The Death of Artemio Cruz

(1915: October 22)

He wrapped himself in the blue serape because the freezing night wind hissed-as if someone were shaking a sheaf of straw-and negated the vertical heat of the day. They'd spent the night out in the open with no food. Just over a mile from them, the basalt crowns of the mountains shot up, their roots buried in the hard desert. For three days now, the scouting party had been on patrol, never asking where they were going, in which direction, guided only by the captain's instincts. He thought he knew all the tricks and all the routes left to Francisco Villa's tattered retreating columns. Thirty-six miles behind them stood the main body of their troops, only waiting for a galloping messenger from this detachment so they could throw themselves on the remnants of Villa's forces and keep them from joining the fresh troops in Chihuahua. But where were those remnants? The captain thought he knew: in some mountain pass, following the worst road. On the fourth day-today-the detachment was to have plunged into the sierra while the bulk of Carranza's forces would advance toward this place, which he and his men would leave at dawn. Yesterday they ran out of cornmeal. And the sergeant who rode out with the canteens last night, to find the stream coursing through the rocks, which disappeared as soon as it reached the desert, had not found it. Yes, he could see its bed of reddish-veined stone, clean and wrinkled, but it was dry. Two years before, they'd passed through this same place during the rainy season, and now, at dawn, only one round start twinkled over the soldier's burning heads. They'd made camp without starting any fires; an enemy scout might see them from the mountain. In any case, it was unnecessary. There was no food to cook, and in the immensity of the desert plains an isolated fire couldn't keep anyone warm. Wrapped in the serape, he ran his hand over his thin face, over the wiry beard that had started to cover his chin. Dust encrusted the corners of his lips, his eyebrows, and the bridge of his nose. There were eighteen men in the detachment, only a few yards from the captain. Whether he sleeps or keeps watch, he is always alone, always separated from his men by a few yards of bare ground. Nearby, the horses shook their manes in the wind, their black silhouettes standing out against the yellow skin of the desert. He wanted to go up into the mountains: the spring that gave rise to the brief, solitary flow of the cool creek was up there. His body felt tense. Hunger and thirst sank his eyes and opened them wider, green eyes with a cold, even stare.

The mask of his face, stained with dust, remained fixed and awake. He was waiting for the first line of dawn to show itself: the fourth day, according to orders. Almost no one slept, they were watching him from a distance as he sat with his knees tucked up, wrapped in the serape, unmoving. Those who tried to close their eyes had to fight their thirst, hunger, and fatigue. Those who weren't looking at the captain looked toward the line of horses, all with their forelocks parted. Their bridles were tied to the thick mesquite protruding out of the earth like a lost finger. The tired horses stared at the ground. The sun should be appearing from behind the mountain about now. It was time.

They were all waiting for the moment when the captain stood up, tossed aside the blue serape, and revealed himself: his chest covered with cartridge belts, the shining buckle on his officer's tunic, his pigskin puttees. Without a word, the detachment got to its feet and went over to the horses. The captain was right: a fan-shaped glow flared up from behind the lowest peaks, casting an arch of light to which unseen birds added a chorus. They kept their distance but they were the real owners of the vast silence of this abandoned land. He signaled to the Yaqui Indian Tobias and said to him, in his own language, "You stay to the back. As soon as we catch sight of the enemy, race back to headquarters."

The Yaqui nodded, putting on his narrow-brimmed hat, which had a round crown and a single red feather stuck in the band. The captain leaped onto his horse, and the line of men began a light trot toward the entrance to the sierra: a canyon with ocher-faced defiles.

There were three bluffs overhanging three passes through the mountain. The detachment headed for the second, the narrowest, along which the horses would have to pass in single file, with the steep cliff wall on one side and the ravine on the other. The path led to the spring; the canteens broadcast their emptiness as they bounced off the men's hips. The clatter of the rocks glancing off the horses' shoes repeated a deep, empty sound which, like the single dry beat of a drum, vanished without an echo down the canyon. Seen from above, the short column of horsemen seemed to be groping its way forward. Only he kept his eyes on the top of the canyon wall, squinting against the sun, letting his horse find the path. At the head of the detachment, he felt neither fear nor pride. He'd left his fear behind, not in his first battles, but in the long series of skirmishes which had made danger normal for him and turned safety into something disturbing. The absolute silence of the canyon secretly alarmed him, and he tightened the reins and flexed the muscles of his right arm and hand so he could swiftly pull out his pistol. He thought he was devoid of arrogance-earlier, because of his fear, and now out of habit. He had no sense of pride when the first bullets whistled past his ear and life like a miracle went on each time another shot missed its mark. He felt only astonishment at the blind wisdom of his body as it avoided danger by standing or crouching, his face hidden behind a tree trunk-astonishment and scorn, when he thought about the tenacity with which his body, faster even than his will, safeguarded itself. He felt no pride when, later, he didn't even hear that pertinacious, all-too-familiar whistle. He lived a dry but controlled dread in those minutes when unforeseen tranquillity surrounded him. He jutted out his jaw in a gesture of doubt.

