The Death of Artemio Cruz

(1919: May 20)

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.

"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.

"Who owes money to this Don Gamaliel, then?"

"Well…It would be easier to tell you who doesn't, I think."

"Is he friendly with anyone around here? Is there someone he's close to?"

"Sure. Father Páez, right around the corner."

"But didn't he buy all the Church land?"

"Sure…but the Father grants eternal salvation to Don Gamaliel and Don Gamaliel grants salvation on earth to the Father."

The sun blinded them as they stepped into the street.

"Blood will tell, they say. And that gal's sure got good blood."

"Who is that woman?"

"Can't you guess, Colonel? That's our hero's little girl."

Staring at the toes of her shoes, she walked along the old streets laid out like a chessboard. When he could no longer hear the echo of her heels on the paving stones and his steps had raised a could of dry, gray dust, he looked toward the walls of the ancient fortress-temple and the almond-shaped stones in its battlements. He crossed the wide esplanade and entered the silent nave. Once again, the footsteps echoed. He walked toward the altar.

The priest was rotund, his skin lifeless; only his coal-black eyes, set deep in his inflamed cheekbones, glowed with life. As soon as he saw the unknown man walking the length of the nave-and he spied on him, hidden behind a large screen, in ancient times a choir for the nuns, who later fled Mexico City, during the liberal Republic-the priest recognized in his movements the unconsciously martial air of a man accustomed to being on guard, accustomed to command and to attack. It was not just the ever so slight deformity of the horseman's lower legs; it was a certain nervous strength in his fist that came from daily contact with pistol and bridle. Even though the man was merely walking with his fist clenched, this was enough for Páez to recognize in him a disturbing power. Up in the nuns' secret place, he concluded that such a man was not there for devotional purposes. He lifted the hem of his cassock and slowly walked down the spiral staircase that led to the abandoned convent. Hem held high, shoulders raised until they almost reached his ears, body black and face white and bloodless, eyes penetrating, he descended with careful steps. The stairs urgently needed repair; his predecessor had stumbled in 1910, with fatal consequences. But Remigio Páez, looking like a puffed-up bat, could pierce all the dark corners of the black, humid, frightening cube. The darkness and the danger aroused all his senses and made him reflect: a military man in his church, dressed in civilian clothes, with no company or escort? Such a sight was too strange to pass unnoticed. He had, of course, foreseen it. The battles, the violence, the sacrilege, all of it would pass (he thought about the order, given barely two years before, that did away with all the chasubles and all the sacred vessels), and the Church, everlasting, built to endure eternally, would come to an understanding with the powers of the earthly city. A military man in civilian clothes…with no escort…

Down he came, one hand on the swollen wall, through which a dark line seeped. The priest recalled that the rainy season would soon begin. He had already taken it upon himself, with all his powers, to point it out from the pulpit and in each confession that he heard: it is a sin, a grave sin against the Holy Spirit, to refuse to receive the gifts of heaven; no one can plot against the intentions of Providence, and Providence has ordered things as they are, and thus people should accept all things; everyone should go out and work the fields, bring in the crops, deliver the fruits of the earth to their legitimate owner, a Christian owner who pays for the obligations of his privilege by punctually delivering his tithes to Holy Mother Church. God punishes rebellion, and Lucifer is overwhelmed by the Archangels Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Galaliel…Gamaliel.

"And justice, Father?"

"Final justice will be meted out above, my son. Do not seek it in this vale of tears."

Words, murmured the priest when he rested at last on the solid floor, shaking the dust off his cassock; words, miserable strings of syllables that fire the blood and the illusions of those who should be content to pass quickly through this short life and enjoy, in exchange for their mortal trials, eternal life. He crossed the cloister and walked toward a vaulted corridor. Justice! For whom? For how long? Life could be so agreeable for everyone if everyone understood the finality of their destiny and did not go about digging into things, stirring things up, desiring more…

"Yes, I believe so; yes, I believe so…" repeated the priest in a low voice, and he opened the carved door of the sacristy.

