Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“Señor, may the shepherds come beneath my windows to shear their sheep, and perhaps to sing me a few songs?”

“We are not conducting a fair here, but a perpetual Mass for the Dead that will last until the end of time.”

“Some baths, then, Señor…”

“The bath is an Arabic custom and will have no place in my palace. Follow the example of my grandmother, who wore the same footwear for so long that when she died it had to be pried off forcibly.”

“Señor, the greatest of the Catholic kings, Charlemagne, accepted from the infidel Caliph Harun al-Rashid, without diminution of his Christian faith, gifts of silk, candelabra, perfume, slaves, balms, a marble chess set, an enormous campaign tent with multicolored curtains, and a clepsydra that marked the hours by dropping little bronze pellets into a basin…”

“Well, here there shall be no treasures but the relics of Our Saviour I have ordered to be brought here: a hair from His most holy head, or perhaps His beard, within a rich inlay, for if He said He loved the hairs of our heads, we should die for one hair of His; and eleven thorns from His crown, a treasure that would enrich eleven worlds; just to hear of such treasures pierces the soul, what will the actual seeing of them be! God’s goodness, He who suffered thorns for me, and I not one for Him; and a piece of the rope that bound the hands or throat of that most innocent Lamb.”

“Señor, I cannot imagine power without luxury, and the Byzantine court would be forgotten were it not for its artificial lions, its trilling mechanical birds, and its throne that rose into the air; and the Emperor Frederick was not in the least impious when he accepted from the Sultan of Damascus a gift of bejeweled astral bodies, moved by hidden mechanisms, that described their course upon a background of black velvet…”

“When one begins in that direction, Señora, he ends like Pope John, converting the pontifical palace into a brothel, castrating a cardinal, toasting the health of the Devil, and invoking the aid of Jupiter and Venus in a night spent playing at dice.”

“A great King always wishes to be the wonder of the world.”

“My asceticism will be the wonder of this age, Señora, and of ages to come, for when we are dead this palace will be dedicated throughout the ages to a perpetual Mass for the Dead, and every moment of the day and night there will be a pair of priests before the Most Sacred Sacrament of the altar, praying to God for my soul and the souls of my dead, two different priests every two hours every day; twenty-four priests daily executing a task as savory as prayer is not a heavy burden. This will be the disposition of my testament. The wonder of the world, Señora? Simon, that famous prince of the Maccabeans, wished to make eternal the memory of his dead brother, the prince Jonathan; to do this he ordered a sepulcher to be built beside the sea, so prominent that its funereal memorials could be seen from every ship, for it seemed to him that whatever he could tell of his brother’s excellent virtues would be less than what strangers would learn, or what that mausoleum might mutely preach. Thus, I, Señora; except that it will not be sailors who see this funereal sepulcher, but pilgrims who venture to our high plain; and always, from Heaven, God and His angels. I want, I ask no other testimony.”

“You are speaking of the dead; I ask only a small adornment for myself … for the living…”

“The only adornment in this house will be the orb and the cross, the symbol of Christianity and of its triumph over pagan styles. Our faith is above any style. Here everything will be consistent. Somber. So that anyone who comes to this palace will say: ‘When you have seen one column of it, you have seen them all.’”

“Señor, Señor, have mercy; do not reproach my wish for beauty; ever since I was a child I have dreamed of having a tiny portion of that beauty created with trees and fountains and colored stone and delightful vistas that the Arab inhabitants left in your land from another time.”

“It is easy to see, Isabel, that you are English, or you would not yield in this manner to the temptations of the Infidel. We have spilled our blood in reconquering our Spanish land.”

“It was theirs, Señor, the Arabs filled it with gardens and fountains and mosques where before there was nothing; you conquered something foreign, Señor…”

“Quiet, woman, you do not know what you are saying; you are denying the course of our destiny, which is to purify all Spain of the Infidel scourge, to eradicate it, mutilate its members, to be left alone finally with our humiliated, but pure, bones. Do you want to know what the only concession to sinful senses in this entire fortress will be? Look, then, atop this edifice I am constructing, the eighth wonder of the world, and you will see it crowned by golden spheres. In this way, as did my forebears upon reconquering the cities of the Moors, I will commemorate our victories for the Faith: see in those spheres the heads of the Infidel exposed to God’s wrath.”

La Señora gazed sadly into the gathering dusk. She smelled something intolerably offensive; the offense was converted into an even more intolerable suspicion: she smelled the burned flesh, fingernails, and hair of a man.

The painting: And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him; If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone.

Pressing his hands to his temples, El Señor asked: What is going on outside? Nothing, Guzmán replied; some miserable twenty-four-year-old youth was involved all summer in a vile affair with two thirteen-year-old boys, just here, in the rockrose thicket below your kitchen, and today he is being burned alive beside the stable for his wicked crime. Yesterday he demonstrated great repentance and regret; he said that to be pardoned even the angels must weep for their sins, and that his was the sin of angels, for he had committed one more diabolical that he would never confess. He said it, Señor, as if he wished to defy his punishment as much as the judges’ curiosity, and he was condemned for what was known as well as that still unknown. You yourself signed the death sentence, do you not remember?

The painting: And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and behold, I having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him: nothing worthy of death is done unto him. I will therefore chastise him, and release him. For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast. And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas: Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison. Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them. But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.

El Señor looked at his cramped fingers, closed his eyes and said in a slightly stronger voice that the boy was right; yes, the saints, the very elect of God, wept, because they knew that not even angels may be pardoned without tears and without penitence; doubtlessly, God has special scales to weigh and to expiate the transgressions of all those who are inferior to Him; some for the crimes and punishments of men, and others for those of angels, whose codes we do not know; but one thing is true: only God is free; therefore, everything inferior to Him, not being free, sins, even a King or a seraph; yes, they sin by their mere imperfection.