The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  (1941: July 6)

  He was on his way to the office. The chauffeur drove, and he read the newspaper. Traffic stopped; he raised his eyes. He saw the two ladies enter the shop. Squinting, he watched them, and then the car moved forward, and he went on reading the news about Sidi Barrani and El Alamein, looking at the photos of Rommel and Montgomery. The chauffeur was sweating in the blazing sun and could not turn on the radio to amuse himself; he concluded that going into business with the Colombian coffee growers when the war in Africa began had not been a bad idea, and the ladies walked into the shop and the young woman asked them please to sit down while she went to get the owner (because she knew who the two ladies were, the mother and the daughter, and the owner had ordered her to tell her when they came in). The young woman walked noiselessly on the rug to the back room, where the owner was leaning over her green-leather desk addressing invitations; she dropped the glasses that hung from a silver chain when the young woman walked in to tell her that the lady and her daughter were there. She sighed and side, "Of course, of course, of course, the big day is coming," and she thanked the young woman, neatened her violet-colored hair, pursed her lips, put out her mentholated cigarette. The two women were sitting in the showroom, not saying a word, until the owner appeared, and then the mother, who had strict notions about what was proper, pretended to be in the middle of a conversation which had never begun and said aloud, "…but what about that other style that looks much prettier. I don't know about you, but I'd take that one; really, it's very nice, very, very pretty." The young lady nodded in agreement, because she was used to those conversations her mother intended not for her but for the person who was now entering, who extended her hand to the daughter but not to the mother, whom she greeted with an enormous smile, her violet head cocked to one side. The daughter began to move over on the sofa so there would be room for the owner, but the mother stopped her with her eyes and a finger which she shook close to her bosom; the daughter stopped moving and stared pleasantly at the woman with dyed hair, who remained standing and asked if they had decided which style they preferred. The mother said no, not yet, they hadn't made up their minds, that's why they wanted to see all the styles again, because everything else depended on the style they chose, details like the color of the flowers, the bridesmaids' dresses, all that.

  "I'm sorry to be such a bother, I wish I…"

  "But, madam, that's why we're here. It's our pleasure to serve you."

  "Well, we just want to be sure."

  "But of course."

  "We wouldn't want to make a mistake, and then at the last minute…"

  "You're perfectly right. It's better to choose calmly and carefully, so that later…"

  "That's right. We want to be sure."

  "I'll just tell the girls to get ready."

  Since they were alone again, the daughter stretched out her legs; her mother shot her an alarmed gaze and wiggled all her fingers at the same time because she could see her daughter's garters, and she also gestured for her to put some saliva on her left stocking; the daughter looked for and found the place where the silk was split and moistened her index finger with saliva and daubed the spot. "It's just that I'm a little sleepy," she quickly explained to her mother. The lady smiled and patted her daughter's hand as they sat on the pink-brocade sofa, not speaking until the daughter said she was hungry and the mother told her that afterwards they would go to Sanborn's and have something to eat, although she would only watch, she'd been putting on so much weight lately.

  "At least you don't have to worry about that."

  "Why not?"

  "You've still got the figure of a young girl. But later on, be careful. On my side of the family, all the women have good figures when they're young, but after forty they start putting on weight."

  "You look fine."

  "You don't remember, that's all, you just don't remember. And besides…"

  "I woke up hungry, and I had a good breakfast."

  "Don't worry for now. But later on, watch out."

  "Does having a baby make you fat?"

  "No, that's not the problem, not at all. A couple of weeks on a diet and you're the same as before. The problem begins after you turn forty."

  In the back room, as she got her two models ready, the owner, on her knees, her mouth filled with pins, nervously fluttered her hands and berated the girls for having such short legs. How can women with such short legs ever look good? They should do more exercise, play tennis, go horseback riding, all those things put people in condition, and the girls told her she seemed very annoyed and the owner replied that she was, that those two women got on her nerves. She said the lady would never shake hands with her; the daughter was nicer, but a little absentminded, sitting there like a bump on a log; but, let's face it, they weren't friends of hers and she couldn't say anything, and anyway, as the Americans put it, "the customer is always right," and you've got to walk into the showroom smiling, saying cheese, cheeese, and more cheeeeee. She had to work even if she hadn't been born to work, and she was used to the kind of rich women you see nowadays. Fortunately, on Sundays she could get together with her friends from before, the women she grew up with, and feel she was human at least once a week. They played bridge, she told the girls, and she applauded when she saw they were ready. Too bad about those short legs. She carefully took all the pins out of her mouth and stuck them back into the pincushion.