"Admirable work, isn't it?" he said as he approached the tall man standing before the altar. "The monks showed prints and engravings to the native artisans and they turned their own style into Christian forms…They say there is an idol, because it no longer demands blood, as the pagan gods did…"

"Are you Páez?"

"Remigio Páez," he said with a twisted smile. "And you, General, Colonel, Major…?"

"Just plain Artemio Cruz."

"Ah."

When the lieutenant colonel and the priest said goodbye at the portals of the church, Páez folded his hands over his stomach and watched his visitor walk away. The clear blue morning sharpened and seemed to draw closer the lines of the two volcanoes: the couple consisting of the sleeping woman and her solitary guardian. He squinted: he couldn't stand that bright light. He gave thanks as he observed the black clouds that would soon moisten the valley and extinguish the sun, as they did every afternoon with a punctual gray storm.

He turned his back on the valley and returned to the shade of the convent. He rubbed his hands. The haughtiness and the insults of this upstart did not matter to him. If that was the only way to save the situation and permit Don Gamaliel to spend the last years of his life safe from all danger, it would not be Remigio Páez, Minister of the Lord, who would upset things with a display of indignation and a crusader's zeal. On the contrary: now he patted himself on the back, thinking about the wisdom of humility. If what this man wanted was to humiliate him, Father Páez would listen to him today and tomorrow with his eyes lowered, at times nodding yes, as if painfully accepting the blame this powerful fool cast on the Church. He took his black hat off its hook, set it carelessly on his head of chestnut hair, and headed for the house of Don Gamaliel Bernal.

"Of course he can do it!" affirmed the old man that afternoon, after talking with the priest. "But I wonder what trick he'll use to get in here. He told Father Páez he'd come to see me today. No…I'm not sure I understand, Catalina."

She raised her face. She rested a hand on her crocheting, where she was carefully working a floral design. Three years before, they had received the message: Gonzalo was dead. From that day on, father and daughter had grown closer, until they'd transformed that slow passing of the afternoons, as they sat on the wicker patio furniture, into something more than a consolation: into a custom which, according to the old man, would last until he died. What did it matter that yesterday's power and wealth were crumbling; perhaps that was the tribute that had to be paid to time and old age. Don Gamaliel fortified himself in a passive struggle. He would not go out to take control of the peasants, but he would never accept an illegal invasion. He would not demand that his debtors pay back both interest and principal, but they would never get another penny from him.

He was hoping that one day they would come back to him on their knees, when need forced them to abandon their pride. But he would remain steadfast in his own. And now…here comes this stranger who promises to give loans to all the peasants at a rate much lower than that demanded by Don Gamaliel. Moreover, he has the effrontery to suggest that the old estate owner hand over all his privileges-and for nothing more than a promise to pay back the fourth part of whatever money can be recouped. Take it or leave it.

"Just as I suspected. His demands won't stop there, either."

"The land?"

"Certainly. He's plotting to take my land from me, don't think he isn't."

As she did every afternoon, she went from one brightly painted cage to another, covering them after observing the nervous movements of the mockingbirds and robins that pecked the seeds and chirped one last time before the sun disappeared.

The old man did not expect a trick of such enormity. The last man to see Gonzalo, his cell mate, the bearer of his last words of love for his father, his sister, his wife, and his son.

"He told me Gonzalo thought about Luisa and the boy before he died."

"Dad. We agreed that we were not going to…"

"I didn't tell him a thing. He doesn't know that she remarried and that my grandson has another name."

"You haven't said a word about all that for three years. Why bring it up now?"

"It's true. We've forgiven him, haven't we? I think we should forgive him for having gone over to the enemy. I think we should try to understand him…"

"I always thought that every afternoon you and I were forgiving him in silence."

"That's it, that's it. Exactly. You understand me without our having to speak. How comforting that is! You understand me…"

Which is why, when that expected, feared guest-because someone, someday, had to appear and say, "I saw him. I met him. He remembered you"-did appear and put forth his perfect pretext, without even mentioning the real problems of the peasant revolt and the suspended payments, Don Gamaliel, after showing him into the library, excused himself and walked rapidly (this old man who thought a measured pace was a sign of elegance) to Catalina's bedroom.