A soldier's insistent whistle behind him confirmed the danger

of this march through the canyon. The whistle was broken by a sudden volley of small-arms fire and a howl he knew only too well: Villa's cavalry was charging down the almost vertical face of the canyon in a suicide attack, while the riflemen dug in on the third bluff fired at his men, whose bleeding horses, enveloped in a din of dust, reared and plunged into the pit of sharp rocks. He was the only one able to look back to see Tobias imitate Villa's men by galloping down the steep slope in a vain attempt to carry out his orders. The Yaqui's horse lost its footing and for an instant flew through the air, until it crashed at the foot of the canyon wall, crushing its rider under it. The howl grew, accompanied by heavy firing; he slipped off the left side of his horse and rolled down the ravine, controlling his fall to the bottom with somersaults and occasional handholds. In his fractured vision, the bellies of the rearing horses pulsated above him, accompanied by the useless shots of the men who'd been surprised on that narrow ledge, where there was no chance to take cover or maneuver the horses. As he fell, clawing at the steep slope, Villa's cavalrymen attacked from the second peak and the hand-to-hand fighting began. Up above, the savage whirlwind of tangled men and crazed horses continued, while down below he was touching the dark floor of the canyon with his bloody hands. He took out his pistol. Only a renewed silence awaited him. His strength was completely drained. He dragged himself forward, his arm and leg in agony, toward a gigantic rock.

"It's time to give up. Come on out of there, Captain Cruz."

His throat dry, he answered, "Why? So you can shoot me? I think I'll stay right here."

But his right hand, numb with pain, could barely hold the pistol. As he raised his arm, he felt a sharp pain in his stomach. He fired with his head down because the pain would not let him lift it. He kept on firing until the trigger only repeated its metallic clicking. He threw the pistol over the rock, and the voice from above shouted again: "Come out with your hands on the back of your neck."

On the other side of the boulder, more than thirty horses were scattered, dead or dying. Some were trying to lift their heads; others leaned on a bent leg; most had red bullet holes in their foreheads, their necks, or their stomachs. Sometimes on top, sometimes beneath the animals, the men on both sides had assumed distracted positions: face up, as if they were trying to drink the thin stream of the dry creek; face down, hugging the rocks. All dead, except this man who was groaning, trapped under the weight of a bay mare.

"Let me bring this man out," he shouted to the group up above. "He might be one of yours."

How would he do it? With what arms? With what strength? He had barely bent over to put his hands under the shoulders of Tobias's trapped body when a bullet whistled past, hitting the boulder. He raised his eyes. The leader of the winning side-his white officer's hat visible in the bluff's shadow-halted the firing with a wave of his hand. Caked sweat, thick with dust, covered his wrists, and even though one arm could barely move, the other managed to drag Tobias's body with a concentrated will.

Behind him he could hear the swift hooves of Villa's cavalry as they detached themselves from the column to take him. They were almost on him when the Yaqui's broken legs emerged from beneath the animal's body. Villa's men tore the cartridge belts from his chest.

It was seven o'clock in the morning.

By four in the afternoon, when they entered the Perales prison, he wouldn't have any memory of the forced march that Colonel Zagal imposed on his men and the two prisoners to negotiate, in nine hours, the difficult mountain passes and descend into the Chihuahua village. His head was so riddled with pain that he could barely follow the route they took. Seemingly, the harshest. The simplest for someone like Zagal, who had accompanied Pancho Villa on his first raids and had spent twenty years traveling these mountains, memorizing hiding places, passes, canyons, and shortcuts. The mushroom shape of Zagal's hat hid half his face, but his long, clenched teeth were always visible in a smile, framed by a black beard and mustache. Zagal smiled when Cruz was mounted, with great effort, on a horse, and the Yaqui's broken body, face down, was tied on the croup of the animal. He smiled when Tobias stretched out an arm to hold on to the captain's belt. He smiled when the column moved forward, entering a dark mouth, a natural tunnel, which he and the rest of Carranza's men hadn't know about, a shortcut that reduced to an hour what would have been a four-hour gallop on the open road. But he was only half aware of all this. He knew that both sides shot captured officers on the spot, so he wondered why Colonel Zagal was leading him to an unknown destiny.

