The Death of Artemio Cruz

(1939: February 3)

He stood on the flat roof, a rifle in his hands. He was remembering how the two of them went out to the lake to hunt. But the rifle in his hands was rusty, no good for hunting. From the flat roof, the façade of the bishop's palace was clearly visible. All that remained was the façade, a shell without floors or roof. The bombs had destroyed all the rest. Half buried in the rubble, a few old pieces of furniture were also visible. Up the street, a man wearing a butterfly collar and two women dressed in black walked toward them. They were squinting, carrying bundless in their hands, and they took astonished steps as they passed the façade. All he had to do was see them to know they were enemies.

"You there, on the other side of the street!"

He shouted to them from that place on the roof. The man raised his face and the sun on his glasses blinded him. He waved his arm to signal them to cross the street to avoid the dangerous façade, which seemed about to collapse. They crossed, and in the distance the salvos of Fascist artillery resounded-they were hollow when they fell into the depths between mountains and high-pitched when they whistled through the air. Later he sat down on a sandbag. Miguel was next to him. Under no circumstance would he abandon the machine gun. From the roof they saw the town's deserted streets. There were shell holes in the streets, broken telephone poles, and tangled wires-the interminable echo of the salvos and the pam-pam-pam of sporadic small-arms fire, the dry, cold roof tiles: only the façade of the ancient bishop's palace was standing on that street.

"Only one belt left for the machine gun," he informed Miguel, and Miguel responded, "Let's wait until this afternoon. After that…"

They leaned back against the wall and it cigarettes. Miguel wrapped his scarf around his face until it hid his blond beard. The mountains in the distance were covered with snow; the snow had gone down the slopes even though the sun shone brightly. In the morning light, the peaks stood out, seeming to advance toward them. Later, in the afternoon, they would retreat; the trails and pines would disappear. At day's end, there would be only a distance purple mass.

But, that midday, Miguel looked at the sun, squinted, and said, "If it weren't for the artillery and he sniping, you'd say we were at peace. These winter days are beautiful. Look how far down the mountain the snow has come."

He looked at deep white creases that ran from Miguel's eyelids to his bearded cheeks, like snow drifting down his face. He would never forget those eyes, because in them he'd learned to see joy, courage, rage, and serenity. There had been times when they'd won and then been thrown back again. Sometimes they'd just lost. But the attitude they should all have was already in the creases in Miguel's face before they won or lost. He learned a lot from Miguel's face. The only thing he'd never seen Miguel do was weep.

He crushed his cigarette on the floor and it sent out a shower of sparks. He asked Miguel why they were losing, and Miguel pointed to the mountains on the frontier and said, "Because our machine guns didn't come from over there."

Then Miguel put out his cigarette, too, and began to murmur a song:

The four generals, the big four generals,

The big four generals, oh Mama,

Who've attacked us old and young…

And he answered, still leaning back on the sandbags:

By Christmas Eve, oh Mama, They'll surely have been hanged…

They sang to kill time. There were many hours like this one in which they stood guard and nothing happened. So they sang. They never had to say, "Let's sing." And no one ever felt embarrassed to sing in front of the others. Exactly as they laughed for no reason, wrestled, or sang along with the fishermen on the beach near Cocuya. Except that now they sang to bolster their courage, even if the words of the song were a bad joke, because the four generals not only hadn't been hanged but had them surrounded in this town with the mountain frontier in their faces. They had no place to go.

The sun began to fade early, at about four in the afternoon, and he hugged his old rifle with its yellow butt and put on his cap. Like Miguel, he wrapped himself up in his scarf. For the past few days he'd been wanting to suggest something to him. Even though his boots were worn, they were still holding up; all Miguel had was an old pair of sandals he'd wrapped with rags and bound up with string. He wanted to say they could take turns with the boots: he one day, Miguel the next. But he didn't have the nerve. The wrinkles in that face said he shouldn't. Now they blew on their fingers, because they knew only too well what it meant to spend a night on an open roof. Then, from the far end of the street came a soldier, one of ours, a Republican running toward us as if he'd popped out of one of the shell holes. He waved his arms and finally fell, face down. Behind him came more Republican soldiers, boots slapping the pockmarked streets. The artillery salvo, which had seemed so far off, suddenly was closer, and from the street below, one of the soldiers shouted: "Weapons, please, give us some guns!"

