The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  I'd tell myself the truth, if I didn't feel my white lips, if I weren't doubled over, unable to hold myself together, if I could bear the weight of the bedclothes, if I didn't stretch out again, twisted, face down, so I could vomit this phlegm, this bile: I would tell myself that it wasn't enough to repeat time and place, pure permanence; I would tell myself that something more, a desire I never expressed, forced me to lead him—oh, I don't know, I just can't realize—yes, to force him to find the ends of the thread I broke, to tie up the broken ends of my life, to finish off my other fate, the second part that I could not complete, and all she can do, sitting there at my side, is ask me:

  "Why was it that way? Tell me: why? I raised him for a different kind of life. Why did you take him away from me?"

  "Didn't he send the very son he'd spoiled to his death? Didn't he separate him from you and me just to warp his mind? Isn't all that true?"

  "Teresa, your father isn't listening to you…"

  "He's faking. He closes his eyes and makes believe."

  "Quiet."

  "Quiet."

  I just don't know anymore. But I do see them. They've come in. The mahogany door opens, it closes, and you can't hear them walking on the thick rug. They've closed the windows. They've drawn the curtains with a hiss, the gray curtains. They've come in.

  "I'm…I'm Gloria…"

  The fresh, sweet sound of banknotes and new bonds when a man like me picks them up in his hand. The smooth acceleration of a luxury automobile, custom-made, with climate control, a bar, telephone, with armrests and footrests, what do you say, priest? will it be the same up there, what do you say?

  "I want to go back there, to the land…"

  "Why did it have to be that way? Tell me: why? I raised him for a different kind of life. Why did you take him away?"

  And she doesn't realize that there's something more painful than the abandoned body, than the ice and sun that buried it, than its eyes open forever, devoured by the birds. Catalina stops rubbing the cotton over my temples and walks away and I don't know if she's crying. I try to raise my hand to find her; the effort sends shooting paints from my arm to my chest and from my chest to my stomach. Despite the abandoned body, despite the ice and the sun that buried it, despite its eyes open forever, eaten by the birds, there is something worse: this vomit I can't hold back, this need to defecate that I can't hold back yet I can't do it, I can't get these gases out of my puffed-up stomach, I can't stop this diffuse pain, can't find the pulse in my wrist, can't feel my legs now, my blood is exploding, it's pouring inside me, that's right, inside, I know it and they don't and I can't convince them, they don't see it run out my lips, between my legs. They don't believe it, all they say is that I no longer have a temperature, ah, temperature, all they say is collapse, collapse, all they guess is tumefaction, tumefaction of the fluid areas, that's what they say as they hold me down, poke me, talk about marble spots, that's right, I can hear them violet marble spots on my stomach which I can't feel anymore, I can't see anymore. Despite the abandoned body, despite the ice and sun that buried it, despite the eyes open forever, devoured by the birds, there is something worse: not being able to remember him, being able to remember only through photographs, through objects left in the bedroom, books with notes written in them. But what does his sweat smell of? Nothing catches the color of his skin: I have no thought of it when I can no longer see it or feel it.

  That morning I was on horseback.

  That I remember: I received a letter with foreign stamps on it.

  But to think of it.

  Ah, I dreamed, imagined, found out of those names, remembered those songs, oh, thank you, but knowing, how can I know? I don't know, I don't know what the war was like, whom he spoke with before dying, the names of the men and women who accompanied him to his death, what he said, what he thought, what he was wearing, what he had to eat that day. I don't know any of it. I invent landscapes, cities, names, and I just don't remember them anymore: Miguel, José, Federico, Luis? Consuelo, Dolores, María, Esperanza, Mercedes, Nuri, Guadalupe, Esteban, Manuel, Aurora? Guadarrama, Pyrenees, Figueras, Toledo, Teruel, Ebro, Guernica, Guadalajara? The abandoned body, the ice and the sun that buried it, the eyes open forever, devoured by the birds.

  Oh, thank you for showing me what my life could be.

  Oh, thank you for living that day for me.

  But there is something more painful.

  What? what? That really exists, that really is mine. That's really what it's like to be God, for certain, isn't it?—to be feared and hated and whatever, that's what being God is, really, right? All right, priest, tell me how I can save all that, and I'll let you go through the ceremony, I'll strike myself on the chest, walk on my knees to the sanctuary, drink vinegar and crown myself with thorns. Tell me how to save all that, because the spirit…

  "…of the Son and of the Holy Ghost…"

  There is something more painful.

  "No, if that were the case, there would be a soft tumor, but there would also be a dislocation or a partial displacement of one or another of the major organs…"

  "I'll say it again: it's the valvulae. That pain can only be caused by the twisting of the intestinal folds, which in turn causes the occlusion…"

  "If that's the case, then we've got to operate…"

  "Gangrene might be developing right now, and we couldn't do a thing…"

  "Obviously, there's cyanosis…"

  "Facies…"

  "Hypothermia…"

  "Lipothymia…"

  Shut up…Shut up!

