Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Again he looked at Felipe’s sleeping face. The prognathic jaw. The laborious breathing. Both characteristics emphasized in sleep. He remembered royal medallions: Felipe was one of them.

He sighed with great sadness and left the chamber, coughing, and protecting the child. In the next room, which was a falcons’ mews, he hid the child. Fearfully, he covered him with a hood like those covering the hawks themselves in the hours of sleep.

THE DEATH CART

About midday Felipe left them, and later Ludovico and Celestina heard bells, flute music, and tambourines. The student mashed some food until it was the consistency of gruel, and fed the child he had hidden in the mews, but he told Celestina nothing of what had passed.

At dusk Felipe returned, magnificently arrayed: polished shoes in the Flemish style, rose-colored breeches, brocaded robe lined with ermine, and on his head a cap as beautiful as a jewel; a cross of precious stones lay upon his breast, and orange blossoms on the ermine. He told them he had obtained a signal favor from his father. The student and the girl could remain in the castle. They would become accustomed to palace life. Ludovico could make good use of the great library, and Celestina find delight in the dances and amusements of the court. Their beautiful nights of love would continue forever. Celestina told him, gaily, she didn’t recognize him, he was so elegant. Ludovico said nothing. Felipe said: “That is because today was my wedding day…”

He left, smiling. Celestina embraced Ludovico, and the student told her all he had learned. They awaited the deepest hour of the night and when they felt sure that the guards were sleeping and the dogs exhausted from being chained all day, they stole from their bedchamber, gathered up the child from the mews, and sought an escape.

Yes, the guards and the dogs were sleeping; but the heavy door of the barbican was closed, and the drawbridge raised above the moat. Then Celestina heard a noise in the courtyard; several men were occupied in piling the charred remains of cadavers onto carts.

Hidden in the shadows of the archways, they waited until the last hour of the night. They took advantage of a moment when the men went to pick up more bodies, and hid in one of the carts, making a place for themselves among burned arms and legs and torsos, and staring into the fiery eyes of corpses with slashed throats. Ashes and blood stained them too; Celestina clutched the infant to her breast, fearfully covering its mouth with her hand, and fighting back the nausea that welled in her throat.

Face down among the cadavers, stained as the cadavers themselves, they shivered in silence as additional charred bodies were thrown on top of them and they heard the creaking wheels of the cart. The huge doors were opened and the drawbridge lowered; Celestina choked back her tears and cradled the infant; the infant cried out; Ludovico shuddered, and Celestina clapped a blood-stained palm over the infant’s mouth; the carts rolled on toward the Castilian dawn.

“Did you hear anything?” said one of the drivers.

“No, what?”

“A baby crying.”

“What have you been drinking, blockhead?”

“The leftovers from Prince Don Felipe’s wedding feast, just like you, you bleary-eyed old sot…”

Now, Celestina, now, jump, we’re in the woods where they cannot find us, Ludovico whispered, and the drivers saw two figures from the heap of cadavers leap from the cart and run into the thicket.

They stopped, climbed out of the cart, and examined the load of dead bodies they were carrying to dump into a mountain ravine; they knelt, crossed themselves, and said: “Don’t tell anyone about this; they’ll say we were drunk and give us the beating of our lives.”

THE TOLEDO JEWRY

They took refuge in the Jewry of Toledo. At first the Hebrews received them out of pity, seeing them in a great state of fatigue, dressed like beggars and carrying a child in their arms, but later they wished to interrogate the couple, and they went to call upon them. Celestina was bathing the child, and the Jews saw what Ludovico and Celestina had seen with astonishment as the day dawned in the woods after their escape from the cart, stained with blood and ashes: the child had six toes on each foot and a blood-red cross upon his back.

“What does this mean?” the visitors asked each other, and Celestina and Ludovico asked each other the same question.

“Is the child yours?” they asked, and the student replied no, that he and his wife had saved him from death, and for that reason loved him as they would their own.

But after a few months everyone noted that the girl was expecting another child, her own, for her torn garments could not hide the swelling of her belly. And they all said: “So; may the Lord be with you; now you will have a child of your own, may he bless your house.”

They lived in a single room behind tall stone arches. There was little light, as the windows were high and very small and covered with oiled paper; the cotton wick floating in a basin of fish oil emitted a strong odor but very little light, although it burned for a long time.

“We stole the child,” Ludovico said to Celestina, “but Felipe robbed us of our lives.”

The learned doctors of the Synagogue of the Passing came to see the child, and almost without exception they shrugged and said they did not understand the anomalies of the six toes on each foot and the cross upon the child’s back. But one stood gravely silent, and one day he sought out Ludovico and spoke with him. Thus he learned that the student was expert in translating Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic, and he took him to the synagogue, and there entrusted him with various tasks.

“Read; translate; we have saved many of the folios which were taken from Rome to the great library of Alexandria, and from there — saved from the great destruction of the civil war waged by Aurelian, and later from the Christian holocaust — were brought to Spain by Hebrew and Arab savants, saved here, too, from the barbaric Goths, and zealously guarded by our people, for all faiths are nourished from a common wisdom. I do not know your faith, nor shall I question you in that respect. We are all sons of the Book, Jews, Moors, and Christians, and only if we accept this truth shall we live in peace one with another. Read; translate; conquer your prejudices, as every man has his own; think how many men have lived before us; we cannot deprecate their intelligence without mutilating our own. Read; translate; find for yourself the things I know and will not tell you, for greater will be your joy if you come to that knowledge by dint of your own efforts, and only thus will you perhaps learn something my long years have not taught me.”

This man was an erudite Jew of advanced years, with a long white beard; his head was always covered by a black toque and the tails of his black tunic were gathered together beneath a silver star pinned upon his breast; in the center of this star, inscribed in bas-relief, was the number 1.

THE CABALA

The Cabala descended from Heaven, brought by angels to instruct the first man, guilty of disobedience, in the means by which he could regain his primordial nobility and happiness. First, you will love your Eternal God. He is the Ancient of ancients, the Mystery of mysteries, the Unknown of unknowns. Before creating any form upon this earth, He was alone, formless, resembling nothing. Who could conceive of how He was then, before the creation, since He had no form? Before the Ancient among ancients, the Most Concealed among all concealed things, had prepared the forms of kings and their first diadems, there was neither limit nor end. Therefore, he began to sculpt those forms and trace them in imitation of his own substance. He spread out before him a veil, and upon that veil he drew the kings and gave them their limits and their forms; but they could not survive. For God did not dwell among them; God did not reveal himself even in a form that would permit Him to be present in the midst of creation, and thus perpetuate it. The ancient worlds were destroyed: unformed worlds we call sparks. Because it was the work of God, and God was absent from it, Creation failed. Thus God knew that He himself was responsible for the Fall, and for that reason must also be responsible for redemption, for both would occur within the circle of divine attributes.