"Don't stop!" shouted the man leading the soldiers. "Don't make yourself an easy target!"

They passed by at a run, below them, and Miguel and Lorenzo aimed the machine gun at the last of their own soldiers, thinking the enemy would be right on their heels.

"They should be here any time now," he said to Miguel.

"All right, Mexican, do a good job now," said Miguel, holding up the last cartridge belt.

But another machine gun fired first. Two or three blocks away, another hidden machine-gun nest, a Fascist one, had waited for the men to fall back, and now it was raking the street, killing the soldiers. But not their leader, who hit the dirt, shouting: "Get down! You'll never learn!"

He moved the machine gun so he could fire at the hidden enemy gun, and the sun fell behind the mountains. The machine gun, shook his entire body, and Miguel whispered, "Balls just aren't enough. Those blond Arabs over there have better weapons."

Because over their heads airplane motors began to buzz.

"The Caproni are here."

They fought side by side, but it was so dark they couldn't see each other. Miguel reached out and touched his shoulder. For the second time that day, the Italian planes were bombing the town.

"Let's get out of here, Lorenzo. The Caproni are back."

"Where to? Wait. What about the machine gun?"

"What good is it? We don't have any more ammo."

The enemy machine gun had also fallen silent. Below them, a group of women ran by. They couldn't see them, but they could hear them, because they were singing in loud voices despite the fighting:

With Lister and Campesino, With Galán and Modesto,

With Commander Carlos as our guides,

The army of the people is so brave

It will surely turn the tide…

The voices sounded strange, mixed in with the noise of the bombs, but they were stronger than the bombs: the bombs fell sporadically but the singing never stopped. "And it isn't as if they were warlike voices either, Papa, but the voices of women in love. They were singing to the Republican fighters as if they were their lovers, and up on the roof Miguel and I accidentally touched hands and thought the same thing. That they were singing to us, to Miguel and Lorenzo, and that they loved us…"

Then the facade of the bishop's palace collapsed, and they threw themselves on the ground, covered with dust. He thought about Madrid when he'd first arrived, about the cafés filled with people until two or three in the morning, when all they talked about was the war, and how euphoric they all felt and how absolutely sure they'd win, and he thought how Madrid was still holding out and how the women of Madrid made curlers out of bomb fragments…They crawled to the stairway. Miguel was unarmed. He dragged his rifle along. He knew there was only one for every five soldiers. He decided not to leave it behind.

They walked down the spiral staircase.

"I think a baby was crying in one of the rooms. I'm not sure, I might have mistaken the air-raid sirens for wailing."

But he imagined the baby there, abandoned. They felt their way down in the darkness. It was so dark that when they came out on the street it looked like broad daylight. Miguel said, "They shall not pass," and the women answered: "They shall not pass!" The night blinded them, and they must have become disoriented as they walked along, because one of the women ran after them, saying, "Not that way. Come with us."

When they got used to the light of night, they found themselves face down on the sidewalk. The collapsed building shielded them from the enemy machine guns: he breathed in the dust, but he also inhaled the sweat from the girls stretched out next to him. He tried to see their faces. All he saw was a beret and a wool cap, until the girl who'd thrown herself down at his side raised her face and he saw her loose chestnut hair whitened by the plaster from the building, and she said:

"My name's Dolores-Lola."

"I'm Lorenzo. This is Miguel."

"Miguel, that's me."

"We're separated from our group."

"We were in the Fourth Corps."

"How do we get out of here?"

"We'll have to take the long way round and cross the bridge."

"Do you know this place?"

"Miguel knows it."

"Right, I know it."

"Where are you from?"

"I'm Mexican."

"Ah, so it won't be hard to understand each other."

The planes left, and they stood up. Nuri with her beret and María with her wool cap told them their names and they repeated theirs. Dolores was wearing trousers and a jacket; the other two women, overalls and knapsacks. They walked single file down the deserted street, hugging the walls of the tall houses, under dark balconies with their windows open, as if on a summer day. They could hear the interminable sniping, but they didn't know where it came from. A dog barked from an alley, and Miguel tossed a stone at it. An old man, a scarf wrapped around his head, was sitting in his rocker. He didn't look at them as they passed, and they could not understand what he was doing there: was he waiting for someone to come home, or was he waiting for the sun to come up, or what. He didn't look at them.

