Carlos Fuentes: The Death of Artemio Cruz

All Yeyé's daughters

like husbands…that belong to other women…all of Yeyé's daughters like husbands that belong

to other women

Allyeyé'sdaughterslike

They rhythm was taking control of him. He stretched out his arms and touched the edge of the muddy bank, and went on pounding his fingers against it and rubbing his stomach in it and a huge smile flowered on his face and broke his cheeks, which s e e m e d s t u c k t o t h e w i d e b o n e s: likehusbandsthatbelongtootherwomen… The afternoon sun fell on his round, woolly head like hot lead, and he couldn't rise from that position, the sweat pouring off his forehead, his ribs, between his thighs, and his canticle became more silent and deep. The less he heard it, the more he felt it, and the more he glued himself to the earth, as if he were fornicating with it. Allyeyésdaughters : his smile was going to explode, the memory of the man with the black frock coat, the one who was going to come that afternoon, which is already this afternoon; and Lunero was lost in his song and his prostrate dance, which reminded him of the tomb, which reminded him of the French tomb and the women forgotten in the prison of this burnt-out mansion.

Behind, the branches and the ruin of the hacienda mansion he dreams about, dreaming away, the boy bathed in sunlight. Those blackened walls set on fire when the Liberals passed through in the final campaign against the Empire, Maximilian already dead, and found the family which had lent its bedrooms to the Field Marshal of the French forces and opened its larders to the Conservative troops. At the Cocuya hacienda, Napoleon III's troops took on supplies, to go out, their mules loaded with canned food, beans, and tobacco, and destroy Juárez's guerrilla forces. From the mountains, the bands of outlaws harried the French encampments in the flatland and in the forts they held throughout the state of Veracruz. And in the neighborhood of the hacienda, the Zouaves found little bands with guitars and harps that sang Balajú went off to war and wouldn't bring me along , cheering up their nights, as did the Indian and mulatto women, who soon gave birth to fair haired mestizos, mulattos with blue eyes and dark skin named Garduño and Alvarez, who, in fact, should have been called Dubois and Garnier. Yes, on that same afternoon, prostrate in the heat, old Ludivinia, locked forever in the bedroom with its absurd chandeliers-two hanging from the whitewashed ceiling, one left in a corner next to the bed with its fluted posts-and curtains made of yellowed lace, fanned by the Indian Baracoa, who lost her original name only to get this slave name from the plantation's blacks, a name completely incongruous with her aquiline profile and greasy hair: old Ludivinia, her eyes wide open, hums that damned song which, even if she realized she was doing it, she would not remember, but which nevertheless she must enjoy, because it mocks General Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, who was at first a friend of the house and an intimate of the deceased Ireneo Menchaca, Ludivinia's husband, and part of the satanic court. Later, when the Savior of Mexico and great protector of the Menchacas-their lives, their haciendas-tried to come back from the last of his myriad exiles and disembarked and was recovering from an attack of dysentery, he renounced his old loyalties, and Ireneo had him arrested by the French and shipped out again: San Juan de Nepomuceno: The Bare Truth. Ludivinia remembers Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, son of the thousand poxy women of the priest Morelos, and she twists her toothless, sucked-in mouth when she remembers the burlesque words of that damned song the followers of Juárez sang when they humiliated General Santa Anna to death:… and what wouldyou think if some thieves in the night took your old lady and pulleddown her drawers… Ludivinia cackles out her laugh and gestures to the Indian to fan her more rapidly. The faded, whitewashed bedroom smelled of the shut-in tropics, disguised as cold. The old lady liked the moisture stains on the wall because they made her think of other climates, those of her childhood before she married Lieutenant Ireneo Menchaca and linked her life and fortune to those of General Antonio López de Santa Anna and received from his hand the rich black lands along the river, as well as other extensive contiguous holdings adjacent to the mountains and the sea. Over the sea in France,diddy-dee-diddy-dee-diddydum, Benito Juárez died, and so did ourfreedom . And now her grimace pursed in disgust, and her entire face collapsed into a thousand powdered layers, all held together by a fine net of blue veins. Ludivinia's trembling claw dismissed Baracoa with another gesture and shook her black silk sleeves and shredded lace cuffs. Lace and crystal, but not only that: carved poplar tables with heavy marble tops on which rested clocks under glass domes, with heavy cabriole feet clutching a glass ball; on the brick floor, wicker rockers covered with bustles she never wore again, beveled card tables, bronze nailheads, chests with inset panels and iron keyholes, oval portraits of unkown Creoles-rigid, varnished, with puffy sideburns, chests held high, and tortoiseshell combs-tin frames for the saints and the Holy Child of Atocha-he in old, moth-eaten needlepoint which barely retained the first layer of gold leaf-the bed with its silver foliage and fluted posts, repository of the bloodless body, nest of concentrated smells, of sheets stained by running sores, of tufts of stuffing that poked their way through the splitting mattress.

