The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  He ran his hand over his rough beard. He picked through his ring of uncomfortable keys. She would be down there right now—she who went up and down the carpeted stairs without making a sound, who was always frightened to see him walk in. "Oh! What a fright you gave me. I didn't expect you. No, I didn't expect you to be back so soon. I swear I didn't expect you to be back so soon." And he wondered why she went through this act of complicity just to throw his guilt in his face. But complicity and guilt were, at least, words, and their encounters, the attraction that repelled before it began to move them, the rejection, which at times drew them together, were not expressed in words, neither before being born nor after being consummated, because both acts were identical. Once, in the darkness, their fingers touched on the banister, and she squeezed his hand and he lit the lamp so she wouldn't trip, because he didn't know that she was going down the stairs while he was going up, but her face did not reflect the feeling of her hand, and she put out the lamp, and he wanted to call that perversity, but that wasn't the right word for it because habit cannot be perverse, unless it stops being premeditated and exceptional. He knew a soft object, wrapped in silk and linen sheets, an object to be touched because the bedroom lamps were never burning during those moments: only in that moment on the stairs, when she neither hid nor masked her face. It happened only once, which was not necessary to remember but nevertheless wrenched his stomach with a bittersweet desire to repeat it. He thought about it and felt it after it had recurred, when it was repeated that very dawn, and the same hand touched his, this time on the handrail that led to the cellar, although this time no lamp was lit and she merely asked him: "What are you looking for here?" before she recovered herself and repeated in an even tone, "Good heavens, what a fright! I didn't expect you. I swear I didn't expect you so early"—an even tone, with no mockery and he could only breathe in that almost fleshly smell, that smell with words, with their own musical cadence.

  He opened the pantry door and at first could not make him out, because he, too, seemed made of incense. She took the sleeve of her secret guest, who was trying to hide the folds of his cassock between his legs and diffuse the sacred smell by waving his arms, before he realized how useless it all was—her protection, his black gesticulations—and lowered his head in an imitative sign of consummation which must have comforted him and assured him that he was carrying out, for his own satisfaction, if not for that of the witnesses who were in fact looking not at him but at each other, the time-honored motions of resignation. He desired, requested that the man who had just walked in look at him, recognize him. Out of the corner of his eye, the priest saw that the man could not tear his eyes away from the woman, nor could she tear hers from him, no matter how she embraced and shielded the minister of the Lord. For his part, he could feel a spasm in his gallbladder, in the yellowness of his eyes and tongue the promise of a terror which, when the moment came—the next moment, because there would be no other—he would not know how to hide. All he had left, thought the priest, was this moment to accept destiny, but in this moment there were no witnesses. That green-eyed man was asking: he was asking her to ask, to dare to ask, to take a chance on the yes or no of chance, and she could not answer; she could no longer answer. The priest imagined that on another day, in sacrificing this possibility of answering or asking, she had sacrificed, from that day on, this life, the priest's life. The candles highlighted the opacity of his skin, matter that withstands transparency and brilliance; the candles created a black twin for the priest out of the whiteness of his face, neck, and arms. He waited to be asked. He saw the contraction of that neck he longed to kiss. The priest sighed: she would not beg, and all that was left to him, standing before this man with green eyes, was a moment to act out his resignation, because tomorrow he would not be able, it would doubtless be impossible, tomorrow resignation would forget his name and would be named viscera and viscera do not know the words of God.

  He slept until noon. Music from an organ-grinder out in the street woke him up, and he did not bother to identify the song. The silence of the previous night—or his mercy of the night and the silence—imposed long-dead moments that cut through the melody, and then, quickly, the slow, melancholy rhythm would begin again to seep through the half-open window before that memory without sound interrupted it once more. The telephone rang, and he picked it up and heard the restrained laughter of the other man, and said:

  "Hello."

  "We've got him down at the station, Congressman."

  "Really?"

  "The President has been informed."

  "Then…"

  "You know. A gesture. A visit. No need to say anything."

  "When?"

  "Come over at about two."

  "See you then."

  She heard him from the adjacent bedroom and began to weep, clinging to the door, but then she heard nothing and dried her cheeks before sitting down in front of her mirror.

  He bought a paper from a newsboy and tried to read it as he drove, but he could only glance at the headlines, which spoke about the execution of those who had made an attempt on the life of the other leader, the candidate. He remembered him in the great moments, the campaign against Villa, during his presidency, when all of them swore their loyalty to him, and he looked at that photo of Father Pro, with his arms wide open to receive the volley of bullets. Passing by him in the street were the white roofs of new automobiles; on the sidewalk, the short skirts and cloche hats of the women, and the balloon trousers of today's lounge lizards, and the shoeshine boys sitting on the ground around the fountain with its ornamental frogs. But it wasn't the city that ran before his glassy, fixed eyes, but the word. He tested it and saw it in the rapid glances from the sidewalks that met his own; he saw it in the attitudes, the winks, the fleeting gestures, in the bent-over men, in obscene finger signals. He felt dangerously alive, clutching the steering wheel, dizzied by all the faces, gestures, finger-penises on the street, between two swings of the pendulum. He had to do it because, inevitably, the guys who got screwed today would end up screwing him tomorrow. A reflection off the windshield blinded him and he shaded his eyes with his hand: he'd always known how to choose the biggest motherfucker, the emerging leader against the fading leader. The immense square of the Zócalo opened before him with its stands set in the arcades, and the Cathedral bells sounded the deep bronze of two o'clock in the afternoon. He showed his identification card to the guard at the entrance to the Moneda. The crystalline winter of the plateau outlined the ecclesiastical silhouette of old Mexico, and groups of students, now taking exams, walked down Argentina and Guatemala Streets. He parked the car in the patio. He rode the grillwork elevator. He walked through the rosewood-paneled rooms with their shining chandeliers and sat down in the waiting room. Around him, the low voices only rose to utter, as unctuously as possible, those two words:

