Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Long and broad was the chamber, and its walls were of pure gold; there was accumulated an unbelievably great quantity of pearls and precious stones — agates, carnelians, emeralds, rubies, topazes — and the very floors were covered with heavy plates of gold and silver, and there were golden disks, and necklaces of idols, fine shields, nose moons of gold, greaves of gold, arm bands of gold, diadems of gold.

Into the chamber came lords and men of the guard, and servants carrying their arms, and maidens with great trays laden with fruits and meat, and some carrying vessels, and there were six ancient lords, and one group of musicians and another of dancers and athletes, and when I sat upon a low bench facing a leather cushion, the maidens offered me victuals — chicken and deer and fragrant herbs — and they served me from their vessels, pouring the sweet-scented beverages into cups of gold, and the six ancients stepped forward to taste each dish as it was served, and as a sign of their respect, they never raised their eyes to my face, and the music commenced — reed pipes, flutes, shell horns, bones and rattles — along with the songs and dances, and a few of the athletes threw themselves on the floor, twirling with their feet a pole as large as a beam, stout, polished, and smooth, tossing it into the air and catching it, and exchanging it among themselves with their feet, a thousand movements in the air so swift and so well executed that I could scarcely believe it could be done; I ate and drank to my fill, marveling at the place and its people; and then came the jesters and buffoons, the dwarfs, with their capering and cavorting, and an old man took the remains from my meal and threw them to the dwarfs and they fell upon them like starving animals.

After we had eaten, all retired from the room with lowered eyes except the maidens, and they disrobed me, bathed me with great care, and again dressed me in a rich mantle.

I held out my hand, Sire, and asked that they leave me my sailor’s clothing, my torn doublet and breeches, and what was concealed inside them: my scissors and my mirror. A maiden relaxed for an instant her mask of servitude, as a flash of anger crossed her features: “Young Lord: you must change your clothing four times a day, never wearing the same habiliment twice.”

“These are the clothes I was wearing when I was thrown upon these shores,” I said simply, but the maiden looked at me, and looked at the clothes, as if I had spoken some kind of witchcraft.

But she herself placed my tattered doublet and breeches at my feet, and along with the other maidens disappeared, leaving me alone in this chamber of treasures.

For a moment, Sire, I thought of the stone chamber of the ancient of memories, where he so zealously guarded his baskets of pearls and ears of grain; in this chamber there was not only treasure to buy a million times over what that old man had guarded, oh, no, Sire. With the treasure of this room one could buy the ransom of all the ports of our Mediterranean Sea, and the lives of all their rulers, great and small, and the love of all their women, of both high and low estate.

Only in that moment of my solitude did I come to the absolute realization that all these treasures were mine, to do with as I would. But since my two sovereign desires — to return with Pedro to the happy beach of the new world and to return with the Lady of the Butterflies to the happy night of my passion — were impossible, I looked once more around this chamber of riches, knowing that it would take more than a month simply to count the gold and silver, the pearls and precious stones, the jewels here collected, and I shouted, as if I wished everyone to hear me, I shouted, so they all would hear me, I seized handfuls of the pearls and necklaces and arm bands and earrings and bracelets and went out of the chamber onto the high terrace from which one could see the total expanse of the splendid lacustrine city, transparent now in the waning, pullulating light of the afternoon; and to the tens of thousands of boats, the open markets, the plazas, the stone towers, the golden haze, the canals of brilliant green, the two snowy peaks that guarded it all, I shouted; to them all, my hands filled with jewels, I shouted:

“Return to your true owners! Restore these treasures to those who wrested them from the jungle, the mines, the beaches, to those who worked and set and polished the stones! Restore the lives of all who died for these treasures! Revive in each pearl a girl given as a whore to a warrior, in every grain of gold revive a man sacrificed because the death of the world was feared, revive the entire world, I will water it with gold, sow it with silver, and bathe it in pearls, let everything be returned to the people, deliver everything I here possess to its true owner — my people of the jungle, my forgotten children, my violated women, my sacrificed men!”

This is what I shouted to the high city from the height of the thirty-three steps on whose summit were guarded the greatest treasures of the world. Believe me, Sire, when I tell you that the distant sounds in the canals and markets, footpaths and towers, seemed suddenly to cease, and only the fading blast of a conch shell filled that enormous vacuum of silence.

I threw the jewels and gold and pearls from the four sides of my high terrace; I watched them roll down the steps up which I had climbed; and from the second side they rolled toward a broad canal; and toward the altars and stone idols below, toward the bloodied walls and black-crusted floors, from the third; and from the fourth, toward the ossuary of death’s-heads, the rows of grinning skulls embedded in the stone.

It was to the water, to the stone, and to the bones I threw all treasures that my hands could hold, and not, I told myself, to the forever lost inhabitants of the nomadic villages of the river, the jungle, and the mountain.

Dispiritedly, I returned to my chamber.

At first I did not perceive its brilliance. It was a pool of light, dazzling, a lake of gold and silver, as if here the precious metal had reproduced in miniature the brilliance of that vast enchanted city.

I walked toward the rear of the cloister, seeking a place where I might rest. I needed to think. I seemed to have come to the end of my trials, but I knew very well I still had the remainder of this day, its night, and the following day and night to exhaust my destiny in the land of the navel of the moon. Strange: it was late afternoon and I still had not yet felt the need to ask my question for this day. Others had spoken; others had explained; my prayers had been answered that events respond to my questions. I had feared at dawn that I might waste a question; now, as night fell, I feared I would not find the opportunity to formulate it.

In this brilliant chamber my eyes sought skins, mantles, some semblance of a bed where I might lie. Brilliant chamber: the brilliance had a center and something in that center was hovering in the air, a crown of lights, a constellation of luminous wings …

Oh, Sire, how I ran then toward that center of light, how quickly I wished to penetrate the shadow that girded the human figure beneath the crown of butterflies, but I stopped, wild with joy, my heart pounding, unsure of the good fortune that had been bestowed upon me, before that figure gowned in shadow but crowned by the sign of my beloved: the fluttering scepter of the butterflies of light.

“My Lady, is it you?”

The black shadow was silent; then came the reply: “Is that your question for this day?”

It was her voice, revealing knowledge of our pact.

I threw myself upon her bosom, my arms embraced her waist, I sought her face; body and countenance were veiled in black; I grasped her hands, they were sheathed in gloves of black leather. In each hand she held a cup.