  "Will he come to the shower?"

  "Who? Your finacé or your father?"

  "Him, Papa."

  "How should I know?"

  He saw the orange cupola and the fat white columns of the Palacio de Bellas Artes go by, but he looked up higher, where the electric lines came together, came apart, ran—not them, he with his head resting against the gray wool of the seat—parallel or connected to the transformers: the ocher Venetian portal of the Post Office and the leafy sculptures, the full breasts and the emptied cornucopias of the Bank of Mexico. He gently rubbed the silk band on his brown felt hat and jiggled the car's jump seat up and down with his toe; in front of him were the blue mosaics of Sanborn's and the carved blackish stone of the convent of San Francisco. The limousine stopped at the corner of Isabel la Católica, and the chauffeur opened the door, doffing his hat, while he, on the other hand, put on his own, pushing back the strands of hair around his temples which had escaped the hat, as the court of lottery-ticket venders, shoe-shine boys, women wrapped in rebozos, and children with snot-encrusted upper lips surrounded him until he passed through the revolving doors and stopped to adjust his tie in front of the vestibule window, and farther along, in the second window, which faced Calle Madero, a man identical to himself, but far away, adjusted the knot of his tie at the same time, with the same nicotine-stained fingers, the same double-breasted suit, but without color, surrounded by beggars, and dropped his hand at the same time that he did and then turned his back on him and walked toward the middle of the street, while he, on the other hand, looked for the elevator, disoriented for an instant.

  Once again those outstretched hands depressed her, and she squeezed her daughter's arm to make her walk more quickly into that unreal, hothouse heat, that smell of soaps and cologne and new stationery. She stopped for a moment to look at the beauty products lined up behind the glass and contemplated herself as she narrowed her eyes to peer at the cosmetics arrayed on a strip of red taffeta. She asked for a jar of cold cream ("Theatrical") and two lipsticks of that color, the color of that taffeta, and she tried unsuccessfully to get the right change out of her crocodile bag: "Here, try to find a twenty-peso bill." She picked up her package and her change, and they walked into the restaurant, where they found a table for two. The young lady ordered orange juice and walnut waffles from the waitress dressed in Tehuana costume, and her mother could not resist ordering pound cake with melted butter, and the two of them looked around to see if they knew anyone, and then the young lady asked permission to take off the jacket of her yellow suit because the heat and glare from the sky
light were too much for her.

  "Joan Crawford," said the daughter. "Joan Crawford."

  "No, no. That's not how you say it. Not like that. Cro-for, Cro-for; that's how they say it."

  "Crau-for."

  "No, no. Cro, cro, cro. The a and the w come out like an o. I think that's how you say it."

  "I didn't like the movie very much."

  "No, it isn't very good. But she looks wonderful."

  "I was really bored."

  "But you made such a fuss about going…"

  "Everybody said it was so good, but it wasn't."

  "A way to kill time."

  "Cro-ford."

  "Yes, I think that's how they say it, Cro-for. I think the d is silent."

  "Cro-for."

  "That's it. Unless I'm mistaken."

  The young lady poured syrup over the waffles and cut them into pieces when she was sure every bit would be soaked in syrup. She smiled at her mother each time she filled her mouth with that toasted, syrupy stuff. Her mother did not look at her. One hand played with another, the thumb rubbing the fingertips, seeming to want to pry off the fingernails. She looked at the two hands near her, not wanting to look at the faces: how insistently one hand again took hold of the other and how slowly it explored the other, not missing a single pore. No, they had no rings on their fingers; they must just be going out or something like that. She tried to avert her gaze and concentrate on the puddle of syrup on her daughter's plate, but without wanting to, she went back to the hands of the couple at the next table, successfully avoiding their faces but not their caressing hands. The daughter let her tongue play over her gums, removing bits of waffle and walnut, and then she wiped her lips, staining the napkin red. But before putting on fresh lipstick, she explored for more crumbs and asked her mother for a taste of pound cake. She said she didn't want coffee, it made her so nervous, even if she loved coffee, but not now, she was quite nervous as it was. The lady patted her hand and told her they ought to be going, they had lots to do. She paid the bill, left a tip, and the two women got up.

