The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  Again he felt as he'd felt before. The confused sounds of war were all around him, but between those near and the far rumble that reached his ears, there was an unbridgeable gap: here the slight trembling of the branches, the slithering of the lizards could be heard quite distinctly. Alone, leaning against the tree trunk, he again felt a sweet, serene life languidly flowing through his veins: a well-being of the body that dispelled any rebellious attempt at thought. His men? His heart beat evenly, without a throb. Would they be looking for him? His arms and legs felt happy, clean, tried. What would they do without him to give them orders? His eyes searched through the roof of leaves for the hidden flight of some bird. Would they lose all sense of discipline? Would they, too, run and hide in this providential forest? But he couldn't go back over the mountain on foot. He would have to wait here. And what if he was taken prisoner? He couldn't go on thinking: a moan parted the leaves near the lieutenant's face, and a man collapsed in his arms. His arms rejected him for an instant and then held on to that body from which hung a red, limp rag of torn flesh.

  The wounded man rested his head on his comrade's shoulder. "They're…really…pouring it…on…"

  He felt the ravaged arm on his back, staining it, dripping angry blood. He tried to push back the face, which was twisted with pain: high cheekbones, open mouth, eyes closed, tangled mustache and beard, short, like his own. If the man had green eyes, he could be his double…

  "Is there any way out? Are we losing? Do you know anything about the cavalry? Have they pulled out?"

  "No…no…They went…forward."

  The wounded man tried to point with his good arm—the other, splintered by machine-gun fire—never relaxing the horrible grimace that seemed to sustain him and prolong his existence.

  "They're advancing? How?"

  "Water, pal…in a bad way…"

  The wounded man fainted, holding on with a strange strength full of wordless pleading. The lieutenant bore that sculpted lead weight on his own body. The tremors of cannon fire returned to his ears. An uncertain wind shook the treetops. Again, silence and tranquillity broken by machine-gun fire. Taking hold of the wounded man's good arm, he disencumbered himself of the body that had been tossed over his own. Holding him by the head, he laid him on the ground, on the knotty roots. He opened his canteen and took a long drink. He brought it to the lips of the wounded man: the water ran down his blackened chin. But his heart still beat: now, on his knees near the wounded man's chest, he wondered how much longer it would go on beating. He unfastened the man's heavy silver buckle and then turned his back on him. What was happening out there? Who was winning? He stood up and walked into the forest, away from the wounded man.

  As he walked, he touched his body, sometimes pushing the lower branches out of the way, but always feeling himself. He wasn't wounded. He did not need help. He stopped by a spring and filled his canteen. A creek, dead before it was really born, ran from the spring and disappeared under the sun just beyond the forest. He took off his uniform jacket and used both hands to douse his chest, his armpits, his burning, dry, raw shoulders, the taut muscles of his arms, the smooth, greenish skin with thick calluses. He wanted to see his reflection in the spring, but the bubbling water made that impossible. This body was not his: Regina had acquired another possession: she had demanded it with each caress. It wasn't his. It was more hers. He had to save it for her. They no longer lived alone and isolated; the walls of separation had fallen; now they were two in one, forever. The Revolution would end; towns and lives would end, but this would never end. It was now their life, the life of both of them. He dried his face. He went out once again on to the plain.

  The charge of the revolutionaries came from the plain toward the forest and the mountain. They ran swiftly alongside him while he, disoriented, walked down toward the burning towns. He heard the whips slap the croups of the horses, the dry crack of rifles, and he was alone on the plain. Were they running away? He turned around, raising his hands to his head. He didn't understand. It was essential to leave a site with a clear mission and never lose that golden thread: only then would it be possible to understand what was happening. A moment's distraction and all the chess moves of war would turn into an irrational, incomprehensible game consisting of tattered, abrupt movements devoid of sense. That cloud of dust…those furious horses galloping onward…that horseman shouting and waving a bare sword…that train stopped in the distance…that dust cloud coming closer and closer…that sun coming closer and closer to his dazed head with each passing minute…that sword just barely grazing his forehead…that galloping that rushes by him and throws him to the ground…

