“Only your signature is lacking, Señor, for without it, as you have said, and said rightly, these papers have no meaning. I could have written them myself, rolled the parchment and then sealed it with El Señor’s ring as Your Mercy was dozing.”
“True, Guzmán, how am I to tempt you if I do not sign the papers?”
“El Señor must be equal to the challenges he proposes. Sign, Señor, here…”
“What do you really want, Guzmán?”
“Irrefutable proof of El Señor’s confidence. Otherwise I cannot occupy myself in dissipating the dangers soaring around his head.”
“What do you mean? Everything is calm; the storm has passed; the nuns are quiet; the workers, I tell you, have returned to work; Bocanegra is dead; the cadavers lie in their crypts; the procession is over; now we are complete; now they may close forever the roads leading to this place; we are all here, united. It has been a memorable day. Nothing remains to be done. Nothing remains to be said. At least, that is my most fervent wish.”
“One day of glory, Señor! Many days of glory, for your dead have spread your renown throughout our land, not only today but during the weeks and months it took to form the corteges and begin their journey through mourning towns and cathedral cities, escorted by clerics, by the heads of all the orders, by entire convents that joined in the procession. All the land has seen your cadavers en route, lying within their litters draped and adorned in black, all for your glory, Señor. But this afternoon as the procession entered this uncompleted palace, upon hearing the funeral bells, the praise and psalms of the monks and the prayers of the multitude, as the Masses and sermons and funeral orations you ordered were celebrated in every corner of the palace, I had to ask myself, Señor, why nature seemed to oppose your design, eager to overthrow it; I saw a sign in that storm that in an instant divested the catafalques of their adornment, tore away the drapery, and allowed the wind to tip over the tabernacle and carry off the black ribbon clusters, ripping and tearing everything so badly that today the plain is covered with the remains of your dead’s remains. Your corpses have been humbled by the storm. Now they lie in peace, but I believe that they will never again be the same; you have given them a second life, Señor, a second opportunity.”
“No, no one shall have a second opportunity, neither the dead nor the living nor those who will never be born; all that I have told you would be in vain if it did not confirm in written words the wordless desire that pulses in every beat of my life: death, truly to be death, nonexistence, radical oblivion, and disappearance; my power is absolute because I shall be the last Señor, with no descendants, and then you and yours, with no need to denounce me, can do what you will with my heritage…”
“Señor, stand up, for God’s sake, don’t kiss my feet, I…”
“There will be no more wretched, defective sons forced to kill the dreams of others so that power may be transmitted from generation to generation, there will be no more…”
“Señor, Señor, stand up, here, lean on my arm, Señor…”
“Yes, let me sign, for if what I say is true, what does it matter…”
“Trust in me, Señor; you have constructed a house for the dead through the labor, accidents, and misery of the living; I have ears, Señor, I have eyes, and I have a good sense of smell; the storm is only nature’s notice of what is happening in the souls of men; let me act, Señor; let me act against men, for, like you, I can do nothing against nature; let me work for you here in the place where the act of nature and the acts of men seem as one: this is the privilege you have accorded to us, the new men, the ability to act without the doubt that arises between morality and practicality; did the bells of the tower burn because they were struck by lightning, or because of a premeditated fire lighted by very human hands?”
“You doubt, Guzmán?”
“Señor: these fields are strewn with the black brocade flowers which the storm tore from the catafalques. At this very moment some stonemason or smith, the former shepherds of these lands, is walking through the arid fields picking up pieces of crape and thinking, remembering that they and their people were dispossessed, removed from their fields, denied their streams, their reserves of water exhausted, so that upon the ruins of the land could arise a funereal city. Let me work for you, Señor; and in my acts your will to conquer hell upon earth may encounter its best ally; and my services will finally be identified with the death and disappearance you so desire…”
“Guzmán … what are you doing? Why are you drawing that curtain? What is moving behind that curtain? Are we not alone, you and I? Who is it? Who is it, Guzmán, what are you showing to me, offering me? Who is it?”
“See, Señor, there is a witness who has heard everything.”
“Who is it? Why is the hair so short? Is it a lad? No, the nightdress cannot hide the shape of her breasts, who is it, please?”
“Come to your bedchamber, rest, lie down…”
“What are you showing me? Who is this girl? What beauty, how white that lily skin, what eyes, like black olives … why have you brought her here? Who is she?”
“Rest, Señor; she will come to you; you need not move; she will do everything. Although a virgin, she is wise; and as you are who you are because of the life and death of those remains we buried here today, she is who she is because of the land where she was born…”
“Guzmán, what are you doing, I am ill, I am ill…”
“She is a broad, deep-flowing river…”
“Take her away, Guzmán, I am rotted…”
“She is the odor of damp geraniums and the zest of the lemon, come, Inés, come, do not be afraid, our Señor needs you, after such a festival of death, bodies demand the celebration of life, it is the law of nature, our Señor will give you all the pleasure you need, stop thinking about the journeymen and smiths and leadworkers, stop torturing yourself by imagining impossible love with the scum that works on this construction, lose your virginity in the arms of our Señor; come, Inesilla, you need El Señor and El Señor needs you, come, Inesilla, you know, you must allow yourself to become pregnant by our Señor…”
“No, Guzmán, no, haven’t I told you…”
“… for if El Señor cannot produce an heir, even if only a bastard, the mother of El Señor will impose her will, and will convince everyone that that imbecilic boy she has brought in her train is the true Prince, the providential sovereign announced in all the prophecies of the common people, the last heir, the universal usurper, the true son of the true father; fear your mother, Señor, fear her, for even mutilated as she is, a mere hulk without arms or legs, wrapped in black rags, she compensates for the missing limbs with intensity of will and the lucidity of her aged brain, I can see, Señor, and I can smell, and I already hear the sound of rebellion, the discontent because your Queen offers no legitimate heir, discontent that the Lady your mother might install an idiot as Prince; for either reason, rebellion…”
“Guzmán, do not betray my purpose; I do not want an heir, I must be the last Señor, and then nothing, nothing, nothing…”
“Choose quickly, Señor, there is no time: either sacrifice your desire for personal death and renew your life in the fertile seed of this young girl of the people, or once again face rebellion and the duty to repress it, as you did once before as a youth, again fill the halls of your palace with corpses; choose, Señor, renewed blood or spilled blood; and see, too, Señor, that what I am offering you refutes the lack of loyalty you suspect in me: I offer the continuity of your dynasty, Señor…”
“Why, Guzmán?”
“What would become of me in a world governed by children, lovers, and rebels? But enough; take this girl, quickly, let her slip between your black sheets, caress her, Señor…”