The Death of Artemio Cruz

(1913: December 4)

He felt the moist crook of the woman's knee next to his waist. Her perspiration was always like that, light and fresh: whenever he took his arm from around her waist, he felt the moisture of that crystalline liquid. He stretched out his hand to rub her back slowly and thought he fell asleep: he could stay that way for hours, just caressing Regina's back. When he closed his eyes, he grasped the infinite love in that young body embracing his: a lifetime would not be enough to travel and chart it, he thought, to explore that smooth, undulating geography with its black and pink irregularities. Regina's body waited, and he, without voice or vision, was spread out on the bed, touching its iron bars first with the tips of his fingers and then with his toes; he tried to touch both ends at the same time. They dwelled within this black crystal: dawn was still far off. The mosquito netting, weighing nothing, isolated them from everything outside their own bodies. He opened his eyes. Regina's cheek came close to his; his matted beard scratched her skin. The darkness was not enough. Regina's slanted eyes glowed, half open, like luminous black scars. She took a deep breath. The girl's hands clasped behind the man's neck, and once more their profiles joined. The heat of their thighs fused into a single flame. He breathed: a bedroom of blouses and starched skirts, quinces cut open on the walnut table, an extinguished bedside lamp. Closer to him, the briny smell of the moistened, soft woman. Her nails made a cat's claw sound on the sheets; her light legs rose again to entwine the man's waist. Her lips sought out his neck. Her nipples trembled joyfully when he touched them with his lips, laughing, pushing aside her long, tangled hair. Did Regina speak? He felt her breath close to him and he sealed her lips with his hand. Without tongue or eyes: only mute flesh abandoned to its own pleasure. She understood him. She snuggled closer to the man's body. Her hand descended to the man's sex; his hand felt for the hard, almost hairless sex: he remembered her standing there naked, young and firm when still but undulating and soft as she began to walk: when she went to bathe in privacy, when she closed the curtains, when she fanned the coals in the brazier. They fell asleep again, each one possessed by the center of the other. Only their hands, one hand, moved in sleep, in their smiling sleep.

"I'll follow you."

"Where will you live?"

"I'll slip into each town before you take it. And I'll wait for you there."

"You'll leave everything behind?"

"I'll bring some clothes. You'll give me money to buy fruit and food, and I'll wait for you. When you get into town, I'll already be there. All I need is something to wear."

That skirt hanging over the chair in the rented room. When she's awake, he likes to touch her and also touch her things: her combs, her little black shoes, her small earrings left on the table. In those moments, he wishes he could give her something more than these days of separation and difficult reunions. An unforeseen command, having to track the enemy, a defeat that forced them to retreat north, had already separated them for weeks on other occasions. But she, like a sea gull, seemed able to read the ebb and flow of the revolutionary tide through the thousand shifts in the fighting and the fortunes of war: if she didn't turn up in the town they'd agreed on, she'd appear, sooner or later, in another. She would go from town to town, asking for his battalion, listening to the answers of the women and the old men left there.

"It's been about two weeks since they passed through here."

"They say there's not a one of them still alive."

"Who knows. They might come back. They forgot a few cannons when they left."

"Watch out for the federales, they shoot anyone who helps the rebels."

And they'd end up finding each other again, just as they did now. She would have the room ready with fruit and food, her skirt tossed over a chair. She would wait for him like that, ready, as if she did not want to waste a minute on unnecessary things. But nothing is unnecessary. Seeing her walk, make the bed, loosen her hair, then take off the rest of her clothes, kissing her whole body as she stood there, he kneels, outlines her body with his lips, enjoys the taste of her skin and her fine hair, the moisture of her seashell: gathering in his mouth the tremors of the standing girl who will finally take the man's head in her hands to make him rest, to keep his lips in one place. And, still standing, she will let herself go, squeezing his head with a broken sigh until he feels she is finished and he carries her in his arms to the bed.

"Artemio, will I ever see you again?"

"Never ask that question. Pretend that we've only just met."

She never asked again. She was ashamed of having done it, even once, of having thought that her love could come to an end or be measured by the time used to measure other things. She had no reason to remember where or why she had met this young man, twenty-four years old. It was unnecessary to burden herself with anything more than love and their meetings during the few days of rest, when the troops, having taken one plaza, stopped to heal their wounds, secure their position in the territory wrested from the dictatorship, locate supplies, and plan the next offensive. That was how the two of them decided it, without ever saying anything. They never thought about the danger of war or the time they were apart. If one of them did not show up at the next meeting place, they would go their separate ways without a word: he south, to the capital; she north, to the coasts of Sinaloa, where she had met him and where she let herself be loved.

"Regina…Regina…"

"Do you remember that rock that stuck out of the sea like a boat of stone? It must still be there."

"That's where I met you. Did you go there often?"

"Every afternoon. A little pool forms between the rocks and you can see yourself in the clear water. I'd go there to look at myself, and one day your face appeared next to mine. At night the stars were reflected in the sea. During the day, you could see the sun burning in it."

"I didn't know what to do that afternoon. We'd been fighting, and suddenly everything stopped: the federales gave up, but I was used to living like a soldier. Then I began to remember other things and I found you sitting on that rock. Your legs were wet."

"I wanted it, too. You just appeared next to me, part of me, reflected in the water. Didn't you realize I wanted it, too?"

The dawn was slow in coming, but through a gray veil the two bodies were revealed, joined by the hand, in sleep. He woke up first and watched her. It seemed like the finest thread in the spiderweb of the centuries: it looked like a twin of death: sleep. Her legs drawn up, her free arm over the man's chest, her mouth moist. They liked making love at dawn: for them it was a celebration of the new day. The dusky light barely showed Regina's profile. Within the hour, they would be hearing the sounds of the town. Now there is only the breathing of the dark young woman who sleeps in total serenity, the living part of the world at rest. Only one thing would have the right to interrupt the felicity of that serene body at rest, outlined on the sheet, wrapped up in itself with the smoothness of a moon in mourning. Does he have the right? The young man's imagination leapt past the lovemaking: he contemplated her as she slept as if resting from the loving which would waken her in a few seconds. When is happiness greater? He caressed her breast. Imagine the renewed union; the union itself; the weary joy of memory and then total desire again, augmented by love, by a new act of love: bliss. He kissed Regina's ear and saw her first smile: he brought his face close to hers so he would not miss her first gesture of happiness. He felt her hand playing with him again. Desire flowered within, scattered with heavy drops: Regina's smooth legs again sought Artemio's waist: her full hand knew all: the erection escaped her fingers and woke up at their touch: her thighs parted, trembling, full, and the erect flesh found the open flesh and entered, caressed, surrounded by the eager pulse, crowned by new eggs, squeezed in that universe of soft, amorous skin: the two of them reduced to the meeting of the world, the seed of reason, to the two voices that name things in silence, that within baptize all things: within, when he thinks about everything but this, he thinks, counts things, does not think about everything, all so that this does not end: he tries to fill his head with seas and sand and wind, with houses and animals, fish and crops, all so that this will not end: within, when he raises his face, his eyes closed, and stretches his neck with all the strength of his swollen veins, when Regina loses herself and lets herself be conquered and answers with thick breath, furrowing her brow, her smiling lips saying yes, yes, she likes it, yes, don't stop, go on, yes, it shouldn't end, yes, until she realizes that it all happened at once, one unable to contemplate the other because both were one and uttering the same words:

"How happy I am."

"How happy I am."

"I love you, Regina."

"I love you, my husband."

"Do I make you happy?"

"Don't ever end; how long it lasts; you fill all of me."

While, out on the street, a pail of water splashed over the dust and wild ducks passed by, quacking over the river, and a whistle announced what no one would be able to stop: boots dragging along, the noise of spurs, hooves echoing again, and the smells of oil and lard seeping through doors and houses. He stretched out his hand and felt for the cigarettes in his shirt pocket. She went over to the window and opened it. She stayed there, breathing deep, with her arms open, standing on tiptoe. The circle of gray mountains came closer to the eyes of the lovers as the sun rose. The aroma of the town bakery wafted up and, from farther off, the savor of myrtles tangled with weeds in the rotten ravines. All he saw was her naked body, her open arms that now wanted to take the day by the shoulders and drag it back to bed.

"Want breakfast?"

"It's too early. Let me finish my cigarette first."

Regina's head rested on his shoulder. His long, sinewy hand stroked her hip. Both smiled.

"When I was a little girl, life was beautiful. There were lots of beautiful times. Vacations, holidays, summer days, games. I don't know why, but when I started growing, I began to long for things. When I was a little girl, I didn't. That's why I started to go to that beach. I said it was better to long. I didn't know why I had changed so much that summer, or that I'd stopped being a little girl."

"You still are, you know."

"With you? After all the things we've done?"

He laughed and kissed her, and she bent her knee, pretending to be a bird with folded wings nestled against his chest. She clung to the man's neck, mixing her laughter with feigned tears.

"What about you?"

"I don't remember anymore. I found you and I love you very much."

"Tell me. Why did I know, the moment I saw you, that nothing else would matter anymore? You know, I told myself at that precise instant that I'd have to make a decision. That if you just went away, I'd be wasting my whole life. Did you feel anything like that?"

"Yes, I did. Didn't you think, though, that I was just another soldier looking for some fun?"

"No, no. I didn't even see your uniform. All I saw were your eyes reflected in the water and then I couldn't see my own reflection anymore without yours next to it."

"Honey, sweetheart, go see if we have any coffee."

When they parted that morning like all the mornings of their seven young months of love, she asked if the troops would be pulling out soon. He said he didn't know what the general had in mind. They might have to go after some pockets of defeated federales still in the area, but at any rate, they'd be keeping their headquarters in town. There was plenty of water and cattle. It was a good place to stay awhile. They were tired after fighting their way south from Sonora and had earned a rest. At eleven they were to report to their commanders at the plaza.

In every town they passed through, the general would investigate working conditions, reduce the workday to eight hours by public decree, and distribute land to the peasants. If there was a hacienda in the area, he would have the company store burned to the ground. If there were loan sharks-and there were always loan sharks, unless they'd fled with the federales-he would rescind all loans. The bad part was that the bulk of the population was under arms and almost all were peasants, so there was no one to enforce the general's decrees. Thus, it was better for them instantly to appropriate the wealth of the rich who remained in each town, and hope the Revolution would triumph, so the land reforms and the eight-hour day would be legalized.

Right now the important thing was to get to Mexico City and depose that drunk Huerta, Don Panchito Madero's assassin. Round and round we go! he murmured as he tucked his khaki shirt into his white trousers. Round and round we go! From Veracruz, where he came from, to Mexico City, and from there north to Sonora, when his teacher Sebastián had asked him to do what the older generation could no longer do: go north, take up arms, and liberate the country. Hadn't even slept with a woman yet, word of honor. But how could he let Sebastián down, the man who had taught him the three things he knew: reading, writing, and hating priests.

He stopped talking when Regina set the coffee down on the table.

"It's boiling hot!"

