Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“His purifying task completed, he will go to Jerusalem, he will deposit his crown and mantle upon Golgotha and will abdicate in favor of God…”

“And does history end there?” Ludovico asked of a one-eyed itinerant Greek with hair like black serpents and wearing a black toga as they sat eating fried hake served on lead plates. “Does your story end there?” he asked of this man who disseminated the auguries of the Tiburtine Sibyl beside the busy Porta Argentea, gate in the walls of Spalato.

THE PROPHECY OF THE THIRD AGE

“No,” mumbled the magus. “Three are the ages of man. The first age of the world passed beneath a reign of faith, when the elect, still weak and enslaved, were not yet capable of freeing themselves. Their law was the law of Moses; that age was continued until the One came who said: ‘If the Son free you, then shall you be truly free.’ The second age was initiated by Christ and continues unto the present hour; it frees us in respect to the past, but in no way affects the future. St. Paul spoke wisely: ‘We know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face.’”

The magus cleaned his teeth with a fishbone. “The third age will be initiated in these days we are living. It is imminent. For have we not seen everywhere the fulfillment of the prophecies Matthew put in the mouth of Jesus, that nation shall rise against nation, that there shall be earthquakes and famines and pestilences and all manner of tribulations, and false prophets shall rise, iniquity abound, and the love of many wax cold: the world is growing old and deteriorating. Are we not governed by a false Pope and a King of unchaste countenance? It is time now for the last Emperor to appear and unite all nations into a single flock, for the Sibyl has said: ‘Rex novus adveniet totum ruiturus in orbem…’”

“And does history end then?” Ludovico insisted.

The magus asked for something to drink. He gulped grossly. He wiped his lips on a black sleeve. “Good does not belong to the age of men. Its triumph is partial. Absolute evil must come so that absolute good may triumph. Absolute good is divine. It is not of the world of men, as is absolute evil. But once the third epoch is begun in peace and abundance — man’s precarious blessings — the Antichrist will appear to destroy them in all his fury.”

He looked at Ludovico with his cat eyes and continued: “He is absolute evil. Only if he incarnates in the future will history know its apotheosis: the future ends there. Absolute evil will provoke absolute good. The Son of Man will descend upon clouds from Heaven, bearing power and great majesty. And He will send forth His angels with resounding trumpets and gather His elect from the four winds. He will sit upon His throne of glory and to the just He will give possession of the kingdom prepared for them since the creation, saying unto them: For I was hungry, and ye gave me meat; naked, and ye clothed me. And to the damned He will say: Depart from me, and will cast them into the everlasting fire, saying: I was a stranger and ye took me not in, sick and in prison, and ye visited me not. And both the elect and the damned will ask: When did we or did we not all these things? and the Son of Man will say unto them: Inasmuch as ye have done it even unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me; but inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. Each shall occupy his place in Eternity. And there will be no further human history.”

Exalted by his own words, the magus had risen to his feet.

Ludovico looked up to ask: “How will you recognize the Antichrist?”

The magus embraced one of the three boys, who always accompanied Ludovico, listening to his every word; he said only: “Bird of prey; black penis. Where the cadaver is, there will the vultures gather.”

“But first, the good King of whom you spoke, how…?”

The magus kissed the cheek of Ludovico’s second son. “A cross upon the back. Six toes upon each foot. He will conquer. He will be conquered.”

“Where?”

“In the house of the scorpions.”

“What place is that?”

“In the only land with the name of Vespers: Spain.”

The magus knelt beside the third child, and other disciples, of other persuasions, who had gathered to listen to him, were offended by the Greek’s allusions to false prophets; and the mob — upon occasion so credulous, at other times so malicious — began to mock the magus, and they shouted at him, some laughing, others somber, all defiant: “If you are a magus and know so much, perform a miracle, or we cannot believe what you have told here…”

Then this terrible one-eyed man with hair like serpents withdrew a scimitar he guarded beneath his black toga and with unexpected strength and ire, as if possessed of a hundred arms, cut the hand from one man, the tongue from another, with two rapid strokes pricked the eyes from one man’s sockets, and spat a thick black stinking phlegm upon another’s face, and this man’s face melted like wax; and to all, the magus cried out: “Were you blind, you would see; maimed, your limbs would be restored; mute, you would speak; sick, you would be healed, but as it is not thus, see how miraculously you have lost eyes, hands, tongue, and health. Men of little faith: who will convince you?”

With clubs and fists, with daggers and hatchets, weeping and vociferating, this crowd fell upon the Greek magus, and tore him limb from limb.

His members were thrown into the sea: the head and the two halves of his trunk, split from his pelvis through his breastbone, like any beast hunted in the forest.

“Never go barefoot, run and play along the beaches and sea walls, but never remove your shoes, never bare your back, always be well covered, listen, speak, mix with everyone, hear them all, learn, survive, compare what we learned in the desert community with what we are living here, we have things to do when you are old enough, something to do together, forget nothing, when you are fourteen we shall leave this city, each will go his separate way, we shall meet again for the final episode, now I want you, with me, to learn, now you are becoming men, I shall gather together everything I know, what little I know, and we shall channel a new course for all this confusion of beliefs, rebellions, and aspirations, we shall join them with my dream on the beach, the promised millennium will take place within history and will be different from Eternity, the world will be renewed within history, without oppression, Pedro, without prohibitions, Celestina, without plagues, Simón, without gods, Ludovico; we shall not return to the original age of gold, nor shall we find it at the end of history, the age of gold is within history, it is called the future, but the future is today, not tomorrow, the future is present, the future is immediate, or it is nothing; the future is here, or there is no such place; the future is now, or there is no such time; we are the future, you three, I…”

THE GYPSY

After three days Ludovico and the three boys descended to the beach of Spalato beneath the high walls of the city-palace in search of the remains of the mutilated Greek magus. The boys agreed that as the one-eyed magus had embraced one, kissed a second, and knelt beside the third, he had asked them to perform this act.

The dirty sands were deserted. Ludovico and the boys searched among the spoils of the sea for the parts of the magus’s body, but finding nothing they sat down to rest and admire the sunset over the yellow waters of the Adriatic.

Then, as if emerging out of nothing (but the sand deadened her steps), they saw walking toward them clothed in red and saffron robes a gypsy woman of the race so named because they had come from Egypt, one of the many prostitutes and thieves with barbaric earrings dangling in their pierced ears that thronged the streets and houses of Spalato selling their favors, telling fortunes, and at times working as servants, for there is no better guardian of things that can be stolen than a thief himself, and this is the age-old wisdom: children of night, guardians of their mother.