“There is repression, humiliation, and sacrifice, in order to gain eternal life, Guzmán.”
“There is passion, ambition, and desire to gain earthly life, Señor.”
“Wisdom is revealed, Guzmán.”
“Prudence is acquired through trial and error, Sire.”
“The highest ideal is that of the contemplative gentleman meditating upon the Scriptures and the dogma of the Revelation, Guzmán.”
“There are no absolute ideals, Señor, only secular prizes for a life of action.”
“Truths are eternal, Guzmán, and I do not want them to change, I do not want that primary wisdom my family has conserved for centuries to be converted into an object of usury, to be debauched by men like that old man, a man so low he would sell his own daughter, and the multitude like him; I know them, Guzmán, I know their horrifying history, I recall the fate of the Children’s Crusade that set forth to do battle for Christ in the land of the Infidel but instead fell into the hands of Hughes Ferreus and Guillaume Porcus, arms makers of Marseilles, who offered the children free transport to the Holy Land, but actually carried them to the barbarous coasts of Africa, where they sold the innocents as slaves to the Arabs. And will you tell me that I, too, have killed, Guzmán? Yes, but in the name of power and the Faith, or in the name of the power of the Faith, but never for money. And I suspect that he who dedicates his toil to money can be nothing but a falsifying Jew, a convert, a filthy pig, even though he bears the name of a pure Christian; the doctor who mutilated my own mother and almost killed her said his name was Cuevas, and he insisted he was a good and pure Spaniard until they discovered the prayer books and candelabra of Jewry in his house. Are you amazed by the confidence I place in you, Guzmán? Now you shall know: the Spanish nobility is infested with converted Jews, false faithful, and only among the people of your own low estate does one find today the old, uncontaminated Christian bloodlines. Do not tell me now, Guzmán, that you have allied yourself with the enemies of our eternal order…”
“Señor, for God’s sake, everything I do, I do because of intense devotion to your interests…”
“But you believe that my interests can be reconciled with those of that band of merchants and moneylenders, simonists, enemies of the Holy Spirit?”
“They can and they must be, Señor; the new forces are a reality: dominate them or they will dominate you. That is my sincere counsel.”
“No, no, I am right, our line ends here and now, the world may die with us but it will not change, the world is well contained within the limits of this palace, Guzmán; whom are you defending, on whose side are you? tell me.”
“Señor, I repeat, I serve El Señor, I advise him and I warn him that he must make use of the new powers so they do not make use of him: if you honor him with the title of Comendador, the aged moneylender will feel an obligation to honor and obey El Señor; at the same time El Señor can enjoy Doña Inés, and renew his blood, now that the seed is weary of growing in the same field; recognize the bastard and contravene the madness and intrigue of the Queen Mother who offers an idiot heir; and if not her madness, then the restlessness of the workmen who are sheltering a second pretender who arrived yesterday in the company of a page-and-drummer who is actually a woman, although dressed in the customary attire of a man, part of your mother’s train; threat is added to threat, the designs of the women and the designs of the world are being joined, and if El Señor wishes somewhere to encounter the Devil, he may find him in the horrendous coupling of woman and the world.”
“What are you doing to avert these threats?”
“What it is my place to do: order the arrest of the masquerading drummer and her young companion, and if El Señor authorizes, torture them.”
“Why?”
“They went directly to the forge of the smith Jerónimo, and have remained there with all the grumbling workmen my men have heard and observed.”
“A drummer who is actually a woman…”
“A Devil with tattooed lips, Señor.”
“A youth accompanying her, you say?”
“Yes, identical to … to the young Prince your mother brought here, even down to the signs of a common monstrosity: six toes on each foot, and a blood-red cross upon their backs…”
“Twins, Guzmán? Do you know the prophecy?”
