“Amen, Señor, amen.”
“Peace, and an early death, Guzmán. Bocanegra was more fortunate than we; what we seek, he has already obtained.”
“El Señor is unjust with me. I only fulfilled my duty, as I fulfill it now, by writing down El Señor’s words.”
“Truly, I am not reproaching you. Come, Guzmán, come nearer; let me tell you something, in confidence…”
“Señor…”
“That dog attacked me on the stairway … one morning … attacked me … he didn’t know me … that’s why I tore off his bandages … to defend myself from him … and you treated him, Guzmán … you were right; he had rabies. You treated him, not knowing; when you knew, you killed him … Loyal and efficient Guzmán; thank you, Guzmán, thank you for doing what is necessary, while I live in the realm of the imagination; thank you; I am not reproaching you…”
“Señor, I beg you; let us put an end to these words. Today is a memorable one; you have brought together all your ancestors in your own palace erected for that purpose; and, in so doing, you have raised your dynasty above any other in this land. Rest, Señor; your words are dictated by your soul’s fatigue…”
“Guzmán, Guzmán, what intolerable pain … come, place the red stone in the palm of my hand … You see, my body pains me even more; Guzmán, do you never doubt?”
“If I had power, Señor, I would never doubt anything.”
“But you do not have it, poor Guzmán; come, kiss my bone ring, kiss my hand, thank me for having taken you from nothing and given you a place in my service, in which you have risen, I recognize, by your own merits and well-proven abilities. Let me see what you have written … Where did you learn such a fine hand?”
“Although in straitened circumstances, I was able to spend a year in Salamanca.”
“You learned a beautiful hand.”
“Among other things, Señor. Students tend to be bellicose rascals. El Señor should be grateful that my defects are in the service of his virtues.”
“Ah, yes. Come then, kiss my hand with respect and gratitude.”
“I do so, Sire, I do so with great humility…”
“Do you know something, Guzmán? All you need do is show the Bishop this writing, alleging that it is a confession, and you can imagine that I would be brought before the Holy Office, judged and condemned to the stake; well, have no such hope; it would do you no good, however bellicose and rascally you may feel; they would not believe you, everything is written in your hand, yes, just so, sprinkle sand on the words to dry the ink, and even though they believed you and condemned me, Guzmán, it would not help you, for if you usurped my power…”
“Señor, you judge me harshly.”
“Shhhh, Guzmán; for if you usurped the power in my name, you, or any man like you … I do not wish to offend you, but any man like you, a new man, you would not know what to do with power, you would go mad, you believe you would not doubt, but you would do nothing but doubt, the entire day, you would be riddled with doubt about what you had done and what you had allowed to be done, doubt establishes its kingdom between moral duty and political duty, there is no possible escape, none, Guzmán, thank heaven that you are a servant and not a master…”
“I do not complain, Señor…”
“But, hear me, one can retain power only when he has behind him a legion of murdering, cruel, incestuous, mad phantoms mortally damaged by the French malady and inclined to bleed to death at a scratch. What is there among men except exchange? And if some serve and others command, Guzmán, it is because some succeed in offering something for which the others have no response: something for which they can offer nothing in exchange. And who in this land can offer me anything in exchange for my thirty bloodless, corrupt, demented, incestuous, criminal, ill — ill even in death — cadavers, Guzmán, come here with me, look at them in their sumptuous sepulchers, see the grimaces and leprous bodies and infirmities and death’s-heads and moth-eaten ermines, regard my thirty phantoms, their heads crowned in blood, their bodies brilliant with chancres and boils and wounds that never healed, no, not even in death. Who, Guzmán? Only I, Guzmán, only I can offer to myself the one gift that is superior, only I can say: this dynasty will die with me; hear me well, and now take my ring and roll the parchment carefully and seal it with the wax; obey me, Guzmán; do as I tell you … do it! Why do you stand there, motionless? Does it horrify you so to see such tumefaction? These are very old cadavers; there is neither stink nor fear in them.”
“But something is still lacking, Señor.”
“I tell you, nothing is lacking, in this testament I have left my doubt, my life, my anguish, and something more: a suspicion, that denies my uniqueness, a suspicion that whatever exists exists only because it is related to, circulates through, or eats into what we believed unique, turns uniqueness into a commonplace, a boiling quagmire, and the parallel suspicion that nothing is unique because everything may be seen and told in as many ways as men existed, do exist, or will exist. Is that not enough? Is there anything more to risk in my undertaking to rescue truth by accumulating in one place all the lies that refute it?”