The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  There was another bonfire at the entrance to the bridge. The federales' caps glowed with a reddish pallor. But the hooves of the black horse carried all the force of the earth, scattering grass and dust and thorns and leaving a trail of sparks from the torch held on high by the rider, who hurled himself at the post at the bridge, leapt over the bonfire, discharged his pistol into astonished eyes, dark necks, bodies that did not understand, who pushed back the cannons, which could not see in the darkness that he was alone, a rider heading south, to the next town, where someone was waiting for him…

  "Out of the way, you goddamn sons of bitches!" shout the thousand voices of this one man.

  The voice of pain and desire, the voice of the pistol, the arms that torches the boxes of powder and blows up the cannons and stampedes the riderless horses, amid a chaos of whinnies and calls and gunshots that now have a distant echo in the lost voices of the town, in the bell that begins to toll in the reddish church tower, in the pulse of the earth that fears the horses of the revolutionary cavalry, which is now crossing the bridge and finds the destruction, the flight, the spent fires, but they don't find either the federales or the lieutenant, he who rides south holding the torch on high, the eyes of his horse burning: riding south, with the thread in his hands, riding south.

  I survived. Regina. What was your name? No. You, Regina. What was your name, nameless soldier? I survived. You all died. I survived. Ah, they've left me in peace. They think I'm asleep. I remembered you. I remembered your name. But you have no name. And the two come toward me, holding hands, with their begging bowls empty, thinking they're going to convince me, inspire my compassion. Oh, no. I don't owe my life to you. I owe it to my pride, are you listening? I owe it to my pride. I sent out the challenge. I dared. Virtue? Humility? Charity? Ah, you can live without them, you really can. You can't live without pride. Charity? What good is it? Humility? You, Catalina, what would you have done with my humility? You would have used it to conquer my disdain, you would have abandoned me. I know you forgive yourself, envisioning the sanctity of that sacrament. Ha. If it hadn't been for my money, you wouldn't have waited a second to divorce me. And you, Teresa, if you hate and insult me though I support you, how would you have liked to hate me in misery, insult me in poverty? Imagine yourselves without my pride, pharisees, waiting forever on every corner in town for a bus; imagine yourselves lost in that footsore crowd; imagine yourselves working in some shop, in an office, typing, wrapping packages, imagine yourselves saving up to buy a car on the installment plan, lighting candles to the Virgin to keep up your illusions, making monthly payments on a piece of land, sighing for a refrigerator; imagine yourselves sitting at a neighborhood movie on Saturdays, eating peanuts, trying to find a taxi after the show, eating out once a month; imagine yourselves having to shout that there's no other country like Mexico to feel yourselves alive; imagine yourselves having to feel proud of serapes and Cantinflas and mariachi music and mole poblano just to feel alive, ha ha; imagine yourselves having to believe in legacies, pilgrimages, the efficacy of prayer to keep you alive.

  Domine, non sum dignus…

  "Cheers. First, they want to cancel all loans from U.S. banks to the Pacific Railroad. Do you have any idea how much the railroad pays per year in interest on those loans? Thirty-nine million pesos. Second, they want to fire all advisers involved in the railroad rehabilitation program. Do you have any idea how much we make? Ten million a year. Third, they want to fire all of us who administer the U.S. loans to the railroads. Do you have any idea how much you earned and how much I earned last year…?"

  "Three million pesos each…"

  "Exactly. And the thing doesn't end there. Do me a favor and

  send a telegram to National Fruits Express telling them that these Communist leaders intend to cancel the rental of refrigerator cars, an item that costs the company twenty million pesos a year and brings us a good commission. Cheers."

  Ha, ha. That's the way to explain it all. Fools. If I didn't defend their interests…fools. Oh, get out of here, all of you. Let me listen. We'll just see if you don't understand me. We'll just see if you don't understand what an arm bent like this means…

  "Sit down, baby. I'll be right with you. Díaz: just make sure that not a single line about police repression against the agitators gets into the paper."

  "But, sir, it looks like somebody died. Besides, it was right in the center of town. It'll be hard…"

  "No, it won't. Those are orders from above."

  "But I know that one of the workers' papers is going to print the news."

  "What's gotten into you? Don't I pay you to think? Isn't your source paid to think? Tell the district attorney's office to close down that paper…"

  How little I need to think. A spark. A spark to give life to this enormous, complex network. Other people need an electric generator, but that would kill me. I need to sail murky waters, communicate over long distances, repel the enemy. Oh, yes. Send this out. I'm not interested.

  "María Luisa. This Juan Felipe Couto, as usual, is getting too big for his britches…That's all, Díaz. Give me a glass of water, honey. I was saying that he's getting too big for his britches. Just like Federico Robles, remember? But they can't get away with it with me around…"

  "When do we attack, Captain?"

