Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

So, alleluia, their fears evaporated, their terrors ceased, it was the end of Babylon, and Pope Puffer and Panter went back to sleep, and we’ll be returning to our basins, the quarries, the ovens … and the wind, Martín? the wind’s still blowing? and the order, Jerónimo? the order not to work today? we’re all supposed to go to the esplanade in front of the palace for a ceremony? what ceremony? who knows, some ceremony, a holiday, it must be a circus, maybe it’s a troupe of puppeteers, who knows, anyway, a ceremony, and what a ceremony, with thunderbolts and lightning flashes that are seen, but not heard, same as the phantom that turned out to be El Señor’s favorite dog, surely it was rabies, all those wounds smeared with pitch, careful, Catilinón, rabies are transmitted by foxes, don’t go near anyone foxy; God has painted His heavens the color of slate and the storm is so near you can smell it in the earth, don’t you smell the storm, Catilinón? why do you think the dust is settling, as if sheltering, as if protecting, as if covering, its eyes with a gray sleeve? So, let’s go, Nuño, Jerónimo, Martín, Catilinón, the dog wasn’t a phantom, Guzmán demonstrated that, it was just a rabid dog, and even though he was El Señor’s best dog, even though he died with El Señor’s broad heraldic collar around his wounded neck, he ceased to be the favorite when he became rabid, you don’t let a Jew or a pig or a rabid dog in your garden, and Guzmán killed him by driving a sharp blade into his neck, dead, stone-cold dead he is, dead as the youth who was burned the other day beside the stables, dead as the journeyman who fell from the scaffold and the supervisor who went to gather walnuts and the worker who splattered upon the paving stones, dead, all of them, and he who sighs over another’s death wears a long noose about his own neck, Bocanegra is dead, hanging from the chapel railing, there won’t be any more accidents now, they’ve killed the phantom dog that was the cause, the comet has disappeared, you’ll see, everything’s back to normal, everything, back the way it was before, hey, let’s go, hear the clarion call and the voices singing, hurry, no, slowly, Catilinón, let’s take our time, for at last we’re going to see something with our own eyes, see, not be told, look, Nuño, look, Madre Milagros, have you told them? one, two, three … thirteen, fourteen … twenty-three, twenty-four holy mendicants, two rows of Lords and noblemen, and eight Hieronymite nuns beside the chaplains and the chaplains beside the litters; just look what a long line, Madre, coming down from the mountain, Martín, look, they’re raising the stilled dust, trampling the weeds, caught by the brambles, a long, interminable black line, Madre, they’re cutting through the thicket and crushing even flatter the brush of this flat dry land, so different from our Andalusian gardens, here they come, Catilinón, through that rocky valley, avoiding the dangerous potholes; almost all have reached the esplanade, the procession is very long, behind the litters come mounted archers armed with lances and on the lances are tied streamers of black taffeta; be more circumspect, Inesilla, even if you’re struck by lightning, don’t be afraid of those black clouds, lower your eyes and forget that clouds bring rain and wind and thunder and lightning, no, Madre Milagros, the storm doesn’t frighten me, I’m lifting my face to be washed by these heavy raindrops, to be refreshed after the terrible heat of this accursed plain you brought us to, far from our sea and the broad rivers, quiet, look how around each litter there’s a splendid footguard and twenty-four mounted pages, count them carefully, carrying wax tapers, all of them wearing black mourning, even the trappings of the mules pulling the litters are black, but what’s on those litters, Martín? climb on my shoulders, Catilinón, look carefully, over the heads of the other workers and nuns and halberdiers and La Señora’s duennas, look carefully and then tell me, I’m up, there, look, there’s El Señor, all in mourning, standing in the palace entrance, pale, almost frightened, as if he expected to see himself in what he is seeing, and by his side, seated, is La Señora, Martín, La Señora, her face expressionless, dressed in black velvet, with the hooded falcon on her wrist, and behind her stands Guzmán, Martín, Guzmán, with the plaited moustache, one hand resting upon his blade, the same dagger he used to kill the dog Bocanegra, and yes, yes, Martín, El Señor is reaching out his hand as if he were looking for the faithful dog, but he’s not there, but what is it we’re seeing, Catilinón, quit all the quibbling and just tell me what’s on those litters, they’re bodies, Martín, bodies! corpses, Madre Milagros, that’s why we were all so frightened, that’s why the dog was howling, because he smelled them approaching, because he knew more than we, and you said no one had died! those are dead bodies, Martín, on my faith and by my balls, they’re corpses, some are skeletons, but they’re all dressed up in rich clothes, black and red, with gold medallions, dressed-up skeletons, Martín, and some are mummies, still grinning, their hair still on their heads, now the halberdiers are lifting them from the