Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

He opened the curtains and inhaled the clean air. The early breeze had already come in, shaking those same curtains, as if to announce itself. He looked out: sunrise was the best time of day, the clearest, a daily springtime. Soon the day would be suffocated by the pounding sun. But at seven in the morning the beach across from his balcony glowed with a cool peace and a silent face. The waves barely whispered, and the voices of the few swimmers did not disturb the solitary encounter of the rising sun, the tranquil ocean, and the sand brushed smooth by the tide. He spread the curtains wide and took a deep breath of the clean air. Three small children were walking along the beach with their pails, picking up the night's treasures: starfish, shells, driftwood. A sailboat rocked near the shore; the transparent sky projected itself over the earth through a filter of a paler green. No cars ran along the avenue that separated the hotel from the beach.

He dropped the curtain and walked toward the bathroom with its Moorish-style tiles. He looked into the mirror at that face swollen by a sleep that could hardly be called sleep, it had been so brief, so different. He closed the door quietly. He turned on the water and put the sink plug in. He tossed his pajama top on the toilet seat. He selected a new blade, taking it out of its wax-paper wrapper and inserting it in the gilt razor. Then he dropped it into the hot water, moistened a towel and covered his face with it. The steam clouded the mirror. He cleaned it with one hand while he turned on the fluorescent light above it with the other. He squeezed the tube containing some new American product, brushless shaving cream; he spread the white, refreshing substance over his cheeks, chin, and neck. He scalded his fingers taking the razor out of the water. He frowned, then stretched his cheek flat and began to shave, from top to bottom, very carefully, twisting his mouth. The steam made him sweat; he could feel the droplets running down his ribs. Slowly he shaved himself clean and then rubbed his chin to make sure it was smooth. He turned on the water again to soak the towel and covered his face with it. He cleaned his ears and splashed his face with a stimulating lotion that made him exhale with pleasure. He cleaned the blade and put it back on the razor, returning the razor to its leather pouch. He pulled out the plug and for an instant contemplated the gray stream of soap and whiskers. He studied his features: he wanted to see the same man in the mirror he'd always found there, because after cleaning off the steam that clouded the mirror again, he felt without knowing it-at that early hour, with its insignificant but indispensable chores, its gastric disturbances and indefinite hungers, its undesired smells that permeated the unconscious life of sleep-that even though he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror every day, a long time had gone by since he'd actually seen himself. A rectangle of mercury and glass, the only true portrait of this face with its green eyes, energetic mouth, wide forehead, and prominent cheekbones. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, which looked ragged, covered with white points; then he searched his reflection for the holes where his lost teeth used to be. He opened the medicine chest and took out the dentures that rested at the bottom of a glass of water. He rinsed them quickly, turned his back to the mirror, and put them in. He squeezed the greenish toothpaste on the brush and brushed his teeth. He gargled, then took off his pajama bottom. He turned on the shower. He checked the water temperature with the palm of his hand and felt the uneven shower on the back of his neck as he rubbed the soap over his thin body with its conspicuous ribs, its flaccid stomach, and its muscles that still managed to conserve a certain nervous tautness, but which now tended to sag in a way he thought grotesque unless he paid false and energetic attention to them…and only when he was observed, as he was these days, by impertinent eyes in the hotel and on the beach. He put his face under the shower, turned off the water, and dried himself with the towel. He felt happy again when he doused his chest and underarms with cologne and ran his comb through his curly hair. He took the blue bathing suit and the white polo shirt out of the closet. He put on the Italian sandals made of canvas and string and slowly opened the bathroom door.

The breeze was still billowing the curtains, and the sun had not stopped shining: it would be a genuine shame to waste a day like this. In September, the weather changes so quickly. He glanced over at the bed. Lilia was still sleeping in that spontaneous, free position of hers: her head leaning on her shoulder and her arm stretched over the pillow, her shoulder bare and one knee bent, poking out of the sheet. He walked over to the young body on which that first light was gracefully playing, illuminating the golden down on her arms and the moist corners of her eyelids, her lips her blond underarms. He bent over to examine the pearls of sweat on her lips and to feel the warmth that rose from this body of a small animal at rest, burned by the sun, innocently lewd. Wishing to turn her over so he could see her body from the front, he reached out his arms. Her half-opened lips closed, and she sighed. He went down to breakfast.

When he finished his coffee, he wiped his lips with his napkin and looked around. It seemed that only children and their nannies had breakfast at this hour. The smooth, still-dripping heads belonged to the ones own hadn't resisted the temptation of a pre-breakfast swim, who were now getting ready, wet bathing suits and all, to go back to the beach, the beach that offered a time without time in which the imagination of each child would impose its own rhythm on the hours, long or short, of castles and walls under construction, of happy preludes to burials, of splashing strolls, and wrestling in the surf, of bodies stretched out without time in the time of the sun, of shrieks in the intangible wrapping of the water. It was strange to see them, at such a tender age, already looking at the hole they'd dug as the bizarre shelter of a fictitious burial, for a sand palace. Now the children were leaving, and the adult hotel guests were coming in.

He lit a cigarette and got ready for the slight vertigo that for the past few months had accompanied his first smoke of the day. He looked far away from the dining room, toward the well-defined curve of the beach that snaked its foamy way from its farthest point on the open sea along the calm half-moon arc of the bay, which was now dotted with sailboats and the growing noise of activity. A couple he knew passed his table, and he waved hello to them. Then he bent his head and inhaled his cigarette again.

The noise level in the dining room rose: forks and knives on plates, teaspoons banged against cups; bottles uncapped and mineral water beginning to bubble, chairs moved, and conversations taking place between couples and among groups of tourists. There was also the growing noise of the surf, which did not resign itself to being overwhelmed by human clamor. From his table, he could see the esplanade of Acapulco's new frontage, which had been hastily erected to provide comfort for the huge influx of travelers from the United States, which the war had taken from Waikiki, Portofino, and Biarritz, and to mask the squalid, muddy land behind it where naked fishermen lived in shacks with their swollen-bellied children, their mangy dogs, streams of sewage, trichinosis, and bacteria. Two ages are always present in this Janus-like community with its double face, so far from what it once was, and so far from what it would like to be.

Seated, he went on smoking, feeling a slight swelling in his legs, which even at eleven o'clock in the morning could not stand this summer clothing. Surreptitiously, he massaged his knee. It must have been the cold inside him, because the morning was bursting into a single round light, and the skull of the sun was burning with an orange plume. And Lilia walked in, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. He stood up and helped her into her chair. He motioned to the waiter. He took note of the married couple's whispers. Lilia asked for papaya and coffee.