  "With my help, he got the concession to build that highway in Sonora. I even helped him so they'd appropriate a budget three times larger than the actual cost of the work, knowing that the highway was going to pass through those dry-farming plots I bought out of the communal lands. I just found out that the wise guy bought some land out there, too, and now he's planning to move the highway so it passes through his property…"

  "What a pig! And he looks like such a nice guy."

  "So, doll, you know, put a little item in your column about him, mention the upcoming divorce of this distinguished public figure. Go easy, now, we just want to throw a little scare into him."

  "Anyway, we have photos of Couto in a cabaret with a blondie who's certainly not Mrs. Couto."

  "Hold them in reserve in case he doesn't straighten out."

  They say the cells in a sponge are not linked but nevertheless the sponge is one: that's what they say. I remember it, because they say if a sponge is torn apart, the pieces join together again. The sponge never loses its unity, it finds a way to join its cells again, it never dies, ah, it never dies.

  "That morning I waited for him with pleasure. We crossed the river on horseback."

  "You dominated him and stole him away from me."

  He stands up amid the indignant voices of the women and takes them by the arm and I go on thinking about the carpenter and then about his son and about what we might have avoided if they'd just let him go with his twelve PR men, as free as a bird, living off the stories about his miracles, getting free meals, free shared beds for sacred witch doctors, until old age and oblivion defeated him, and Catalina and Teresa and Gerardo sit down in the armchairs at the far end of the room. How long will they wait to call in a priest, hasten my death, squeeze confessions out of me? Oh, how they'd like to know. What fun I'm going to have. What fun, what fun. You, Catalina, would be capable of telling me what you never told me, if that would soften me up so you'd know about you-know-what. Ah, but I know what you'd like to know. And your daughter's pinched face doesn't hide it. It won't be long before that poor fool turns up here and starts bawling, to see if he can finally get something out of all this. Ah, how little they know me. Do they think a fortune like that is going to be wasted among three frauds, among three bats that don't even know how to fly? Three bats without wings: three mice. Who disdain me. Yes. Who cannot avoid the hatred of beggars. Who detest the furs that cover them, who hate the houses they live in, the jewels they show off, because I gave it all to them. No, don't touch me now…

  "Leave me alone…"

  "But Gerardo's here…dear Gerardo…your son-in-law…look at him."

  "Ah, the idiot."

  "Don Artemio…
"

  "Mama, I can't stand it, I can't stand it! I can't!"

  "He's ill."

  "Bah, I'll get out of this bed one day soon and then you'll see…"

  "I told you he was pretending."

  "Let him rest."

  "I tell you he's pretending! The way he always does, to make fun of us, the way he always does, always."

  "No, no, the doctor says…"

  "What does the doctor know. I know him better. It's another trick."

  "Don't say anything!"

  Don't say anything. That oil. They daub my lips with that oil. My eyelids. My nostrils. They don't know how much it cost. They didn't have to decide. My hands. My icy feet that I can't feel anymore. They don't know. They didn't have to give everything up. My eyes. They spread my legs and daub that oil on my thighs.

  Ego te absolvo.

  They don't know. She didn't speak. She didn't tell.

  You will live seventy-one years without realizing it. You will not stop to think about the fact that your blood circulates, your heart beats, your gallbladder empties itself of serous liquids, your liver secretes bile, your kidney produces urine, your pancreas regulates the sugar in your blood. You haven't caused these functions by thinking about them. You will know that you breathe, but you will not think about it, because it doesn't depend on your thoughts. You will turn your back on it and live. You could have dominated your functions, feigned death, walked through fire, endured a bed of broken glass. Simply speaking, you will live and allow your functions to go about their business on their own. Until today. Today, when your involuntary functions will force you to take account of them, will triumph, and end up destroying your person. You will think that you breathe each time air labors its way toward your lungs; you will think that your blood is circulating each time the veins in your abdomen pulse with that painful presence. They will overcome you because they will force you to take life into account instead of living it. Triumph. You will try to imagine it—it is that lucidity which forces you to perceive the slightest pulsation, all the movements of attraction, of separation, even the most terrible, the movement of that which no longer moves—and within you, in your guts, that serous membrane will cover your abdominal cavity and will wrap itself around your intestines, and the fold of tissue, blood, and lymph vessels that connects the stomach and the intestine with your abdominal walls, that fold of adipose cells, will no longer be irrigated with blood by the thick celiac artery that feeds your stomach and your intestines, that penetrates the base of the fold and descends obliquely to the base of the small intestine after having run behind the pancreas, where it gives rise to another artery that irrigates a third of your duodenum and the mouth of the pancreas; crossing your duodenum, it penetrates your aorta, your inferior vena cava, your right urethra, your genito-femoral nerve, and the veins in your testicles. That artery will last, blotched, thick, red, for seventy-one years without your knowing it. Today you will know it. It's going to stop working. The flow is going to dry up. For seventy-one years that artery will make incredible efforts: over the course of its descent, there comes a moment in which, under pressure from a segment of your spinal column, it will have to move downward and at the same time forward and, abruptly, backward again. For seventy-one years your mesentery artery will, under pressure, survive this test, this death-defying feat. Today it will no longer be able to do so. Today it will no longer withstand the pressure. Today, in the swift, piston-like motion downward, forward, and backward, it will stop, convulsed, congested, a mass of paralyzed blood, a scarlet stone that will obstruct your intestine. You will feel that pulse of growing pressure, you will feel it: it's your blood that has stopped for the first time, that now will not reach the other bank of your life, that stops and congeals within the swirl of your intestine, to rot, stagnate, without reaching the other bank of your life.

