Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“Guzmán … what are you doing? Why are you drawing that curtain? What is moving behind that curtain? Are we not alone, you and I? Who is it? Who is it, Guzmán, what are you showing to me, offering me? Who is it?”

“See, Señor, there is a witness who has heard everything.”

“Who is it? Why is the hair so short? Is it a lad? No, the nightdress cannot hide the shape of her breasts, who is it, please?”

“Come to your bedchamber, rest, lie down…”

“What are you showing me? Who is this girl? What beauty, how white that lily skin, what eyes, like black olives … why have you brought her here? Who is she?”

“Rest, Señor; she will come to you; you need not move; she will do everything. Although a virgin, she is wise; and as you are who you are because of the life and death of those remains we buried here today, she is who she is because of the land where she was born…”

“Guzmán, what are you doing, I am ill, I am ill…”

“She is a broad, deep-flowing river…”

“Take her away, Guzmán, I am rotted…”

“She is the odor of damp geraniums and the zest of the lemon, come, Inés, come, do not be afraid, our Señor needs you, after such a festival of death, bodies demand the celebration of life, it is the law of nature, our Señor will give you all the pleasure you need, stop thinking about the journeymen and smiths and leadworkers, stop torturing yourself by imagining impossible love with the scum that works on this construction, lose your virginity in the arms of our Señor; come, Inesilla, you need El Señor and El Señor needs you, come, Inesilla, you know, you must allow yourself to become pregnant by our Señor…”

“No, Guzmán, no, haven’t I told you…”

“… for if El Señor cannot produce an heir, even if only a bastard, the mother of El Señor will impose her will, and will convince everyone that that imbecilic boy she has brought in her train is the true Prince, the providential sovereign announced in all the prophecies of the common people, the last heir, the universal usurper, the true son of the true father; fear your mother, Señor, fear her, for even mutilated as she is, a mere hulk without arms or legs, wrapped in black rags, she compensates for the missing limbs with intensity of will and the lucidity of her aged brain, I can see, Señor, and I can smell, and I already hear the sound of rebellion, the discontent because your Queen offers no legitimate heir, discontent that the Lady your mother might install an idiot as Prince; for either reason, rebellion…”

“Guzmán, do not betray my purpose; I do not want an heir, I must be the last Señor, and then nothing, nothing, nothing…”

“Choose quickly, Señor, there is no time: either sacrifice your desire for personal death and renew your life in the fertile seed of this young girl of the people, or once again face rebellion and the duty to repress it, as you did once before as a youth, again fill the halls of your palace with corpses; choose, Señor, renewed blood or spilled blood; and see, too, Señor, that what I am offering you refutes the lack of loyalty you suspect in me: I offer the continuity of your dynasty, Señor…”

“Why, Guzmán?”

“What would become of me in a world governed by children, lovers, and rebels? But enough; take this girl, quickly, let her slip between your black sheets, caress her, Señor…”

“Guzmán … the painting … what black space … the light has faded.”

“Do not look at the painting, look at her flesh, Señor, could you imagine there was such softness in the world, you must touch her to believe it…”

“What a horrible voice … who is that speaking from the shadows of the painting … I don’t understand … horror…”

“Lose yourself in your pleasure, Señor, and allow me to act for you. And if you are disposed to die, die in the arms of this maiden, spend yourself between her round thighs and give your soul to the Devil.”

“Yes, let her come, let her come, bring her to me, Guzmán, let me touch her, let me…”