He breathed deeply. They left the town behind and reached an open field with some bare poplars in it. That autumn no one had raked up the dry leaves and they crackled under their feet. He noticed that the leaves closest to the ground had already turned black from the rains, and he glanced back at the soaking-wet rags wrapped around Miguel's feet. Once again he wanted to offer him his boots, but his comrade was striding along so resolutely on his strong, slim legs that he realized how useless it would be to offer what wasn't needed. In the distance, those dark slopes awaited them. Perhaps then he'd need the boots. Not now. Now the bridge was there, and beneath it ran a turbulent, deep river. They stopped to stare at it.

"I hoped it would be frozen over"-he gestured angrily.

"Spanish rivers never freeze over," murmured Miguel. "They always run."

"Why did you want it to be frozen?" Dolores asked him.

"Well, that way we could have avoided the bridge."

"Why would we want to do that?" said María, and the three women, the question in their eyes, looked like curious little girls.

"Because bridges are usually mined," said Miguel.

The small group did not move. The swift white river swirling at their feet hypnotized them. They stood stock-still. Until Miguel raised his face, looked toward the mountains, and said: "If we cross the bridge, we can get to the mountains and from there to the border. If we don't cross, we'll be shot…"

"Well?" said María, holding back a sob. For the first time, the two men could see her glassy, weary eyes.

"We lost!" shouted Miguel. He clenched his empty fists and walked around as if looking for a rifle on the ground carpeted with blackened leaves. "There's no going back! We've got no planes, no artillery, nothing!"

He did not move. He stood there staring at Miguel until Dolores, Dolores's hot hand, the five fingers she had just taken out of her armpit, clasped the young man's five fingers, and he understood. She sought his eyes, and he saw hers, also for the first time. She blinked, and he saw that her eyes were green, as green as the sea near our land. He saw her with uncombed hair and no makeup, her cheeks red from the cold, her lips full and dry. The other three didn't notice. They walked, she and he, holding hands, and stepped onto the bridge. For a moment, he doubted. She did not. The ten fingers they clasped gave them warmth, the only warmth he'd felt in all those months.

"…the only warmth I felt in all those months of retreat toward Catalonia and the Pyrenees…"

They heard the noise of the river below, and the creak of the bridge's wooden planks. If Miguel and the girls shouted from the other bank, they did not hear them. The bridge grew longer and longer, it seemed to be spanning an ocean and not this rampaging river.

"My heart was beating fast. She must have felt the pounding in my hand, because she put in on her breast, where I could feel the strength of her heart…"

Then they walked side by side, and the bridge grew shorter.

On the other side rose something they hadn't seen a huge, bare elm, beautiful and white. It wasn't covered with snow but with glittering ice. It was so white it glowed like a jewel in the night. He felt the weight of the rifle on his shoulder, the weight of his legs, his leaden feet on the planks; the elm waiting for them seemed so light, luminuous, and white.

"I closed my eyes, Papa, and I opened them, afraid that the tree wouldn't be there anymore…"

Then their feet touched earth, they stopped, they did not look back, both ran toward the elm, without paying attention to the shouts of Miguel and the two girls, without hearing the running feet of their comrades on the bridge, they ran and embraced the naked trunk, white and covered with ice, they shook it, and pearls of cold fell on their heads. They touched hands, embracing it, and they wrenched themselves from their tree to brow and she his neck. She stepped back, so he could see her moist green eyes better, her half-open mouth, before she buried her head in the boy's chest, raised her face to give him her lips, before their comrades surrounded them, but not hugging the tree as they had…

"…how warm, Lola, how warm you are, and how much I already love you."

They made camp in the foothills, below the snow line. Miguel and Lorenzo gathered wood and made a fire. Lorenzo sat next to Lola and held her hand once more. María took a dented cup out of her knapsack, filled it with snow, and let the snow melt over the fire. Then she took out a chunk of goat cheese. Nuri pulled some wrinkled Lipton tea bags out of her bosom, and everyone laughed at the face of the English yachtsman smiling on the labels.