  "Open the windows."

  I can't move, I don't know where to look, where to go; I don't feel any temperature, only the cold that comes and goes in my legs, but not the cold or heat of everything else, of everything hidden that I never saw…

  "Poor girl…She's had quite a shock…"

  …Shut up…I can guess what my face is like, don't say a word…I know I've got blackened nails, bluish skin…shut up…

  "Appendicitis?"

  "We've got to operate."

  "It's risky."

  "I'll say it again: a kidney stone. Give him two centigrams of morphine and he'll be all right."

  "It's risky."

  "He's not hemorrhaging."

  Thank you very much. I could have died at Perales. I could have died with that soldier. I could have died in that bare room, sitting across from that fat man. I survived. You died. Thank you very much.

  "Hold him down. Bring the basin."

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

  "Hold him down. Bring the basin."

  Hold him down. He's going. Hold him down. He's vomiting. He's vomiting that taste that he only smelled before He can't even turn his head anymore. He vomits face up. He's vomiting over his shit. It's pouring over his lips, down his jaw. His excrement. The women scream. They scream. I don't hear them, but someone has to scream. It's not happening. This is not happening. Someone has to scream so that this won't happen. They hold me down, they keep me still. No more. He's going. He's going without a thing, naked. Without his things. Hold him down. He's going.

  You will read the letter, sent from a concentration camp, with foreign stamps, signed Miguel, which will be folded around the other, written hastily, signed Lorenzo. You will receive that letter, you will read: "I'm not afraid…I remember you…You wouldn't be ashamed…I'll never forget this life, Papa, because I learned everything I know here…I'll tell you everything when I get back." You will read and you will choose again: you will choose another life.

  You will choose to leave him in Catalina's hands, you will not bring him to that land, you will not put him at the edge of his choice; you will not push him into that mortal destiny, which could have been your own. You will not force him to do what you did not do, to ransom your lost life. You will not permit that this time you die on some rocky path and she be saved.

  You will choose to embrace that wounded soldier who enters the provide
ntial woods, to lay him down, cleanse his wounded arm with water from the tiny spring scorched by the desert, bandage him, stay with him, keep him breathing with your own breath, wait, wait until both of you are found, captured, shot in a town with a forgotten name, like that dusty one, like that one of adobe and thatched roofs: until they shoot the soldier and you, two nameless, naked men buried in the common grave of those sentenced to death, who have no tombstone. Dead at the age of twenty-four, with no more avenues, no more labyrinths, no more choices—dead, holding the hand of a nameless soldier saved by you. Dead.

  You will say to Laura: yes.

  You will say to the fat man in the bare room painted indigo blue: no.

  You will choose to stay with Bernal and Tobias, take your chances with them, not go to that bloody patio to justify yourself, to think that by killing Zagal you paid for the killing of your comrades.

  You will not visit old Gamaliel in Puebla.

  You will not take Lilia when she comes back that night, you will not think that you will never again be able to have another woman.

  You will break the silence of that night, you will speak to Catalina, you will ask her to forgive you, you will speak to her about those who died for you, you will ask her to accept you as you are, with your sins, you will ask her not to hate you but to take you as you are.

  You will stay with Lunero on the hacienda, you will never abandon that place.

  You will stay at the side of your teacher Sebastián—what a man he was, what a man. You will not go out and join the Revolution in the north.

  You will be a peon.

  You will be a blacksmith.

  You will remain an outsider with all those who remained outsiders.

  You will not be Artemio Cruz, you will not be seventy-one years old, you will not weigh a hundred and seventy-four pounds, you will not be five feet eight inches tall, you will not have false teeth, you will not smoke French cigarettes, you will not wear Italian silk shirts, you will not collect cuff-links, you will not order your ties from a New York shop, you will not wear blue, three-button suits, you will not prefer Irish twill, you will not drink gin and tonic, you will not have a Volvo, a Cadillac, and a Rambler station wagon, you will not remember and love that painting by Renoir, you will not eat poached eggs on toast with Black-well's marmalade, you will not every morning read a newspaper you yourself own, you will not leaf through Life and Paris Match some nights, you will not be listening to that incantation next to you, that chorus, that hatred which wants to wrench your life away from you before it's time, which invokes, invokes, invokes, invokes what you could have smilingly imagined just a short time ago and which you will not tolerate now.

  De profundis clamavi.

  De profundis clamavi.

  Look at me now, listen to me, shine a light into my eyes, don't put me to sleep in death / Because on the day you eat from his table you will certainly die / Don't rejoice in the death of another, remember that we all die / Death and hell were cast into the pit of flame and this was the second death / That which I fear, that is what comes to me, that which strikes me with terror, that possesses me / How bitter is your memory for the man satisfied with his riches / Have the portals of death opened for you? / Sin came into the world through woman, and because of woman we all must die / Have you seen the portals of the region of darkness? / Your weakness for the poor and the drained of strength is good / And what fruit did they obtain, then? Those for which they now feel shame, because their end is death / Because the appetite of the flesh is death.

