Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

"Oh yes, of course, he protected me, he has my support."

…the arguments in favor of a better life were not totally lost on her, and the world she was used to and loved, her childhood years, had sufficient reality to allow her to return to the country, to her husband, without grief.

"With no voice in the matter, with no point of view, bought, just a mute witness to what he did."

She could imagine herself a casual visitor in that alien world, plucked out of the mud by her husband.

Her real world was in the shady Puebla plaza, in the pleasures of cool linen spread over a mahogany table, the feel of hand-painted china, the silverware, the aroma.

"…of sliced pears, quince, peach preserves…"

("I know you ruined Don León Labastida. Those three buildings of his in Puebla are worth a fortune."

"Look at it from my point of view, Pizarro. All Labastida does is ask for one loan after another, never taking the interest into account. I gave him the rope, but he hung himself."

"You must get some pleasure, seeing all this ancient pride tumble down. But you won't pull the same trick on me. I'm not a Puebla dandy like Labastida."

"You always pay on time and you never borrow beyond what you can reasonably pay back."

"Nobody's going to break me, Cruz. I swear it to you.")

Don Gamaliel felt the proximity of death, and he himself arranged his funeral in every detail and with every luxury. His son-in-law could not refuse him the thousand-pesos cash he demanded. His chronic cough worsened, became like a boiling glass bubble set out in the sun, and soon his chest tightened and his lungs could bring in only a thin, cold breath of air that managed to wend its way through the cracks in that mass of phlegm, irritation, and blood.

"Oh yes, the object of his occasional pleasure."

The old man ordered a coach decorated with silver, covered with a canopy of black velvet, and pulled by eight horses with silver fittings and black plumes. He ordered that he be brought in a wheelchair to the window where he could see the coach and the caparisoned horses pass by, back and forth, before his feverish eyes.

"A mother? What birth takes place without joy and pain?"

He told the young bride to take the four large gold candelabra out of the cabinet and polish them: they were to be set around him both at the wake and at the Mass. He asked her to shave him, because the beard went on growing for several hours after death: only his throat and cheeks, and a few snips with the scissors on his beard and mustache. He should be wearing his starched shirt and his frock coat, and they should poison his mastiff.

"Immobile and mute; out of pride."

He left his land to his daughter and named his son-in-law usufructuary and administrator. It was only in the will that he mentioned him. Her he treated, more than ever, as the little girl who grew up at his side and never once spoke of the death of his son or of his son-in-law's first visit. Death seemed an opportunity piously to set aside all those things and, in a final act, restore the lost world.

"Do I have the right to destroy his love, if his love is true?"

Two days before he died, he gave up the wheelchair and took to his bed. Supported by a mass of pillows, he maintained his elegant erect posture, his silky, aquiline profile. Sometimes he stretched out his hand to make sure his daughter was nearby. The mastiff whimpered under the bed. Finally, his thin lips opened in a spasm of terror, and his hand could no longer reach out. It stayed there, immobile, on his chest. She stood, contemplating that hand. It was the first time she'd witnessed death. Her mother had died when she was very young. Gonzalo had died far away.

"So it's this quietude that's so close, this hand that does not move."

Very few families accompanied the grand coach as it rolled first to the Church of San Francisco and then to the cemetery. Perhaps they were afraid of meeting her husband. He rented out the Puebla house.

"How helpless I felt then. Not even the boy helped. Not even Lorenzo. I began thinking what my life might have been with the man behind bars, the life he cut off."

("Ah, there's old Pizarro sitting in front of the main house of his hacienda with a shotgun in his hands. All he's got left is the house."

"That's right, Ventura. All he's got left is the house."

"He's also got a few boys left who are supposed to be good and who will be loyal to him to the death."

"Right, Ventura. Don't forget their faces.")

One night, she realized she was unintentionally spying on him. Imperceptibly, he began to forget her unaffected indifference during their first years, and she began to seek out her husband's eyes during the gray hours of the afternoon, the slow movements of the man who stretched his legs over the leather hassock or who bent down to light the wood in the old fireplace when it was cold.

"Ah, it must have been a weak look, full of self-pity, begging pity from him; nervous, yes, because I could not control the sadness and helplessness I was left with when my father died. I thought that nervousness was mine alone…"

She did not realize that at the same time a new man had begun to observe her with new eyes, eyes of repose and confidence, as if he wanted her to understand that the hard times were over.

("Well, sir, everyone's wondering when you're going to divide up Don Pizarro's land."

"Tell them to hold on for a while. Can't they see that Pizarro hasn't given up yet? Tell them to hold on and keep their rifles ready in case the old man tries something. When things calm down, I'll divide up the land."

"I'll keep your secret. I know you've been making deals with outsiders to trade Don Pizarro's good land for lots in Puebla."

"The small landowners will give work to the peasants, Ventura. Here, take this, and get some rest…"

"Thanks, Don Artemio. I hope you understand that I…")

And now that the foundation for their well-being was laid, another man emerged, ready to show her that his strength could also be used for acts of happiness. The night in which their eyes finally stopped to grant each other an instant of silent attention, she thought for the first time in ages about how her hair looked and she brought her hand to her nape with its chestnut tresses.

"…as he smiled at me, standing by the fireplace, with that, that candor…Do I have the right to deny myself the possibility of happiness…?"

("Ventura, tell them to return the rifles to me. They don't need them anymore. Now each one of them has his parcel of land, and most of it belongs either to me or to people who work for me. They have nothing to fear anymore."

"Of course, sir. They agree, and they thank you. Some had dreamed of getting much more, but they'll go along with you; they say won't bite the hand that feeds them, just to give it a reason to starve them."

"Pick out ten or twelve of the toughest and give them rifles. We don't want malcontents on either side.")

"Afterwards I resented it. I let myself go…And I liked it. I felt ashamed."

He wanted to efface all trace of the start of their life together, to be loved without a memory of the act that forced her to take him for a husband. Lying next to his wife, he asked silently-this she knew-that the fingers they entwined at that moment be something more than a temporary response.

"Perhaps I would have felt something more with the other one; I don't know; I only knew my husband's love; ah, he gave himself with a demanding passion, as if he couldn't live another moment unless he knew I felt the same…"

He reproached himself, thinking that appearances were proof against him. How could he make her believe that he'd loved her from the moment he saw her pass by on a street in Puebla, even before he knew who she was?