Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

"Better wait here…"

The voices above grew louder, as if they were arguing. Then Colonel Zagal's laugh rang out clearly. The voices withdrew. Someone far away whistled: a single, rough whistle to get attention. Other undefinable noises reached his hiding place, heavy sounds that persisted for several minutes. Then nothing. His eyes began to get used to the place: darkness.

"Looks like they've gone. But it might be a trap. Better wait here."

In the heat of the abandoned shaft, he felt his chest, carefully ran his fingers over the ribs he'd hurt in falling. He was in a round space with no exit, no doubt where the miners had stopped digging. A few broken beams lay on the ground; others held up the fragile clay roof. He tested the stability of one of the beams and then sat down again to wait for the hours to pass. One of the beams reached down the hole he'd fallen into: it wouldn't be hard to climb up and make his way back to the entrance. He felt the rents on his trousers and his tunic; his golden insignias were coming loose. And fatigue, hunger, sleepiness. His young body stretched its legs and felt a strong pulse in its thighs. Darkness and rest, slight panting, eyes closed. He thought about the women he would have wanted to know; the bodies of those he did know fled from his imagination. The last one had been in Fresnillo. A prostitute on her day off. The kind that start crying when you ask them where they're from or how they ended up here. The usual question to start up a conversation, because all of them loved to make up stories. Not that one; she just cried. And the war that never ended. Of course, these were the last battles. He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to breathe normally. Once they eliminated Pancho Villa's scattered army, there would be peace. Peace.

"What am I going to do when this is finally over? And why think that it's going to end? I never think that."

Maybe peace would mean good job opportunities. In his crisscrossing over Mexico, all he'd ever seen was destruction. But fields that were despoiled could be planted again. In Bajío, once, he'd seen a beautiful field; alongside, someone could build a house with arcades and flower-covered patios, and tend the crops. To see a seed grow, care for it, watch the plant sprout, harvest the fruit. It would be a good life, a good life…

"Don't go to sleep, stay alert."

He pinched his thigh. The muscles in the nape of his neck jerked his head back.

No sounds came from above. He could explore. He grabbed the beam that went up from the hole, and swung his foot to one of the cuts in the wall that ran up. He edged his way, using his good arm and wedging his foot in cut after cut. Finally he was able to grasp the ledge. His head came over the top. He was in the flow of hot air. But now it seemed heavier, even more choked-off than before. He walked to the main gallery. He recognized it because next to the poorly ventilated shaft he'd been in was the other, the one that blew hot air. But beyond, the light no longer came through the entrance. Had night fallen? Had he lost track of time?

His hands felt blindly for the entrance. It wasn't night that had closed it off but Villa's men, who had barricaded it before leaving. They'd sealed him in this tomb with its exhausted veins of ore.

In the nerves of his stomach he felt smashed. He automatically widened his nostrils in an imaginary effort to breathe deeply. He brought his fingers to his temples and rubbed them. The other shaft, the one that blew hot. That wind came from outside, it came up from the desert, the sun whipped it up. He ran toward the second tunnel. His nose led him to that sweet, flowing air, and with his hands braced on the walls he made his way, tripping in the darkness. A drop of water moistened his hand. He brought his open mouth to the wall, searching for the source of the water. Slow, disparate pearls dripped from the roof. He caught another with his tongue; he waited for the third, the fourth. He hung his head. The shaft seemed to end. He sniffed the air. It came from below, he felt it around his ankles. He went down on his knees, feeling with his hands. From that invisible opening, it came from there: the steepness of the shaft gave it more force than it had here at the opening. The stones were loose. He began to pull at them until the wall gave way: a new gallery, glittering with silvery veins, opened before him. He squeezed his body through and realized that he couldn't stand up in this new passage: he would have to crawl. So he dragged himself along, without knowing where this slithering would take him. Gray seams, golden reflections from his officer's bars: only those irregular lights illuminated his slow crawl, like that of a beshrouded snake. His eyes reflected the blackest corners of the darkness, and a thread of saliva ran down his chin. His mouth felt as if it were full of tamarinds: perhaps the involuntary memory of any fruit recalled stimulates the salivary glands; perhaps the precise messenger of a scent released from a faraway orchard, carried by the mobile desert air, had reached this narrow passage. His newly awakened sense of smell perceived something else. A breath of air. A lungful of air. The unmistakable taste of nearby dirt: unmistakable for someone who had spent such a long time locked up with the taste of stone. The low shaft was descending; now it suddenly stopped and fell, cut off, onto a wide interior space with a sand floor. He dropped down from the high gallery and landed on the soft bed. Some roots had made their way in here. How?

"Yes, now it goes up again. It's light! It looked like a reflection on the sand, but it's light!"

He ran, his chest full of air, toward the opening bathed in sunlight.

He ran without hearing or seeing. Without hearing the slow strumming of the guitar and the voice that sang along with it, the saucy, sensual voice of a tired soldier.

Durango girls wear green and white, Some like to pinch, some like to bite…

Without seeing the small fire over which the carcass of the goat shot back in the mountains was turning, or the fingers that tore off strips of its skin.

Without hearing or seeing, he fell on the first fringe of illuminated ground. How could he see, under the molten sun of three o'clock in the afternoon, Colonel Zagal's hat transformed into a plaster mushroom.

Zagal laughed and offered him his hand. "Get a move on, Captain, you're going to make us late. Just look at the Yaqui over there, eating his head off. And now everybody can use his canteen."

Chihuahua girls are desperate,

they don't know what to do,

They need a man to love them,

I wonder if I'll do…

The prisoner raised his face and before looking at Zagal's now relaxed group let his eyes roam the dry landscape of rocks and spiny plants stretching out, wide, silent, and leaden, before him. Then he stood up and walked over to the small camp. The Yaqui fixed his eyes on him. He stretched out his arm, ripped a scorched chunk of meat off the goat's back, and sat down to eat.

Perales.

A town of adobe bricks, scarcely different from any other. Only

one of its streets, the one that passed by the town hall, was paved. The others were dirt pounded down by the bare feet of children, the talons of turkeys which preened on street corners, the paws of the pack of dogs that sometimes slept in the sun and sometimes ran around aimlessly, barking. Perhaps one or two good houses, with grand entryways and iron gates and zinc drainpipes: they always belonged to the local moneylender and the political boss (when they weren't one and the same person). But now those figures were fleeing Pancho Villa's swift justice. The troops had taken over both houses and filled the patios-hidden behind the long walls that faced the street like battlements-with horses and hay, boxes of ammunition and tools: whatever Villa's defeated Northern Division had managed to salvage in its march back to its source. The color of the town was gray; only the façade of the town hall boasted a pinkish tone, and that quickly faded on its sides and in the patios into the same gray as the earth. There was a spring nearby, the reason why the town was founded. Its wealth derived from turkeys, chickens, a few dry fields tilled alongside the dusty streets, a pair of blacksmiths, a carpenter's shop, a general store, and a few small businesses set up in houses. It was a miracle anyone survived. People lived in silence. As in most Mexican villages, it was hard to know where the people were hiding. Mornings and afternoons, afternoons and evenings, the blow of an insistent hammer could perhaps be heard, or the wail of a newborn, but it would be difficult to run into a living being on those burning streets. Sometimes the children, small and barefoot, would peer out. The soldiers, too, stayed behind the walls of the abandoned houses or in the patios of the town hall, which was the destination of the weary column.