The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  The priest was rotund, his skin lifeless; only his coal-black eyes, set deep in his inflamed cheekbones, glowed with life. As soon as he saw the unknown man walking the length of the nave—and he spied on him, hidden behind a large screen, in ancient times a choir for the nuns, who later fled Mexico City, during the liberal Republic—the priest recognized in his movements the unconsciously martial air of a man accustomed to being on guard, accustomed to command and to attack. It was not just the ever so slight deformity of the horseman's lower legs; it was a certain nervous strength in his fist that came from daily contact with pistol and bridle. Even though the man was merely walking with his fist clenched, this was enough for Páez to recognize in him a disturbing power. Up in the nuns' secret place, he concluded that such a man was not there for devotional purposes. He lifted the hem of his cassock and slowly walked down the spiral staircase that led to the abandoned convent. Hem held high, shoulders raised until they almost reached his ears, body black and face white and bloodless, eyes penetrating, he descended with careful steps. The stairs urgently needed repair; his predecessor had stumbled in 1910, with fatal consequences. But Remigio Páez, looking like a puffed-up bat, could pierce all the dark corners of the black, humid, frightening cube. The darkness and the danger aroused all his senses and made him reflect: a military man in his church, dressed in civilian clothes, with no company or escort? Such a sight was too strange to pass unnoticed. He had, of course, foreseen it. The battles, the violence, the sacrilege, all of it would pass (he thought about the order, given barely two years before, that did away with all the chasubles and all the sacred vessels), and the Church, everlasting, built to endure eternally, would come to an understanding with the powers of the earthly city. A military man in civilian clothes…with no escort…

  Down he came, one hand on the swollen wall, through which a dark line seeped. The priest recalled that the rainy season would soon begin. He had already taken it upon himself, with all his powers, to point it out from the pulpit and in each confession that he heard: it is a sin, a grave sin against the Holy Spirit, to refuse to receive the gifts of heaven; no one can plot against the intentions of Providence, and Providence has ordered things as they are, and thus people should accept all things; everyone should go out and work the fields, bring in the crops, deliver the fruits of the earth to their legitimate owner, a Christian owner who pays for the obligations of his privilege by punctually delivering his tithes to Holy Mother Church. God punishes rebellion, and Lucifer is overwhelmed by the Archangels Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Galaliel…Gamaliel.

  "And justice, Father?"

  "Final justice will be meted out above, my son. Do not seek it in this vale of tears."

  Words, murmured the priest when he rested at last on the solid floor, shaking the dust off his cassock; words, miserable strings of syllables that fire the blood and the illusions of those who should be content to pass quickly through this short life and enjoy, in exchange for their mortal trials, eternal life. He crossed the cloister and walked toward a vaulted corridor. Justice! For whom? For how long? Life could be so agreeable for everyone if everyone understood the finality of their destiny and did not go about digging into things, stirring things up, desiring more…

  "Yes, I believe so; yes, I believe so…" repeated the priest in a low voice, and he opened the carved door of the sacristy.

  "Admirable work, isn't it?" he said as he approached the tall man standing before the altar. "The monks showed prints and engravings to the native artisans and they turned their own style into Christian forms…They say there is an idol, because it no longer demands blood, as the pagan gods did…"

  "Are you Páez?"

  "Remigio Páez," he said with a twisted smile. "And you, General, Colonel, Major…?"

  "Just plain Artemio Cruz."

  "Ah."

  When the lieutenant colonel and the priest said goodbye at the portals of the church, Páez folded his hands over his stomach and watched his visitor walk away. The clear blue morning sharpened and seemed to draw closer the lines of the two volcanoes: the couple consisting of the sleeping woman and her solitary guardian. He squinted: he couldn't stand that bright light. He gave thanks as he observed the black clouds that would soon moisten the valley and extinguish the sun, as they did every afternoon with a punctual gray storm.

  He turned his back on the valley and returned to the shade of the convent. He rubbed his hands. The haughtiness and the insults of this upstart did not matter to him. If that was the only way to save the situation and permit Don Gamaliel to spend the last years of his life safe from all danger, it would not be Remigio Páez, Minister of the Lord, who would upset things with a display of indignation and a crusader's zeal. On the contrary: now he patted himself on the back, thinking about the wisdom of humility. If what this man wanted was to humiliate him, Father Páez would listen to him today and tomorrow with his eyes lowered, at times nodding yes, as if painfully accepting the blame this powerful fool cast on the Church. He took his black hat off its hook, set it carelessly on his head of chestnut hair, and headed for the house of Don Gamaliel Bernal.

  "Of course he can do it!" affirmed the old man that afternoon, after talking with the priest. "But I wonder what trick he'll use to get in here. He told Father Páez he'd come to see me today. No…I'm not sure I understand, Catalina."

