Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“I want the portrait to have the immutability of the figure of the heir,” said the Mad Lady. “I want the Prince to resemble no other living creature, Brother Julián; least of all, that impostor snuggled between adulterous sheets in this very palace.”

The friar named Julián looked at me, inquisitively, as if he were asking me what instead he asked the Mad Lady: “Immutability, Most Exalted Lady? The portrait can adopt a thousand different configurations. Which do you desire: the image of he who was or he who is to be? And in what place do you wish him: in the place of his origin, that of his destiny, or that which he presently occupies? What places, what times, Most Exalted Lady? For my art, limited as it may be, is capable of introducing whatever changes and combinations Your Grace desires.”

Then the Mad Lady leaned forward; her mutilated trunk, propped against the back of a leather chair, swayed, and only the rapid intervention of the dwarf prevented the disaster of a fall; the Mad Lady wished only to show the painter the enamel upon her bosom, the image, the profile, of her dead husband, a rigid profile, like that on an ancient seal, suitable for the minting of coins, gray, as gray as the undifferentiated space of the background; there is nothing to invent, said the aged Lady, everything is actual, we are the children of God, God is One, and his totality exists in all places, in the immensity of the firmament as well as in the reduced dimensions of this oval: it matters not whether you paint a portrait or a wall, Friar: the space your brushes cover will be the same as the space where we are now, and both spaces are the same as the universe, which is the invariable space of God’s thought, accommodated equally in the largest or the smallest space, in a grain of sand and in the enormity of the broad seas; but come, hurry, paint, do not be proposing false problems.

The friar smiled and bowed his head, joining this action of respect with a serious investigation of the area of my feet, his courtly acquiescence to the demands of the Mad Lady blending into the continuation of honest artistic activity; he insisted on seeing me unshod, on carefully counting, his brush pointing to each one, the toes of my feet. In so doing, he took advantage of the fact that the Mad Lady had summoned a tailor and a bootmaker to make me a change of clothing and some boots, but if the clothing hung from me loosely, much too loosely, the boots were tight, too tight, and what could I do? I felt deformed in that footwear, bowlegged, and it seemed as if one leg were shorter than the other, and I gave the artisan a good kick with the toe of his own boots, till the rascal begged for mercy, making excuses, how was he to know that I had six toes on each foot? why do you say that? what is strange about that? I have always had six toes on each foot, and exactly twelve toenails; I am infuriated; with great grimacing I order the servants to cut the boots into little pieces and to force the damned bootmaker to eat them like tripe, all of which was performed amid great shouting and other less civil noises from the dwarf, until the bootmaker ran vomiting from the room; the Mad Lady ordered the dwarf to be still, and showed me an open coffer filled with precious jewels and I was to choose from among them those that pleased me most for my personal adornment. I chose an enormous round black pearl; I put it in my mouth and swallowed it, which caused new merriment on the part of the dwarf, who handed me a chamber utensil so that when I felt the desire to defecate, the pearl could be deposited there with my evacuation, and between us the dwarf and I would charge ourselves with examining the excrement until we found the precious pearl; the Mad Lady nodded and said the pearl would be doubly precious for having passed through my body from mouth to bum, and that it would henceforth be known as the Pilgrim Pearl. And there was more, she promised she would give me clothing and more clothing so that I would never twice dressed in the same attire; I stared with avarice at the medallion that adorned her bosom, and as she perceived the direction of my gaze, she said that my likeness would be engraved upon precious stones, and my profile on all the coins of the land, and to that end they would use the image Brother Julián was painting at that moment; and smiling, the priest, still working, said: “Then see, Most Exalted Excellencies, how this image I am painting begins to be suffused with unforeseen desires, with pleasures and whims and humors not present in the unvarying original creation; see how I render not what is given but what is desired … For painting is a mental process.”

But no one listened to him; the dwarf was already proposing that we write the Pope asking that he grant me the gift of the supreme relic: the foreskin from Christ’s circumcision, then we would have everything; the dwarf guffawed, revealing her whitish, toothless gums, we would fill this chamber with relics, the ultimate relic, the piece of skin from the penis of the infant Jesus, we would fill the chamber with delights, with garbage, with talismans, with sumptuous clothing and superb tatters, curiosities, miniatures, we would celebrate magnificent banquets here, said the dwarf, as I nodded enthusiastically, gluttonously, with an increasing appetite to fill the chamber as full as I would stuff myself with pleasures; great banquets, the dwarf repeated, and the Mad Lady said yes, excess, expense, the most obnoxious ostentation: for that we had been born, that was why we were who we were, nothing would be too much to humiliate those who never may have, never should have, and never want to have anything, isn’t it true, mistress? isn’t it true that our mourning is over? that our weeping is ended? yes, my faithful Barbarica, the Prince is again with us, our funereal devotion has ended, let there be luxuries, let there be excesses, look, said the Mad Lady, look, listen, make a good face for the painter, my boy, let him see you neither too happy nor too sad, put on a Prince’s face; you will have a Prince’s face when you understand me: I shall repeat to you the lessons I taught my son Felipe, our Señor, to educate you in the proper governing of these kingdoms, a man alone is nothing, I said to him when he was a child, each of us sitting beside the winter’s fire, and now I say to you, an individual dependent solely upon his own strength readily succumbs, his life is spent in searching for what, once obtained, he must spend, only to begin once again to exhaust himself in the search; but not we, not we, because in the midst of the weaknesses of men who are alone, we, you and I, my boy, shall be like the world itself, single individuals represent only themselves, we shall represent the world, because we have created, with vices, powers, devotions, altars, hearths, battles, gallows, palaces, monasteries, the only immortal thing, the signs that last, the scars of the earth, what remains after individuals are forgotten: we have invented the image of the world; compared to fragile individual existence you and I will be the essence of existence, you and I are the sea and they the fishermen, you and I, Prince, are the veins of ore, and they the miners, they take sustenance from us, not we from them, they need us in order that their poor lives have meaning, they shall live from us and we shall live from ourselves, they go and we remain, they exploit, devour, and exalt us because they fear to die, whereas we shall not understand the meaning of death.

“Everything in excess, my boy, everything in excess to demonstrate that death has no meaning, that the powers of re-creation are much more vast than those of extinction, and that for every thing that dies, three are born in its place; the only thing that dies is that which dies as an individual, never that which is continued as a race. Quickly, Barbarica, order us a great dinner, I see the young Prince is fatigued, little eel pies and a great stew of pork, cabbage, carrots, beets, and chickpeas, and an infinite variety of sausages, red, and hot, and stuffed with onions, and naturally, order a hundred pounds of black grapes boiled in the copper caldrons to obtain the few grams of mustard we like to season our stew, run, quickly, order it, and return immediately, Barbarica, for the court painter has asked that you pose beside the Prince, that you appear in the second painting, a large one this time, on canvas, you standing, with the Prince’s hand upon your shoulder, hurry back, Barbarica, men shall remember you, thanks to Brother Julián, our painter.”