  He got up, feeling his wounded forehead. He had to get back to the forest again: it was the only safe place. He staggered. The sun melted his vision and blurred the horizon into crusts, the dry grass, the line of mountains. When he reached the trees, he grabbed a trunk; he unbuttoned his uniform jacket and ripped off his shirt sleeve. He spit on it and put the moist spot on his lacerated forehead. He tied the rag around his head—his head was pounding painfully when the dry branches alongside him splintered under the weight of unknown boots: the soldier belonged to the revolutionary troops and he was carrying a body on his back, a bloody, broken sack with a blood-encrusted arm.

  "I found him where the forest begins. He was dying. They blew most of his arm off…Lieutenant."

  The tall, dark soldier squinted until he could see the insignia. "I think he's gone and died on me. He feels like a dead man."

  He put the body down, resting it against the tree. Artemio had done the same thing half an hour, fifteen minutes before. The soldier brought his face close to the wounded man's mouth; he recognized the open mouth, the high cheekbones, the half-closed eyes.

  "Yes. He's gone. If only I'd gotten there a little sooner, I might have saved him."

  He closed the dead man's eyes with his square hand. He hooked the silver belt buckle, and as he bent his head, he muttered through white teeth: "Damnit, Lieutenant. If there weren't a few brave guys like this one in the world, where would the rest of us be?"

  He turned his back on the soldier and the dead man and ran toward the open plain. It was preferable. Even if he neither heard nor saw. Even if the world passed him by like a shadow. Even if all the noises of war and peace—mockingbirds, wind, distant roaring—that persisted were to turn into that single, dull drumming that encompassed all noise and reduced it to sadness. He tripped over a corpse. He bent down, without knowing why, seconds before that voice cut through the deaf drumming of all these noises.

  "Lieutenant…Lieutenant Cruz."

  A hand rested on the lieutenant's shoulder; he raised his face.

  "You're badly wounded, Lieutenant. Come with us. The federales ran off. Jiménez held the town square. Come back with us to headquarters in Río Hondo. The cavalry really did a job; they multiplied, really. Come on. You don't look so well."

  He clasped the officer's shoulders and murmured: "To headquarters. Right, let's go."

  The thread was broken. The thread that allowed him to traverse the labyrinth of war without getting lost. Without getting lost: without deserting. He wasn't strong enough to hold the reins. But the horse was tethered to Major Gavilán's saddle during that slow march through the mountains separating the battle plain from the valley where she waits for him. The thread stayed behind. There below, the town of Río Hondo hadn't changed: it was the same jumble of houses he'd left behind that morning, with broken roof tiles and adobe walls, pink, reddish, surrounded by cactuses. He thought he could pick out, next to the green lips of the ravine, the house where Regina must be waiting for him.

  Gavilán was trotting in front of him. The afternoon shadows cast the image of the mountain on the tired bodies of the two soldiers. The major's horse stopped for an instant, waiting for the lieutenant's to catch up. Gavilán offered him a cigarette. As soon as the match was out, the horses started trotting again. But by then he'd seen the pain in the major's face and he lowered his head. He des
erved it. They'd know the truth about his having deserted under fire, and they'd rip off his insignia. But they wouldn't know the whole truth: they wouldn't know that he wanted to save himself so as to return to Regina's love, nor would they understand if he explained. They also wouldn't know that he'd abandoned the wounded soldier, that he could have saved his life. His love for Regina would compensate for the guilt of abandoning the soldier. That's the way it should be. He lowered his head and thought that for the first time in his life he was experiencing shame. Shame: it wasn't shame that showed in Major Gavilán's clear, direct eyes. The officer rubbed his fuzzy blond beard with his free hand crusted with dust and sun.

