Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“Patience and obedience,” Cato winked cockily, “for those who don’t flee or rebel or dispute with their Lords pass from serfs to vassals, from vassals to laborers, from laborers to landholders, and there’s always a way to a fortune for the person who knows where to look.”

“And what will your road be, poor Catilinón, for here we all chew the same chick-pea, we all cook with the same measure of oil, and every man of us washes with the same square of Castile soap.”

And cock-of-the-walk Cato crowed: “A man like me would make a good servant for some high Lord. And a servant sees his Liege mother-naked, and hears him when he shits.”

The old man who tended the forge sighed, rose, and declared: “When my father came to these lands he was so poor and desperate that he sold himself as a serf to El Señor’s father. He had to present himself at the church with a cord around his neck and a maravedi coin on his head to signify his lowly rank. El Señor promised him protection, a job, and land to work. But now the land no longer yields any fruit; we might as well sow in the sea, for the land’s going bad on us and God and his saints seem to have fallen asleep; brothers, we’ll have eaten up our own livelihood in this construction, and in so doing we’ll have dried up the land that once nourished us. We need to think about what’s going to happen in the future, and forget what’s gone before.”

ALL MY SINS

He sees him kneeling on his prie-dieu, his hands folded upon the velvet armrest and his dog drowsing at his feet. He will spend the morning contemplating the man contemplating the painting.

The painting: Bathed in the luminous pale air of Italian spaces a group of naked men with their backs turned to the viewer are listening to the sermon of the figure standing in front of a small stone temple in the angle of an enormous empty piazza whose rectilinear perspectives fade into a gauzy, greenish, transparent background. Everything in the figure of the orator bespeaks his identity: the sweet nobility of his bearing, the white drapery of his tunic, the admonitory hand with the forefinger pointing toward Heaven; the blend of energy, pain, and resignation upon the face, the straight nose, thin lips, the chestnut-colored beard, the golden highlights in the long hair, the clear forehead, the very fine eyebrows. But something is lacking and something is overdone. The head is not encircled by the traditional halo. And the eyes are not directed toward Heaven as they should be.

El Señor buried his head between his interlocked hands and over and over repeated (each word amplified by the preceding word, because in this crypt the echo would be inevitable): Should anyone say that the formation of the human body is the work of the Devil and that conception in the maternal womb is diabolical, then anathema, anathema, anathema it be.

Thrice he struck himself upon the breast and the mastiff growled uneasily. Blows and growls echo hollowly against the arches, walls, and bare floors. El Señor, coughing, wrapped himself in his cape and repeated the three anathemas.

The painting: The eyes are not directed toward Heaven. Cruel, or elusive, bearing the secret of a different sign, too close or too distant to what they seemed to observe, not visionary as one might expect, not generous, not inclined to sacrifice, unaware of the fatal denouement of the legend, sensual eyes, yes; eyes for the earth, not for Heaven? These eyes stare at the naked men and they are staring too low.

Hidden behind a column in the crypt, Guzmán could have said what El Señor was thinking as he beat his breast; he was thinking he shouldn’t be kneeling there examining a painting in order to examine his own conscience, he should be actively employed in hastening the construction that, for one reason or another, was unduly behind schedule. The various processions ordered by El Señor were on the road; the scouts and messengers had reported seeing them approaching the palace, dragging their heavy burdens over bare mountains and wooded mountains, along the coastal roads, stopping at inns, sheltered among the pines, abandoned in mastic-tree thickets, mired down along the highways, but advancing inexorably toward the place appointed by El Señor: the mausoleum of the palace. And here was El Señor, with eyes and energy only for the supposed mystery of an Italian painting.

Even the growling of the dog Bocanegra could be interpreted as a reproach against its master. Hadn’t it been he who had dictated unequivocally: Construct with all haste?

The palace: Above and outside on the vast surrounding plain, blocks of granite were piled high. Sixty master quarriers were working the marble, and oxcarts laden with new stones were arriving every moment. Masons, carpenters, smiths, weavers, goldsmiths, and woodworkers had set up their workshops, their taverns, and their huts on the flat field beneath the burning sun, while the original constructions were being raised beside the chestnut grove, the last refuge on plains and mountains devastated by the fury and urgency of building this edifice ordered by El Señor Don Felipe upon his return from the victory against the heretics of Flanders: the ax had felled forever the pine groves that had been intended to shelter the palace against the extremities of summer and winter. It’s true, thought Guzmán, that El Señor had said, “The woods will guard against the cold northerly winds of winter, and zephyrs and west winds will cool us in summer.” But even more true was the fact that today the stripped lands could offer neither; the good intentions of El Señor and the exigencies of construction had not been compatible. And El Señor, always enclosed in the crypt, was unaware of what had happened.

El Señor coughed; his nose and throat felt very dry. He resisted the temptation to seek a glass of water from the room beside the chapel, preferring to discipline himself, fingering the leather pouch filled with holy relics he wore tied about his neck. And his thirst was soothed by the thought, constantly in his mind, that behind every immediate material expenditure lay the inexhaustible riches of eternal life; he was constructing for the future, yes, but also for salvation, and salvation knows no time; salvation is not just an idea, he murmured, it is another place, the life eternal we must all attain, for men’s lives cannot be counted by years but by virtues, and in the next life white hairs do not crown the head of he who has lived longest but he who has lived best; yes, the life eternal that we must all attain, but also an eternity that is mine by both natural and divine right. It is a very small thing to leave behind some tangible evidence of that certainty, this palace dedicated to the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.

“For doesn’t everything testify that eternal life will be mine, my imperfections, but also my persistence by word and deed in being pardoned, the discipline I impose upon myself, rejecting all indulgence of the senses, war, hunt, falconry, carnal love, as well as the construction of the fortress for the Eucharist? I concede my sins, but with greater devotion I concede that he who is not mortified cannot be a Christian Prince, but I know that frailties, expunged with penitence, do not arouse God’s ire, not even their memory. Will the life eternal be denied to him who not only fulfills the penitences of all men but who also, because he is the Prince, would deprive his subjects of all hope if in spite of everything he were condemned at the final judgment?”

To know this (he said to himself; or the vassal who was observing him said it for him) was almost to know himself immortal. El Señor rejected this arrogant notion; he looked at the disquieting eyes of that Christ without a halo and murmured: “Confitemur fieri resurrectionem carnis omnis mortuorum.”