Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

The woman orders with a new wail: “Take him! Don’t let him escape!”

For you have leapt from the carriage, poor wretch, searching for the gray eyes of the drummer amid the throng of terrified servitors, who look as if they were participating in a hecatomb. Finally the halberdiers find an outlet for their energies and, deathly afraid, prepare to detain you: the miracle glows in the innocence of their eyes. They have not known what to do; they sniffed danger, they heard the woman’s voice; they were grateful for the ferociously shouted order; they prepared to fulfill it; but when they saw you they hesitated, dumfounded, as if you were untouchable; only a new order from the woman traveling in the leather carriage has impelled them, terrified, to seize you.

You do not resist. Returning your gaze, you have just seen the only serene eyes in this cortege of madmen. You ignore the beggars who are beginning to kneel around you, trembling, heads lowered, stretching out their hands to touch you as they would a saint, murmuring words soliciting your favor: the same beggars who shortly before wanted to beat you to death in order to steal any remains from your shipwreck.

Two maids lift the woman wrapped as always in the rags hiding her face, and lead her thus veiled to the funeral carriage. The dwarf descends from the leather carriage, tripping and stumbling; she wears a dress of red brocade much too large for her, sleeves turned up, skirts caught up in a thick roll about her waist. The throngs of servants and companions open a respectful path to the invalid and the dwarf; you trail behind them, receiving no such respect.

They pause beside the black coach. A horrendous silence descends. The maids assist their bundle, helping her approach the glass of the coffin fastened to the coach floor. Fleetingly, two slits of eyes glisten through the rags, but now the woman does not cry out. Following the silence there is an incredulous exclamation, and as the beggars had done before, all those present fall to their knees around the funeral coach. They have all seen the same thing. A corpse dressed in the clothing you wore this morning when the waves tossed you upon the shores of the Cabo de los Desastres, clothing that would be unremarkable were it not that it had been ravaged by fire and sea and sand; they say the tattered dun breeches and strawberry-colored doublet cling, still damp, to the dead flesh resting in the coffin of black silk, cushioned, decorated around all four sides with black brocade flowers, beneath a carapace of glass. And upon the face (is the face the same face?) a cloth or mask of garnet and yellow and green and blue feathers; and in the place of the mouth, a circle of spiders. The broken arrows that form the nervure of the mask rest upon the neck, temples, and the forehead of the cadaver no longer that of the Very High Prince and Lord dragged from monastery to monastery by his widow: formerly only the beggars and captives had seen this miracle, now the courtiers and servants of the lady traveler also see it.

And before such convincing evidence everyone begins to stare at you, poor caballero, flogged, dragged through the sand, thrown into the sealed carriage; and as their astonishment is so great they force you to examine yourself, touch the velvet cap that smells of benzoin, the medallion resting on a silken shirt redolent of aloes, to look at the rose-colored hose, and the fur cape still retaining an aroma of clove; amazed, you rub a jaw covered by a new beard you sense is golden. Everyone is kneeling around you, only the rag-swathed Lady sustained by her maids remains standing, while her vast company of halberdiers and notaries, cooks and scullions, sheriff and deceitful ladies, cross themselves and chant prayers of praise, and the Jews murmur: sephtori, sephtori, All is emanation and the world is transformed, and the Arabs grasp the opportunity to praise Allah and to ask themselves whether this portent bodes good or ill for them. The dwarf kneels also; with a grimace of false respect on her chubby face she crosses herself, but when she notices the multicolor stains on her tiny hands she quickly hides them among the folds of her voluminous dress.

Still not revealing her face, the Lady says: “My son will be happy to see you.” And she orders her servants: “I want to kiss the feet of the Prince.”

And they lower the bundle they hold to your feet and she kisses them and now you alone are standing, the honored caballero who doesn’t know his own name or his own face, and fears now never to recover them, and before you, you see the black-clad drummer with the gray eyes and tattooed lips, and from those intently staring eyes and those moving but silent lips you read — a moment before you fall, fainting, stranger to yourself, enemy to yourself, enemy to your new body, overwhelmed by the black invasion of the incomprehensible, your former, although unremembered life, battling against your new and unsought mortal shell — the single message: “ Salve. We have awaited you.”

But as night falls, in this confusion of sounds, mute are the words of the drummer, resonant those of the invalid voyager, the wandering phantom that found you along the way, bring him here, bring him to my carriage, march, march, we shall not stop again, our painful pilgrimage has ended, they are awaiting us, the sepulchers are prepared, sheriff, notary, halberdier, without pause, march, toward the Pantheon of Kings erected by my son El Señor Don Felipe, there we shall find repose, the living and the dead, march, away from the coast toward the high plains, toward the palace constructed from the heart of the mountains, identical to the mountains: to our tombs, all.

THE WORKERS

Where are the rockrose shrubs where we used to shelter our flocks, eh? Martín smiled and sank his hands into the lime basin, glancing at his two companions, who were preoccupied with slaking the lime. Where will they find succor and shelter now in time of storm and wind and snow and all the other misfortunes we know so well? Nuño started toward the lime kilns, and Catilinón said they’d done a good job, and that it would last well. Martín felt the lime burning his arms and withdrew them from the tank.

As they walked, they cleaned their arms and hands on their chests and shirt fronts, passing the day laborers, who were sinking the foundations until they touched solid ground and then throwing the excavated dirt outside the enclosures. It was one o’clock in the afternoon and time to rest and eat. Martín shouted this to the laborers on the crane, as if his voice could be heard in the midst of all the commotion on the platforms and scaffolding.

“Hup!”

“Easy!”

“Pull, now!”

“Hold it, there!”

“Stop!”

“A little over, there!”

“Back!”

“A little more!”

On this very spot there had been a spring that never went dry, Martín smiled again, and beside it the woods that were the only refuge for the animals, winter and summer. Catilinón winked his eye and guffawed. “Ah, but you’re in such a state now, my pretty, we’ll never have pleasure of you again!” And everyone laughed heartily with him.

All the stone was carved at the quarry; at the work site and in the chapel one could scarcely hear the ringing blows of the hammer. Martín and his friends ate in one of the tile sheds, seated on bricks; then they bade each other farewell and Martín walked to the quarry; he ran the back of his hand across his mouth and picked up his chisel. The supervisor walked among the workers, repeating with kindness and gentleness the specifications for this particular work, for these lands had never seen its equal and it was difficult for the old shepherds converted into stoneworkers to construct a palace conceived in the mortified imagination of El Señor; as the supervisor continually reminded the workers, El Señor wished to offer to Heaven some noteworthy service for favors and intercessions performed. Round the columns very carefully, said the supervisor, and Martin applied his chisel with care; easy now, smiled the estate master, just two light taps of the hammer, no pit marks, no rose or chip or bump anywhere; so Martín had only to smooth it a bit with fine chisel strokes; in that way it was smooth all over. Martín looked up at the pounding sun, missing the rockrose, the flock, and the spring that never dried either in winter or in summer.