“No, Señor…”
“Twins always announce the end of dynasties. They are the excess that promises immediate extinction. And a swift renascence. Ah, Guzmán, why have you been so slow to reveal these things to me? Can these twins be the dual sign of the disappearance of my house and the foundation of a new line? Guzmán, do not torture me any more; enough; have the usurpers, the enemies to my uniqueness and to the permanence of my order, arrived at the very doors of my palace?”
“I am not torturing El Señor; I use the root, slim as chard and bursting with pungent liquor, of the turpeth-of-the-East, a name that meant ‘quitcares’… and I am relieved of one care, knowing that finally El Señor understands the singular nature of the dangers threatening him…”
“Bring the youth and the disguised girl before me. Help me, Guzmán, the pain…”
“I am helping El Señor, who only tortures himself. And I shall take charge of averting the threats of which I have spoken … with El Señor’s permission.”
“Enough, enough, Guzmán, the only care you can relieve me of is this fear that things change, that the world can exist beyond the world contained within my palace … You must realize, Guzmán: I killed innocent people in order to assure the permanence of my world. Do not tell me that usury, money, debt, and a pair of unknown youths threaten that world; do not snatch away, Guzmán, my reason for being; do not destroy the very foundation stone of my existence; everything … here … within the stone walls of my palace; here my doubts; here my crimes; here my loves; here my ills; here my Faith; here my mother and her Idiot Prince and her dwarf; here my untouched wife; here, part of me and my palace, these two strangers whom you will bring before me; here my contradictory words, Guzmán, and also my vulnerability; I know I am contradictory, as are my profound Faith and the string of heresies I repeat, to test it, yes, but also to demonstrate to you, to myself, to no one, to everyone, to the very walls, for they have ears, that my knowledge is as certain as it is weak, that that prisca sapientia, that fundamental knowledge, is not foreign to me, I guard it here, here in my head, here in my breast, Guzmán, adding light to shadow and shadow to light so that somewhere, in spite of and because of contradictions, the intelligence may exist that nothing is totally good or totally evil; that I know, although not everyone believes or knows or understands that I know it, and this is the privilege of the long continuity of my house upon this earth, with all its crimes and madness, that justifies everything, Guzmán, that is my wisdom, and everything that has happened has happened so that someone, one person, one single person, that I, may know it, and that, sadly, is enough; one cannot use that wisdom in governing, for then, you are right, he would lose his kingdom, although not the knowledge that good and evil are one and that each nourishes the other; I know that, although it serves me no purpose, but your usurer from Seville does not know it, or your grumbling workmen, nor do you yourself know it, Guzmán, for on the day you, any of you, sit upon my throne, you will have to learn it again, beginning from nothing, and you will commit the same crimes but in the name of other gods: money, justice, that progress of which you speak; none of you will have the minimal tolerance my awareness of madness, evil, fatality, impossibility, human frailty, illness, pain, and the inconstancy of pleasure assures us. Balance, a precarious balance, Guzmán: to burn a youth only for an obviously abominable crime, and for no other; to protect the life but punish the guilt of my Chronicler by sending him to the galleys as a cure for his innocence; to make myself blind and deaf to any other evidence. Who did the painting in the chapel? You would want to know Guzmán, if you saw, as I have seen in it, a culpable rebelliousness of the soul, but I know how to be deaf and blind and mute when the solution to one problem creates a thousand new ones. Look at that map on the walclass="underline" look at its limits, the Pillars of Hercules, the mouths of the Tagus, Cape Finisterre, distant, frigid Iceland, then the universal abyss, the shoulders of Atlas, the slow and deliberate turtle upon whose shell the world rests: Guzmán, swear to me that there is nothing more; I would go mad if the world extended one inch beyond the confines we know; if it were so, I would have to learn everything again, begin everything again, and I would know no more than the usurer, the workman, or you know; my shoulders, like those of Atlas, are tired: I can bear no more weight; nor is there room on my head for one additional fathom of sea or one additional square acre of land; Spain is contained within Spain, and Spain is this palace…”