  Word of God, life, profession of death, de profundis clamavi, Domine,

  omnes eodem cogimur, omnium versatur urna

  quae quasi saxum Tantaleum semper impendet

  quid quisque vitet, numquam homini satis cautum

  est in horas

  mors tandem inclusum protrahet inde caput

  nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet

  atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus

  Omnia te vita perfuncta sequentur

  Chorus, sepulchre; voices, pyre; you will imagine, in the zone of forgetting of your consciousness, those rites, those ceremonies, those twilights: burial, cremation, balm. Exposed at the top of a tower, so that the air, not the earth, will disintegrate you: locked in the tomb with your dead slaves; wept over by paid mourners; buried with your most highly prized objects, your entourage, your black jewels: vigil, guarding,

  requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine de profundis clamavi, Domine

  Laura's voice, as she spoke of these things, sitting on the floor with her knees bent, with the small bound book in her hands…says that everything can be fatal to us, even that which gives us life…she says that since we cannot cure death, misery, ignorance, we would do well, in order to be happy, not to think about them…she says that only sudden death is to be feared; which is why confessors live in the houses of the powerful…she says be a man, fear death when you're out of danger, not in danger…she says the premeditation of death is the premeditation of freedom…she says how softly you tread, oh, cold death…she says the hours will never forgive you, the hours that are filing down the days…she says, showing me the taut knot cut…she says is not my door made of double thicknesses of metal?…she says a thousand deaths await me, since I expect only my life…she says how can man want to live when God wants him to die…she says, of what use are treasures, vassals, servants…

  What use? what use? Let them intone, let them sing, let them wail. They will not touch the sumptuous carving, the opulent inlay, the gold-and-stucco moldings, the vestry dresser of bone and tortoiseshell, the metal plates and door handles, the paneled coffers with iron keyholes, the aromatic benches of ayacahuite

  wood, the choir seats, the baroque crownwork and drapery, the curved chairbacks, the shaped cross-beams, the polychromed corbels, the bronze-headed tacks, the worked leather, the claw-and-ball cabriole feet, the chasubles of silver thread, the damask armchairs, the velvet sofas, the refectory tables, the cylinders and amphora, the beveled game tables, the canopied, linen beds, the fluted posts, the coats of arms and the orles, the merino rugs, the iron keys, the canvases done in four panels, the silks and cashmeres, the wools and taffetas, the crystal and the chandeliers, the hand-painted china, the burnished beams, they will touch none of that. That will be yours.

  You will stretch out your hand.

  A day, which, nevertheless, will be an exceptional day; three or four years ago; you will not remember; you will remember by remembering; no, you will remember because the first thing that you remember when you try to remember is a separate day, a day of ceremony, a day separated from the rest by red numbers; and this will be the day—you yourself will think it then—on which all the names, persons, words, and deeds of a cycle ferment and make the crust of the earth groan; it will be a night when you will celebrate the New Year; your arthritic fingers will have difficulty grasping the wrought-iron handrail; you will jab your other hand deep into your jacket pocket and descend laboriously.

  You will stretch out your hand.

  (1955: December 31)

  With difficulty, he grasped the wrought-iron handrail. He jabbed his other hand deep into the pocket of his robe and laboriously walked down the stairs, without looking at the niches dedicated to the Mexican Virgins. Guadalupe, Zapopan, Remedios. As the setting sun came through the windows, it bathed in gold the warm silks and the drapery that billowed like silver sails; it reddened the burnished wood of the beams; it illuminated half of the man's face. He was wearing his tuxedo trousers, shirt, and tie: draped in his red robe, he looked like a tired old magician. He imagined his guests repeating the same performances that once upon a time they had put on with unique charm. Tonight, he would be annoyed to recognize the same faces, the same clichés that year after year provided the proper tone for his New Year's Eve party—the feast of St. Sylvester—in his enormous Coyoacán residence.

  His footsteps echoed emptily on the tezontle floor. Slightly cramped in their black patent-leathe
r slippers, his feet dragged along with that staggering heaviness he could no longer avoid. Tall, rocking on indecisive heels, his barrel chest thrust forward, and his nervous hands with their thick veins dangling at his sides, he slowly made his way along the whitewashed corridors, treading on the thick wool carpeting. He caught sight of himself in the lustrous mirrors and in the crystalware displayed in the colonial breakfronts, as he ran his fingers over the metal plates and door handles, the paneled coffers with iron keyholes, the aromatic benches of ayacahuite wood, the opulent marquetry. A servant opened the door of the grand ballroom for him. The old man stopped for the last time in front of a mirror and straightened his bow tie. With the palm of his hand, he smoothed the few curly gray hairs that remained on his high forehead. He squeezed his cheeks to push his false teeth into place, and walked into the room with its shiny floor, a vast expanse decorated with colonial pictures—St. Sebastian, St. Lucy, St. Jerome, and St. Michael. Its glowing cedar floor, from which the rugs had been removed to allow dancing, opened onto the lawns and brick terraces.