were also frozen, at a certain point he did not know where he was and he clawed at his forehead to remember.
When he reached the polar regions he lay down on the snow and, the next morning, was born there; he was large, heavy as a heart without a body and soon the hunters and other animals gave him the name Heart of the Bear. Knowing he had to live in the ice and water, he made a tall man of petrified snow and, for the top, chose a scarecrow; he borrowed wholly from his fur and from colors that scarcely existed; but he learned to work with them in such a way that the rainbow and, more than anything, the color green, could be glimpsed within the white.
Thomas Müntzer did not lose sight of him lest the river melt, summer returned; seen from a distance he seemed to be the polar expanse itself; he smiled at everything and everyone and his ferocity only became terrible when he was hungry and his smile hung from his tongue; at that moment he spoke, rose up, swung his tail and paws; a shadow was cast in front of him and he ate it; it could’ve been a dog, a wolf, the head of Thomas Müntzer who had not lost sight of him lest the river melt, summer returned; he fed, he continued smiling and walking rhythmically. Everywhere he walked, he wrested power which was the temperature rising,
and which was the greatest danger
for the frozen regions.
On the night he was going to eat the shadow of Müntzer’s head, he smiled enigmatically, and howled with hunger all night.
Place 9 —
As the bear intoned the Rules’ adumbrations, Ana de Jesus, in his arms, thought about Pegasus, Copernicus, and Giordano Bruno. She dreamed: through the half-open door, she had caught Copernicus meditating. It was the end of the day, the sun had come in through the window and through the window it had left. “And the Sun lies in the middle of it all,” thought Copernicus. She dreamed; she knew it was so but, at that moment, she saw it was so; it made itself known to her tentatively, as if the ideas had slipped inside the house and were the last light crowning the furniture; she did not take her eyes off the jar of water sitting on the windowsill; it seemed as if everything revolved around the Sun, bright open heart; when she came back to herself, the soup was steaming on the plate and the monks were silent with their clasped hands resting on the tray.
Place 10 —
She had let herself be taken by sleep, the hot wind of the desert had put out the fire
the stars rose in flight over the frozen expanse
Ana de Jesus lost herself in Giordano Bruno, and in the infinity of space.
Giordano Bruno, he of prodigious memory, saw his forehead reflected in the fire and remembered all the seconds, all the minutes, all the hours, all the years of his life; even more intensely, he remembered the texts he had read and the authors who had granted him that pleasure; then he sensed a rising flame would split his forehead in two
but in both parts he remembered that the universe is infinite, populated by thousands of systems with their planets and their sun.
Place 11 —
If she dreamed, she dreamed of forests, and houses born from forests; and shaped like forests. The cities had been destroyed or perhaps had never existed. Heart of the Bear became a permanent place of representations, sensations, perceptions, images, icons, and myths; she had become accustomed to reading texts and seeing animals in him. His enormous, fragile paw had eyes and claws when he wrote on the ground or on paper. A great pleasure rose up from the battle and he followed it with his writing, watching.
What he most loved was the death of the peasants whom he buried every night in solitary places; separating the words
mountains
and rivers
and heads
and punishments.
Upon each grave Heart of the Bear placed a stone where John of the
Cross wrote the epitaph:
this is me, and I am him.
Opening the book, seeing the blank page, picking up any instrument that writes is a great consolation. I believe there is snow under the page, and the heat of the desert hovers around, the sand falls in the clepsydra without the end of this day even being visible or predicted from afar; I gather an infinite sadness from the dead, I collect and arrange its members, and gather them. From a distance I see Saint John of the Cross meditating, the Sun of Copernicus striking his eyes and capturing Müntzer’s head between its hands. From time to time Saint John of the Cross kisses his mouth with the lips he uses to pray and I sense that one of his words will slide down the throat of Müntzer who, in this battle, became dust.
Place 12 —
As he became dust, Thomas Müntzer heard the trampling of the horses farther and farther away. He had never died before. He was aware that Pegasus was moving away.
Neither John of the Cross nor Ana de Peñalosa stopped him, grasping his white mane. He turned toward Heart of the Bear but Pegasus’s longing was so acute that the bear remained what at the beginning he had always been — an animal that had come from the polar regions. John of the Cross, motionless, continued meditating.
He seemed so absent, with his hand fallen onto the sand,
so absent trying to perceive the voices to which he was listening for the book, so absent with his closed eyes open,
so absent with his mouth penetrated by silence
that Müntzer forgot his own name, when he had been born and, worst of all, the reason he was going to die.
But John of the Cross appeared to be sleeping (he had never been absent). He began to write the bear, walking around him, and the last words he said
take him in your paws
let us go into exile.
Ana de Peñalosa and Ana de Jesus did not sleep for a moment that night. They wore the dresses that best expressed them; they waited sitting down, facing one another, always seeing what happened in the same mirror. They had the impression of walking through time, space was nothing; they left the house, the window, the river, the desert, the forest, the polar regions, and concentrated on the word.
Heart of the Bear illuminated the way, in front of them, always with Thomas Müntzer lying across his paws.
Ageless,
Ana de Peñalosa,
grew to be very old.
She was astonished by the dust
that the bear carried
in his arms,
she did not know
which side
his hands,
his arms,
or his head were on;
she wanted
to give birth to
an entire body
and