"Fix yourself up. Take off that black dress. Make yourself attractive. Come to the library at seven o'clock sharp."

He said nothing more. She would obey him: this would be the test of all those melancholy afternoons. She would understand. This one trump was left to save the situation. All Don Gamaliel had to do was feel the presence and guess the will of this man in order to understand-or to say to himself-that any delay would be suicidal, that it was difficult to disobey him, that the sacrifice he was demanding was small and, in a way, not really repugnant. He'd been alerted by Father Páez: a tall man, full of vigor, with hypnotic green eyes and a curt way of speaking. Artemio Cruz.

Artemio Cruz. So that was the name of the new world rising out of the civil war; that was the name of those who had come to take his place. Unfortunate land-the old man said, as he returned, slowly once again, to the library and that undesired but fascinating presence-unfortunate land that has to destroy its old possessors with each new generation and put in their place new owners just as rapacious and ambitious as the old ones. The old man imagined himself the final product of a peculiarly Creole civilization, a civilization of enlightened despots. He took pleasure in thinking of himself as a father, sometimes a hard father but always a provider and always the repository of a tradition of good taste, courtesy, and culture.

That's why he'd brought him to the library. There the venerable-almost sacred-quality of what Don Gamaliel was and symbolized was more in evidence. But the guest did to allow himself to be impressed. The fact that this man had a completely new idea of life, one hammered out on the forge of experience, one that allowed him to put his life on the line because he knew he had nothing to lose, did not escape the keen eye of the old man as he rested his head on the back of the leather chair and squinted to get a better look at his opponent. The stranger didn't even mention the real reasons for his visit. Don Gamaliel realized things would proceed better that way. Perhaps the visitor understood the situation with as much subtlety as he did, although Don Gamaliel's motivation-ambition-might have been stronger. The old man smiled as he remembered that feeling, for him merely a word, the urgent impulse to take advantage of rights won through sacrifice, struggle, wounds, that saber scar on his forehead. Don Gamaliel was not the only one to reach these conclusions. On the silent lips and in the eloquent gaze of the other man was written what the old man, now playing with his magnifying glass, knew well how to read.

The stranger didn't move a muscle when Don Gamaliel walked to his desk to take out that paper, the list of his debtors. So much the better. If things went on this way, they would understand each other perfectly; perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to mention those annoying matters, perhaps everything would be resolved in a more elegant manner. The young military man quickly learned the style of power, Don Gamaliel repeated to himself, and this sense of shared knowledge smoothed the way for the bitter business with which reality forced him to deal.

"But didn't you see how he looked at me?" shouted the girl when the guest had said goodbye. "Didn't you see his lust…the filth in his eyes?"

"Yes, yes, of course." The old man calmed his daughter with his hands. "It's only natural. You may not know it, but you are very beautiful. The problem is, you scarcely ever leave this house. It's only natural."

"I'll never leave!"

Don Gamaliel slowly lit the cigar that stained his thick mustache and the roots of his beard yellow. "I thought you would understand."

"What did Father Páez tell you? He's an atheist! A godless man who has no respect for anything…And did you believe that story he made up?"

"Calm down, now. Fortunes are not always made by the godly, you know."

"Did you believe that story? Why did Gonzalo have to die, instead of this person? If the two of them were condemned, in the same cell, why aren't the two of them dead? I know what he's up to, I know: all that claptrap he came here to tell us isn't true. He made it up to humiliate you and so that I…"

Don Gamaliel stopped rocking. Everything had been going along so well, so calmly! And now, out of her woman's intuition, came the same objections the old man had already thought up and already rejected as pointless.

"You have the imagination of a twenty-year-old girl." He stood up and extinguished his cigar. "But since you seem to prefer me to be frank, I'll be frank. This man can save us. And that's all that matters…"

He sighed and stretched out his arms to touch his daughter's hands. "Think about your father's final years. Don't I deserve a little…?"

"Yes, Father, I haven't said anything…"

"And think about yourself."

