Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“With a thorn from the limb of a dragon tree I opened anew her virginity,” said Mother Celestina, “and I lined the mouth of her pleasure with a double row of fishes’ teeth, and placed ground glass deep in her woman’s place, then bathed her mound of Venus with drops of bat’s blood; I restitched her with a thread as fine as a hair from your head, exactly the same, but strong as the strings of a cittern, so the cavalier would believe he was taking her for the first time, believing she was I, an ancient virgin, and the day will come, El Señor, Yer Mercy, when they will not recognize themselves in those mirrors…”

SEVENTH DAY

“Today is the seventh day,” said El Señor. “Will you see again, Ludovico? Will you open your eyes?”

“I have already told you, that depends upon you…”

“And what is it you expect of me?”

Ludovico reached out to touch Celestina. The girl dressed as a page took the blind man’s hand as he began to speak with deliberation. “Twenty years ago chance brought together four men and a woman on the beach of the Cabo de los Desastres. At that time you listened to our dreams. You explained to us why they would be impossible. You did not tell us your dream. We could not therefore tell you why it too would be impossible.”

“Do you want me to do that now?”

“Wait, Felipe. You told Pedro that his community of free men would be destroyed, and that in order to survive, its members would be forced to act in the same ways as their oppressors. Freedom would be their goal, but in order to achieve it they would have to employ the methods of tyranny. Therefore, they would never be free.”

“Would that not have been the way? And would that oppression not have been worse than mine, since I have no need to justify my acts in the name of liberty, but they, on the other hand, do? I can be exceptionally benevolent, they cannot. Because no one can demand an accounting of me, I can condone failure; they cannot; they would be condemned by others. If the tyranny of a single man is reprehensible, would the tyranny of many men — who would multiply, never diminish, the oppression of the solitary tyrant — be any different? I am able to judge men remembering that within each breast, as in mine, an angel struggles against a beast; they cannot, for the heresy of liberty is the offspring of the Manichaean heresy, which conceives of all things in irreconcilable terms of good and evil. My enlightened discretion as a despot, Ludovico, is preferable to the deformed libertarian zeal of the mob; their oppression is worse than mine.”

“And you would not allow even one opportunity for Pedro’s dream?”

“Did Pedro’s dream offer a single opportunity to me? Besides, the old man is dead; whether drowned in this world or run through by a lance in the other, the effect is the same.”

“Pedro’s allies are gathered outside your palace. You thought you had rid yourself of his sons by setting your voracious mastiffs on them. But now Pedro has more sons than ever. Your discontented workers. The men of the cities, offended by your capricious decrees. The persecuted races, Moors and Jews, who are as much a part of this Spain as you and I, as Castilian or Aragonese, as Goth, Roman, or Celt. They have been born here, lived and died here; they have left the signs of their labor and their beauty in temples and books. No other land in this old world possesses such a gift: to be the common home of three cultures and three different faiths. Instead of persecuting them and driving them out, search for the way in which they can coexist with Christians, and those three links will form your true fortress.”

“This is my fortress, this palace, constructed as the shrine for the two sacraments which are but one: my power and my faith. I do not wish the chaos, the canker, the Babel you propose to me…”

“Outside the walls of your necropolis and its strict façade of unity, Felipe, another Spain has been gestating, an ancient, new, and varied Spain, the work of many cultures, multiple aspirations, and different readings of a single book.”

“The Book of God can be read only in one manner; any other reading is madness.”

“Without your realizing it, many men, inch by inch, have been gaining their human rights as opposed to your divine right. No, enclosed here, you did not realize that, as you were equally unaware of the emptying of your coffers that forced you to go to the Sevillian moneylender…”

“Not only words and things must coincide: all reading must be the reading of the Divine Word…”

“Be apprised: one city defended the sanctuary it had offered a persecuted man…”

“… for in an ascending scale everything finally flows into one identical being and word: God…”

“Be apprised: another city instituted a tribunal against the royal caprice of one of your ancestors…”

“God. God. The first, the efficient, the final, and the restorative cause for everything that exists.”

“Be apprised: one of the more distant cities began to meet in assemblies of the people in order to debate and vote…”

“And thus, the vision of the world is unique…”

“Be apprised: yet another city granted freedom to serfs emancipated from their serfdom…”

“All words and all things possess a forever established place, a precise function, and an exact correspondence with divine eternity…”

“Be apprised: still another city enjoyed a judge who dictated justice in accordance with laws, not caprice, and men’s eyes were opened…”

“The world of man and the world of God are expressed through a proclamation based upon the word, which can be enriched, combined, and interpreted, yes, but which is in the end immutable, Ludovico…”

“Be apprised: one city said secretly of your mandates: obey, but do not fulfill.”

“But every enrichment, combination, or interpretation of words leads us always to the same hierarchical and unified perspective, to a single reading of reality. And beyond this canon, all reading is illicit.”

“Be apprised: little by little the people of Spain, in secret, have given birth to the institutions of freedom.”

“Oh, honor us, God, oh, honorus, God, oh, onerous God…”

“Gather into one sheaf all these dispersed events. You will see the plant of liberty germinate. Do not destroy it. Give that opportunity to Pedro’s dream.”

“What shall I have gained?”

“Spain will thereby be a new world, a world of tolerance, and proof of the virtues of human exchange. And upon this new world we shall found a truly new world beyond the sea, and do there as we do here, coexist with the native cultures.”

“You are dreaming, Ludovico; I see no possible coexistence with idolaters and flesh-eaters.”

“Our crimes in the name of religion, dynastic power, and belligerent ambition have been no better. If you show yourself to be tolerant here, surely you will be persuasive there. As in that world Quetzalcoatl’s morality was perverted by power, that of Jesus has similarly been perverted here. Can we not return together, freed from terror and slavery, to that original goodness, both here and there?”

“You say that all this depends on me?”

“If you will but open your arms to those who in a spirit of rebellion have joined together in the tile sheds, forges, and taverns on this work site, in nearby towns, and among the delegations in the procession that brought your ancestors here.”

“You say workmen and burghers, Moors and Jews, surround me and threaten me. I already know that. Is there also rebellion in the religious orders?”

“The thirty processions came from far away, from all extremes, from Portugal and Valencia, from Galicia, Catalonia, and Majorca. The secret adepts of the ancient Waldensian, Cathari, and Adamite heresies joined them disguised as monks and nuns, beggars and pilgrims. You are surrounded, Felipe. Will you receive them in peace?”