Browse Topics    Excerpt from Inez by Carlos Fuentes  Inez book
cover Photo: Farrar, Straus and Giroux  "...long-term memory is
like a castle built of great blocks of stone. It takes only a
symbol -- the castle itself -- to remind us of all its contents.
Could this round seal be the key to his own personal dwelling? "
Inez by Carlos Fuentes  moreReturn to the main page.  "We shall
have nothing to say in regard to our own death."  For a long
time this sentence had been going around and around in the aged
maestro's head. He did not dare write it down. He was afraid
that consigning it to paper would make it real, with fateful
consequences. He would have nothing more to say after that: the
dead man does not know what death is, but neither do the living.
For that reason the sentence that haunted him like a verbal
ghost was both sufficient and insufficient. It said everything,
but at the price of never saying anything again. It condemned
him to silence. And what could he say about silence? He, who had
dedicated hi