The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  "I had to bring him, just so he could see that painting of the Archangel, that one, divine…"

  "It's what I've always said: only someone with Don Artemio's taste…"

  "But how can we ever return the favor?"

  "How right you are never to accept invitations."

  "Everything was just so glorious that I'm speechless; speechless, speechless, Don Artemio; what wines! And that duck with the glorious things on it!"

  …Turn your face and pay no attention…All he needed were the whispers…He didn't want to make it too clear…His senses reveled in the pure murmuring around him…touches, smells, tastes, images…Let them call him in giggles and whispers, the Mummy of Coyoacán…Let them make fun of Lilia with secret smiles…There they were, dancing before him…

  He raises his arm: a signal to the orchestra leader. The music breaks off in mid-song, and everyone stops dancing. The strings take up an Oriental melody, a path opens in the crowd, a half-naked woman makes her way from the door, waving her arms and grinding her hips, until she occupies the center of the floor. A happy shout. The dancer writhes with a drum-like rhythm in her waist, her body smeared with oil, orange lips, white eyelids, and blue brows. On foot, dancing around a circle, moving her stomach in ever more rapid spasms, she picks out old man Ibargüen and drags him by the arm to the center of the floor. She sits him on the ground, arranges his arms so he looks like the god Vishnu, prances around him while he tries to copy her gyrations. Everyone smiles. Now she goes over to Capdevila, forces him to take off his jacket, to dance around Ibargüen. The host laughs, slumped down in his damask armchair, fingering his dogs' leashes. The dancer climbs on Couto's shoulders and urges other woman to imitate her. Everyone laughs. The guffawing horses wreck their riders' coiffures, and the ladies' faces flush with perspiration. Their skirts wrinkle and slip up above their kness. Some of the young men try to trip the apoplectic chargers who battle around the two old dancers and the woman with her legs spread.

  He raised his eyes, as if coming back to the surface after being carried to the bottom by lead weights. Above the disarranged hairdos and the waving arms, the clear sky of beams and white walls, the seventeenth-century canvases, the angelic carvings…And to an attuned ear, the hidden scurry of immense rats—back fangs, pointed snouts—that inhabit the eaves and foundations of this ancient convent that once belonged to the Order of St. Jerome. Occasionally, they would scuttle immodestly in the corners of the hall, waiting by the thousands in the darkness above and below the happy revelers…waiting, perhaps, for the chance to take them all by surprise…infect them with fever and headaches…vertigo and cold tremors…hard and painful swellings in their thighs and armpits…black patches on their skin…vomiting blood…If he were to raise his arm again…so the servants would seal the doors with steel bolts…close up the exits from this house filled with amphorae and cylinders…beveled panels…canopied beds…iron keys…inlays and chairs…doors of double-thick metal…statues of monks and lions…And the whole crowd of them would have to stay here in quarantine…never leave the nave…douse themselves with vinegar…make bonfires of aromatic wood…hang rosaries of thyme on their bodies…indolently shoo away the green buzzing flies…while he ordered them to dance, live, drink…He looked for Lilia in the rolling sea of bodies. She was drinking alone, silently, in a corner, with an innocent smile on her lips, her back turned toward the dancing and the mock-jousts…Some men were going out to relieve themselves…their hands already on their flies…Some women were on their way to powder their noses…already opening their evening bags…He smiled in his hard way…the only reaction this display of joy and munificence provoked: he cackled in silence…He imagined them…all of them, each one, in a row, standing before the toilet bowls in the floor below…all urinating, with their bladders swollen with splendid liquids…all shitting out the remains of the food prepared over two days with care, taste, selection…all of it alien to this final destiny of the ducks and lobsters, the purees and the sauces…ah yes, the greatest pleasure of the entire evening…

  Soon they were all tired out. The dancer finished her dance and found herself surrounded by indifference. People went back to their conversations, drank more champagne, sat down in the deep couches. Those who had excused themselves were returning, zipping flies, putting compacts back into evening bags. It was running its course. The minor, foreseeable orgy…the punctual, programmed exaltation…The voices went back to their soft singsong…to the classic dissimulation of the Mexican central plateau…Those old worries were coming back…as if to take revenge for the moment that had passed, the fleeting instant…

  "…no, because cortisone makes me break out…"

  "…you have no idea of the spiritual exercises Father Martínez is conducting…"

  "…just take a look at her: who'd have ever said it; they say they were…"

  "…I had to fire her…"

  "…by the time Luis gets home, all he wants to do is…"

  "…don't, Jaime, he doesn't like it…"

  "…she got up on her high horse…"

  "…watch a little TV…"

  "…who can put up with the kind of maids you get today…"

  "…lovers for over twenty years…"

  "…how could anyone get the idea of giving that bunch of Indians the vote?"

