“They kill us.”
“We are reborn.”
“Go on your way.”
“Do not return.”
“We shall be the twenty days of your dark destiny.”
“We shall live them for you.”
“My question,” I implored. “My final question…”
“Look at the sky: every star has its time.”
“All those times live side by side, in the same sky.”
“There is a different time.”
“Will you learn to measure it?”
“All times live within a single dead space.”
“There history ends.”
“History? This one, mine? the history of many? which history? I could not ask; I could not answer … Once again, these young people born of my embrace spoke as if they could divine my thoughts, as if they were I, multiplied, crossbred, mixed with everything I had seen or touched here. Humankind stood before me on the causeway, beside the lagoon, naked and proud, they spoke in their plural voices.
“The new land gave life to Pedro; in that life your friend culminated his entire existence, his dreams, his sufferings, and his labors. His life was worthwhile. The new world gave him his life, completed.”
“Pedro gave his life for you.”
“You gave the scissors.”
“They gave you gold.”
“You gave your labor.”
“They gave you memory.”
“You gave them a mirror.”
“They gave you the gift of their deaths.”
“You responded with love: to them, already dead; to a woman, still living.”
“She gave you your days.”
“The five days of the sun offered you twenty days of shadows.”
“The twenty days of the smoking mirror offered you your double.”
“Your double offered you his kingdom.”
“You exchanged power for the woman.”
“The woman gave you wisdom.”
“You gave us our lives.”
“We give you freedom.”
“Can you make a greater offering?”
“You cannot.”
“The story has ended.”
“To whom will you give your lives?” I asked.
“To the new land that gave life to Pedro.”
They embraced me.
They kissed me.
I climbed into the boat.
A youth freed it from its moorings.
The wind and the night drew me far from the causeway. I could no longer see my twenty young friends, or imagine their destinies during the twenty days they would live on my behalf; but they would be days of blood, crime, and pain, that was all I knew, I could understand nothing more of what they told me. I felt impoverished, and alone: I had lost everything, the friendship of old Pedro, the fraternal love of the people of the jungle, the love of the Lady of the Butterflies; I had gained nothing except what I wished to forget: the sacrifice and oppression incarnate in the smoking shadow that dwelt within me, and which, perhaps, I had not truly killed with my scissors. Dizzy, I clung to the single mast of this ship of serpents and saw that I was skimming rapidly across the lagoon of Mexico. But behind me I was leaving not a wake in water but a whirlwind of dust; at the contact of the keel, Sire, the lagoon was turning into earth, the water lay only before me, my stern trailed dust behind it.
I trembled: I was sailing toward a convulsed center where water and dust met, where water was dust, and dust, water; a whirlpool identical to the one I had known in the voyage to these lands, an upside-down spiral of stars, a suction of broken teeth and invisible tongues and a sound of rattles: the mouth of the serpent, I told myself, clinging to the fragile mast of my boat, the great serpent of dust and water of the Mexican lagoon is swallowing me, its coils contracting, everything is returning to the mortal embrace of the great skin spotted by the fire of creation, I closed my eyes, I fell into the pit, I dreamed I was surrounded by liquid walls, cascades of dust, and that, as in the ocean sea, the sky was quickly receding from view, I opened my eyes, Sire, and found that such was not the case, rather, my boat and I, with a movement that cannot be described, were moving in every direction, captive upon a vast subterranean river, or plowing an enormous land beneath the sea.
We were moving in every direction, so that if this was descent it was also ascent; if the boat raced to the right, my rebellious senses indicated it also danced toward the left; in one space and one time my final voyage was leading me, simultaneously, to all places and all moments: in them I found myself, hallucinated, in the center of everything that exists, a center of flaming flowers, yes, but the center was also a desert-like north, a rain of hail, a dominion of owls, a midnight at once black and white; and being in the north, I was at the same time in the south, a blue midday, a flock of parrots, fecund water that rose in warm mists to bathe the moon at its apogee; and being both in the north and the south, I was in the west, a tremulous red dusk, timorous before the nearby darkness, and I was in the east, in the heart of the mountain, on the crest of the dawn, the announcement of the morning star, and being in each of the points of the compass — and still in the center of it all — I was also above the north, watching the fire that spread from the center of the earth to the most distant star of the Pole, but beneath the north, also, in the midst of a cold and cutting storm of ice and knives; and above the south, in the eye of its deluge, but below it also, in a thick region of repugnant forgetfulness and drunkenness; and being at the Occident, I was at the same time above it, witness to the feared extinction of the sun, and beneath, looking for the last time at the forbidding animal with twisted paws that devoured it; and being at the east, I was beneath it, seeing how all hidden things emerged from the earth, how plants began to germinate, rivers to flow, beasts to couple, and men to be born, and above the orient of my simultaneous vision of all things, Venus was gleaming within reach of my hand, near my extended hand, and as at the beginning of my story, I called her morning star, night’s last glimmer, but also its perpetuation in the dawn’s clear light, the sailor’s guide: I repeated that name, the same name, the only name, the name of my destination, go where I go, sailing away from port or in return, embarked victorious or vanquished, Venus, Venus; Vésperes — evening; Vísperas — eve; Víspero — evening star; Héspero — Venus; Hesperia — the Western Land; Hespérides — daughter of the west; España, Spain; España/Hespaña/Vespaña, name of the double star, twin of itself, constant dusk and dawn, silver stele that joins the old and the new worlds and carried me from one to the other borne on her fiery train, star of evening, star of dawn, Plumed Serpent, my name in the new world was the name of the old world; Quetzalcoatl, Venus, Hesperia, Spain, identical stars, dawn and dusk, mysterious union, indecipherable enigma, but cipher for two bodies, two lands, cipher for a terrible encounter.
I tore my mirror from my doublet and turned it toward the star, to capture her, to hold in my mirror all the instants and spaces of my voyage toward the origin of my voyage: at hand, in my hand, the burning star, Venus, Hesperia, Spain, Plumed Serpent, Smoking Mirror: a single name, I clung to the fire of the trapped star, I climbed the mast to be closer to her, fire touched the tip, it burst into flame, St. Elmo’s fire, the rough slate-gray sea, heaving tortuously, sky veiled beneath scintillating light, my solitary light in flames, a mirror, a beacon, a coast, my serpent boat burst upon the rocks, I fell from the mast, falling backward, my eyes fast on the fire on the tip of the mast, the fugitive star, restored night, upside-down sky, a single place, no longer all places, a single time, no longer all times, I fell, returned …
I was awakened, Sire, by the tattooed lips of a woman dressed as a page.
I was lying face down upon the beach, arms flung wide in a cross.