Nuri told how they'd packed the tobacco and condensed milk sent by the Americans before Barcelona fell. Nuri was plump and jolly and had worked before the war in a textile factory, but then María started talking, recalling the days when she'd studied in Madrid and lived in the Student Residence and went out on strike against Primo de Rivera and wept at each new play by García Lorca.

"I'm writing to you with the paper resting on my knees as I listen to these girls talk, and I try to tell them how much I love Spain, and the only thing I can think to talk about is my first visit to Toledo, a city I imagined to be the way EI Greco painted it-enveloped in a thunderstorm, with lightning flashes and greenish clouds, set over a wide Tagus, a city-how shall I put it?-at war against itself. And I found a city bathed in sunlight, a sunny, silent city with its old fortress bombed out, because El Greco's picture-I try to tell them-is all of Spain, and if the Tagus in the real Toledo is narrower, the Tagus of Spain splits the country apart. That's what I've seen here, Papa. That's what I try to tell them…"

That's what he told them, before Miguel told now he'd joined Colonel Asencio's brigade and how hard it had been for him to learn to fight. He told them that everyone in the Republican army was very brave, but they needed more than bravery to win. They had to know how to fight. And amateur soldiers take a long time to understand that there are rules about security and that it's better to go on living so as to go on fighting. Moreover, once they learned how to defend themselves, they still had to learn how to attack. And when they learned all that, they still had to learn the hardest lesson of all, how to master themselves, overcome their habits, their need for comfort. Miguel criticized the anarchists because, he said, they were defeatists, and criticized the arms merchants who promised weapons to the Republic they'd already sold to Franco. He said his greatest sorrow, the one he'd carry to his grave, was that all the workers of the world had not taken up arms to defend Spain, because if Spain lost, it was as if al of them lost. He said that and broke a cigarette in half, giving part of it to the Mexican. They both smoked, he next to Dolores, and he passed his to her so she could smoke, too.

They heard heavy artillery in the distance. From their campsite, they could see a yellowish glow, a fan of dust rising in the night. "Figueras," said Miguel. "They're shelling Figueras."

They looked out toward Figueras. Lola was next to him. She didn't speak to all them. Only to him, in a low voice, as they watched the far-off dust and listened to the noise. She said she was twenty-two, three years older than he, so he pretended to be even older and said he'd already turned twenty-four. She said she was from Albacete and that she'd gone to war to be with her boyfriend. They'd studied together-chemistry-and she followed him, but Franco's Moroccan troops had shot him at Oviedo. He told her he was from Mexico, and that he lived where it was hot, near the sea, a place full of fruit. She asked him to tell her about tropical fruits and laughed at the names she'd never heard and told him that mamey sounded like a poison and guanábana like a bird. He told her he loved horses and when he first came he'd been in the cavalry, but now there were no more horses, or anything else, for that matter. She told him she'd never been on a horse; he tried to explain the pleasure of horseback riding, especially on the beach at dawn, when the air smells of iodine and the north wind is letting up but it's still raining lightly and the foam raised by the horse's hooves mixes with the drizzle, and how he'd ride shirtless, his lips caked with salt. That she liked. She said that maybe he still had the taste of salt on his mouth, and kissed him. The others had gone to sleep next to the fire, which was dying out. He got up to stir it, with Lola's taste fresh in his mouth. He saw that the others had fallen asleep hugging one another to keep warm, and he went back to Lola. She opened his sheepskin-lined jacket, and he clasped his hands around her back, over her rough work shirt, and covered his back with the jacket. She whispered that they should choose a place to meet in case they were separated. He told her they'd meet in a café he knew near the statue of Cybele when they liberated Madrid, and she answered that they'd see each other in Mexico, and he said yes, in the main plaza in the port of Veracruz, under the arches, in the Parroquia Café. They would have coffee and crabs.