It was early. They went out on the street with their arms around each other's waists. She wearing her starched skirt, he in his felt hat and white uniform jacket. The cluster of houses where they were living was near a ravine; the morning glories hung over the void, and a rabbit torn apart by the teeth of a coyote was rotting in the underbrush. Deep down, below, a stream ran its course. Regina peered down to find it, as if hoping to find again the reflected image of her fiction. Their hands joined; the road to the town clung to the edge of the canyon, and down from the mountains came the echoes of thrushes calling to each other. No: the noise of light hooves, lost in clouds of dust.

"Lieutenant Cruz! Lieutenant Cruz!"

The perpetually smiling face of Loreto, the general's aide, disappeared behind the sweat and dust coating him, when he reined in his horse in a dry whinny. "Come quickly," he said, panting as he wiped his face with a handkerchief. "There's big news: we're moving out right away. Have you had breakfast? They're serving eggs over at headquarters."

"Eggs? I've already got mine," he joked, patting his crotch.

Regina's embrace was an embrace of dust. Only when Loreto's horse vanished and the dust settled did the whole woman, clinging to the shoulders of her young lover, reemerge.

"Wait for me here."

"What can it be?"

"There must be some federales wandering around somewhere. Nothing serious."

"I should stay here?"

"Yes, Don't move. I'll be back tonight or early tomorrow at the latest."

"Artemio…Think we'll ever return there?"

"Who knows. Who knows how long this'll go on. Don't think about it. You know I love you, right?"

"I love you, too. A lot. Forever."

Out in the stables and in the main patio of the headquarters, the troops had received their orders and were preparing their packs with ritual calm. The cannon rolled along in single file, pulled by white mules with shadows under their eyes; they were followed by ammunition carriages set on rails that ran from the patio to the train station. The cavalry attended to their mounts, removed feed bags, put on bridles, made sure saddles were cinched tightly, and patted the heads of the war horses, so docile and gentle to the men even though they were stained with dust and their stomachs were covered with ticks. Two hundred horses moved slowly past the barracks, spotted, dappled, dusty black. The infantry oiled its rifles and then filed past the smiling dwarf who distributed ammunition. The hats worn by soldiers from the north: gray felt, the brim turned up on one side. Neckerchiefs. Cartridge belts around their waists. Only a few wearing boots: wool trousers, yellow leather shoes or huaraches. Striped shirts, collarless. Here and there-on the streets, in the patios, at the station-Yaqui Indian hats hung with leafy twigs: members of the band carrying their music stands in their hands, their metal instruments on their backs. The last swallows of hot water. Pots filled to the brim with beans. Plates of huevos rancheros. Shouts come from the station: a flatcar of Mayan Indians was pulling in, to an accompaniment of high-pitched drumming and a flutter of colored bows and primitive arrows.

He made his way through the throng: inside, standing in front of the map hastily nailed to a wall, the general was explaining: "The federales are mounting a counterattack at our backs, in territory the Revolution has already liberated. What they want is to cut us off from the rear. At dawn, a scout up in the mountains spotted a thick cloud of smoke rising over the towns occupied by Colonel Jiménez. He reported it, and I remembered that the colonel had collected a big pile of boards and railway ties in each town, which he would burn if he was attacked, to warn us. That's how things stand. We have to split up. Half will go back to the other side of the mountain to help Jiménez. The other half will go out to finish off the groups we defeated yesterday and to make sure that another big offensive doesn't come from the south. We'll only leave a company here. But it doesn't seem likely they'll get this far. Major Gavilán…Lieutenant Aparicio…Lieutenant Cruz: you head north again."

Jiménez's fires were petering out when, around midday, Artemio Cruz passed the outpost at the mountain pass. From up there he could see the train overflowing with people: it ran without blowing its whistle, carrying mortars and cannon, ammunition boxes and machine guns. The cavalry detachment made its way down the steep slopes with difficulty, and the cannon began to fire on the towns supposedly retaken by the federales.

"Let's speed up," he said. "They'll keep firing for about two hours, and then we'll go in to scout."

He never knew why, the moment his horse's hooves reached flat ground, he lowered his head and lost all notion of the finite mission he'd been ordered to carry out. The men with him seemed to vanish, along with the positive feeling of an objective to be reached, and in their place came a tenderness, an inner lament for something lost, a longing to return to Regina's arms and forget it all. It was as if the flaming sphere of the sun had overwhelmed the nearby presence of the cavalry and the distant noise of the bombardment: in place of that real world there was another, a dream world where only he and his love had the right to live, where only they had a reason to save it.

"Do you remember that rock that stuck out of the sea like a boat of stone?"

"He gazed at her again, yearning to kiss her, afraid he would wake her, certain that by gazing at her he was making her his. Only one man possesses-he thought-all the secret images of Regina; that man possesses her, and he will never give her up. Contemplating her, he contemplated himself. His hands dropped the reins: all he is, all his love, is embedded in the flesh of this woman who contains both of them. I wish I could go back…tell her how much I love her…tell her the depth of my feelings…so that Regina would know…

The horse whinnied and bucked; the rider fell on the hard ground, on the rocks and briars. The grenades of the federales rained down on the cavalry, and as he got up in the smoke, all he could see was his horse's chest on fire, the shield that had stopped the flames. Around the fallen body of his own mount, more than fifty horses were rearing senselessly: there was no light above; the sky and moved down one step, and it was a sky of gunpowder no higher than the men. He ran toward one of the low trees: the bursts of smoke hid more than bare branches. Ninety feet away, a forest began; it was low but thick. A chaotic shouting reached his ears. He dove to catch the reins of a riderless horse but threw only one leg over its back. He hid his body behind the horse and whipped it on. The horse galloped and he, head down and eyes blinded by his own tangled hair, desperately held on to the saddle and bridle. The brilliance of the morning finally vanished; the shadow allowed him to open his eyes, part from the animal's flesh, and roll until he hit a tree trunk.

Again he felt as he'd felt before. The confused sounds of war were all around him, but between those near and the far rumble that reached his ears, there was an unbridgeable gap: here the slight trembling of the branches, the slithering of the lizards could be heard quite distinctly. Alone, leaning against the tree trunk, he again felt a sweet, serene life languidly flowing through his veins: a well-being of the body that dispelled any rebellious attempt at thought. His men? His heart beat evenly, without a throb. Would they be looking for him? His arms and legs felt happy, clean, tried. What would they do without him to give them orders? His eyes searched through the roof of leaves for the hidden flight of some bird. Would they lose all sense of discipline? Would they, too, run and hide in this providential forest? But he couldn't go back over the mountain on foot. He would have to wait here. And what if he was taken prisoner? He couldn't go on thinking: a moan parted the leaves near the lieutenant's face, and a man collapsed in his arms. His arms rejected him for an instant and then held on to that body from which hung a red, limp rag of torn flesh.

The wounded man rested his head on his comrade's shoulder. "They're…really…pouring it…on…"

He felt the ravaged arm on his back, staining it, dripping angry blood. He tried to push back the face, which was twisted with pain: high cheekbones, open mouth, eyes closed, tangled mustache and beard, short, like his own. If the man had green eyes, he could be his double…

"Is there any way out? Are we losing? Do you know anything about the cavalry? Have they pulled out?"

"No…no…They went…forward."

The wounded man tried to point with his good arm-the other, splintered by machine-gun fire-never relaxing the horrible grimace that seemed to sustain him and prolong his existence.

"They're advancing? How?"

"Water, pal…in a bad way…"

The wounded man fainted, holding on with a strange strength full of wordless pleading. The lieutenant bore that sculpted lead weight on his own body. The tremors of cannon fire returned to his ears. An uncertain wind shook the treetops. Again, silence and tranquillity broken by machine-gun fire. Taking hold of the wounded man's good arm, he disencumbered himself of the body that had been tossed over his own. Holding him by the head, he laid him on the ground, on the knotty roots. He opened his canteen and took a long drink. He brought it to the lips of the wounded man: the water ran down his blackened chin. But his heart still beat: now, on his knees near the wounded man's chest, he wondered how much longer it would go on beating. He unfastened the man's heavy silver buckle and then turned his back on him. What was happening out there? Who was winning? He stood up and walked into the forest, away from the wounded man.

As he walked, he touched his body, sometimes pushing the lower branches out of the way, but always feeling himself. He wasn't wounded. He did not need help. He stopped by a spring and filled his canteen. A creek, dead before it was really born, ran from the spring and disappeared under the sun just beyond the forest. He took off his uniform jacket and used both hands to douse his chest, his armpits, his burning, dry, raw shoulders, the taut muscles of his arms, the smooth, greenish skin with thick calluses. He wanted to see his reflection in the spring, but the bubbling water made that impossible. This body was not his: Regina had acquired another possession: she had demanded it with each caress. It wasn't his. It was more hers. He had to save it for her. They no longer lived alone and isolated; the walls of separation had fallen; now they were two in one, forever. The Revolution would end; towns and lives would end, but this would never end. It was now their life, the life of both of them. He dried his face. He went out once again on to the plain.

The charge of the revolutionaries came from the plain toward the forest and the mountain. They ran swiftly alongside him while he, disoriented, walked down toward the burning towns. He heard the whips slap the croups of the horses, the dry crack of rifles, and he was alone on the plain. Were they running away? He turned around, raising his hands to his head. He didn't understand. It was essential to leave a site with a clear mission and never lose that golden thread: only then would it be possible to understand what was happening. A moment's distraction and all the chess moves of war would turn into an irrational, incomprehensible game consisting of tattered, abrupt movements devoid of sense. That cloud of dust…those furious horses galloping onward…that horseman shouting and waving a bare sword…that train stopped in the distance…that dust cloud coming closer and closer…that sun coming closer and closer to his dazed head with each passing minute…that sword just barely grazing his forehead…that galloping that rushes by him and throws him to the ground…

He got up, feeling his wounded forehead. He had to get back to the forest again: it was the only safe place. He staggered. The sun melted his vision and blurred the horizon into crusts, the dry grass, the line of mountains. When he reached the trees, he grabbed a trunk; he unbuttoned his uniform jacket and ripped off his shirt sleeve. He spit on it and put the moist spot on his lacerated forehead. He tied the rag around his head-his head was pounding painfully when the dry branches alongside him splintered under the weight of unknown boots: the soldier belonged to the revolutionary troops and he was carrying a body on his back, a bloody, broken sack with a blood-encrusted arm.

"I found him where the forest begins. He was dying. They blew most of his arm off…Lieutenant."

The tall, dark soldier squinted until he could see the insignia. "I think he's gone and died on me. He feels like a dead man."

He put the body down, resting it against the tree. Artemio had done the same thing half an hour, fifteen minutes before. The soldier brought his face close to the wounded man's mouth; he recognized the open mouth, the high cheekbones, the half-closed eyes.

"Yes. He's gone. If only I'd gotten there a little sooner, I might have saved him."

He closed the dead man's eyes with his square hand. He hooked the silver belt buckle, and as he bent his head, he muttered through white teeth: "Damnit, Lieutenant. If there weren't a few brave guys like this one in the world, where would the rest of us be?"

He turned his back on the soldier and the dead man and ran toward the open plain. It was preferable. Even if he neither heard nor saw. Even if the world passed him by like a shadow. Even if all the noises of war and peace-mockingbirds, wind, distant roaring-that persisted were to turn into that single, dull drumming that encompassed all noise and reduced it to sadness. He tripped over a corpse. He bent down, without knowing why, seconds before that voice cut through the deaf drumming of all these noises.

"Lieutenant…Lieutenant Cruz."

A hand rested on the lieutenant's shoulder; he raised his face.

"You're badly wounded, Lieutenant. Come with us. The federales ran off. Jiménez held the town square. Come back with us to headquarters in Río Hondo. The cavalry really did a job; they multiplied, really. Come on. You don't look so well."

He clasped the officer's shoulders and murmured: "To headquarters. Right, let's go."

The thread was broken. The thread that allowed him to traverse the labyrinth of war without getting lost. Without getting lost: without deserting. He wasn't strong enough to hold the reins. But the horse was tethered to Major Gavilán's saddle during that slow march through the mountains separating the battle plain from the valley where she waits for him. The thread stayed behind. There below, the town of Río Hondo hadn't changed: it was the same jumble of houses he'd left behind that morning, with broken roof tiles and adobe walls, pink, reddish, surrounded by cactuses. He thought he could pick out, next to the green lips of the ravine, the house where Regina must be waiting for him.

Gavilán was trotting in front of him. The afternoon shadows cast the image of the mountain on the tired bodies of the two soldiers. The major's horse stopped for an instant, waiting for the lieutenant's to catch up. Gavilán offered him a cigarette. As soon as the match was out, the horses started trotting again. But by then he'd seen the pain in the major's face and he lowered his head. He deserved it. They'd know the truth about his having deserted under fire, and they'd rip off his insignia. But they wouldn't know the whole truth: they wouldn't know that he wanted to save himself so as to return to Regina's love, nor would they understand if he explained. They also wouldn't know that he'd abandoned the wounded soldier, that he could have saved his life. His love for Regina would compensate for the guilt of abandoning the soldier. That's the way it should be. He lowered his head and thought that for the first time in his life he was experiencing shame. Shame: it wasn't shame that showed in Major Gavilán's clear, direct eyes. The officer rubbed his fuzzy blond beard with his free hand crusted with dust and sun.

"We owe our lives to you and your men, Lieutenant. You halted the enemy's advance. The general will welcome you like a hero…Artemio…Do you mind if I call you Artemio?"

The major tried to smile. He rested his free hand on the lieutenant's shoulder and went on, laughing dryly. "We've been fighting alongside each other for a long time, and look: we don't even call each other by our first names."

Major Gavilán's eyes asked for some response. The night fell with its incorporeal crystal, and the last glow flashed behind the mountains, now far away, hidden in the darkness, secluded. In the barracks, fires were burning that could not be seen from a distance in the afternoon light.

"The skunks!" exclaimed the major suddenly in a bitter tone. "They made a surprise attack on the town at about one in the afternoon. Naturally, they didn't reach headquarters. But they took their revenge on the outlying areas-their usual tricks. They've promised to take revenge on any town that helps us. They took ten hostages and sent us a message that if we didn't surrender they would hang them. The general replied with mortar fire."

The streets were filled with soldiers, people, stray dogs, and children, as stray as the dogs, crying in doorways. Some fires still burned, and women sat right out in the street on their mattresses, alongside whatever else they had salvaged.

"Lieutenant Artemio Cruz," whispered Gavilán, leaning over to reach the hearing of some soldiers.

"Lieutenant Cruz," ran the murmur from the soldiers to the women.

The people made way for the two horses: the major's bay, nervous in the crowd pressing up against it; the lieutenant's black stallion, his forehead low, letting himself be led by the bay. Hands reached out: the men from the cavalry detachment commanded by the lieutenant. They squeezed his leg in greeting; they motioned toward his forehead, where the blood had seeped through the rag; they muttered congratulations on the victory. They crossed the town. The ravine yawned in the background, and the trees were swaying in the evening breeze. He raised his eyes: the cluster of white houses. He looked for the window; they were all closed. The glare of candles illuminated the entryway to some houses; black groups, wrapped in rebozos, were crouched there.

"Don't anyone cut them down!" shouted Lieutenant Aparicio from his rearing horse, using his riding crop to beat back the hands raised imploringly. "We've all got to remember this forever! Everyone's got to know who we're fighting! They make the common people kill their brothers. Take a good look. That's how they killed the Yaquis, because the Yaquis didn't want their land taken from them. The same way they killed the workers at Río Blanco and Cananea, who didn't want to die of hunger. And that's the way they'll kill all of us unless we kick the shit out of them first. Take a good look."

The finger of young Lieutenant Aparicio pointed to the clump of trees near the ravine. The crude henequen ropes still drew blood from the necks; but the open eyes, purple tongues, and limp bodies barely swaying in the wind blowing down from the mountains proved they were dead. The eyes of the onlookers-some lost, some enraged, most with a sweet expression of disbelief, filled with quiet pain-focused on the muddy huaraches, a child's bare feet, a woman's black slippers. He dismounted. He came closer. He clutched Regina's starched skirt with a broken, choked sound: it was the first time he'd cried since becoming a man.

Aparicio and Gavilán led him to Regina's room. They made him lie down, cleaned the wound, and replaced the filthy rag with a bandage. After they left, he hugged the pillow, hiding his face. He sought sleep, nothing more, and secretly told himself that perhaps sleep would reunite them, make them as they had been. He knew it was impossible, though here on this bed, with its yellowed mosquito netting, he felt her presence more intensely than when he touched her damp hair, her smooth body, her warm thighs. She was there as she had never been before, more alive than ever in the young man's fevered mind: more herself, more his now than he ever remembered her. Perhaps, during their brief months of love, he'd never seen the beauty of her eyes with such emotion, nor could he have compared them, as he could now, with their brilliant twins-black jewels, the deep, calm sea under the sun, their depths like sand mixed in time, dark cherries from the tree of flesh and hot entrails. He'd never told her that. There had not been time. There had not been time to tell her so many things about their love. There had not been time for a final word. Perhaps if he closed his eyes she would come back, whole, to take life from the desperate caresses that pulsed from his fingertips. Perhaps it would be enough to imagine her, to have her always at his side. Who knows if memory can really prolong existence, entwine their legs, open windows to the dawn, comb her hair, revive smell, noise, touch. He sat up. He felt around in the darkness for the bottle of mescal. But the mescal did not help him forget, as people always say it does; it only made the memories flow quicker.

He would return to the rocks on that beach while the alcohol was setting his stomach on fire. He would return. Where? To that mythical beach that never existed? To that lie about the beloved, to that fiction about a meeting on the beach invented by her so that he would feel clean, innocent, sure of being in love? He threw the glass of mescal to the floor. That's what mescal was really good for: destroying lies. It was a beautiful lie.

"Where did we meet?"

"Don't you remember?"

"No, you tell me."

"Don't you remember that beach? I would go there every afternoon."

"Now I remember. You saw the reflection of my face next to yours."

"Remember now: and then I never wanted to see myself without your reflection next to mine."

"Yes, I remember."

He would have to believe that beautiful lie forever, until the end. It wasn't true: he hadn't gone into that Sinaloa town as he had so many others, looking for the first unwary woman he'd find walking down the street. It wasn't true that the eighteen-year-old girl had been forced onto a horse and raped in silence in the officers' quarters, far from the sea, her face turned toward the thorny, dry hills. It was not true that he'd been forgiven in silence, forgiven by Regina's honorableness, when resistance gave way to pleasure and the arms that had never touched a man joyfully touched him for the first time, her moist mouth open, repeating, as she did last night, yes, yes, she'd liked it, she'd liked it with him, she wanted more, she'd been afraid of such happiness. Regina, with the dreamy, fiery eyes. How she accepted the truth of her pleasure and admitted that she was in love with him; how she invented the story about the sea and the reflection in the calm water to forget what would later, when he loved her, make him ashamed. A whore, Regina, a tasty dish, the clean spirit of surprise, a woman without excuses, without justifications. She didn't know how to be boring; she never annoyed him with painful complaints. She would always be there, in one town or another. Perhaps now the fantasy of an inert body hanging from a rope would vanish, and she would already be in another town. She'd just moved on. Yes: as always. She left without bothering him and went south. She crossed the federales' lines and found a little room in the next town. Yes; because she couldn't live without him, nor he without her. Yes. It was just a question of leaving, taking a horse, picking up a pistol, getting on with the offensive, and finding her in the next town when they'd take a rest.

In the darkness, he felt around for his field jacket. He slung his cartridge belts across his chest. Outside, the black horse, the quiet one, was tied to a post. People were still gathered around the victims of the hanging, but he didn't even look in that direction. He got on his horse and galloped to headquarters.

"Where the hell did those bastards go?" he shouted to one of the soldiers on guard.

"They're on the other side of the ravine, sir. They're supposed to be dug in next to the bridge, waiting for reinforcements. Looks like they want to take this town again. Come on in and have something to eat."

He dismounted. Slowly he threaded his way through the bonfires in the patio, the clay pots swinging over the crisscrossed logs. The sound of a woman's hands slapping the dough got louder. He stuck a big spoon into the boiling broth of the tripe stew, took a pinch of onion, some powdered chile and oregano. He chewed the hard, fresh northern-style tortillas; the pigs' feet. He was alive.

He ripped from its rusty iron ring the torch that lit up the entrance to headquarters. He sank his spurs into the black horse's flanks. Those still walking the street jumped out of the way. The surprised horse tried to buck, but he held the bridle tight, spurred the horse, and felt, finally, that the horse understood. It was no longer the horse of the wounded man, the wavering man who had crossed the mountains that afternoon. And it was a different horse, too: it understood. It shook its mane to make sure the man understood: it was a war horse, as furious and swift as its rider. And the rider raised the torch to light the road that wound around the town and led to the bridge over the ravine.

There was another bonfire at the entrance to the bridge. The federales' caps glowed with a reddish pallor. But the hooves of the black horse carried all the force of the earth, scattering grass and dust and thorns and leaving a trail of sparks from the torch held on high by the rider, who hurled himself at the post at the bridge, leapt over the bonfire, discharged his pistol into astonished eyes, dark necks, bodies that did not understand, who pushed back the cannons, which could not see in the darkness that he was alone, a rider heading south, to the next town, where someone was waiting for him…

"Out of the way, you goddamn sons of bitches!" shout the thousand voices of this one man.

The voice of pain and desire, the voice of the pistol, the arms that torches the boxes of powder and blows up the cannons and stampedes the riderless horses, amid a chaos of whinnies and calls and gunshots that now have a distant echo in the lost voices of the town, in the bell that begins to toll in the reddish church tower, in the pulse of the earth that fears the horses of the revolutionary cavalry, which is now crossing the bridge and finds the destruction, the flight, the spent fires, but they don't find either the federales or the lieutenant, he who rides south holding the torch on high, the eyes of his horse burning: riding south, with the thread in his hands, riding south.

