Carlos Fuentes: The Death of Artemio Cruz

Atanasio told her, recalled old Ludivinia this hot afternoon, and from that day on, she never left her room. She had them bring her finest possessions there, the dining-room chandelier, the metal-encrusted chests, the most highly varnished pictures. All to wait for a death her romantic mind judged imminent but which had taken thirty-five lost years-nothing for a woman ninety-three years old, born the year of the first revolt, when a riot of clubs and stones was raised by Father Hidalgo in his parish of Dolores and her mother gave birth to her in a house in which terror had bolted the doors. She'd lost her calendars, and this year of 1903 was for her merely a time purloined from the rapid death from grief which should have followed that of the colonel. As if the fire of 1868 never existed: the flames extinguished just as they were reaching the door of the sealed bedroom, while her sons-there was a second, not only Atanasio, but she loved only him-shouted for her to save herself and she piled chairs and tables against the door and coughed in the thick smoke pouring through the cracks. She never wanted to see anyone ever again, only the Indian woman, because she needed someone to bring her food and stitch up her black clothing. She did not want to know more, but only to remember the old times. And within these four walls, she lost track of everything, except the essentials: her widowhood, the past, and, suddenly, that boy who was always running in the distance, right on the heels of a mulatto she didn't recognize.

"Indian, bring a pitcher of water."

But, instead of Baracoa, a yellow specter appeared at the door.

Ludivinia screamed soundlessly and shrank to the back of the bed: her sunken eyes opened wide in horror, and all the husks that made up her face seemed to turn to dust. The man stopped at the threshold and raised a trembling hand. "I'm Pedro…"

Ludivinia did not understand. Her trembling kept her from speaking, but her arms managed to wave, to exorcise, to deny in a flutter of black rags, while the pale ghost walked toward her with his mouth open. "Uh…Pedro…uh…" he said, rubbing his sparsely bearded, stained chin, his eyelids blinking nervously. "Pedro…"

The paralyzed old woman did not understand what this sluggish man stinking of sweat and cheap alcohol was saying: "Uh…There's nothing left, you know?…All of it…gone to the devil…And now…" he muttered, with a dry sob, "they're taking away the black; but, Mama, you don't know…"

"Atanasio…"

"No…Pedro." The drunk threw himself on the rocking chair, spreading his legs, as if he'd reached his final port. "They're taking away the black…who gives us food…yours and mine…"

"Not a black; a mulatto; a mulatto and a boy…"

Ludivinia was listening, but she did not look at the ghost who had come in to speak to her; no voice which let itself be heard inside the forbidden cave could have a body.

"All right. A mulatto, and a boy…"

"Sometimes the boy runs over there, far off. I've seen him. He makes me happy. He's a boy."

"The agent came to tell me…He woke me up at dawn…They're taking the black away…What are we going to do?"

"There're taking a black away? The hacienda is full of blacks. The colonel says they're cheaper and work harder. But if you want one so much, offer a little more for him."

And there they stood, statues of salt, thinking what later they would have wanted to say, when it would be too late, when the boy was no longer with them. Ludivinia tried to focus her gaze on the presence she refused to admit: who could he be, this man who for this purpose, just today, had dusted off his best suit to take the forbidden step? Yes: the batiste shirtfront, stained with mold from its storage in the tropics, the narrow trousers, too tight, too narrow for the small potbelly of that exhausted body. The old clothes did not tolerate the truth of the customary sweat-tobacco and alcohol-and his glassy eyes denied all the affirmation and bearing his clothes presupposed: the eyes of a drunkard without malice, remote from all human contact for more than fifteen years. Ah, sighed Ludivinia, perched on her disarranged bed, admitting at last that this voice did have a face, that isn't Atanasio, who was in his virility the extension of his mother. That is the mother, but with whiskers and testicles-dreamed the old woman-not the mother as she might have been as a man, as Atanasio was; and for that reason she loved one son and not the other-she sighed again-she loved the son who lived firmly rooted in the place assigned to them on earth, and not the one who, even after the defeat of their cause, wanted to go on profiting, up there, in the palaces, from what no longer belonged to them. She was certain: while everything was theirs, they had the right to impose their presence on the entire nation; she doubted: now that nothing was theirs, their place was within these four walls.

The mother and son contemplated each other, with the wall of a resurrection between them.

Have you come to tell me that there is no more land or greatnessfor us, that others have taken advantage of us as we took advantageof the original owners of all this? Have you come to tell me what I'veknown in my heart of hearts since my wedding night?

I've come on a pretext. I've come because I no longer want to bealone.

I'd like to remember you as a small boy. I loved you then; whenshe's young, a mother should love all her children. When we get old,we know better. We have to have a reason for loving someone. Bloodis not a reason. The only reason is blood loved without reason.

I wanted to be strong, like my brother. I've used an iron hand todeal with the mulatto and the boy. I've forbiddenthem to enter thebig house. Just as Atanasio did, remember? But in those days therewere so many workers. Today, only the mulatto and the boy are left.The mulatto is going.

You've been left alone. You've come looking for me so you won'tbe alone. You think I'm alone; I see it in your pitying eyes. Fool,always, and weak: not my son, who never asked anyone for pity, butmy own image as a young bride. Now it can't be, not now. Now Ihave my whole life for company, so I can stop being an old woman.It's you who are old if you think the world's come to an end, withyour gray hairs and your drunkenness, and your lack of will. NowI see you, now I see you, shitass! You're just the same as when youwent to the capital with us; the same as when you thought our powerwas an excuse to expend it on women and liquor and not a reasonto add to it and make it stronger and use it like a whip; the same aswhen you thought our power had passed without any loss and soyou thought you could stay up there without our support when wehad to come back down to this burning land, to this fountain ofeverything, to this hell from which we rose and into which we hadto fall…It stinks! There's a smell stronger than horse sweat or fruitor gunpowder…Have you ever stopped to smell the coupling of aman and a woman? That's what the earth here smells like, the sheetsof love, and you never knew it…Listen, oh, I caressed you when youwere born and gave you my milk and said you were mine, my son,and all I was remembering was the moment when your father madeyou with all the blindness of a love that was not meant to create youbut to give me pleasure: and that's what's left; you havedisappeared…Out there, listen to me…

Why don't you speak? All right…all right…Don't say a word,just seeing you there looking at me like that is something; somethingmore than a bare mattress and all those sleepless nights…