Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Only the fishes escaped from between the legs of the goddess lying upon the sea, and for that reason they smell of woman and they are smooth, and quiver, and are the color of pleasure.

And the belly of the goddess contracted for the last time.

And from her smoking entrails rose a column of fire.

And the specter in the flame was the phantom of the humpbacked, boil-plagued god, who ascended to the sky in the form of fire and there shut out the light of the old sun that existed before time and was converted into the first sun of man: the sun of the days and the sun of the years.

Thus was the dwarf rewarded for his sacrifice.

In contrast, the red god and the white god had to bear the price of their pride.

They remained upon the earth, condemned to measure the time of man.

And they wept for their cowardice, for from the sacrifice of the black boil-plagued god were born half-formed men, men who in no way resembled the gods, men born not whole but mutilated, deformed of soul as the body of the god who sacrificed himself to give them life was deformed of body.

As he was telling all this, the ancient traced line after line in the dust of the elaborately embellished cave, before stopping and asking that I count the lines while he continued his account.

He said then that the mother goddess counted as many days as he had drawn lines in the dust, so that all the stars might complete their dance in the sky and so that the yield of all the fruits of the earth might be completed and again begin their cycle of germination.

I counted three hundred and sixty-five lines and the ancient said that this was the exact number of a complete revolution of the sun and thus it proved that there are lives that begin anew as they are ended, for the humpbacked god gave his life for man but was reborn as the sun.

And the ancient said he would tell what the goddess had then said:

I have given the fire of my belly so that men might be born.

I have given my skin and my mouth and my eyes so that men might live.

The humpbacked and boil-plagued black god gave his life so that men might be born of the fire of my belly.

Then he was turned into the sun so that my body might be fruitful and nourish mankind.

What will men give us in exchange for all this?

And as she spoke she realized that men did possess something the gods do not have, for the gods were and are and will forever be, and they owe nothing to anyone.

But man does: he owes his life.

And the debt of his life is called destiny.

And it must be paid.

And in order to direct the destiny of men, the mother earth and the father sun invented and ordained time, which is the course of destiny.

And thus as the sun had its days exactly numbered, man must know the name and the number of his days, which are different from the days of nature, which has no destiny, only purpose; but different, too, from the days of the gods, who possess neither time nor destiny, although it is true that it is they who give them to nature and to man.

With his extended hand, the old man erased five lines in the dust and looked into my questioning eyes.

And he continued to count:

The gods granted twenty days to the destiny of the names of man, calling them the day of the Crocodile, the Wind, the House, the Lizard, the Snake, the Skull, the Deer, the Rabbit, the Water, the Dog, the Monkey, the Grass, the Reed, the Ocelot, the Eagle, the Vulture, the Earthquake, the Knife, the Rain, and the Flower.

But man not only has his day and his name, but his destiny as well is inseparable from the sign of the gods to whom he must offer sacrifices to repay the debt of his life.

And so, in addition to the twenty days of the name of man, were ordained the thirteen days of the gods’ being.

And the year of destiny, which is different from the year of the sun’s voyage or of the germination of the earth, begins when the first day of the twenty coincides with the first day of the thirteen.

And this happens only when the twenty days have turned thirteen times or when the thirteen days have turned twenty times.

In this way the destinies of the arrow and of circular being are linked, the line of man and the sphere of the gods, and of this conjunction is born total time, which is neither line nor sphere, but the marriage of both.

“Look at these lines, brother, and count them to the point my finger indicates.”

As I counted, I asked: “Why twenty and why thirteen?”

“Twenty because this is the natural number of the complete man, who had that many fingers and toes. Thirteen because it is the incomprehensible number of mystery, and thus is fitting for the gods.”

I counted two hundred and sixty lines, which, it is true, are twenty times thirteen or thirteen times twenty, and I accepted the fact that for the ancient these were the days of the human year, different from the solar year, and I asked: “And why did you erase those five days from the time of the sun?”

The ancient sighed and recounted the following:

As I sigh, so sighed the goddess, our mother earth, and she wept bitterly throughout the night, imploring men to repay her for the debt of their lives.

But the only thing men could give to repay their lives was life, and the goddess knew that, and she wept, desiring to eat the hearts of men.

The men were afraid and they offered the goddess the other two things they had besides life: fruits as an offering; time as adoration.

The goddess cried out, saying that was not enough, that the fruit was in reality another gift of the earth and the sun to men, and to give something that did not belong to them was not a gift at all.

The goddess cried out, saying it was not enough, that time, too, was a gift of the earth and the sun to men, that men needed it while the earth and the sun did not, and that by giving time to men they had lost their divine eternity, and chained themselves to calendars not fitting to a god.

The goddess cried out, saying it was not enough, that the only gift man could give to the gods was life, and that she would not be stilled until they gave her blood, and she would no longer give fruit if it were not watered with human blood.

Beneath the skin of her mountains and her valleys and her rivers, earth had articulations filled with eyes and mouths: she saw everything, nothing sated her appetites, and men asked themselves whether if in order to go on living they must actually all die to feed the thirst and hunger of the earth and the sun.

Their offerings of the fruits of nature were not enough, for the earth refused to continue to give fruit and with her died the first sun of Fire and the world was covered with ice and we all perished from cold and hunger.

And the prayers of time were not enough, for the earth concerted with the sun so that time disappeared and the second sun of Wind died, when everything was destroyed by tempests and we had to abandon our temples and carry our homes on our backs.

And thus evils succeeded evils; men tried to flee, but where could they flee that was not the earth, always the earth?

“Look, brother, look outside, toward the light, toward the indomitable jungle, and see there the wounds of our sufferings, and recall with me the terrible catastrophes that beset us again and again.”

The third sun of Water died; then everything was swept away by the deluge, and it rained fire, and men burned and their cities with them.

Each sun perished because men did not want to sacrifice themselves for the gods, and the price of their refusal was destruction.

Each sun was reborn because men again honored the gods, and sacrificed themselves for them.

And in each catastrophe we lost everything and had to begin again from nothing.

“What sun is today’s sun?” I asked.