Carlos Fuentes: The Death of Artemio Cruz

"My daughter, Catalina."

She did not move. The long, smooth chestnut hair that cascaded down her long, warm neck (even at that distance, he could see the luster of her nape), her eyes, simultaneously hard and liquid, with a trembling stare, two glass bubbles: amber like those of her father but franker, less accustomed to feigning with naturalness, reproduced in the other dualities of that slim but well-rounded body, in her moist, slightly parted lips, in her high, taut breasts. Eyes, lips, hard, smooth breasts alternated between helplessness and rage. She held her hands together over her thighs and her narrow waist as she walked, fluttering the white muslin of her dress, cut full around her solid hips and buttoned down the back, ending near her thin calves. Toward him walked a flesh of pale gold, which even now revealed the faded chiaroscuro of the entire body in its forehead and cheeks, and she held out her hand, in whose touch he sought, without finding it, the moisture that would have revealed her emotion.

"He was with your brother during his final hours. I spoke about him to you."

"You were fortunate, sir."

"He told me about the two of you, asked me to visit you. He was a brave man, to the very end."

"He wasn't brave. It's just that he loved all…this too much."

She touched her bosom and then quickly withdrew her hand to trace an arc in the air.

"An idealist, yes, very much an idealist," murmured the old man, sighing. "The gentleman will dine with us."

The girl took her father's arm, and he, with the mastiff alongside, followed them through the narrow, damp rooms crammed with porcelain vases and stools, clocks and display cabinets, waxed furniture and large religious paintings of little value. The gilt feet of the chairs and the side tables rested on painted wooden floors devoid of rugs, and the lamps remained unlit. Only in the dining room a grand cut-glass chandelier illuminated the heavy mahogany table and sideboards and a cracked still life in which the pottery and brilliant fruit of the tropics glowed. Don Gamaliel shooed away the mosquitoes flying around the real fruit bowl, less abundant than the one in the painting. Pointing a finger, he invited him to sit down.

Sitting opposite her, he could finally stare directly into the girl's unmoving eyes. Did she know why he was visiting? Did she see in the look in his eyes that sense of triumph, made complete by the woman's physical presence? Could she detect the slight smile of luck and self-assurance? Did she feel his barely disguised intention to possess her? Her eyes expressed only that strange message of hard fatality, seeming to show that she was ready to accept everything but that she would nevertheless transform her acceptance into an opportunity to triumph over the man who in this silent and smiling way had begun to make her his own.

She was surprised at the strength with which she succumbed, the power of her weakness. Immodestly, she raised her eyes to observe the strong features of the stranger. She couldn't avoid a clash with his green eyes. He was not good-looking, certainly not handsome. But the olive skin of his face, which lent his entire body the same linear, sinuous energy as his thick lips and the prominent nerves in his temples, promised something desirable to the touch, because unknown. Under the table, he stretched out his foot until he touched the tip of her feminine slipper. The girl lowered her eyelids, looked at her father out of the corner of her eye, and moved her foot back. The perfect host smiled with his usual benevolence, running his fingers over his glass.

The entrance of the old Indian maid with the rice broke the silence, and Don Gamaliel observed that the dry season was ending a bit late this year. Fortunately, the clouds had begun to gather over the mountains, and the harvest would be good-not as good as last year, but good. It was odd, he said, how this old house was always damp, a dampness that stained the shadowed corners and nurtured the fern and the bright colors in the patio. It was, perhaps, a good omen for a family that grew and prospered thanks to the fruit of the land: established in the valley of Puebla-he was eating the rice, gathering it on his fork with precise movements-since the beginning of the nineteenth century and stronger, true enough, than all the absurd vicissitudes of a country incapable of tranquillity, enamored of convulsion.

"Sometimes I think the absence of blood and death throws us into despair. It's as if we feel alive only when we're surrounded by destruction and executions," the old man went on in his cordial voice. "But we shall go on, go on forever, because we have learned to survive, always…"

He picked up his guest's glass and filled it with full-bodied wine.

"But there is a price to be paid for surviving," said the guest dryly.

"It's always possible to negotiate the most convenient price…"

As he filled his daughter's glass, Don Gamaliel caressed her hand. "It's the finesse with which the negotiations are carried out that matters most. There is no need to frighten anyone, no need to wound sensitive souls…Honor should be kept intact."

He felt again for the girl's foot. This time she did not pull her foot back. She raised her glass and stared at the unknown guest without blushing.

"It's important to know how to make distinctions," murmured the old man as he wiped his lips with his napkin. "For example, business is one thing, and religion is something completely different."

"See him there so nice and pious, taking Communion every day with his little girl? Well, that same man stole everything he has from the priests, back when Juárez auctioned off Church property and anybody with a little cash could buy huge tracts of land…"

He had spent six days in Puebla before visiting Don Gamaliel Bernal's house. President Carranza had disbanded the troops, and it was then he remembered his conversation with Gonzalo Bernal in Perales and set out on the road to Puebla: a matter of pure instinct, but also the confidence which says that knowing a name, an address, a city in the shattered, chaotic world left by the Revolution is to know a lot. The irony that he should be the one returning to Puebla and not the executed Bernal amused him. It was in a way a masquerade, a sleight-of-hand, a joke that could be played with the greatest seriousness; but it was also proof of being alive, of a capacity to survive and strengthen one's own destiny at the expense of others. When he reached Puebla, when, from the Cholula road, he could make out, scattered over the valley, the red-and-yellow mushrooms that were the church domes, he was entering doubled, with Gonzalo Bernal's life added to his own, with the destiny of the dead man added onto his, as if Bernal in dying had delegated the possibilities of his unfulfilled life to him. Perhaps the death of others prolongs our life, he thought. But he hadn't come to Puebla to think.

"This year he hasn't even been able to buy seed. His debts have been piling up since last year, when the peasants went in for rebelling and planted the fallow land. They told him that if he didn't give them the land that wasn't being planted, they wouldn't work the land that was. And out of sheer pride he refused, so he was left with no harvest. Before, the Rural Guard would have put the rebels in their place, but now…well, another day has dawned.

"And not only that. Even the people who owe him money are getting out of hand. They don't want to pay him another cent. They say that with all the interest he's already charged them they've paid more than enough. See now, Colonel? They all believe things are going to change.

"Ah, but the old man is as stubborn as ever, won't give an inch. He'd rather die than give up whatever it is someone owes him."

He lost the last round of dice and shrugged. He gestured to the bartender for drinks all round, and they all thanked him.