  The American explained how they inject boiling water into the deposits, how the water dissolves them, and the sulphur is brought to the surface by compressed air. He explained the system again, and the other American said they were very pleased with their findings and sliced the air several times with his hand, shaking it quite close to his leathery red face and repeating in Spanish: "Domes good; pyrites bad. Domes good; pyrites bad. Domes good…" He drummed his fingers on the glass top of the table and nodded, accustomed to the fact that whenever they spoke to him in Spanish they thought he didn't understand, not because they spoke Spanish badly but because he didn't understand anything well. "Pyrites bad." He removed his elbows from the table as the engineer rolled out the map of the zone. The other man explained that the zone was so rich they could go on mining it at full capacity until well into the twenty-first century; at full capacity, until they exhausted the deposits; at full capacity. He repeated that seven times and then withdrew the fist he'd let fall at the beginning of his sermon right on the green area dotted with triangles that marked the geologist's discoveries. The American winked and said that the cedar and mahogany forests were also enormous and all the profits from that would go—one hundred percent—to the Mexican partner; they, the American partners; would not meddle in his business, although they did advise him to reforest continuously; they had seen forests destroyed everywhere: didn't people realize that those trees were worth money? But that was his affair, because with or without the forests the sulphur domes were there. He smiled and stood up. He stuck his thumbs between his belt and his trousers and seesawed his unlit cigar between his lips until one of the Americans got up with a lighted match in his hands. The American brought the match to the cigar, and he made the man hold it there until the cigar tip was glowing brightly. He demanded a payment of $2 million, and they asked him why. After all, they were happy to bring him in as a full partner for only three hundred thousand, but no one was going to make a penny until the investment started to produce. The geologist cleaned his glasses with a small piece of chamois he kept in his shirt pocket, while the other began to walk from the table to the window and from the window to the table, until he repeated that those were his conditions. The $2 million was not an advance or credit or anything like that: that was how much they owed him for getting the concession for them; without the payment, it might be impossible to get the concession; over time they would earn back what they would be giving him now; but without him, without the front man, as he said in English, apologizing for his frankness, they would never get the concession to work those deposits. He pushed a button to call his secretary and the secretary rapidly read a sheet of figures and the Americans said okay several times, okay, okay, okay, and he smiled and offered them whiskey and told them that they could exploit those sulphur deposits until well into the next century but that they weren't going to exploit him for one minute during this one, and they all toasted and the two Americans smiled as they muttered—just once—son of a bitch under their breath.

  The two ladies strolled arm in arm. They walked slowly with their heads down and stopped in front of every store window to say how pretty, how expensive, there's a better one up the street, look at that one, how nice, until they got tired and walked into a café, where they picked out a good table, away from the entrance, where the lottery-ticket venders peered in and the dry, thick dust swirled, and far from the lavatories, and they ordered two Canada Dry orangeades. The mother powdered her face and stared at her amber eyes in the compact mirror, contemplating the progress of the bags that had begun to appear under them, and quickly snapped the cover shut. The two of them observed the bubbling of the soda water mixed with food coloring and waited for the gas to escape before drinking it in little sips. The girl secretly slipped her foot out of her shoe and rubbed her sore toes, and the lady, seated before her orange drink, recalled the separate rooms of the house, separate but contiguous, and the noises that managed to pass through the closed door each morning and each night: someone clearing his throat, shoes falling on the floor, the sound of keys landing on the mantel, the hinges on the closet door that needed oiling, at times even the rhythm of someone's breathing while asleep. A chill ran down her spine. She had gone to the closed door that very morning, walking on tiptoe, and had felt a chill run down her spine. It surprised her to think that all those insignificant, normal sounds were also secret sounds. She had gone back to bed, wrapped herself in the covers, and fixed her eyes on the ceiling, where a fan of round, fleeting lights was spreading: the sparkles created by the shadow of the chestnut tree. She had drunk what remained of her now cold tea and slept until the maid awakened her and reminded her that they had a day full of chores ahead of them. And only now, with that cold glass in her hand, did she remember those first hours of the day.