Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Now the Mad Lady enjoys the effect of her words: her son’s increased pallor, the contained anger of the beautiful Señora seated beside El Señor with a hooded bird poised on her greasy gauntlet, the impotent gesture of the man standing behind them, who with such fury, but also with such futility, places his hand to his belt, to the handle of his dagger, but then has to settle for stroking his braided moustaches; how the Mad Lady’s yellow eyes bore into my body prostrated at the feet of such high Lords before she says:

“One day you tore me from the arms of death, my son; you frustrated my will to die and join my most beloved husband. Today I thank you for that. You forced me to recover the past in my lifetime. Listen carefully, Felipe: our dynasty will not disappear: you will be succeeded by your own father, and your father by your grandfather, and your grandfather by his father, until we meet our end in our beginnings and not — as the sterile women who live with you, and despise you, would wish — in our end. Take good care of your dead, my son; let no one steal them from you: they will be your descendants.”

As if he were obeying a ritual previously agreed upon, the halberdier supporting the trunk of the mutilated Mad Lady shifts her so that she looks directly into La Señora’s face, but La Señora is not looking at the Mad Lady; rather, she is looking at me, and with an intensity, with an astonishment, that is also recognition; I would have liked to ask her: Do you know me, do you know me, do you know this shipwrecked victim, this orphan, this man without parents or any who love him, do you know me? But now La Señora was searching for something among the sea of faces at this ceremony. I follow the direction of her gaze, and more than meeting, it seems to transfix like a ray of lightning or a sword the gaze of a tall, blond, pale priest who moves away from the group and hurries into the palace. With the motion of her head — erratically tracing the sign of the cross in the stormy late-afternoon air — the Mad Lady blesses her son, El Señor; he seems almost asphyxiated, his thick lips move spasmodically, and he thrusts his enormous chin forward as if to capture any air escaping from his lungs. The Mad Lady smiles and orders them to take her to her rooms and there she joins me, the dwarf, and the halberdiers, who place her in the little cart that the dwarf begins to push along the passageways; there we go again, walking, it’s no wonder I’m exhausted, the dwarf pushing the little cart, and I behind, past the cells of the nuns, who peer secretively from behind their veils and the hangings in their cells, past the bedchambers of the duennas, until we reach the bedchamber of La Señora, and I cannot understand why we enter the splendid bedchamber in this manner, with churlish fury, without knocking. The halberdiers guard the door, the dwarf pushes the little cart, the Mad Lady, with rapid movements of her head, looks from La Señora to me and from me to La Señora, the dwarf tilts her head to one side, jumps up and down twice, and then rushes at La Señora, pummeling her belly, beating her fists upon La Señora’s bulging skirts, cackling wildly, as the Mad Lady says cuttingly:

“Enough of these silly games, Isabel; that bulge is false; there’s nothing in your belly but wind and feather pillows. Enough of this announcing a false pregnancy, followed by an equally false miscarriage; your belly is as sterile as this devastated plain: enough, enough, it’s no longer necessary; I have found the heir, I have brought him here: here he is.”

I, the shipwrecked orphan? I, the heir? I expected to see in La Señora’s face an astonishment equaling mine: but instead she pointed toward the bed and said: “Juan.”

And naked, you rise from the bed redolent of spices and dried violets, you, a youth like myself, entirely naked, golden, with a faraway look in your eyes in which stupor is indistinguishable from forgetfulness or satisfaction.

“Turn around, Juan; show your back to this witch.”

You slowly turn and show us your back and on it there is a blood-red cross, part of your flesh; I want to walk to you, to recognize you, embrace you, remember something with you, and you, as you look at me, seem astonished, of what I do not know, for an instant you seem to recapture something lost, to take a step outside that waking dream in which you move, impelled by the voice of the young Señora, perhaps, like mine, your spirit too struggles to recognize itself by recognizing me, I feel it, I feel the same hollowness in my stomach I felt as I fell from the mainmast into the emptiness of the ocean, perhaps you feel the same, I don’t know, but La Señora paralyzes all of us with her words, directed to the dwarf: “Don’t touch me again, you disgusting creature; you are beating my son.”

