Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

You will choose to embrace that wounded soldier who enters the providential woods, to lay him down, cleanse his wounded arm with water from the tiny spring scorched by the desert, bandage him, stay with him, keep him breathing with your own breath, wait, wait until both of you are found, captured, shot in a town with a forgotten name, like that dusty one, like that one of adobe and thatched roofs: until they shoot the soldier and you, two nameless, naked men buried in the common grave of those sentenced to death, who have no tombstone. Dead at the age of twenty-four, with no more avenues, no more labyrinths, no more choices-dead, holding the hand of a nameless soldier saved by you. Dead.

You will say to Laura: yes.

You will say to the fat man in the bare room painted indigo blue: no.

You will choose to stay with Bernal and Tobias, take your chances with them, not go to that bloody patio to justify yourself, to think that by killing Zagal you paid for the killing of your comrades.

You will not visit old Gamaliel in Puebla.

You will not take Lilia when she comes back that night, you will not think that you will never again be able to have another woman.

You will break the silence of that night, you will speak to Catalina, you will ask her to forgive you, you will speak to her about those who died for you, you will ask her to accept you as you are, with your sins, you will ask her not to hate you but to take you as you are.

You will stay with Lunero on the hacienda, you will never abandon that place.

You will stay at the side of your teacher Sebastián-what a man he was, what a man. You will not go out and join the Revolution in the north.

You will be a peon.

You will be a blacksmith.

You will remain an outsider with all those who remained outsiders.

You will not be Artemio Cruz, you will not be seventy-one years old, you will not weigh a hundred and seventy-four pounds, you will not be five feet eight inches tall, you will not have false teeth, you will not smoke French cigarettes, you will not wear Italian silk shirts, you will not collect cuff-links, you will not order your ties from a New York shop, you will not wear blue, three-button suits, you will not prefer Irish twill, you will not drink gin and tonic, you will not have a Volvo, a Cadillac, and a Rambler station wagon, you will not remember and love that painting by Renoir, you will not eat poached eggs on toast with Black-well's marmalade, you will not every morning read a newspaper you yourself own, you will not leaf through Life and Paris Match some nights, you will not be listening to that incantation next to you, that chorus, that hatred which wants to wrench your life away from you before it's time, which invokes, invokes, invokes, invokes what you could have smilingly imagined just a short time ago and which you will not tolerate now.

De profundis clamavi.

De profundis clamavi.

Look at me now, listen to me, shine a light into my eyes, don't put me to sleep in death / Because on the day you eat from his table you will certainly die / Don't rejoice in the death of another, remember that we all die / Death and hell were cast into the pit of flame and this was the second death / That which I fear, that is what comes to me, that which strikes me with terror, that possesses me / How bitter is your memory for the man satisfied with his riches / Have the portals of death opened for you? / Sin came into the world through woman, and because of woman we all must die / Have you seen the portals of the region of darkness? / Your weakness for the poor and the drained of strength is good / And what fruit did they obtain, then? Those for which they now feel shame, because their end is death / Because the appetite of the flesh is death.

Word of God, life, profession of death, de profundis clamavi, Domine,

omnes eodem cogimur, omnium versatur urna

quae quasi saxum Tantaleum semper impendet

quid quisque vitet, numquam homini satis cautum

est in horas

mors tandem inclusum protrahet inde caput

nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet

atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus

Omnia te vita perfuncta sequentur

Chorus, sepulchre; voices, pyre; you will imagine, in the zone of forgetting of your consciousness, those rites, those ceremonies, those twilights: burial, cremation, balm. Exposed at the top of a tower, so that the air, not the earth, will disintegrate you: locked in the tomb with your dead slaves; wept over by paid mourners; buried with your most highly prized objects, your entourage, your black jewels: vigil, guarding,

requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine de profundis clamavi, Domine

Laura's voice, as she spoke of these things, sitting on the floor with her knees bent, with the small bound book in her hands…says that everything can be fatal to us, even that which gives us life…she says that since we cannot cure death, misery, ignorance, we would do well, in order to be happy, not to think about them…she says that only sudden death is to be feared; which is why confessors live in the houses of the powerful…she says be a man, fear death when you're out of danger, not in danger…she says the premeditation of death is the premeditation of freedom…she says how softly you tread, oh, cold death…she says the hours will never forgive you, the hours that are filing down the days…she says, showing me the taut knot cut…she says is not my door made of double thicknesses of metal?…she says a thousand deaths await me, since I expect only my life…she says how can man want to live when God wants him to die…she says, of what use are treasures, vassals, servants…

What use? what use? Let them intone, let them sing, let them wail. They will not touch the sumptuous carving, the opulent inlay, the gold-and-stucco moldings, the vestry dresser of bone and tortoiseshell, the metal plates and door handles, the paneled coffers with iron keyholes, the aromatic benches of ayacahuite

wood, the choir seats, the baroque crownwork and drapery, the curved chairbacks, the shaped cross-beams, the polychromed corbels, the bronze-headed tacks, the worked leather, the claw-and-ball cabriole feet, the chasubles of silver thread, the damask armchairs, the velvet sofas, the refectory tables, the cylinders and amphora, the beveled game tables, the canopied, linen beds, the fluted posts, the coats of arms and the orles, the merino rugs, the iron keys, the canvases done in four panels, the silks and cashmeres, the wools and taffetas, the crystal and the chandeliers, the hand-painted china, the burnished beams, they will touch none of that. That will be yours.

You will stretch out your hand.

A day, which, nevertheless, will be an exceptional day; three or four years ago; you will not remember; you will remember by remembering; no, you will remember because the first thing that you remember when you try to remember is a separate day, a day of ceremony, a day separated from the rest by red numbers; and this will be the day-you yourself will think it then-on which all the names, persons, words, and deeds of a cycle ferment and make the crust of the earth groan; it will be a night when you will celebrate the New Year; your arthritic fingers will have difficulty grasping the wrought-iron handrail; you will jab your other hand deep into your jacket pocket and descend laboriously.

You will stretch out your hand.

With difficulty, he grasped the wrought-iron handrail. He jabbed his other hand deep into the pocket of his robe and laboriously walked down the stairs, without looking at the niches dedicated to the Mexican Virgins. Guadalupe, Zapopan, Remedios. As the setting sun came through the windows, it bathed in gold the warm silks and the drapery that billowed like silver sails; it reddened the burnished wood of the beams; it illuminated half of the man's face. He was wearing his tuxedo trousers, shirt, and tie: draped in his red robe, he looked like a tired old magician. He imagined his guests repeating the same performances that once upon a time they had put on with unique charm. Tonight, he would be annoyed to recognize the same faces, the same clichés that year after year provided the proper tone for his New Year's Eve party-the feast of St. Sylvester-in his enormous Coyoacán residence.