Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“It is sad that you will not live as long as I, señor caballero; a great pity that you cannot penetrate my dreams and see me as I see myself, eternally prostrated at the foot of tombs, eternally present at the death of Kings, insanely wandering through the galleries of palaces yet to be constructed, mad, yes, and drunk with grief before a loss that only the combination of rank and madness can support. I see myself, dream of myself, touch myself, señor caballero, wandering from century to century, from castle to castle, from crypt to crypt, mother of all Kings, wife of all Kings, surviving all, finally shut up in a castle in the midst of rain and misty grasslands, mourning another death befallen in sunny lands, the death of another Prince of our degenerate blood; I see myself dry and stooped, tiny and tremulous as a sparrow, dressed like an ancient doll, in a loose gown of torn and yellowed lace, toothless, whispering into indifferent ears: ‘Do not forget the last Prince, and may God grant us a sad but not odious memory…’

“A true gift does not admit equal recompense. An authentic offering rises above all comparison and all price. My honor and my rank, señor caballero, prevent my accepting anything in exchange which could be considered superior or even equal to my gift: a total, final, incomparable, and uncompensatable crown or body. I am offering my life to death. Death offers me its true life. At first, being born, I believed I was dying, although unknowing I was born. Later, dying, and knowing, I have again been born. This is my gift. This is the unsurpassable offering of my cult. No, my work is not perfect. But it is sufficient. Now rest. You will forget everything I have told you. All my words have been spoken tomorrow. This procession is moving in the opposite direction from that you know how to measure. We came from death: what kind of life could await us at the end of the procession? And now, because of your perverse curiosity, you have joined us. Notwithstanding, let no man speak evil of my largesse. For you, señor caballero, I have a gift also. They are awaiting us, señor caballero, we have an appointment. Yes … Yes…”

REUNION OF SOUNDS

Silence will never be absolute; this you tell yourself as you listen. Forlornness, yes, possibly; suspected nakedness, that, too; darkness, certainly. But either the isolation of the place or that of forever embraced figures (you say to yourself, señor caballero) seems to convoke that reunion of sound (drum; squeaking carriage wheels; horses; solemn chant, luminis claritatem; the panting of the woman; the distant bursting of waves upon the coast where you awoke this morning, again in another land as unknown as your name) which in the apparent silence (as if it were taking advantage of the exhaustion of your own defenses) builds layer upon layer of its most tenacious, keenest, most resounding insinuations; the silence that surrounds us (señor caballero, she says to you, her head resting upon your knees) is the mask of silence: its person.

You cannot speak; the lips of the lady voyager silence yours, and as she kisses you you are repeating her words, unwillingly you repeat: “Make no mistake, señor caballero; it is my voice, and they are your words issuing from your throat and mouth.” You speak in the name of what she, her body resting upon yours, summons. Like her, you are inertia transformed into a conduit for energy; you were found along the road; you had a different destiny; she separates her lips from yours and you feel too-tiny hands upon your features; they seem to be drawing, tracing, the contours of the face that belongs to you but which you have never seen. The fingers are minuscule, but heavy and rough. They seem to hold colors and stones and feathers that they arrange upon your face, as your former face disappears with every stroke of those moist fingertips. The fingernails scrape against your teeth as if filing them. The plump palms pass through your hair, as if spreading a dye, and as they touch your cheeks, those tiny hands create a beard light as a canary’s plumage; surprised, you rub your jaw. Those strange fingers, so removed from the voice of the woman who seems remote from it, work upon your former skin, and suddenly the monotonous and changeless rhythm of the drum ceases, only the wail trapped behind the clenched lips of the captive Moslem can be heard; then that chant, too, dies. She warned you; in the silence you can hear your hair and fingernails growing, your features changing; the tutelary lines of your palms are erased, rerouted, reborn.

“My husband’s body is mine only in the realm of thought; I give it to you, señor caballero, for you to inhabit, not in the name of my love, but of our power. Such is my offering. You can neither reject it nor make an offering in return.”

You are immersed in something you can only call nothingness. In spite of it all, the drum had been a message from the external world, a thread to rescue you from the impenetrable darkness of the carriage; similarly, so was the dislocated Moorish chant seeking flight toward sacred Mecca. The drum was: the beating of a heart (professionless, possessionless señor caballero). The drum was: the heart of death (Didn’t I tell you, señor caballero, that Dr. Pedro del Agua extracted all the viscera except the heart?). You were listening all the time, not realizing; and once you realize what you are hearing, it is too late; its unaccustomed sound is replaced by tumultuous presences. Then: pandemonium, babel, clamor, hullabaloo, brouhaha: for the first time since you were thrown inside it — you know neither how nor where, such was the combined menace of the beggars and the halberdiers — the carriage stops.

The door of the carriage opens, or rather, light in a riot of white blades pierces the carriage and a woman’s loud wail is heard over the shouts of the crowd and the jabbering gibberish of the astonished halberdiers, who whirl in their tracks, weapons in hand, not knowing whom to attack or whom to defend but instinctively alerted to a danger which because it is intangible is all the more menacing; over the noise of the monks, as incredulous as astounded, running toward the carriage, flapping like windmills in the wind; over the babble of deceitful ladies-in-waiting, who forgetting to maintain their fragile disguises drop their perukes and raise their skirts to reveal twisted, hairy legs; over the song of the beggars, who kneeling around the carriage sing the Alabado, praise to the Sacrament, for as the beggars are always closest to the funeral coach they are the first to see the miracle; and over the finally released shouts of the Arab, who had restrained his song: at last, the soul is One, One is the soul, the ancient Averroës died, but not his science! and over the sound of the Moorish woman, who hides her unveiled face with her hands and croons: the hearts of the fallen reveal a great marvel, to Spain and her realms has come a great evil; the Jews, more circumspect, murmur among themselves: sephirot, sephirot, All emanates from All, and All emanates from One, thirty and two are the roads to Adonai, One is the God, but three are the mothers who give birth to the emanations, three mothers and seven doubles: the Cabala spoke, and hearing them the delirious preceptor monk cried out, I was right, I was right, the Judaizing reverted pig slipped through my thin fingers, he climbed upon the royal carriage, he bewitched Our Most High Queen, he made her prisoner of his philosophy of transformations while I wished to make him prisoner of our truth of unity, the Infidel transformed himself into a snake and a bird, a unicorn and a cadaver, for the Christian is but an image of the Creator who is One and although the Christian be born, suffer, and die he is always one, one, one, not two, not three, not seven, but one, and scullions drop the rotted hares and run to hide among the squat bushes beside the mountain road, and notables tumble from litters suddenly abandoned by bearers, and clay jars break shattered upon rocks, for here all is confusion and babble and buzz and beside you in the carriage a bundle whitened by the glaring sun of this summer afternoon trembles and hides her face behind a cascade of rags, helped by a chubby-cheeked dwarf who watches you through acrid, puffy eyes, smiling a toothless smile.