Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

And God wept, saying: “I am the Most Ancient of the ancients. There is no one who knew my youth.”

THE SECOND CHILD

In the eighth month of Celestina’s pregnancy, Ludovico dared ask her: “Who is the father of your child? Do you know?”

Celestina wept and said no, she did not know. They did not know the father or the mother of the child they had stolen from the castle; now they knew only that she was the mother of the child about to be born, but its father was unknown …

“Did Jerónimo, your husband, never touch you?”

“Never, I swear it.”

“But I did.”

“Both you and Felipe.”

“Our semen was mixed; poor girl, what will you give birth to…?”

“And three old men in the woods, one after another…”

“And the first, then, who was the first?”

“The first man…?”

“Yes…”

“El Señor, Felipe’s father; Felipe did not dare; his father took my virginity on my wedding night…”

“Then you knew…”

“Who Felipe was? I always knew.”

“Oh, Celestina, you should have spoken; those innocents would not have died…”

“Would you have exchanged all the world’s pleasure for all its justice?”

“You are right; perhaps not.”

“And now, would you exchange knowledge for vengeance?”

“Not yet. I need to know, that later I may act.”

“And I, Ludovico?”

“The semen is mixed, I tell you. We shall never know the father of your child.”

“I fornicated with the Devil, Ludovico.”

Celestina’s child was born one dark March night. The midwives came. The air of Toledo was green, and its sky, black silver. The Jews, beneath that dome of blazing phosphorus, sought shelter from the storm with fervent prayers. Lightning flashed like bloodless lances. The child was born feet first. He had six toes on each foot, and a blood-red cross upon his back.

When Ludovico carried the child to be presented at the synagogue, he bowed before his mentor, the erudite ancient. Ludovico glanced up and saw that gleaming on the star upon his protector’s breast was inscribed the number 2.

THE ZOHAR

And thus, the Ancient of ancients, intending to rectify the flaw in His creation, which was His absence from the world and the cause of the common Fall of God and man, conceived of redemption as a way to manifest Himself among men and to remain present among them. But as He could not incarnate in human form, or be represented in any icon — not even as an exclamation point or a period — without forfeiting His unknown form in the unknown, manifested Himself in the very origins of the new life. Which was this: life and thought were intermingled. What is thought, is. What is, is thought. And this being so, all human souls, before their descent into the world, will have existed before God, in Heaven, for there, having been thought, they were. But before coming into the world, each soul is composed of a woman and a man joined together in a single being. Upon descending to earth, the two halves are separated and each half animates a different body. According to the works they do and the paths they follow upon the earth, the souls, if they work with love and follow the paths of love, will be reunited in death. But if they have not done so, the souls will pass through as many bodies as are necessary to incarnate love. Thus the damned souls take possession of living bodies, and fearful is the battle within every man: one former soul, incomplete and condemned to wander because of lack of love, takes possession of a portion of each new soul born in search of love. But as it has existed before God, in Heaven, all that a soul learns on earth it has always known. And this being so, all that has existed in the past will also exist in the future, and all that will be has already been. And this being so, nothing is born or dies completely. Things simply exchange places.

THE SOMNAMBULIST

Celestina soon saw that the resemblance between the two children was not limited to the extreme manifestations of the feet, and the cross, but also that in all other ways, in their bodily proportions and their features, they were identical. She pointed this out to Ludovico; the student could say only that it was a true mystery, and since there was no possible explanation, and as such was its nature, nothing could be done but trust that someday the mystery would reveal itself. He said this grudgingly, for these events, and the reading and translations through which he earned his living in the synagogue, were contrary to the deepest beliefs of his rebellious intelligence: grace is directly accessible to man, without intermediaries; it must be incarnate in matter, direct itself to pragmatic ends, and be explicable by logic.

Ludovico advised Celestina not to venture outside the Jewry, enclosed on four sides by the Puerta del Cambrón, the hills of the Tagus, the old mosque, and St. Eulalia, as it was the couple’s invisible protection and to venture out into the Christian sector would endanger their anonymity. But certain afternoons, driven by a waking dream, Celestina left the two children, taking advantage of their napping, or confident that neighbors would respond to their cries, and wandered like a sleepwalker beyond the limits of the Hebrew quarters.

Perhaps only now, twenty years later, did she dare explain the reason for those somnambulistic walks through steep stone alleyways and ancient Arab markets, to the Castle of San Servando, toward the river, to the Alcántara Bridge, to the northernmost ports, and to the southernmost port, Puerta de Hierro, where the fearful, dense, desolate, extensive, profound Castilian plain dies at the feet of the mountains of Toledo.

She looked at people. She sought one face. Many afternoons went by. She recognized no one. No one recognized her. They were all living. Each had been born before or after or at the same time as she. No dead wandered these Toledan streets, no one who could approach her, take her arm, stop her, and say: “I knew you before I died or you were born.”

THE SEPHIROT

Everything that exists, everything formed by the Ancient (sanctified be his name!), is born of both male and female. The father is the wisdom from which everything is engendered. The mother is intelligence, as it was written: “To intelligence you shall give the name Mother.” From this union is born a son, the major offshoot of wisdom and intelligence. His name is knowledge, or science. These three sum up in themselves everything that has been, is, and will be; at the same time, their union resides within the head of the Ancient of ancients, for He is all and all is He, and thus the Ancient (sanctified be his name!) is represented by the number 3, and has three heads that form but one. God reveals His creation through His attributes, the Sephirot that radiate like rays and extend like the branches of a tree. But all the rays and all the branches emanating from God must return to the number 3, lest they be destroyed in dispersion. Thus the Hebrew alphabet, which is the word of God, has twenty-two letters, and these letters can be combined and arranged in diverse manners, always as long as they are not dispersed and all possible combinations return always to the three mother letters, which are . The first is fire. The second water. The third air. From them is born everything that multiplies. And through them everything returns to unity. And from unity again derive the first three Sephirot, which are the Crown, Wisdom, and Intelligence. The first represents knowledge, or science. The second, the one who knows. The third, what is known. The son. The father. The mother. From this trinity are born all other things, manifesting themselves progressively in love, justice, beauty, triumph, glory, generation, and power. Rash would be he who, traveling this route, attempted to go beyond, for wishing to surpass himself he will know only the disintegration of all that preceded him: power, generation, glory, triumph, beauty, justice, love, intelligence, wisdom, and knowledge; and will only commit himself to the desert of the wandering death, seeking a soul to appropriate so he can reincarnate and reinitiate the circle of life, postponing his return to Heaven and reunion with the lost half of his soul. The holy soul, on the other hand, will stop, recognizing that plenitude possesses limits and that these limits assure that plenitude is plentiful, for infinite disintegration is a vacuum, and that soul will renounce ambitious mirages and will turn back upon its steps to return to the threshold of the three, which in turn is the threshold of return to unity. For it is written that every thing shall return to its origin, as from it, it emerged.