litters and carrying them toward the tombs, Madre; be quiet, Inés, and look, here come four precentors dressed in capes, look, Martín, there’s the fat Bishop again, blue in the face from coughing and gagging, and a gelding as well, they say, and he and all his ministers are wearing brocade, Madre, and the monks are singing the Subvenite, and I know how to sing it, too, but the wind … the rain … the decorations on the caskets are flapping in the wind, the wind will blow the dead away, they are our dead, daughters, El Señor’s ancestors have arrived now, overcoming flatland and mountain, storms and deep pits, canyons and swampy grasslands to receive their final burial in this palace of the dead, all the dynasty, from the time of its foundation, the thirty ancestors on their thirty litters destined for the thirty sepulchers, the thirty phantoms of the dynasty that rules us, little Sisters, beneath the invincible motto, Not yet, Not yet, inscribed in the center of the abyss that is the very center of the coat of arms, Not yet, Nondum, Nondum; the first Señor, he of the battles against the Moors; the courageous Señor his son, who threw himself from the towers of his besieged castle upon the lances of Mohammed rather than surrender; the Arian King and his disobedient son whom the father ordered decapitated one Easter morning; the Señor who died of fire between incestuous sheets as he violated his own daughter, whose remains are eternally joined to those of her father, and their son and brother, who to avoid temptation dedicated himself to the collection of miniatures; the Señor who was an astronomer, son of the preceding Señor, who from the study of the minute passed to the investigation of the maximum, but as he did so complained that God had not consulted him about the creation of the world; the brave Señor who died of his sins, for his life was nourished by his virtues; and his Señora who fought like a lioness against the usurping pretenders; the Señor known as the Suffering, whether because of his spiritual pain or his well-known corporeal constipation isn’t known, and his grandson, the taciturn and impotent Señor whose only pleasure came from sniffing the crusts of excrement he habitually allowed to accumulate in his breeches; and the young Señor, the murderer, who ordered his two brothers, his rivals, thrown from the walls, and who, as they died, summoned him to God’s judgment thirty-three and a half days later, after which time this Señor was found dead in his bed, poisoned by the constant handling of a poisoned lead rosary; look at them, daughter, they are our wise and beloved masters and rulers; the cruel Señor who abandoned his legitimate wife for the love of a concubine and then forced the members of his court to drink his favorite’s bath water; the abandoned Señora who fashioned a flag the color of her blood and tears, for a more worthy occupation for her widow-like state no one could propose, or she imagine, and that blessed banner of sorrows was carried into battle against impious Cathari heretics; and thus you are witnessing, Inesilla, little silly, how everything in this world is part of a greater plan, and how even the most insipid devotions have some purpose; and the harsh Señor who had statues erected on the sites of his nocturnal crimes, for he was given to sallying out at night, cloaked, to provoke street duels for no more than a knock-this-chip-off-my-shoulder, and then celebrated his murders by commemorating his victims in marble, until one night one of those stone arms fell on his head and killed him; and the virgin Señora murdered by one of her husband’s halberdiers while she was praying, in order to assure her rapid passage to Paradise; the rebellious Señor who rose up in arms against his stepfather, the murderer of his mother, she who died in prayer; the seditious Infanta who in battling for the succession leveled plains, burned palaces, and decapitated loyal nobles; the Señor who employed all the days of his reign in celebrating his own funerals, thus considering his human servitude and making himself the equal of lepers who by law must observe their burials before they die, and so he lay in his coffin and intoned the De Profundis; the Señor who was widowed at an early age and whose small sons were sequestered — it was soon discovered it was all the work of a Jewish conspiracy — for the famous Dr. Cuevas who attended the Queen was Jewish and the three heirs to the throne were kidnapped by Hebrews who later slit their throats by the light of the moon and manufactured magical oils from them, for which the King felt obligated to burn alive in the plaza of Logroño thirty thousand false Christians, in truth pertinacious Jews; see the little coffin, Inesilla, there is the body of a little child in it, symbolizing the three lost noble children; and El Señor’s grandmother, our most chaste Señora, who never changed her clothing, for she said that in this way the Devil would never see what belonged only to God, and who on dying had to be pried loose from the stockings and shoes that had stuck to her flesh, and the mad Señor, her husband, the grandfather of our own Señor, who enjoyed boiling hares alive, who collected snow in his chamber pot and had his sugar dyed with ink: they say that one night as he