Read Online Inez: A Novel by Carlos Fuentes - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Carlos Fuentes
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pokes into the ground rooting out and devouring all the crawling, wiggling little things it can cram into its mouse-spider snout. Its shriek is nearly inaudible, but it is joined by many just like it, until there is a sea of milling, restless, dissatisfied shrews, prophets of a new trembling that will shake the plain.
Perhaps the shrews will hide and the reindeer will return, tranquil now, first displaying themselves, circling on the plain but marking it out into spaces, which other antlered hordes approach only to be aggressively chased off by the lord of that piece of earth. A ferocious battle will take place between the proprietary deer and those disputing its territory. You, hidden, invisible and unimportant to them, will watch that combat of bloodied antlers and penises engorged in the frenzy of combat until one animal establishes itself as master of that space and expels the bleeding vanquished, and in every neighboring space only the beast with the greatest rack and the greatest penis will take possession of the field where now, tame and indifferent, the females of the herd will come to graze and be mounted by the triumphant deer, never lifting their heads or interrupting their
grazing, the males puffing and snorting like the accursed heavens that will damn them to eternal combat in order to enjoy this instant, the females silent to the end …
And at the end, you alone in the following darkness, crying out alone, as if the antlered herd and their females were still occupying the plain as solitary as you, fem, will be, sensing that you will have to flee from this place, go far away from here, obscurely fearful that an enormous antlered beast will surprise you calmly eating plants by the riverbank and will be confused by your strange scent and your red mane and your four-footed, loping gait …
Suns later … You will stop and look at the sea. You will not know what to do now. You will feel yourself and find your body sticky, smeared from head to toes with the same viscous substance that will be coated on your face and on hands that will not clean you because they will be coated too and your head will be a tangled, filthy nest, and a thick paste will dribble down into your eyes and blind you. You will wish and not wish to see.
Two sea-dwellers, as long as two yous laid end to end, will roil the sea with their battle, at times feinting and at times direct and lethal, now that the two fish use their mouths the way the monkey will use its club, attacking with sharp teeth. This you will see.
You will not understand why they battle in this way. You, hom, will feel abandoned and lonely and sad when you walk along the rocky beach and you find small fish on the rocks identical to the large ones but for their size, their bodies mangled and the mark of the teeth of the large fish imprinted on them like the symbols—and like a light from the sky that memory will return—scratched with stone in the protective hollows in the mountainsides.
You will see the largest fish attack each other in the ocean
until one is killed or flees, and you will think you understand that battle but not the death of the fish-babies murdered by their own progenitors—you will see them attack their young again and again—abandoning them, dead, on the beaches …
Other times, those same large white lighthearted fish will frolic in the waves, making gigantic leaps and taking the sea as their playground. You will seek a way to have thoughts, feeling that if you think you will have to remember. There will be things you do want to remember and others you would like, or that you will need, to forget.
Forget and remember, facing the sea, there will be two moments in your head difficult to tell apart—instinctively you will put a hand to your forehead every time you think this—because until very recently there will have been no before or after for you, fem, only this, the moment and the place where you will find yourself doing what you will have to
Perhaps the shrews will hide and the reindeer will return, tranquil now, first displaying themselves, circling on the plain but marking it out into spaces, which other antlered hordes approach only to be aggressively chased off by the lord of that piece of earth. A ferocious battle will take place between the proprietary deer and those disputing its territory. You, hidden, invisible and unimportant to them, will watch that combat of bloodied antlers and penises engorged in the frenzy of combat until one animal establishes itself as master of that space and expels the bleeding vanquished, and in every neighboring space only the beast with the greatest rack and the greatest penis will take possession of the field where now, tame and indifferent, the females of the herd will come to graze and be mounted by the triumphant deer, never lifting their heads or interrupting their
grazing, the males puffing and snorting like the accursed heavens that will damn them to eternal combat in order to enjoy this instant, the females silent to the end …
And at the end, you alone in the following darkness, crying out alone, as if the antlered herd and their females were still occupying the plain as solitary as you, fem, will be, sensing that you will have to flee from this place, go far away from here, obscurely fearful that an enormous antlered beast will surprise you calmly eating plants by the riverbank and will be confused by your strange scent and your red mane and your four-footed, loping gait …
Suns later … You will stop and look at the sea. You will not know what to do now. You will feel yourself and find your body sticky, smeared from head to toes with the same viscous substance that will be coated on your face and on hands that will not clean you because they will be coated too and your head will be a tangled, filthy nest, and a thick paste will dribble down into your eyes and blind you. You will wish and not wish to see.
Two sea-dwellers, as long as two yous laid end to end, will roil the sea with their battle, at times feinting and at times direct and lethal, now that the two fish use their mouths the way the monkey will use its club, attacking with sharp teeth. This you will see.
You will not understand why they battle in this way. You, hom, will feel abandoned and lonely and sad when you walk along the rocky beach and you find small fish on the rocks identical to the large ones but for their size, their bodies mangled and the mark of the teeth of the large fish imprinted on them like the symbols—and like a light from the sky that memory will return—scratched with stone in the protective hollows in the mountainsides.
You will see the largest fish attack each other in the ocean
until one is killed or flees, and you will think you understand that battle but not the death of the fish-babies murdered by their own progenitors—you will see them attack their young again and again—abandoning them, dead, on the beaches …
Other times, those same large white lighthearted fish will frolic in the waves, making gigantic leaps and taking the sea as their playground. You will seek a way to have thoughts, feeling that if you think you will have to remember. There will be things you do want to remember and others you would like, or that you will need, to forget.
Forget and remember, facing the sea, there will be two moments in your head difficult to tell apart—instinctively you will put a hand to your forehead every time you think this—because until very recently there will have been no before or after for you, fem, only this, the moment and the place where you will find yourself doing what you will have to
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