Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“Hexadigitalism is the privilege of those destined to renew their family bloodlines. Believe me, Señora, the sterility of your union is not your fault but the tariff accumulated by the family of El Señor, who, remember, is your second cousin. If you trace back a strict dynastic line, you will see that your common ancestors are reduced to a very small number. Every living man carries within himself thirty phantoms; such is the extant relationship between the living and the dead. Your line, Señora, goes back to only a half dozen incestuous brothers and sisters living for centuries in the promiscuous isolation of their castles, avoiding all contact with the mob and their pestilential menace; isolated, telling you the ancient stories of the birth, passion, and death of Kings. What is certain is that the price of extreme consanguinity as well as the excesses of extreme fertility are in the end enemies to dynastic continuity. Cambyses, King of Persia, married his sister Meroë and when she was carrying his child killed her by kicking her in the belly. See in this crime the ultimate in certain sibling relationships. And on the other hand, twins — a form of pregnancy as superfluous as redundant — have killed three great dynasties, those of the Caesars, the Antonines, and the Carolingians. Renew the bloodlines, Señora, seek neither sterile incest nor prolific births but love and its customs, which are the ways of passion that engender beauty and precision. Enough, Señora, of this attempt to deceive your subjects: the familiar public announcement of your pregnancy, hoping to attenuate the expectation of an heir, merely forces you to pretense: you must stuff your farthingale with pillows and imitate a condition that is not yours; then follows the equally familiar announcement of a miscarriage. Frustrated hopes are often converted into irritation, if not into open rebellion. El Señor, and you also, Señora, are beginning to suffer excessively for past legitimizations, for in our world custom makes law and a twice-repeated event becomes a custom. The rights of your dominion must be exercised continually or they will be lost. El Señor is no longer seen to wage war, to subdue, with the spilling of blood, any to whom it might have occurred to spill the blood of the powerful. And you are not seen to produce heirs. You must be cautious. Allay their discontent with one theatrical blow: fulfill their hopes by producing a son. You are the daughter of the happy English isle, Anglia plena jocis, and naturally you are unsuited to this Castilian severity. Wager everything on pleasure; combine it, Señora, with duty and you will win all the games. You may rely on me, whatever you decide; the only proof of paternity will be the features of El Señor that I introduce upon the seals, miniatures, medallions, and portraits that will be the representation of your son for the multitude and for posterity. I cannot change an infant’s features, but I can emphasize in my icons the hereditary features of the supposed father, our Señor; I can erase the real features, whether they be those of one of your black bearers, of some common construction supervisor, or of the poor youth, your latest lover, condemned to die at the stake. And let us give thanks to God that he is dying for the secondary and not the principal crime. But to return to our concern: the populace will know the face of your son only through the coins bearing the effigy I have designed that are minted and circulated in our kingdoms; the ordinary citizen will never have occasion to compare the engraved image with the real face; he will never see your infant except from a distance, when you deign to display him from some high, remote balcony; and history will know only the effigy that I, following your will, leave to it. For, no matter how beautiful your offspring, I shall charge myself to mark upon his face the stigmata of this house: prognathism.”

“You are right, Brother Julián. I should have allowed myself to become pregnant by that beautiful boy.”

“Ah yes, he was truly beautiful! But think no more of him; he will be dead within a few hours. Better think of the new youth, the one of your dream.”

“And what will his name be?”

“Juan Agrippa. Remember, six toes on each foot and a blood-red cross upon his back.”

“What do the name and the marks signify?”

“That Rome still lives.”

“How do you know these things?”

“Because you have dreamed them, Señora.”

“I don’t know whether the dream is completely mine; I don’t know…”

“Some dreams can be induced, and some can be shared.”

“You lie. You know more than you are telling.”

“But if I told her everything, La Señora would cease to have confidence in me. I do not betray La Señora’s secrets; she must not insist that I betray mine.”

“It is true. Then you would cease to interest me.”

La Señora and the miniaturist monk, both under the effects of the belladonna, stared at each other unseeing, their pupils dilated. In the pupils of the tall, fragile, blond, and bald cleric was revealed the image of an eternal empire, renewed and immortal throughout all the convolutions of blood and war, of bed and gallows; darkly reflected in La Señora’s pupils was the chance event only, but not the continuity; the event was pleasure, the continuity the duty Julián wished to impose upon her; she saw, multiplied ad infinitum, the figure of the youth lying on the beach, and between his thighs she wished to divine the seed of pleasure as well as the seed of pregnancy; she did not know, actually, whether both could germinate at the same time.

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, against his will, my husband goes to the hunt.”

“Even better; he will be distracted and absent-minded; and you will be able to go as far as the coast.”

“Tell Guzmán to ready the litter, the hawk, and the Libyan bearers.”

“He will want a guard to accompany you. It is a very lonely area.”

“Let my orders be obeyed! And if your prophecies are true, Brother Julián, you will have pleasure.”

“That is all a contrite and devout soul could ask.”

BRIEF LIFE, ETERNAL GLORY, UNCHANGING WORLD

When he awoke, El Señor attributed the filth of his bed to the attack of the eagles and the mockery of the hawks during his dream of the stone valley: bound to his board, Bocanegra dozed, exhausted. Captive in what he believed to be the physical prolongation of his nightmare, El Señor had no time to feel revulsion; the stench of the bedchamber, the inexplicable presence of the thick slobber, the tortured stools, animal placenta, and stains of urine and blood, semen and grease, were less compelling than the will to decipher the tripartite prayer that echoed through his dream like an airy refrain: Brief life, eternal glory, unchanging world.

Then he was struck by the recollection of the Cathedral profaned on the day of his victory: excrement and blood — copper and iron — of what were they signs? Inheritance or promise? Residuum or new dawn?

He sensed a flash of light; he turned his head; he saw himself reflected in a hand mirror resting against a water pitcher near the head of his bed. He saw himself, his mouth opened like a man yelling. But no scream escaped from that breathless, choking throat.

He picked up the hand mirror and hurried into the chapel, fleeing from the silent horror of the filthy bedchamber. In the chapel greater dangers existed, real dangers, dangers far removed from the intangible menace of his bedchamber.

Once there, he found time to question, once again, the Christ without a halo standing to one side in the painting brought from Orvieto. He received no response from the figure; then he walked to the stairway.

Mirror in hand, he paused at the first step.

He raised the mirror to his eyes, studying his image.