the youth found on the Cabo de los Desastres, when I told you this, I lied, I accept my lie, yes, because I did not know then how this story was going to end, I believed I would never reveal my greatest secret to anyone, I thought today, as I began to speak to you, that the worst secret would be any secret at all, for example, when El Señor told me what he saw in his mirror as he ascended the thirty steps, I said to myself, this will be the secret, the father of El Señor fornicated with a she-wolf, but that she-wolf was none other than an ancient Queen dead for centuries, the one who stitched flags the color of her blood and her tears, a restless soul resurrected in the body of a she-wolf, it was natural that another child should be born of her belly, blood calls to blood, degenerates seek out one another and copulate and procreate: three sons of the Señor called the Fair, three bastards, three usurpers, Felipe’s three brothers, is it not enough you know this secret?, is your curiosity not satiated?, I wished to be honest with you, to win your forgiveness, do not now accuse me of something so frightful, I asked La Señora to have a child by Mihail-ben-Sama, you, you were the true culprit, you, a Chronicler made bitter and desperate because your papers are not identical to life, as you would wish, you interrupted my project with your idiotic poem, you removed Mihail from life and placed him within literature, you wove with paper the rope that was to bind you to the galley, indiscreet and candid friend, you sent Mihail to the stake, do you not remember?, you shared a cell with him the night before your exile and his death, how could I have been the iniquitous procurer who delivered a son to the carnal love of his mother?, how was I to know that was what La Señora desired?, she recognized him, yes, she recognized him, the cross, the toes, I believed I was compassionately reuniting a mother and a son, she knew who he was, she knew she was fornicating with her own son, she knew it, and she screamed her pleasure of him, I knew it, and I lamented it with prayers and breast beating: blood calls to blood, the son born of incest has closed the perfect circle of his origin: transgression of moral law; Cain slew Abel, Set, Osiris, Smoking Mirror killed the Plumed Serpent, Romulus, Remus, and Pollux, son of Zeus, rejected immortality at the death of his brother Castor, son of a swan: sons of a witch, sons of a she-wolf, sons of a Queen, these were three, they did not kill one another, their number saved them, but there is no order that is not founded upon crime, if not of blood, then of the flesh: poor Iohannes Agrippa, called Don Juan, it fell to you, in the name of the three brothers, to transgress in order to found anew: not Set, not Cain, not Romulus, not Pollux, your destiny, Don Juan is that of Oedipus: the shadow that walks toward its end by walking toward its origin: the future will respond to the enigmas of the past only because that future is identical to the beginning; tragedy is the restoration of the dawn of being: monarch and prisoner, culprit and innocent, criminal and victim, the shadow of Don Juan is the shadow of Don Felipe: in her son, Don Juan, La Señora knew the flesh of her husband Don Felipe: only thus, Chronicler, only in this way; candid friend of marvels, soul of wax, hear me, I believed I was returning her lost son to her, but instead she recovered her true lover, you are to blame, foolish friend, not I, not I, such was not my intent, I swear it, forgive me, I forgive you, events acquire a life of their own, they escape our hands, I did not propose such a horrible infraction of divine and human laws, you frustrated my project with your literature, now you know the truth, you must now alter all the words and all the intent of this long narration, revise now what I have told you, Chronicler, and try to discover the lie, the deception, the fiction, yes, the fiction, in each phrase, doubt now everything I have told you, what will you do to collate my subjective words with objective truth?, what?, you sent Miguel-of-Life to the stake, and you condemned me to be an accomplice to an incestuous transgression: see the fires of the stake upon every page you fill, Chronicler Don Miguel, see the blood of incest in every word you write: you desired the truth, now save it with the lie . . .
“Señor, this great painting has been sent to you from Orvieto, fatherland of a few somber, austere, and energetic painters. You are the Defender of the Faith. They offer it in homage to you and to the Faith. See its great dimensions. I have measured them. They will fit perfectly within the empty space behind the altar in your chapel.”
Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
WORK
1954, Los días enmascarados, Novaro (stories).
1958, La región más transparente, Fondo de Cultura Económica (novel).
1959, Las buenas conciencias, Fondo de Cultura Económica (novel).
1962, Aura, Ediciones Era (novel).
1962, La muerte de Artemio Cruz, Fondo de Cultura Económica (novel).
1964, Cantar de ciegos, J. Mortiz (stories).
1967, Zona Sagrada, Siglo XXI (novel).
1967, Cambio de piel, J. Mortiz (novel).
1969, Cumpleaños, J. Mortiz (novel).
1969, El mundo de José Luis Cuevas, Tudor Publishing Company (essay).
1970, Casa con dos puertas, J. Mortiz (essay).
1970, Todos los gatos son pardos, Siglo XXI (play).
1970, El tuerto es rey, J. Mortiz (play).
1971, Tiempo mexicano, J. Mortiz (essay).
1971, Los reinos originarios, Seix Barral (play).
1972, Cuerpos y ofrendas, Alianza (anthology).
1973, Chac Mool y otros cuentos, Salvat (stories).
1975, Terra Nostra, J. Mortiz (novel).
1976, Cervantes o la crítica de la lectura, J. Mortiz (essay).
1978, La cabeza de la hidra, Argos (novel).
1980, Una familia lejana, Ediciones Era (novel).
1980, El Dragón y el Unicorno: La tensión del pensamiento entre las antiguas relaciones de sangre y las nuevas relaciones jurídico-estatales que surgieron con la civilización, Cal y Arena (essay coauthored by Alejandro Carrillo Castro).
1981, Agua quemada, Fondo de Cultura Económica (stories).
1982, Orquídeas a la luz de la luna. Comedia mexicana, Seix Barral (play).
1985, Gringo Viejo, Fondo de Cultura Económica (novel).
1987, Cristóbal Nonato, Fondo de Cultura Económica (novel).
1990, Constancia y otras novelas para vírgenes, Fondo de Cultura Económica (novel).
1990, Valiente mundo Nuevo. Épica, utopía y mito en la novela hispanoamericana, Mondadori (essay).
1990, La campaña, Santillana (novel).
1991, Dos educaciones, Mondadori (play).
1991, Ceremonias del alba, Mondadori (play).
1992, El espejo enterrado, Fondo de Cultura Económica (essay).
1993, Geografía de la novela, Fondo de Cultura Económica (essay).
1993, El naranjo, Alfaguara (stories).
1994, Nuevo tiempo mexicano, Aguilar (essay).
1994, Diana o la cazadora solitaria, Alfaguara (essay).
1995,
