The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  "Look. Give me a match."

  "Sorry."

  "The moon's up now."

  "Want to see it? If you stand on my shoulders, you might catch a glimpse…"

  "No. It's not worth the trouble."

  "It's good they took my watch."

  "Yes."

  "I mean, otherwise I'd be counting the minutes."

  "Of course, I understand."

  "The night seemed more…well, longer…"

  "This stinking pisshole."

  "Look at the Yaqui. Fast asleep. It's good no one showed he was afraid."

  "Now, another day stuck in here."

  "Who knows. They're liable to walk in any time."

  "Not these guys. They like their little game. It's too traditional to be shot at dawn. They're going to play with us."

  "He wasn't impulsive?"

  "Villa yes. Zagal no."

  "Cruz…isn't this really absurd?"

  "What?"

  "Dying at the hands of one of the big bosses, and not believing in any of them."

  "Think we'll go all three of us together, or they'll take us out one at a time?"

  "Easier in one haul, don't you think? Hey, you're the soldier here."

  "Don't you have any tricks up your sleeve?"

  "Shall I tell you something? You'll die laughing."

  "What is it?"

  "I wouldn't tell you if I weren't sure we aren't going to get out of here. Carranza sent me on this mission just so I'd get caught and the other side would be responsible for my death. He got it into his head that he'd rather have a dead hero than a live traitor."

  "You, a traitor?"

  "Depends on how you look at it. You've only been in battles; you've followed orders and have never had any doubts about your leaders."

  "Correct. Our mission is to win the war. Aren't you with Obregón and Carranza?"

  "The same way I could have been with Zapata or Villa. I don't believe in any of them."

  "So?"

  "That's the drama. They're all there is. I don't know if you remember the beginning. It was only a short time ago, but it seems so far away…When the leaders didn't matter. When we weren't doing this to raise up one man but to raise up all men."

  "Are you trying to get me to find fault with the loyalty of our men? That's what the Revolution's all about, nothing else: being loyal to the leaders."

  "Right. Even the Yaqui, who went out to fight for his land, now he's only fighting for General Obregón against General Villa. No—before, it was something else. Before it degenerated into factions. Whenever the Revolution passed through a village, the debts of the peasants were wiped out, the moneylender's property was confiscated, the political prisoners were let out of jail, and the old bosses were run out. But just look at how the people who thought the Revolution was not to puff up leaders but to free the people are being left behind."

  "Time will tell."

  "No, it won't. A revolution starts in the battlefields, but once it gets corrupted, even though military battles are still won, it's lost. And we're all to blame. We've let ourselves be divided and directed by the lustful, the ambitious, the mediocre. Those who want a real, radical, intransigent revolution are, unfortunately, ignorant, bloody men. And the educated ones only want half a revolution, compatible with the only thing they really want: to do well, to live well, to take the place of Don Porfirio's elite. That's Mexico's drama. Look at me. I spent my entire life reading Kropotkin, Bakunin, and old Plekhanov, buried in my books since I was a kid, and talk, talk, talk. And when the time comes to make a decision, I have to join up with Carranza, because he's the only one who seems a decent sort, the only one who doesn't scare me. Doesn't that make me sound like a faggot? I'm afraid of the people, of Villa, and of Zapata…'I'll go on being an impossible person as long as the people who are possible today go on being possible'…Oh, yeah. Sure, sure."

  "You start in with all this now, when you're about to die…"

  "That's the radical defect in my character: my love of the fantastic, of adventures hitherto unseen, enterprises that open infinite, unknown horizons…Oh yeah! Sure, sure."

  "Why didn't you say all that when you were out there?"

  "I did say it, beginning in 1913, to Iturbe, to Lucio Blanco, to Buelna, to all the honorable military men who didn't try to become big chiefs. That's why they didn't know how to nip Carranza in the bud. I mean, his whole life he's done nothing but turn people against each other and divide them, because if he didn't, who wouldn't take his command from him, the old mediocrity? That's why he promoted mediocrities, the Pablo González types, who'd never put him in the shade. That's how he divided the Revolution, turning it into a factional war."

  "And that's why he sent you to Perales?"

  "My mission was to convince Villa's men to give up. As if we all didn't know that they're running away in defeat and they're so desperate they shoot every Carranza supporter they can get their hands on. The old man doesn't like getting his hands dirty. He'd rather have the enemy do his dirty work for him. Artemio, Artemio, the leaders, haven't been equal to the people and their Revolution."

  "So why don't you go over to Villa?"

  "Why would I want more of the same? So I could see how long he lasts and then go over to another and then another, until I find myself in another cell waiting for orders for my execution?"

