Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“But the sun does not penetrate these painted windows of my carriage. I am at the mercy of my servants. We are dependent upon their seeing the sun. I will not be aware of it. I do not want to be. Every dawn we shall come to a different monastery. Swaddled in rags, I shall descend from this carriage and they will lead me to a windowless cell, then to the crypt beneath the earth; then back to the carriage again, always in shadows … We must take care, señor caballero; we are at the mercy of their deceit. They can pretend that they have seen the sun. They can take advantage of our constant appetite for darkness. You saw them this morning; they are not people to be trusted. They behave as they do from habit, you see; but habit affects only individuals. I, señor caballero, live by heritage. And that affects the species.

“It is not that they are bad people. On the contrary, they serve me devotedly, beyond even ordinary demands. But they must be weary. We have not paused since we fled from that convent. They must believe I have imposed this march on them as punishment for their mistake. The horses are probably frothing at the mouth. The feet of the muleteers are probably badly wounded. The food has probably spoiled. By now perhaps neither Moors nor Jews, not even the beggars, will accept our hares and partridges. How my poor sheriffs and ladies-in-waiting must be sweating!

“Poor ladies! Permit me to laugh; if you desire, imagine my laughter, for your ears would hear only an indignant howl: poor ladies, indeed! I have been deceived, sir, I have been deceived; we arrived at that convent at dawn; I am in the hands of those who serve me; without them I cannot take a step; it is they who must prepare everything, see that we want for nothing, my son is generous and has placed at my command all that you have seen, a guard of forty-three halberdiers and their officers, a majordomo, a councilman, controllers, doctors, treasurers, servants, wine stewards, a sheriff, eight ladies-in-waiting and fifteen duennas (Oh, señor caballero, permit me to laugh, do not be startled by my laughter), fourteen valets, two silversmiths and their apprentices, eighteen cooks and their scullions; the preceptor monk, and thirty-three captives, the false converts from Mohammed and from Jewry, for in this manner my son El Señor, in the course of my wanderings, assures all the villages in Spain that we are steadfast in our combat, that we are tearing out the root of those accursed beliefs, and thus stills the voices that murmur against us, insinuating that all this filth, pretending false conversion, has placed itself in the councils of the kingdom and there debates and disposes in our name; no, let them all see the tenacity of our persecution of the tenacious infidels and how I amuse myself by leading both Jews and Arabs, who despise one another, for it is commonly known that the Jew steals from the Arab and the Arab kills the Jew, and here all are mixed together and humiliated and without any anticipated end to their afflictions amid muleteers, messengers, rough horsemen, hunters, valets, and pensioners, my thirteen priests and a drummer-and-page; everything you have seen and also someone you have not seen: Barbarica, my Barbarica, my faithful companion, the only woman I allow in my presence; you cannot see her because she is very tiny and as she has a most unpleasant defect she insists upon traveling inside a wicker trunk … Señor caballero, what more could one expect of filial gratitude, I who have never asked but one thing, I who willingly would wander these roads alone, bearing my burden on my back, I who without need of this procession would travel from town to town and from cloister to cloister, dressed in sackcloth, begging charity and shelter, contenting myself with the little I could importune: solitude, nakedness, and darkness, by night and by day. I alone, bearing my burden on my back. If I had strength, if it were physically possible …

“That is my desire. Balls and gallantries are not for him, or luxuries and childbirth for me. The merriment has ended and we are alone. I ordered burned all the clothing he had touched; I ordered that in the courtyard they make a pyre of our bed, and although first I wished to remain to my death dressed as I was at the moment I learned of his, until my skirts fell from me in shreds and my slippers grew thin as paper and my undergarments came unstitched of their own accord, later I decided to change my clothing one final time and to wear forever this habit of patched and mended rags. But you can see for yourself; they swaddled me in black rags, they do not allow me to see or breathe, and now I am unable even to undress myself. I had wished differently. I wanted only to eat what was indispensable, bread moistened in water, perhaps gruel, very rarely chicken broth. I wanted to sleep on the ground.

“Can all the sordidness possible to humanity, sir, compensate for the vacuum left by death? I wanted sordidness, I lived with sordidness. But since my son insists on it, I am now dependent upon this scrupulous service in my travels. My rules are simple. You would be surprised, you, señor caballero, who seem to wander through the world with no beast of burden to bear your sorrows and without even a rough pair of leather breeches to protect you from the stones and thorns, you would be surprised, I tell you, at the way the most simple dispositions are complicated the moment they are set apart by ceremony. In the end, the ceremony is converted into the substance, and the marrow of the matter becomes of secondary importance.

“Every evening at dusk they transport me to my carriage; they always draw the curtains and seal the doors and windows; they have the horses hitched in pairs; the black coach rolls behind my carriage; the torches we need to light our way are lighted; we travel through the night; every dawn the monks and a few halberdiers approach the nearest monastery and, with humility and authority, ask for shelter against the unbearable sun; as always they convey me, swathed in rags and carried by the soldiers, to a bare room; after me they bring the body of my husband; they prepare the Requiem Mass; they advise me of the hour, the Mass is celebrated; they leave me there at the foot of the catafalque, my only company my faithful Barbarica; again at dusk they come to get us; the voyage is renewed once the obolus has been paid to the monks.

“Let my grief be respected. Let my solitary company with death be respected. Let no woman approach me! None, except Barbarica, who is hardly a woman and who can awaken no passion or jealousy. I hear their footsteps, their women’s footsteps, women’s voices, rustling taffetas, crackling crinolines, high-pitched laughter, sighs of intrigue; the walls of the convents moan with the voices of love; the hollow walls howl with indecent gratifications; behind the door of every cell some woman weeps and cries out her pleasure … Let no woman dare! I tolerate everything, señor caballero, this costly company my son has imposed upon me, the violation of my declared desire to be anonymous, the mockery of my supreme intent of sacrifice: a poor woman, naked and hungry, widowed and solitary, in rags, dragging along the roads her heavy burden wrapped, like herself, in the sackcloth of beggarhood. I accept everything … except the presence of a woman. Now he is mine, mine alone, forever.

“The first time I kissed him again, señor caballero, I had to break the seal of lead, the wood, the waxen cloths enveloping him. I could, at last, do what I would with that body. They had been generous and lenient with me. Let no one oppose her in anything, let no one do anything that might cause her discontent; do her will and protect her health, and little by little she herself will be convinced of the necessity for burying the corpse: that is what they murmured with their stupid air of compassion.