The page replaced the feather mask upon his face; he offered a hand to El Señor, who grasped it, arose, and descended from the dais; but even this uncommon movement did not reanimate those who observed incomprehendingly, although luster was restored to eyes that watched El Señor and the page descend from the altar, saw the page offer his other hand to the kneeling youth in tattered clothing, a cross upon his back, his blond locks hiding his face; the page’s young companion arose from his position of humiliation, the halberdiers released him, and the trio — the page, the youth, and El Señor — walked toward the neighboring bedchamber separated from the chapel by a black curtain, and passing through the throng that formed a double wall of questioners, they entered El Señor’s chamber.
Guzmán drew back the curtain to allow them to pass. And that was the gesture that revived the movement, sighs, chatter, and exclamations of the court; everyone crowded over, ran across, nudged, or trampled the mutilated body of the Mad Lady, perhaps thinking it was some animal, perhaps El Señor’s dog, a forgotten package, a bundle of black rags, a bale of old hay; they thundered over it like a herd of horses, like a drove of oxen; no one saw her die, no one heard the last sigh from that mutilated bleeding old woman, her head split open, her tangled white hair matted with blood, her eyes starting from her head, her torso flattened, a heap of discarded rinds and peels, for everyone buzzed like a swarm of insects before the bedchamber door.
But only those closest — Julián and Toribio, the Comendador and Guzmán — could see what happened; Don Juan only imagined it; Inés only feared it. And this is what those who could see and hear, and lived to tell it, say:
The page approached El Señor; again he whispered something to him, and El Señor gave orders corresponding to the words of the page, for only at the page’s instruction did El Señor seem capable of acting; they were to send for a certain Aragonese flautist, and allow the page and his young companion, holding hands, moving extremely slowly, as if underwater, not looking at one another, somnambulists, to walk to El Señor’s bed, climb upon it, lie down, and await the indispensable arrival of the flautist; he is on his way, Señor, he was entertaining La Señora in her chamber with his sad, blind trilling; poor solitary and defeated Señora, she seems to be following the road of all our Queens: to be devoured by a Time with a body, a gullet, teeth, claws, scruffy hide, and hunger; they’re opening a path for him now, Señor; he’s guided by eyes that can see and by his own divining hands, Señor; here comes the flautist, no, no one knows where he came from, or when, or how, or why, only that the page deems him indispensable for the incomprehensible ceremony taking place upon the bed where our Señor has in the past been treated by Guzmán for all his premature ills, and where ill, unmoving, he has been able to watch other ceremonies, divine ceremonies, without being seen; but this ceremony cannot be divine, for the two boys have climbed upon El Señor’s own bed and are embracing there as if to console or recognize each other, as if to remember each other; tender, humane gazes, Julián and Toribio may think, but not the prelate who in a high state of agitation cries sodomy, sodomy in the chapel dedicated to the sovereign worship of the Eucharist, sovereign the worship as sovereign should be contrition before a sin becoming more and more prevalent, and St. Luke has said: Nay; but, except you repent, ye shall all likewise perish, and the only way to purge this heinous sin is in the way the youth was purged who was discovered in improper relations with the stableboys: at the stake, by fire, sic contritio est dolor per essentiam; and only vaguely hearing him, for the prelate’s admonitions in no way detracted from the force of curiosity outside the seignorial chamber or the force of fatality within it, Julián gazed toward the painting on the altar and asked himself whether Christian contrition must necessarily be repentance of intent, and not repentance for the passion that was cause and effect, as necessary to the sin as to the pardon, and as he met Julián’s eyes, the friar who was horoscopist and astronomer, he longed to ask him whether the moment was not approaching to change an act of contrition into an act of charity, an act without the repentance the Bishop judged and proclaimed essential, an act of pardon (Inés, Angustias, Milagros) that did not detest the fault committed, for there is something in Christian contritio that as we cleanse ourselves of the sin (Milagros, Angustias, Inés) also washes away our lives, pretending that we have never actually lived them: was it worth the trouble to begin again? Toribio and Julián asked each other with their eyes: Is it worth the pain? while the page and his companion lay embraced on El Señor’s bed; there they are awaiting, Inés, Madre Milagros, Sister Angustias, the arrival of the flautist from Aragon, who now enters the bedchamber, feeling his way, yellow-fingernailed hands extended before him, heavy shoulders, limping walk, his silent rope-soled sandals tied with rags around ulcerated ankles, his flute tied to his belt with a tattered cord: the blind man.
Doubly blind, doubly, Toribio reported to Julián, Julián to the Comendador, the Comendador to an alguacil, the alguacil to a steward; the sound of their voices flowed over the flattened cadaver of the Mad Lady until it reached the agitated honeycomb of nuns hidden behind the distant ornamental ironwork: doubly blind, for now the page blindfolds the blind man with a dirty handkerchief stained with visible remains of dried blood; the blind man remains blindfolded; he is led by the page to the bed and the flautist too climbs upon it, where he sits at one end, legs crossed; he removes his flute from his belt and begins to play a melancholy, monotonous tune with interminably repeated rhythms: music such as we have never heard here, Julián, Toribio, Inés, Madre Milagros, music that smells of smoke and mountain, that tastes of stone and copper, that does not recall in us any recollections, but seems to revive the page’s young companion, draws him out of his stupor, causes him to lift his face as if in search of a sun banished from these royal dungeons, lights a flame in his eyes as if truly an errant star were reflected there, Toribio, Julián; and the page is drawing the curtains around El Señor’s bed, Inés, Madre Milagros, Sister Angustias, while the light in the eyes of the blond and tattered youth spreads across his entire face and animates his lips; the youth’s lips are moving, Guzmán, Toribio, Inés, Madre Milagros, and this is the last thing we who have the privilege of being able to peer through the door to El Señor’s chamber can see before the page’s hand draws the last curtain and separates the three — the page, youth, and flautist — from eyes avid for these novelties and also from the defeated gaze of a trembling El Señor seated again upon the curule chair brought to him by Guzmán: all three are hidden by the three curtains that completely close off the bed from head to foot and from top to bottom: more than a bed, it is a fragile tomb, a motionless carriage.
The youth speaks. And El Señor hears what the youth is saying, but his fatigued arm hangs lifelessly by his side, and his hand gropes distractedly for something beside the curule chair, a companion, perhaps a dog that would make him feel less defenseless.
The youth speaks, hidden behind the curtains that envelop El Señor’s bed, hidden in the strange company of the page and the flautist. One can hear the flautist’s melancholy music accompanying the words of the young pilgrim. Nothing, on the other hand, can be heard from the lips of the page. And these are the pilgrim’s words: