Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“A long absence breeds forgetfulness, my mother used to say, and it’s a long rope that tugs at one who grieves over another’s death. Forget the afflictions of others, we have enough of our own.”

“Do you believe this life is worse than the one you left behind, Catilinón?”

“What I believe is that it’s the local man who gets the ruined land. And if you don’t like it here, why don’t you go live in a city, Martín?”

“Because neither I nor any of mine ever had enough to pay our Lord what we owed him and thus be free to leave that land.”

“Well, I say to you, Martín, that the land’s abandoned us, and we’ve lost all our lands. We had some rights as long as we were a frontier against the Moors; we lost those rights, although we were promised protection, when the powerful Lords gathered the free lands under their sole dominion; we lost both rights and protection, in the end, when the greatest Lord claimed these lands from the lesser Lords in order to construct his tombs here. And what’s left to us? A wage, as long as the work lasts. And then? Neither wage nor lands, and how are we to begin again?”

“You speak well, Jerónimo; but if we’ve nothing left, we’ve nothing to lose; all we have is a long life of pain, and death, at the end.”

“That’s mutinous talk, Martín…”

“And I speak following much deceit, Catilinón, and for many unquiet people who’ve been stripped of everything they had…”

“Well, your rope must be longer than the one that tugs at the dead laborer’s wife; dead, there’ll be no one to bury you, and alive, there’s no one to look after you.”

“And the burial of a Prince’s bones costs more than all our lives put together…”

“And who’ll be governing us when this Señor dies without leaving any heir?”

“Some foreign lady?”

“No, Nuño, but you can be sure there’ll be a roar and hubbub among the nobles and clergy — the great Babylon of all Spain.”

“But what can we do, Jerónimo, you know how it is with a whore or a crow: the more you wash them, the blacker they grow.”

“You were born a blockhead, Cato, and you’ll die a blockhead, and you’ll never understand what it is to be a free man, or that we could govern ourselves.”

“If you want to give me something, Jerónimo, make it money, not advice.”

Who’s Catilinón? A buffoon come from Valladolid, a rascal there and a good-for-nothing here, given to speaking in proverbs. Nuño? a laborer in the quarry, slow as an ox but stubborn as a mule, the son and the grandson of foot soldiers and farmers, a bad mixture, for those askari soldiers fought with the rebellious Urraca against her cousin and husband, Alfonso the Battler, and in favor of the laborers, against imposed taxes, and against the holdings of mills, vineyards, and forests by the monasteries, and since Doña Urraca was defeated, and the farmers lost the war, and the lands remained in the hands of the clergy and Lords, their resentment is deep. Martín? Be cautious there, he’s so tough that quicklime doesn’t strip the flesh from his arms, be cautious, he’s Navarrese, from Pamplona, come here for this job, be cautious, those men did battle against the Moor but were just as happy laying ambush to the armies of the Most Catholic King Charlemagne who crossed the Pyrenees to defend Christianity; with the Navarrese, it’s let’s look after ourselves. Catilinón. Nuño. Martín.

Guzmán attended the falcons affected with hydropsy or diarrhea from having eaten damp or bad meat, from being kept in cold places, or from having swallowed feathers that had stuck in their craws through the hunter’s carelessness. The birds thus affected secrete a warm, foul liquid that irritates and damages the liver and tripe. The bird’s skin becomes dry, its thighs grow thin, it has no strength, its craw becomes engorged, it has a sorrowful aspect, ruffled feathers, and an insatiable thirst, Señor. Guzmán rattled off his words to insinuate himself with the Lord and obtain a place with him by enumerating his knowledge of birds and hounds, hunting and hawks’ mews, and as he raised his head to look at El Señor, El Señor flushed, El Señor was humiliated; nevertheless, Guzmán knew from that moment that El Señor liked this humiliation. “Trust in me, Señor, count on me, Señor.” Guzmán moved the sick hawks to dry perches made from the cork tree, and he prepared a new mixture of red powder, finely ground incense, and myrrh, what is happening in the palace? nothing, Guzmán, all is silent, nothing, an odor of incense and myrrh issues from La Señora’s bedchamber; an odor of warm, foul water issues from the Mad Lady’s bedchamber, an odor of bad sleep and griped bowels issues from El Señor’s bedchamber; nothing, Guzmán. As if each person had decided to remain alone in his chambers, forever, his body his only company, his body, huntsman? what do you mean? his own body, Guzmán, that’s all; Guzmán smelled the reddish powder, the incense, and the myrrh: a young shipwrecked sailor, a foolish Prince, a nubile nun, each with his own body. Hadn’t they been able to ascertain what he already knew, those loose-tongued huntsmen he had charged to find out? Valiant spies; the sailor, the Idiot, the nun. And I, I, Guzmán, with no one of my own, with no company but an old hawk with broken talons and a poisoned craw.