“You lie, you are sterile, sterile, who sows his seed in you sows in the sea,” shouts the Mad Lady.

Then, at a sign from La Señora, you turn sideways to us, you arch your back, you tilt your head backward, and we can see the priming of your great weapon, how it is gradually, smoothly, swiftly erect, enormous, so rigid its tip touches your dark, deep, warm navel.

Then, very calmly, La Señora says: “No, I am not sterile; it is your son, our Señor, who is sterile, sapped by the excesses of those remains that today we buried here in my palace, mine, poor Señora-mother, you’ve outstayed your welcome.”

The Mad Lady screamed; with her voice she halted the dwarf, who had rushed toward the youth’s huge, erect mandrake; La Señora has no need to laugh, she simply looks at me uneasily, I feel stupid, useless, dressed in these clothes that are not mine, the cape of moth-eaten fur, the velvet cap pulled down to my eyebrows, the tarnished gold medallion upon my breast, awkward, useless, disguised, envying the beauty and freedom and grace of that youth whom La Señora now commands: “Rest now, Don Juan; go back to bed.”

Slowly the youth called Juan obeyed. He seemed asleep, eternally asleep, and La Señora, who must be the mistress of that sleep, stared with the icy gaze of a wild beast at the Mad Lady, at the dwarf, and me, and said: “When you returned this morning, I feared you, old woman, for a moment I feared you. I saw standing beside you a young man who looked very much like this one who sleeps with me. I thought you had stolen him from me. Then, when I ascertained that it was not so, I decided that fortune had been equally generous with the two women of this house: one youth for me, and another, very similar, for you.”

She paused, smiled, and continued: “But now I see that anything you desire, anything you look upon, or anything your deformed, dwarfed little friend touches in your stead, turns into the image of yourselves: mutilation and deformity. Is this all your arts can convoke, Most Exalted Señora? A fool?”

I, mouth agape, I, the authentic fool: is this the role I must play? If I play it, will they treat me with affection, will they feed me from time to time? Will they, will they? The dwarf pushes the little cart, we flee from that place, far from the bedchamber of the young Señora and her young companion, I following the Mad Lady and the dwarf, understanding nothing, a true cretin, and now I am sitting here in this stiff chair, my eyes closed and a dead, no longer bleeding, pigeon upon my head: but I am bathed in blood, my face is covered with sticky blood, the sheet on my shoulders is a purplish mantle, and now the Mad Lady is enchanted, she seems to have forgotten her fit of temper, she bows her head and murmurs: “The imperial toga; the purple of the patrician. Praise be to God who in this manner manifests His signs, and make them concur and conform.”

The stained sheet. My formerly blond hair now red with blood. What more can I do? The business of the dove was a good idea; the Mad Lady is very happy, perhaps if I continue to do mad things she will be even happier, less harsh with me, will allow me to go out from time to time, will forget her threat to keep me locked up in this hole; perhaps there are gardens in this palace and the Mad Lady will permit me to walk through them in the afternoon, no, from the bedchamber of the young Señora one sees no garden, only a dusty, dry, enclosed space, but that chamber is as beautiful as its mistress; how I hope they will transfer me to a room like that, her room brings long-lost memories, almost dreamed, I don’t know, from distant lands, from lands where the sun is born, the East, yes, the East, the hangings, the perfumes, the skins, the tiles, everything in that chamber was almost a clear memory, a fearful and irrecoverable voyage, but the truth is that truly I must be a fool, a total fool, for I understand nothing; the dwarf whispers secretly to the Mad Lady: Take off his clothes, mistress, let’s see if he too has that cross on his back, let’s see if he too has a great stiff staff and a pair of great fat orbs like that impostor back there, let’s see; but the Mad Lady pays no attention to her; she pays no attention because she fears something, then she recovers her dignity and authority and orders the barber and the menservants: “Bathe him, then put on him this long, black, curly wig, then summon the painter, Brother Julián, to come paint the miniature of the heir, the future Lord of all Spain.”