The painting: They always turn out the lights when I speak. I always speak in the darkness, when attention is focused elsewhere; no one has ever paid the least attention to me — and with good reason. A secondary character, a miserable Jewish carpenter who doesn’t know either how to read or how to write, an honest workman who has always earned his living with his hands. They know nothing about that. They scorn my calluses and my sweat. But, without me, what would they sit on, what would they sleep on? Bah! They couldn’t even sit down to discuss their idiotic problems or lie down to dream their equally imbecilic dreams. No; they turn out the lights when I speak because they are afraid of me. Afraid of the simple truth of a hairy, callused, ignorant old man, but a man who knows the truth; that’s why they fear me and hide me as they would a shameful illness. Joseph doesn’t exist. The carpenter is happy with a good trencher of lamb, garlic, pepper, and wine. Perhaps it’s true. I followed the steps of the Bastard and the truth is that I never paid too much attention to what he said or did because there were other more interesting things to see; at the last supper with all his cronies I spied on them from a distance; I couldn’t hear what they were saying, not that it mattered to me; I was outside, lost among the dogs, the hangers-on and the passers-by, and looking inside I found it more interesting to watch what the cooks and the serving girls were doing; I was more interested in the braziers and their savory odors, in the platters of food and the bread and wine, than in the people being served. It’s true; I’m always distracted by anything that tastes good, by anything that can be touched or smelled or chewed; I have no patience for the fancy words of that crew of geldings, for that’s what they are: the only thing I really saw clearly was that Judas kissed the Bastard. That’s proof he wasn’t my son; would any son of mine allow himself to be kissed by a man? Bah … More and more lights are going out, they don’t want to hear me, they’re afraid of me. They’ve invented a personality for me that isn’t mine; a quiet, ignorant old man who swallows all their lies, a shadowy figure on the edges of what’s going on. They’d have a real laugh if they knew the truth: from the time he was a young man Joseph was a real hand with the girls, a braggart, a good eater, and a good drinker; anyone will tell you that, and if you believe I’m lying hear what they have to say in the brothels of Jerusalem, the taverns of Samaria, and the stables of Bethlehem, why, in that hay more than twenty wenches warmed by the burning days of the desert came to know me, they’d have died of the cold if it hadn’t been for me; that’s who I am, I, Joseph, and Mary and her family ought to be grateful to me for marrying her; I took her from a family that was having hard times but still very pretentious for all that, all her family putting on fine airs, although they were very happy to let an honest man who worked as a carpenter provide their food. Bah! And fine thanks I got from that twit of a girl. First it was no, don’t touch me, I’m afraid, let me get used to it gradually, it hurts, not now, another night, and then one fine day I noticed that although she’s supposed to be a virgin, she’s pregnant, and I mean really pregnant, and what a wallop I gave her, and all the time she’s swearing it was all because of some dove. Am I to take the responsibility for that? I, Joseph, a real man, cuckolded by a dove? Oh, I gave it to her, pow, and again, pow, and again … I left her; I went off to Bethlehem to look up some old friends, but she followed me and had her son there, and right away Miss Big-mouth began telling all the shepherds in those parts that her son was the son of God, and three clowns dressed up in turbans — magi and puppeteers by profession, and professional gossips as well — heard of it, and they took it upon themselves to carry the news to court and then … fury and fear from Herod, and children drawn and quartered all through Judea, and I on my way to Egypt to get away from the mess that witch had got me into, and she on a donkey right behind me, you can’t abandon me now, what bellowing, and finally yes, I will be yours, take me, and the flesh is weak and she’s very beautiful and so I fell for it. We had several more children in Egypt and after we returned to Palestine, but all her affection and care were for the Bastard, the others grew up wild as goats, dirty and running loose, but not the Bastard, no, all indulgence, and secrets all the time, and sorcery, and old rolls of papyrus brought from my in-laws’ house covered with all kinds of useless stuff, and the boy stuffed with nonsense by the age of twelve, debating with learned doctors, Mister Know-it-all, full of silly ideas, delusions of grandeur, unbelievable pedantry, and then he goes off into the world and it was nothing but scorn for us who’d given him food and a roof over his head, I told you, woman, he’s a good-for-nothing, he scorns us, he can’t even say hello to us in public, he never says a word about us, he even counsels everyone to abandon his father and his mother, he’s an unnatural son, and a liar besides, I’ve spied on him and I follow him, I watch while he makes a deal with Lazarus, a sick man from Bethany, so he pretends to die, and they bury him, and then the Bastard brings him back to life, and the whole thing arranged with Martha and Mary, the sick man’s sisters, all pure intrigue, the sisters owe him a favor and that’s why they agree to the comedy, and disciples hiding beneath the wedding table with baskets filled with bread and amphoras brimming with wine, and then, a miracle, a miracle, and I, forgotten, scorned, cuckolded, you think I’m not going to betray him? you think I’m not going to give myself the pleasure of being the one, the very carpenter who with his old, callused hands, a simple man of the people, crude but honest, the one who held the saw and cut two planks and joined them together to make a cross and nailed them firmly so they would bear the weight of a body? Thirty pieces of silver. I’d never seen so much money. I hefted the weight of the pretty pouch as lost in the crowd of curiosity seekers I watched him die on the cross I had built. Do you hear me? I, Joseph, I … Bah! They always turn off the lights on me. I’m always talking into empty space.