Carlos Fuentes: The Death of Artemio Cruz

Are you looking for someone? And that boy there outside , isn't healive? I'm suspicious of you; you probably think I don't knowanything, that I don't see anything from here…As if I couldn't sensethat there is flesh of my flesh prowling out there, an extension ofIreneo and Atanasio, another Menchaca, another man like them,out there, listen to me…Of course he's mine, even though you haven'tsought him…Blood answers blood without having to come near…

"Lunero," said the boy when he woke up from his siesta and saw the mulatto lying there, worn out, on the muddy ground. "I want to go into the big house."

Later, when everything would be over, old Ludivinia would break her silence and go out, like a wingless crow, to scream along the avenues of fern, her eyes lost in the underbrush and lifted, finally, to the Sierra; she would raise her arms toward the human form she hoped to find behind every branch that slashes her face furrowed with lifeless veins, blinded by the night she's unaccustomed to in her cloister of permanently burning candles. And she would smell that conjunction of the earth and would shout in a hoarse voice the names she'd forgotten and just recently learned, she would bite her pale hands out of rage, because in her heart something-years, memory, the past that was her life-would tell her that there would still exist a margin of life beyond her century of memories: a chance to live and love another being of her blood: something that had not died with the death of Ireneo and Atanasio. But now, with Master Pedrito before her, in the bedroom she hadn't left in thirty-five years, Ludivinia thought she was the center that yoked memory to the beings now around her. Master Pedrito rubbed his unshaven chin and spoke again, this time aloud. "Mama, you don't know…"

The old lady's eyes froze the son's voice in his throat.

What? That nothing could last? That their strength was all show,based on an injustice that had to die at the hands of anotherinjustice? That the enemies we had shot so wecould go on being themasters, or the ones whose tongues were cut out or whose hands werecut off on your father's orders so that he could go on being the master,that the enemies from whom your father stole land so he could beginto be the master were victorious one day and set our house on fireand took away what wasn't ours, what we had by force and not byright? That, despite everything, your brother refused to accept lossand defeat and went on being Atanasio Menchaca, not up there, farfrom the scene, like you, but down here, alongside his servants, facingup to danger, raping mulattas and Indians, and not, like you,seducing willing women? That, of your brother's thousand careless,swift, ferocious couplings, there would remain one proof, one, one,of his having passed through this land? That, of all the childrenscattered by Atanasio Menchaca over our possessions, one would beborn close by? That the same day his son was born in a Negroshack-as he should be born, downward, to show once again thestrength of the father-who was Atanasio…

Master Pedrito could not read these words in Ludivinia's eyes. The old woman's gaze, having left her worn-out face, wafted like a marble wave over the liquid heat of the bedroom. The man in the tight clothes did not have to hear Ludivinia's voice.

Don't reproach me for anything. I'm your son, too…My blood isthe same as Atanasio's…so why, that night…? All I was told was:"Sergeant Robaina, from the old Santa Anna troops, has found whatyou've been looking for for so long, Colonel Menchaca's body, in theCampeche cemetery. Another soldier, who saw where they buriedyour father with no marker, told the sergeant when he was orderedto the port garrison. And the sergeant, outwitting the commanders,stole Colonel Menchaca's remains at night. Now he's beingtransferred to Jalisco and is passing through here and wants to giveyou the remains. I'll wait for you and your brother tonight, aftereleven, inthe clearing about a mile from town, the place where theyhad the gallows for hanging rebel Indians." Clever, wasn't it?Atanasio believed him, as I did; his eyes filled with tears, he neverquestioned the message. Why did I ever come to Cocuya that season?Because I was starting to run out of money in Mexico City, andAtanasio never refused me anything. He even preferred that I be faraway, he wanted to be the only Menchaca in the area, your onlyguardian. The red moon that shines in the hottest time of the yearwas up when we got there. There was Sergeant Robaina. Weremembered him from when we were kids. He was leaning againsthis big horse, his teeth glowing like white rice, just like his whitemustache. We remembered him from when we were kids. He'dalways accompanied General Santa Anna and was famous as a horsebreaker; he'd always laughed like that, as if he were part of a hugejoke. And there, on the big horse's back, was the filthy sack we werehoping for. Atanasio hugged him, and the sergeant laughed as he'dnever laughed, he even whistled with laughter, and that's when thefour men came out of the thicket, glowing in the moonlight, becausethey were all wearing white. "All souls in heaven!" shouted thesergeant in his jolly voice. "Souls in heaven right here for those whoaren't satisfied with having lost a man and go around wanting toget him back!" And then his face changed, and he went for Atanasio,too. No one took any account of me, I swear. They just walkedforward, looking at my brother, as if I didn't exist. I don't even knowhow I managed to get on my horse and break through that damnedcircle of four men walking with machetes in hand, while Atanasioshouted to me in a hoarse but calm voice: "Go home, brother, andremember what you take with you." And I felt the butt bouncing offmy knee, but I could no longer see the four men surroundingAtanasio, how they first slashed open his legs and then cut him topieces, there under the moon, so it could take place in silence. Wherecould I go for help on the haciendawhen I knew he was dead andgone, and besides, he'd been killed by the men who worked for thenew headman in the district, who sooner or later had to kill Atanasioto be headman for certain? And from then on, who was going tooppose him? After that, I didn't want to know about the new fence,put up the next day by the man who had defeated us on our ownland. What for? The workers went over to him without a word; hecouldn't be worse than Atanasio. And as if to warn me to keep mymouth shut, a detachment of federal troops spent a week standingguard over the new boundaries. And for some reason or other, amonth later, General Porfirio Díaz visited the new big house in thearea. And they didn't even bother to omit their little joke. Along withAtanasio's mutilated body, they gave me some cow bones, a hugeskull with horns-which is what the sergeant had in his sack. All Idid was hang that shotgun over the door of the house, who knows?maybe as a kind of tribute to poor Atanasio. Really, that night…Ididn't even realize that I had it on my saddle, even though the buttkept hitting me on the knee on that long gallop, Mama, I swear, itwas so long…