Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Hear me, Sire, hear me to the end, do not raise your hand, do not summon your guards, you must hear me: I speak in my love for the girl who succored me, I can speak only as she caresses me, love is my memory, my only memory, I know that now, for the minute we are separated, Sire, she and I, I shall return to the oblivion from which this woman’s painted lips rescued me: she is my voice, my guide, in both worlds, without her I forget everything because remembering is painful, only her love can give me the strength to resign myself to the pain of memory: in solitude I shall abandon myself forever to soothing oblivion; I do not wish to remember the old world from which I sailed, or the new one from which I have come …

I was fleeing along the causeway that joins the larger island of Mexico to the smaller island of Tlatelolco, when I saw walking toward me a group of naked youths, and in them I recognized the ten boys and ten girls who had led me from the volcano, and who spoke our tongue; they ran toward me, joy in their voices and expressions; and this was the first happy thing I had seen for a long time, contrasting violently with the melancholy silence of the city of the lagoon. They embraced me, they kissed me, but they said nothing explicit beyond the simple expressions of pleasure at meeting me.

I did not want to ask them why they had abandoned me to those terrible solitary encounters with the inhabitants of the palace; I must save my penultimate question for a moment I knew was near, and it must not be asked of them; they — my uncertain judgment and my sure heart told me — would give the final answer.

I let myself be led along the causeway toward the island of Tlatelolco; we entered a large, very clean, and deserted plaza surrounded by walls of red stone. In the plaza were a single low pyramid and several temples; a great silence reigned over all. The dawn was a pearl in the heavens. In the center of the immense plaza stood a wicker basket.

I thought I recognized it; I hurried forward, followed by the twenty young people; there was a man within it; I looked at him; I fell to my knees before him, because of a strange sacred compulsion as well as the desire to look into his face and hear his voice close to mine.

It was the ancient of memories, the same old man, guardian of the most ancient fables, who one day spoke to me in a dank chamber in the pyramid in the jungle and then died of terror when he saw himself in my mirror, who was dragged to the summit of the temple and there, I believed then, devoured by vultures.

And as before, he said to me now, but speaking our Castilian tongue: “Welcome, my brother. We have awaited you.”

I touched him with a trembling hand; he smiled; he was not a phantom. Was this old man, in truth, the owner of the secrets of this land, of all lands? But what did he know? He was welcoming me on the day of my flight: the last day of my life in the new world, at the end of the five days of memory that he himself — I was sure of it now — had granted me as an exceptional gift; five days separate from the twenty days he had forbidden to my memory, twenty days, and on this morning I still did not know whether they had been lived in the oblivion of what happened between each of the five remembered days or, as the mirrors of the staff told me, were still to be lived in an uncertain future.

The sun’s rays appeared over the walls and low summits of the pyramids of this plaza, and this was my true question — as I rejected the most immediate, closest questions, those I wished at that instant to ask on impulse, who are you, old man? did you die of terror when I showed you your true face? were you not fodder for vultures, worms, and snakes in the thick jungle where we abandoned your corpse? Instead, my question was this:

“My lord: Have I already lived the twenty forgotten days, or am I still to live them? For now I know they were, or they will be, days of death, pain, and blood, and I fear alike having lived them yesterday or living them tomorrow.”

The ancient with the mottled skull and tufts of white hair smiled a toothless smile. “You are welcome, my brother. We have awaited you. We shall always await you. You have been here before. You do not remember. What does it matter? You have been in many places, and you do not remember. How far my eyes can see. How far beyond this land born from burning seas, which rises from its decaying and abundant coast, ascends through perfumed valleys of fruit, and ends in a desert of stone and fire. I know the many cities you have founded. Beside rivers. Beside seas. In the motionless center of the deserts. Discover who founded those distant and proximate cities and always you will discover yourself, forgotten by yourself. Plumed Serpent you were called in this part of the world. You bore other names in the lands of clay and date palms, of deltas and flood tides, of vineyards and she-wolves. You were born between two rivers. You were suckled on the milk of beasts. You grew to manhood beside the blue and white father of waters. You dreamed beneath a tree. You perished on a hilltop, and were born again. You were always the first teacher, he who planted the seed, he who tilled the land, he who worked the metal, he who predicated love among men. He who spoke. He who wrote. And always you were accompanied by an enemy brother, a double, a shadow, a man who wanted for himself what you wanted for everyone: the fruit of labor, and the voice of men.” The ancient’s long bony finger emerged from the cotton that warmed him, and he pointed toward one of the entrances to the plaza of Tlatelolco.

“You will always fail. You will always return. You will fail again. You will not allow yourself to be vanquished. You know the original order of man’s life because you founded it, with men, who were not born to devour one another like beasts but to live in accord with the teachings of the dawn of day, your teachings.”

“I killed him with my own hands; I, too, am a murderer.”

“No, it is merely that you have once again killed your enemy brother. He who struggles against you. He who struggles within you. That dark twin will be reborn in you, and you will continue to struggle against him. And he will be reborn here. Once again we shall suffer beneath his yoke. Once again we shall await your return to kill him.”

“My lord: you are speaking of a fatality without end, circular and eternal. Will it never be resolved with the definitive triumph of one of the two: my double or me?”

“Never. Because what you represent will live only if it is denied, attacked, sequestered in a palace or a prison or a temple. For if your kingdom could be established without opposition it would soon be converted into a kingdom identical to the one you combat. Your goodness, my son, is kept alive only because your double refutes it.”

“And it will never be resolved?”

“Never, my brother, my son, never. Your destiny is to be pursued. To struggle. To be defeated. To be reborn from your defeat. To return. To speak. To remind men of what they have forgotten. To reign for an instant. To be defeated again by the forces of the world. To flee. To return. To remember. An endless labor. The most painful of all labors. Freedom is the name of your task. One word represented by many men.”

“Like me, always defeated, my lord?”

“Look, my brother, my son. Look…”

The plaza of Tlatelolco was teeming with life, activity, sounds, music, a thousand small and pleasurable tasks: some were shaping clay with their hands or on a potter’s wheel, some were weaving hemp, some dancing and singing; silversmiths, with dexterity and finesse, were casting silver toys: a monkey with moving head and feet that held in its hand a spindle that seemed to spin, or an apple it seemed to eat; patient workers were sorting and adjusting feathers, examining them minutely to see whether they fitted better with the grain, against the grain, or across the grain, on the right side or the reverse, perfectly fashioning a feather animal or tree or rose; children were seated at the feet of aged teachers; women suckled their babes, others were cooking the food of the land, flesh of the doe or buck, rabbit, gopher, all wrapped in the bland little cakes of bread that have the taste of smoke; scribes and poets were speaking loudly or in calm tones of friendship, of the brevity of life, the delight of love, the pleasure of flowers; their voices filled my ears, and all about me that morning, my last morning, I heard their words: