Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Then this same Azucena looked with tender eyes upon the young girl and asked whether she might ask a favor. The girl, smiling, nodded. And her duenna explained that when he died the jester had left a newborn child in his straw pallet. She didn’t know its origin, only the buffoon could have solved that mystery. She had decided to care for the child in secret, but her breasts were dry. Could she suckle the infant at the bitch’s teats?

The girl made a gesture of disgust, then smiled and finally said yes, smiling, why yes, but they must hurry and finish dressing and go to the castle chapel. There they knelt to receive the Sacrament. But when the girl opened her mouth and the priest placed the Host on her long, narrow tongue, the wafer turned into a serpent. The girl spit and screamed; the priest, enraged, ordered her to leave the chapel at once: God himself had been witness to the offense. No unclean woman may set foot within the temple, much less receive the body of Christ; the girl screamed in horror, and howling with rage, the priest answered her with these words: “Menstruation is the course of the Devil through the corrupt body of Eve.”

Felipe loved this girl from afar; he witnessed the scene in the chapel, standing aside, constantly stroking his beardless, prognathic chin.

JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS

A great country wedding was being celebrated in the granary, with dancing, singing, and drinking. The newlywed pair, a ruddy-faced young smith and a pale, slim sixteen-year-old girl, were dancing; his arms were about her waist, her arms around his neck, their faces so close that from time to time their lips could not help but meet in a kiss. Then everyone heard the heavy hoofbeats in the yard outside and they were afraid; El Señor and his young sapling, the one called Felipe, entered, and without a word the Lord approached the bride, took her by the hand, and offered her to Felipe.

Thereupon he led his son and the girl to a nearby hut and ordered Felipe to bed with the bride. The youth resisted. His father pushed him toward the trembling girl. In his mind Felipe imposed upon this girl the features of the young Lady of the castle who had been expelled from chapel during the early Mass. Even so, that imagined face still did not excite him, but confirmed in him instead his profound conception of the loved one as something one may desire but may not touch: didn’t all the youths and handsome minstrels tell only of the passion of parted lovers, of ladies adored from afar: didn’t all of them dwell in ineffable distance?

El Señor pushed his son aside; he stripped off his own boots and breeches and fornicated with the bride, quickly, proudly, coldly, bloodily, heavily, while Felipe watched amid the smoke and stench of the cotton wick swimming in a basin of fish oil. The father departed, telling Felipe to return alone to the castle.

Felipe told the sobbing girl his name and she told him hers, Celestina.

THE LITTLE INQUISITOR

The student Ludovico had been brought before the Holy Office by the taut-skinned monk, and there the Augustinian informed the Inquisitor that the young man’s ideas were not only theologically in error, they were, in practice, dangerous, for if they filtered down to the people they would corrode the effectiveness, even the existence, of ecclesiastical hierarchy.

“Less zeal, less zeal,” the Inquisitor, a stooped little man wearing a cardinal’s biretta, said in irritation to the monk. In contrast, he spoke sweetly to Ludovico, asking him to recant; he promised him everything would be forgotten. My design, the ancient man said, sucking his lips, is not to win battles with words but to convince the head and heart of man that we must accept the world as it is, and peacefully; the world we live in is well ordered and offers rewarding riches to those who accept their place in it without protest.

The impassioned Ludovico stood and asked violently: “A world from which God is absent, sequestered by a few, unseen to all who openly aspire to his grace?”

So the Inquisitor also rose, trembling like an aspen leaf, as Ludovico leapt toward the blue-leaded window and escaped across the red tiles of the Archbishopric city.

He slammed the window after him with such force that the leaded panes shattered at the feet of the monk and the Inquisitor, and the latter said: “Increase the accounts due the University pro vitris fractis. And do not bring me these foolish problems. Rebels grow tall with attention but are effaced by indifference.”

THE PLAGUE

Cadavers lie in the streets and the doors are marked with hastily painted crosses. Atop the high towers yellow flags are whipped by a rancorous wind. Beggars do not dare to beg; they watch quietly as a man pursues a dog around the square, finally captures it and strangles it, for it is said that animals are the cause of the pestilence; the dye-stained water which formerly flowed from the dyehouses has dried up, now no one tosses urine and excrement from his window, even the hogs that once wandered loose through the streets devouring the filth have died; but the cadavers of cattle slaughtered at the slaughterhouse lie putrefying there, and fish thrown in the street, and chicken heads; and over it all the thick celebratory clouds of flies. The sick have been driven from their homes; they wander alone, finally joining their infected fellows among the piles of refuse.

Blackened bodies float in the river and black fish die on the contaminated shores. Open graves are set afire. One or two mournful orchestras play in the squares, hoping to dispel the heavy atmosphere of melancholy hanging over the city.

Very few people dare walk through the streets; when they do they are cloaked in long, heavy black robes, leather gloves, boots, and wear masks with glass-covered eyeholes and beaks filled with the oil of the bergamot fruit. The convents have been closed, their doors and windows sealed.

But a good and simple monk named Simón has dared go out, believing it his duty to attend and cure the sick. Before he approaches them, Simón dampens his vestments with vinegar and fastens about his waist a sash stained and thickened with dried blood and ground dried frogs. He turns his back when he must hear the confession of the sick, for the breath of the infected can coat the surface of a water jug with gray scum. The afflicted moan and vomit, their black ulcers bursting like inky craters. Simón administers the Last Sacraments, moistening the Host in vinegar and then offering it secured upon the end of a long wand. Usually, the dying vomit the Body of Christ.

The city is choking beneath the weight of its own refuse; in spite of the abundance of animal and vegetable detritus, greater still is the accumulation of decomposing bodies. Then the Mayor comes to Simón and asks that he go to the prison and speak with the prisoners to make them the following offer: when the plague is over they will be liberated if now they lend their services to work in the streets, burning the dead.

Simón goes to the prison and makes the offer, first warning the prisoners of the dangers they run; isolated in their dungeons they have escaped the sickness; once outside, collecting the bodies in the streets, many of them will die, but those who survive will be freed.

The prisoners accept the agreement proposed by Simón. The simple monk leads them into the streets and there the prisoners begin to pile the bodies upon carts. The black smoke from the funeral pyres asphyxiates birds in their flight; the bell towers become nests filled with black feathers.

CELESTINA

The thin pale bride took to her bed and lay there trembling day and night. Her bridegroom tried to approach her, but every time he came near, Celestina screamed, rejecting her husband’s overtures. Then the young smith would bow his head and leave her in peace.