Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“New”

“Oh, Señor Don Guzmán, doubt is excellent when it is a question of securing what we already possess, but it can be fatal if it impedes us in pursuit of what we seek.” “Are you out of your mind? Have you swallowed that pack of lies?” “No, but I shall have the prudence, with no illusions, to submit everything I have heard to the harshest test: the same proof that you demand; but you must see things in my manner, Don Guzmán; if the new world does not exist, we shall have lost nothing; but if it does, by chance, exist, we have everything to gain; oh, my dear friend; I cannot ever sleep again in peace for thinking that the riches recounted by that young voyager may exist, and may lie there for centuries, wasted, unless my hand take them and turn them to their true purpose, which is not the adornment of idols, but commerce, the arts, prosperity, change … Did you notice how naïvely those natives exchanged their jewels for a mirror or a pair of scissors? Oh, Don Guzmán: these ancient eyes and these feeble ears have never seen or heard of better business…”

“Beyond”

“Azucena, Lolilla, I tell you that everything that hangs, that tastes and smells comes from another place, even the rosary of our devotions, which comes from Syria, oh, I shall have it bead by bead, I shall have everything, guided by my homunculus, away from here, far from this accursed cloister of death, I shall be reborn, I shall live, I who have longed for a garden of jasmine and mosques, I who asked only that the shepherds return beneath my window with their flutes and flocks, I who came from misty England in search of the land of the sun and its orange trees and instead found myself on a plain of weeds, my flesh pierced by nettles and thistles, now I shall have the greatest garden in the world at my feet, the free land, the new land, without the burdens and crimes and prohibitions of this accursed plain to which my English aunt and uncle sent me, oh, Don Juan, pleasure will be for everyone or no one, and in the free land woman, to be woman, need not sell her soul to the Devil, oh, I shall beat the Devil at his own game, I shall sell my soul for the second time, he cannot keep his records straight, for so great is his desire to make himself master of souls that he buys them once and twice and a thousand times, I shall deceive the horned and tailed one himself, for if after it is all over I am condemned, what do I lose, my dear scrubbing maids? and if in deceiving him I win, I win nothing less than a second chance: a second life, in the second land; oh, my most cherished scrubbing lasses, what happiness you have brought me.” “Mistress, mistress, remember that the Devil may refuse to come in spite of your potions and spells and fancy words; we have tried everything and nothing happens; where is the Devil? Surely he’s not this little bit of a man, this slobbering root that inspires only disgust, not fear, and who would be lucky not to end up as a partner for that clown of a Barbarica.” “But I know, Azucena, Lolilla, I know; now I know, now I know where the Devil is…”

“The ocean”

be off, be off, far from my chapel, my cocoon, let them take everything, the palace, the servants, the land, everything except this place, my dead, my stairway, my painting, my bedchamber, my nest, my anguish, exterminate idolatry, yes, I promised that, I dictated that to Guzmán, and what is written exists, exists permanently, but how was I to know that there were still more pagans in the world? the world was closed, its frontiers circumscribed, fenced in, conquered, the heretics and idolaters known, yes, let the idolaters die by my hand and I shall be granted the pardon I bestowed upon the heretics, true pardon, not for my transitory acts on the fields of Flanders, but for my eternal words in this final cloister, who will recall even a single act that has not been recorded? will the need to exterminate idolaters in the new world be the price for pardoning heretics in the old? but that Augustinian, that man with the face like a skull, has told me just the opposite, the same law for everyone, extermination for everyone, Jews, Arabs, idolaters, heretics, and if not that, then must it be precisely the opposite? pardon for everyone, those there and those here? oh, nonono, I shall save nothing that way if the new world exists, it must be destroyed, for never have I heard of anything that so ferociously mocks my world, a world, that youth said, a world where the natural order must be recreated each day, for its life depends upon the sun and the night and sacrifice, a world that dies with each dusk and which must be re-created with each dawn, nononono, the goal of my world is to be forever fixed, that it may be forever regulated by power, crime, inheritance, my world equal to my palace, the new world the most dissimilar world possible, that world incomprehensible, proliferating, flower of a day, death every night, resurrection every morning, the very thing I saw in the mirror as I ascended the stairway, everything changing, nothing dying completely, nothing expended, everything resurrected, transformed, everything nourished from every other thing, extinction impossible, everything repeated, oh, for all my theorems, all my philosophy, I would be naked, defeated, truly defeated, for everything I offer to the world to force the world to say I cannot repay you, you have won, your obliteration is my defeat, I continue to live but you have succeeded in obliterating your presence, you have killed me, for as you die I die because of you, for as you die I can summon nothing to occupy your place, all that is nothing if now some contemptible boy offers me an entire world, a new world, oh, my God, with what can I repay such an offering? what could I give in return for such a gift? with what could I fill the space of the new world? how many crimes, loves, anxieties, battles, persecutions, dreams, and nightmares would I have to suffer before again being able to reach this trembling needle point of concentration that constitutes my entire existence? oh, Lord who hears me, tell me, finally, the truth, if I conquer the new world, will I not be the conquered, not it?

