Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

"He wasn't impulsive?"

"Villa yes. Zagal no."

"Cruz…isn't this really absurd?"

"What?"

"Dying at the hands of one of the big bosses, and not believing in any of them."

"Think we'll go all three of us together, or they'll take us out one at a time?"

"Easier in one haul, don't you think? Hey, you're the soldier here."

"Don't you have any tricks up your sleeve?"

"Shall I tell you something? You'll die laughing."

"What is it?"

"I wouldn't tell you if I weren't sure we aren't going to get out of here. Carranza sent me on this mission just so I'd get caught and the other side would be responsible for my death. He got it into his head that he'd rather have a dead hero than a live traitor."

"You, a traitor?"

"Depends on how you look at it. You've only been in battles; you've followed orders and have never had any doubts about your leaders."

"Correct. Our mission is to win the war. Aren't you with Obregón and Carranza?"

"The same way I could have been with Zapata or Villa. I don't believe in any of them."

"So?"

"That's the drama. They're all there is. I don't know if you remember the beginning. It was only a short time ago, but it seems so far away…When the leaders didn't matter. When we weren't doing this to raise up one man but to raise up all men."

"Are you trying to get me to find fault with the loyalty of our men? That's what the Revolution's all about, nothing else: being loyal to the leaders."

"Right. Even the Yaqui, who went out to fight for his land, now he's only fighting for General Obregón against General Villa. No-before, it was something else. Before it degenerated into factions. Whenever the Revolution passed through a village, the debts of the peasants were wiped out, the moneylender's property was confiscated, the political prisoners were let out of jail, and the old bosses were run out. But just look at how the people who thought the Revolution was not to puff up leaders but to free the people are being left behind."

"Time will tell."

"No, it won't. A revolution starts in the battlefields, but once it gets corrupted, even though military battles are still won, it's lost. And we're all to blame. We've let ourselves be divided and directed by the lustful, the ambitious, the mediocre. Those who want a real, radical, intransigent revolution are, unfortunately, ignorant, bloody men. And the educated ones only want half a revolution, compatible with the only thing they really want: to do well, to live well, to take the place of Don Porfirio's elite. That's Mexico's drama. Look at me. I spent my entire life reading Kropotkin, Bakunin, and old Plekhanov, buried in my books since I was a kid, and talk, talk, talk. And when the time comes to make a decision, I have to join up with Carranza, because he's the only one who seems a decent sort, the only one who doesn't scare me. Doesn't that make me sound like a faggot? I'm afraid of the people, of Villa, and of Zapata…'I'll go on being an impossible person as long as the people who are possible today go on being possible'…Oh, yeah. Sure, sure."

"You start in with all this now, when you're about to die…"

"That's the radical defect in my character: my love of the fantastic, of adventures hitherto unseen, enterprises that open infinite, unknown horizons…Oh yeah! Sure, sure."

"Why didn't you say all that when you were out there?"

"I did say it, beginning in 1913, to Iturbe, to Lucio Blanco, to Buelna, to all the honorable military men who didn't try to become big chiefs. That's why they didn't know how to nip Carranza in the bud. I mean, his whole life he's done nothing but turn people against each other and divide them, because if he didn't, who wouldn't take his command from him, the old mediocrity? That's why he promoted mediocrities, the Pablo González types, who'd never put him in the shade. That's how he divided the Revolution, turning it into a factional war."

"And that's why he sent you to Perales?"

"My mission was to convince Villa's men to give up. As if we all didn't know that they're running away in defeat and they're so desperate they shoot every Carranza supporter they can get their hands on. The old man doesn't like getting his hands dirty. He'd rather have the enemy do his dirty work for him. Artemio, Artemio, the leaders, haven't been equal to the people and their Revolution."

"So why don't you go over to Villa?"

"Why would I want more of the same? So I could see how long he lasts and then go over to another and then another, until I find myself in another cell waiting for orders for my execution?"

"But you'd save yourself…"

"No…Believe me, Cruz, I'd like to save myself and go back to Puebla. See my wife, my son. Luisa and little Pancho. And my little sister, Catalina, who depends on me for so much. See my father, my dear old Don Gamaliel, so noble and so blind. I wish I could explain to him why I got involved in all this. He never understood that there are obligations we've just got to see through, even though we know it's all going to fail. For him, the old order was eternal-the haciendas, the camouflaged loan-sharking, all of it…I wish there was someone I could ask to go see them and give them a message from me. But no one's getting out of here alive, that I do know. No; it's all a sinister game of musical chairs. We're living among criminals and pygmies, because the big boss only favors midgets who won't stand over him, and the little boss has got to murder the big one to get ahead. A shame, Artemio. How necessary everything that's happening is, and how unnecessary it is to corrupt it. That isn't what we wanted when we started the Revolution of the people in 1913…As for you, you'd better decide. As soon as they eliminate Zapata and Villa, there will be only two bosses left, the two you work for. Which one will you go with?"

"My leader is General Obregón."

"Well, at least you've made a choice. I hope it doesn't cost you your life; I hope…"

"You're forgetting that they're going to shoot us."

Bernal laughed in surprise, as if he'd tried to fly, forgetting the chains that held him down. He squeezed the other prisoner's shoulder and said: "This damned mania for politics! Maybe it's an intuition. Why don't you go with Villa?"

He couldn't make out Gonzalo Bernal's face clearly, but in the darkness he could feel the mocking eyes, the know-it-all air of a shyster who never fights but just talks while others win battles. Abruptly, he moved away from Bernal.

"What's the matter?" asked the lawyer, smiling.

He grunted and lit his cigarette, which had gone out. "That's no way to talk," he said between his teeth. "Where do you get this stuff? Am I telling you everything? Well, let me tell you that people who tell everything without being asked really bust my balls, especially when they're going to die any minute. Shut up, Mr. Lawyer, tell yourself whatever you want, but let me die without spilling my guts."

Gonzalo's voice sounded as though sheathed in steel: "Listen, he-man, we are three men sentenced to death. The Yaqui told us his story…"

His rage was directed against himself, because he had allowed himself to drift into intimacy and talk, he had opened himself to a man who did not deserve that kind of confidence.

"That was the life of a real man. He had a right to tell it."

"What about you?"

"All I've ever done is fight. If there was more, I don't remember it."

"You loved some woman…"

He clenched his fists.

"…You had a father, a mother; hell, you may even have a son someplace. You don't? I do, Cruz. I do think I had a man's life-I'd like to be free to get on with it. Don't you? Wouldn't you like to be caressing…?"

Bernal's voice broke when Artemio's hands sought him in the darkness, beat him against the wall without a word, with a muffled bellow, his nails stuck into the twill lapels of this new enemy armed with ideas and tenderness, who was merely repeating the secret thoughts of the captain, of the prisoner, his own thoughts: What will happen after our death?