Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

“Look, look,” the Mad Lady demanded of the terrified Prince, “I have brought you Jews and Moors, see them there in their corners, tatterdemalions, the very dregs of humanity, separated forever from the presence of God the Father and ineligible for the redemptive sacrifice of God the Son; look at them, at this moment of your wedding ceremony I want you to know our enemies, the enemies of our Faith, the object of your arrogant wrath, flesh for your prisons and fodder for your avenging sword; I have ordered them brought here to your wedding so that you may do to them whatever your sovereign will decrees; do not be compassionate: the garrote, the pillory, the rack, beheading, whatever you wish on this the day of your wedding, the stake — establish yourself in blood, my lover, son, husband, ancestor, and descendant; act quickly, give wing to your actions, indulge neither in repose nor impatience, for your time will be brief, and supreme; you are but the transition toward the resurrection of our breed, in you my husband has been reborn, from you will be reborn our father’s fathers, our dynasty will regress toward its beginnings, our blood will be renewed: you shall marry my gentlewoman Barbarica. Steward! Place in the Prince’s hands the sword of the battles against the Infidel; Barbarica, get up off the floor, stop stuffing yourself, roll your white nuptial taffetas tightly around your waist; Chamberlain! place the crown of orange blossoms upon the head of the tiny Queen; Friar! open your breviary … and let the ceremony begin!”

“Oh, mistress! Why are you crowning me with such riches? I have served you well, and I am the most faithful of your servants. But I do not deserve such happiness.”

“I am thinking of my poor husband, Barbarica, and of all the women who desired him. Ah, what a mockery, what a fierce revenge, my little one!”

“Oh, mistress! Your worthy heir deserves something better than I.”

“There is nothing better than you, I tell you, you are the only person I could bear to see married to the phantom of my husband. Let the whores, nuns, and peasant girls who loved my husband and were loved by him in turn writhe with envy; let them choke with rage when they see you, a little monster, a runty bitch, a misshapen fetus, in their place, you in the Prince’s bed, you renewing the bloodlines of Spain.”

“Oh, mistress! My body is too small to contain my joy.”

“Grasp the sword hilt in your hands, Prince, do not falter; let it also be said of you: It was a propitious hour he girded on his sword; remove that grin from your face, Barbarica, more dignity, my gentle lady; and you there in your chamber beside the chapel, have no anxiety, my son, born of a sick father in a Flemish privy: the succession is assured, you now have an heir and an heiress, there is now a royal couple, Spain is saved, from this time forward there will be only fatal sterility or unfortunate monstrosity, now nothing will be born, or what is born will be irreconcilable, a step further toward our marvelous separation: let no one resemble us, let no one recognize himself in us, we are different, we are unique! there is no possible interrelationship, there is none! power must culminate in absolute separation or it is not worth the struggle, no one resembles us, no one may take a mirror and say, we could be you, no one, no one; and you, my barren Señora of the falsely bulging skirts, roll in your soft bed and on your floor of sand with your handsome lover, prefer the illusion of beauty and the mirage of pleasure to the insuperable power of that which resembles nothing else, that which is perfectly, definitively, immutably, heraldically unique; your pleasure and your beauty will disappear with time; fear time, watch it waste and bite and wrinkle and dry and gall and strip and rot and corrode; contemplate and fear the corrosive action of the years upon your defeated body and your stultified and envious mind, Señora; envy those of us who have nothing to fear because we have already been devoured by time, we are beyond its misery and we know that even time cannot ruin a ruin. This is where we live, in the abyss which is the very center, the blind spot, the motionless heart of the heraldic field. Glut yourselves, beggars; drink, alguaciles; eat, stewards; tremble, infidels; more dignity, Barbarica; clasp your sword, Prince; officiate, officiate, Friar; my monstrous couple against your handsome lover, Señora; my heirs against yours. Let the milk and blood flow; ooze nectars, seep odors.”

When the nuptial ceremony had ended, the Idiot Prince stood like a statue for a long while, his eyes staring into nothingness; Brother Julián stood with his head bowed; the dwarf disguised as Queen and bride tugged impatiently at the cape and doublet of her husband, and her eyes pleaded to the Mad Lady, tell everyone to go, please, mistress, tell them to get the hell out; this part is over, now my fun begins; in turn, the Mad Lady’s eyes commanded silence and attention: frozen like a medallion that was both dead and alive, lacking any sense of animation, the motionless Prince compensated her for all her desiring, weeping, suffering, love, and hatred; in the Mad Lady’s mind all the sovereigns of the past, all the dead of the present, and all the phantoms of the future were joined together, given substance, culminated in the figure of her heir: fabricated by her, animated by her, converted by her into this frozen statue.