The pain made him sleep. His arm and leg, badly bruised by the fall, hung inert; the Yaqui still held on to him, moaning, his face flushed. The rock tumulus passed by, one by one, and the men continued on, protected by the shadows at the base of the mountains, entering interior valleys of stone, deep ravines that ended in dry riverbeds, paths camouflaged by thickets and bushes so the column could cross undetected. Perhaps only Pancho Villa's men have really traveled this land, he thought, which was why, before, they had been able to win the string of guerrilla victories that had broken the back of the dictatorship. Masters of surprise, of encirclement, of rapid withdrawal after attack. Exactly the opposite of the tactics taught in military school, the tactics of General Alvaro Obregón, who believed in formal battles on the open plain with precise maneuvers on well-reconnoitered terrain.

"All together and in order. Don't straggle on me," shouted Colonel Zagal, detaching himself from the head of the column and galloping back, swallowing dust and clenching his teeth. "Now that we're out of the mountains, who knows what we'll run into. Everybody on guard; heads down, eyes open for dust clouds; together we see better than I would by myself…"

The masses of rock opened wider. The column was on a flat bluff, and the rolling Chihuahua desert, spotted with mesquite, spread out at their feet. The sun was cut by gusts of high wind: a layer of coolness that never touched the burning edges of the desert.

"Let's go by way of the mine so we get down faster," shouted Zagal. "Hold on tight to your pal, Cruz. It's a steep path."

The Yaqui's hand squeezed Artemio's belt. There was more in that pressure than a desire not to fall: an intent to communicate. Artemio lowered his head, patted his horse's neck, and turned toward Tobias's flushed face.

Speaking in his own language, the Indian whispered: "We're going to pass by a mine that was abandoned a long time ago. When we get close to one of the entrances, turn the horse and head him inside. The passages branch off so many times they'll never find you…"

He went on patting the horse's neck. Then he raised his head and tried to make out path they'd down to the desert and the mine entrance Tobias was talking about.

The Yaqui whispered again: "Forget about me. My legs are broken."

Was it noon? Was it one o'clock? The sun grew heavier and heavier.

A flock of goats appeared on a ridge, and some soldiers fired at them. One goat escaped; another fell off his pedestal and was picked up by a soldier who dismounted, picked up the carcass, and loaded it on his shoulders.

"Hunting season is officially over!" Zagal declared in his hoarse, smiling voice. "You're going to miss those bullets someday, Corporal Payán."

Then, standing up in his stirrups, he spoke to the entire column: "Get one thing through your thick skulls, you bastards: Carranza's troops are right on our ass. Don't anyone waste a single shot. What do you think, that we're on our way south, winning all the way, like before? Well, we aren't. We lost and we're heading north, back where we came from."

"But, sir," whined the corporal in a low voice, "at least now we've got a little something to eat."

"Yeah, and if we don't get out of here, we'll turn into a little something to shit."

The column laughed, and Corporal Payán tied the dead goat behind his saddle.

"No one eats or drinks anything until we get down there," ordered Zagal.

He had his mind fixed on the narrow trails that led down. There, just around the next turn, the open mouth of the mine.

The hooves of Zagal's horse clattered on the narrow-gauge rails protruding a foot or two outside the entrance. It was then that Cruz threw himself off his horse, tumbling down the slope before the surprised rifles could be raised. He fell on his knees in the darkness: the first shots rang out, and Zagal's men began shouting at each other. The sudden cold cleared his head, but the darkness dizzied him. Keep going: his legs ran, forgetting the pain, until he smashed into a boulder. He spread his arms toward two shafts running in different directions. Through one, a strong wind was blowing; out of the other came a shut-in-heat. With his arms outstretched, he could feel the different temperatures on the tips of his fingers. He started running again, toward the closed shaft, because it had to be deeper. Behind him, accompanied by the music of jangling spurs, came Villa's men. A match cast an orange glow, and he lost his footing and fell down a vertical shaft, until he felt the dry thud of his body on some rotten beams. Above, the noise of spurs was incessant, and a murmur of voices bounced off the walls of the mine. The man being chased got to his feet painfully; he tried to calculate the dimensions of the place into which he'd fallen and locate the shaft he should follow to get away.

