lifetime.

I tell you now, Sire, we were completely surrounded by motionless water; I told myself we’d sailed upon the terrible Sargasso Sea, the point where all sailors become fearful and turn back. Not we. I, because I feared the turbulent catastrophe of the future more than the present calmness that delayed that fate. The old man, because neither calm nor torment weakened his confidence in our certain destination, the new world of his dreams. The delightful conversations we had then saved us from the clutches of this indolent ocean. We spoke of the sea, and when Pedro showed me the faithfully — to the extent of man’s knowledge — reproduced charts of the ports and harbors ringing our Mediterranean, I could recall, but always without the orientation of any dates, the contours of that remembered sea; but where the charts extended toward the west, marine space faded into an unknown of vague contours.

“That’s how it is, son. The mariner’s compass can tell us nothing about what lies beyond this point”—his finger touched the island of Iceland—“shown here as Ultima Thule…”

“… where the world ends,” I added.

Friends in adversity, father and son, or more accurately, grandfather and grandson, in appearance, we had not because of that ceased to maintain our opposing beliefs.

“Are you still afraid?” the old man asked me.

“No, I’m not afraid. But neither do I believe. And you?”

“I fear your name. Do you swear you’re not called Felipe?”

“Yes. Why do you fear that name?”

“Because that name is capable of carrying me to something worse than the end of the world.”

“To what, Pedro?”

“To his castle. He lives there, with death.”

These are the things the old man said when his spirit grew somber; then I would try to talk again about the sea and boats, and then old Pedro, a man of action and memories as I was one of dreams and forgetfulness, explained the observations leading him to conceive the plan of this lateen-rigged, two-masted vessel with triangular sails superior, he told me, to those on the ancient cogs, for by lying closer to the wind it took better advantage of it. And the absence of a forecastle, as well as the lightness of the wood from which the ship was built, assured greater agility and maneuverability. I saw that now: two men alone, we were able to control this small and docile ship, and we had come this far tacking with scarcely a breeze fore or aft, and were even advancing over the Sargasso, although the water was like oil. Old Pedro had shown himself to be ingenious and full of illusions.