Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

THE PALACE IDIOT

Now the Mad Lady orders them to seat me in this stiff straight-backed chair, and she orders me to sit quietly while her servants throw a sheet over my shoulders and the barber in her retinue approaches with scissors and razors. But I am too young to need a barber, too beardless, I pull the two or three hairs from my chin with my fingers, pinching them between my fingernails, it’s a very simple process, all this ceremony isn’t necessary; if it’s ceremony they want, let them lend me a mirror and I’ll pull the hairs from my chin myself (and see myself for the first time; my memory is very bad, I cannot remember my face; the sea was too rough to reflect my image, and the fire of the corposant blinded me as I fell from the mainmast; now they could at least be good enough to hand me a mirror so that I could see my forgotten face for the first time), but I see that their intention is not to shave me but to do something more serious; the barber is clicking his scissors with gusto, with excessive gusto; he licks his lips, he bends over, he circles about me, observing me, until the Mad Lady says, enough, do what you have to do, and the barber approaches and begins to cut my long hair; tufts of blond hair fall upon my chest and shoulders, fall upon the cold floor of this chamber that according to that damned gossiping dwarf will from now on be mine … my prison, the dwarf said. I was led here by the Mad Lady, the dwarf, and the halberdiers, who guided us with wax torches: we had to walk a long way (I am very tired) through the galleries of this palace, hearing the murmur of feminine voices, doors closing, the whisper of nuns’ coifs as they hurried to their cloister, locks and chains, and water dripping down the walls, always lower, deeper, and if this were a ship and not a house I would say they had brought me to the deepest part of a brigantine, to the brig, but the Mad Lady calls this bare stone room with iron rings embedded in the walls and a straw mat on the floor a bedchamber.

“Try to be comfortable here, you can come out only when I permit it.”

I remember nothing, not my face, not my life, only the St. Elmo’s fire on the mainmast, my fall into the sea, my miraculous salvation on the beach, the passage of the procession across the dunes, the impulse to save myself, to join those men, to know that I was alive and that men would look after me, look after a poor shipwrecked youth who had no home, no occupation, no memory: the most orphaned of orphans who had ever stepped upon these shores. I forget everything that happens; by night I no longer remember what happened during the day. Yes, perhaps I recall the things closest at hand, clothes, or the most definitive things, death. But everything else … what happens between the time one dresses and one dies … what is said and thought between the time one puts on his breeches and the time he’s placed in his coffin … nothing of that. What is happening now, yes. What is immediate, what happens during the day, before I go to sleep, yes. We arrived here today as part of a procession, at the end of a procession, the bells were tolling, there was a storm, the palace is enormous and still uncompleted, there are many workmen, cranes, piles of things, straw and tiles, blocks of stone, carts, smoke, smoke everywhere, smoke that prevents one from seeing very far, that deceives, that makes one believe that a corridor continues when in reality it ends, ends as empty space or continues only as dangerous planks, carelessly placed, the dwarf must be very careful as she pushes the Mad Lady in the little cart, the wax torches must illuminate very well, tonight we came close to killing ourselves, we came to the landing of a stairway, and continuing to descend (down, down, always down; this chamber must be in a very deep place, far beneath the rest of the palace, near the cisterns, for the plain is dry, whereas black water seeps through these walls), the dwarf, who must have very sharp vision — doubtlessly in compensation for her minute stature — shouted no, no, be careful, there are no stairs here, they’ve not been built yet, it’s only a landing, it’s open, be careful, and if she hadn’t seen that there were no steps we’d have fallen off that open landing, yes, and now our broken bones would be lying at the bottom of some forgotten corner of the palace and our flesh would be food for rats and I wonder whether seeing the three of us dead — the Mad Lady, the dwarf, and me — would please the other persons who live here, and who are they? and I realize I must be satisfied with this room that, whatever the Mad Lady and the dwarf say, is a jail, not a bedchamber. But I shall keep what I know to myself. And also I will tell them that it is a very fine chamber, very comfortably appointed, and I will allow the barber to cut my long hair and to take the razor, as he does now, and shave me, painfully, he’s a clumsy brute, he wets my head with water and then quickly runs the razor over it, very roughly, without having first soaped it, and I can feel that he’s cutting my scalp, and blood is rolling down my forehead and cheeks. The blood blinds me and I close my eyes, and I have a strange impression that is difficult to explain, I examine my thoughts, I know that I must never cross the Mad Lady and the dwarf, who are watching me with great contentment as the barber shaves my head, the Mad Lady is all satisfaction, her bilious eyes glowing like coals: all her life is there, gleaming, she is nothing but eyes, the dwarf, as she watches me, is holding a dove in her tiny little arms, stroking it, then suddenly I have a flash of intuition as to the role I must play here, I must not cross them, I must be respectful to them, they will treat me well, not as if I were a servant, no, I must not cross them, but others, yes, perhaps that’s the very reason they will treat me well, they hope I will treat others badly in their name, an invalid Lady and a tiny dwarf, dependent upon me to convert their desires into actions, I begin to yell as if I were mad, I see that while they are shaving me the dwarf is playing with her dove, and I yell: I cannot bear this headache, relieve the pain, relieve my blood with the blood of the dove. The dwarf leaps toward me, shrieking with joy, not asking permission of the Mad Lady, and offers me the white bird; I take it and I seize the razor from the surprised barber, I plunge it into the smooth, white, quivering breast of the dove and when I see the blood staining its feathers I crown myself with the dying bird, I place its tremulous body upon my shaven and bleeding head and allow the blood to run down my face and blind me again, but now I refuse to close my eyes, I see the joy of the dwarf, who is leaping with pleasure, I see first the defiance, then the fear, and finally the proud acceptance of the Mad Lady, who exclaims: “The crown one fashions is the crown one will wear.”

She understands that I understand. Then I am able to close my eyes and lick the sour taste of blood and remember, before I forget, for the day has been long and troubled and tomorrow in order to survive I shall have forgotten all that occurred today, how we arrived in the midst of the storm that tore the ribbons from the litters and the veils from the catafalques, how we descended from the carriage and prostrated ourselves before El Señor, who stood receiving the various companies, and how the Mad Lady orders me to kiss the pale hand and then the stinking feet of El Señor, her son, and she says to me: This is El Señor, my son; and to him she says:

“You should always have trusted me. I am the only one who has brought you a living person instead of a dead body. Do not bury in the black marble crypt reserved for my husband that corpse I bring with me; throw it into a common grave, along with the tavern keepers and criminals and dogs of your army of huntsmen: that body I have brought here with me is not that of a high Prince, your father, but a shipwrecked beggar. The true Señor, your father, was reincarnated in the body of this youth. See in him both your resurrected father and the son no one has given you: your immediate ancestor and your most direct descendant. Thus God Our Lord resolves the conflicts of privileged dynasties.”