  "But you'd save yourself…"

  "No…Believe me, Cruz, I'd like to save myself and go back to Puebla. See my wife, my son. Luisa and little Pancho. And my little sister, Catalina, who depends on me for so much. See my father, my dear old Don Gamaliel, so noble and so blind. I wish I could explain to him why I got involved in all this. He never understood that there are obligations we've just got to see through, even though we know it's all going to fail. For him, the old order was eternal—the haciendas, the camouflaged loan-sharking, all of it…I wish there was someone I could ask to go see them and give them a message from me. But no one's getting out of here alive, that I do know. No; it's all a sinister game of musical chairs. We're living among criminals and pygmies, because the big boss only favors midgets who won't stand over him, and the little boss has got to murder the big one to get ahead. A shame, Artemio. How necessary everything that's happening is, and how unnecessary it is to corrupt it. That isn't what we wanted when we started the Revolution of the people in 1913…As for you, you'd better decide. As soon as they eliminate Zapata and Villa, there will be only two bosses left, the two you work for. Which one will you go with?"

  "My leader is General Obregón."

  "Well, at least you've made a choice. I hope it doesn't cost you your life; I hope…"

  "You're forgetting that they're going to shoot us."

  Bernal laughed in surprise, as if he'd tried to fly, forgetting the chains that held him down. He squeezed the other prisoner's shoulder and said: "This damned mania for politics! Maybe it's an intuition. Why don't you go with Villa?"

  He couldn't make out Gonzalo Bernal's face clearly, but in the darkness he could feel the mocking eyes, the know-it-all air of a shyster who never fights but just talks while others win battles. Abruptly, he moved away from Bernal.

  "What's the matter?" asked the lawyer, smiling.

  He grunted and lit his cigarette, which had gone out. "That's no way to talk," he said between his teeth. "Where do you get this stuff? Am I telling you everything? Well, let me tell you that people who tell everything without being asked really bust my balls, especially when they're going to die any minute. Shut up, Mr. Lawyer, tell yourself whatever you want, but let me die without spilling my guts."

  Gonzalo's voice sounded as though sheathed in steel: "Listen, he-man, we are three men sentenced to death. The Yaqui told us his story…"

  His rage was directed against himself, because he had allowed himself to drift into intimacy and talk, he had opened himself to a man who did not deserve that kind of confidence.

  "That was the life of a real man. He had a right to tell it."

&nb
sp; "What about you?"

  "All I've ever done is fight. If there was more, I don't remember it."

  "You loved some woman…"

  He clenched his fists.

  "…You had a father, a mother; hell, you may even have a son someplace. You don't? I do, Cruz. I do think I had a man's life—I'd like to be free to get on with it. Don't you? Wouldn't you like to be caressing…?"

  Bernal's voice broke when Artemio's hands sought him in the darkness, beat him against the wall without a word, with a muffled bellow, his nails stuck into the twill lapels of this new enemy armed with ideas and tenderness, who was merely repeating the secret thoughts of the captain, of the prisoner, his own thoughts: What will happen after our death?

  And Bernal went on, despite the fists that pounded him: "…If they hadn't killed us before we were thirty?…What might have become of our lives? I wanted to do so many things…"

  Until he, his back covered with sweat, his face close to Bernal's, also murmured: "…Everything is going to go on the way it always does, don't you get it? The sun is going to come up, and kids will keep on being born, even if the two of us are dead and buried, don't you get it?"

  The two men separated after their violent embrace. Bernal dropped on the floor; Cruz walked toward the cell door, his mind made up: he would tell Zagal a cock-and-bull story, he would ask him to let the Yaqui go and would leave Bernal to his fate.

  When the corporal of the guard, humming, led him to the colonel, all he felt was that lost pain for Regina, the sweet and bitter memory he'd hidden, which was now boiling to the surface, asking him to go on living, as if the dead woman needed the memory of a living man to be something other than a body gnawed by worms in an unmarked grave in a nameless town somewhere.

  "Don't get any cute ideas about pulling a fast one on us," said Colonel Zagal in his eternally smiling voice. "We're sending two patrols out right now to see if what you're telling us is true, and if it isn't, or if the attack is coming from another direction, make your peace with God and figure you've done nothing more than earn yourself a few more hours of life—at the cost of your honor."

  Zagal stretched out his legs and wiggled his stocking toes one after the other. His boots were on the table, worn out and sagging.

  "What about the Yaqui?"

  "He wasn't part of the deal. Look: the night's drawing long. Why tease these poor bastards with the idea that they're going to live another day? Corporal Payán!…Let's send the other two prisoners off to a better life. Take them out of the cell and bring them out back."

  "The Yaqui can't walk," said the corporal.

  "Who does he think he is, the cucaracha in the song? Fine, give him some marijuana," cackled Zagal. "All right, bring him out on a stretcher and prop him up against the wall as best you can."

  What did Tobias and Gonzalo Bernal see? The same thing the captain saw, except that he was at a greater elevation, standing next to Zagal on the balcony of the town hall. Down below, the Yaqui was carried out on a stretcher and Bernal walked with his head slumped, and the two were set against the wall between two oil lamps.

  A night in which the glow of dawn was slow in showing itself, in which the silhouette of the mountains did not allow itself to be seen, not even when the rifles thundered with reddish blasts and Bernal stretched out his hand to touch the Yaqui's shoulder. Tobias stayed against the wall, held in place by the stretcher. The lamps lit his shattered face, wracked by bullets. They lit only the ankles of Gonzalo Bernal's prone body, out of which flowed rivulets of blood.

