Contain your anger, old man, and disguise your fear, for you well know that your best defense has been invisibility; you know that El Señor will not visit you until the next harvest is collected, or until a wedding when he comes to take, by force, his rights as the Lord. For this reason you have forbidden anyone to marry before the harvest time, trusting that by then the commune will be sufficiently strong to confront El Señor. You ask the repentant man standing before you: Why have you returned when you could have remained with your stolen bottle under the protection of El Señor?
The thin man, his ankles raw from the torture ropes, answers you: “I have returned to do penance for my double betrayaclass="underline" I have returned to fight in defense of my companions, for tomorrow the army of El Señor will march against us and will crush our dream…”
You ask him: Where is this bottle you have stolen? And he bows his head and admits that inexplicably El Señor took it from him. But he pleads: “I am a traitor and a confessed thief, but let me return and fight with you. Don’t despise my poor bones.”
You decide to pardon him. But the assembly protests: you hear voices demanding death for this man as an example to whoever might feel tempted to repeat his crimes. And there is more: many allege that if the man has returned, it is because El Señor plans to employ him as a spy within the commune. You argue heatedly, old man: not a single drop of blood must be spilled here; to yourself you say silently that, in the same way the thief and traitor could not change his instincts overnight, the multitude gathered here cannot suppress its own. The members of the commune defy you: once El Señor attacks, the spilling of blood will be inevitable; in fact, the time remaining before the fateful battle has been brutally curtailed. You point to the traitor’s ankles, still bleeding from the torture: a man replies that this is an obvious stratagem of El Señor, so that, once pardoned, the traitor can remain in the commune and continue to inform against it. They accuse you of evading the facts, and several strong men hurry outside; soon in the warm summer night you hear the sound of the hammer and the saw.
Inside the granary your community first debates, then decrees: we will live in peace only when our rules of life are accepted by everyone; in the meanwhile we must set aside our own code of brotherhood and actively destroy those who do not deserve it, our enemies. You try to calm them, old man; you say we must live in isolation and in peace, with the hope that sooner or later our good example will spread; you say we must conquer with persuasion, not with arms. Your people shout in your face: we must defend ourselves, for if we’re destroyed we can offer no example at all. You persist, weakly: we will negotiate with El Señor, we will deliver this harvest in exchange for the right to pursue our new mode of life. Then the assembly laughs openly at you.
The traitor is condemned to death and hanged that same night from the brand-new gallows erected in the middle of the commons. The people elect one of the carpenters to organize the defense; the new leader’s first orders are to raise barricades in the fields; a popular army is formed and neighbor watches over neighbor to prevent future betrayals.
Old man: you are petitioned to remain in your hut; occasionally in the evenings young girls come to bring you flowers and honor you as the founder of the commune; but you do not dare ascertain what really is happening. The new leader has warned you that if you speak again, if you again repeat the arguments you expressed during the assembly, you will be exiled, and if you persist in debate outside the commune, you will be considered a traitor and murdered in broad daylight. From your window you can see the gallows erected in the commons. It seems to you that only the hangman and you are motionless, waiting, always waiting; the rest of an incomprehensible world races by before your eyes, and your ears are filled with the chaotic sounds of running horses, of weeping, of discharged harquebuses, and of fire. What is the source of the arms the members of the commune employ in their struggle against El Señor? You find out the day you see in the square the pennants and infantry of another Liege, a rival of your oppressor. Every day, men are hanged; you no longer know, you don’t want to know, whether they are men of the commune or soldiers of El Señor. It is said (at times the sorrowing women dare communicate the rumors) that some members are opposed to the alliances that, under the guise of necessity, the new leader has effected with the noble rivals of El Señor.
Once the new leader visits you and says: “Pedro, I hope someday when we again live in peace we can raise a monument to you right here where the gallows now stands.”
CELESTINA’S DREAM
Felipe took the girl’s hand.
You’ve chosen me, isn’t that true, Celestina? And I feel I’ve chosen you. Here, let’s drink to our love. Together we’ll work with our new friends to build the old man’s ship; together we’ll voyage to a new and better land. We’ve become good friends, we five, but you and I, my love, will make love beneath the stars as the ship softly breasts the waves of the unknown sea.
Ludovico the student is also our friend now; but every night, following the day’s hard labor, as we drink and I look into your eyes he will try to hide his behind his cup; I can see my love for you reflected in his eyes.
We’ve no need for explanations, Celestina; soon every night Ludovico will lie with us beneath our covers; I love him like a brother and you love what I love; there will be no hatred, no suspicion, no jealousy, only satisfied desire, when I make love to you and then permit him to do the same.
At times you are assaulted by temptation and by doubt: “I am the only woman on board. It is only natural they both love me.” But Ludovico’s passion, his tender touch, even the newly minted words so different from his usual dogmatic expression, the beauty of the pleasure he gives and receives from you, all this tells you he loves you because you are Celestina, and that he could love no other woman. You are Celestina: you are mine: Ludovico is yours.
Then I begin to believe that perhaps my friend loves you more than I, Celestina, for he loves both you and me, or me through you; and you, because of your freely given loyalty to me, fear you are becoming too close to him and more distant from me. I love him, he is my brother; you must please me by loving him always more.
During the day, old Pedro stands at the helm while the monk prays and fishes. Ludovico and I perform the exhausting tasks; we climb the mainmast and ready the sail, we scan the horizon and at the sight of storm clouds prepare the crossjack, we sound and scrub and polish, and gaze interminably at the endless ocean from whose center we seem never to move, as if we were lying to. Our shoulders and hands touch constantly; we have learned to haul the ropes as one, to know the power and grace of our common muscles, for now we even walk like twins, as if the symmetrical distribution of our bodies’ weight were essential to the equilibrium of the ship. And our bodies sweat together beneath the summer sun; our skin is dark, our hair bleached by the gold light of the sea. You, Celestina, are pale; you stand away from us during the day, in the shadows, salting down the fish and slicing the toughened loaves, alien to our active labor, alien to our cultured Latinist jests, morosely humiliated you cannot share in the wit and puns of the education we have in common, when Ludovico says to me: “Crinis flavus, os decorum cervixque candidula, sermo blandus et suavis; sed quid laudem singula?” And I reply, caressing the nape of his neck: “Totus pulcher et decorus, nec est in te macula, sed vacare castitati talis nequit formula…”