Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

All right, then, bitches, just imagine you're standing in front of a shopkeeper who doesn't give credit, that you're being evicted, that you're up against shyster lawyer, a thieving doctor, imagine you're from the shitty middle class, bitches, standing on line to buy adulterated milk, to pay property taxes, to get an audience, to get a loan, standing on line to dream you'll do better someday, envying the wife and daughter of Artemio Cruz as they cruise by in their car, envying a house in Las Lomas de Chapultepec, envying a mink coat, an emerald necklace, a trip abroad, imagine yourselves in a world in which I was virtuous, in which I was humble: down below, where I came from, or up above, where I am. Only in those two places, let me tell you, is there any dignity, not in the middle, not in the envy, the monotony, the lines. Everything or nothing: know how I play the game? understand how? everything or nothing, put it all on the black or all on the red, you need balls, see? Balls, putting it all on the line, shooting the works, running the risk of being shot either by the ones on top or by the ones at the bottom. That's what it means to be a man, which is what I've been, not the way you would have wanted, half a man, a man with his little temper tantrums, intemperate shouts, a whorehouse, a saloon man, a postcard macho, no! no! not me! I didn't have to shout at you, I didn't have to get drunk to scare you, I didn't have to smack you around to show you who was boss, I didn't have to humiliate myself to beg your tenderness: I gave you wealth without expecting anything back, tenderness, understanding, and because I didn't demand anything from you, you haven't been able to abandon me, you latched onto my wealth, cursing me probably the way you'd never curse my poor pay packet, but forced to respect me the way you'd never have respected my mediocrity-ah, assholes, conceited bitches, impotent bitches, who had everything money could buy and who still have mediocre minds. If at least you had taken advantage of what I gave you, if at least you had understood what luxury items are for, how they're used: while I had everything, do you hear me? everything that can be bought and everything that can't be bought. I had Regina, do you hear me? I loved Regina, her name was Regina, and she loved me, she loved me without money, she followed me, she gave me life, down below, do you hear me? I heard you, Catalina, I heard what you told him one day:

"Your father; your father, Lorenzo…Do you think…? Do you think anyone could approve of…? I don't know, about holy men…real martyrs…"

Dominie, non sum dignus…

In the depth of your pain, you will smell that incense which lingersand lingers and you will know, behind your shut eyes, that the windows have been closed as well, that you no longer breathe the cool afternoon air: only the stench of the incense, the trace left behind by the priest who will come to give you absolution, a last rite which you will not request, but which you will nevertheless accept, just so as not to gratify them with your rebelliousness in your last moments. You will want all of this to take place so you won't owe anything to anyone, and you will want to remember yourself in a life that owes nothing to no one. She will stop you, her memory-you will name her: Regina; you will name her: Laura; you will name her: Catalina; you will name her: Lilia-which will summarize all your memories and will oblige you to acknowledge her. But you will transform even that gratitude-you know it, behind each scream of sharp pain-into pity for yourself, in a loss of your loss. No one will give you more in order to take away more from you than that woman, the woman you loved with her four different names: who else?

You will stand fast. You've probably made a secret vow: not to acknowledge your debts. You will have wrapped Teresa and Gerardo in the same oblivion, an oblivion you will justify because you know nothing about them, because the girl will grow up at her mother's side, far from you, you who will have life only for your son, because Teresa will marry that boy whose face you can never fix in your memory, that vague boy, that gray man who will not waste or occupy the grace period granted to your memory. And Sebastián: you will not want to remember those square hands which pull you by the ears, which spank you with a ruler. You will not want to remember your painful knuckles, your fingers white with chalk dust, the hours standing at the blackboard learning to write, to multiply, to draw elementary things-houses and circles. You will not want to: that is your debt.

You scream and arms hold you down: you want to get up and walk to ease your pain.

You smell the incense.

You smell the enclosed garden.

You think that it's impossible to choose, that no one should choose, that you didn't choose on that day. You let things happen, you weren't responsible, you didn't create either of the moral codes which made their claim on you that day. You couldn't be responsible for options you didn't create. You dream, away from your body which screams and twists, away from the machete jabbed into your stomach until it forces out your tears. You dream about that ordering of life that you yourself created, that you will never be able to reveal because the world will not give you the chance, because the world will offer you only its established tables, its codes in conflict, which you will not dream of, which you will not think about, which you will not live.

The incense will be a smell with time, a smell that talks.

Father Páez will live in your house, will be hidden in the cellar by Catalina: it will not be your fault, it will not be your fault.

You will not remember what you say, you and he, that night in the cellar. You will not remember if he, if you say it. What's the name of the monster who voluntarily dresses up as a woman, who voluntarily castrates himself, who voluntarily gets drunk on the fictitious blood of a God? who will say that? but who loves, I swear it, because the love of God is great indeed and inhabits all bodies, justifies them. We have our bodies by the grace of God and with his benediction, to give them the minutes of love which life would like to strip from us. Don't feel ashamed, don't feel anything; instead, forget your troubles. It can't be a sin, because all the words and all the acts of our short, hasty love, of today and never of tomorrow, are only a consolation that you and I give each other, an acceptance of the necessary evils of life which later justifies our contrition. After all, how could there be real contrition without the recognition of the real evil in us? How can we understand sin, pardon for which we are to beg on our knees, if beforehand we don't commit sin? Forget your life, let me put out the light, forget everything, and later we will pray together for forgiveness and we will say a prayer that will erase our minutes of love. In order to consecrate this body which was created by God and which says God in every desire, unsatisfied or satisfied, which says God in every secret caress, says God in the gift of the semen God planted between your thighs.

To live is to betray your God. Every act in life, every act that affirms us as living beings, requires that the commandments of your God be broken.

In a whorehouse that night, you will speak with Major, Gavilán, with all your old comrades, and you will not remember what they said that night, you will not remember if they say it, if you say it, with the cold voice that will not be the voice of the men, the cold voice of power and self-interest: We want the greatest good for the nation, as long as it's compatible with our personal well-being. Let's be intelligent: we can go far. Let's do what's necessary, not the impossible. Let's determine once and for all all the acts to power and cruelty that will be useful to us, in order not to have to repeat them. Let's scale the benefits so that the people enjoy every taste they get. We can make a revolution very quickly, but tomorrow they'll demand more and more and more, and then we'll have nothing to give if we've already done and given everything-except, perhaps, our personal sacrifice. Why die if we aren't going to see the fruits of our heroism? Let's always keep something in reserve. We are men, not martyrs; everything will be allowed us if we hold on to power. Lose power and they'll screw you. Just think how lucky we are: we're young but we're haloed, wearing the halo of the armed, triumphant Revolution. Why did we fight? to die of hunger? When it's necessary, force is just. You don't share power."