I survived. Regina. What was your name? No. You, Regina. What was your name, nameless soldier? I survived. You all died. I survived. Ah, they've left me in peace. They think I'm asleep. I remembered you. I remembered your name. But you have no name. And the two come toward me, holding hands, with their begging bowls empty, thinking they're going to convince me, inspire my compassion. Oh, no. I don't owe my life to you. I owe it to my pride, are you listening? I owe it to my pride. I sent out the challenge. I dared. Virtue? Humility? Charity? Ah, you can live without them, you really can. You can't live without pride. Charity? What good is it? Humility? You, Catalina, what would you have done with my humility? You would have used it to conquer my disdain, you would have abandoned me. I know you forgive yourself, envisioning the sanctity of that sacrament. Ha. If it hadn't been for my money, you wouldn't have waited a second to divorce me. And you, Teresa, if you hate and insult me though I support you, how would you have liked to hate me in misery, insult me in poverty? Imagine yourselves without my pride, pharisees, waiting forever on every corner in town for a bus; imagine yourselves lost in that footsore crowd; imagine yourselves working in some shop, in an office, typing, wrapping packages, imagine yourselves saving up to buy a car on the installment plan, lighting candles to the Virgin to keep up your illusions, making monthly payments on a piece of land, sighing for a refrigerator; imagine yourselves sitting at a neighborhood movie on Saturdays, eating peanuts, trying to find a taxi after the show, eating out once a month; imagine yourselves having to shout that there's no other country like Mexico to feel yourselves alive; imagine yourselves having to feel proud of serapes and Cantinflas and mariachi music and mole poblano just to feel alive, ha ha; imagine yourselves having to believe in legacies, pilgrimages, the efficacy of prayer to keep you alive.

Domine, non sum dignus…

"Cheers. First, they want to cancel all loans from U.S. banks to the Pacific Railroad. Do you have any idea how much the railroad pays per year in interest on those loans? Thirty-nine million pesos. Second, they want to fire all advisers involved in the railroad rehabilitation program. Do you have any idea how much we make? Ten million a year. Third, they want to fire all of us who administer the U.S. loans to the railroads. Do you have any idea how much you earned and how much I earned last year…?"

"Three million pesos each…"

"Exactly. And the thing doesn't end there. Do me a favor and

send a telegram to National Fruits Express telling them that these Communist leaders intend to cancel the rental of refrigerator cars, an item that costs the company twenty million pesos a year and brings us a good commission. Cheers."

Ha, ha. That's the way to explain it all. Fools. If I didn't defend their interests…fools. Oh, get out of here, all of you. Let me listen. We'll just see if you don't understand me. We'll just see if you don't understand what an arm bent like this means…

"Sit down, baby. I'll be right with you. Díaz: just make sure that not a single line about police repression against the agitators gets into the paper."

"But, sir, it looks like somebody died. Besides, it was right in the center of town. It'll be hard…"

"No, it won't. Those are orders from above."

"But I know that one of the workers' papers is going to print the news."

"What's gotten into you? Don't I pay you to think? Isn't your source paid to think? Tell the district attorney's office to close down that paper…"

How little I need to think. A spark. A spark to give life to this enormous, complex network. Other people need an electric generator, but that would kill me. I need to sail murky waters, communicate over long distances, repel the enemy. Oh, yes. Send this out. I'm not interested.

"María Luisa. This Juan Felipe Couto, as usual, is getting too big for his britches…That's all, Díaz. Give me a glass of water, honey. I was saying that he's getting too big for his britches. Just like Federico Robles, remember? But they can't get away with it with me around…"

"When do we attack, Captain?"

"With my help, he got the concession to build that highway in Sonora. I even helped him so they'd appropriate a budget three times larger than the actual cost of the work, knowing that the highway was going to pass through those dry-farming plots I bought out of the communal lands. I just found out that the wise guy bought some land out there, too, and now he's planning to move the highway so it passes through his property…"

"What a pig! And he looks like such a nice guy."

"So, doll, you know, put a little item in your column about him, mention the upcoming divorce of this distinguished public figure. Go easy, now, we just want to throw a little scare into him."

"Anyway, we have photos of Couto in a cabaret with a blondie who's certainly not Mrs. Couto."

"Hold them in reserve in case he doesn't straighten out."

They say the cells in a sponge are not linked but nevertheless the sponge is one: that's what they say. I remember it, because they say if a sponge is torn apart, the pieces join together again. The sponge never loses its unity, it finds a way to join its cells again, it never dies, ah, it never dies.

"That morning I waited for him with pleasure. We crossed the river on horseback."

"You dominated him and stole him away from me."

He stands up amid the indignant voices of the women and takes them by the arm and I go on thinking about the carpenter and then about his son and about what we might have avoided if they'd just let him go with his twelve PR men, as free as a bird, living off the stories about his miracles, getting free meals, free shared beds for sacred witch doctors, until old age and oblivion defeated him, and Catalina and Teresa and Gerardo sit down in the armchairs at the far end of the room. How long will they wait to call in a priest, hasten my death, squeeze confessions out of me? Oh, how they'd like to know. What fun I'm going to have. What fun, what fun. You, Catalina, would be capable of telling me what you never told me, if that would soften me up so you'd know about you-know-what. Ah, but I know what you'd like to know. And your daughter's pinched face doesn't hide it. It won't be long before that poor fool turns up here and starts bawling, to see if he can finally get something out of all this. Ah, how little they know me. Do they think a fortune like that is going to be wasted among three frauds, among three bats that don't even know how to fly? Three bats without wings: three mice. Who disdain me. Yes. Who cannot avoid the hatred of beggars. Who detest the furs that cover them, who hate the houses they live in, the jewels they show off, because I gave it all to them. No, don't touch me now…

"Leave me alone…"

"But Gerardo's here…dear Gerardo…your son-in-law…look at him."

"Ah, the idiot."

"Don Artemio…"

"Mama, I can't stand it, I can't stand it! I can't!"

"He's ill."

"Bah, I'll get out of this bed one day soon and then you'll see…"

"I told you he was pretending."