"Better wait here…"

The voices above grew louder, as if they were arguing. Then Colonel Zagal's laugh rang out clearly. The voices withdrew. Someone far away whistled: a single, rough whistle to get attention. Other undefinable noises reached his hiding place, heavy sounds that persisted for several minutes. Then nothing. His eyes began to get used to the place: darkness.

"Looks like they've gone. But it might be a trap. Better wait here."

In the heat of the abandoned shaft, he felt his chest, carefully ran his fingers over the ribs he'd hurt in falling. He was in a round space with no exit, no doubt where the miners had stopped digging. A few broken beams lay on the ground; others held up the fragile clay roof. He tested the stability of one of the beams and then sat down again to wait for the hours to pass. One of the beams reached down the hole he'd fallen into: it wouldn't be hard to climb up and make his way back to the entrance. He felt the rents on his trousers and his tunic; his golden insignias were coming loose. And fatigue, hunger, sleepiness. His young body stretched its legs and felt a strong pulse in its thighs. Darkness and rest, slight panting, eyes closed. He thought about the women he would have wanted to know; the bodies of those he did know fled from his imagination. The last one had been in Fresnillo. A prostitute on her day off. The kind that start crying when you ask them where they're from or how they ended up here. The usual question to start up a conversation, because all of them loved to make up stories. Not that one; she just cried. And the war that never ended. Of course, these were the last battles. He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to breathe normally. Once they eliminated Pancho Villa's scattered army, there would be peace. Peace.

"What am I going to do when this is finally over? And why think that it's going to end? I never think that."

Maybe peace would mean good job opportunities. In his crisscrossing over Mexico, all he'd ever seen was destruction. But fields that were despoiled could be planted again. In Bajío, once, he'd seen a beautiful field; alongside, someone could build a house with arcades and flower-covered patios, and tend the crops. To see a seed grow, care for it, watch the plant sprout, harvest the fruit. It would be a good life, a good life…

"Don't go to sleep, stay alert."

He pinched his thigh. The muscles in the nape of his neck jerked his head back.

No sounds came from above. He could explore. He grabbed the beam that went up from the hole, and swung his foot to one of the cuts in the wall that ran up. He edged his way, using his good arm and wedging his foot in cut after cut. Finally he was able to grasp the ledge. His head came over the top. He was in the flow of hot air. But now it seemed heavier, even more choked-off than before. He walked to the main gallery. He recognized it because next to the poorly ventilated shaft he'd been in was the other, the one that blew hot air. But beyond, the light no longer came through the entrance. Had night fallen? Had he lost track of time?

His hands felt blindly for the entrance. It wasn't night that had closed it off but Villa's men, who had barricaded it before leaving. They'd sealed him in this tomb with its exhausted veins of ore.

In the nerves of his stomach he felt smashed. He automatically widened his nostrils in an imaginary effort to breathe deeply. He brought his fingers to his temples and rubbed them. The other shaft, the one that blew hot. That wind came from outside, it came up from the desert, the sun whipped it up. He ran toward the second tunnel. His nose led him to that sweet, flowing air, and with his hands braced on the walls he made his way, tripping in the darkness. A drop of water moistened his hand. He brought his open mouth to the wall, searching for the source of the water. Slow, disparate pearls dripped from the roof. He caught another with his tongue; he waited for the third, the fourth. He hung his head. The shaft seemed to end. He sniffed the air. It came from below, he felt it around his ankles. He went down on his knees, feeling with his hands. From that invisible opening, it came from there: the steepness of the shaft gave it more force than it had here at the opening. The stones were loose. He began to pull at them until the wall gave way: a new gallery, glittering with silvery veins, opened before him. He squeezed his body through and realized that he couldn't stand up in this new passage: he would have to crawl. So he dragged himself along, without knowing where this slithering would take him. Gray seams, golden reflections from his officer's bars: only those irregular lights illuminated his slow crawl, like that of a beshrouded snake. His eyes reflected the blackest corners of the darkness, and a thread of saliva ran down his chin. His mouth felt as if it were full of tamarinds: perhaps the involuntary memory of any fruit recalled stimulates the salivary glands; perhaps the precise messenger of a scent released from a faraway orchard, carried by the mobile desert air, had reached this narrow passage. His newly awakened sense of smell perceived something else. A breath of air. A lungful of air. The unmistakable taste of nearby dirt: unmistakable for someone who had spent such a long time locked up with the taste of stone. The low shaft was descending; now it suddenly stopped and fell, cut off, onto a wide interior space with a sand floor. He dropped down from the high gallery and landed on the soft bed. Some roots had made their way in here. How?

