Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

The major tried to smile. He rested his free hand on the lieutenant's shoulder and went on, laughing dryly. "We've been fighting alongside each other for a long time, and look: we don't even call each other by our first names."

Major Gavilán's eyes asked for some response. The night fell with its incorporeal crystal, and the last glow flashed behind the mountains, now far away, hidden in the darkness, secluded. In the barracks, fires were burning that could not be seen from a distance in the afternoon light.

"The skunks!" exclaimed the major suddenly in a bitter tone. "They made a surprise attack on the town at about one in the afternoon. Naturally, they didn't reach headquarters. But they took their revenge on the outlying areas-their usual tricks. They've promised to take revenge on any town that helps us. They took ten hostages and sent us a message that if we didn't surrender they would hang them. The general replied with mortar fire."

The streets were filled with soldiers, people, stray dogs, and children, as stray as the dogs, crying in doorways. Some fires still burned, and women sat right out in the street on their mattresses, alongside whatever else they had salvaged.

"Lieutenant Artemio Cruz," whispered Gavilán, leaning over to reach the hearing of some soldiers.

"Lieutenant Cruz," ran the murmur from the soldiers to the women.

The people made way for the two horses: the major's bay, nervous in the crowd pressing up against it; the lieutenant's black stallion, his forehead low, letting himself be led by the bay. Hands reached out: the men from the cavalry detachment commanded by the lieutenant. They squeezed his leg in greeting; they motioned toward his forehead, where the blood had seeped through the rag; they muttered congratulations on the victory. They crossed the town. The ravine yawned in the background, and the trees were swaying in the evening breeze. He raised his eyes: the cluster of white houses. He looked for the window; they were all closed. The glare of candles illuminated the entryway to some houses; black groups, wrapped in rebozos , were crouched there.

"Don't anyone cut them down!" shouted Lieutenant Aparicio from his rearing horse, using his riding crop to beat back the hands raised imploringly. "We've all got to remember this forever! Everyone's got to know who we're fighting! They make the common people kill their brothers. Take a good look. That's how they killed the Yaquis, because the Yaquis didn't want their land taken from them. The same way they killed the workers at Río Blanco and Cananea, who didn't want to die of hunger. And that's the way they'll kill all of us unless we kick the shit out of them first. Take a good look."

The finger of young Lieutenant Aparicio pointed to the clump of trees near the ravine. The crude henequen ropes still drew blood from the necks; but the open eyes, purple tongues, and limp bodies barely swaying in the wind blowing down from the mountains proved they were dead. The eyes of the onlookers-some lost, some enraged, most with a sweet expression of disbelief, filled with quiet pain-focused on the muddy huaraches , a child's bare feet, a woman's black slippers. He dismounted. He came closer. He clutched Regina's starched skirt with a broken, choked sound: it was the first time he'd cried since becoming a man.

Aparicio and Gavilán led him to Regina's room. They made him lie down, cleaned the wound, and replaced the filthy rag with a bandage. After they left, he hugged the pillow, hiding his face. He sought sleep, nothing more, and secretly told himself that perhaps sleep would reunite them, make them as they had been. He knew it was impossible, though here on this bed, with its yellowed mosquito netting, he felt her presence more intensely than when he touched her damp hair, her smooth body, her warm thighs. She was there as she had never been before, more alive than ever in the young man's fevered mind: more herself, more his now than he ever remembered her. Perhaps, during their brief months of love, he'd never seen the beauty of her eyes with such emotion, nor could he have compared them, as he could now, with their brilliant twins-black jewels, the deep, calm sea under the sun, their depths like sand mixed in time, dark cherries from the tree of flesh and hot entrails. He'd never told her that. There had not been time. There had not been time to tell her so many things about their love. There had not been time for a final word. Perhaps if he closed his eyes she would come back, whole, to take life from the desperate caresses that pulsed from his fingertips. Perhaps it would be enough to imagine her, to have her always at his side. Who knows if memory can really prolong existence, entwine their legs, open windows to the dawn, comb her hair, revive smell, noise, touch. He sat up. He felt around in the darkness for the bottle of mescal. But the mescal did not help him forget, as people always say it does; it only made the memories flow quicker.

He would return to the rocks on that beach while the alcohol was setting his stomach on fire. He would return. Where? To that mythical beach that never existed? To that lie about the beloved, to that fiction about a meeting on the beach invented by her so that he would feel clean, innocent, sure of being in love? He threw the glass of mescal to the floor. That's what mescal was really good for: destroying lies. It was a beautiful lie.

"Where did we meet?"

"Don't you remember?"

"No, you tell me."

"Don't you remember that beach? I would go there every afternoon."

"Now I remember. You saw the reflection of my face next to yours."

"Remember now: and then I never wanted to see myself without your reflection next to mine."

"Yes, I remember."

He would have to believe that beautiful lie forever, until the end. It wasn't true: he hadn't gone into that Sinaloa town as he had so many others, looking for the first unwary woman he'd find walking down the street. It wasn't true that the eighteen-year-old girl had been forced onto a horse and raped in silence in the officers' quarters, far from the sea, her face turned toward the thorny, dry hills. It was not true that he'd been forgiven in silence, forgiven by Regina's honorableness, when resistance gave way to pleasure and the arms that had never touched a man joyfully touched him for the first time, her moist mouth open, repeating, as she did last night, yes, yes, she'd liked it, she'd liked it with him, she wanted more, she'd been afraid of such happiness. Regina, with the dreamy, fiery eyes. How she accepted the truth of her pleasure and admitted that she was in love with him; how she invented the story about the sea and the reflection in the calm water to forget what would later, when he loved her, make him ashamed. A whore, Regina, a tasty dish, the clean spirit of surprise, a woman without excuses, without justifications. She didn't know how to be boring; she never annoyed him with painful complaints. She would always be there, in one town or another. Perhaps now the fantasy of an inert body hanging from a rope would vanish, and she would already be in another town. She'd just moved on. Yes: as always. She left without bothering him and went south. She crossed the federales' lines and found a little room in the next town. Yes; because she couldn't live without him, nor he without her. Yes. It was just a question of leaving, taking a horse, picking up a pistol, getting on with the offensive, and finding her in the next town when they'd take a rest.

In the darkness, he felt around for his field jacket. He slung his cartridge belts across his chest. Outside, the black horse, the quiet one, was tied to a post. People were still gathered around the victims of the hanging, but he didn't even look in that direction. He got on his horse and galloped to headquarters.