The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  "Don Rodrigo wondered if you wouldn't mind sharing the boat with me."

  He nodded and looked for a spot in the shaded cabin.

  Adame was saying to Lilia: "…the old boy offered me the use of the boat a week ago and then forgot…"

  Lilia smiled and spread out a towel on the sun-drenched stern.

  "Wouldn't you like something?" the man asked Lilia when the steward appeared with the liquor cart and some snacks.

  From her towel, Lilia signaled no with a finger. He pulled the cart over and nibbled on some almonds while the steward made him a gin and tonic. Xavier Adame had disappeared on the canvas roof of the cabin.

  The cabin cruiser sailed slowly out of the bay. He put on his cap with the transparent visor and leaned back to sip his drink.

  Opposite him, the sun was melting over Lilia. She undid the strap on her bathing suit and exposed her back. Her whole body was a gesture of pure joy. She raised her arms and tied up her brilliant, coppery hair, which had been hanging loose. Her fine sweat ran down her neck, lubricating the soft, round flesh of her arms and the smooth, wide-apart shoulders. He stared at her from deep inside the cabin. She would fall asleep in the same position she'd been in that morning. Resting on one shoulder, with her knee bent. He saw she'd shaved her armpits. The motor started, and the waves spread in two swift crests, raising a salty, even mist which fell on Lilia. The seawater moistened her bathing suit, making it cling to her hips and sink into her backside. Sea gulls flew close to the speeding boat, screeching, as he slowly sucked on his straw. Instead of exciting him, her young body inspired him with restraint, with a kind of malevolent austerity. Sitting on a canvas chair inside the cabin, he played a waiting game with his desires, hoarding them for the silent, solitary night, when their bodies would vanish in the darkness and not be the subject of comparisons. In the night, he would use his experienced hands on her, hands that loved slowness and surprise. He lowered his eyes and looked at those dark hands with their prominent greenish veins, hands that substituted for the vigor and impatience of youth.

  They were in the open sea. From the uninhabited coast with its ragged scrub and stone battlements, there rose a burning glare. They yacht turned into the rolling sea and a wave smashed, soaking Lilia's body: she shouted with glee and lifted her breasts, tipped with pink buttons that seemed to hold her hard bosom in place. She lay down again. The steward reappeared with a fragrant platter of peeled plums, peaches, and oranges. He closed his eyes and allowed himself a painful smile, imposed on him by a thought: that sensual body, that slim waist, those full thighs, had hidden within them a cell, tiny as yet: the cancer of time. Ephemeral wonder, how would it be different, after the passage of time, from this body that now possessed her? A corpse in the sun dripping oils and sweat, sweating away its quick youth, lost in the blink on an eye, withered capillaries, thighs that would soften from successive births and from mere anguished time on earth with its elemental, always repeated routines, devoid of originality. He opened his eyes. He stared at her.

  Xavier slid down from the roof. He saw the hairy legs, then the knot of his hidden sex, finally his burning chest. Yes: he did walk like a wolf as he bent down to enter the open cabin, taking two peaches off the platter, which had been left on a tray of ice. Xavier smiled at him and went out with the fruit in his hand. He squatted in front of Lilia, with his legs spread in front of the girl's face; he touched her shoulder. Lilia smiled and took one of the peaches Xavier was offering, saying words he could not hear, words drowned out by the motor, the wind, the swift waves. Now those two mouths were chewing at the same time, and the juice was dripping down their chins. If at least…Yes. The young man brought his legs together and shifted his weight so they hung over the port side. He raised his smiling eyes, squinting into the white midday sky. Lilia watched him and moved her lips. Xavier tried to say something, moving his arm, pointing toward the coast. Lilia tried to look in that direction, covering her breasts as she did so. Xavier came back to her side, and both laughed as he knotted her strap. She sat up with her wet breasts clearly outlined, and shielded her eyes with her hand so she could see what he was pointing to in the distant line that was a small beach fallen like a yellow conch shell on the edge of a thick forest. Xavier stood and shouted an order to the captain. The yacht turned again and headed toward the beach. Lilia then joined him on the port side and offered Xavier a cigarette. They talked.