  "…and his wife all alone in her house; she never…"

  "…it's serious policy matter; we've received the…"

  "…I hope the PRI goes right on choosing people…"

  "…that's what the President always says in the chamber…"

  "…me, I sure would take a chance…"

  "…Laura; I think her name's Laura…"

  "only a few of us do any real work…"

  "…if I hear another word about that income-tax crap…"

  "…for thirty million lazy pigs…"

  "…I'll move all my savings to Switzerland…"

  "…Commies only understand one thing…"

  "…don't do it, Jaime, no one's supposed to bother him…"

  "…it's going to be the most incredible deal…"

  "…being beaten over the head…"

  "…just invest a hundred million…"

  "…a divine Dalí…"

  "…and get it all back in a couple of years…"

  "…the people from my gallery sent it…"

  "…or less…"

  "…from New York…"

  "…for a long time she lived in France; disappointments…is what they say…"

  "…just us girls are going to get together…"

  "…Paris, the city of light, par excellence…"

  "…and have a good time…"

  "…if you like, we can go to Acapulco tomorrow…"

  "…laughing all the way to the bank; the wheels of Swiss industry…"

  "…the American ambassador called to warn me…"

  "…turn because of those ten billion dollars…"

  "…Laura; Laura Rivière; she married again over there…"

  "…in the company plane…"

  "…we Latin Americans have on deposit there…"

  "…no country is safe from subversion…"

  "…of course, I read it in Excélsior…"

  "…I'll tell you: a great dancer…"

  "…Rome, the eternal city, par excellence…"

  "…but he's now worth a penny…"

  "…I made my money the old-fashioned way…"

  "…oh, but, darling, it's like the Eucharist dipped in egg…"

  "…you tell me why I should pay taxes to a government full of crooks…"

  "…they call him the Mummy, the Mummy of Coyoacán…"

  "…Darling, a sensational dressmaker…"

  "…subsidies for agriculture?…"

  "…I'm telling you: he always falls apart when he putts…"

  "…poor Catalina…"

  "…Yeah? And who's controlling the droughts and the frosts?…"

  "…no way around it: without American investments…"


  "…they say she was the great love of his life, but…"

  "…Madrid, divine; Seville, just lovely…"

  "…we'll never get out of this rut…"

  "…you know what they say, there's only one Mexico…"

  "…turns out it wasn't worth the trouble, understand?…"

  "…the lady of the house; if it weren't…"

  "…I get back forty-five centavos of every peso…"

  "…they give us their money and their know-how…"

  "…even before making the loan…"

  "…and we still complain…"

  "…it was twenty-some years ago…"

  "…sure: bosses, venal leaders, whatever you want…"

  "…he did everything in white and gold, you'll just die!…"

  "…but the good politician doesn't try to reform reality…"

  "…why, yes, I have the honor to be the President's friend…"

  "…instead, we should take advantage of it, work with it…"

  "…from the deals he's got with Juan Felipe, for sure…"

  "he's got tons of charities, but he never talks about them…"

  "…I just said to him: The pleasure is all mine…"

  "…we all owe each other favors, am I right or am I wrong?"

  "…what she would give to leave him!…"

  "…if it were me, I'd be out of there, poor Catalina!…"

  "…he talked them down, but it couldn't have been less than ten thousand dollars…"

  "…Laura; I think her name's Laura; I think she was very beautiful…"

  "…but what do you want, for heaven's sake, women are weak…"