  "We owe our lives to you and your men, Lieutenant. You halted the enemy's advance. The general will welcome you like a hero…Artemio…Do you mind if I call you Artemio?"

  The major tried to smile. He rested his free hand on the lieutenant's shoulder and went on, laughing dryly. "We've been fighting alongside each other for a long time, and look: we don't even call each other by our first names."

  Major Gavilán's eyes asked for some response. The night fell with its incorporeal crystal, and the last glow flashed behind the mountains, now far away, hidden in the darkness, secluded. In the barracks, fires were burning that could not be seen from a distance in the afternoon light.

  "The skunks!" exclaimed the major suddenly in a bitter tone. "They made a surprise attack on the town at about one in the afternoon. Naturally, they didn't reach headquarters. But they took their revenge on the outlying areas—their usual tricks. They've promised to take revenge on any town that helps us. They took ten hostages and sent us a message that if we didn't surrender they would hang them. The general replied with mortar fire."

  The streets were filled with soldiers, people, stray dogs, and children, as stray as the dogs, crying in doorways. Some fires still burned, and women sat right out in the street on their mattresses, alongside whatever else they had salvaged.

  "Lieutenant Artemio Cruz," whispered Gavilán, leaning over to reach the hearing of some soldiers.

  "Lieutenant Cruz," ran the murmur from the soldiers to the women.

  The people made way for the two horses: the major's bay, nervous in the crowd pressing up against it; the lieutenant's black stallion, his forehead low, letting himself be led by the bay. Hands reached out: the men from the cavalry detachment commanded by the lieutenant. They squeezed his leg in greeting; they motioned toward his forehead, where the blood had seeped through the rag; they muttered congratulations on the victory. They crossed the town. The ravine yawned in the background, and the trees were swaying in the evening breeze. He raised his eyes: the cluster of white houses. He looked for the window; they were all closed. The glare of candles illuminated the entryway to some houses; black groups, wrapped in rebozos, were crouched there.

  "Don't anyone cut them down!" shouted Lieutenant Aparicio from his rearing horse, using his riding crop to beat back the hands raised imploringly. "We've all got to remember this forever! Everyone's got to know who we're fighting! They make the common people kill their brothers. Take a good look. That's how they killed the Yaquis, because the Yaquis didn't want their land taken from them. The same way they killed the workers at Río Blanco and Cananea, who didn't want to die of hunger. And that's the way they'll kill all of us unless we kick the shit out of them first. Take a good look."

  The finger of young Lieutenant Aparicio pointed to the clump of trees near the ravine. The crude henequen ropes still drew blood from the necks; but the open eyes, purple tongues, and limp bodies barely swaying in the wind blowing down from the mountains proved they were dead. The eyes of the onlookers—some lost, some enraged, most with a sweet expression of disbelief, filled with quiet pain—focused on the muddy huaraches, a child's bare feet, a woman's black slippers. He dismounted. He came closer. He clutched Regina's starched skirt with a broken, choked sound: it was the first time he'd cried since becoming a man.

  Aparicio and Gavilán led him to Regina's room. They made him lie down, cleaned the wound, and replaced the filthy rag with a bandage. After they left, he hugged the pillow, hiding his face. He sought sleep, nothing more, and secretly told himself that perhaps sleep would reunite them, make them as they had been. He knew it was impossible, though here on this bed, with its yellowed mosquito netting, he felt her presence more intensely than when he touched her damp hair, her smooth body, her warm thighs. She was there as she had never been before, more alive than ever in the young man's fevered mind: more herself, more his now than he ever remembered her. Perhaps, during their brief months of love, he'd never seen the beauty of her eyes with such emotion, nor could he have compared them, as he could now, with their brilliant twins—black jewels, the deep, calm sea under the sun, their depths like sand mixed in time, dark cherries from the tree of flesh and hot entrails. He'd never told her that. There had not been time. There had not been time to tell her so many things about their love. There had not been time for a final word. Perhaps if he closed his eyes she would come back, whole, to take life from the desperate caresses that pulsed from his fingertips. Perhaps it would be enough to imagine her, to have her always at his side. Who knows if memory can really prolong existence, entwine their legs, open windows to the dawn, comb her hair, revive smell, noise, touch. He sat up. He felt around in the darkness for the bottle of mescal. But the mescal did not help him forget, as people always say it does; it only made the memories flow quicker.