  He saw the two bodies seated side by side, equally dark and equally smooth, making a single uninterrupted line from their heads to the feet they'd stretched to the water. Immobile but tense with confident expectation; united in their newness, in their barely disguised eagerness to try each other, to reveal themselves. He sipped through his straw and put on his sunglasses, which, along with his visored cap, virtually camouflaged his face.

  They talked. They finished sucking their peach pits and might have said: "It tastes good," or it might have been: "I like it…"—something no one had ever said before, said by bodies, by presences making their debut in life.

  They might have said: "How is it we've never me before? I'm always at the club…"

  "No, I'm not…Come on, let's toss our pits at the same time. One, two…"

  He watched them toss their pits, laughing a laugh that did not reach him; he saw the power of their arms.

  "I beat you!" said Xavier as the pits soundlessly hit the water far from the yacht. She laughed. They settled back again.

  "Do you like water skiing?"

  "I don't know how."

  "Come on, then. I'll give you a free lesson…"

  What could they be saying? He coughed and pulled the cart over to make himself another drink. Xavier would find out just what sort of couple he and Lilia were. She would tell her petty, sordid story. He would shrug and force to prefer his wolf's body, at least for one night, just for variety's sake. But as for loving each other…loving each other…

  "All you have to do is keep your arms stiff, see? Don't bend your arms…"

  "First let me see how you do it…"

  "Sure. Wait till we get to the little beach."

  That's the ticket! Be young and rich.

  The yacht stopped a few yards off the half-hidden beach. Weary, it rocked back and forth and exhaled its gasoline breath, staining the sea of green crystal and white sand. Xavier tossed the skis into the water; then he dove in, came up smiling, and put them on.

  "Throw me the towline!"

  The girl found the line and tossed it to him. The yacht started to move again, and Xavier rose up out of the water, following in the boat's wake with one arm raised in salute while Lilia contemplated him and he drank his gin and tonic. The strip of water separating the two young people linked them in some mysterious fashion. It united them more than real fornication and fixed them in an immobile nearness, as if the yacht were not cutting through the Pacific, as if Xavier were as statue sculpted now for all eternity but being pulled by the boat, as if Lilia had posed on one, any one, of the waves which in appearance lacked all substance and which rose, broke, died, reconstituted themselves—other, the same—always in motion and always identical, out of time, their own mirrors, mirrors of the waves of our origins, of the lost millennium and of the millennium of come. He sank his body into the low, comfortable chair. What would he choose now? How would he escape from that world of chance packed with needs that elude the control of his will?

  Xavier let go of the handle and sank into the sea across from the beach. Lilia dove in without looking, without glancing at him. But her explanation would come. What would it be? Would Lilia explain to him? Would Xavier ask Lilia for an explanation? Would Lilia give Xavier an explanation? When Lilia's head, glittering a thousand strange streaks because of the sun and the sea, appeared in the water next to that of the young man, he knew that no one, no one but he, would dare ask for an explanation; down there, in the clam sea of this transparent anchorage, no one would look for reasons or stop the fatal encounter, no one would corrupt what was there, what ha
d to be. What was building up between the two young people? This body sunken into its seat, dressed in a polo shirt, wearing flannel slacks and a visored cap? This important stare? Down there the bodies were swimming in silence and the side of the boat kept him from seeing what was happening. Xavier whistled. The yacht started up, and Lilia appeared for an instant on the surface of the water. She fell; the yacht stopped. Their raucous laughter reached his ears. He'd never heard her laugh that way. As if she'd just been born, as if there were no past, always the past, tombstones of history and of stories, sacks of shame, crimes committed by her, by him.

  By everyone. That was the intolerable word. Committed by everyone. His bitter grimace could not hold back that word, which came pouring out. Which broke all the springs of power and blame, of one man's domination over others, over someone, over a girl in his power, bought by him, to bring them into a wide world of common acts, similar destinies, experiences not labeled as personal property. So, hadn't this woman been branded forever? Wouldn't she always be a woman occasionally possessed by him? Wouldn't that be her definition and her fate: to be what she was because at a given moment she was his? Could Lilia love someone as if he had never existed?

