Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“What must I offer them?”

“The shared governing of this kingdom. Their freedom, but also yours. Although you never told us your dream that afternoon by the seashore, you clearly allowed us to see your fears.”

“I had none. I knew what I was doing. I demonstrated to my father that I was worthy to succeed him, to increase his power and bring unity to its consummation. Do you want me to sacrifice everything to the dispersion now threatening me?”

“You are not alone. I have three sons. You have three brothers.”

“The usurpers, Ludovico?”

“The heirs you never had, Felipe.”

“And that I never desired.”

“Felipe, my life would not be the same without you: I love you that much. In my sons, your brothers, recognize the bond between your solitary unity and the community of many. They are three, remember: unity that increases without dispersion.”

“Be charitable, Ludovico. Let them be patient with me. Let them allow me to disappear in peace. Then they can take everything, and have no need to rebel. Let them allow me to follow my own destiny to its conclusion…”

“Nothingness is not a destiny.”

“Perhaps the power of nothingness would be: my privilege.”

“Will you not share even that?”

“Tell those discontented workers, those rebellious burghers, the Moors and Jews and excommunicated heretics, that out of love they disperse and leave me in peace, enclosed here, without love. That is all I ask.”

“Rebellion is one manner of loving. And your destiny is no longer yours: in spite of anything you can do, it is shared now. Do what you will, those three youths have already diverted the course of your destiny merely by coming here; nothing will be as you had previously planned it; nothing will be as you previously desired it…”

“Unchanging world…”

“Change has begun with the news about the new world. The new world already exists in the imagination or in the desire of all those who heard the third youth speak, or heard of what he told.”

“Brief life…”

“The second youth has prolonged it, fulfilling his destiny as a holy madman, encountering dynastic continuity in the most humble, scorned, and deformed of women, Barbarica, of all those who dwell within your palace the soul most worthy of love, Felipe, and as he joined himself in matrimony, lighting the spark of rebellion, extending life to the dynasty of all men; the strange ways of a destiny that is no longer yours, Felipe…”

“Eternal glory…”

“The first youth based it upon immediate pleasure, desire converted into action, passion rooted in the present … Felipe, the monk Simón dreamed of a world without illness or death. You countered with the dream of your fears: solitude.”

“I said then that if the flesh cannot die, the spirit would die in its name. I would deny men their freedom and men could not barter slavery against death. Thus Simón’s dream would be defeated.”

“And you added that you would live forever enclosed in your castle, protected by your guards, never daring to go out, fearing to know something worse than your own impossible death: the spark of rebellion in the eyes of your slaves.”

“You say that I am surrounded today, and that it is not a spark but a bonfire. But you see: I am not afraid.”

“No, you said something different. Try to remember with me. A conversation on the beach twenty years ago. Not that you would fear the simple and irrational menace of the multitude, but rather the rebellion that merely ceased to recognize you. You would kill no one. You would simply decree the non-existence of every person. Why would they not have paid you in the same coin? This would be the world’s vengeance: to kill you by forgetting you exist.”

“Do I ask anything more? But today’s rebels, Ludovico, do recognize me, since they have challenged me…”

“Perhaps this is your last opportunity. If you do not recognize them, your horrible dream will be fulfilled. You will be a phantom in your own castle.”

“Do I ask anything more? You forget that the other time I ordered them all killed.”

“I love you as much as I hate you, and I cannot explain why. You condemned my dream to sterile and solitary pride. You were right. The grace of the knowledge acquired by a single man may perhaps kill God, but it may also kill the one who obtains it. Today I am almost able to say that my hatred toward the egoism of science is capable of casting me once again into the arms of an abominable belief in the Christian God. I have told you my story. I did not follow the path you spoke of that afternoon. Fate joined me mysteriously to the destiny of three children and the wisdom of many men in many places. This I learned: that grace is shared knowledge. No man can keep it for himself. Shared knowledge is true creation, always fragile, maintained by many desires, errors, jubilations, fears, unexpected losses, and sudden discoveries. I cannot separate myself from the three lives I have protected, from my conversations with the learned doctor in the Synagogue of the Passing, from the dream I had on the rooftop in Alexandria, from the ten years that perhaps I lived with the Citizens of Heaven in the deserts of Palestine, from the words of the one-eyed magus in Spalato, from the vision of Valerio Camillo’s theater in Venice, from the crusade of the free spirit in Flanders, from our encounter with the old man in the windmill and the tales he told us, from the dream of my third son in the new world, and from the company of both Celestinas, the old and the young. I am all that I know, plus these lives, these stories, and these words. I offer them to you in order that, through all these events, ideas, and destinies joined together here today, I may offer you what few men have had, Felipe: a second opportunity…”

“Poor Celestina. She longed so for complete love. Have we ever known it? Did we three have it as we made love those nights in the castle? What excitement, Ludovico! To kill by day and make love by night. My youth ended there; perhaps my life…”

“Felipe, listen, a second opportunity. Let them enter: do not kill them this time, do not repeat history, win your freedom, everyone’s freedom, by proving that history is not unalterable, purge for all time your first crime by avoiding the second.”

“I did not know then. How strange. What a distant memory, Ludovico. I feared not being recognized because I feared not to be loved. I wished to be loved. I loved Isabel. I loved Inés. Yes, I loved the pleasure our companion, the young Celestina, gave me. Ludovico: I have known the old woman, Mother Celestina. She does not remember me. Along with her lips she passed her memory to this woman who accompanies you. Mother Celestina, Ludovico: see the destiny of love, just see…”

“A second opportunity, Felipe, do not repeat the crime of your youth…”

“But today, do you see, Ludovico? I fear nothing because I love no one; do you see, Ludovico? will you finally open your eyes?”

“I shall open them on the day of the millennium.”

“What day will that be?”

“Remember the prophecy of the magus of Spalato. The Sybyl announced the coming of the last Emperor, the King of peace and abundance, the triumph of true Christianity, who will vanquish the Antichrist, who will go to Jerusalem, deposit his crown and mantle on Golgotha, and abdicate in favor of God, initiating the third age of history in expectation of the eternal judgment that will put an end to history. It is written that this King will govern over all the peoples of the world, uniting them in one single flock, rex novus adveniet totum ruiturus in orbem. You must be that providential monarch, Felipe, in my name and yours, I beg you, in the name of our lost youth and our regained lives…”