Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

The painting: Tremble with fear, sigh with pleasure, desire, envy, ejaculate, cough, shit, piss, weep, and, bound to such wretchedness, attempt furthermore to imitate me; but if, bound to passion as they are, to fragility and to the filth of the earth, they succeed, in spite of everything, in scorning what they have and in undertaking mad adventure for what they will never achieve, then yes, yes, in truth I say to you, not only will they imitate me, they will surpass me, they will be what I could never be, dung and courage, enamored dust.

“No, do not listen to that falsifier, Guzmán, it isn’t true, Christ’s cruelty is to demonstrate to us that we can never be like Him, the cruelty of excrement is that it makes equals of us all, and between the two cruelties we attempt to forge some personal differences that will give us an identity; that is what my mutilated mother does, and that false Prince she has brought in her train, that false heir, as false as Christ the divine was to the humanity of Jesus, in whose body he dwelt.”

The painting: As false as you, Jesus, are to my divinity as Christ: without consulting you I have appropriated all the blame, the defects and the needs of that body, your body, Jesus, chosen from among thousands; my Father has placed His phantom within your mortal flesh, oh, son of Mary, so He might offer to men the mirage of an impossible virtue; but the moment you feel the vinegar in your throat, I warn you; the moment you feel the thorns upon your brow, I shall abandon your body and leave you in the hands of human cruelty.

“Look at the painting from Orvieto, Guzmán, study its subtle movements, its subtle Italianate frivolities, look how a painting of pious intent is transformed into the scene of a drama of unforeseen entrances and exits, see how the fickle artists of the other peninsula have displaced the sacred representations of the ecclesiastical atrium with profane theaters of illusory spaces, curtains, arches, shadows, and fictitious lights, see how into the scene occupied by the man Jesus enters a double identical to him, how he embraces him, kisses him, see how the two bodies seem to blend into one another in order to perform the comedy of the master of mockery, the not-born Father. Multiply your doubts, Guzmán, tell all the possible stories, and ask yourself once more why we chose one single version among that pack of possibilities and upon that choice founded an immortal Church and a hundred transitory kingdoms.”

“You are the head of one of those kingdoms, Señor; try not to lose it.”

“I tell you to doubt, Guzmán: the human body of Christ was a phantom, His suffering and His death were mere illusion, for if he suffered he was not God, and if he was God he could not suffer. Doubt, Guzmán, and watch the performance that is taking place before our eyes, within the frame of that painting.”

The painting: If I am God I cannot suffer; if I suffer I am not God; the vinegar and thorns are enough; now they will take me from the cell, they will lead me through the deep, shadowy passageways toward the great door where I must carry my own cross and painfully ascend that dusty hill seen so many times in my dreams, where they have raised, like the foundation of my destiny, two other crosses, miracles, miracles, now is the moment to concentrate all my powers of transfiguration, of convocation, of prestidigitation; if I could do it to fill the amphoras of Canaan with wine, to multiply the fishes, and to reverse the hours of Lazarus, why should I not do it now, now when my own divinity is in danger of escaping through the chinks of pain. As they gave me vinegar to drink, as they lashed me and crowned me with thorns, I avoided pain by thinking intently of a quiet, coarse, and therefore receptive man called Simon of Cyrene, invoking him to come to my side, intensely entreating with the same intensity I begged Lazarus to renounce the peace of death and accept the agitation of life through the simple recourse of suicide in death, entreating that Simon hear me from afar and be present at the hour and in the place with the necessary assistance; that afternoon I was conducted by guards through the dark and musty passageways that lead from the cells to the great Praetorian door, my gaze penetrated the darkness and to my nostrils came the odor of fish and garlic and sweat: Simon had heard me from afar, Simon, dressed as a simple vendor of foodstuffs, laden with vegetables and fish, had come to obey me, to take my place; I pretended to stumble, the guards lost their martial beat, stopped, turned back, started forward again, turned around, confused, beat me, beat and cursed the Cyrenian who had already taken my place, who was now carrying the cross while I carried the onions and dried salted fish; I offered them to the Centurions and was rejected; the procession continued on its way and I gave thanks for the blindness of the foreign masters toward an alien and submissive race, for although we could distinguish the face of each foreign oppressor, for our lives might depend on it, they see us for what we are: a mass of slaves without individual physiognomy, each indistinguishable from all the others … Later, that same afternoon, I was able to watch Simon, crucified in ignorance and in error; I was able to contemplate my own torture and death, for the Centurions, the apostles, Magdalene and Mary and John of Patmos believed that Simon was I; and as my eyes penetrated the light shifting between granular sunlight and stormy shadows, I saw Simon of Cyrene upon the cross, and I could not believe my eyes; in his agony, the quiet, ordinary man of Cyrene had assumed my features; the sweat and pain of his face were forever imprinted upon Veronica’s handkerchief. And thus I, Jesus, upon the hill of Calvary was witness to the crucifixion of Simon, and this was my most miraculous, although my least well known, act.

“But look, Guzmán, how quickly the scenery of the painting is changing, the backdrop remains the same, but the clothing of the figures is changing, the set is being replaced, the invisible, cruel, and capricious artist is arranging his tale in a new order, he has prepared a new performance for us.”

The painting: Neither divine nor miraculous: I am a Palestinian, a political agitator; I convince my companions and intimates that a mock martyrdom is absolutely necessary to our cause; we cast lots to determine who is to betray me to the authorities and who is to take my place when, as I foresee, I am condemned to death. The lots fall to Judas and to Simon of Cyrene. Our group is very small for reasons of security, mobility, and purity of convictions; but also because it is composed of men who physically are very similar. In this way we can disguise ourselves as one another, appear simultaneously in different places under the generic name of Messiah, and astound the ignorant and ordinary folk with false miracles carefully organized and executed not by one but by several of my companions, but always attributable to me, as I am the symbol of the rebellion and its intellectual author. Only in this way am I different from my companions; my mother forced me to burn the midnight oil reading the Sacred Scriptures; I articulated the spontaneous rebellion of my untutored companions and channeled, organized, and intellectualized it. I lament that Judas and the Cyrenian were those elected by chance. I would have preferred to lose Peter, the most insecure and the weakest among us all, or John of Patmos, too whimsical to be politically effective. But sentiment must not intervene in these decisions that are more important than our own personal likes and dislikes. Thus, along the road to the cross, we all follow behind a double prepared to give his life for me and for my cause; there we all feign tears and despair; pretending only to a certain point, it’s true, for Simon of Cyrene is a good man and a loyal, although expendable, warrior; we feign tears and despair to deceive the authorities and to cement our subversive legend, and then all of us who are actors in the drama withdraw into the darkness from which we will emerge for a short time to perform the sacramental play of the individual insurrection of the slaves against the collective ethic of Rome and the weighty tradition of Israel. That afternoon on which the weather so opportunely collaborated with us, that afternoon begun in heat and sun and dust and ended in storm, that early darkness and the motionless violence of the stones, were necessary so that our rebellion might fly on the wings of a legend of sacrifice. Only from sacrifice are new worlds born. But men have always been sacrificed. So it occurred to me: sacrifice a God. The ancient gods and their divine history were born from human sacrifice. From divine sacrifice human history would be born. It was a very effective inversion, well worth the effort. My fate and that of my followers are not important. No one ever again knew anything of us. But there was no one who did not know what happened that afternoon on Golgotha. Our creation is called history.