  "Mister President."

  "Misser Prisdent."

  "Mishter Praisident."

  "Congressman Cruz? Please step this way."

  The fat man opened his arms to him, and the two of them clapped each other on the back, the waist, rubbed their hips, and the fat man laughed from within, as usual, and outwardly as well, and with his index finger pretended to shoot himself in the head, and laughed again voicelessly, with a silent shaking of belly and dark cheeks. He buttoned—with some difficulty—the collar of his uniform and asked if he'd seen the news, and he said yes, that now he understood the game but that none of it was of the least importance and that he'd come to reiterate his offer of support for the President, his unconditional support, and the fat man asked if he wanted anything, and he talked about some vacant lots on the outskirts of the city that weren't worth much today but that might, in time, be subdivided, and the other man promised to arrange it because, after all, now they were pals, brothers, and the congressman had, wow!, been fighting since 1913, and had a right to live in security, outside the ups and downs of politics. That's what he said to him, and he patted him gently on the arm and
again on the back and hips to seal their friendship. The door with gilt handles opened from the other office emerged General Jiménez, Colonel Gavilán, and other friends who just last night had been at Saturno's and who walked by without seeing him, their heads bowed; and the fat man laughed again and told him that lots of his friends had come to put themselves at the service of the President in this hour of unity, and he ushered him out with a sweeping gesture of his arm.

  In the rear of the office, he saw under a greenish light those eyes that had been screwed into the depths of the cranium, those eyes of a tiger on the prowl, and he bowed and said: "I'm at your disposal, Mr. President…To serve you unconditionally, I assure you, Mr. President…"

  I smell that old oil they use to muck up my eyes, my nose, my lips, my cold feet, my blue hands, my thighs, near my sex, and I ask them to open the window: I want to breathe. I push this hollow sound out through my nostrils and I let them do what they wish and I cross my arms over my stomach. The linen of the sheet, its coolness. That is something important. What do they know, Catalina, the priest, Teresa, Gerardo?

  "Leave me alone…"

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

  "Don't say anything."

  "Teresita, don't contradict your father…I mean, your mother…Don't you see that…"

  "Ha. You're just as responsible as he is. You because you're weak and a coward, he because…because…"

  "Enough, enough."

  "Good afternoon."

  "Come this way."

  "Enough, for God's sake."

  "Keep it up, keep it up."

  What was he thinking about? What was he remembering?

  "…like beggars, why does he make Gerardo work?"

  What do they know, Catalina, the priest, Teresa, Gerardo? What will their grief, hysterics, or the expressions of sympathy that will appear in the papers matter? Who will have the honesty to say, as I say now, that my only love has been to possess things, their sensual property? That's what I love. The sheet I embrace. And all the rest, what is now passing before my eyes. A floor made of Italian marble, veined in green and black. The bottles that store up the summer of those places. Old pictures with chipped varnish: in a single blotch, they pick up sun- or candlelight and allow us to wander slowly through them with our eyes and our sense of touch as we sit on a white-leather sofa decorated with gold fillet, with a glass of cognac in one hand and a cigar in the other, wearing a light silk tuxedo, our patent-leather slippers resting on a thick, silent carpet made of merino wool. There a man can take possession of landscape and the faces of other men. There, or sitting on the terrace facing the Pacific, watching the sunset and reiterating with his senses, the most tense, yes, the most delightful, the ebb and flow, the friction of those silver waves on the moist sand. Land. Land that can translate itself into money. Square plots of land in the city on which the forest of construction timbers begins to rise. Green and yellow property in the country, always the best, near the reservoirs, passed over by the roar of the tractor. Vertical property of mountain mines, gray treasure boxes. Machines: that tasty smell of the rotary press as it vomits out its pages in an accelerated rhythm…

  "Oh, Don Artemio, do you feel okay?"

  "It's nothing, just the heat. This glare. What's going on, Mena? How about opening the windows?"

  "Right away…"

  Ah, the noises of the street. Suddenly. It's impossible to tell one from the other. Ah, the noises of the street.

  "What can I do for you, Don Artemio?"

  "Mena, you know how enthusiastically we defended President Batista, right down to the last moment. But now that he's no longer in power, it's not easy to do. It's even harder, in fact, to defend General Trujillo, even though he's still in power. You represented the two of them, so you'll understand…It's hard to make a case for them."

