FICTION

THE ORANGE TREE by Carlos Fuentes. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $21; 229 pp.) Fuentes presents numerous characters in these five novellas: The first protagonist, a translator and speaker of many Indian and Spanish dialects, allows Fuentes to explore the use and misuse of language in the creation of a culture; the sons of Cortes allow him to explore the unstable foundations of power lain in Mexico (“on the base of each column of this Catholic temple is inscribed an insignia of the Aztec gods”); the Roman narrator gives Fuentes a stage for the barbaric siege of Numantia (“We only hurt others when we’re incapable of imagining them”); the black Irishman, proud descendant of the Spanish sailors, who wears a mask in life and death that even he does not recognize, allows Fuentes to play with the sordid remains of that heritage; and a sailor who turns Paradise over to the Japanese, completes Fuentes’ version of history. These are legacies of lying, violence, greed and despair, and running through all the novellas is the image of an orange tree, fragrant and bountiful, in the center of the city of Numantia.