Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

And that night the two of them slit the throats of all the inhabitants of the town in the jungle. Then they made love.

At dawn, she said to him: “Twenty-five are the days of your destiny in this land. You shall remember twenty, because in those days you will have acted. Five you will forget, for they are the masked days you will set aside from your destiny to save against your death.”

“And at the end of those days, what will happen to me?”

“I shall await you at the summit of the pyramid, beside the volcano.”

“Shall I see you again? Shall I sleep with you again?”

“I promise. For one year you will have everything. You will have me every night.”

“Only a year…? And then?”

The Lady of the Butterflies did not answer.

THE DEFEAT

Felipe, El Señor, Defensor Fides, in the name of the Faith he defended and the sacred power of Rome, had laid siege to the Flemish city where the hordes of the heresiarch and the Brabantine Duke who protected them had taken final refuge.

“All is lost,” said the Duke.

He stroked a mole on his cheek and again looked at Ludovico and his young companion. “That is to say, everything is lost for you. I shall make peace with Don Felipe and with Rome. If I lay down my arms I shall have gained something: the right to collect tithes, plus privileges of navigation and letters of commerce for my industrious subjects. And without need of accords, but thanks to the crusade of the heretics, I shall have discredited both the Church, which was so easily challenged and humiliated by your throng, and the mystics who participated in such excesses. The true triumph of this war belongs to the secular and lay cause. The men of the future will remember that it is possible to burn effigies, disband convents, and expel monks, converting the unproductive riches of the clergy into the sap of commerce and industry. They will also remember that mobs guided by mysticism level fields, destroy harvests, harass the burghers, and violate their women. Thus, I shall have triumphed, if I lay down my arms. A thing I shall do. However, they are asking the head of this youth. You, blind man, you may go free. It is a sad thing, but no one sees any danger in you. Go now.”

Ludovico hid in the shadows of the Cathedral. There was a terrible odor of vomit and excrement. He heard the Teutonic voices of Felipe’s mercenaries. He smelled Felipe’s presence; he knew that body, he had loved it, he had possessed it. He spoke to him from the shadows. He did not open his eyes. Not yet. Phantoms do not frighten us because we cannot see them: phantoms are phantoms because they do not see us.

Then he fled. It was night. He kept his ear to the ground. He followed the sounds of the retreat of the Duke and his men. He hitched up the cart. A blind man with two coffins. Dead from hunger, from the war, from the plague, what did it matter? They allowed him to pass beyond the walls. He followed the sounds of the flight of the Duke and his men.

He was guided by the dark drums of execution.

Naked, his hands bound, the young and beautiful heresiarch with the blood-red cross upon his back knelt beside the stump of a tree and laid his head upon it.

The executioner raised high the ax.

SING YOUR TROUBLES

“I only promised to take them to the next town,” the blind man protested, “where I am going to bury two of my sons who died of the cholera. I’ve never seen them before.”

They allowed him to continue on his way. They set free the scramble-brained old man in his town-without-a-name, amid the jeers and the anguish of the priest, the barber, the bachelor, and the niece, for everyone knew about the madness of Señor Quijano, but they placed a chain about the neck of the youth, and handcuffed him and strung him to the chain gang.

The captain of the guard said to a subaltern: “Did you see that? That youth has a cross upon his back, and six toes on each foot…”

“So, that means nothing to me…”

“Don’t you remember almost twenty years ago now, when we were serving in the castle guard?”

“Nah, so we served in the guard, so…”

“El Señor gave orders to place traps for wolves through all the district, and each Saturday we went out to hunt the beasts; we were to kill immediately any she-wolf we saw, or any child with those same signs of the cross and the feet; don’t stop to make sure of anything, he said, kill them quickly, don’t you remember?”

“God’s blood, how should I remember, it’s been so long…”

Sing your troubles, they said to him in the dungeons of Tordesillas; they tied a cloth over his face, covering his nostrils and cutting off his breath, and through the cloth they poured streams of water which ran down the back of his nose into his throat; speak, who are you? you’d better speak up, wretch, for in any case you were condemned to death twenty years ago, no one will ask about you, speak, who are you?… I’m drowning, drowning, drowning …

THE CIRCULAR DREAM

The black, blood-bedaubed priests took him by the hands and arms, and amid smoking censers, forced him to lie upon the stone at the summit of the pyramid that faced the throne of the woman with the painted lips …

He smiled sadly. To reach her he had fled from village to village, through the jungles and valleys of the new world, until he reached the temple beside the volcano; employing all the tricks of the rogue, he had deceived, he had assumed the role of a blond white god who according to the legends of the natives was to return from the East, he had accepted their gifts, he had asked that it all be converted into gold, he had laden himself with heavy pouches, he had made love to the women, he had explored every facet of his cleverness, he had demanded sacrifices in his name, he had presided over the pageantry of death, more, more, always more, the god is insatiable, he exploited their weakness and fear, he ordered the death of the old because they were of no service, of the young because they could serve as nourishment, and of children because they were innocent, he had set people against people, he demanded war as proof of devotion, he knew the burning of villages, he had seen cadavers on the plains, and in his ascent from the coast to the high plain he had promised each nation to free it from the tribute exacted by the next strongest, only to subject it to the taxes of the next nation along his path; he had created a chain of tributes worse than any servitude previously known in these lands. He justified himself by saying he did it in order to survive; one single man against an empire … had history ever known an undertaking comparable to his? Alexander’s armies, Caesar’s legions; he was alone, Ulixes, son of Sisyphus, breaking forever from his father’s fatalism: this time the rock, pushed to the summit, would crown it forever. But who would know of this odyssey, who would tell it to generations to come? Was it worth the effort to perform memorable feats with no witnesses to sing of them?

He alone.

The woman of the painted lips whispered into his ear: “You remember nothing more?”

“No.”

“You have forgotten the five days?”

“I have lived but twenty.”

“And the beautiful year we spent together, you favored and attended, you and I making love?”

“I remember nothing.”

He had survived. The black priest raised the flint knife and with a single, swift movement drove it down toward the youth’s heart …

At the instant the stone knife touched his breast, he awakened.

He breathed a sigh of relief. He was sleeping beside a tree on a pile of dried leaves. He was trembling with cold, and he attempted to stretch his limbs. His hands were tied. He tried to struggle to his feet. He fell back among the damp leaves. A rope bound his feet. Two soldiers walked toward him, cut the rope binding his feet, and led him to a clearing in the forest.