The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  ("He has reduced us to misery. We cannot see you socially; you are part of what he is doing to us.")

  It was true. This man.

  "I am hopelessly in love with this man, this man who perhaps really does love me, this man to whom I don't know what to say, this man who brings me from pleasure to shame, from the most depressing shame to pleasure that is most, most…"

  This man had come to destroy them: he had destroyed them already. She saved her body, but not her soul, by selling herself to him. She passed long hours at the window facing the open fields, lost in contemplation of the shaded valley, sometimes rocking the baby's cradle, waiting for her second child to come, imagining the future this adventurer could offer them. He entered the world the way he entered his wife's body—by overcoming modesty with joy and breaking the rules of decency with pleasure. He sat those men down at his own table, his overseers, peons with shining eyes, people who knew nothing about good manners. He abolished the hierarchy embodied in Don Gamaliel. He turned the house into a stable full of ruffians who talked endlessly about incomprehensible, tedious, unamusing things. He began to receive commissions from his neighbors, to hear himself described in terms of adulation. He should go to Mexico City, to the new congress. They would put him up for office. Who better to represent them? If he and his wife cared to visit the towns in the area on Sunday, they would see how much they were loved and what a shooin he would be for the congress.

  Ventura bowed his head again before putting on his hat. The peon drove the coach right up to the porch; he turned his back on the Indian and walked to the rocking chair where the pregnant woman was sitting.

  "Or is it may obligation to nurture the rancor I feel until the day I die?"

  He offered her his hand, and she took it. The rotten fruit burst under their feet; the dogs barked, running around the carriage; and the branches of the plum trees wafted the cool dew. As he helped her into the coach, he squeezed her arm and smiled. "I don't know if I've offended you in some way, but if I have, I beg your forgiveness."

  He waited for a few seconds. If only she had shown herself even slightly moved. That would have been enough: a gesture, even if evincing no affection, which would have revealed the barest weakness, the smallest sign of tenderness, of a desire for protection.

  "If I could make up my mind, if only I could."

  Just as he had at their first meeting, he now moved his hand toward her palm. Once again he touched flesh devoid of emotion. He took the reins; she sat down next to him, opened her blue parasol, and never looked at her husband.

  "Take care of the baby."

  "I've divided my live into night and day, as if to satisfy two ways of living. For God's sake, why can't I just choose one?"

  He stared fixedly toward the east. The road passed by cornfields crisscrossed by lines of water the peasants channeled by hand toward the freshly seeded patches to protect the tiny mounds where the seed was hidden. Hawks soared off in the distance; the green scepters of the maguey shot up; machetes labored at cutting incisions in their trunks: sap. Only a hawk high above could make out the moist, fertile stain that marked the outline of the lands of the new master, lands that had once belonged to Bernal, Labastida, and Pizarro.

  "Yes: he loves me, he must love me."

  The silvery saliva of the creeks soon ran out, and the exception gave way to rule: the chalky maguey soil. As the coach passed, the workers dropped their machetes and hoes, the drivers whipped their burros; the clouds of dust rose over another kind of earth, suddenly dry. Ahead of the coach, like a black swarm of bees, walked a religious procession which they quickly caught up to.

  "I should give him every reason to love me. Doesn't this passion please me? Don't his words of love, his daring, and the proof of his pleasure please me? Even now. Even now that I'm pregnant, he won't leave me alone. Yes, yes, it all pleases me."

  The slow advance of the pilgrims stopped them: children dressed in white tunics with gold hems, sometimes with halos of silver paper and wire wobbling over their black heads, holding hands with the women wrapped in rebozos, with red cheekbones and glassy eyes, crossing themselves and muttering the ancient litanies—on their knees, feet bare, hands, clasped to their rosaries—who held up the man with ulcerated legs who was carrying out his vow, whipping the sinner who rejoiced to receive the lashes on his naked back, his waist cinched with a strap of thorns. The crowns of thorns opening wounds in dark foreheads; the nopal scapularies on hairless chests. The whispers in native language did not rise from the road spattered with red drops which the slow feet flattened and quickly hid: feet with hard soles, callused, accustomed to carrying a second layer of muddy skin. The carriage could not move forward.

  "Why haven't I learned to accept all this without feeling a strange weight on my heart, without reservation? I want to understand it as proof that he cannot resist the attraction of my body, and I can only understand it as proof that I have triumphed over him, that I can wrench that love out of him every night and scorn him the next day with my coldness and distance. Why can't I decide? Why do I have to decide?"

  The sick pressed slices of onion to their temples or allowed themselves to be stroked by the holy branches the women were carrying: hundreds, hundreds. Only an uninterrupted howl broke the silence beneath their murmuring. Even the slavering dogs with the mangy fur panted softly, running between the legs of the slow-moving crowd that waited for the pink-chalk towers to appear in the distance, the porch tiles, the cupolas with their yellow mosaics. The gourds rose to the thin lips of the penitents, and down their chins ran the thick phlegm of pulque. Sightless, wormy eyes, faces stained by ringworm; the shaved heads of sick children; noses pocked by smallpox; eyebrows obliterated by syphilis: the conquistadors' mark on the bodies of the conquered, who moved forward on their knees, crawling, on foot, toward the shrine erected in honor of the god of the god-men, the teules. Hundreds, hundreds: feet, hands, signs, sweat, lamentations, bruises, fleas, mud, lips, teeth: hundreds.

