Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Once alone Celestina draws close to the fire, fed constantly to soothe the sick girl’s trembling; she thrusts her pale hands into the flames, choking back her screams and moans by biting down hard on a rope. She continues this way, burning herself, biting the rope, burning herself, until there is nothing left of the rope but a wet string and her hands are one great running wound. When the virginal husband sees his wife’s hands he asks her what has happened. She answers: “I have fornicated with the Devil.”

THE FLIGHT

That night Felipe escaped from the castle with the two young serfs. All three hid in the nearby forest, breathing in its strong verdant embrace. They did not sleep, for Felipe had many questions to ask them, and the two youths, in great detail, told Felipe where he could find the armies of free men, the enlightened, the vagabond kings of the interregnum preparing for the second coming of Christ to earth.

As dawn approached, three of El Señor’s hunters entered the forest, guided by large and ferocious dogs; Felipe climbed a tall pine and hid himself there, but the two sons of Pedro were hunted down and devoured by the mastiffs.

When the hunters had departed, Felipe descended from the tree and continued alone to the place described by Pedro’s two sons. As night fell he heard music and he came to a clearing where naked men and women were dancing and singing: The divine essence is my essence and my essence is the divine essence, for every spark of creation is divine and reincarnation will be universal. Felipe thought of the bloody and dismembered bodies of his unfortunate friends; he took off his clothes and joined the dancers. He felt drunk, and like them, he danced and shouted.

SIMON’S FACE

The plague in the city has ended. The prisoners bury the last bodies and Simón the monk helps them. The yellow flags are struck while the monk joins the prisoners around a bonfire and they tell tales of the time they have passed together: they are friends.

There is a final brief silence. Simón announces to them that now they are free. Many have died, it is true, and sad; but those who live have won something more than life; they have won their freedom. They are drinking the last swallow from the wineskin when the Mayor and his halberdiers approach them. The Mayor simply orders his armed company to seize the prisoners and return them to the prison. The period of grace has ended. All the surviving prisoners will be returned to prison to fulfill the time of their sentences.

One of the prisoners spits in Simón’s face.

IN THE FOREST

Celestina forsakes her home; she, too, wanders through the forest, bathing her injured hands in the fresh streams and eating roots and nuts. At night she sits beneath a great tree and fills with flour the little cloth dolls she carries hidden beneath her skirts; she caresses them, she presses them to her breasts, she invokes the Evil One and asks him to take her and give her a son. But she raises this supplication only when the sounds of the whistling, howling, moaning forest are most intense; only the forest must hear her.

One night, as two old men were returning from a distant fair, hot and excited, they heard her and parted the branches and watched her; when Celestina’s passion reached an unbearable level, the two old men fell upon her and raped her, one after the other; but the pale thin girl, lost in the consuming intensity of her fantasy, was oblivious to their acts; perhaps she imagined only that her pleas had been attended, that a Devil with two tails had got her with child. The old men questioned the significance of the flour-filled dolls, then shrugged their shoulders, laughed, and destroyed them.

After the two old men had gone, Celestina lay exhausted and alone for a long while. Then she heard the sounds of music and singing coming toward her. She saw Felipe at the head of a vast horde of men and women dressed in hairshirts and carrying scythes across their shoulders. Felipe’s heart turned over, for he recognized Celestina as the bride whom his father had one evening taken for himself. He knelt beside her, stroked her hair, and said to her: “Suffer no more. No one is going to punish you for your sins. Now poor souls like you may love and not be condemned for that love. Come with us.”

He took Celestina’s injured hands, and she answered him: “No, you come with me. I have had a dream. We must go to the sea.”

The singing throng continued on its way; Felipe, who knew now that dreams may be real when no other course is possible, went in the opposite direction with Celestina.

THE BOAT

The aged serf Pedro had reached the coast and had set about building a boat. His arms were still strong and every time he looked at the sea he could feel his strength increasing. That morning, glancing from the sea toward the dunes, Pedro saw the monk Simón descending, covered in dust, his habit hanging in shreds. The monk asked Pedro: “Are you a sailor? Where will you be sailing?”

The old man told the monk that questions were unwelcome; if the monk wanted to go with him, he should get to work immediately. But before the two men had picked up their hammers and nails, the student Ludovico, in beggar’s rags now, also appeared on the dunes; he, too, came down to the beach and asked whether he could join them on their voyage, for the boat could carry them far, very far, from here.

Ludovico joined in their labor, and as the day came to a close, Celestina, guided by her dream, appeared with Felipe, and both requested a place in the vessel. Pedro told them they could all accompany him, but on the condition that first they work.

“You, girl, tend to the cooking, and you, lad, bring us something to eat.”

Pedro handed Felipe a sharpened knife.

THE CITY OF THE SUN

When they had finished their day’s work, the five of them ate meat from the deer Felipe had slain and Celestina asked where they would be sailing once the ship was ready. Pedro answered that any land would be better than the one they were leaving behind. And Ludovico added that surely there were other, freer, more prodigal lands; the whole earth could not be one enormous prison.

“But there are cataracts at the ocean’s end,” said the monk Simón. “We cannot go far.”

Felipe laughed. “You’re right, monk. Why don’t we stay here and try to change the world we know?”

“What would you do?” the student Ludovico asked. “If you had the power, what kind of world would you create?”

They all sat very close together, contented after their completed tasks and the savory food. Pedro said he envisioned a world where there were no rich or poor, a world where neither man nor beast would be governed by arbitrary powers. He spoke brusquely but with the voice of a dreamer who sees a community where every being would be free to ask and to receive from others the things he needed most, where his only obligation would be to give to others what they asked of him. Each man would be free to do what most pleased him, because every job would be natural and useful.

They all looked toward Celestina and the girl pressed her hands to her breast, closed her eyes, and imagined a world where nothing would be forbidden, where all men and all women could choose the person and the love they wanted most, for all love would be natural and blessed; God approves all the desires of all His creatures, if they are desires of love and life, not hatred and death. Didn’t the Creator himself plant the seed of amorous love within the breasts of all His creatures?

The monk Simón said: “We can’t have love until there is no more sickness and death. I dream of a world where every child will be happy and will live forever. No one will ever again fear pain or extinction, for when he is born into this world he will inhabit the earth forever, and thus earth will be heaven and heaven will be here on earth.”