She smiled and so did he, and he said he wanted to mess her hair and kiss her and she beat him to it, snatching off his cap and tangling his hair while he slipped his hands under her shirt, caressed her back, sought her unfettered breasts and then he didn't think about anything and neither did she, certainly not, because her voice didn't say words, emptying all her thoughts into that continuous murmur that was thank you I love you don't ever forget me…

They clamber their way over the mountain, and for the first time Miguel walks with difficulty, but not because of the climb, even though it's steep. The cold has gotten to his feet, a cold with sharp teeth they all fell in their faces. Dolores leans on her lover's arm, and if he catches a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, he can see she's worried, but if he looks her in the eye, she looks back with a smile. All he asks-all any of them asks-is that it now snow. He's the only one with a weapon, and he has only two bullets. Miguel has told them they have nothing to worry about.

"I'm not afraid. The border's on the other side. Tonight we'll be in France, in a house and in bed. We'll have a nice hot meal. I remember you and I think you wouldn't be ashamed, you would have done the same thing I'm doing. You fought, too, and you'd be proud to know that there's always one who goes to war. I know you'd be proud. But now this fight's coming to an end. As soon as we cross the border, this late arrival to the international brigades calls it quits and begins a new life. I'll never forget this one, Papa, because I learned everything I know here. It's simple. I'll tell you everything when I get back. Just now I can't think of the right words."

With one finger, he touched the letter in the inside pocket of his shirt. He couldn't open his mouth in this cold. He was panting. White steam seeped between his clenched teeth. They were moving so slowly. The column of refugees was so long they couldn't see the far end of it. Ahead of them were the carts full of wheat and sausages the peasants were taking to France; the women carrying mattresses and blankets, the men carrying paintings, chairs, pitchers, mirrors. The peasants said they would plant crops in France. They moved forward slowly. There were children as well, some just infants. The land up in the mountains was dry, harsh, thorny, full of scrub. They were scrabbling their way over the mountain. He felt Dolores's fist at his side and also felt that he had to save her, protect her. He loved her more than he did last night. And he knew that tomorrow he'd love her more than he did today. She loved him as well. There was no need to say it. They liked each other. That's it. We like each other. They already knew how to laugh together. They had things to tell each other.

Dolores left him and ran to María, who had stopped by a boulder, holding her hand to her forehead. She said it was nothing. She suddenly felt so tired. They had to get out of the way of the red faces, the frozen hands, the heavy carts. María repeated that she suddenly felt a little dizzy. Lola took her by the arm, and they started walking again. It was then, yes, then that they heard the noise of a motor coming closer. They stopped. They couldn't find the plane. Everyone looked for it, but the sky was milky. Miguel was the first to see the black wings, the swastika, and the first to shout, "Down! Everybody down!"

Everyone hit the dirt, squeezed between rocks, under the carts. Everyone-except that rifle which still had two bullets in it. And it doesn't fire, rusty damn piece of junk, it doesn't fire no matter how hard he squeezes the trigger, standing there in plain view, until the noise passes over their heads, fills them with that swift shadow and the fusillade that spatters on the ground and ricochets off the rocks…

"Down, Lorenzo, get down, you damn fool Mexican!"

Down, down, down, Lorenzo, and those new boots on the dry earth, Lorenzo, and your rifle in the dirt, damn fool Mexican, and a vertigo inside your stomach, as if you were carrying the ocean in your guts, and your face already in the dust with your open green eyes and half asleep, between sun and night, as she screams and you know that, after all, your boots will be of some use to poor old Miguel with his blond beard and white wrinkles, and in a minute Dolores will throw herself on you, Lorenzo, and Miguel will tell her it's useless, crying for the first time, they had better keep going, life is on the other side of the mountains, life and freedom, because that's the way it is, those were the words he wrote: they took the letter with them, they took it out of his stained shirt, she squeezed it in her hands, what heat!, if the snow falls, it will bury him, when you kissed him again, Dolores, clinging to his body, and he wanted to bring you to the sea, on horseback, before touching his own blood and falling asleep with you in his eyes…how green…don't forget…

I'd tell myself the truth, if I didn't feel my white lips, if I weren't doubled over, unable to hold myself together, if I could bear the weight of the bedclothes, if I didn't stretch out again, twisted, face down, so I could vomit this phlegm, this bile: I would tell myself that it wasn't enough to repeat time and place, pure permanence; I would tell myself that something more, a desire I never expressed, forced me to lead him-oh, I don't know, I just can't realize-yes, to force him to find the ends of the thread I broke, to tie up the broken ends of my life, to finish off my other fate, the second part that I could not complete, and all she can do, sitting there at my side, is ask me:

"Why was it that way? Tell me: why? I raised him for a different kind of life. Why did you take him away from me?"

