Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

THE SEVEN DAYS OF EL SEÑOR

Many years later, walking through the deserted galleries of the palace, shading his eyes with one hand to protect them from the light filtering through the white leaded windows, El Señor would remember his last encounters with the companions of his youth, Ludovico, the student, blind of his own will, bald, shoulders bowed, dressed in beggar’s rags, his face marked by the exertion of memory and questioning, and Celestina, yes, Celestina, no, not young, not that young, so like the other, the bewitched girl they had both made love to twenty years before, but no, not that similar, an illusion, an impression caused by certain features, her figure, gestures that could not withstand close examination: a resemblance born of possession or of memory …

Ludovico and Celestina, twenty years later. Somber pleasure illuminated Felipe’s pale face; he knew everything; everything was once again a succession of questions; for seven days he had asked what he had already known; they remained in the bedchamber, they ate there, they slept there, at fixed hours alguaciles and stewards, chamberlains and guards attended them; Brother Julián officiated at the early Mass, but at night El Señor asked to be left in total solitude in the chapel; seven days and seven nights: El Señor recalled the narrative told alternately by Ludovico and Celestina: the number 7, fortune, the progression of life, time moves upon seven wheels …

FIRST DAY

“The sickness…”

“The women of the people, with their sweaty underarms and wide hips, infected your father.”

“The accursed malady…”

“Your father infected me when he took me on the night of my wedding in the grange.”

“Corruption…”

“Celestina transmitted your father’s malady to you when you and I had her in the castle of the crime.”

“Then you were also infected…”

“I never touched another woman.”

“I never touched my wife.”

“Did you know carnal love with any other woman?”

“With a novitiate who then made love with one of these you call your sons…”

“My sons are incorruptible.”

“But they are sons of corruption: brothers…”

“By destiny, not by blood.”

“No, Ludovico, at least two of them are my father’s sons…”

“How do you know that?”

“Celestina’s child is my father’s son.”

“I copulated with three old men in the forest, Felipe; with you, with Ludovico … with the Devil.”

“The enigma would not be so dark if all three had been born at the same time from the same womb, like the brothers of old.”

“And the son of the she-wolf is my father’s son…”

“But these … my will has made them brothers: my sons.”

“And if two of them are my father’s sons, then the third must be also.”

“Who is the mother of the child Ludovico and I stole from the castle?”

“I do not know, Celestina. They are all my father’s sons. There is no other possible bond…”

“There were two women in the chamber where I found him.”

“And if they are my father’s sons, all three are my brothers…”

“A scrubbing maid…”

“Bastards…”

“And a young Lady…”

“Silence, Ludovico, for the love of Heaven, silence!”

Then, in response to Ludovico and Celestina’s story, El Señor told them of his father’s death and his mother’s voluntary sacrifice, her mutilation, and her decision to live accompanying forever the embalmed cadaver of her husband.

When night fell, he had gone into the chapel he imagined to be deserted, to calm his soul praying before the altar and the painting from Orvieto, when behind him he heard terrible curses; he looked toward the double rows of tombs, and there, poking into each of them, he could see the crooked figure of a woman who seemed brazenly to be admonishing the corpses: “Curses on you! May you be eaten up by canker. May your pores ooze stinking water and evil nits eat your flesh! Who beat me to the robbing of these rich tombs?”

El Señor took her by the arm and asked who she was; the cloaked woman fell to her knees, looked up at El Señor, and begged his forgiveness; she said she was called Mother Celestina, and that in all Spain there was no more honorable woman to be found, that His Maj’sty could ask in the tanneries along the Manzanares, her word was as good as gold in every tavern there; a devout and honorable woman she was who in her pilgrimage had come to this holy place of wide-spread and well-deserved fame to worship the holy relics of El Señor’s ancestors; and although she be the first to do so, she would not be the last, for such a notable mausoleum would attract multitudes desirous of sharing El Señor’s pain and paying homage to his affliction.

El Señor yanked back the hood hiding the woman’s face; he knew it was she, the girl of the wedding in the grange, the bewitched girl Celestina his father had raped because he, Felipe, did not possess the spirit for it and was saving his virginity for his English cousin, the beautiful Lady of the curls and starched petticoats. Here was a Celestina with no memory of anything, having transmitted everything she had known and experienced to the other woman, the one disguised as a page, who with Ludovico awaited him a few steps away in the bedchamber; Felipe tied up loose ends, Felipe felt rejuvenated, his project against the world was regaining strength, Celestina was an unforeseen ally, she did not remember him but he could reconstruct the youthful face behind that mask marked by greed, promiscuity, gluttony, and wine, the alert and malicious eyes that remembered nothing, in truth, because she lived for the day, her flesh swollen, lax, and wrinkled, the mouth toothless, the nose crisscrossed by broken veins: Celestina …

“But you say someone beat you here … Who?”

“But look here, Yer M’rcy, there’s a leg missing here, and a head there, and here fingernails, and there the scorpion…”

“Who?”

They heard weeping and sighing: Celestina took El Señor’s hand, placed a finger to her lips, and they walked between the royal sepulchers until they came to the tomb of Felipe’s father: there they found Barbarica sniveling and whimpering by the open tomb, and in it, upon the remains of the former whoring Señor, lay the new Idiot Prince brought there by the Mad Lady. The dwarf was startled when she saw El Señor and Mother Celestina; she crossed herself, joined her hands in supplication to Heaven and to earth, do not castigate me, Señor, but see how my husband lies sleeping, nothing brings him to his senses, he lies there just as if he’d been drained; your mother the Queen promised us your throne, but it’s a fine job we’ll do of occupying it — on that distant day when you’re no longer with us, Señor, and may God keep you for many years — if my sovereign husband is stretched out here stupefied forever upon the embalmed remains of your father, El Señor, see …

Felipe affectionately stroked Barbarica’s head. “Do you truly wish to reign, my little monster, or would you prefer to be with your lover forever?”

“Oh, Señor, both things, if it please Your Mercy.”

“You cannot do both. You must choose.”

“Oh, most generous Prince, then I wish to remain forever with him…”

“Do you know the monastery of Verdín?” El Señor asked Mother Celestina.

“There is no monastery, Señor, where I cannot count a brother among the friars.”

“Are you discreet?”

“Have no fear, Most Munificent Prince, I am not one of those women they pillory as witches for selling girls to the abbots…”

“Do you know what happens in Verdín?”

“It is a place of bed-fast people, Señor, where all those who tire of life, or of whom life has tired, exhausted old men, disillusioned youths, dishonored families, take to their beds and pledge never to arise until death carries them off feet-first. In short, whoever goes there makes a vow to keep himself between his sheets and never rise again, and it is a marvel to see a father, a mother, children, sometimes even servants, lying there one beside the other, some sighing, some weeping, one pretending to sleep, another saying aloud the Magnificat, some avoiding looking at the others, some staring at each other absently or with enigmatic smiles, the old appealing for a swift passing, the young soon accustomed to living that life, even believing there is no other, that the world outside is pure illusion. No one lasts very long. Death takes pity on those who imitate it.”