Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“Among other things, Señor. Students tend to be bellicose rascals. El Señor should be grateful that my defects are in the service of his virtues.”

“Ah, yes. Come then, kiss my hand with respect and gratitude.”

“I do so, Sire, I do so with great humility…”

“Do you know something, Guzmán? All you need do is show the Bishop this writing, alleging that it is a confession, and you can imagine that I would be brought before the Holy Office, judged and condemned to the stake; well, have no such hope; it would do you no good, however bellicose and rascally you may feel; they would not believe you, everything is written in your hand, yes, just so, sprinkle sand on the words to dry the ink, and even though they believed you and condemned me, Guzmán, it would not help you, for if you usurped my power…”

“Señor, you judge me harshly.”

“Shhhh, Guzmán; for if you usurped the power in my name, you, or any man like you … I do not wish to offend you, but any man like you, a new man, you would not know what to do with power, you would go mad, you believe you would not doubt, but you would do nothing but doubt, the entire day, you would be riddled with doubt about what you had done and what you had allowed to be done, doubt establishes its kingdom between moral duty and political duty, there is no possible escape, none, Guzmán, thank heaven that you are a servant and not a master…”

“I do not complain, Señor…”

“But, hear me, one can retain power only when he has behind him a legion of murdering, cruel, incestuous, mad phantoms mortally damaged by the French malady and inclined to bleed to death at a scratch. What is there among men except exchange? And if some serve and others command, Guzmán, it is because some succeed in offering something for which the others have no response: something for which they can offer nothing in exchange. And who in this land can offer me anything in exchange for my thirty bloodless, corrupt, demented, incestuous, criminal, ill — ill even in death — cadavers, Guzmán, come here with me, look at them in their sumptuous sepulchers, see the grimaces and leprous bodies and infirmities and death’s-heads and moth-eaten ermines, regard my thirty phantoms, their heads crowned in blood, their bodies brilliant with chancres and boils and wounds that never healed, no, not even in death. Who, Guzmán? Only I, Guzmán, only I can offer to myself the one gift that is superior, only I can say: this dynasty will die with me; hear me well, and now take my ring and roll the parchment carefully and seal it with the wax; obey me, Guzmán; do as I tell you … do it! Why do you stand there, motionless? Does it horrify you so to see such tumefaction? These are very old cadavers; there is neither stink nor fear in them.”

“But something is still lacking, Señor.”

“I tell you, nothing is lacking, in this testament I have left my doubt, my life, my anguish, and something more: a suspicion, that denies my uniqueness, a suspicion that whatever exists exists only because it is related to, circulates through, or eats into what we believed unique, turns uniqueness into a commonplace, a boiling quagmire, and the parallel suspicion that nothing is unique because everything may be seen and told in as many ways as men existed, do exist, or will exist. Is that not enough? Is there anything more to risk in my undertaking to rescue truth by accumulating in one place all the lies that refute it?”

“Only your signature is lacking, Señor, for without it, as you have said, and said rightly, these papers have no meaning. I could have written them myself, rolled the parchment and then sealed it with El Señor’s ring as Your Mercy was dozing.”

“True, Guzmán, how am I to tempt you if I do not sign the papers?”

“El Señor must be equal to the challenges he proposes. Sign, Señor, here…”

“What do you really want, Guzmán?”

“Irrefutable proof of El Señor’s confidence. Otherwise I cannot occupy myself in dissipating the dangers soaring around his head.”

“What do you mean? Everything is calm; the storm has passed; the nuns are quiet; the workers, I tell you, have returned to work; Bocanegra is dead; the cadavers lie in their crypts; the procession is over; now we are complete; now they may close forever the roads leading to this place; we are all here, united. It has been a memorable day. Nothing remains to be done. Nothing remains to be said. At least, that is my most fervent wish.”

“One day of glory, Señor! Many days of glory, for your dead have spread your renown throughout our land, not only today but during the weeks and months it took to form the corteges and begin their journey through mourning towns and cathedral cities, escorted by clerics, by the heads of all the orders, by entire convents that joined in the procession. All the land has seen your cadavers en route, lying within their litters draped and adorned in black, all for your glory, Señor. But this afternoon as the procession entered this uncompleted palace, upon hearing the funeral bells, the praise and psalms of the monks and the prayers of the multitude, as the Masses and sermons and funeral orations you ordered were celebrated in every corner of the palace, I had to ask myself, Señor, why nature seemed to oppose your design, eager to overthrow it; I saw a sign in that storm that in an instant divested the catafalques of their adornment, tore away the drapery, and allowed the wind to tip over the tabernacle and carry off the black ribbon clusters, ripping and tearing everything so badly that today the plain is covered with the remains of your dead’s remains. Your corpses have been humbled by the storm. Now they lie in peace, but I believe that they will never again be the same; you have given them a second life, Señor, a second opportunity.”

“No, no one shall have a second opportunity, neither the dead nor the living nor those who will never be born; all that I have told you would be in vain if it did not confirm in written words the wordless desire that pulses in every beat of my life: death, truly to be death, nonexistence, radical oblivion, and disappearance; my power is absolute because I shall be the last Señor, with no descendants, and then you and yours, with no need to denounce me, can do what you will with my heritage…”

“Señor, stand up, for God’s sake, don’t kiss my feet, I…”

“There will be no more wretched, defective sons forced to kill the dreams of others so that power may be transmitted from generation to generation, there will be no more…”

“Señor, Señor, stand up, here, lean on my arm, Señor…”

“Yes, let me sign, for if what I say is true, what does it matter…”

“Trust in me, Señor; you have constructed a house for the dead through the labor, accidents, and misery of the living; I have ears, Señor, I have eyes, and I have a good sense of smell; the storm is only nature’s notice of what is happening in the souls of men; let me act, Señor; let me act against men, for, like you, I can do nothing against nature; let me work for you here in the place where the act of nature and the acts of men seem as one: this is the privilege you have accorded to us, the new men, the ability to act without the doubt that arises between morality and practicality; did the bells of the tower burn because they were struck by lightning, or because of a premeditated fire lighted by very human hands?”

“You doubt, Guzmán?”

“Señor: these fields are strewn with the black brocade flowers which the storm tore from the catafalques. At this very moment some stonemason or smith, the former shepherds of these lands, is walking through the arid fields picking up pieces of crape and thinking, remembering that they and their people were dispossessed, removed from their fields, denied their streams, their reserves of water exhausted, so that upon the ruins of the land could arise a funereal city. Let me work for you, Señor; and in my acts your will to conquer hell upon earth may encounter its best ally; and my services will finally be identified with the death and disappearance you so desire…”