Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

They say the cells in a sponge are not linked but nevertheless the sponge is one: that's what they say. I remember it, because they say if a sponge is torn apart, the pieces join together again. The sponge never loses its unity, it finds a way to join its cells again, it never dies, ah, it never dies.

"That morning I waited for him with pleasure. We crossed the river on horseback."

"You dominated him and stole him away from me."

He stands up amid the indignant voices of the women and takes them by the arm and I go on thinking about the carpenter and then about his son and about what we might have avoided if they'd just let him go with his twelve PR men, as free as a bird, living off the stories about his miracles, getting free meals, free shared beds for sacred witch doctors, until old age and oblivion defeated him, and Catalina and Teresa and Gerardo sit down in the armchairs at the far end of the room. How long will they wait to call in a priest, hasten my death, squeeze confessions out of me? Oh, how they'd like to know. What fun I'm going to have. What fun, what fun. You, Catalina, would be capable of telling me what you never told me, if that would soften me up so you'd know about you-know-what. Ah, but I know what you'd like to know. And your daughter's pinched face doesn't hide it. It won't be long before that poor fool turns up here and starts bawling, to see if he can finally get something out of all this. Ah, how little they know me. Do they think a fortune like that is going to be wasted among three frauds, among three bats that don't even know how to fly? Three bats without wings: three mice. Who disdain me. Yes. Who cannot avoid the hatred of beggars. Who detest the furs that cover them, who hate the houses they live in, the jewels they show off, because I gave it all to them. No, don't touch me now…

"Leave me alone…"

"But Gerardo's here…dear Gerardo…your son-in-law…look at him."

"Ah, the idiot."

"Don Artemio…"

"Mama, I can't stand it, I can't stand it! I can't!"

"He's ill."

"Bah, I'll get out of this bed one day soon and then you'll see…"

"I told you he was pretending."

"Let him rest."

"I tell you he's pretending! The way he always does, to make fun of us, the way he always does, always."

"No, no, the doctor says…"

"What does the doctor know. I know him better. It's another trick."

"Don't say anything!"

Don't say anything. That oil. They daub my lips with that oil. My eyelids. My nostrils. They don't know how much it cost. They didn't have to decide. My hands. My icy feet that I can't feel anymore. They don't know. They didn't have to give everything up. My eyes. They spread my legs and daub that oil on my thighs.

Ego te absolvo.

They don't know. She didn't speak. She didn't tell.

You will live seventy-one years without realizing it. You will not stop to think about the fact that your blood circulates, your heart beats, your gallbladder empties itself of serous liquids, your liver secretes bile, your kidney produces urine, your pancreas regulates the sugar in your blood. You haven't caused these functions by thinking about them. You will know that you breathe, but you will not think about it, because it doesn't depend on your thoughts. You will turn your back on it and live. You could have dominated your functions, feigned death, walked through fire, endured a bed of broken glass. Simply speaking, you will live and allow your functions to go about their business on their own. Until today. Today, when your involuntary functions will force you to take account of them, will triumph, and end up destroying your person. You will think that you breathe each time air labors its way toward your lungs; you will think that your blood is circulating each time the veins in your abdomen pulse with that painful presence. They will overcome you because they will force you to take life into account instead of living it. Triumph. You will try to imagine it-it is that lucidity which forces you to perceive the slightest pulsation, all the movements of attraction, of separation, even the most terrible, the movement of that which no longer moves-and within you, in your guts, that serous membrane will cover your abdominal cavity and will wrap itself around your intestines, and the fold of tissue, blood, and lymph vessels that connects the stomach and the intestine with your abdominal walls, that fold of adipose cells, will no longer be irrigated with blood by the thick celiac artery that feeds your stomach and your intestines, that penetrates the base of the fold and descends obliquely to the base of the small intestine after having run behind the pancreas, where it gives rise to another artery that irrigates a third of your duodenum and the mouth of the pancreas; crossing your duodenum, it penetrates your aorta, your inferior vena cava, your right urethra, your genito-femoral nerve, and the veins in your testicles. That artery will last, blotched, thick, red, for seventy-one years without your knowing it. Today you will know it. It's going to stop working. The flow is going to dry up. For seventy-one years that artery will make incredible efforts: over the course of its descent, there comes a moment in which, under pressure from a segment of your spinal column, it will have to move downward and at the same time forward and, abruptly, backward again. For seventy-one years your mesentery artery will, under pressure, survive this test, this death-defying feat. Today it will no longer be able to do so. Today it will no longer withstand the pressure. Today, in the swift, piston-like motion downward, forward, and backward, it will stop, convulsed, congested, a mass of paralyzed blood, a scarlet stone that will obstruct your intestine. You will feel that pulse of growing pressure, you will feel it: it's your blood that has stopped for the first time, that now will not reach the other bank of your life, that stops and congeals within the swirl of your intestine, to rot, stagnate, without reaching the other bank of your life.

And it is then that Catalina will approach you, to ask if you want anything, you who at that instant can attend only to your growing pain, trying to repulse it with your will to sleep, to rest, while Catalina cannot avoid making that gesture, that hand stretched forth which she will quickly withdraw, fearful, and press to her matronly bosom, then extend it again, and this time rest it, trembling, on your forehead. She will caress your forehead and you will not know it; you are lost in the acute concentration of pain. You will not realize that for the first time in decades Catalina has placed her hand on your brow, caressed your forehead, pushing back the sweat-matted gray hair that covers it, and then caressing it again in fear and thankfulness, grateful that tenderness is overcoming fear, in an embarrassed tenderness, ashamed of itself, with a shame that finally seems attenuated by the certainty that you don't realize she is caressing you. Perhaps, as she runs her fingers over your brow, she whispers words that seek to mix with that memory of yours that never ceases, lost in the depth of these hours, unconscious, exempt from your will but fused with your involuntary memory, which slides along the interstices of your pain and repeats now the words you didn't hear then. She, too, will think of her pride. There the spark will be born. There you will hear her, in that common mirror, in that pool that will reflect both your faces, that when you try to kiss will drown both of you in the liquid reflection of your faces. Why don't you look the other way? There you will find Catalina in the flesh. Why do you try to kiss her in the cold reflection of the water? Why doesn't she bring her face to yours; why, like you, does she sink it in the stagnant water and repeat to you now that you are not listening to her, "I let myself go"? Perhaps her hand speaks to you of an excess of freedom that defeats freedom. Freedom that raises an endless tower that does not reach heaven but splits the abyss, cleaves the earth. You will name it: separation. You will refuse: pride. You will survive, Artemio Cruz, you will survive because you will expose yourself to the risk of freedom. You will triumph over the risk and, without enemies, will become your own enemy