Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“The crane was killed by the boatmen of the lake, and brought to me here in this my black house,” added the man with the broom, “and in the mirror in its head I could see the heavens and the constellations, and the stars, and beneath the heavens the sea, and on the sea great mountains advancing across the waters, and from them descended onto the coasts a great number of people who came marching singly and in squadrons, with many weapons, wearing many adornments in the manner of men dressed for war, and these men had very white skin, and red beards, and they showed their teeth as they spoke, and they were like monsters, for half of their bodies were those of men, but the other half was that of a beast with four legs and a fearsome foaming mouth.”

He ceased speaking, and again questioned me: “You came alone?”

I told him I had.

“I thought not. I thought you came with others.”

He covered the dead bird with the cloth.

He was silent for a long while. And as if they had awaited this silence, through the narrow door of the chamber entered in a great company maidens with cloths folded over their outstretched arms, and they were dressed in elaborately embroidered gowns of white cotton, and warriors with banners whose insignia was an eagle attacking an ocelot, its feet and talons set as if to strike, and albinos who entered as I had, shielding their eyes with their hands to protect them from the sun, and upon seeing me they were grateful for the surrounding shadows, and they approached to touch me and murmured things among themselves, and frolicking dwarfs, leaping and grimacing and thus paying me their respect, and they were accompanied by stately peacocks and small, fleet, short-haired dogs with skins lustrous as a pig’s.

Then the maidens robed me in the cloths, and around my neck they placed strings of precious stones and garlands of flowers, and they tied golden bells about my ankles, and upon my arms, above my elbows, they placed golden arm bands, and ear ornaments of highly polished copper in my ears, and once again, upon my head, a crest of green plumes.

And my dark double, naked, supporting himself upon his broom, said to all assembled:

“This is truly the Plumed Serpent, the great priest from the beginnings of time, man’s creator, the god of peace and work, the teacher who taught us to plant corn, to till the earth, to weave the feather, and work the stone; this is truly the one called Quetzalcoatl, the white god, the enemy of sacrifice, the enemy of war, the enemy of blood, the friend of life who one day fled to the east with sadness and anger in his heart because his teachings had been repudiated, because the demands of hunger and power and catastrophe and terror had led men to war and to the spilling of blood. He promised to return one day by the same route from the east toward which he had fled, where the great sun rises and the great waters burst upon the shore, to restore the lost reign of peace. We did but guard his throne for his return. Now we give it to him. The signs have manifested themselves. The prophecies have been fulfilled. The throne is his, and I am his slave.”

So spoke my dark double, painfully supported by the broom that at times served as his crutch, and my ear, made sensitive by continual contrast between reality and marvel, seemed to perceive in his tones a return to those he had employed on the night of the phantom: imperceptibly, resignation was yielding to a new challenge, and behind the softness of his words was a metallic timbre that made me question his sincerity. Nevertheless, I rejected those doubts; and I did so, Sire, because in truth I did not seek the honors that this man offered me; I had little desire to reign over the great city of the towers and canals; and sadly, in that instant when a throne was offered me, I thought of only two things, everything I desire was centered in them: Pedro, a small piece of land, our own free land, on the coast of pearls would have been sufficient; my young beloved, the Lady of the Butterflies, I longed to find you again, burning and beautiful and terrible, as on the night in the jungle, and make love to you again.

But all my desires and doubts were suspended by the activity of the maidens and the warriors, the albinos and the dwarfs, the small dogs and the vain peacocks; they opened a path for me, indicating the way from this chamber, and when I reached the threshold, I looked back and saw my vanquished double, who was renewing his compelling task of burning papers and sweeping ashes. He did not look at me again.

I went out into the courtyard, and sounds and people before invisible became immediate, present, as if the entire city was reviving from its stupor, the morning’s portents annulled, the prophecies of an origin so often invoked in this land fulfilled, feared and desired, yes, as if that past was also future, beneficent at times, but also a stark presentiment of a past as cruel as that they had known formerly; I was led along corridors raised upon jasper pillars that looked down upon great gardens, each with several pools, where there were more birds, hundreds of them, and hundreds of men feeding them, and giving them grass and fish and flies and lizards; they were cleaning the pools, and fishing, and feeding, and grooming the birds, they were collecting their eggs, and treating them and clipping their feathers, and I realized that from these magnificent breeding aviaries came the feathers from which these natives made their rich mantles and shields and tapestries and crests and fans; and we passed through low-ceilinged rooms where there were many cages built of strong wooden bars, and some held mountain lions, and others ocelots, and some lynx, and others wolves; and we came to another courtyard filled with cages built of sturdy poles, and perches, where there was every imaginable species of birds of prey: lanners, kites, vultures, hawks, all species of falcons and many of eagles; and from there we passed into some high-ceilinged rooms where there were men and women and children whose hair and bodies were completely white, and dwarfs and hunchbacks, and crippled and deformed and monstrous people in great numbers, every category of these little men having its own chamber or room; and we passed by something similar to armories whose blazon was a bow and two quivers upon each door, and in these rooms there were bows and arrows, slings, lances, goads, darts, bludgeons and swords, shields and bucklers, casques, greaves and brassards, and poles dipped in pitch with sharp fish bones and rocks embedded in their tips; beyond that house we arrived in a courtyard enclosed on three sides by masonry walls and on the fourth by an enormous stone stairway.

I was led to the stairway by the maidens and warriors, the albinos and dwarfs, and, counting the steps, I climbed — there were thirty-three — and as I reached the summit, low and square like all the others of this land, I could again see, closer now than from the mountains of the dawn but with sufficient distance to perceive its contours, the magnificent city that my double, the dark prince, had just ceded me.

I looked upon the great expanse of the city of the lake, crossed by bridges and canals, and open in vast plazas, tall in thick towers, its dwellings one hundred thousand houses, and frequented by two hundred thousand boats, and I saw only what I already knew: all this splendor was maintained by my poor friends of the jungle and the river towns, it was for this homage that they had repeatedly fulfilled the cycle: pearls and gold in exchange for men, women, and children to the service of this great city and its lords ensconced upon the high lake of the high valley of thin air and transparent visions.

I stepped into the chamber that crowned this construction.

What marvels, oh, Christian Lord who hears me, had I not seen since the whirlpool of the ocean threw me upon the beach of pearls. I wish to omit nothing from my account, either seen or dreamed, even though in that land, I admit it, it was almost always impossible to separate marvel from truth, or truth from marvel. But if I am certain of anything, it is that the chamber into which I now entered was the seat of the ultimate union of fable and reality, for to enter there was to penetrate into the very heart of opulence.