  He would return to the rocks on that beach while the alcohol was setting his stomach on fire. He would return. Where? To that mythical beach that never existed? To that lie about the beloved, to that fiction about a meeting on the beach invented by her so that he would feel clean, innocent, sure of being in love? He threw the glass of mescal to the floor. That's what mescal was really good for: destroying lies. It was a beautiful lie.

  "Where did we meet?"

  "Don't you remember?"

  "No, you tell me."

  "Don't you remember that beach? I would go there every afternoon."

  "Now I remember. You saw the reflection of my face next to yours."

  "Remember now: and then I never wanted to see myself without your reflection next to mine."

  "Yes, I remember."

  He would have to believe that beautiful lie forever, until the end. It wasn't true: he hadn't gone into that Sinaloa town as he had so many others, looking for the first unwary woman he'd find walking down the street. It wasn't true that the eighteen-year-old girl had been forced onto a horse and raped in silence in the officers' quarters, far from the sea, her face turned toward the thorny, dry hills. It was not true that he'd been forgiven in silence, forgiven by Regina's honorableness, when resistance gave way to pleasure and the arms that had never touched a man joyfully touched him for the first time, her moist mouth open, repeating, as she did last night, yes, yes, she'd liked it, she'd liked it with him, she wanted more, she'd been afraid of such happiness. Regina, with the dreamy, fiery eyes. How she accepted the truth of her pleasure and admitted that she was in love with him; how she invented the story about the sea and the reflection in the calm water to forget what would later, when he loved her, make him ashamed. A whore, Regina, a tasty dish, the clean spirit of surprise, a woman without excuses, without justifications. She didn't know how to be boring; she never annoyed him with painful complaints. She would always be there, in one town or another. Perhaps now the fantasy of an inert body hanging from a rope would vanish, and she would already be in another town. She'd just moved on. Yes: as always. She left without bothering him and went south. She crossed the federales' lines and found a little room in the next town. Yes; because she couldn't live without him, nor he without her. Yes. It was just a question of leaving, taking a horse, picking up a pistol, getting on with the offensive, and finding her in the next town when they'd take a rest.

  In the darkness, he felt around for his field jacket. He slung his cartridge belts across his chest. Outside, the black horse, the quiet one, wa
s tied to a post. People were still gathered around the victims of the hanging, but he didn't even look in that direction. He got on his horse and galloped to headquarters.

  "Where the hell did those bastards go?" he shouted to one of the soldiers on guard.

  "They're on the other side of the ravine, sir. They're supposed to be dug in next to the bridge, waiting for reinforcements. Looks like they want to take this town again. Come on in and have something to eat."

  He dismounted. Slowly he threaded his way through the bonfires in the patio, the clay pots swinging over the crisscrossed logs. The sound of a woman's hands slapping the dough got louder. He stuck a big spoon into the boiling broth of the tripe stew, took a pinch of onion, some powdered chile and oregano. He chewed the hard, fresh northern-style tortillas; the pigs' feet. He was alive.

  He ripped from its rusty iron ring the torch that lit up the entrance to headquarters. He sank his spurs into the black horse's flanks. Those still walking the street jumped out of the way. The surprised horse tried to buck, but he held the bridle tight, spurred the horse, and felt, finally, that the horse understood. It was no longer the horse of the wounded man, the wavering man who had crossed the mountains that afternoon. And it was a different horse, too: it understood. It shook its mane to make sure the man understood: it was a war horse, as furious and swift as its rider. And the rider raised the torch to light the road that wound around the town and led to the bridge over the ravine.