Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

The young people looked at one another. A new kind of gaze, stamped by water. I do not know how to explain it, Sire. I had not seen such gazes here before, although, remember, in my passage through this strange land I had seen many eyes of warring passions, terror and tenderness, friendship and hatred, veneration and vengeance, yes, but never such new glances, for the first time new, theirs and mine: who minted the face of the earth? who made its field burn wordlessly?

One of the youths spoke. I understood him easily as I listened, what sadness and relief I felt: a youth, a boy, who did not speak in the name of the beginning, of legend, power, or tradition, but for himself, here, on this causeway beside the waters of the lagoon of Mexico. “I saw no one in that plaza.”

“The old man,” I murmured, frightened, “the old man in the basket…”

The youth shook his head. “No one. There was no one there but us.”

An obscure question blazed in my body: “With whom was I speaking, then? Who answered my questions?”

Now it was a young girl who spoke: “You were talking to yourself. You asked questions. You answered them. We heard you.”

If time is a hunter, in that instant I was pierced by its arrow, I fell, wounded, and the oath of my days in this land fell shattered beside me; I managed to stammer: “Then I have dreamed it all … Then none of it was true … Then I must awaken…”

“No, do not awaken,” said a youth. “You must finish your voyage, you must return to your land…”

“And return here, again and again, to be defeated, always defeated, defeated by crime if I commit a crime when I return, defeated by criminals, if I return to punish them?”

My head was whirling, Señor, words tumbled from my lips, I no longer knew where I was or what day it was … I was dreaming. But if I dreamed, where was I dreaming? how long had I been dreaming? Perhaps in that instant, dreaming that I was standing on the causeway beside a boat, surrounded by my twenty friends, I was sleeping placidly on old Pedro’s ship, becalmed in the center of the Sargasso Sea; or perhaps I was dreaming it all, dizzied by the sea, in the center of the vortex that held us captive in the great ocean; or perhaps, truly — as I had then believed — I had emerged from the sea to step upon the beaches of death, and had remained there forever, imagining the phantoms of my life; I did not know, after all, whether perhaps everything was dreamed from the moment I was placed within the basket of the ancient of memory beneath the jungle sky, surrounded by bowers and deerskins, abandoned there with no company but my mirror, destined to dream and one day to awaken and see myself as ancient as the Lord of Memory; I did not know, I did not know in what moment I had ceased to live awake and begun to live asleep; but here we were, on the causeway that joined the islands of a lagoon in a non-existent place called Mexico, the place of the navel of the moon, they and I, I and they, those I had torn from the soil of death, the bones that had come to life when I clasped them to my breast, the most unreal, the most fantastic of all my dreams …

Was this, too, a lie? were they also phantoms?

“We are here,” a different girl spoke, simply. “In truth, we exist here.”

And they spoke in turn:

“You must go.”

“You are the only one who knows of us.”

“This is your secret.”

“You must not return.”

“We shall hide.”

“We shall disappear.”

“They will not find us.”

“They will not sacrifice us.”

“We shall emerge when it is necessary.”

“Tell no one about us.”

“You need not return.”

“We shall do what you promised.”

“We shall act in your name.”

“Do not worry.”

“We are twenty.”

“We shall live the days you do not remember in your name…”

“The days you lost…”

“The days you fear…”

“Twenty days…”

“We are twenty…”

“Ten men…”

“Ten women…”

“One for each of your forgotten and feared days…”

“All together…”

“Do not return…”

“They will not forgive you for it…”

“This has been your crime…”

“You gave us life…”

“They do not know that…”

“They do not believe we exist…”

“We shall surprise them…”

“We shall hide…”

“In the mountain…”

“In the desert…”

“In the jungle…”

“On the coast…”

“Among the ruins…”

“In forgotten villages…”

“Among the magueys, cultivating the fiber and the flowing sap…”

“Beside the bells…”

“Beneath the lash…”

“Within the mine…”

“In the trapiche, grinding the sugar cane…”

“In the dungeons, prisoners again…”

“In the milpas, working the corn…”

“In all the land…”

Did time have words, did it? did space have hours, did it? What hour, what day was this? I implored them to tell me, that was my last question, Sire:

“What day is this? What hour is this?”

“A day.”

“A man.”

“A different day.”

“A woman.”

“Twenty days.”

“Ten men.”

“Ten women.”

“What does it matter?”

“A day.”

“The first morning of March.”

“Dry earth.”

“Black earth.”

“The city falls.”

“And we.”

“A different day.”

“The second night of October.”

“Wet earth.”

“Red earth.”

“The city falls.”

“And we.”

“Twenty days.”

“September.”

“The rains are dying.”

“July.”

“Burning mornings, late storms.”

“February.”

“Whirling dust.”

“March.”

“The same plaza.”

“Sun, the sun.”

“October.”

“The same plaza.”

“Water, the water.”

“Twenty days.”

“Knife and cannon blast.”

“Dogs growl.”

“Blood runs.”

“We have no weapons.”

“Stones are lofted, sticks, and shafts.”

“Many men.”

“On horseback.”

“A man.”

“Murdered.”

“The same plaza.”

“Odor of dust.”

“Tattered standards.”

“A people.”

“Enslaved.”

“A land.”

“Humiliated.”

“And we.”

“The city dies.”

“The city is reborn.”

“They kill us.”

“We are reborn.”

“Go on your way.”

“Do not return.”

“We shall be the twenty days of your dark destiny.”

“We shall live them for you.”

“My question,” I implored. “My final question…”

“Look at the sky: every star has its time.”

“All those times live side by side, in the same sky.”

“There is a different time.”

“Will you learn to measure it?”

“All times live within a single dead space.”

“There history ends.”

“History? This one, mine? the history of many? which history? I could not ask; I could not answer … Once again, these young people born of my embrace spoke as if they could divine my thoughts, as if they were I, multiplied, crossbred, mixed with everything I had seen or touched here. Humankind stood before me on the causeway, beside the lagoon, naked and proud, they spoke in their plural voices.

“The new land gave life to Pedro; in that life your friend culminated his entire existence, his dreams, his sufferings, and his labors. His life was worthwhile. The new world gave him his life, completed.”

“Pedro gave his life for you.”

“You gave the scissors.”

“They gave you gold.”

“You gave your labor.”