was devoting himself to unspeakable pleasures he was strangled with a silken noose by four Moorish slaves; so they say; and finally, Inesilla, the father of El Señor, the whoring Prince whose body has been dragged by his widow, the Mad Lady, the mother of El Señor, through all the monasteries of this land drained by so many battles, by so much crime and so much heroism and so much injustice; here they will all find their rest, in these crypts of granite and marble, forever, daughter, forever, for this palace is a tomb and a temple and is constructed for eternity, but nothing is eternal, Madre Milagros, except the true eternity of Heaven and Hell, quiet, you’re very impertinent for a novitiate, all these bones and skulls will never move from here, and the resurrection of the flesh, Madre? and the day of the final judgment? won’t our Lords ascend to Heaven in the bodies they had in life? accursed Inesilla, don’t try to confuse me, you should be wearing bells, child of fun- and merrymakers, instead of the habits of our saintly order, are you trying to confuse me? for the body in which we will be resurrected will not be the lustful body in which we died, but it will be a new Christian body, the same body, but renewed, reconverted by a second baptism in the temple of the Holy Spirit, repeat, my poor child, repeat, and then ask yourself, tollens ergo membra Christi faciam membra meretricis? and recall the exhortation of St. John Chrysostom, “You have no right to defile your body, for it is not yours, but the temple of God, your Father,” and recall also that the Holy Father in Rome has ordered denounced to the Inquisition all who hold that kissing, embracing, and touching to the end of carnal delectation are not mortal sins, remember that, but, Madre, I don’t want to look at those repulsive mummies and skeletons, what I want to see are those wooden coffers with golden handles, lined with green taffeta and trimmed with silver gimp, don’t you see them? yes, my daughter, those house the relics of the saints and the beatified and others pertaining to the succession of our very illustrious Lords, but the weather is still gray and overcast, hey, Catilinón, what’s in those boxes? tell me, they’re opening them now, Martín, I can see very well your shoulders make a good tower and now El Señor is walking toward one of the boxes which a monk is holding out to him and he’s taking out a shinbone, do you hear, a shinbone, from the knee down, with part of the kneecap, with skin and nerves still hanging from a large part of it, and now El Señor is raising it to his lips, kissing it, and that, Jerónimo, and that was a flash of lightning that struck the bell tower and tore down part of the stonework, but look, there at the end of the procession, it’s a small leather carriage advancing beneath the rain, surrounded by an exhausted multitude of halberdiers, cooks, alguaciles, ladies-in-waiting, and scullions carrying javelins with boars’ heads impaled upon their points, strings of onions, dried pork, and tallow candles, and behind them, look, behind them, a funeral carriage, the last, the one that was missing, Inesilla, the one needed to complete the thirty bodies that must lie in the thirty sepulchers of this hall, the most ornate, the most embellished of the carriages, with all the fury of the rain pouring off its glass cover, they’re stopping, Martín, who is coming now, Madre? the procession is over, my habit is soaking wet, the cloth is clinging to my breasts, Madre, let’s go change our clothing, let’s go stand naked before the fire to dry, who’s coming there? four halberdiers are approaching to open the door of the leather coach, the storm is worsening, the corpses are being received in a terrible wind, the tabernacle is crashing to the ground, the wind is blowing the brocades of the caskets, look, Madre, look; look, Martín, a spark of fire high on the tip of the bell tower, just beneath the golden sphere, look, the sphere is blazing as if it held a fiery wax taper, and as the sphere blazes the chants burst forth, and the funeral bells, and the praise and psalms and the prayers of the multitude; the four halberdiers help from the small leather carriage a bundle in black, nervous, shaking, sobbing; yellow eyes shine from the rags and no one knows when the Mad Lady reveals her face whether those are tears or raindrops running down her dry cheeks; and behind that bundle wrapped in wet rags, you descend, beneath the storm, you, beatified, handsome, and stupid, you, in your velvet cap, fur cape, the golden fleece upon your chest, the rose-colored stockings, you, the resurrected Prince, fair, beatified, and idiotic, you, the usurping shipwrecked youth wearing these insignia and clothing, mere appearances, you, with the gaping mouth, the drooping lip, the prognathic jaw, the waxen stare, the labored breathing, and behind you stops the carriage of the dead wherein the youth found on the dunes lies in tattered clothing in the place of the whoring Very High Lord who died of catarrh after playing strenuously at ball, and who the following day was embalmed by the science of Dr. Don Pedro del Agua. They’re calling you, Jerónimo, eh? they need you, the lightning bolt has set fire to the bells themselves, the bells are fusing, are melting, and we …