“What place is that?”
“In the only land with the name of Vespers: Spain.”
The magus knelt beside the third child, and other disciples, of other persuasions, who had gathered to listen to him, were offended by the Greek’s allusions to false prophets; and the mob — upon occasion so credulous, at other times so malicious — began to mock the magus, and they shouted at him, some laughing, others somber, all defiant: “If you are a magus and know so much, perform a miracle, or we cannot believe what you have told here…”
Then this terrible one-eyed man with hair like serpents withdrew a scimitar he guarded beneath his black toga and with unexpected strength and ire, as if possessed of a hundred arms, cut the hand from one man, the tongue from another, with two rapid strokes pricked the eyes from one man’s sockets, and spat a thick black stinking phlegm upon another’s face, and this man’s face melted like wax; and to all, the magus cried out: “Were you blind, you would see; maimed, your limbs would be restored; mute, you would speak; sick, you would be healed, but as it is not thus, see how miraculously you have lost eyes, hands, tongue, and health. Men of little faith: who will convince you?”
With clubs and fists, with daggers and hatchets, weeping and vociferating, this crowd fell upon the Greek magus, and tore him limb from limb.
His members were thrown into the sea: the head and the two halves of his trunk, split from his pelvis through his breastbone, like any beast hunted in the forest.
“Never go barefoot, run and play along the beaches and sea walls, but never remove your shoes, never bare your back, always be well covered, listen, speak, mix with everyone, hear them all, learn, survive, compare what we learned in the desert community with what we are living here, we have things to do when you are old enough, something to do together, forget nothing, when you are fourteen we shall leave this city, each will go his separate way, we shall meet again for the final episode, now I want you, with me, to learn, now you are becoming men, I shall gather together everything I know, what little I know, and we shall channel a new course for all this confusion of beliefs, rebellions, and aspirations, we shall join them with my dream on the beach, the promised millennium will take place within history and will be different from Eternity, the world will be renewed within history, without oppression, Pedro, without prohibitions, Celestina, without plagues, Simón, without gods, Ludovico; we shall not return to the original age of gold, nor shall we find it at the end of history, the age of gold is within history, it is called the future, but the future is today, not tomorrow, the future is present, the future is immediate, or it is nothing; the future is here, or there is no such place; the future is now, or there is no such time; we are the future, you three, I…”
THE GYPSY
After three days Ludovico and the three boys descended to the beach of Spalato beneath the high walls of the city-palace in search of the remains of the mutilated Greek magus. The boys agreed that as the one-eyed magus had embraced one, kissed a second, and knelt beside the third, he had asked them to perform this act.
The dirty sands were deserted. Ludovico and the boys searched among the spoils of the sea for the parts of the magus’s body, but finding nothing they sat down to rest and admire the sunset over the yellow waters of the Adriatic.
Then, as if emerging out of nothing (but the sand deadened her steps), they saw walking toward them clothed in red and saffron robes a gypsy woman of the race so named because they had come from Egypt, one of the many prostitutes and thieves with barbaric earrings dangling in their pierced ears that thronged the streets and houses of Spalato selling their favors, telling fortunes, and at times working as servants, for there is no better guardian of things that can be stolen than a thief himself, and this is the age-old wisdom: children of night, guardians of their mother.
But as the woman approached, Ludovico felt fear; the gypsy’s lips were tattooed in the same colors as her billowing dress. It was growing dark; the woman asked them whether they wished her to tell their fortunes, to throw the naipes, a word that comes from naibi, the most ancient Oriental name for she-devils, sibyls, and pythonesses. Ludovico refused, dismissing her brusquely, for secretly he feared any announcement of a new fate that would alter the destinies of his three sons.
Then the gypsy asked: “Are you searching for the remains of the one-eyed one?”
Ludovico sat silently, waiting, but the boys eagerly responded. The gypsy spoke simply: “It is in the cards.”
“Read them,” one of the boys said impulsively.
“Yes, read them,” the other two chorused.
The gypsy smiled enigmatically: “I have only three cards with me.”
The boys reacted with childish disappointment.
“But with three cards one may achieve all the combinations of the tarot; the number 3 signifies the harmonious solution of the conflict of the fall, the incorporation of the spirit with the pair, the formula of each of the created worlds, and synthesis of life: man with his father and mother; with his wife and his child; with his father and his son … So spoke the tarot, which contains all enigmas and their solutions.”
The woman moved her hands in the air as if shuffling cards; the three boys laughed and mocked her, she doesn’t even have three cards! her cards are pure air! deceiver, thief, whore! but the gypsy did not laugh; she looked at one boy and said to him: Run along the shore and pick up that bottle half buried in the sand; and to the second she said: Dive into the water, there is another bottle on the bottom; and to the third: Swim still farther, I see the green crystal gleam of another bottle floating on the waves. The three boys did as she asked. They returned to the beach with three bottles, slimy, green, red-sealed. Only the feet of one boy were wet; the other two, soaked and out of breath, were on all fours on the dirty sand shaking themselves like dogs.
“Get up!” Ludovico shouted with growing terror. “Like men, on two feet!”
The gypsy smiled and said: “These are the remains of the magus; his head and the two halves of his severed torso.”
Again the boys laughed, and said they were only three old bottles; they looked at them and shook them: there was something inside, not even wine, not water, a tight sheaf of papers within each bottle. They laughed. They looked at one another. They started to throw them back into the sea. The gypsy screamed and shouted three words, tiko, tiki, tika, it is the word of God, which in all tongues is pronounced the same, theo, teos, deus, teotl, and only these sons of the Devil will disguise it by naming God dog, in reverse, yes, get up, do not tempt me, be men, not dogs, you, boy, your bottle, tiko, which means destiny in the Chinese tongue, you, boy, your bottle, tika, which means fate in the Gypsy tongue, guard them well, never open them or you will have neither fate, chance, nor destiny, they have been sealed for many ages, one comes from the past, destiny; another from the present, chance; the other from the future, fate; this is the gift of the one-eyed magus who gave you an embrace, a kiss, a caress while others mocked him, and once again killed him …
“But you said these were the parts of his body,” murmured one of the boys.
And the gypsy replied: “The magus was paper. Always he was paper, either a hero or an author of paper. First he was protagonist. When he returned to his hearth from wars and adventures, he wrote. What he lived as a hero is one thing: the centuries sing of it. What he wrote as a poet is a different thing: the letters are silent. He lived the lore that traveled from mouth to mouth. He died what was written upon paper. When he discovered the infidelity of his wife, weary of waiting for him, he lived all his adventures in reverse order. And as he relived them, he wrote about them. He did not stop his ears with wax: he was seduced by the song of the sirens. He did not resist the beauty of the lotus: he ate, and from that time he has lived a dream. Without weapons, he confronted Polyphemus; the Cyclops tore out one of his eyes. He returned to the origin: Ulixes, son of Sisyphus, forever between Scylla and Charybdis, between the monster of imagination — the creature with twelve feet and six heads and serpents’ necks and teeth like a shark and barking dogs in the place of its sex — and the monster of nature — the enormous mouth that swallows and vomits out all the waters of the universe; son of Sisyphus, he returned to the origin, condemned to write of his own adventures again and again, to believe that he had finished his book only to begin again, to relate it all from a different point of view, according to unforeseen possibilities, in other time, in other spaces, aspiring from the beginning and to the end of time the impossible: a perfectly simultaneous narration. He was paper. His body was his death. When they killed him and threw him into the sea, he was again paper. He lived again. Guard him well. It is his offering.”