Carlos Fuentes: The Death of Artemio Cruz

You will go further and will penetrate into the nave of the ship, its Castilian exterior conquered by the macabre, smiling plenitude of this Indian heaven of saints, angels, and indigenous gods. A single, enormous nave will run toward the altar of gilt foliage, somber opulence of masked faces, lugubrious and festive prayer, always urgent, for this freedom, the only one granted, to decorate a temple and fill it with tranquil astonishment, with sculpted resignation, with the horror of emptiness, the terror of the dead times, of those who prolonged the slow deliberateness of free labor, the unique instants of autonomy in color and form, far from that exterior world of whips and branding irons and smallpox. You will walk to the conquest of your new world through a nave devoid of blank spaces: angel heads, luxuriant vines, polychrome flowers, red, round fruits captured in trellises of gold, white saints in chains, saints with astonished faces, saints in a heaven invented by Indians in their own image and likeness: angels and saints wearing the face of the sun and the moon, with the hand to protect harvests, with the index finger of the hounds, with the cruel, unnecessary, alien eyes of the idol, with the rigorous face of the cycles. The faces of stone behind the pink, kindly, ingenuous masks, masks that are, however, impassive and dead: create the night, fill the black sails with wind, close your eyes, Artemio Cruz…

His story of Gonzalo Bernal's final moments in the Perales prison opened the doors of the house to him.

"He was always so pure," said Don Gamaliel Bernal Gonzalo's father. "He always thought that, unless clear thinking determines it, action contaminates us and leads us to betray ourselves. I think that's why he left this house. Well, I believe it in part, because this hurricane swept everyone away, even those of us who never left home. No, what I'm trying to say is that, for my son, moral obligation meant participating in order to explain, to offer coherent ideas, yes, I think he participated to keep this cause from caving in under the test of action, the way all the others have. I don't know, his ideas were very complicated. He preached tolerance. I'm happy to know he died bravely. I'm happy to see you here."

He hadn't simply walked in one day to visit the old man. Beforehand, he had made inquiries in several Puebla towns, spoken with several people, found out what he had to find out. For that reason, he could know listen to the old man's worn-out arguments without blinking an eye, as the old man leaned his head against the polished leather of his chair back, turning his profile into the yellowish light that held the thick dust suffusing the air of the enclosed library. The shelves were so high that Don Gamaliel used a ladder on wheels, which over time had scratched the ocher floors, to reach the tall, thick volumes, French and English texts on geography, fine arts, and natural sciences. To read them, Don Gamaliel had to use a magnifying glass, the one he now held motionless in his silky hands, not noticing that the oblique light passed through the glass and concentrated, burning into the crease of his striped, carefully pressed trousers. Artemio Cruz, on the other hand, did notice it. An uncomfortable silence separated them.

"Please forgive me. May I offer you something? Better yet: stay for dinner."

He opened his hands in a sign of invitation and pleasure, and the magnifying glass fell on the lap of this thin man with flesh stretched over brittle bones, with skull, jowls, and lips spotted with the yellow marks of age.

"I'm not shocked at what's happening," he'd said before, his voice always precise and courteous, sonorous when within those terms, otherwise flat. "What use would all my reading have been to me"-he gestured with the reading glass toward the shelves of books-"if it didn't teach me to understand the inevitability of change? Things change their appearance, whether we like it or not. Why should we stubbornly refuse to see them or long for the past? How much less tiresome it is to accept the unforeseeable! Or should I call it something else? You, Mr…excuse me, I've forgotten your rank…yes, Lieutenant Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel…I mean, I don't know where you're from, what your profession is…I esteem you because you shared my son's final hours…Well, you did act, but could you foresee everything? I didn't act and I couldn't either. Perhaps our action and our passivity converge in that, in that both are quite blind and impotent. Although there certainly is a difference…don't you think? Ah, well…"

He never lost sight of the old man's amber eyes, which were all too intent on creating an atmosphere of cordiality, too self-confident behind that mask of paternal sweetness. Perhaps those aristocratic hand movements, that fixed nobility of his profile, his bearded chin, that attentive cocking of his head, were all natural to him. He thought that even naturalness can be feigned; at times, a mask disguises too well the expressions of a face that does not exist either outside or under it. And Don Gamaliel's mask looked so much like his real face that it was disconcerting to think about the dividing line, the impalpable shadow that might separate them. He thought all this, and also that one day he might be able to say it right to the old man's face.

All the clocks in the house chimed at the same instant, and the old man stood up to light the acetylene lamp on the rolltop desk. He slowly pushed the top back and fumbled through some papers. He picked one up and half turned toward his visitor's armchair. He smiled, furrowed his brow, and smiled again as he deposited the paper on top of the others. Gracefully he raised his index finger to his ear: a dog was barking and scratching on the other side of the door.

He took advantage of the fact that the old man had turned his back toward him to scrutinize him secretly. Not one of Don Gamaliel's character traits broke the harmonious nobility of his full-length portrait. Seen from the rear, he walked elegantly, bolt-upright; longish white hair crowned the old man walking toward the door. Gamaliel Bernal was troubling-he grew nervous as he thought about it again-because he was too perfect. It was possible that his courtesy was nothing more than a natural complement to his naïveté. The thought annoyed him. The old man made his slow way to the door; the dog was barking: the fight would be too easy, could not be savored. But suppose the friendliness was merely a mask for the old man's cunning?

When the tails of his frock coat stopped swinging and his white hand had grasped the copper doorknob, Don Gamaliel looked at him over his shoulder with those amber eyes. His free hand stroked his beard. His look seemed to read his unknown visitor's thoughts, and his slightly twisted smile recalled that of a magician about to complete a totally new trick. If in the old man's gesture the unknown visitor could understand and accept an invitation to silent complicity, Don Gamaliel's movement was so elegant, so artful, that he never gave his accomplice the chance to return the look and seal the tacit agreement.

Night had fallen and the uncertain light of the lamp barely revealed the golden spines of the books and the silver trimming of the wallpaper that covered the library walls. He remembered, from when the door of the house had been opened to him, a long string of rooms that came into view beyond the old Puebla mansion's main vestibule and went all the way to the library, with room after room opening onto the patio with its majolica and its tiles. The mastiff jumped for joy and licked his master's hand. Behind the dog appeared the girl dressed in white, a white that contrasted with the crepuscular light stretching out behind her.

She stopped for a second at the threshold, while the dog leapt toward the unknown man and sniffed at his feet and hands. Don Gonzalo laughed, took the dog by his red collar, and muttered a vague excuse. His visitor didn't understand it. He stood up, buttoning his jacket with the precise movements of military life, straightening it as if he were still wearing a uniform; he remained still before the beauty of this young woman, who had not yet passed through the doorway.