The fire hadn't reached here. Neither did the news of the lost

lands, the son killed in ambush, or the boy born in the Negro shacks: the news didn't, but the premonitions did.

"Indian, bring a pitcher of water."

She waited until Baracoa left and then broke all the rules: she parted the curtains and squinted to get a glimpse of what was happening outside. She had seen that unknown boy grow up; she had spied on him from the window, from the other side of the lace. She had seen those green eyes and cackled with joy, knowing herself to be in another young body, she who had etched into her brain the memories of a century, and in the wrinkles of her face disappeared layers of air, earth, and sun. She persisted. She survived. It was difficult for her to get to the window; she practically crawled, eyes fixed on her knees, hands squeezed against her thighs. Her head, covered with patches of white hair, had sunk between her shoulders, which were sometimes higher than the top of her head. But she survived. She was still here, trying, from her unkempt bed, to replicate the gestures of the young, fair-skinned beauty who opened the doors of Cocuya to the long parade of Spanish prelates, French traders, Scots and English engineers, bond salesmen, speculators, and anti-Spanish guerrillas, who all passed through here on their way to Mexico City and the opportunities the young, anarchic nation had to offer: her baroque cathedrals, her gold and silver mines, her tezontle and carved-stone palaces, her ecclesiastical businessmen, her perpetual political carnival and her perpetually indebted government, her customs concessions easily arranged for glib foreigners. Those were glorious days for Mexico, when the Menchacas left the hacienda in the hands of their oldest son, Atanasio, so that he might become a man by dealing with workers, bandits, and Indians. They made their way to the central plateau to glitter in the fictitious court of His Most Serene Highness. How was General Santa Anna going to get along without his old pal Manchaca-now Colonel Menchaca-who knew all about fighting cocks and pits and could pass an entire night drinking and recalling the Casamata Plan, the Barradas expedition, the Alamo, San Jacinto, the War of the Cakes, even the defeats perpetrated by the invading Yankee army, to which the Generalissimo alluded with a cynical hilarity, pounding the floor with his wooden foot raising his glass, and caressing the black hair of Flor de México, the child-bride he'd brought to the nuptial bed when his wife's death rattle was still echoing in the air? There were also days of grief, when the Generalissimo was expelled from Mexico by the Liberals, and the Menchacas went back to their hacienda to defend their property: the thousands of acres heaped on them by the crippled tyrant addicted to cock fighting-acres appropriated without leave from native peasants who either had to stay on as field hands or move to the foot of the mountains; lands cultivated by the new black-and cheap-workers imported from the Caribbean islands, lands swollen by mortgages imposed on all the small landowners in the region. Tomb-like shacks for drying tobacco. Carts piled high with bananas and mangoes. Herds of goats set out to pasture on the low slopes of the Sierra Madre. And in the center of it all, the one-story mansion, with its pink belvedere and stables alive with whinnying, with boats and carriage outings. And Atanasio, the green-eyed son, dressed in white on his white horse, another gift from Santa Anna, galloping over the fertile land, his whip in his hand, always ready to impose his decisive will, to satisfy his voracious appetites with the young peasant women, to defend his property, using his band of imported Negroes, against the ever more frequent incursions of the Juárez forces. Above all, long live Mexico, long live our Nation,death to the foreign prince …And during the final days of the Empire, when old Ireneo Menchaca was informed that Santa Anna was coming back from exile to proclaim a new Republic, he boarded his black carriage and went to Veracruz, where a boat was waiting for him at the dock. From the deck of the Virginia, Santa Anna and his German pirates were signaling Fort San Juan de Ulúa, but no one answered. The port garrison was on the side of the Empire and mocked the fallen tyrant as he paced back and forth under the pennants, desperate; spouting obscenities from his fleshy lips. The sails filled again, and the two old friends played cards in the Yankee captain's cabin; they sailed over a torrid, languid sea, from which they could barely make out the coastline, which was lost behind a veil of heat. From the side of the ship in full dress, the dictator's furious eyes saw Sisal's white silhouette. And the crippled old man walked down the gangplank, followed by his old pal. He issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Yucatán and once again lived his dream of greatness. Maximilian had just been sentenced to death in Querétaro, and the Republic had a right to count on the services of its natural, its true leader, its monarch-without-a-crown. It was all told to Ludivinia: how they were captured by the commander of Sisal, how they were sent to Campeche and paraded through the streets with their hands in chains, beaten like common criminals by the guards. How they were thrown into a dungeon in the fortress. How that summer, without latrines, swollen with foul water, old Colonel Menchaca died, while newspapers in the United States reported that Santa Anna had been executed by Juárez, as was the innocent Prince of Trieste. A lie: only the cadaver of Ireneo Menchaca was buried in the cemetery opposite the bay, the end of a life of chance and spins of the wheel of fortune, like that of the nation itself. Santa Anna, wearing the permanent grin of an infectious madness, again went into exile.