“Señora: we are not alone. We are not the only ones.”
He smiled as he looked at the outlines of the figure he imagined sleeping beneath the sheet; this afternoon the third youth of this company has descended from the mountain to the plain. He is identical to the other two: the one you shelter here and the one your mother-in-law, the Señora, mother of El Señor Don Felipe, harbors in a dungeon. The three of them are identical, even to the sign they all bear: the blood-red cross upon their backs; identical, even in the monstrous configuration of their feet, for among them they can boast of sixty-six fingernails and toenails. Identical, different only because the persons who accompany them are different. I have ears, I have eyes: one youth is at the forge, one in a dungeon, and the third here in your bedchamber. One of them stares uncomprehendingly at his companion, who is probably his lover; her name is Celestina, or at least so she is called by the old smith of the palace. The other stares with dull stupidity, in which a tiny flame of horror begins to gleam, at his unsought companions: the one known as the Mad Lady, and Barbarica the dwarf. And this one? Is he still sleeping, my Señora? Are you desired by him, or detested? What do we know, Señora?
‘’He is my lover,” said Isabel, with frightened arrogance.
And the youth named Juan, pretending to sleep beneath the sheet, silently repeated her words, and in silence listened to the continuation of Guzmán’s discourse: one thing is certain, Señora, and that is that what we thought was a unique event when we found the shipwrecked youth that afternoon upon the beach of the Cabo, deceiving El Señor while he was hunting, is not unique at all; and this — Guzmán smiled again — offends my sense of reasonable coincidence. Why three? Why the cross? Why the six toes on each foot? And especially why, since the world is so wide and far-reaching, the three of them here? I have no time to answer these riddles. I have no arguments with which to answer magic, but I have actions aplenty. It is time to act, Señora, to act with the energy and determination that will skillfully unite the forces of fortune. We must take the initiative, you and I, Señora; I do not know what destiny holds in store for us if we allow events to unfold blindly; nothing good, surely; imagine an irrational encounter among the three youths come like phantoms out of nowhere, a mad old lady, a concupiscent dwarf, a catamite drummer-and-page who asks to be called by a womanish name and allows himself to be kissed and caressed by men; imagine an uneasy multitude whose words of rebellion have come to my ears, and a Señor with no vital strength who divides his time between mystic devotions and culpably lubricious interludes with the novitiates of this cloister who have taken the vows of chastity, confinement, and marriage with Christ. Can you and I, we two, eat of the stew of the ingredients simmering here? Do not let your eyes rebuke me, Señora; truly, my devotion to your person does not warrant that. But you think I am lying. You know your husband’s body. You know he lacks vigor. But I speak the truth; there is one who has revived those dormant energies. It is not easy to confine a young and beautiful Sevillian novitiate in this somber cloister and expect her to dedicate herself to a life of shadows; like the air she will pass between the bars of her cell to play her role as harlot with the delight that comes only with the forbidden. And thus pleasure is not solely your privilege in this palace; your husband is pleasuring himself with a young girl who being a clever Sevilliana is not unaware that the vows of chastity are renewable. On the other hand, who will wash away the sins of my Señora? I speak the truth; but it does not matter. What is important is that El Señor has stored his coat of mail in chests filled with bran; he has lost, yes, this is surely true, the taste for war that, more than divine will, procured the throne for his grandfathers. El Señor, our master, is becoming mad: he is convinced that time has favored him, and that instead of advancing is running backward. He fears, therefore, his birth more than his death; but whatever happens, he fears his death, for he has not seen either Heaven or Hell reflected in the mirror of time, but rather, horrendous transformations of an eternity on earth: man into animal, and animal into man. In any case he fears the earth, which he does not deserve to inhabit. Do not be alarmed, Señora; I am not proposing a crime, that is not necessary. One day, as El Señor slept a deep sleep similar to death, I walked about his bed with my dagger held high above him; I could have killed him at that instant, but this thought stayed my hand: El Señor is already dead; all that is lacking, Señora, is that he be enlightened and interred. And who will succeed this sterile Lord? An imbecile fabricated by the madness of the Queen Mother? That lackluster lover lying beside you? A third usurper whose intentions, schemes, and means we do not know? Who?
La Señora broke her silence. “Guzmán, then?”
Guzmán, yes, Guzmán and La Señora, you and I, together; I the will, you the blood, and both destiny, he repeated, continuing his fevered plea; Señora, this palace has been constructed in the name of order, but today disorder threatens on every side … Guzmán attempted to recall to his mind’s eye the naked figure of La Señora as she lay when he surprised her sleeping, her body intertwined with that of the youth called Juan … we know, you and I, how to take advantage of disorder and not lose ourselves in it … he struggled against the burning impulse to take La Señora in his arms, embrace that waist and caress those breasts, and beneath the sheet the youth named Juan felt the wave of that contained passion wash over him in a wordless challenge, a wordless longing to possess the woman that he, Juan, now possessed, and that he, Juan, did not know was his alone … these three youths are deceiving us, Señora, I do not believe in coincidence, it must be a plot, they must be conspiring among themselves, they are feigning a stupid apathy, like the cat pretending to doze so the mice will come out from their hiding places … mice, thought the youth called Juan, like the mouse that shares with me the sleep and love of La Señora, the Mus that traveled with her from the courtyard of the old castle of her torment to the bedchamber of the new palace of her pleasure, Mus, Mus, the one that crept into her flesh as Guzmán would like to penetrate the dark hiding place of the pale Señora … they thought, they desired, together, unknowing, Guzmán trembling, feverish, proud, standing before La Señora, so morbid and soft, so inciting, so hapless, what maddening contrast in the convergence of whitest skin and blackest hair that Guzmán had seen for the first time when, unannounced, he entered this chamber … let us not be led astray by the feigned disorder in the arrival of these three unknown youths, no … let me be led astray in your flesh, Señora, let me drive the shining silver of my arrow into the deep, final, black, lost, sweet heart of your carnation of milk and blood, fleece and honey … as I do, thought Juan, as I do, as Guzmán’s awful, silent, unsatisfied wave of desire again washed over the white shadow hidden beneath the sheets … we must turn the true disorder that threatens us to our own advantage, the discontent of the workmen on this job, we must incite them, give wing to their displeasure so they do our work for us, so they clothe the revolt in the name of justice and popular rights, so they seize power and then, inevitably, lose it: then you and I can do everything a man and woman can do together … What I do, what they do to me, murmured Juan beneath the sheet, and he felt hidden like a mouse in his hole, like the mandrake root buried by La Señora beneath the white sands of this chamber; and he wanted to shout to Guzmán: Take her, then, if you want her so much, what’s stopping you? why don’t you do what you want? why do you speak and not act, Guzmán, does my presence immobilize you and terrify you more than you want to admit? Poor Guzmán, I am only a tiny mouse, a lifeless root, an orphan of the sea; do you want to kill me, Guzmán?