Then the Idiot raised his arm, the long waxen fingers moved; he stared absently into the corners of the dungeon where the Moorish and Jewish captives huddled together; he extended his arm and for the first time he spoke: You are free, he murmured, you may go in freedom, rise, walk, leave here as free as the day you were born, return to life, let your hair and your beards grow, do not rend your garments any longer, cover your women’s faces with veils, adore whomever you desire, be free in my name, please, get up and leave here; this is my will on the day of my marriage; leave here: you have been pardoned; leave us alone, my wife, the Lady, and me; leave this land; save yourselves …

The cock crowed. And before its distant sound died, it was revived in the melancholy strains of a flute.

“My drummer!” shouted the old Lady, bobbing her head like a nervous hen. “He’s returned!”

But instead, amid the incredulous stares of the liberated captives and the rancorous stares of the beggars, who had expected something more in the way of largesse from the Prince, her wildly staring eyes met the eyes of a flutist squatting beside one of the dungeon walls. His eyes — with the unblinking stare of a mirror — were directed toward the Idiot Prince. But the flutist’s eyes — groaned the ancient Lady — cannot see. They were clouded by the green opacity of blindness. And thus, in the upheaval of the Lady’s emotions were blended in that hour — as the flutist blended into the crowd of captives and beggars — impressions of opulence and misery; she did not know whether this merriment, this wedding, these banquets, a musician’s blindness, the captives’ freedom, a Prince’s will were a sign of poverty, or plenty.

GALLICINIUM

The smith’s preternaturally old eyes gleamed, and outside, at the hour of the cock’s crow, Celestina’s young companion, drawn by an irresistible attraction toward the palace, walked along the side of the interminable construction until he stopped beside the high walls of an enclosed garden.

Once again La Señora traced the contours of the youth at her side; the air of the bedchamber was even heavier than usual, the odors of gum acacia blending with the aromas of exuded perfumes, and the captive breath of stock mingled with the secret exhalations of the little sacks hidden beneath the cushions that were also the habitation of the wise, silky Mus; the vapors from the tiled bath seemed to evoke a fine, almost imperceptible mist from the sand-covered floor. At this hour of the cock’s crow La Señora’s fingertips awakened the sleeping flesh of the youth; she thought her caresses were arousing him to the dawn, and to new love-making; she did not know that the youth called Juan had heard and understood everything during the hour Guzmán had spent in the chamber; but in this caress La Señora’s swift touch performed a different function (and La Señora, even though she did not want to admit it, knew it; had not the diabolic little mouse told her — on her true wedding night as she lay upon the paving stones of the castle courtyard — that from that moment her diminished senses would double in power, extent, and anguish, seeing more, touching more, smelling more, tasting more, hearing more, heighten, as if by an unconscious drug, that secret pact between a virgin Queen and a satanic Mus crept in between her legs?); but the other youth could know none of this, he who was Celestina’s companion, he was not the one with whom the little mouse had made its pact; and nevertheless, as he stood there beside the wall looking up toward La Señora’s window, the third youth found on the beach felt as if invisible hands were caressing him, arousing him, summoning him … and then he leaned weakly against the wall, bathed in cold sweat, experiencing an anguish he knew was not his but that he longed to communicate with a cry of alarm to someone in danger, to a body that was not his but depended upon his as he depended upon it, a body both near and remote, intimate and strange: hands caressed both the body lying within their reach and the one not in their presence; as the flesh of the youth lying by her side was aroused there was a similar awakening of something forgotten until that very moment, forgotten since he had been found on the beach of the Cabo de los Desastres by La Señora and Guzmán; La Señora did not want to know what her touch elicited (in spite of the fact that the Mus that had gnawed away the thin membrane separating her from pleasure had warned her: You will feel more, Isabel, and therefore you will know more; but you will feel more than you know; you will delegate to me the wisdom procured by your senses; yours will be the pleasure and mine the knowledge; such will be our pact, concluded upon these icy stones in a courtyard on a night of gray clouds and black lightning; you will feel; only later, much later, will you know what you have felt, what you have done and undone with your fingernails, your senses, your eyes and nose and ears and mouth); and the youth called Juan, thus aroused by La Señora, remembered; and as he remembered he feared; and as he feared he imagined: he imagined, feared, remembered something that until that moment — buried in the drugged atmosphere of the chamber, lulled by the domination of another’s senses, senses that monopolized all experience for themselves — had not again come to mind; also he asked himself, who am I? and realized he asked that question for the first time since he had been borne in the litter along the deserts of the shore up to the high plain with La Señora, hidden behind her veils, and the heraldic bird of icy humors and proud, sleek head.