  And it is then that Catalina will approach you, to ask if you want anything, you who at that instant can attend only to your growing pain, trying to repulse it with your will to sleep, to rest, while Catalina cannot avoid making that gesture, that hand stretched forth which she will quickly withdraw, fearful, and press to her matronly bosom, then extend it again, and this time rest it, trembling, on your forehead. She will caress your forehead and you will not know it; you are lost in the acute concentration of pain. You will not realize that for the first time in decades Catalina has placed her hand on your brow, caressed your forehead, pushing back the sweat-matted gray hair that covers it, and then caressing it again in fear and thankfulness, grateful that tenderness is overcoming fear, in an embarrassed tenderness, ashamed of itself, with a shame that finally seems attenuated by the certainty that you don't realize she is caressing you. Perhaps, as she runs her fingers over your brow, she whispers words that seek to mix with that memory of yours that never ceases, lost in the depth of these hours, unconscious, exempt from your will but fused with your involuntary memory, which slides along the interstices of your pain and repeats now the words you didn't hear then. She, too, will think of her pride. There the spark will be born. There you will hear her, in that common mirror, in that pool that will reflect both your faces, that when you try to kiss will drown both of you in the liquid reflection of your faces. Why don't you look the other way? There you will find Catalina in the flesh. Why do you try to kiss her in the cold reflection of the water? Why doesn't she bring her face to yours; why, like you, does she sink it in the stagnant water and repeat to you now that you are not listening to her, "I let myself go"? Perhaps her hand speaks to you of an excess of freedom that defeats freedom. Freedom that raises an endless tower that does not reach heaven but splits the abyss, cleaves the earth. You will name it: separation. You will refuse: pride. You will survive, Artemio Cruz, you will survive because you will expose yourself to the risk of freedom. You will triumph over the risk and, without enemies, will become your own enemy

  in order to continue the battle of pride. You've conquered everything else; the only thing left is to conquer yourself. Your enemy will surge forth from the mirror to fight the last battle: the enemy nymph, the nymph of thick breath, daughter of gods, mother of the goatish seducer, mother of the only god to die during the time of man. From the mirror will emerge the mother of the Great God Pan, the nymph of pride, your double, once again your double: your ultimate enemy on the earth whose population has been effaced by your pride. You will survive. You will discover that virtue may well be desirable but only pride is necessary. Yet the hand that at this moment is caressing your brow will reach the end and with its small voice silence the shout of challenges, remind you that only at the end, even if it is at the end, pride is superfluous and humility is necessary. Her pale fingers will touch your feverish brow, will try to ease your pain, will try to say to you today what they did not say to you forty-three years ago.

  (1924: June 3)

  He didn't hear her say it when she awoke from her fitful sleep. "I let myself go." Lying at his side, her chestnut hair covering her face; and in every fold of her flesh she felt weary moisture, the fatigue of summer. She covered her mouth with her hand and foresaw the new day's vertical sun, the afternoon thundershower, the evening transition from suffocating heat to coolness. She did not want to remember what happened during the night. She buried her face in the pillow and said again: "I let myself go."

  The cold, clear dawn erased the pride of the night and came through the half-open window of the bedroom. Once again it defined the details the darkness had confused in a single embrace.

  "I'm young. I have a right…"

  She put on her nightgown and fled from the man before the sun could rise over the line of mountains.

  "I have a right. It has the blessing of the Church."

  Now, from her bedroom window, she saw in the distance how

  the sun crowned Citlaltépetl Mountain. She cuddled the child in her arms and stayed by the window.

  "What weakness. Always when I wake up, this weakness, this hatred, this disdain I don't really feel…"
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  Her eyes met those of the smiling Indian coming through the garden gate. He took off his hat and bowed…

  "…whenever I wake up and see his body asleep next to mine…"

  His white teeth gleamed, especially when he was near her.

  "Does he really love me?"

  The boss tucked his shirt into his tight trousers, and the Indian turned his back on the woman's window.

  "Five years have gone by…"

  "What brings you here so early, Ventura?"

  "I let my ears lead me around. Mind if I fill my gourd?"

  "Is everything ready in town?"