He made all his preparations, for something told him, something as sure and at the same time as vague as the first rapacious instinct of his birds, he must be prepared, as he had been earlier in preparing the death of the mastiff Bocanegra, and now that the greatest hunt of all was approaching, he must have the skins ready, the trappings, and the trimmings, he must have at hand the curved knife, the turquoise, the flat-and-convex file, the scissors, the irons, the awl, and the fetters, he must accustom the young hawks to wear the bells tied with jesses so artfully knotted that the birds can neither lose them accidentally nor pick them off themselves, though they be lost for many days in the field, searching, always searching, for big game? What? Who? A turbulent river, the river Guzmán.

“Great disorder breeds great order. Trust in me, Señor.”

And he was extremely careful not to tell El Señor who he was, he, Guzmán, he told only his favorite hawk: Hawk, beautiful hawk, see these hands that care for you and feed you, those are not the hands of some boorish workman like those Martíns and Nuños, but the hands of an ancient line of Lords who sold protection to the Moorish kingdom of Al-Ta’if and thus amassed noble lands on the frontier that were then ruined by the combined enterprise of nature and men, but if it was by chance that a great plague killed half the population, it was the premeditated action of men that took advantage of our desolation, our lack of strong arms for labor, to ruin us: I owe my ruin to the laborer who feeling himself indispensable raised his normal salary five times over; I owe my ruin to the burgher who taking advantage of our sudden indigence bought up the lands of the dead at a low price; and the other ruin, the ruin of my soul, I owe to El Señor, who gave me shelter and humiliated me, kiss my hand, Guzmán, that’s the way, with respect and gratitude, you think, Guzmán, but you think poorly, poor Guzmán, what would you do with my power if you had it? what would I do, Señor? what would we do, my angry hawk, what would we do? Let El Señor never know who I am, hawk, you must never tell him; let El Señor believe I am of his own making, let El Señor believe that the little I am, the little I have, I owe to him. You are my master, hawk, as you work, so shall I, and like you I shall soar to the heights from which I may wreak vengeance on all those who ruined me, hawk …

And last, he must try on the gauntlet made of the hide of a dog, test its roughness, for the bird cannot get a good purchase on a smooth gauntlet, grease it carefully, so that it is well covered with fat, and cut the tips of the fingers, for if one’s own fingers are long they don’t fit into the tips, which become very dry and hard, Señor. And trim the beaks well, over and over, one doesn’t want the hawk to catch his beak in one of the holes of the bell, and die. And finally, take the hawks among the dogs with whom they must hunt, so they come to know them, and so that, feeling secure on Guzmán’s wrist, and greedy for live prey, the hawk will eat amid the dogs, and never fail to recognize them, never forget them, so that the bird will know that his prey is not the dog but something else, but what? a bearded smith, who seems old, a resentful quarrier, slow but stubborn, a rebellious Pamplonian; a clown from Valladolid, an imbecilic Prince who, did you hear, Guzmán? the palace barber himself told me, crowns himself with bleeding doves; a Mad Lady in a little cart pushed by a babbling, ass-peddling, farting dwarf; a Señor who must be as ill in his soul as he is in body, for he moans as if something were eating at him that could as easily be the result of a thorny prayer as a trot with a spicy vixen. Oh, well, they are finding out something, the featherheads, and now, said Guzmán, stroking his favorite hawk, the situation is just reversed, for this time I possess the weapon — the hawk — but I am not sure of the prey; whereas before, I knew the prey — the faithful Bocanegra — but I was not sure of the weapon. It must be a weapon like this curved file, flat on one end and rounded at the other, so that it may be used two ways, for a man in my position, my fine hawk, must be the secret enemy both of those who have everything and of those who have nothing.