Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

My foot loosened a pebble from the edge of the well; I watched it fall and for many seconds — as long as it took the pebble to reach the sunken mirror of the waters — I listened in vain, and then the cavern was filled with echoes, and the voices of my captors were raised in confused debate, and again and again they repeated the word “cenote, cenote,” and then “death,” and then “night,” and then “sun,” and then “life,” and I recalled my dream, when I had slept beside one of these wells and fallen into it, and also I remembered I had the right to one nocturnal question and at the top of my lungs I shouted in the language of this land: “Why am I going to die?”

And a voice spoke over my shoulder, so close I would have sworn it was the voice of my shadow, and said: “Because you have killed the sun.”

I was not dreaming now, and the naked arms of these natives pushed me toward the well: I lost my footing; I shouted, it isn’t true! I fell … the animal with the twisted feet killed it! I fell … I saw it! I fell into the true night, not the unreal night of dreams, I fell shouting, the animal! the animal: I fell through the black night within the well … the animal! It’s true! I dreamed it! Then feet-first I struck the water and I heard the distant ringing echo of the voice that had spoken over my shoulder: “Dream now you are going to die so that this night will not be the last, the eternal, the infinite night of our fear…”

I sank into the quicksilver breast of the waters.

DAY OF THE WATER, NIGHT OF THE PHANTOM

I was bathed in light. Night reigned when I had been thrown into the well, and the fear of my executioners was like the night. As I plunged into the water, I had drawn in the last lungful of air and closed my eyes; as soon as I felt myself beneath the surface, my will to survive revived; I swam, but my efforts were to no avail: after a few strokes I came always to the circular wall of smooth, sheer rock, without any handhold. Without hope, I floated, knowing that sooner or later I would grow weak and would sink into the unknown depths of this watery prison. I decided to call this day of my certain death the day of the Water, and I wondered whether this was one of the five days I was to steal from life to hold against death, as the Lord of Memory and the Lady of the Butterflies had so often told me. How would I know? My beautiful and horrible lover had warned me I would remember only those five decisive days, forgetting the other twenty of my destiny in this land. How would I know what I lived but could not remember? And then, as I say, Sire, I was bathed in light.

An undulating brightness, shattered when I had splashed through it, covered the surface of the water; it was again smooth and calm, barely riffled by my quiet floating. First, I sought the deliverance of the thread that in my dream had rescued me from a similar situation. But now the thread was nowhere to be seen. Then I prayed that this well might be like the sea, subject to high and low tides, for then at the ebb tide I might stand on the floor of my prison. Keeping my eyes open wide, I dived into the depths of the well. There I found the reason for the astonishing brightness: the sandy floor of this pool was a burial ground of bones and skulls; and if the sands were brilliant, they were dull compared to the refulgence of the remains of those other men who had died here.

I rose to the surface: I had seen my destiny face to face, bone to bone. I dived again, again I explored the well in the illumination of that deathly light. I saw that in one corner chance had piled up a heap of skulls that formed a small submerged pyramid. I considered: “Perhaps these dead can be of service to my life. Perhaps I can build a platform of washed bones where I can stand and await my death by starvation — or the salvation that came in my dream: the spider’s thread.”

So I began to work. I swam like a fish to the grisly mound and began to dislodge the crusted skulls that seemed almost a part of the chalky rock, or the rock an extension of the death’s-heads. I used my scissors to pry the skulls from the soft stone, rising to the surface when my air was exhausted, filling my lungs, diving again to renew my task.

Thus I passed several hours of the night, resting from time to time, floating calmly on my back on my liquid bed, for more people drown from terror than from water. But in the end my pedestal of bones was still not very tall, and I reached the point where I considered giving up and abandoning myself to the sleep shared by my companions, the skeletons in this sinkhole. There I was beneath the waters, staring into the hollow eye sockets of a skull embedded in the rock. I said to myself that as the ancient Lord of Memory had died of fear upon seeing himself in my mirror, I would take this skull as my mirror; I would kiss it, caress it, press it to my breast, and thus create a compassion I had been denied. I would die embracing my own image, as final and eternal as the night so feared by my tormentors.

As captives pry stones from their dungeon walls, so I pried loose this last skull. But captives have hopes that beyond the loosened stone they will find liberty. I had no such hope. This labor I did for my death. I loosened the skull, and then, Sire, an icy thread slipped between my fingers, and if it were possible for a man to shout beneath the water, I would have shouted: “The spider’s thread!”

And, shouting, I would have thanked my loving and protective lady for saving me. But I immediately realized the thread in my hands was intangible; it was not spun by the spider, but was water … more water. And then this filament of cold water turned into a frozen torrent, and the torrent into a true subterranean cataract that scattered the shattered remains of the skulls and burst powerfully from the small hole in the rock that had been plugged only by the last skull. The liberated torrents enveloped me in foam, tumbled me over and over, lifted me from the bottom of the well with their turbulent force, dragging me upward with them toward the night, toward the jungle.

That well was filling with water, Sire, quickly and tumultuously, and I swam upward toward the edge from which I’d been pushed, fighting now to keep from being sucked toward the sunken cemetery by the churning currents of the waters freed by the accident of my labors. Fortune had allowed me to tap the very vein that fed the well, the subterranean river that was father to these deep-flowing waters.

I swam with the upsurging water, lessening now in force. The water did not overflow the top of the well, but leveled a few inches below its rim. My hands touched dry land, my fingers dug in, and I pulled myself up until I could see over the edge of the well. A red sun and a gray sky: these were the first things I saw. A sun the color of blood, blazing in its own fire, bathed in the purple of its rebirth. It, as I, had just emerged. It edged upward in a metallic sky, a sky as flat as the chalky white ground where my nighttime executioners stood staring in amazement, watching me emerge from the well filled by the rushing waters at the very instant the sun was born anew.

I emerged by my own efforts; by my own efforts I scrambled to my feet and met their expressions of amazement, gratitude, and respect. No one came near me now, no one touched me; all stood obediently at a distance. I heard the lament of a flute. The sun quickly shed its terrestrial cloak, rose higher, transformed the gray sky into a bright yellow cupola. Joy exploded. To the music of the flutes were added rattles, bells, and drums; groups of men with red ocher- and clay-painted bodies danced first around me, then preceded me, inviting me to follow them; women and children joined us, offering me small earthen jars of a thick white intoxicating liquid and roasted ears of grain sprinkled with a fiery pepper.