Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Oh, I am the Moor Moraima,

young, and fair to behold …

“Are you singing, mistress?” “Oh, Lolilla, look how happy our mistress is, you’re alive again, mistress, and your happiness gives us pleasure.” “I am singing, my scrubbing maids, and laughing.” “We were terribly afraid for you, Señora, when we saw your husband enter your bedchamber for the first time, without knocking, as if seeking a…” “And see what he found, my duennas; just look at that creature lying upon my bed, fabricated from bits and pieces I stole from the sepulchers; see him as El Señor saw him: is this my lover, this mummy, this monster? Yes, Señor, he is my penitence, the proof of my loyalty to your proposals, Sire, the Oriental luxury of a bedchamber and upon the bed, a cadaver, my companion, Sire, the only choice you have left me, the reflection of your funereal will, luxury wherein death resides, the pleasures of the senses subjugated by the domination of a cadaver; see how well I understand you, see how I follow in your path, see how closely bound I am to your most intimate mandates … and now, Azucena, Lolilla, let us prepare ourselves for a great voyage, all is ended here; warm my bath water with hot charcoal; the most perfumed soap, Lolilla; clean my most elegant dress, Azucena, scrape well the wax stains left by the candles; bathe me, lather me with soap, take the torche-cul, Lolilla, and wash well all my parts so that no odor of man cling there, not one drop of man’s love … my perfumes, Azucena, and that dress, the one with the lowest décolletage — they say that the eyes are the windows of the soul and décolletage the window of Hell — and my jeweled gloves, and the slippers that fit my feet so sleekly that common people will wonder how I put them on and off, and gold powder for my hair, and remove those precious glass panes from my windows and pack them away so no one will ever again look through them toward a garden that does not exist; the garden is beyond, in the other world, and we are going there.” “And this sealed green bottle, mistress; is there something in it?” “Don Juan brought that with him from the sea; leave it here on the sands of the chamber.” “And the monster, Señora; will he remain on your bed?” “Oh, Azucena, Lolilla, my homunculus knows everything, understands everything; he has already told me what we must do with my royal mummy; there will be time; let us make ready; take that cup, Lolilla, the one made from an ostrich egg; fill it and give it to me.” “Drink, Señora…” “Sing, mistress…”

A Christian came to my gates,

ah, woe is me,

hoping to deceive …

CELESTINA AND LUDOVICO

I recognized you, said El Señor, when the woman with the tattooed lips, dressed as a page, and the blind Aragonese flautist had entered his bedchamber; Felipe dismissed Guzmán, who, stuttering with rage, and eyes burning, excused himself, saying: “I would rather a wrathful El Señor castigate me for angering him than a repentant El Señor condemn me for not giving him counsel…”

No one looked at him, no one answered him, and when he attempted to station himself outside the door to the chapel the halberdiers prevented him; Guzmán crossed the chapel, walked through corridors, courtyards, kitchens, and mews, and emerged into the night of the tile sheds, taverns, and forges of the work site.

I recognized you, said El Señor, gazing at them with great tenderness. You, Celestina; you, Ludovico; you have returned, it is true, is it not? I was slow to recognize you both; you, Ludovico, do you remember when we talked beside the sea? a dream, a world without God, sufficient grace for every man; you, Celestina, the world of love with nothing forbidden to the body, each body the solar center of the world; I was slow to recognize you, time has wounded you, brother, and favored you, my girl; you cannot see, poor Ludovico, I could not believe you were so old, and you so young, it is you, Celestina, it is truly you? I am, and I am not, she said, the girl you remember is not I, and the girl I was you do not remember, although you met me one day in the forest; is it you, Ludovico? Yes, it is I, Felipe, here we are, we have returned, and you must return with us to that shore by the sea where we destroyed Pedro’s ship with our hatchets, you must hear our stories again, hear us again and remember what you told us then, remember what you imagined, then compare it with what actually happened, imagine what actually will happen.

And this is what, in turn, the girl with the tattooed lips and the blind flautist recounted that night.

THE FIRST CHILD

Felipe pleasured himself in that night of love with Celestina and Ludovico: Ludovico in the love of Celestina and Felipe; Celestina, in the love of Felipe and Ludovico. The three, lying together on marten-skin furs, turned one of their sea dreams into reality.

And thus they passed several days. Their pleasure was inexhaustible. They invented words, acts, combinations, desires, recollections, that led them toward the ultimate truth of their bodies; not finding it, they imagined their youth and their love would be eternal. Celestina had been right. The world will be liberated when all bodies are liberated.

Felipe left them by day. He offered no excuses, they were not necessary. The castle was the place where everything they had dreamed was becoming reality. The others, Ludovico said to Celestina — Pedro, Simón, the Eremites, the Moors, the pilgrims, the Hebrews, the heresiarchs, the beggars, the prostitutes — must, like them, be liberating themselves in the diverse forms of their various pleasures. At night, Felipe returned, always with brimming pitchers and trays laden with food.

“We need never leave here,” he said to them, “Everything we need is here.”

They made love. They slept. But one night Felipe entered the bedchamber and with him a frightful odor penetrated the room.

“Now the smell is of death, not of pleasure,” Ludovico said to himself.

He waited until Felipe and Celestina were sleeping, naked, their limbs intertwined. The young student donned his beggar’s clothing and left the chamber. A thick cloud of smoke forced him to retreat. He steeled himself to investigate what was happening. Cautiously he walked a long passageway. Death was borne on the wings of the smoke. Choking, he sought refuge. He opened a door and stepped into a bedchamber.

Two women were peering through a high narrow arched window onto the castle courtyard below. They did not see him as he entered. Clutching each other in fear were a beautiful young Lady and a malodorous scrubbing maid in wide skirts. The student approached the window. Seeing him there, the women screamed and embraced each other even more tightly. Brusquely forcing them aside, Ludovico looked out onto the courtyard. The women ran screaming from the room.

He had not seen the women before, but the cadavers, yes. Guards in coats of mail, bloody swords unsheathed, were dragging bodies by the hair or by the feet and throwing them onto a great pyre blazing in the center of the courtyard. He recognized the men, women, and children Felipe had led to the castle.

Ludovico looked about the rich apartment. With a gesture of rage he ripped down a tapestry hanging on one of the chamber walls. Behind the tapestry was a cradle. And in the cradle slept a baby only a few weeks old. A thousand conflicting thoughts raced through the student’s feverish brain. All were resolved in one almost instinctive action: he removed the child from the cradle, wrapped him in the same silks that had covered him, and left the room with the infant in his arms.

He believed he was saving an innocent from the terrible slaughter. He returned to Felipe’s bedchamber. The youth and the girl were still asleep. Holding the infant aloft to show him to his companions, he almost awakened them. He looked at Celestina’s sleeping face and smiled tranquilly; he knew what she was dreaming. He looked at Felipe and his smile froze; he did not know what Felipe dreamed. Beside the seashore each of them except Felipe had told what he desired: Pedro, a world without servitude. Simón, a world without illness. Celestina, a world without sin. Ludovico, a world without God.