Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

"Just as I suspected. His demands won't stop there, either."

"The land?"

"Certainly. He's plotting to take my land from me, don't think he isn't."

As she did every afternoon, she went from one brightly painted cage to another, covering them after observing the nervous movements of the mockingbirds and robins that pecked the seeds and chirped one last time before the sun disappeared.

The old man did not expect a trick of such enormity. The last man to see Gonzalo, his cell mate, the bearer of his last words of love for his father, his sister, his wife, and his son.

"He told me Gonzalo thought about Luisa and the boy before he died."

"Dad. We agreed that we were not going to…"

"I didn't tell him a thing. He doesn't know that she remarried and that my grandson has another name."

"You haven't said a word about all that for three years. Why bring it up now?"

"It's true. We've forgiven him, haven't we? I think we should forgive him for having gone over to the enemy. I think we should try to understand him…"

"I always thought that every afternoon you and I were forgiving him in silence."

"That's it, that's it. Exactly. You understand me without our having to speak. How comforting that is! You understand me…"

Which is why, when that expected, feared guest-because someone, someday, had to appear and say, "I saw him. I met him. He remembered you"-did appear and put forth his perfect pretext, without even mentioning the real problems of the peasant revolt and the suspended payments, Don Gamaliel, after showing him into the library, excused himself and walked rapidly (this old man who thought a measured pace was a sign of elegance) to Catalina's bedroom.

"Fix yourself up. Take off that black dress. Make yourself attractive. Come to the library at seven o'clock sharp."

He said nothing more. She would obey him: this would be the test of all those melancholy afternoons. She would understand. This one trump was left to save the situation. All Don Gamaliel had to do was feel the presence and guess the will of this man in order to understand-or to say to himself-that any delay would be suicidal, that it was difficult to disobey him, that the sacrifice he was demanding was small and, in a way, not really repugnant. He'd been alerted by Father Páez: a tall man, full of vigor, with hypnotic green eyes and a curt way of speaking. Artemio Cruz.

Artemio Cruz. So that was the name of the new world rising out of the civil war; that was the name of those who had come to take his place. Unfortunate land-the old man said, as he returned, slowly once again, to the library and that undesired but fascinating presence-unfortunate land that has to destroy its old possessors with each new generation and put in their place new owners just as rapacious and ambitious as the old ones. The old man imagined himself the final product of a peculiarly Creole civilization, a civilization of enlightened despots. He took pleasure in thinking of himself as a father, sometimes a hard father but always a provider and always the repository of a tradition of good taste, courtesy, and culture.

That's why he'd brought him to the library. There the venerable-almost sacred-quality of what Don Gamaliel was and symbolized was more in evidence. But the guest did to allow himself to be impressed. The fact that this man had a completely new idea of life, one hammered out on the forge of experience, one that allowed him to put his life on the line because he knew he had nothing to lose, did not escape the keen eye of the old man as he rested his head on the back of the leather chair and squinted to get a better look at his opponent. The stranger didn't even mention the real reasons for his visit. Don Gamaliel realized things would proceed better that way. Perhaps the visitor understood the situation with as much subtlety as he did, although Don Gamaliel's motivation-ambition-might have been stronger. The old man smiled as he remembered that feeling, for him merely a word, the urgent impulse to take advantage of rights won through sacrifice, struggle, wounds, that saber scar on his forehead. Don Gamaliel was not the only one to reach these conclusions. On the silent lips and in the eloquent gaze of the other man was written what the old man, now playing with his magnifying glass, knew well how to read.

The stranger didn't move a muscle when Don Gamaliel walked to his desk to take out that paper, the list of his debtors. So much the better. If things went on this way, they would understand each other perfectly; perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to mention those annoying matters, perhaps everything would be resolved in a more elegant manner. The young military man quickly learned the style of power, Don Gamaliel repeated to himself, and this sense of shared knowledge smoothed the way for the bitter business with which reality forced him to deal.

"But didn't you see how he looked at me?" shouted the girl when the guest had said goodbye. "Didn't you see his lust…the filth in his eyes?"

"Yes, yes, of course." The old man calmed his daughter with his hands. "It's only natural. You may not know it, but you are very beautiful. The problem is, you scarcely ever leave this house. It's only natural."

"I'll never leave!"

Don Gamaliel slowly lit the cigar that stained his thick mustache and the roots of his beard yellow. "I thought you would understand."

"What did Father Páez tell you? He's an atheist! A godless man who has no respect for anything…And did you believe that story he made up?"

"Calm down, now. Fortunes are not always made by the godly, you know."

"Did you believe that story? Why did Gonzalo have to die, instead of this person? If the two of them were condemned, in the same cell, why aren't the two of them dead? I know what he's up to, I know: all that claptrap he came here to tell us isn't true. He made it up to humiliate you and so that I…"

Don Gamaliel stopped rocking. Everything had been going along so well, so calmly! And now, out of her woman's intuition, came the same objections the old man had already thought up and already rejected as pointless.

"You have the imagination of a twenty-year-old girl." He stood up and extinguished his cigar. "But since you seem to prefer me to be frank, I'll be frank. This man can save us. And that's all that matters…"

He sighed and stretched out his arms to touch his daughter's hands. "Think about your father's final years. Don't I deserve a little…?"

"Yes, Father, I haven't said anything…"

"And think about yourself."

She lowered her head. "Yes, I understand. I've known something like this would happen ever since Gonzalo left home. If only he were alive…"

"But he isn't."

"He didn't think about me. Who knows what he thought about."

Beyond the circle of light cast by the oil lamp that Don Gamaliel held high, along the old, chilly hallways, the girl forced herself to recall those old, confused images. She recalled the tense, sweaty faces of Gonzalo's schoolmates, the long arguments in the room at the back of the house; she remembered her brother's glowing, stubborn, anxious face, his nervous body that sometimes seemed to exist outside reality, his love of comfort, good dinners, wine, books, and his periodic outbursts of rage in which he denounced his own sensual, conformist tendencies. She remembered the coldness of Luisa, her sister-in-law, the violent arguments that turned to silence whenever the "daughter of the house" entered the room; how Luisa's weeping drowned in hysterical laughter when his death was announced to them; how one day she silently departed at dawn when she thought everyone was asleep but the young woman was peeking out from behind the living-room curtains: the hard hand of the man wearing a bowler and carrying a walking stick who took Luisa's hand and helped her and the boy enter the black coach laden with the widow's baggage.