"Let him rest."

"I tell you he's pretending! The way he always does, to make fun of us, the way he always does, always."

"No, no, the doctor says…"

"What does the doctor know. I know him better. It's another trick."

"Don't say anything!"

Don't say anything. That oil. They daub my lips with that oil. My eyelids. My nostrils. They don't know how much it cost. They didn't have to decide. My hands. My icy feet that I can't feel anymore. They don't know. They didn't have to give everything up. My eyes. They spread my legs and daub that oil on my thighs.

Ego te absolvo.

They don't know. She didn't speak. She didn't tell.

You will live seventy-one years without realizing it. You will not stop to think about the fact that your blood circulates, your heart beats, your gallbladder empties itself of serous liquids, your liver secretes bile, your kidney produces urine, your pancreas regulates the sugar in your blood. You haven't caused these functions by thinking about them. You will know that you breathe, but you will not think about it, because it doesn't depend on your thoughts. You will turn your back on it and live. You could have dominated your functions, feigned death, walked through fire, endured a bed of broken glass. Simply speaking, you will live and allow your functions to go about their business on their own. Until today. Today, when your involuntary functions will force you to take account of them, will triumph, and end up destroying your person. You will think that you breathe each time air labors its way toward your lungs; you will think that your blood is circulating each time the veins in your abdomen pulse with that painful presence. They will overcome you because they will force you to take life into account instead of living it. Triumph. You will try to imagine it-it is that lucidity which forces you to perceive the slightest pulsation, all the movements of attraction, of separation, even the most terrible, the movement of that which no longer moves-and within you, in your guts, that serous membrane will cover your abdominal cavity and will wrap itself around your intestines, and the fold of tissue, blood, and lymph vessels that connects the stomach and the intestine with your abdominal walls, that fold of adipose cells, will no longer be irrigated with blood by the thick celiac artery that feeds your stomach and your intestines, that penetrates the base of the fold and descends obliquely to the base of the small intestine after having run behind the pancreas, where it gives rise to another artery that irrigates a third of your duodenum and the mouth of the pancreas; crossing your duodenum, it penetrates your aorta, your inferior vena cava, your right urethra, your genito-femoral nerve, and the veins in your testicles. That artery will last, blotched, thick, red, for seventy-one years without your knowing it. Today you will know it. It's going to stop working. The flow is going to dry up. For seventy-one years that artery will make incredible efforts: over the course of its descent, there comes a moment in which, under pressure from a segment of your spinal column, it will have to move downward and at the same time forward and, abruptly, backward again. For seventy-one years your mesentery artery will, under pressure, survive this test, this death-defying feat. Today it will no longer be able to do so. Today it will no longer withstand the pressure. Today, in the swift, piston-like motion downward, forward, and backward, it will stop, convulsed, congested, a mass of paralyzed blood, a scarlet stone that will obstruct your intestine. You will feel that pulse of growing pressure, you will feel it: it's your blood that has stopped for the first time, that now will not reach the other bank of your life, that stops and congeals within the swirl of your intestine, to rot, stagnate, without reaching the other bank of your life.

And it is then that Catalina will approach you, to ask if you want anything, you who at that instant can attend only to your growing pain, trying to repulse it with your will to sleep, to rest, while Catalina cannot avoid making that gesture, that hand stretched forth which she will quickly withdraw, fearful, and press to her matronly bosom, then extend it again, and this time rest it, trembling, on your forehead. She will caress your forehead and you will not know it; you are lost in the acute concentration of pain. You will not realize that for the first time in decades Catalina has placed her hand on your brow, caressed your forehead, pushing back the sweat-matted gray hair that covers it, and then caressing it again in fear and thankfulness, grateful that tenderness is overcoming fear, in an embarrassed tenderness, ashamed of itself, with a shame that finally seems attenuated by the certainty that you don't realize she is caressing you. Perhaps, as she runs her fingers over your brow, she whispers words that seek to mix with that memory of yours that never ceases, lost in the depth of these hours, unconscious, exempt from your will but fused with your involuntary memory, which slides along the interstices of your pain and repeats now the words you didn't hear then. She, too, will think of her pride. There the spark will be born. There you will hear her, in that common mirror, in that pool that will reflect both your faces, that when you try to kiss will drown both of you in the liquid reflection of your faces. Why don't you look the other way? There you will find Catalina in the flesh. Why do you try to kiss her in the cold reflection of the water? Why doesn't she bring her face to yours; why, like you, does she sink it in the stagnant water and repeat to you now that you are not listening to her, "I let myself go"? Perhaps her hand speaks to you of an excess of freedom that defeats freedom. Freedom that raises an endless tower that does not reach heaven but splits the abyss, cleaves the earth. You will name it: separation. You will refuse: pride. You will survive, Artemio Cruz, you will survive because you will expose yourself to the risk of freedom. You will triumph over the risk and, without enemies, will become your own enemy

in order to continue the battle of pride. You've conquered everything else; the only thing left is to conquer yourself. Your enemy will surge forth from the mirror to fight the last battle: the enemy nymph, the nymph of thick breath, daughter of gods, mother of the goatish seducer, mother of the only god to die during the time of man. From the mirror will emerge the mother of the Great God Pan, the nymph of pride, your double, once again your double: your ultimate enemy on the earth whose population has been effaced by your pride. You will survive. You will discover that virtue may well be desirable but only pride is necessary. Yet the hand that at this moment is caressing your brow will reach the end and with its small voice silence the shout of challenges, remind you that only at the end, even if it is at the end, pride is superfluous and humility is necessary. Her pale fingers will touch your feverish brow, will try to ease your pain, will try to say to you today what they did not say to you forty-three years ago.