"Didn't he send the very son he'd spoiled to his death? Didn't he separate him from you and me just to warp his mind? Isn't all that true?"

"Teresa, your father isn't listening to you…"

"He's faking. He closes his eyes and makes believe."

"Quiet."

"Quiet."

I just don't know anymore. But I do see them. They've come in. The mahogany door opens, it closes, and you can't hear them walking on the thick rug. They've closed the windows. They've drawn the curtains with a hiss, the gray curtains. They've come in.

"I'm…I'm Gloria…"

The fresh, sweet sound of banknotes and new bonds when a man like me picks them up in his hand. The smooth acceleration of a luxury automobile, custom-made, with climate control, a bar, telephone, with armrests and footrests, what do you say, priest? will it be the same up there, what do you say?

"I want to go back there, to the land…"

"Why did it have to be that way? Tell me: why? I raised him for a different kind of life. Why did you take him away?"

And she doesn't realize that there's something more painful than the abandoned body, than the ice and sun that buried it, than its eyes open forever, devoured by the birds. Catalina stops rubbing the cotton over my temples and walks away and I don't know if she's crying. I try to raise my hand to find her; the effort sends shooting paints from my arm to my chest and from my chest to my stomach. Despite the abandoned body, despite the ice and the sun that buried it, despite its eyes open forever, eaten by the birds, there is something worse: this vomit I can't hold back, this need to defecate that I can't hold back yet I can't do it, I can't get these gases out of my puffed-up stomach, I can't stop this diffuse pain, can't find the pulse in my wrist, can't feel my legs now, my blood is exploding, it's pouring inside me, that's right, inside, I know it and they don't and I can't convince them, they don't see it run out my lips, between my legs. They don't believe it, all they say is that I no longer have a temperature, ah, temperature, all they say is collapse, collapse, all they guess is tumefaction, tumefaction of the fluid areas, that's what they say as they hold me down, poke me, talk about marble spots, that's right, I can hear them violet marble spots on my stomach which I can't feel anymore, I can't see anymore. Despite the abandoned body, despite the ice and sun that buried it, despite the eyes open forever, devoured by the birds, there is something worse: not being able to remember him, being able to remember only through photographs, through objects left in the bedroom, books with notes written in them. But what does his sweat smell of? Nothing catches the color of his skin: I have no thought of it when I can no longer see it or feel it.

That morning I was on horseback.

That I remember: I received a letter with foreign stamps on it.

But to think of it.

Ah, I dreamed, imagined, found out of those names, remembered those songs, oh, thank you, but knowing, how can I know? I don't know, I don't know what the war was like, whom he spoke with before dying, the names of the men and women who accompanied him to his death, what he said, what he thought, what he was wearing, what he had to eat that day. I don't know any of it. I invent landscapes, cities, names, and I just don't remember them anymore: Miguel, José, Federico, Luis? Consuelo, Dolores, María, Esperanza, Mercedes, Nuri, Guadalupe, Esteban, Manuel, Aurora? Guadarrama, Pyrenees, Figueras, Toledo, Teruel, Ebro, Guernica, Guadalajara? The abandoned body, the ice and the sun that buried it, the eyes open forever, devoured by the birds.

Oh, thank you for showing me what my life could be.

Oh, thank you for living that day for me.

But there is something more painful.

What? what? That really exists, that really is mine. That's really what it's like to be God, for certain, isn't it?-to be feared and hated and whatever, that's what being God is, really, right? All right, priest, tell me how I can save all that, and I'll let you go through the ceremony, I'll strike myself on the chest, walk on my knees to the sanctuary, drink vinegar and crown myself with thorns. Tell me how to save all that, because the spirit…

"…of the Son and of the Holy Ghost…"

There is something more painful.

