Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“He was an old man,” the ancient replied. “Old men are useless. They eat but they do not work. They are scarcely able to hunt snakes. They should die as soon as possible. An old man is the shadow of death and is unnecessary in this world.”

With amazement I looked at this ancient who surely had lived more than a hundred years, at this invalid coddled in a basket filled with pearls and balls of cotton to warm him against a cold born not of the warm humid air of the jungle but of the brittle, icy years of his bones.

I told him that all things decline and die, man and pearl alike, for such is the law of nature.

The ancient shook his head and replied that some lives are like arrows. They are shot into the air, they fly, and they fall. My friend’s life was like these. But there are other lives that are like circles. Where they seem to end, they in truth begin again. They are renewable lives. “Such as these is your life and mine and that of our absent brother. Do you know anything of him?”

Imagine, Sire, my confusion as I listened to these incomprehensible statements so familiarly expounded. And imagine, too, as I imagined, how the only thing clear to me was the feeling that my fate depended upon my replies.

I murmured: “No, I know nothing of him.”

“He will return someday, as you have returned.”

The ancient sighed and told how our absent brother, more than any other, must return, because he, more than any other, had sacrificed himself. And sacrifice is the only manner to assure renewal.

“Let us be attentive”—he spoke very quietly—“to Three Crocodile day, which returned you to this land. That is the day when all things join together and again become only one, as in the beginning.”

“We are three, my lord; you, I, and the absent one,” I murmured, unsure of what I was saying.

The old man pondered a moment and then said that all abundant things that chaotically proliferate or multiply decline; on the other hand, those things that rise toward oneness live again, and this is the difference between gods and men, for men believe that more is better, but the gods know that less is better.

As he spoke he touched his fingers rapidly, as earlier the young warrior on the beach had done, and he counted on them and gave me to understand that six are fewer than nine, and three are fewer than six.

“Three men clasping hands”—his icy fingers touched mine—“form a circle, readying themselves to be one single man, as in the beginning. Three aspire to oneness. One is perfect, the origin of everything; one cannot be divided, all things that can be divided are mortal, what is indivisible is eternal; three is the first number after one that cannot be divided, two is still imperfect since it can be cut in half; three can devolve into six, nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, or return to one; three is the crossing of the roads: unity or dispersion; three is the promise of unity.”

The ancient accompanied all these explanations by rapid movements of his hands; stretching an arm outside his basket, he drew parallel lines, erased them, drew some within circles hurriedly traced by his gnarled finger in the dust of this chamber illuminated by treasures whose owners feed upon snakes and ants and turtles.

I added one line in the dust: “What shall we do if we again become one, my lord?”

The ancient stared into the distance, beyond the aperture of our cave, toward the jungle, and said: “We shall become one with our opposite — mother, woman, earth — who is also one being and who awaits only our oneness to receive us in her arms. Then there will be peace and happiness, for she will not rule over us nor we over her. We will be lovers.”

I could say nothing, and he said nothing for a long while. Then he looked at me intently and told what I am now going to tell you, Sire:

First was the air and it was inhabited by gods who had no bodies.

And below the air was the sea, and no one knows how or by whom it was created.

And there was no thing in the sea.

And neither was there time in the air or in the sea, so the gods did nothing.

But one of the goddesses of the air called herself goddess of the earth and then since she saw only air and water, she began to ask what her name meant, and when the earth would be created, for that was her dwelling.

She became enamored of her name earth and so great was her impatience that finally she refused to sleep with the other gods until they would give her earth.

And the gods, eager to possess her once again, decided to grant her her whim and they lowered her from the sky to the water and for a long time, until she grew tired, she walked upon the water, and then she lay down upon the sea and fell asleep.

And the gods, desiring her, attempted to waken her, and to do with her what men will, but earth slept and it is not known whether this sleep was like death.

Angry, the gods turned themselves into great serpents and coiled about the arms and legs of the goddess and with their strength they dismembered her and then abandoned her.

And from the body of the goddess were born all things.

From her hair, trees; from her skin, grass and flowers; from her eyes, wells and streams and caverns; from her mouth, rivers; from her nostrils, valleys; and from her shoulders, the mountains.

And from the belly of the goddess was born fire.

And with her eyes the goddess looked at the sky she had abandoned and for the first time she saw the stars and the movement of the planets, for when she dwelt in the sky, she had not seen them or measured their course.

There is no time in the heavens, for in them everything is forever the same.

But the earth needs time in order to be born, to grow, and to die.

And the earth needs time in order to be reborn.

The goddess knew this because day after day she watched the setting and rising and setting of the sun, while the fruits born from the skin of the goddess fell to the ground, and with no hands to pick them they rotted, and no one drank the water of the fountains born from her eyes, and the rivers flowing from her mouth coursed swiftly to the sea, without purpose.

And so the goddess of the earth convoked three gods, one red, one white, and the third black.

And this black god was an ugly, humpbacked dwarf plagued with boils, while the other two were tall, proud young princes.

And the goddess of the earth said to these gods that one of them must sacrifice himself in order that men might be born to pick the fruit, drink the waters, tame the rivers, and make use of the earth.

The two handsome young men hesitated, for each loved himself very much.

The diseased and humpbacked dwarf did not; he neither hesitated nor did he love himself.

He threw himself into the belly of the earth goddess, which was pure fire, and there he perished.

From the flames thus nourished came the first man and the first woman; and the man was called head, or hawk; and the woman was called hair, or grass.

But from the truncated body of the monstrous god who had sacrificed himself came forth only a half man and a half woman, for they had no bodies below their chests, and to walk they hopped like magpies or sparrows, and to beget offspring the man placed his tongue in the mouth of the woman, and so were born two men and two women who were more complete, with bodies as far as their navels, and from them were born four men and four women, whole now as far as their genitals, and these coupled like gods, and their children were born whole as far as their knees, and their grandchildren were completely whole, with feet, and they were the first to be able to walk erect and they populated the world before the watchful gaze of the first lady our mother.

From earth’s belly of fire were also born the companions of men, the beasts that escaped from her pyre, and all of them bear on their skins the mark of their birth from the ashes: the spots of the snake, the dark blackish feathers of the eagle, the singed ocelot. And so, too, the wings of the butterfly and the shell of the turtle and the skin of the deer all show to this day their refulgent and shadowed origin.