Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

The ancient one trembled like a little bird, and her small, shrunken, sick body was that of a plucked sparrow; with eyes shut, I put my arms around her.

“Wait,” moaned the woman, “wait, you cannot now, oh, pity, now our times no longer coincide, too much time has passed for me since I knew you, but too little time for you, wait, one day my cycle will be complete, I will again be the girl of the jungle, we shall meet again, somewhere, now you cannot…”

I had thrown off the mantle in which they had dressed me and, naked, blind, aroused, I pressed myself against her body, my erect penis sought the sex of the ancient one, but instead met stone, flint, impenetrable rock …

I drew back, I knelt between the ancient legs, I spread them, and from her hole, Sire, from that burning hole that had been mine, emerged a stone knife, its stone sheath a carved face, and the face was that of my marvelous beloved, the girl of the jungle, the Lady of the Butterflies.

I moaned, my senses reeling, I spun through time, uncertain of the hour, abandoned to the radiance of gold and silver and pearls that like that of the shining butterflies was now reduced to the dullness of ashes; I felt ashes in my mouth, and fire at my back, and suddenly the chamber was filled with a new radiance; I rolled over: torches of fire, great explosions of fire, held on high; it was night, the night was lighted by these men; I looked at their torches, I looked at my dark double, supported on his crutch.

They looked at me.

NIGHT OF REFLECTIONS

My dark double, the lame one called Smoking Mirror, was now wearing a vest on which were painted parts of the human body — skulls, ears, hearts, guts, breasts, hands, feet; around his neck he wore an ornament of yellow parrot feathers; his mantle was the shape of nettle leaves, and was decorated with black dye and tufts of eagle down; the plugs in his earlobes were turquoise mosaic, each supporting a circle of thorns, the nose ornament was of gold set with stones, and upon his head he wore a headdress of green feathers similar to the one I had worn when I took the throne of this accursed city. His gaze was a mirror of passions, the first of the long night of reflections I now had to live: revulsion and anger, scorn and pleasure, secret defeat, inflamed deception, dark victory.

Ashamed of my own nakedness, I picked up my ragged sailor’s clothing; I dressed bashfully, clumsily, hastily; I picked up the feather mask, the strange map of the new world the ancient woman had given me, and placed it in my doublet along with my mirror and scissors. The old woman still lay on the floor, shielding her eyes with a pocked arm, her black clothing scattered upon the silver floor, her legs spread, the stone dagger still buried between her thighs.

The heavy smoke of incense invaded the treasure chamber.

The crippled prince raised one arm as he spoke, agitating the feathers of his crest; he addressed himself to the company of priests and warriors who accompanied him, rather than to the ancient woman and myself, although he looked only at us:

“See him; see the Young Lord of love and peace; see the creator of men; see the gentle and charitable teacher; see the enemy of sacrifice and war; see the creator fallen; see his naked and drunken shame; see him intoxicated, lying with his own sister, believing in the stupor of drink that she is his mother, or lying with his mother, believing she is his sister; which is the worse crime? for which of all his crimes shall we again expel him from the city: usurper, liar, as weak as the men he once created, and contaminated by human clay? Is this the one who will defend us against thunder, fire, earthquake, and shadow? Will his teachings be sufficient to placate the furies of nature that from the heights of the sky and the deepest reaches of the earth threaten us at every instant? See the creator fallen, and tell me whether from the pits of drunkenness and incest, love and peace and labor can be predicated. Go now, messengers and couriers, carry the news: the dream has ended, the god has returned, has sinned, will again flee filled with shame, our law has triumphed, remains, continues, the earth thirsts for blood that it may yield its fruits, the sun hungers for blood that it may reappear at every dawn, the Lord of the Great Voice hungers and thirsts for pearls, maize, gold, birds, the life and death of all things, to answer the challenges of the earth and the sun. You have returned, Young Lord; brief has been your stay upon the throne I yielded to you today; you will flee again; your return will again be what it has always been: a promise. With our words we shall honor that promise. We shall reject it by our acts. One cannot govern with your teachings. But one can govern only by invoking them.”

Before I could react to these incomprehensible accusations, the ancient woman moaned with fear, held out her aged arms to the man who spoke, my sumptuously attired double, the man in whom only now I recognized — separating him forever from myself — the Lord of the Great Voice, the oft-mentioned prince of these lands of the dead moon.

The Tlatoani told the woman not to despair, that everything was done well, that she would have the reward of this day and this age, the gift of the moment she was living, the promise offered every time the woman fulfilled this cycle of an always renewed existence.

“Your sister,” murmured the lame prince. “Your shame. Your mother.”

Oh, Sire, what did these prohibitions matter to me? I did not understand them, I knew them false, I was giddy, my reason whirling, my members tremulous; gorged with nightmares I threw myself at the feet of my recovered lover, I kissed her knees, her thighs, her belly. I tried to kiss her lips; her hand forbade me, sealing my lips; I cared nothing for her cruel mysteries, I would accept whatever she asked of me, one year, and then death, one day, one night, one single moment of love and my life would again have meaning; now, yes, now I would confess before her, my mother, prepared to be heard by her and thus to die for her; I pulled her hand from my lips, I told her she must listen, that my memory was returning, everything I had thought was lost forever, the memory of my life, of our lives, the memory of the world before my voyage to the new world; I saw myself as a child, before speech or memory, a newborn infant wrapped in bloody sheets, fleeing in the arms of a woman, mother, wet nurse, sister, I do not know, through portals and corridors to a stone courtyard where were piled corpses of women, men, and infants like myself, corpses whose clothing indicated their state, peasants, Jews, workmen, mudejares, whores, monks, women and children of the common people, corpses in a castle courtyard, a tumulus of bodies, cadavers heaped on firewood, a few armored guards holding their torches to the enormous pyre, dogs barking at the flames, the flames illuminating their spiked collars bearing a device inscribed in iron, Nondum, Nondum …

No, Sire, do not tremble, do not cry out like that, let me continue, hear me, she did not want to hear me, she said what you just now said, enough, enough; she pushed me away, as now you rise from your chair, not yet, not yet; wait, Sire, I wanted this time to confess before her, and I remembered death and crime and I did not know why I should confess this, shouting to the Lady of the Butterflies, you preferred me, you gave yourself to me so that I might give you a son, not knowing what I was saying, Sire, or why I was saying it, and the proud man resting on his crutch stared at us through the eyes of a black ocelot, you possessed her only after I had fled, you were always the second, not first, and you despised my sons, you murdered my sons, I said this as if I had actually lived it and was now confessing it, but she finds them again, my mother, my wife, my lover, my sister, she drinks the blood of my sons, she regains youth and life, she again makes love with me, and the ashen butterflies recovered their brilliance and their power of flight, joined together in a sparkling constellation and lighted upon the head of the ancient woman, and at that instant the Lady of the Butterflies disintegrated, fell into dust, and the guards of the Lord of the Great Voice fell upon me, shoved and kicked me to the ground, dragged me far from the remains of my mother and sister, my lover, away from the chamber of treasures onto the great terrace, to the flickering night of the city, bright bonfires, lights trembling in the canals, stilled mirrors in the black lagoon.