Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Never had a mind debated so fast and feverishly as in that instant: in every complete revolution of our boat around the circular walls of water I had exactly six seconds to move without fear of being sucked from the boat: swiftly, I reviewed the objects caught in the rigging and still remaining in the boat: strips of shark meat, some lines attached to the embedded iron rings; in vain I sought the ax with which we’d clubbed the shark to death: in the pocket of my water-soaked doublet I felt the shaving mirror, and in the belt of my breeches the black tailor’s scissors. And Pedro bound to the mast. And at the helm, the wheel, spinning wildly, weakened now, perhaps, in its precise and precious equipoise as both indicator and guide of the ship.

In the six seconds Providence granted me at each rotation, I ran to the wheel. The vibration had damaged its stability. I returned to my sure hold on the ring. I endured the trembling whiplash as the ship completed its gyration. I returned to the wheel, utilized the scissors as a lever, seized its vibrating base, and struggled like a galley slave to prize loose that wheel on which all my hopes were pinned.

Imagine, Sire, my repeated efforts during that eternal night whose only hour hands were those of my particular sequence: six seconds of feverish activity, thirty-four of obligatory and painful repose, watchful, adding my sweat to the waters that washed over me and at times blinded me, wiping away when I could the thick salt encrusted on my forehead and eyes. I ran toward the mast, waited, I began to free Pedro, waited, continued freeing Pedro, waited, I told him to run with me to the wheel, waited, we ran, I counted, I told him first to seize the base of the wheel, that he count to thirty-six and move only when I moved, now, clutching the wheel — wait, old man, now — I bound him chest and shoulders to the wheel, waited, now I grasped the wheel, wait, old man, now take the line, tie me while I hold myself pinned to the motionless base, now let go, old man, free your arms as I free mine, now we’re going to fly, old man, to fly or drown, I don’t know which: old man, you told me, didn’t you, that the novelty of this ship was its light wood? Invoke that lightness now, Pedro, for your life and mine, pray for us; I don’t know what forces of this hostile whirlpool cause certain weights to descend and others to rise, pray that your wheel be of the former, let go, old man, here comes the whiplash of this fearful curve, now …

The combined velocity of the whirlpool and the ship threw us overboard, dashed us against the smooth turbulence of the vortex, it was impossible to know whether we were upside down or right side up, we lost all orientation, twins bound to the wheel that had in its turn fallen into the claws of the maelstrom. I closed my eyes, nauseated, choking, blinded by the cataracts of black spume in this ocean tunnel, knowing that my sight was of as little use as my death, perhaps, would be. At first I closed my eyes in order not to lose consciousness, such was the rapidity of the revolutions: no one has ever known such vertigo, Sire, no one; and in that vertigo, light and dark were one, silence and clamor, my being and that of the female who gave me birth, wakefulness and sleep, life and death, all one. Finally I lost all consciousness, calculation, or hope; I was born again, again I died, and only one thought accompanied me amidst all that vertigo:

“You’ve lived this already … before … you’ve lived it … before … you knew … already,” the waters murmured in my dead ear.

For the last time, I opened my eyes, the old man and I were still bound to the wheel. I saw the upturned keel of our ship in the heart of the vortex, I heard nothing, for the drumming of the waters obliterated everything. All I saw was that husk of wood fading out of sight forever, consummating its nuptials with the sea.

THE BEYOND

Was there ever a time, Sire, you looked death in the face? Do you know the strange new geography death offers to the passive eyes and stilled hands of the dead? With no proof except that of my own death, I imagine the universe of death is different for every person. Or is the uniqueness of our deaths also wrested from us by the nameless immortal forces of sea and slime, stone and air. Farewell to an age of pride; accept now the certainty that as the senses that served us in life are dead, a new sense with dusty eyelids and waxy fingers is born in each of us in death, awaiting only that moment to lead us toward white beaches and black forests.

I say white and black in order to be understood, but I do not speak of whiteness as we know it in life, the white of bone or sheet, or of the blackness of the crow or of the night. Imagine, if you can, Sire, their simultaneous existence; side by side, at once illuminating and obscuring, the white white because the contrast of black permits it, and the black made black because white lights its blackness. In life these colors are divorced, but when at the hour of death I opened my new eyes of sand, I saw them forever united, one the color of the other, unimaginable alone: black beaches, white jungles. And the sky of death obscured by swift wings: a flock of shrieking, brightly colored birds flew overhead, their number so great they darkened the sun.

I am recounting my first impressions upon dying, as vague and uncertain as my drowsy fatigue, but as precise as the certainty that I would not be astounded by anything I saw, for I was dead, and thus I was seeing for the first time what one sees on the littoral of death. I clung to such simple facts: I had met death in the sea and we had descended into its entrails through a deep tunnel of water; the speeding vortex had led us to the island of the dead, a curious place of vague outlines, a hazy impression of white beach, black jungle, and shrieking birds that cast the veil of their wings across a spectral sun. Phantasmal island, final port of phantasmal voyagers. All of this must be accepted as truth, my will was incapable of offering any opposition; so this was the contract with death, an inability to affirm, to better, or to transform. Final port, a reality without appeal.

Had I come to this bay alone or accompanied? The eyes of the dead voyager search for new and strange directions, Sire, for he has lost the compass of his terrestrial days and cannot tell whether far is near, or near, far. With the ears of death I heard intermittent breathing; with the eyes of death I saw I was approaching a beach, accompanied by mother-of-pearl shells washed toward shore by the waves and by a soft dew that bathed both them and me. The dew was cool, the waters of the sea were warm, a green warmness warm as the water of a bath, different from the icy gray seas and cold blue waters I had known in life. I reached the shore of the other world with an armada of seashells that seemed to guide me toward the beach; my face was washed in the warm waves, I felt grainy sand beneath my hands and knees and feet; I was enveloped in crystalline green water, calm and silent as a lake.

I thought I had returned to life; I tried to shout; I tried to shout a single word: “Land!”

But instead of the impossible voice of a dead man I heard a bellow of pain; I looked and saw a floating wineskin adrift in the current of a sleepy river that emptied here into the sea; I saw an enormous monster with the body of a hairless pig, boiled or singed by fire; the monster moaned and stained the limpid waters with red; it was fat and dark and had two teats upon its breast; it was bleeding, carried toward the sea by the slow current. When I saw it, I tried desperately to grab hold of the floating shells around me; I said to myself, this is God-the-Terrible; I said, I’m looking at the very Devil, and I think I fainted from terror.

Perhaps I slipped from swoon to sleep. When I came to myself I seemed to be reclining. My head rested on the sandy beach, my body was caressed by warm waves. I managed to struggle to my feet, blinded still by fear and the acceptance of death. I looked toward the sea; the wineskin monster was drifting toward the horizon, inanimate and bleeding. I stepped onto the beach and was bathed in light. It was as beautiful as the sunset: a light slanting horizontally across the beach it bathed in a glossy grayish luster. I told myself that was the light we had in life called pearly.