  He stood up, walked toward the stern, and shouted: "It's getting late. We've got to get back to the club if we're going to eat on time."

  He felt his own face, his entire body, rigid, covered by a pale starch, when he realized that no one could hear his shouts. After all, how could two graceful bodies swimming under the opaline water, parallel to each other and not touching, as if they were floating in a second level of air, hear him?

  Xavier Adame left them on the dock and returned to the yacht: he wanted to go on skiing. He said goodbye from the prow. She waved her blouse, and in her eyes there was nothing of what he would have wanted to see. Just as, during lunch on the shore of the anchorage under the shelter of palm branches, he would have wanted to see what he did not find in Lilia's chestnut eyes. Xavier hadn't asked. Lilia hadn't told that sad, melodramatic tale which he secretly enjoyed, while he identified the mixed flavors of the vichyssoise. A middle-class couple, with the usual leper, the tough guy, the punisher, the poor fool; divorce and whores. He would have wanted to tell it—and maybe he should have told it—to Xavier. But it was hard for him to remember the story because it had fled from Lilia's eyes this afternoon as if during the morning the past had fled the woman's life.

  But the present could not flee because they were living it, sitting on those straw armchairs and mechanically eating the specially ordered lunch: vichyssoise, lobster, Côtes du Rhône, Baked Alaska. She was sitting there, paid by him. He stopped the small forkful of seafood before it reached his mouth: she was paid by him, but she was escaping him. He couldn't have her any longer. That afternoon, that very night, she would look for Xavier, they would meet in secret, they'd already made a date. And Lilia's eyes, lost in the seascape of sailboats and sleeping water, said nothing. But he could get it out of her, he could make a scene…He felt he was false, uncomfortable, and went on eating his lobster…Now which road…A fatal meeting that imposes itself on his will…Ah, on Monday it would all be over, he'd never see her again, never feel for her in the dark, naked, sure of finding that reclined warmth between the sheets, he would never again…

  "Aren't you sleepy?" murmured Lilia when dessert was served. "Doesn't the wine just knock you out?"

  "It does. A little. Have some dessert."

  "No. I don't want ice cream…I need a siesta."

  When they got to the hotel, Lilia wiggled her fingers in farewell, and he crossed the avenue and asked a boy to put a chair in the shade of the palms for him. It was hard for him to light his cigarette: an invisible wind that came from nowhere in the hot afternoon insisted on putting out his matches. A few young couples were taking their siesta near him, embracing, some with their legs entwined, others with their heads wrapped in towels. He began to wish Lilia would come downstairs and rest her head on his thin, bony, flannel-covered knees. He suffered or felt wounded, annoyed, insecure. He suffered from the mystery of that love he could not touch. He suffered from the memory of that immediate, wordless complicity, agreed upon right in front of his eyes in gestures that in themselves meant nothing, but in the presence of that man, of that man slumped in his canvas chair, slumped behind his visor, his dark glasses…One of the young women lying near him stretched with a languid rhythm in her arms and began to sprinkle a rain of fine sand on her boyfriend's neck. She shrieked when he jumped up, pretending to be mad, and grabbed her around the waist. The two rolled on the sand; she got up and ran; he chased until he caught the panting, excited girl again, and carried her in his arms to the sea. He took off his Italian sandals and felt the hot sand under his feet. He walked the beach, to its end, alone. He walked with his eyes fixed on his own footprints, not noticing that the tide was washing them away and that each new footstep was the sole, ephemeral evidence of itself.

  The sun was level with his eyes.

  The lovers came out of the water—confused, he couldn't tell how long the prolonged coitus had taken. They could almost be seen from the beach, but they'd been covered by the sheets of the silvery afternoon sea—and that playful display with which they'd entered the water had now become two heads joined in silence, she a splendid dark girl with lowered eyes, young…young. The couple stretched out near him again, covering their heads with a towel. They also covered themselves with night, the slow night of the tropics. The black man who rented the chairs began to gather them up. He got up and walked to the hotel.

