“You are right, Brother Julián. I should have allowed myself to become pregnant by that beautiful boy.”
“Ah yes, he was truly beautiful! But think no more of him; he will be dead within a few hours. Better think of the new youth, the one of your dream.”
“And what will his name be?”
“Juan Agrippa. Remember, six toes on each foot and a blood-red cross upon his back.”
“What do the name and the marks signify?”
“That Rome still lives.”
“How do you know these things?”
“Because you have dreamed them, Señora.”
“I don’t know whether the dream is completely mine; I don’t know…”
“Some dreams can be induced, and some can be shared.”
“You lie. You know more than you are telling.”
“But if I told her everything, La Señora would cease to have confidence in me. I do not betray La Señora’s secrets; she must not insist that I betray mine.”
“It is true. Then you would cease to interest me.”
La Señora and the miniaturist monk, both under the effects of the belladonna, stared at each other unseeing, their pupils dilated. In the pupils of the tall, fragile, blond, and bald cleric was revealed the image of an eternal empire, renewed and immortal throughout all the convolutions of blood and war, of bed and gallows; darkly reflected in La Señora’s pupils was the chance event only, but not the continuity; the event was pleasure, the continuity the duty Julián wished to impose upon her; she saw, multiplied ad infinitum, the figure of the youth lying on the beach, and between his thighs she wished to divine the seed of pleasure as well as the seed of pregnancy; she did not know, actually, whether both could germinate at the same time.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, against his will, my husband goes to the hunt.”
“Even better; he will be distracted and absent-minded; and you will be able to go as far as the coast.”
“Tell Guzmán to ready the litter, the hawk, and the Libyan bearers.”
“He will want a guard to accompany you. It is a very lonely area.”
“Let my orders be obeyed! And if your prophecies are true, Brother Julián, you will have pleasure.”
“That is all a contrite and devout soul could ask.”
BRIEF LIFE, ETERNAL GLORY, UNCHANGING WORLD
When he awoke, El Señor attributed the filth of his bed to the attack of the eagles and the mockery of the hawks during his dream of the stone valley: bound to his board, Bocanegra dozed, exhausted. Captive in what he believed to be the physical prolongation of his nightmare, El Señor had no time to feel revulsion; the stench of the bedchamber, the inexplicable presence of the thick slobber, the tortured stools, animal placenta, and stains of urine and blood, semen and grease, were less compelling than the will to decipher the tripartite prayer that echoed through his dream like an airy refrain: Brief life, eternal glory, unchanging world.
Then he was struck by the recollection of the Cathedral profaned on the day of his victory: excrement and blood — copper and iron — of what were they signs? Inheritance or promise? Residuum or new dawn?
He sensed a flash of light; he turned his head; he saw himself reflected in a hand mirror resting against a water pitcher near the head of his bed. He saw himself, his mouth opened like a man yelling. But no scream escaped from that breathless, choking throat.
He picked up the hand mirror and hurried into the chapel, fleeing from the silent horror of the filthy bedchamber. In the chapel greater dangers existed, real dangers, dangers far removed from the intangible menace of his bedchamber.
Once there, he found time to question, once again, the Christ without a halo standing to one side in the painting brought from Orvieto. He received no response from the figure; then he walked to the stairway.
Mirror in hand, he paused at the first step.
He raised the mirror to his eyes, studying his image.
It was he. A man born thirty-seven years earlier: serene forehead, skin like wax, one cruel eye, one tender (both veiled by heavy-lidded, saurian eyelids), straight nose with flaring nostrils, as if compassionately amplified by God himself to facilitate the difficult respiration; thick lips, salient jaw, disguised both by the silken beard and moustache and by the folds of the high white ruff that hid the neck, separating the head from the trunk; above the ruff the head was poised like a captive bird.
El Señor gazed at himself and tried to recall how he had looked in his youth when he fled through the forest with the sons of Pedro and, with Celestina, reached the sea; how the wind had whipped his then curly hair and battered his bare chest; how the thorns had torn at his boots and the branches ripped his shirt; how strong his legs had been and how his sun-bronzed arms had glistened as he tugged at the ship’s sail beside the student Ludovico; ah, to be young …
No longer was he that youth, but neither was he yet this man: watching himself in the mirror, he ascended the first step; and the change, although almost imperceptible, did not escape his keen attention, his secret proposal; the mouth was a bit more open, as if the difficulty of breathing had increased. He ascended the second step: in the mirror the network of wrinkles was more finely woven about eyes a little more sunken and hollow.
He climbed the third step, indifferent to the swift and inexplicable changes of the light, attentive only to the changing image in the mirror: the front teeth were missing now, and the mesh of wrinkles about the eyes and mouth had become impenetrable. He climbed the fourth step: his beard and hair were reflected white as an August cloud, white as a January field; the mouth, now agape, sought with anguish the never sufficient air and the bloodshot eyes recalled too much — and begged clemency for what they remembered.
He reached the fifth step, and it was only with a great effort that he refrained from retreating rapidly to the lower stair: the asphyxiated face in the mirror conveyed the image of the resignation that precedes death. His neck was bandaged, pus ran from his ears, and worms filled his nostrils. Already dead? Dead in life? To ascertain, he found the courage to climb the sixth step; the face in the mirror was motionless, and the neck bandages now shrouded his jaw.