  "Don't worry, Don Artemio, I'll see to arranging things. But with so many nuts around…And while we're at it, I've brought along a short article that explains the work of the Benefactor…Nothing more…"

  "Good. leave it to me. Díaz, good thing you came in when you did. Print this on the editorial page with a phony signature…Mena, I'll be seeing you. Stay in touch…"

  In touch. Touch. Stay in touch. In touch with my white lips, ooooh, a hand, give me a hand, oh, another pulse to revive mine, white lips…

  "I blame you."

  "Does that make you feel better? Good. We crossed the river on horseback. We went back to my part of the country. My country."

  "…we'd like to know where…"

  Finally, finally, they're giving me the pleasure of coming to me on their knees, physically, to ask me for it. The priest hinted at it. It must be that something is going to happen to me soon, for these two to have found their way to my bedside with that tiny tremor I can't help but notice. They're trying to guess what my joke will be, the final joke I've enjoyed so much by myself, the definitive humiliation whose ultimate consequences I won't be able to enjoy, but whose initial spasms delight me right here and now. This may be my last little flame of triumph…

  "Where…" I murmur with so much sweetness, so much secrecy…"Where…Let me think…Teresa, I think I remember…Isn't there a mahogany box…where I store my cigars…? It has a false bottom…"

  I don't have to finish. The two of them get up and run to the huge, horseshoe-shaped desk, where they think I sometimes pass away my insomnia-ridden nights reading: they wish it were so. The two women force open the drawers, they scatter papers, and finally find the ebony box. Ah, so it was there all along. There was another one there. Or someone took it. Their fingers must get the second clasp, hastily sliding it off. But there's nothing there. When was the last time I ate? I urinated a long time ago. But eating. I vomited. But eating.

  "The Undersecretary is on the phone, Don Artemio."

  They closed the curtains, didn't they? It's nighttime, isn't it? There are plants that need the moonlight to flower. They wait until nightfall. The convolvulus. At that shack there was a convolvulus, at the hut by the river. The flower opened in the afternoon, yes.

  "Thank you, miss…Hello…Yes, this is Artemio Cruz. No, no, no, no, no, reconciliation is impossible. It's a clear-cut attempt to bring down the government. They've already managed to get the unions to abandon the official party en masse; if things go on like this, what will your power base be, Mr. Undersecretary?…Yes…It's the only way: declare the strike null and void, send in the troops, rough them up, and put the leaders in jail…Of course, things are that serious, sir…"

  Mimosa, too. I remember that the mimosa has feelings; it can be sensitive and modest, chaste and palpitating, alive, the mimosa…

  "…yes, of course…oh, and one thing more, just to put my cards on the table: if you people show weakness, my associates and I will take our capital out of Mexico. We need guarantees. Listen, what do you think will happen, for example, if in two weeks a hundred million dollars leaves the country?…What?…No, I do understand. Of course!…"

  That's it. It's all over. Ah. That's all. Was that all? Who knows. I don't remember. I haven't listened to that tape in a long time. I've been masquerading for a long time, and in fact I'm thinking about things I'd like to eat, yes, it's more important to think about food because I haven't eaten for hours, and Padilla disconnects the recorder, and I've kept my eyes closed and don't know what they can be thinking or saying—Catalina, Teresa, Gerardo, the child, no, Gloria went out, she left with Padilla's son, they're kissing out in the hall, taking advantage of the fact that no one's there—because I keep my eyes closed and only think about pork chops, pork roast, barbecue, stuffed turkey, the soups I like so much, almost as much as I like desserts, oh yes, I always had a sweet tooth and in this country the desserts are delicious, candied almond and pineapple, coconut and curd, ah, custard too, cakes from Zamora, I think about those Zamora cakes, candied fruit, red snapper, bass, filet of sole, I think about oysters and crabs…

  We crossed the river on horsebac
k. And we reached the sandbar and the sea. In Veracruz.

  …mussels and squid, octopus and seviche, I think about beer, as bitter as seawater, beer, I think about venison Yucatán-style, I think about the fact that I'm not old, no, although one day I was, in front of the mirror, and stinking cheeses, how I love them, I think, I want, how that relieves me, how it bores me to hear my own exact, insinuating, authoritarian voice acting out that same role, always, what a bother, when I could have been eating, eating: I eat, I sleep, I fornicate, and the rest of it—what? what? what? who wants to eat sleep fornicate with my money? You Padilla and you Catalina and you Teresa and you Gerardo and you Paquito Padilla—is that your name?—the one who's been chewing on my granddaughter's lips in the half-light of my room or of this room, you who are still young, because I don't live here, you are young, I know how to live well, that's why I don't live here, I'm an old man, is that right? An old man filled with manias, who has a perfect right to have them because he screwed himself, see? He screwed himself screwing everyone else, he chose just in time, like that night, ah, I've already remembered it, that night, that word, that woman. Why can't they give me something to eat? Why? Get out: oh, what pain: get out: motherfuckers.