“Only what is written is real. Wind carries away words as easily as it brings them. Only the written remains. I shall believe in my life only if I read it. I shall believe in my death only if I read it.”
And thus, after a few day’s time, a different friar brought El Señor a document and El Señor read it. It related therein the suffering of the Jews expelled from his kingdom, and this chronicle was signed by an Andrés Bernáldez, priest of Los Palacios; the Jews could not sell their possessions in exchange for gold or silver, as the exportation of these metals was forbidden, thus they have sold houses, properties, and everything they possessed for the pittance pure Christians wished to pay them, they wandered about with them, begging, and finding no one who would buy them; they gave a house for an ass, a vineyard for a little cloth, and then fled Spain in cramped and badly captained ships, and many drowned in storms, and others reached the north of Africa only to become victims of pillage and murder, the Turks killing many of them to steal the gold they had swallowed hoping in this fashion to conceal it, others perished from hunger and epidemics, and there were those who were abandoned naked on islands by their captains; some were sold in Genoa and its villages as men- and maidservants and some were thrown into the sea; staggering, the most fortunate had reached the cities in the north of Europe, Amsterdam and Lübeck and London, and there have been given refuge and accepted in their offices as money-changers, contractors, jewelers, and philosophers …
At first El Señor savored the reading of this chronicle, giving thanks that his land was being rid of those who, denying the divinity of Christ, threatened El Señor’s personal well-being and solitude. But then he was struck by diarrhea like a hare’s or nanny goat’s that kept him bedfast for a week. He persisted, nevertheless, in his decision to heed only what was communicated to him in writing, and to speak only with the ancient Celestina, when she came to visit him, or with his mother, the one called the Mad Lady, when he himself approached the walled-up niche in his chapel.
“What are you doing, Mother?”
Through the opening at the level of the mutilated Queen’s yellow eyes, he heard her muted, ancient voice: “I was remembering, my son, when you were a little boy and used to sit at my feet, or upon my knees, during the long winter nights beside the fire in the chimney hearth in our old castle, while I educated you to be a true Prince, repeating to you the rules every good preceptor inculcates in legitimate heirs. I told you then, son, that it befits no one more than a Prince to have much and good knowledge, but this knowledge must be useful and employed toward heroic and praiseworthy ends. The bee does not settle upon every flower, nor from those from which she sucks does she take more than she has need of to fabricate her honeycombs. The erudite Prince need not know everything, but neither may he ignore any of the things leading to the designs of his birth. Thus let it be said of you, my darling son: that you knew everything you should, but that you studied nothing you need not have known. How young I was then, and beautiful, and whole, and you were so small and blond and attentive in your high ermine collar, your pale, delicate hands resting upon my knees, so serious, listening to me: it is not sufficient, my son, that you confess and take Communion every month, but, knowing that in the use of the Holy Sacraments lies your best defense, you must habituate yourself, first, to confessing every two weeks, then every week, and then every day; and do not content yourself with confessing only the sins you have committed since your last Communion, but every day confess first the last ten years of your life, then twenty, then thirty, until you are accustomed to confessing your entire life every day. And in order to do this with greater purity, you must not only most forcefully forbid yourself all that is illicit, but even be moderate in the honorable portion of your life, keeping your fasts, even though your physician counsel you differently, suffering your labors with patience, and surmounting your passions, for he who is not mortified can never be a Christian Prince. Let your virtue shine forth, oh, my son, my Prince, in the delights of bodily purity, and let it be said of you that you were like the pearl that never leaves its shell except to receive the dew from Heaven: never betray the limits of this virtue, not even in the strict law of most chaste matrimony. This will be a rare marvel in a depraved century! In a perfect body! In a young sovereign! And in a palace filled with adulation, and the delights of the world. For let the fables say what they will of their chaste deities; the poets lie when they say that Hercules destroyed serpents in his cradle, but here we shall say with all truth, and in all simplicity, that a young King choked within his palace all the serpents of his appetites. Oh, what a great victory! Let the Phoenix make its nest amid heavy perfumes in the high mountains of Araby, that is well and good; but that the Ermine be not stained in the black vapors of Babylon is cause for admiration. The admiration of others, my son: power is appearance, honor is appearance, the Spanish knight and Prince are what they appear to be, for appearance is reality, and reality a fleeting illusion. That a King confined within his bedchamber, penitent, austere, contemplative, may keep himself clean and pure, I can easily understand; but that a King caressed by all delights, feted with music, flattered with entertainments and feasts and a thousand incentives for pleasure, keep himself always so temperate; truly, that has all the signs of a miracle. God placed Adam in Paradise; and here observes St. Augustine: who must guard whom?. Paradise, Adam? or Adam, Paradise? Answer this question today, my little son, and if you ask me, what are you doing, Mother? where are you? I shall tell you I am with you, I, young, and you a child, more than forty years ago, inculcating in you the education of a Prince, asking you to be what your father, my husband, the fair, never was, always looking to your salvation, son, inciting you to chastity, pleading with you never to succumb, never to touch any woman, not even your wife, or to know anything it was not fitting to know, and that you devote yourself to mortification, for I would charge myself with procuring for you an heir who would not lead us to extinction but guide us back to our origins, thus perpetuating our breed. I have fulfilled my part, little Felipe, you have an heir without having stained your body; you would not be like your father who caused me such great suffering, you would be for me what your father never was, chaste, mortified, and prudent; and what you were not, another would be in your name, the heir I rescued from the poking and pinching and sticks of a mob of beggars so that he would do what you would never have to do. Have you deserved, my son, the name of Prince? That I am: I am a young and beautiful Queen, saved by the honor and esteem of her son: you. My name is Juana.”
In the solitude of his dust-filled bedchamber of black sheets, black tapestries, black crucifix, and high narrow window, El Señor pondered his mother’s words. Seated there, he was pleasured by a summer’s day, the last summer’s day he had lived. He knew he would never again see such a day. It would be eternal winter in this solitude. He looked from time to time toward the nuns’ choir. Encarnación, Dolores, Esperanza, Caridad, Angustias, Clemencia, Milagros, Ausencia, Soledad: he, Felipe, a recluse among women, seated in eternal penumbra.
On that last summer’s day of his life he had ridden through the flowering land of his childhood. He had ridden out to hunt. Guzmán had prepared everything. His faithful Bocanegra accompanied him. It rained. He took refuge in his tent and read his breviary. Bocanegra ran out of the tent. It stopped raining. Everyone gathered around the felled stag. He was to give the order for the final ceremony: that the horns sound, the stag be quartered, the hounds be baited, and the prizes and punishments of the day be allotted. He raised his hand to give the order. But before he gave it, everything happened as if he had already acted. The culminating moment of the hunt proceeded as if El Señor’s order had been given. As if his most perfect presence were absence itself.