  "I must decide; I have no other possibility in life than being this man's wife until the day I die. Why not accept him? Yes, it's easy to think it. But not so easy to forget the reasons for my rage. God. God, tell me if I am destroying my own happiness, tell me if I should choose him over my duty as sister and daughter…"

  The carriage made its difficult way along the dusty road, amid bodies that did not know what haste was, that moved along on their knees, on foot, crawling toward the shrine. The maguey planted along the road prevented them from taking a detour, and the white woman protected herself from the sun with the parasol she held in her fingers. She was rocked softly by the shoulders of the pilgrims: her gazelle eyes, her pink earlobes, the even whiteness of her skin, the handkerchief that covered her nose and mouth, her high breasts behind the blue silk, her big belly, her small, crossed feet, and her velvet slippers.

  "We have a son. My father and brother are dead. Why do things past hypnotize me? I should look ahead. I don't know how to decide. Am I going to let events, luck, things beyond my control decide for me? It's possible. God. And I'm expecting another child…"

  Hands stretched out toward her: first the callused limb of an old, gray-haired Indian, then, quickly, the arms naked under the rebozos of the women; a low murmur of admiration and tenderness, a longing to touch her, high-pitched syllables: "Mamita, mamita." The coach stopped, and he jumped up, waving the horsewhip over their dark heads, shouting at them to get out of the way: tall, dressed in black, with his gold-braided hat pulled down to his eyebrows…

  "…God, why did you put me in this predicament?…"

  She took up the reins and drove the horse off to the right, knocking down the pilgrims, until the horse whinnied and reared, breaking clay pots, the crates crammed with squawking hens, which fluttered away. The horse kicked the heads of the Indians on the ground, spun completely around, shining with sweat, the nerves in its neck stretched taut and its eyes bulging out of its head: she felt on her body the sweat, the sores, the muted screams, the
vermin, the rising stench of the pulque. Standing up, balanced by the weight of her stomach, she snapped the reins over the animal's back. The crowd made way, with tiny shrieks of innocence and shock, arms raised, bodies pressed to the wall of maguey, and she sped home.

  "Why have you given me this life in which I must choose? I wasn't born for this…"

  Panting, far now from the pilgrims, they headed for the house lost in the reverberating heat, hidden by the swift height of the fruit trees he'd planted.

  "I'm a weak woman. All I ever wanted was a quiet life and for others to make choices for me…I can't…I can't…"

  The long tables were set up near the shrine right out in the sun. Dense squadrons of flies flew over the pots of beans, the hard tacos piled up on a tablecloth of newspaper. The pitchers of pulque laced with cherries, the dry ears of corn, and the tricolor almond marzipan contrasted sharply with the darkness of the food and the clay pots. The president of the municipality stepped up to the podium, introduced him, praised him to the skies, and he accepted the nomination for the federal congress, arranged months earlier in Puebla and Mexico City with a government that recognized his revolutionary merits, the fact that he'd set a good example by retiring from the army to carry out the mandate of agrarian reform, as well as the excellent service he'd rendered in volunteering to stand in for the not yet reestablished public authority in the region, restoring order at his own cost and risk. The dull, persistent murmur of the pilgrims entering and leaving the shrine was all around them. The pilgrims cried out to their Virgin and their God, they wailed, they listened to the speeches and they drank from the jugs of pulque. Someone shouted. Several shots rang out. The candidate never lost his composure, the Indians chewed tacos, and he yielded the floor to another learned colleague from the area, while the Indian drum saluted him and the sun hid behind the mountains.

  "Just as I told you," whispered Ventura when the drops of rain began punctually to pelt his hat. "Don Pizarro's killers were there, taking aim at you as soon as you stepped up to the podium."

  Hatless, he slipped the coat of corn leaves over his head. "Where are they now?"

  "Pushing up daisies." Ventura smiled. "We had 'em surrounded before the speeches began."

  He put his foot in the stirrup. "Make sure Pizarro gets some souvenirs."

  He hated her when he walked into the whitewashed, naked house and found her alone, rocking, wrapped in her arms, as if the arrival of the man filled her with an intangible chill, as if the man's breath, the dried sweat on his body, the feared tone of his voice all heralded a frozen wind. Her thin, straight nose trembled: he threw his hat on the table and his spurs scarred the brick floor as he walked.

  "They…frightened me…"

  He didn't speak. He took off his corn-leaf coat and laid it out near the fireplace. The water hissed, running down the roof tiles. It was the first time she had ever tried to justify herself.

  "They asked about my wife. Today was important for me."

