Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Sire, I never had the opportunity to answer.

THE EXCHANGE

Whoever lives amid sound is frightened by silence. More than darkness, silence is the terror of the night. And more than his confinement, the captive suffers the absence of the sonorous rhythms of freedom. We were surrounded by soft and regular murmurs: the warm waves of the sea, the crackling of the fire on the beach, the rustling of the palm fans.

Why did those sounds that had become customary after more than a week suddenly cease? I listened, my head still against Pedro’s breast, and heard the beating of his heart. Then, like an alert bird with eyes on each side of its head, I looked nervously from the jungle to the sea and from the sea to the jungle. I saw nothing at first: nothing to cause or justify the sudden cessation of sound.

My senses quickened. I imagined I had penetrated the forest at our back: there the green was so intense it was black. Again I looked toward the sea: the lemony-green waters, too, were growing dark, taking on the colors of the jungle: the sea, Sire, was a forest of trees.

I withdrew from the embrace of my aged father and, unable to move toward the shore, stood as if enchanted, perceiving finally that the sea was filled with tree trunks, as it had been the other day with the shells of the turtles, and that those floating trunks were advancing toward our beach. I whirled, frightened, as the fire crackling on the beach was echoed in the sound of snapping twigs and branches parted behind us in the jungle.

Stupidly, I managed to pant: “Pedro, did you bring a weapon?”

The old man shook his head, smiling. “We won’t need them here in our happy land.”

Happy or unfortunate, was it ours alone? Was it really ours? Or did it belong to the beings whose heads I could now see over the edge of the floating tree trunks? I don’t say men, Sire, because the first thing I saw were long black manes which I mistook for horses’ tails and for a moment I had a strange vision of floating trees manned by dusky centaurs. Only as that armada of trunks drew closer could I distinguish faces the color of the wood itself, and in the interior of the tree trunks I saw heads, round shields, and another forest — this time vertical — of ferocious lances.

Pedro walked tranquilly to the gate of his house and stood there, his hand upon the ship’s wheel. I whirled to look toward the woods; the noise in the thicket was increasing; the invisible force from the jungle and the visible army from the sea were marching toward an encounter.

Then thirty or more men leaped from the trunks into the water, blending with its reflected greenness; their bodies were the color of canaries, their lances red, their shields green. And other men like them, similarly armed and naked except for the cloth that concealed their shame, erupted from the jungle.

They looked at us.

We looked at them.

Our astonishment was identical, and we were equally immobilized. I could only think that what seemed to me fantastic about them — the color of their tawny skin and their straight black hair and smooth-skinned, hairless bodies — must, to creatures so different, have seemed incredible in us — my long gold mane, Pedro’s curly hair and white beard, his hirsute face and my pallid one. They looked at us. We looked at them. And from that first exchange was born a fleeting, silent question: “Have they discovered us … or did we discover them?”

The natives were the first to conquer their astonishment. Several, as if planned beforehand, ran to our small bonfire and with lances and bare feet stamped out the fire, saving only one burning branch. Then one of them, who wore a band of black bird feathers around his waist, spoke to us excitedly and angrily, pointing toward the sky, then toward the extinguished fire, then toward the expanse of the beach of pearls. Finally he raised three fingers of one hand and with the index of the other counted three times the three extended fingers. I looked at Pedro, as if I had such confidence in his wisdom that I believed him capable of understanding their language and the strange signs. An amazing language, in truth, with chirping sounds, for now the multitude of dark men had begun to speak simultaneously, and their voices seemed more like those of birds than men, and I noticed there were no r ’s in their speech, but many t ’s and l ’s.

And since we could answer none of their arguments, the ire of the plumed man increased, and he walked toward Pedro and spoke again, pointing toward the house and the fence of branches bounding the space reclaimed by the old man in this new world. And the group of natives who had surged from the thicket began to pull up the stakes of the fence and throw them back into the forest. Pedro did not move, but blood surged to his face and veins pulsed at his throat and temples. The party of natives pulled down the fence, ripped the branches from the roof, and kicked and tore down everything the old man had built. I searched desperately for an escape, for some response, some way to reason with the savages, and at that instant, born from some miraculously recovered instinct, came an idea born of the exchange — the simple fact that first we’d exchanged looks and then been unable to exchange words, and from the mutual looks had been born an original and duplicated amazement, but only violence had come from the unanswered words.

I shouted to Pedro without thinking, as if someone else were speaking through me, using my voice: “Old man! Offer them your house! Offer them something, quickly!”

Blood glinted in Pedro’s eyes, and foam bubbled at the corner of his lips. “Never! Nothing! Not one nail! Everything here is mine!”

“Something, Pedro, something!”

“Nothing! It took me twenty years to best El Señor! Never!”

“Hurry, Pedro, give them your land as a gift!”

“Never!” he screamed like a cornered beast, clinging to the ship’s wheel that had saved us once before. “Nothing! This is my piece of land, this is my new home … Never!”

The black-plumed chieftain shouted: the natives rushed at Pedro, but the old man struggled against them; he was a hoary lion, striking furiously at the faces and bodies of his assailants; he shouted at me: “Bastard, don’t leave me alone! Fight, are you a woman!”

I pulled the scissors from my breeches and raised them to strike; they glinted darkly in the sun and the natives stopped abruptly; they stood back from Pedro as the black-plumed leader shouted something to the men from the sea who were waiting on the beach, lances poised; as one, their weapons flew toward a single target: Pedro’s heart.

I was paralyzed with fright, my scissors still in my upraised fist: like the flocks of birds, the flying lances darkened the sky; they pierced the old man’s body as one of the natives threw the burning branch onto the remains of the hut, setting fire to the dried branches of the thatching.

The old man did not cry out. His life was ended, standing by the ship’s wheel, arms open, eyes and mouth wide, engulfed in the smoke from his burning hut, his body run through by red lances; Pedro was dead, standing at the foot of his little plot of land by the beach. He had obtained what he had so long sought, but he did not keep it long.

I told myself such steadfastness deserved at least this poor glory: the first to step on the new land, the first whose blood was spilled upon it. I shut my eyes as the sound of mockery filled my ears, my own laughter echoing through unshed tears, and I could see upon a black background the cadaver and the blood of the ancient turtle I had killed with the same scissors I still grasped in my hand.

Then I heard no sound at all except the crackling of the fire consuming the pitiful remains of the hut and the body of my friend and grandfather. Slowly the quiet murmur of the waves and palms returned. I opened my eyes; I found myself surrounded by silent natives holding their shields before their breasts. Their black-plumed chieftain advanced toward me. There was nothing in his dark glance except a hope — that could change to a smile or a grimace.