  "There are your dead," said Zagal.

  Another fusillade, distant but heavy, served as a commentary on his words, and immediately a hoarse cannon joined in the blowing away a corner of the building. The shouts of Villa's men rose confusedly to the white balcony, where Zagal was bellowing disarticulate commands:

  "They're here! They found us! It's Carranza's men!" And he knocked him down and squeezed his hand—alive once more, concentrated in all its strength—around the butt of the colonel's pistol. He felt the metallic dryness of the weapon in his fingers. He stuck it into Zagal's back and wrapped his right arm around the colonel's neck. He squeezed, keeping him on the ground, his jaws set, his lips foaming. Over the edge of the balcony he could see the confusion down in the execution yard. The soldiers in the squad ran around, trampling the corpses of Tobias and Bernal, kicking over the oil lamps. Explosions rained down on the town of Perales, accompanied by shouts and fire, galloping and whinnying horses. More of Villa's troops came out into the yard, pulling on their jackets and buttoning their trousers. The fallen lamps etched every profile, every belt, every brass button with a golden line. Hands reached out to pick up rifles and cartridge belts. Quickly they opened the stable doors and neighing horses came out on the patio. Their riders mounted and galloped out the gates. Stragglers ran behind the cavalry, and now the patio was deserted. The corpses of Bernal and the Yaqui. Two oil lamps. The shouting faded off into the distance, headed for the enemy attack. The prisoner released Zagal. The colonel remained on his knees, coughing, rubbing his nearly strangled neck. He could barely raise his voice: "Don't give up. I'm here."

  And the morning finally showed its blue eyelid over the desert.

  The immediate din ceased. Zagal's men ran through the streets toward the siege, their white shirts tinged with blue. Not a murmur rose from the patio. Zagal stood up and unbuttoned his grayish tunic, as if offering his chest. The captain also stepped forward, pistol in hand.

  "My offer still stands," he said in a dry voice to the colonel.

  "Let's go downstairs," said Zagal, relaxing his arms.

  In the office, Zagal picked up the Colt he kept in a drawer.

  They walked, both armed, through the cold corridors out to the patio. They divided the rectangular space in two. The colonel moved Bernal's head out of his way with his foot. The captain picked up the oil lamps.

  Each man stood in corner. They moved forward.

  Zagal fired first, and his shot pierced Tobias the Yaqui again. The colonel stopped, and a flash of hope lit his black eyes: the other walked forward without firing. The duel was turning into a ritual of honor. The colonel clung—for one second, two seconds, three seconds—to the hope that the other would respect his courage, that the two would meet in the middle of the patio without firing another shot.

  They both stopped at the halfway point.

  The smile returned to the colonel's face. The captain crossed the imaginary line. Zagal, laughing, was making a friendly gesture with his hand when two quick shots pierced his stomach, and the other man watched him sag and fall at his feet. Then he dropped the pistol on the colonel's sweat-soaked head and stood there, not moving.

  The desert wind shook the curly hair over his eyes, the tatters of his tunic stained with sweat, the strips of his leather puttees. Five days' growth of beard bristled on his cheeks, and his green eyes were lost behind eyelids covered with dust and dry tears. Standing there in the patio, a solitary hero surrounded by corpses. Standing there, a hero without witnesses. Standing there, surrounded by abandon while the battle raged on outside the town, with a roll of drums.

  He lowered his eyes. Zagal's lifeless arm pointed toward Gonzalo's lifeless skull. The Yaqui was seated, his body against the wall; his back had left a clear outline on the canvas of the stretcher. He knelt next to the colonel and closed his eyes.

  Suddenly he stood up and breathed the air he'd wanted to find, thank, and use to give name to his life and his freedom. But he was alone. He had no witnesses. He had no comrades. A muffled shout escaped from his throat, drowned out by steady machine-gun fire in the distance.

  "I'm free; I'm free."

  He held his fists over his stomach, his face twisted with pain.

  He raised his eyes and finally saw what someone sentenced to die at dawn must have seen: the distant line of mountains, the now whitish sky, the patio's adobe walls. He listened to whatever it was someone sentenced to die at dawn must listen to: the chirping of hid
den birds, the sharp cry of a hungry child, the strange hammering of the worker in the village, remote from the unvarying, monotonous, lost clamor of the artillery and small-arms fire still raging behind him. Anonymous work, stronger than the clamor, with the certainty that, once the fighting was over, and the dying, and the winning, the sun would shine again, every day…

  I cannot desire; I let them do whatever they wish. I try to touch it. I run my finger over it, from my navel to my pubis. Round. Puffy. I don't know. The doctor's gone. Said he was going to bring in some other doctors. He doesn't want to be responsible for what happens to me. I don't know. But I see them. They've come in. The mahogany door opens, closes, and their footsteps go unheard on the thick rug. They've closed the windows. They've closed the gray curtains with a hiss. They've come in.