She lowered her head. "Yes, I understand. I've known something like this would happen ever since Gonzalo left home. If only he were alive…"

"But he isn't."

"He didn't think about me. Who knows what he thought about."

Beyond the circle of light cast by the oil lamp that Don Gamaliel held high, along the old, chilly hallways, the girl forced herself to recall those old, confused images. She recalled the tense, sweaty faces of Gonzalo's schoolmates, the long arguments in the room at the back of the house; she remembered her brother's glowing, stubborn, anxious face, his nervous body that sometimes seemed to exist outside reality, his love of comfort, good dinners, wine, books, and his periodic outbursts of rage in which he denounced his own sensual, conformist tendencies. She remembered the coldness of Luisa, her sister-in-law, the violent arguments that turned to silence whenever the "daughter of the house" entered the room; how Luisa's weeping drowned in hysterical laughter when his death was announced to them; how one day she silently departed at dawn when she thought everyone was asleep but the young woman was peeking out from behind the living-room curtains: the hard hand of the man wearing a bowler and carrying a walking stick who took Luisa's hand and helped her and the boy enter the black coach laden with the widow's baggage.

She could only avenge that death-Don Gamaliel kissed her forehead and opened her bedroom door-by embracing this man, by embracing him but denying him the tenderness he would seek in her. By killing him in life, distilling bitterness until he was poisoned. She looked into the mirror, vainly searching for the new features this change should have imprinted on her face. That would be the way for her and her father to avenge Gonzalo's having abandoned them, avenge his idiotic idealism: by giving away this twenty-year-old-girl-why did thinking about herself, about her youth, bring her to tears?-to the man who was with Gonzalo during those final hours, hours of which she could have no memory, rejecting self-pity, pouring it out for her dead brother, without a sob of fury, without a tightening of her jaw: if no one explained the truth to her, she would cling to what she thought was the truth. She took off her black stockings. As her fingertips touched her legs, she closed her eyes; she must deny the memory of the rough, strong foot that sought out her own during dinner, flooding her bosom with a strange, uncontrollable feeling. Her body might not be God's creation-she knelt, pressing her laced fingers against her brows-but the creation of other bodies, but her spirit was. She would not allow that body to take a delightful, spontaneous path, to desire caresses, while her spirit demanded she take another. She pulled back the sheet and slipped into bed with her eyes closed. She stretched out her hand to put out the lamp. She put the pillow over her face. She mustn't think about that. No, no, no, mustn't think about it. There was nothing more to say. To say the other name, to tell her father about it. No. No. Humiliating her father was unnecessary. Next month, as soon as possible: and if that man enjoyed Catalina Bernal's fortune, her property, her body…what difference did it make…Ramón…No, not that name, never again. She slept.

"You said it yourself, Don Gamaliel," said the guest when he returned the next day. "It's impossible to stop the course of events. Let's turn over those plots to the peasants; after all, they're only good for dry farming, so no one's going to get much out of them. Let's give out those plots so they can be used only for small-scale farming. You'll see that, to thank us, they'll leave their women to work that dust and come back to take care of our good land. Think about it: you could turn out to be a hero of the agrarian-reform program, and it won't cost you a thing."

Amused, the old man observed him, smiling behind his thick beard. "Have you spoken to her?"

"I have…"

She could not contain herself. Her chin trembled when he lifted his hand to raise her closed-eyed face. He was touching that smooth, creamy, rosy skin for the first time. The two of them were surrounded by the penetrating smell of the plants in the patio, herbs suffocated by moisture, the odor of rotten earth. He loved her. As he touched her, he realized he loved her. He had to make her understand that his love was real, even if circumstances said the opposite. He could love her as he had loved once before, the first time: he knew he still possessed that time-proven tenderness. He touched the girl's hot cheeks again. Her rigidity, when she felt that strange hand on her skin, could not hold back the tightly squeezed tears that emerged from her eyelids. "You won't complain, because you will have nothing to complain about," whispered the man as he brought his face close to her lips-which avoided the contact. "I know how to love you…"

"We should thank you…for having thought of us," she answered in her lowest voice.