“From the other side”

“Since man has observed the order of the heavens, Toribio, when they move, where they move, to what degree, and what that movement produces, could you deny that man, if I may put it this way, that man possesses a genius comparable to that of the Creator of the heavens?” “No, Julián, I would merely say that in some manner man could fabricate heavens if he could but obtain the divine instruments and materials.” “Well, I would be content if I could fabricate a new world using human materials.” “Do not doubt it could be done, my brother, for anything is possible; nothing must be rejected; nature, and in particular human nature, encompasses each and every level of existence, from the divine to the diabolic, from the bestial to the mystic; nothing is beyond belief; nothing is beyond possibility; the only possibilities we deny are the possibilities we do not know…”

“Of the sea”

“Business dealings for whom, old man? I’ll tell you: for El Señor, for his fortune, not ours, and thus this new world, once again, will defer our bettering ourselves, and bind us even more tightly than before to seignorial power…” “Oh, Don Guzmán, do you have so little confidence in my astuteness? Look around you; look at the Princes, the monks, at the palace, look at religion itself; what is their common sign? Nonproductivity; for as the monks do not propagate sons, El Señor does not propagate riches; he cannot, it is contrary to his most profound reason for being; if what I know of him from my own account and what you have told me about him is true, then it is also true that his rank, his power, his cult, depend upon loss, not acquisition. El Señor’s dynasty confuses honor with loss, glory with loss, rank with loss, power with loss, like the magpie that to no one’s benefit steals and hides in her nest everything that glitters. Look closely, Don Guzmán. Reflect seriously upon what we have heard and what I now tell you, and you will find a frightening similarity between the motives that animate El Señor and those that govern life in the new world. Power is a challenge based upon offering something for which there is no possible counter-offering. A challenge, I say, for greatest is the power of the one who ends by having something that is nothing; in the end, loss; in the end, death; in the end, sacrifice: sacrifice, death and loss for others, as long as it is possible, and when it is no longer so, then sacrifice, death and loss for oneself. My solution is very simple; to these negative practices I oppose the very positive proposition of exchanging in order to acquire; to loss, I oppose acquisition. El Señor wished to complete his palace of death? You have seen that he had to come to me for a loan. Does he wish to send an expedition to ascertain the existence or non-existence of a new world? He will have to come to us, the outfitters, the dealers in commodities, the manufacturers of arms. Does he wish to colonize new lands? He will have to come to men like you, Don Guzmán, and to every last ordinary man in this palace, and to the rogues in the cities, and to the impoverished nobles; the new world will belong to us, we will win it with our arms and our brains, and we shall be repaid for our efforts with the gold and pearls that will flow from the hands of the natives into ours, though we will take care to reserve the royal fifth part for El Señor, and to collect payment for his debts in advance, and to make him content, and deceive him. Oh, yes!” “Bah, you’re a dreamer, too, testy old fool; it was an ill-fated day when I opened the doors of this palace to you. You’re dreaming, for whether or not that new world exists, El Señor has decreed that it does not; you heard him.” “But a piece of paper will never stay the course of history.” “El Señor believes it so; he believes only what is written.” “Then we shall win with paper; find me a pen, ink, and parchment, and this very night my letters will go out to the contractors and navigators of Genoa and Oporto, Antwerp and Danzig; the word will spread far and wide…”