Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

She felt tired, she sat on the sofa, took a small, leather-bound book off the side table, and leafed through it. She pushed aside her blond hair, which covered half her face, turned toward the light, and in a low voice spoke out what she was reading, her eyebrows raised and a tenuous resignation on her lips. She read, closed the book, and said, "Calderón de la Barca," and, staring at the man, recited from memory: "Is there not to be pleasure someday? God, tell, why did you create flowers if our olfactory sense is not to enjoy the soft aroma of your fragrant scents…"

She lay back on the sofa, covering her eyes with her hands, repeating in a precise, tired voice, a voice that did not want to hear itself or to be heard,"…if our auditory sense is not to hear them…if our eyes are not to see them," and she felt the man's hand on her neck, touching the shining pearls that lay on her bosom.

"I didn't make you do it…"

"No, you have nothing to do with it. That started long ago."

"Why did it happen?"

"Oh, maybe I just have too inflated an idea of my own value…because I think I have a right to be treated better…not as an object, but as a person…"

"What about us?"

"I don't know. I just don't know. I'm thirty-five. It's hard to start over unless someone lends a hand…We talked that night, remember?"

"In New York."

"Yes. We said we ought to get to know each other…"

"…That it was more dangerous to close doors than to open them…But don't you think you know me by now?"

"You never say anything. You never ask me for anything."

"Do you really think I should be asking you for things? Why?"

"I don't know…"

"You don't know. Well, let me spell it out for you. Then you'll know…"

"Maybe."

"I love you. You say you love me. No, you don't want to understand…Give me a cigarette."

He took the pack out of his jacket pocket. He selected a match and lit it, while she took the cigarette, felt the paper between her lips, moistened it, with two fingers removed a few grains of tobacco from her lip, rolled them in her fingers, casually tossed them away, as she waited. And he went on looking at her.

"Maybe I'll start taking classes again. When I was fifteen, I wanted to paint. Later I forgot all about it."

"Aren't we going out?"

"No, we're not going out."

"Want another drink?"

"Yes, make me another."

He took her empty glass from the table, noted the lipstick smudge on the rim, heard the tinkle of an ice cube against the crystal, walked to the low table, measured out the whiskey again, picked up another ice cube with the silver tongs…

"Please, don't add water."

She asked him if it didn't bother him what direction the girl dressed in white-in white and shadow-standing on the swing was looking, the girl with the blue braids down her dress. She said there was always something left out of the picture, because the world represented in the picture should be extended, go beyond it, be filled with other colors, other presences, other concerns, because of which the picture was composed and existed. They went out into the September sun. They walked, laughing, under the arcades on the rue de Rivoli, and she told him he ought to see the Place des Vosges, which was perhaps the most beautiful. They hailed a taxi. He spread the subway map out on his knees, and she ran her finger over the red line, the green line, holding on to his arm, her breath very close to his, saying that she loved those names, that she never got tired of saying them, Richard-Lenoir, Ledru-Rollin, Filles-du-Calvaire…

He handed her the glass and gave the celestial globe another spin, rereading the names Lupus, Crater, Sagittarius, Pisces, Horologium, Argo Navis, Libra, Serpens. He spun the globe, running his finger on it, touching the cold, distant stars.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking at this globe."

"Ah."

He bent over and kissed her loosened hair; she nodded and smiled.

"Your wife wants this sofa."

"So I hear."

"What do you think? Should I be generous?"

"Do whatever you think best."

"Should I be indifferent? Should I forget she called? I'd rather be indifferent. Sometimes generosity is the worst insult, and not generous at all. Don't you think so?"

"I don't follow you."

"Put on some music."

"What do you want to hear this time?"

"The same album. Put the same album on, please."

He read the numbers on the four sides. He put them in order, pressed the button, let the first record fall, fall with its dry slap on the felt turntable. He smelled that mix of wax, heat from the amplifier tubes, and polished wood, and once again heard the wings of the clavichord, the soft fall toward joy, the clavichord's renunciation, it renounces the air to touch terra firma with the violins-its support, the shoulders of the giant.

"Loud enough?"

"Make it a little louder. Artemio…"

"What?"

"I can't go on this way, sweetheart. You have to make up your mind."

"Be patient, Laura. Try to realize…"

"Realize what?"

"Don't pressure me."

"Into what? Are you afraid of me?"

"Aren't we doing fine just the way we are? What more do we need?"

"Who knows. Maybe we don't need anything."

"I can't hear you."

"No, don't lower the volume. Listen to me through the music. I'm getting tired of all this."

"I didn't trick you into anything. I didn't pressure you."

"I didn't change you, which is something else. You're not willing."

"I love you like this, the way we've been until now."

"The way we were the first day."

"Yes, that's it."

"But it isn't the first day anymore. Now you know me. Go on."

"Just think for a minute, Laura, please. Those things create real problems. We've got to keep up…"

"Appearances? Or is it just fear? Nothing's going to happen, you can be sure that nothing at all will happen."

"We should have gone out."

"No. No more. Raise the volume."

The violins crashed against the windows: the joy, the renunciation. The joy of that forced grimace below those light, shining eyes. He picked up his hat. He walked to the door. He stopped with his hand on the knob. He looked back. Laura, curled up, hugging the pillows, her back turned toward him. He walked out. He closed the door carefully behind him.

I wake up again, but this time screaming. Someone just plunged a long, cold knife into my stomach-someone outside. I couldn't make an attempt on my own life like that. There is someone, some other person who has stabbed an iron rod into my guts. I stretch out my arms, I make an effort to get up, and the hands are there, someone else's arms holding me down, asking me to be calm, saying I should be still, and another finger quickly dials a telephone number, misdials, tries again, misdials again, finally gets the connection, calls for the doctor, quick, right away, because I want to get up and disguise my pain by moving around, and they won't let me-who can they be? who can they be?-and the contractions move up. I imagine them like the coils of a snake, they move up my chest, toward my throat. They fill my tongue, my mouth with ground-up, bitter paste, some old food I forgot and I'm now vomiting, face down, looking vainly for a bowl and not that rug stained by the thick, stinking liquid from my stomach. It doesn't stop, it rends my chest, it's so bitter and tickles my throat, it tickles me horribly. It goes on, doesn't stop, some old digested something with blood, vomited onto the carpet in the bedroom, and I don't have to see myself to sense the pallor on my face, my livid lips, the accelerated rhythm of my heart as my pulse disappears from my wrist. They've stuck a dagger into my navel, the same navel that nourished me once upon a time, once upon a time, and I can't believe what my fingers tell me when I touch that stomach stuck to my body which isn't really a stomach. It's swollen, inflated, puffed up with gases I can feel moving around, which I can't expel, no matter how I try: farts that rise up to my throat and then go back down to my stomach, to my intestines, and I can't expel them. But I can breathe in my own fetid breath, now that I manage to lean back and feel that next to me they're hastily cleaning the rug. I smell the soapy water, the wet rag trying to vanquish the smell of vomit. I want to get up; if I walk around the room, the pain will go away, I know it will go away.