He opened his hand to caress Catalina's hair. "You understand, don't you? You are going to live by my side. You'll have to forget many things…I promise to respect what is yours…You must promise me that never again…"

She raised her eyes, narrowing them with a hatred she had never felt before. Her mouth was dry. Who was this monster? Who was this man who knew everything, who took everything, who destroyed everything?

"Don't say it…" said the girl as she eluded his embrace.

"I've already had a talk with him. He's a weakling. He didn't really love you. He was frightened from the start."

With her hand the girl cleansed the places he'd touched on her face. "Of course, he's not strong like you…He's not an animal, like you…"

She wanted to scream when he took her by the arm, smiled, and made a fist. "Your little Ramón is leaving Puebla. You'll never see him again…"

He released her. She walked toward the brightly colored cages in the patio: that trill of the birds. One by one, as he looked on, motionless, she opened the painted doors. A robin peeked out and then flew away. The mockingbird hesitated, accustomed to his water and seed. She took him up on her pinkie, kissed his wing, and sent him off. She closed her eyes when the last bird had gone, and allowed the man to take her arm, to lead her to the library, where Don Gamaliel was waiting patiently.

I feel hands that take me under my arms and raise me to make me more comfortable on the smooth cushions, and fresh linen that is like a balm for my body, which is both hot and cold. I feel all this, but when I open my eyes I see before me that newspaper hiding the face of the reader. I think that Vida Mexicana is there, will always be there every day, will come out every day, and there will be no human power to stop it. Teresa-who is reading the newspaper-drops it in alarm.

"Is something wrong? Do you feel sick?"

I have to calm her with my hand, and she picks up the newspaper. No. I feel content, perpetrator of a gigantic joke. Perhaps. Perhaps the master stroke would be to leave behind a special will the newspaper would publish, a testament in which I would tell the truth about my honest enterprise in the area of freedom of the press…No. I've excited myself and brought back the shooting pain in my stomach. I try to reach out to Teresa, to ask for help, but my daughter is immersed in the newspaper again. Earlier, I had seen the day extinguished beyond the windows and had heard the merciful noise of curtains. Now, in the half light of the bedroom with its high ceilings and oak closets, I can't make out the people standing farthest away. The room is very large, but she's there. She must be sitting stiffly, with her lace handkerchief in her hands, her face devoid of make up. Perhaps she doesn't hear me when I whisper: "That morning I waited for him happily. We crossed the river on horseback."

The only one listening to me is this stranger I've never seen before, with his smoothly shaven cheeks and black eyebrows. He's asking me to say an act of contrition; I'm thinking about the carpenter and the Virgin, and he's offering me the keys to heaven.

"Well, what would you say…in a situation like this…?"

I've caught him by surprise. And Teresa has to ruin everything by shouting: "Leave him alone, Father, leave him alone! Don't you see that there's nothing we can do! He wants to go to hell and die just as he's lived, cold, mocking everything…"

The priest holds her back with one arm as he brings his lips close to my ear, almost kissing me: "They don't have to hear us."

And I manage to grunt: "Okay, then, be a man and get these bitches out of here."

He stands up amid the indignant voices of the women and takes them by the arm, and Padilla comes closer. But they don't want that.

"No, counselor, we can't allow that."

"It's customary…for years, ma'am."

"Will you take responsibility?"

"Don Artemio…I've brought you everything we recorded this morning…"

I nod. I try to smile. The same as every day. A man you can count on, this Padilla.

"The outlet is next to the bureau."

"Thanks."

Yes, of course, that's my voice, the voice I had yesterday-yesterday? I can't tell the difference anymore-and I ask Pons, my managing editor-ah, the tape is screeching; adjust it, Padilla, I listened to my voice in reverse: it screeches like a cockatoo's. There I am:

"What do you think about this business, Pons?"

"It's bad, but it'll be a cinch to handle, at least for now."

"Then now's the time to get the paper moving on it, no holds barred, okay? Hit them where it hurts. Don't hold back."

"You're the boss, Artemio."

"Good thing we've prepared our readers for this one."

"They've been talking about it for years now."