  She raised her face. She rested a hand on her crocheting, where she was carefully working a floral design. Three years before, they had received the message: Gonzalo was dead. From that day on, father and daughter had grown closer, until they'd transformed that slow passing of the afternoons, as they sat on the wicker patio furniture, into something more than a consolation: into a custom which, according to the old man, would last until he died. What did it matter that yesterday's power and wealth were crumbling; perhaps that was the tribute that had to be paid to time and old age. Don Gamaliel fortified himself in a passive struggle. He would not go out to take control of the peasants, but he would never accept an illegal invasion. He would not demand that his debtors pay back both interest and principal, but they would never get another penny from him.

  He was hoping that one day they would come back to him on their knees, when need forced them to abandon their pride. But he would remain steadfast in his own. And now…here comes this stranger who promises to give loans to all the peasants at a rate much lower than that demanded by Don Gamaliel. Moreover, he has the effrontery to suggest that the old estate owner hand over all his privileges—and for nothing more than a promise to pay back the fourth part of whatever money can be recouped. Take it or leave it.

  "Just as I suspected. His demands won't stop there, either."

  "The land?"

  "Certainly. He's plotting to take my land from me, don't think he isn't."

  As she did every afternoon, she went from one brightly painted cage to another, covering them after observing the nervous movements of the mockingbirds and robins that pecked the seeds and chirped one last time before the sun disappeared.

  The old man did not expect a trick of such enormity. The last man to see Gonzalo, his cell mate, the bearer of his last words of love for his father, his sister, his wife, and his son.

  "He told me Gonzalo thought about Luisa and the boy before he died."

  "Dad. We agreed that we were not going to…"

  "I didn't tell him a thing. He doesn't know that she remarried and that my grandson has another name."

  "You haven't said a word about all that for three years. Why bring it up now?"

  "It's true. We've forgiven him, haven't we? I think we should forgive him for having gone over to the enemy. I think we should try to understand him…"

  "I always thought that every afternoon you and I were forgiving him in silence."

  "That's it, that's it. Exactly. You understand me without our having to speak. How comforting that is! You understand me…"

  Which is why, when that expected, feared guest—because someone, someday, had to appear and say, "
I saw him. I met him. He remembered you"—did appear and put forth his perfect pretext, without even mentioning the real problems of the peasant revolt and the suspended payments, Don Gamaliel, after showing him into the library, excused himself and walked rapidly (this old man who thought a measured pace was a sign of elegance) to Catalina's bedroom.

  "Fix yourself up. Take off that black dress. Make yourself attractive. Come to the library at seven o'clock sharp."

  He said nothing more. She would obey him: this would be the test of all those melancholy afternoons. She would understand. This one trump was left to save the situation. All Don Gamaliel had to do was feel the presence and guess the will of this man in order to understand—or to say to himself—that any delay would be suicidal, that it was difficult to disobey him, that the sacrifice he was demanding was small and, in a way, not really repugnant. He'd been alerted by Father Páez: a tall man, full of vigor, with hypnotic green eyes and a curt way of speaking. Artemio Cruz.

  Artemio Cruz. So that was the name of the new world rising out of the civil war; that was the name of those who had come to take his place. Unfortunate land—the old man said, as he returned, slowly once again, to the library and that undesired but fascinating presence—unfortunate land that has to destroy its old possessors with each new generation and put in their place new owners just as rapacious and ambitious as the old ones. The old man imagined himself the final product of a peculiarly Creole civilization, a civilization of enlightened despots. He took pleasure in thinking of himself as a father, sometimes a hard father but always a provider and always the repository of a tradition of good taste, courtesy, and culture.

  That's why he'd brought him to the library. There the venerable—almost sacred—quality of what Don Gamaliel was and symbolized was more in evidence. But the guest did to allow himself to be impressed. The fact that this man had a completely new idea of life, one hammered out on the forge of experience, one that allowed him to put his life on the line because he knew he had nothing to lose, did not escape the keen eye of the old man as he rested his head on the back of the leather chair and squinted to get a better look at his opponent. The stranger didn't even mention the real reasons for his visit. Don Gamaliel realized things would proceed better that way. Perhaps the visitor understood the situation with as much subtlety as he did, although Don Gamaliel's motivation—ambition—might have been stronger. The old man smiled as he remembered that feeling, for him merely a word, the urgent impulse to take advantage of rights won through sacrifice, struggle, wounds, that saber scar on his forehead. Don Gamaliel was not the only one to reach these conclusions. On the silent lips and in the eloquent gaze of the other man was written what the old man, now playing with his magnifying glass, knew well how to read.

  The stranger didn't move a muscle when Don Gamaliel walked to his desk to take out that paper, the list of his debtors. So much the better. If things went on this way, they would understand each other perfectly; perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to mention those annoying matters, perhaps everything would be resolved in a more elegant manner. The young military man quickly learned the style of power, Don Gamaliel repeated to himself, and this sense of shared knowledge smoothed the way for the bitter business with which reality forced him to deal.

  "But didn't you see how he looked at me?" shouted the girl when the guest had said goodbye. "Didn't you see his lust…the filth in his eyes?"

  "Yes, yes, of course." The old man calmed his daughter with his hands. "It's only natural. You may not know it, but you are very beautiful. The problem is, you scarcely ever leave this house. It's only natural."

  "I'll never leave!"

  Don Gamaliel slowly lit the cigar that stained his thick mustache and the roots of his beard yellow. "I thought you would understand."