"No, if that were the case, there would be a soft tumor, but there would also be a dislocation or a partial displacement of one or another of the major organs…"

"I'll say it again: it's the valvulae. That pain can only be caused by the twisting of the intestinal folds, which in turn causes the occlusion…"

"If that's the case, then we've got to operate…"

"Gangrene might be developing right now, and we couldn't do a thing…"

"Obviously, there's cyanosis…"

"Facies…"

"Hypothermia…"

"Lipothymia…"

Shut up…Shut up!

"Open the windows."

I can't move, I don't know where to look, where to go; I don't feel any temperature, only the cold that comes and goes in my legs, but not the cold or heat of everything else, of everything hidden that I never saw…

"Poor girl…She's had quite a shock…"

…Shut up…I can guess what my face is like, don't say a word…I know I've got blackened nails, bluish skin…shut up…

"Appendicitis?"

"We've got to operate."

"It's risky."

"I'll say it again: a kidney stone. Give him two centigrams of morphine and he'll be all right."

"It's risky."

"He's not hemorrhaging."

Thank you very much. I could have died at Perales. I could have died with that soldier. I could have died in that bare room, sitting across from that fat man. I survived. You died. Thank you very much.

"Hold him down. Bring the basin."

"See how he ended up? Do you see? Just like my brother. That's how he ended up."

"Hold him down. Bring the basin."

Hold him down. He's going. Hold him down. He's vomiting. He's vomiting that taste that he only smelled before He can't even turn his head anymore. He vomits face up. He's vomiting over his shit. It's pouring over his lips, down his jaw. His excrement. The women scream. They scream. I don't hear them, but someone has to scream. It's not happening. This is not happening. Someone has to scream so that this won't happen. They hold me down, they keep me still. No more. He's going. He's going without a thing, naked. Without his things. Hold him down. He's going.

You will read the letter, sent from a concentration camp, with foreign stamps, signed Miguel, which will be folded around the other, written hastily, signed Lorenzo. You will receive that letter, you will read: "I'm not afraid…I remember you…You wouldn't be ashamed…I'll never forget this life, Papa, because I learned everything I know here…I'll tell you everything when I get back." You will read and you will choose again: you will choose another life.

You will choose to leave him in Catalina's hands, you will not bring him to that land, you will not put him at the edge of his choice; you will not push him into that mortal destiny, which could have been your own. You will not force him to do what you did not do, to ransom your lost life. You will not permit that this time you die on some rocky path and she be saved.

You will choose to embrace that wounded soldier who enters the providential woods, to lay him down, cleanse his wounded arm with water from the tiny spring scorched by the desert, bandage him, stay with him, keep him breathing with your own breath, wait, wait until both of you are found, captured, shot in a town with a forgotten name, like that dusty one, like that one of adobe and thatched roofs: until they shoot the soldier and you, two nameless, naked men buried in the common grave of those sentenced to death, who have no tombstone. Dead at the age of twenty-four, with no more avenues, no more labyrinths, no more choices-dead, holding the hand of a nameless soldier saved by you. Dead.

You will say to Laura: yes.

You will say to the fat man in the bare room painted indigo blue: no.

You will choose to stay with Bernal and Tobias, take your chances with them, not go to that bloody patio to justify yourself, to think that by killing Zagal you paid for the killing of your comrades.

You will not visit old Gamaliel in Puebla.

You will not take Lilia when she comes back that night, you will not think that you will never again be able to have another woman.

You will break the silence of that night, you will speak to Catalina, you will ask her to forgive you, you will speak to her about those who died for you, you will ask her to accept you as you are, with your sins, you will ask her not to hate you but to take you as you are.

You will stay with Lunero on the hacienda, you will never abandon that place.

You will stay at the side of your teacher Sebastián-what a man he was, what a man. You will not go out and join the Revolution in the north.

You will be a peon.

You will be a blacksmith.

You will remain an outsider with all those who remained outsiders.