"I want to see all the editorials and page one…Bring it all over to my house, any time of day or night."

"You know what to do, the same slant for every story. A brazen red plot. Alien infiltration totally foreign to the essence of the Mexican Revolution…"

"The good old Mexican Revolution!"

"…leaders controlled by foreign agents. Tombroni's really got to give it to them; Blanco is to blast them with a column in which he equates the leader with the Antichrist, and the cartoons have to be scathing…How are you feeling?"

"Not good. The usual thing. It'll pass. We'd all like to be the men we used to be, right?"

"The men we used to be…right."

"Tell Mr. Corkery to step in."

I cough on the tape. I hear the hinges on a door opening and closing. I feel nothing moving in my stomach, nothing, nothing, the gases don't move, no matter how I strain…But I see them. They've come in. The mahogany door opens, closes, and the footsteps on the thick rug are soundless. They've closed the windows.

"Open the windows."

"No, no. You could catch cold and complicate everything…"

"Open them."

"Are you worried, Mr. Cruz?"

"I am. Sit down, and I'll explain why. Would you like a drink? Wheel the cart over. I don't feel very well."

I hear the little wheels, the clink of the bottles.

"You look okay."

I hear ice falling into the glass, the pressure of soda being siphoned out.

"Look, I'll tell you what's at stake here, in case your people haven't grasped it. Tell the central office that if this so-called union clean-up campaign goes over, we might as well do as the bullfighters do and cut off our pigtails…"

"Pigtails?"

"I'll put it as plainly as I can. We're fucked…"

"Turn that off!" shrieks Teresa, running over to the tape recorder. "Where do you think you are, don't you have any manners at all?"

I manage to wave my hand, make a face. I miss a few words on the tape.

"…what these railroad leaders are proposing?"

Someone nervously blows his nose. Where?

"…explain it to the companies. God forbid they should be so naïve as to think this is a democratic movement-try to see my point of view-aimed at getting rid of some corrupt union bosses. It isn't that."

"I'm all ears, Mr. Cruz."

That's right, it must be the gringo who sneezes. Ah-ah-ah.

"No. No. You could catch cold and complicate everything."

"Open them."

I and not only I, other men, could sniff the breeze for the perfumes of other lands, the aromas drawn out of other noons by the wind. I sniff, I sniff. Far from me, far from this cold sweat, far from these inflamed gases. I made them open the window. I can smell whatever I like, amuse myself by choosing the smells the wind carries: yes, autumn forests; yes, leaves burning; oh, yes, ripe plums; yes, yes, the rotten tropics; yes, hard salt flats, pineapples split open with a machete, tobacco drying in the darkness, the smoke from locomotives, waves on the open sea, pine trees covered with snow; ah, metal and guano. How many tastes that everlasting movement brings and takes away. No, no, they won't let me live: they sit down again, they get up and walk and sit down again together, as if they were a single shadow, as if they couldn't think or act on their own. They sit down again, at the same time, with their backs to the window, to block the movement of air toward me, to suffocate me, to make me close my eyes and remember things and no longer let me see things, touch things, smell things. The damned pair of them, how long will it take them to bring in a priest, speed up my death, wrench confessions out of me? There he is still, on his knees, with his scrubbed face. I try to turn my back on him. The pain in my side stops me. Aaaay. It's almost over. I'll be free. I want to sleep. Here it comes again. Here it is. Aaah-ay. And the women. No, not these women. The women. The ones the love. What? Yes. No. I don't know. I've forgotten the face. By God, I've forgotten that face. No. I shouldn't forget it. Where is it? Ay, it was so pretty, that face, how could I ever forget it. It was mine, how could I ever forget it. Aaah-ay. I loved you, how can I forget you. You were mine, how can I forget you? What did you look like, please, what did you look like? How shall I invoke you? What? Why? Another injection? What? Why? No no no, something else, quick, I remember something else; that hurts, aaah-ay, that hurts, that puts me to sleep…that…