  The tides of dancing and talk brought them close and carried them away. But now this young man with an open smile and light hair hunkered down next to the old man, balancing a champagne glass in one hand, his other hand on the arm of the chair…The young man asked if he would rather he kept his distance, and the old man said, "You've done nothing else all night, Mr. Ceballos…" He didn't look at the young man…but kept his eyes fixed on the center of the uproar…an unwritten law…the guests were not to come too close, except to praise the house and the dinner, quickly…respect his inviolate territory…thank him for his hospitality and entertainment…the stage and the seat in the audience…Obviously, young Ceballos did not realize…"You know? I admire you…" He dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a crushed pack of cigarettes…He lit one slowly…without looking at the young man…who said that only a king could look at people with that kind of disdain, the disdain with which he was looking at them when…And he asked if this was the first time he'd ever come to…And the young man said yes…"Didn't your father-in-law…?" "Of course…" "Well, then…" "Those rules were made without consulting me, Don Artemio…" He gave in…With languid eyes…spirals of smoke…he turned to face Jaime, and the Young man stared back without blinking…mischief in his eyes…the interplay of lips and jawbone…the old man's…the young man's…he recognized himself, ah…he disconcerted him, ah…"What, Mr. Ceballos, what did you sacrifice?"…I don't understand'he didn't understand, he said he didn't understand'he exhaled a smile through his nostrils…"The wound we suffer when we betray ourselves, my friend…Who do you think you're talking to? Do you really think I'm fooling myself…?" Jaime held out the ashtray…Ah, they crossed the river that morning on horseback…"for some kind of justification…?" he observed without being observed…"Your father-in-law and other people you deal with must have…" They crossed the river, that morning…"That our wealth is justified, that we've worked hard to earn it…our reward, isn't that right?…" She asked if they would go together to the sea…"Do you know why I'm on top of all these little people…why I control them?…" Jaime held out the ashtray; he made a gesture with his cigarette butt…he came out of the ford with his chest bare…"Ah, you came over to me, I didn't call you…" Jaime narrowed his eyes and drank from his glass…"Are you losing your illusions?"…She repeated, "My God, I don't deserve this," raising the mirror, wondering if that is what he'd seen when he came back…Poor Catalina…"Because I'm not fooling myself…" on the other bank, they could make out the ghost of land, right, the ghost…"How do you like this party?"…vacilón, qué rico vacilón, cha cha cha…The air smelled of banana. Cocuya…"It doesn't matter to me…" he dug his spurs into his horse's flanks; faced him and smiled…"…my paintings, my wines, my comforts, which I control the same way I control all of you…" "Do you think…?"…you remembered your youth because of him and because of these places…"Power is its own reward, that's all I know, and to get power you have to be able to do anything…" but you didn't want to tell him how much it meant to you, you might have strained his affection…"exactly the way your father-in-law and I did it, the way everybody dancing here did it…" that morning I waited for him with pleasure…"the same way you'll have to do it—if that's what you want…" To work with you, Don Artemio, you might perhaps find a place for me in one of your businesses…the boy's raised hand pointed east, to where the sun rises, toward the lake…"Usually these matters are arranged in a different way…" the horses trotted slowly, parting the tangled grass, shaking their manes, raising a scattered foam…"your father-in-law would call and insinuate that his son-in-law is…" they looked each other in the eye and smiled…But, you see, I have other ideals…to the ocean, to the open sea, and Lorenzo ran, agile, toward the waves that broke around his waist…He accepted things as they are; he became a realist…"Yes, exactly right. Just like you, Don Artemio…" he asked if he'd ever thought about the other side of the ocean; all land is the same, only the sea is different…Just like me!…He told him there were islands…did he fight in the Revolution, did he risk his hide, was he an inch away from being shot?…the sea tasted like bitter beer, smelled like melon, quince, strawberry…What?…No…I…A ship leaves in ten days. I've booked passage…My friend, you just got here and the party's over. Hurry and pick up the crumbs…Wouldn't you do the same thing, Papa…on top of forty years because we were baptized in the glory of the Revolution…Yes…but what about you? Do you think all that can be inherited? How are they going to make it last…? Now there is that front. I think it's the only one left…yes…our power?…I'm leaving…You all showed us how…"Bah! I'm telling you, you've come too late"…I waited for him with pleasure that morning…Others might try to fool me; I've never fooled myself; that's why I'm here…they crossed the river on horseback…hurry up…fill your belly…because it's all disappearing…he asked if they would go to the sea together…What does it matter to me…the sea watched over by the low flight of the sea gulls…I'll die, and it'll make me laugh…the sea that only pokes its tired tongue out on the beach…and it will make me laugh to think…toward the waves that broke around his waist…I keep a world alive for which there are no measures…the old man brought his head close to Ceballos's ear…the sea that tastes of bitter beer…"Shall I confess something to you"…the sea that smells like melon and guava…his finger made a dry ping on the young man's glass…the fishermen dragging their nets toward the sand…"Real power is always born out of revolt…" Do I believe? I don't know. You brought me here, showed me all these things…And you…all of you…With his ten fingers outstretched, under the overcast sky, facing the open sea…and all of you…no longer have what it takes…

  Again, he looked toward the dance floor.

  "So," whispered Jaime, "may I come to see you…one of these days?"

  "Speak to Padilla. Good night."

  The clock in the ballroom struck three times. The old man sighed and snapped the leashes of the sleeping dogs, who instantly pricked up their ears and stood at the same time as he, bracing himself first on the arms of his chair, rose heavily and the music stopped.

  He crossed the dance floor amid his guests' expressions of gratitude and the heads turned aside. Lilia made her way toward him: "Excuse me…" and she grasped his rigid arm. He with his head held high (Laura, Laura); she with averted eyes, curious. They wended their way along the path opened by the guests,
the sumptuous crystalware, the opulent marquetry, the stucco-and-gold moldings, the colonial breakfronts inlaid with bone and tortoiseshell, the metal plates and knockers, the paneled coffers with iron keyholes, the aromatic benches of ayacahuite wood, the church choir seats, the baroque crownwork and drapery, the bowed backrests, the carved crossbeams, the polychromed corbels, the bronze studs, the embossed leather, the cabriole feet with their claw and ball, the chasubles sewn with silver thread, the damask armchairs, the velvet couches, the cylinders and amphorae, the beveled game tables, the merino-wool carpets, the four-paneled canvases, under the crystal chandeliers, the burnished beams, until they reached the first step of the staircase. Then he caressed Lilia's hand, and the woman helped him, taking him by the elbow, bending, the better to assist him.

  She smiled. "You didn't get too tired now, did you?"