  "Yes, I know…"

  "How can I put it…We all…we all need witnesses of our lives in order to live them…"

  "Yes…"

  "You…"

  "I didn't choose my life!" she shouted, clutching the arms of the rocker. "If you force people to do your bidding, don't demand gratitude, too, or…"

  "So you did my bidding against your will? Why do you like it so much, then? Why do you moan for it in bed, when all you do is mope around with a long face afterwards? Who can figure you out?"

  "Wretch!"

  "Go on, you hypocrite, answer me that, why?"

  "It would be the same with any man."

  She raised her eyes to face him. She had said it. She preferred to cheapen herself. "What do you know? I close my eyes and give you another face and another name."

  "Catalina…I've always loved you…This isn't my fault."

  "Leave me alone. I will be in your hands forever. You've got what you wanted. Take what you've got and don't ask for the impossible."

  "Why do you reject me? I know you like me when…"

  "Leave me alone. Don't touch me. Don't throw my weakness in my face. I swear to you I'll never let myself go with you again…"

  "But you are my wife."

  "Don't come any closer. I won't deprive you. After all, that belongs to you. It's part of your winnings."

  "Yes, and you'll have to put up with it for the rest of your life."

  "I know what my consolation is. With God on my side, with my children, I'll never lack for solace…"

  "Why should God be on your side, you fraud?"

  "Your insults don't matter to me. I know what my consolation is."

  "And just why is it you need consolation?"

  "Don't walk away. I need consolation for knowing I live with the man who humiliated my father and betrayed my brother."

  "You're going to be sorry, Catalina Bernal. You're making me think I ought to remind you of your father and brother every time you spread your legs for me…"

  "Nothing you can say can hurt me."

  "Don't be so sure."

  "Do whatever you like. The truth hurts, doesn't it? You killed my brother."

  "Your brother didn't give anyone time to betray him. He wanted to be a martyr. He didn't want to save himself."

  "He died and you're here, safe and sound, enjoying his rightful inheritance. That's all I know."

  "Well, then, burn. And think about the fact that I'll never give you up, not even when I die, but remember, too, that I know how to humiliate. You're going to be sorry you didn't realize it…"

  "Do you think I couldn't see your animal face when you said you loved me?"

  "I never wanted you to be separated from me. I wanted you to be part of my life…"

  "Don't touch me. That's something you will never be able to buy."

  "Forget what's happened today. Remember that we're going to live the rest of our live the rest of our lives together."

  "Stay away from me. Yes. I think about that. About all those years ahead of us."

  "Forgive me, then. I ask you again."

  "Will you forgive me?"

  "I have nothing to forgive you for."

  "Will you forgive me for not being able to forgive you for the oblivion the other man is consigned to, the man I really loved? If I only could remember his face clearly…If only I'd had that first love, I could say that I'd lived…Try to understand; I hate him more than I hate you, because he let you intimidate him and he never came back…Perhaps I'm telling you this because I can't tell it to him…Yes, tell me that it's cowardly to think this way…I don't know, I…I'm weak…And you, if you want, can love lots of women, but I'm tied to you. If he had taken me by force, I wouldn't have to remember him and hate him today without being able to recall his face. I was left unsatisfied forever, do you understand me?…Listen to me now, don't walk away…Since I don't have the courage to blame myself for everything that's happened, and since I don't have him close by to hate, I blame you for everything, and I hate you, you who are so strong, because you put up with anything…Tell me if you can forgive me that, because I will never forgive you as long as I can't forgive myself and the man who ran away…Such a weakling. But I don't even want to think, I don't want to talk. Let me live in peace and ask God's forgiveness, not yours…"

  "Calm down. I liked your sullen silences better."

  "Now you know how things stand. You can hurt me as much as you like. I've even given you the weapon. Now, suddenly, because I want you to hate me, and so all our illusions die all at once…"

  "It would be simpler to forget everything and start over from scratch."

  "That's not the way things work."

  The immobile woman remembered her first decision, when Don Gamaliel had told her what was happening. To lose with power. To let herself be victimized and then take her revenge.

  "Nothing can stop me, see? Just name one thing that can stop me."

  "It's only natural. It just pours out of me."

  "No
need to nurture it and care for it. It just comes naturally."

  "Leave me alone!"

  She stopped looking at her husband. The absence of words obliterated the nearness of that tall, dark man with his thick mustache, who felt his brow and his nape weighed down by a pain of stone. That closed mouth, with its grimace of dissimulated scorn, spewed the words it could never say right into his face.

  "Do you really think that, after doing all you've done, you still have a right to love? Do you really think that the rules of life can change just so you can get that reward in addition to everything else? You lost your innocence in the outside world. You can't recover it here inside, in the world of feelings. Maybe you once had your garden. I had mine, my little paradise. Now we've both lost it. Try to remember. You can't find in me what you've already sacrificed, what you lost forever by your own actions. I don't know where you come from. I don't know what you've done. I only know that in your life you lost what you made me lose later: dreams and innocence. We'll never be the same."