You will close your eyes, conscious of the fact that your eyelids are not opaque, that even though you close them the light reaches the retina: the sunlight that will stop, framed by the open window, at the same height as your closed eyes, your closed eyes that erase details from vision, that alter brilliance and color but do not eliminate vision itself-the light from the copper penny which will melt in the west. You will close your eyes and think you see more. You will see only what your brain wants you to see, more than what is offered by the world. You will close your eyes and the exterior world will no longer compete with your imaginative vision. You will lower your eyelids, and that immobile, unchanging, constant sunlight will create behind your eyelids another world in movement, light in movement, light that fatigues, frightens, confuses, makes you happy, sad. Behind your closed eyelids, you will know the intensity of a light that penetrates to the depth of that small, imperfect plaque to arouse sentiments contrary to your will, your condition. Nevertheless, you will close your eyes, feign deafness; stop touching something, even if it's the air, with your fingers, imagine an absolute insensibility; halt the flow of saliva across your tongue and palate, overcome the taste of your own self; impede your labored breathing, which will go on filling your lungs, your blood with life, choose a partial death. You will always see, always touch, always taste, always smell, always hear: you will have screamed when they pierced your skin with that needle filled with tranquilizer; you will scream before you feel any pain. The announcement of pain will travel to your brain before your skin actually feels the pain: it will travel to warn you about the pain you will feel, to put you on guard so that you will be aware, so that you will feel the pain more acutely, because awareness weakens us, turns us into victims when we realize that the powers will not consult us, will not take us into account.

There it is: the organs of pain, though slower, will overcome those of reflexive prevention.

And you will feel divided, a man who will receive and a man who will act, sensor man and motor man, man constructed of organs that feel, transmit feeling to the millions of minuscule fibers that spread toward your cerebral cortex, toward that surface on the upper half of the brain which for seventy-one years receives, stores, expends, denudes, returns the colors of the world, the feel of flesh, the tastes of life, the smells of the earth, the noises of the air: returning them to the frontal motor, to the nerves, muscles, and glands that will transform your body and the fraction of the exterior world that falls to you.

But in your half sleep the nerve fiber that carries the light impulse will not connect with the zone of vision. You will hear color, and you will touch sound, see smells, smell taste. You will stretch out your arms so as not to fall into the pit of chaos, to recover the order of your whole life, the order of the received fact, transmitted to the nerve, returned to the nerve transformed into an effect and once again into a fact. You will stretch out your arms and behind your closed eyes you will see the colors of your mind and finally you will feel, without seeing it, the origin of the touch that you hear: the sheets, the light touch of the sheets between your clenched fingers; you will open your hands and feel the sweat on your palms and perhaps you will remember that you were born without lifelines on your hand, without fortune, life, or love: you were born, you will be born with a smooth palm, but all you have to do is be born; after a few hours, that blank surface will be filled with signs, lines, portents. You will die with your dense lines worn out, but all you have to do is die for all trace of your destiny to disappear from your hands after a few hours.

Chaos has no plural.

Order, order: you will cling to the sheets and repeat in silence, within yourself, the sensations your brain houses, clarifies. With effort, you will mentally locate the places that alert you to thirst and hunger, perspiration and chills, balance and falling. You will find them in the lower brain, the servant, the domestic who carries out immediate functions and frees the other, the upper brain, for thought, imagination, desire: child of artifice, necessity, or chance, the world will not be simple; you cannot know it passively, allowing things to happen to you; you must think so that a combination of dangers does not defeat you, imagine so that mere guessing doesn't negate you, desire so that the web of uncertainty doesn't devour you: you shall survive.

You will recognize yourself.

You will recognize others and allow them-her-to recognize you; and you will know that you oppose every individual because each will be one more obstacle keeping you from reaching the objects of your desire.

You will desire: how you would like your desire and the object desired to be the same thing; how you will dream about instant gratification, about the total identification of desire and what is desired.

You will rest with your eyes closed, but you will not stop seeing, you will not stop desiring: you will remember, because that way you will make the desired thing yours: back, back, in nostalgia, you will make yours whatever you desire: not forward, back.

Memory is satisfied desire.

Survive through memory before it's too late.

Before chaos keeps you from remembering.