  He decided to take a quick swim in the pool before going up. He walked into the dressing room near the pool and, sitting on a bench, once again took off his sandals. The lockers hid him. Behind him he heard wet footsteps on the rubber mat; breathless voices laughed; they dried their bodies. He took off his polo shirt. From the other side of the lockers there arose the penetrating smells of sweat, cigar smoke, and cologne. A smoke ring wafted toward the ceiling.

  "Beauty and the Beast didn't show up today."

  "No, they didn't."

  "What a piece she is…"

  "What a waste. That old bird can't cut the mustard."

  "He's liable to get a stroke."

  "Right. Get a move on."

  They went out. He put on his sandals and walked out, putting on his shirt.

  He walked up the stairs to his room. There was nothing there to surprise him. There was the bed, in disarray after her siesta, but there was no Lilia. He stood in the middle of the room. The fan was spinning like a vulture on a string. Outside, on the terrace, another night of crickets and fireflies. Another night. He closed the window so the scent wouldn't escape. His senses took in the aroma of recently sprinkled perfume, sweat, wet towels, makeup. Those were not the real names. The pillow, which still showed where her head had been, was a garden, fruit, moist earth, the sea. He moved slowly toward the drawer where she…He picked up her silk bra and brought it to his cheek. His whiskers scraped it. He had to be prepared. He had to shower, shave again for tonight. He dropped the bra and walked toward the bath with a different gait, happy once again.

  He turned on the light and then the hot water. He tossed his shirt on the toilet seat. He opened the medicine chest. He saw the things that belonged to both of them: toothpaste tubes, mentholated shaving cream, tortoiseshell combs, cold cream, aspirin, antacid pills, tampons, cologne, blue razor blades, brilliantine, rouge, antispasmodic pills, yellow mouthwash, prophylactics, milk of magnesia, bandages, iodine, shampoo, tweezers, nail clippers, a lip pencil, eye drops, eucalyptus nasal spray, cough syrup, deodorant. He picked up his razor. The blade was clogged with thick chestnut hairs. He paused with the razor in his hand. He brought it to his lips and involuntarily closed his eyes. When he opened them, that old man with bloodshot eyes, gray cheeks, withered lips—who was no longer the other, the reflection he'd learned so well—shot him a grimace from the mirror.

  I see them. They've come in. The mahogany door opens and closes a
nd their footsteps on the thick carpet are inaudible. They've closed the windows. They've drawn the curtains with a hiss. I'd like to ask them to open them, to open the windows. There's a world outside. There's strong wind blowing from the mesa, it shakes the thin black trees. I've got to breathe…They've come in.

  "Go on over to him, child, let him get to know you. Tell him your name."

  She smells good. She has a pretty smell. Ah, yes, I can still make out blushing cheeks, shining eyes, her entire young body, graceful, which comes closer to my bed, taking short steps.

  "I'm…I'm Gloria."

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

  "See how he ended up? See? Just like my brother. That's how he ended up."

  "Feel relieved? Do it."

  "Ego te absolvo."

  The fresh, sweet rustle of banknotes and new bonds when the hand of a man like me picks them up. The smooth acceleration of a luxury car, custom-built, air-conditioned, with a bar, telephone, soft cushions, and footrests—well priest, well? Up there too, right? That heaven represents power over men, innumerable men with hidden faces, forgotten names: last names from the thousand work lists of the mines, factories, newspapers. That anonymous face which sings me traditional songs on my saint's day, which hides its eyes under its helmet when I visit construction sites, which draws my caricature for the opposition newspapers: well, well? That does exist, that really is mine. That really is what being God is, right? To be feared and hated and whatever, that's really being God, right? Tell me how I save all that and I'll let you go through with your ceremonies, I'll beat myself on the chest, I'll walk on my knees to a sanctuary, I'll drink vinegar and wear a crown of thorns. Tell me how I save all that because the spirit…