You will not be Artemio Cruz, you will not be seventy-one years old, you will not weigh a hundred and seventy-four pounds, you will not be five feet eight inches tall, you will not have false teeth, you will not smoke French cigarettes, you will not wear Italian silk shirts, you will not collect cuff-links, you will not order your ties from a New York shop, you will not wear blue, three-button suits, you will not prefer Irish twill, you will not drink gin and tonic, you will not have a Volvo, a Cadillac, and a Rambler station wagon, you will not remember and love that painting by Renoir, you will not eat poached eggs on toast with Black-well's marmalade, you will not every morning read a newspaper you yourself own, you will not leaf through Life and Paris Match some nights, you will not be listening to that incantation next to you, that chorus, that hatred which wants to wrench your life away from you before it's time, which invokes, invokes, invokes, invokes what you could have smilingly imagined just a short time ago and which you will not tolerate now.

De profundis clamavi.

De profundis clamavi.

Look at me now, listen to me, shine a light into my eyes, don't put me to sleep in death / Because on the day you eat from his table you will certainly die / Don't rejoice in the death of another, remember that we all die / Death and hell were cast into the pit of flame and this was the second death / That which I fear, that is what comes to me, that which strikes me with terror, that possesses me / How bitter is your memory for the man satisfied with his riches / Have the portals of death opened for you? / Sin came into the world through woman, and because of woman we all must die / Have you seen the portals of the region of darkness? / Your weakness for the poor and the drained of strength is good / And what fruit did they obtain, then? Those for which they now feel shame, because their end is death / Because the appetite of the flesh is death.

Word of God, life, profession of death, de profundis clamavi, Domine,

omnes eodem cogimur, omnium versatur urna

quae quasi saxum Tantaleum semper impendet

quid quisque vitet, numquam homini satis cautum

est in horas

mors tandem inclusum protrahet inde caput

nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet

atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus

Omnia te vita perfuncta sequentur

Chorus, sepulchre; voices, pyre; you will imagine, in the zone of forgetting of your consciousness, those rites, those ceremonies, those twilights: burial, cremation, balm. Exposed at the top of a tower, so that the air, not the earth, will disintegrate you: locked in the tomb with your dead slaves; wept over by paid mourners; buried with your most highly prized objects, your entourage, your black jewels: vigil, guarding,

requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine de profundis clamavi, Domine

Laura's voice, as she spoke of these things, sitting on the floor with her knees bent, with the small bound book in her hands…says that everything can be fatal to us, even that which gives us life…she says that since we cannot cure death, misery, ignorance, we would do well, in order to be happy, not to think about them…she says that only sudden death is to be feared; which is why confessors live in the houses of the powerful…she says be a man, fear death when you're out of danger, not in danger…she says the premeditation of death is the premeditation of freedom…she says how softly you tread, oh, cold death…she says the hours will never forgive you, the hours that are filing down the days…she says, showing me the taut knot cut…she says is not my door made of double thicknesses of metal?…she says a thousand deaths await me, since I expect only my life…she says how can man want to live when God wants him to die…she says, of what use are treasures, vassals, servants…

What use? what use? Let them intone, let them sing, let them wail. They will not touch the sumptuous carving, the opulent inlay, the gold-and-stucco moldings, the vestry dresser of bone and tortoiseshell, the metal plates and door handles, the paneled coffers with iron keyholes, the aromatic benches of ayacahuite

wood, the choir seats, the baroque crownwork and drapery, the curved chairbacks, the shaped cross-beams, the polychromed corbels, the bronze-headed tacks, the worked leather, the claw-and-ball cabriole feet, the chasubles of silver thread, the damask armchairs, the velvet sofas, the refectory tables, the cylinders and amphora, the beveled game tables, the canopied, linen beds, the fluted posts, the coats of arms and the orles, the merino rugs, the iron keys, the canvases done in four panels, the silks and cashmeres, the wools and taffetas, the crystal and the chandeliers, the hand-painted china, the burnished beams, they will touch none of that. That will be yours.

You will stretch out your hand.

A day, which, nevertheless, will be an exceptional day; three or four years ago; you will not remember; you will remember by remembering; no, you will remember because the first thing that you remember when you try to remember is a separate day, a day of ceremony, a day separated from the rest by red numbers; and this will be the day-you yourself will think it then-on which all the names, persons, words, and deeds of a cycle ferment and make the crust of the earth groan; it will be a night when you will celebrate the New Year; your arthritic fingers will have difficulty grasping the wrought-iron handrail; you will jab your other hand deep into your jacket pocket and descend laboriously.

You will stretch out your hand.