  "What did Father Páez tell you? He's an atheist! A godless man who has no respect for anything…And did you believe that story he made up?"

  "Calm down, now. Fortunes are not always made by the godly, you know."

  "Did you believe that story? Why did Gonzalo have to die, instead of this person? If the two of them were condemned, in the same cell, why aren't the two of them dead? I know what he's up to, I know: all that claptrap he came here to tell us isn't true. He made it up to humiliate you and so that I…"

  Don Gamaliel stopped rocking. Everything had been going along so well, so calmly! And now, out of her woman's intuition, came the same objections the old man had already thought up and already rejected as pointless.

  "You have the imagination of a twenty-year-old girl." He stood up and extinguished his cigar. "But since you seem to prefer me to be frank, I'll be frank. This man can save us. And that's all that matters…"

  He sighed and stretched out his arms to touch his daughter's hands. "Think about your father's final years. Don't I deserve a little…?"

  "Yes, Father, I haven't said anything…"

  "And think about yourself."

  She lowered her head. "Yes, I understand. I've known something like this would happen ever since Gonzalo left home. If only he were alive…"

  "But he isn't."

  "He didn't think about me. Who knows what he thought about."

  Beyond the circle of light cast by the oil lamp that Don Gamaliel held high, along the old, chilly hallways, the girl forced herself to recall those old, confused images. She recalled the tense, sweaty faces of Gonzalo's schoolmates, the long arguments in the room at the back of the house; she remembered her brother's glowing, stubborn, anxious face, his nervous body that sometimes seemed to exist outside reality, his love of comfort, good dinners, wine, books, and his periodic outbursts of rage in which he denounced his own sensual, conformist tendencies. She remembered the coldness of Luisa, her sister-in-law, the violent arguments that turned to silence whenever the "daughter of the house" entered the room; how Luisa's weeping drowned in hysterical laughter when his death was announced to them; how one day she silently departed at dawn when she thought everyone was asleep but the young woman was peeking out from behind the living-room curtains: the hard hand of the man wearing a bowler and carrying a walking stick who took Luisa's hand and helped her and the boy enter the black coach laden with the widow's baggage.

  She could only avenge that death—Don Gamaliel kissed her forehead and opened her bedroom door—by embracing this man, by embracing him but denying him the tenderness he would seek in her. By killing him in life, distilling bitterness until he was poisoned. She looked into the mirror, vainly searching for the new features this change should have imprinted on her face. That would be the way for her and her father to avenge Gonzalo's having abandoned them, avenge his idiotic idealism: by giving away this twenty-year-old-girl—why did thinking about herself, about her youth, bring her to tears?—to the man who was with Gonzalo during those final hours, hours of which she could have no memory, rejecting self-pity, pouring it out for her dead brother, without a sob of fury, without a tightening of her jaw: if no one explained the truth to her, she would cling to what she thought was the truth. She took off her black stockings. As her fingertips touched her legs, she closed her eyes; she must deny the memory of the rough, strong foot that sought out her own during dinner, flooding her bosom with a strange, uncontrollable feeling. Her body might not be God's creation—she knelt, pressing her laced fingers against her brows—but the creation of other bodies, but her spirit was. She would not allow that body to take a delightful, spontaneous path, to desire caresses, while her spirit demanded she take another. She pulled back the sheet and slipped into bed with her eyes closed. She stretched out her hand to put out the lamp. She put the pillow over her face. She mustn't think about that. No, no, no, mustn't think about it. There was nothing more to say. To say the other name, to tell her father about it. No. No. Humiliating her father was unnecessary. Next month, as soon as possible: and if that man enjoyed Catalina Bernal's fortune, her property, her body…what difference did it make…Ramón…No, not that name, never again. She slept.

  "You s
aid it yourself, Don Gamaliel," said the guest when he returned the next day. "It's impossible to stop the course of events. Let's turn over those plots to the peasants; after all, they're only good for dry farming, so no one's going to get much out of them. Let's give out those plots so they can be used only for small-scale farming. You'll see that, to thank us, they'll leave their women to work that dust and come back to take care of our good land. Think about it: you could turn out to be a hero of the agrarian-reform program, and it won't cost you a thing."

  Amused, the old man observed him, smiling behind his thick beard. "Have you spoken to her?"

  "I have…"

  She could not contain herself. Her chin trembled when he lifted his hand to raise her closed-eyed face. He was touching that smooth, creamy, rosy skin for the first time. The two of them were surrounded by the penetrating smell of the plants in the patio, herbs suffocated by moisture, the odor of rotten earth. He loved her. As he touched her, he realized he loved her. He had to make her understand that his love was real, even if circumstances said the opposite. He could love her as he had loved once before, the first time: he knew he still possessed that time-proven tenderness. He touched the girl's hot cheeks again. Her rigidity, when she felt that strange hand on her skin, could not hold back the tightly squeezed tears that emerged from her eyelids. "You won't complain, because you will have nothing to complain about," whispered the man as he brought his face close to her lips—which avoided the contact. "I know how to love you…"