The Good Conscience by Carlos Fuentes

Author:Carlos Fuentes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Chapter 7

… but sinners …

His shoes leave the hardness of the pavement and with surprise stop upon soft earth. The countryside opens before him. A yellow road winds between fields of pale wheat and high corn. The deep narrow valley rises, slowly flattening, until it reaches a stream.

Jaime descends with his feet buried to the ankle in black loam. He waits for a moment beside the stream; beyond it a straw-colored plain undulates in the early wind, stretches all the way to the line of mountains, hazy in dawn. Behind him the morning bells of Guanajuato’s churches are ringing. He leaves the path and slips off his shoes and lifts his eyes to a sun rising through shreds of vapor. The air is cool, but the earth is already warm. Guanajuato grows small and toy-like behind him. A hill stands high on the plain. Beyond it the boy can see the plain sweeping on, crossed by dark briary gulleys. He is surrounded by the living earth. Newborn thrushes chirp. Buzzards circle overhead.

Once past the hill his way becomes harder. Brambles and briars catch at his legs, stones bruise the soft soles of his feet, the air cuts his skin, sweat glues his shirt to his back. There is a different vegetation along the sides of the ravine now, gray and brown, spiny, for the lake has not extended its fingers of water this far. This is untilled land, where a few goats tinkle their bells. Then the bald mountain, a castle of rock and briars. The arid stone tumult of the Mexican desert. Stone and dust and flapping black wings. Ravines and cliffs, solitude, the mountain’s closed fist. The land original, obstinate, beyond salvation, which refuses to accept man; autonomous nature, a kingdom that will not be divided.

He takes off his shirt. His face is not calm, it reflects his profound anxiety. The palms of his hands are wet. He picks up the broken shell of a wild egg. Was it a bird’s womb, or a lizard’s? The sun burns his shoulders. His erect body is almost lost in the vast panorama. He stoops and begins to collect long sharp cactus spines, which he laces and plaits into a whip. Air is a hot lung in which the sun can be heard panting.

His hand holds the whip and rises. Ezequiel, bound, is led before him again. Adelina sucks her glass of beer. The whip of thorns and cactus needles lashes down upon his bare back. He bites to hold in the cry of pain. Again the whip falls cuttingly. Thorns stick into the flesh of his back and he must jerk to free the whip. He waits a little before the next blow. A needle-sharp briar digs into his chest just below the nipple; as he pulls it loose, he feels his flesh tear. And the sun looks on, his only witness. He falls on his knees. His eyes cloud as they see his dripping blood. Why has pain made him happy? He was not searching for happiness.

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