Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

The ceremony of the foot washing ended and all of them, priests and warriors, saw me kneeling at the feet of the Lady. A new sound rose from the steps, accompanied by an intense aroma, and soon there appeared on the summit richly adorned dancers with long hair and with plumage of rich feathers upon their brows, and they were led by another dancer dressed like a bat, with wings and all else necessary to assure that resemblance; and these dancers whistled by placing a finger in their mouths, and each carried two sacks upon his back; and one of these sacks was filled with incense that they began to sprinkle upon the braziers on the four sides of the platform, as if on the four corners of the world, and they offered the other sacks to the priests, who took them and then approached me: they ordered me to stand.

I looked with terror at the block and the knives and I divined my fate to be that of a whore sacrificed after draining a warrior’s pleasure, or that of a captive killed to serve as an example to insubmissive peoples.

There was no time. From their sacks the high priests withdrew objects and clothing and paints, and began to stain my body and face, and to cover my head with white feathers, and to place garlands of flowers about my neck, and long streamers of flowers down my back, and hoops of gold in my ears, and strings of precious stones upon my chest. And they covered me with a rich mantle woven like a net, and covered my lower parts with a piece of richly embroidered linen, and they shod me with brightly painted ankle-high boots of soft deerskin and tied golden bells about my ankles and placed strings of precious stones upon my wrist, up to the elbow, and above the elbow golden arm bands, and again upon my chest the white ornament they call the wind jewel, and upon my shoulders a fringed and tasseled pouch-like ornament of white linen.

Thus transformed, and drenched in an icy sweat, I asked myself whether in this manner they were not preparing me for the maximum sacrifice of the day, but the high priests stood back from me, as if awed, and one of them exclaimed:

“This is, in truth, the Lord of the Night, the capricious and cruel Smoking Mirror, who lost one foot on the day of creation when he dragged our mother, the earth, from the waters, and the earth, our lady and mother, tore off his foot at the joint; this is the other, the shadow, he who always watches over our shoulders and accompanies us everywhere, he who tore the earth from the waters of creation and, exhausted and mutilated, had no time to give light to the earth, and who sees in the light an enemy who mocks his efforts and his sacrifice: the earth was born from the waters and from the shadows, and only because first there was land and then shadow could light exist, and men, and so the Smoking Mirror demands men’s deaths to remind them that they emerged from the earth and the shadow, and so castigate their pride. This is, in truth, the Lord of the Night who left one single footprint in the ground meal of the temple on this his day.”

As I heard this reasoning, I sought with feverish eyes the hard, cold gaze of my Lady, for through her I knew I possessed a different identity, one I believe destined to labor and peace and life; but as this priest’s words accorded me the opposite identity, condemned me, I suddenly realized that the horrible deaths I had witnessed here were in my honor, as the sacrifice of the inhabitants of the jungle had been, and that I would not die now since others would die for me and in my name: the Smoking Mirror. Here my name meant shadow and crime, and in the jungle, light and peace.

How ignorant, Sire, I was and I am of the keys that open the doors of understanding to that world so foreign to our own, for if among us the code of unity prevails and all things aspire to oneness, there what seemed to be one soon demonstrated the duplicity of its nature: everything there was two, two the people of the jungle, who first killed Pedro and then killed themselves for me; two the ancient of memories: ancient in my mirror and young in his recollection; two the Lady of the Butterflies, lover in the jungle and tyrant on the pyramid, devourer of filth and purifier of the world; two was the sun: beneficence and terror; two was the darkness: the executioner of the sun, the promise of the dawn; two was life: life and its death; and two death: death and its life.

As I was two: I, this person who is speaking to you, and a dark double encountered one night in the forest. I was my shadow. My shadow was my enemy. I must fulfill my own destiny as well as that of my dark double. Little I imagined, even then, of the fearful burden that this my double destiny would cast upon my weak shoulders. I barely glimpsed its horror in the words of my lover, the cruel Lady of this day, when the sorcerer ceased to speak. And this is what she spoke:

“Every year, on this day, we select one youth. For one year, we nurture and care for him, and all who look upon him have great reverence for him and pay him great obeisance. For an entire year he wanders through the land playing his flute, with his flowers and his smoking reed, free by night and day to wander throughout the land, accompanied always by eight servants who assuage his thirst and hunger. This youth will be married to a maiden who will surfeit him with pleasure through the year, for she will be the youngest and most beautiful and most wellborn in this land. And at the end of the year, having lived like a prince in the land, the young man will return on this day to this very temple, and as he lies upon the stone, bound hand and foot, the stone knife will pierce his breast, and from the open wound we will tear out his heart and offer it to the sun. This is, among us, the most honorable, the most desirable destiny our land may offer, for the chosen youth will have greater pleasure than any man, first in life and then in death. And the people will learn that those who have riches and pleasure in life must come to the end of their lives in poverty and in pain.”

The Lady was silent for a moment, staring at me, her eyes brilliant, her tattooed lips forming a smiling grimace. Finally she said: “We have chosen you, stranger, as the image of the Smoking Mirror. Yours will be the destiny I have just related.”

I closed my eyes, Sire, in a vain attempt to exorcise these words, and in the green star of my mind gratitude for the postponement shone more strongly than the certainty of my announced death. I would not die today. But within a year I would return, to die in this very place. Between the fact of my survival and the fact of my coming death, which between them were the total destiny the cruel Lady my lover had proclaimed, was insinuated the unique fact of my other destiny the same Lady had told me one night in the jungle.

“My Lady,” I replied, “I remind you that one night you promised me a different destiny: that I might have five days rescued from death.”

“You have saved them.”

“You promised that we would meet again at the foot of the volcano.”

“We have met.”

“You promised that when I found you again, you would multiply my pleasure of that night.”

“I have fulfilled my promise. I offer you a pleasure greater than any other: the certainty of one happy year and a precise death. For unhappy are the lives of men who among so many years of misfortune manage to salvage, here and there, only brief hours of happiness; and it is fearful to live without knowing either when or how death will come, for although death is certain, it does not announce its arrival, and thus plunges man into anguish and fear.”

“You promised me that on the last day saved from my destiny, I would not have to ask because I would know.”

“This is the last day, and now you know: a year of happiness and death at an appointed time await you.”