Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“Señor, I have explained. He had rabies.”

“He never knew his hour of glory. He died without being able to defend me. He lived half awake, half asleep, drugged, at my feet. My poor faithful Bocanegra.”

“He was the phantom dog.”

“Do you mean to tell me that that was the glory he awaited so long? Is that why you killed him when he was dressed for the supreme hunt?”

“Perhaps.”

“You killed him.”

“It was my duty, Señor. He had rabies…”

“No one verified that but you.”

“It was true; he was frightening the nuns, the workers; you saw the mad self-indulgence that overpowered the nuns; you yourself felt its menace; the Sisters and the workers were eyeing each other on the sly, Señor; they were becoming aroused; the contagion could easily have spread from the cloisters to the work sheds…”

“Ah, now that he is no longer here, I feel that the dog was my only ally, my only guardian…”

“He had become listless; he had lost his taste for the hunt.”

“Did he at least die in God’s grace?”

“He was a dog, Señor. What do we know…?”

“Without pain? What do we know? Was he one of my ancestors? Is that why he was so close to me, tried to warn me against danger, never abandoned my side, never, except to protect me? Why did he run out that day from my tent on the mountain? When he returned, he carried the sand of the seashore on his paws, in his wound … Who wounded him?”

“He was a dog, Señor. He could not speak.”

“What was he trying to tell me, poor brute, poor, fine, supposedly fierce mastiff? Was he one of my blood? Have we buried here the lifeless body of a Prince dead for centuries, not knowing that at the same time we were killing, in my favorite dog, his resurrected soul, living, gifted — even though he no longer savored the blood of the boar — with high values, like fidelity, and unarguable adherence to my person? Tell me, Guzmán. Do not look at me like that, vassal, I am not reproaching you; write, write my testament: In the name of the always glorious, forever virgin Mary Our Lady, look quickly, Guzmán, watch what is happening in the painting from Orvieto…”

The painting: Mother of the carpenter’s son, it all seems like a dream, I don’t know where the truth lies, I don’t know now, I never knew, I don’t know whether I became pregnant by the carpenter, or by some lusty apprentice of that aged artisan, Joseph, to whom I had been wed still a girl, or whether by some anonymous voyager who stopped to ask for water for his camels and to tell me enchanting stories, I, married to Joseph the carpenter, I, the mother of the child … I, the true daughter of the house of David, not the carpenter. History will say the opposite, because it is written by men; I, the woman, the daughter of David …

“Look how the forms are changing, see how the figures are turning and walking forward and going in and going out as if in some elaborate altarpiece, see the child-become-man, see him in the company of the Holy Spirit that descends in the form of a dove to accompany him on the day of his baptism in the desert waters of the Jordan, see the fiery, flowing river crossing now from border to border of the painting, Guzmán, and doubt, imagine an impotent carpenter, and watch the tiny scene unrolling up there, on those rocks below that humble shed in one corner of the painting.”

The painting: He kissed me, all he did was kiss me, he told me that this was what marriage was, a few rough, panting, anguished kisses sterile as the roadways of Sinai, that is what he told me, but when he saw my belly swelling he repudiated me; I was of the house of David, I knew its ancient secrets, in us are united great wisdom, the liquid, flowing formulas of our rivers, the Nile and the Tigris, the Ganges and the Jordan, one single flux of ancient memories, of magical knowledge born by the shores of the waters where men founded their first cities, fourteen generations after the captivity of Babylon, one night I served hallucinatory philters to the unlearned carpenter and caused him to dream of the hovering, Priapic, subornable, Lucifer-like angels of the nearest heaven, the one all we women can see with our bare eyes, the corrupt heaven we have at hand, the heaven of bodies; in the stupor of his body I caused those false angels to visit the carpenter and in his dream I made him believe that I had been got with child by the Holy Spirit and that I would give birth to the son of God, the heralded Messiah, the descendant of David the King.

“Hear the raucous laughter of the angels, Guzmán, hear it echoing from heaven to heaven, down through the years that for the phantom Father are but an instant, until the not-born Father — see his perfidious triangular eye there in the upper center of the painting we contemplate as it contemplates us — becomes aware of the monstrous joke and in an instant of caprice endorses the joke by sending the dove.”

The painting: Do you not see the light surrounding our bodies immersed in the river? do you not hear the beating wings of an invisible bird, John? baptize me, John, Master, I want to be a man with you, John, show me the road of life, John, my mother says I am the son of God, John, but beside you I feel I am only a poor Galilean, weak, human … too human, eager to taste the fruits of life, bored by so many hours of wearying Bible study, a discipline imposed by my mother, read, you must know everything, ever since I was a boy, astonish the doctors, you must play your part well, you cannot be a dull and ignorant man like your father, baptize me, John, bathe me, John, take me in your arms, John, in my blood are blended the ignorant humility of a carpenter and the proud wisdom of a race of Kings, tell me what I must do with this double inheritance of slave and King, John, help me lead the slaves and humiliate the Kings, John.

“See the dove, Guzmán, alighting on the head, yes, of the human, yes, too human, yes, Galilean, yes, the day of his baptism which perhaps was but the day of his sodomite nuptials with John the Baptist who was perhaps a handsome man who perhaps died, as the other day a boy died here, burned beside the stables, because of his heinous relations with the son of the carpenter and, as a consequence, because of the combined animosity of two women who desired him but could never seduce him: Herodias and Salome, the ancient and the young naiads of the court of Israel; look, Guzmán, see it in the painting: see how the figure of the Christ without a halo is approaching that of the man dressed in a brief tunic of animal skins, how they take one another’s hands, how they embrace, kiss each other upon the lips … how the Baptist consummates his marriage with Jesus, what I ask for in my prayers, the divine embrace, the most chaste kiss…”

“Señor, for saying less, men have died in these lands, impaled upon a stake driven up their buttocks, tearing through their entrails, and exiting through an eye or a mouth, for your fables suggest a similar punishment…”

“Be quiet, and look; be quiet, and understand; look at Jesus, born of Mary and an unknown father, visited by a Christ sent from the phantorn not-born Father; only after that baptism in the river do the two live together; a pragmatic Christ, Guzmán; hear Him…”

The painting: I shall do quickly what is to be done and at every opportunity I shall deny my terrestrial parents so that everyone may understand that my virtues and my miracles are not of this world, nor will they ever be, so I may offer to men the image of Tantalus, invite them to drink the water and eat the fruit that — the moment they stretch out their hand, or open their mouth — disappear before their thirst and their hunger.

“That is the joke, Guzmán; to recall to us His unknown and forgotten existence before there was any Heaven or creation, the phantom Father sends His impossible representative, places Him within the body of a son of a lowly Hebrew, offers the vain illusion of a virtue that reproduces that of a Father who was never born, Guzmán, who never knew what it is to tremble with fear, to sigh with pleasure, to desire, to envy, to scorn what he has and to undertake mad adventure for what he can never achieve, who never knew what it is to ejaculate, to cough, to weep, to evacuate, to urinate, Guzmán, the things that you and I and the monk and the Chronicler and the Bishop and the astrologer and the supervisors and workmen and smiths all do … the things we all do.”