"Yes, now it goes up again. It's light! It looked like a reflection on the sand, but it's light!"

He ran, his chest full of air, toward the opening bathed in sunlight.

He ran without hearing or seeing. Without hearing the slow strumming of the guitar and the voice that sang along with it, the saucy, sensual voice of a tired soldier.

Durango girls wear green and white, Some like to pinch, some like to bite…

Without seeing the small fire over which the carcass of the goat shot back in the mountains was turning, or the fingers that tore off strips of its skin.

Without hearing or seeing, he fell on the first fringe of illuminated ground. How could he see, under the molten sun of three o'clock in the afternoon, Colonel Zagal's hat transformed into a plaster mushroom.

Zagal laughed and offered him his hand. "Get a move on, Captain, you're going to make us late. Just look at the Yaqui over there, eating his head off. And now everybody can use his canteen."

Chihuahua girls are desperate,

they don't know what to do,

They need a man to love them,

I wonder if I'll do…

The prisoner raised his face and before looking at Zagal's now relaxed group let his eyes roam the dry landscape of rocks and spiny plants stretching out, wide, silent, and leaden, before him. Then he stood up and walked over to the small camp. The Yaqui fixed his eyes on him. He stretched out his arm, ripped a scorched chunk of meat off the goat's back, and sat down to eat.

Perales.

A town of adobe bricks, scarcely different from any other. Only

one of its streets, the one that passed by the town hall, was paved. The others were dirt pounded down by the bare feet of children, the talons of turkeys which preened on street corners, the paws of the pack of dogs that sometimes slept in the sun and sometimes ran around aimlessly, barking. Perhaps one or two good houses, with grand entryways and iron gates and zinc drainpipes: they always belonged to the local moneylender and the political boss (when they weren't one and the same person). But now those figures were fleeing Pancho Villa's swift justice. The troops had taken over both houses and filled the patios-hidden behind the long walls that faced the street like battlements-with horses and hay, boxes of ammunition and tools: whatever Villa's defeated Northern Division had managed to salvage in its march back to its source. The color of the town was gray; only the façade of the town hall boasted a pinkish tone, and that quickly faded on its sides and in the patios into the same gray as the earth. There was a spring nearby, the reason why the town was founded. Its wealth derived from turkeys, chickens, a few dry fields tilled alongside the dusty streets, a pair of blacksmiths, a carpenter's shop, a general store, and a few small businesses set up in houses. It was a miracle anyone survived. People lived in silence. As in most Mexican villages, it was hard to know where the people were hiding. Mornings and afternoons, afternoons and evenings, the blow of an insistent hammer could perhaps be heard, or the wail of a newborn, but it would be difficult to run into a living being on those burning streets. Sometimes the children, small and barefoot, would peer out. The soldiers, too, stayed behind the walls of the abandoned houses or in the patios of the town hall, which was the destination of the weary column.

When they dismounted, a guard detachment approached and Colonel Zagal pointed to the Yaqui. "Lock him up. You come with me, Cruz."

The colonel wasn't laughing now. He opened the door of the whitewashed office, and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. He loosened his belt and sat down. The prisoner stood there, staring at him.

"Pull up a chair, Captain, and let's have a nice little chat. Care for a cigarette?"

The prisoner took one, and the flame from the match brought their faces together.

"Well now"-Zagal smiled again-"it's a simple deal. You tell us the plans of the troops chasing us and we'll set you free. I'm talking to you man to man now. We know we're done for, but even so we're going to put up a defense. You're a good soldier and understand what I mean."

"Sure. That's why I won't tell you anything."

"Of course. But actually you wouldn't have to tell us very much. You and all those dead guys back in the canyon were on a scouting mission-anybody could see that. Which means that the rest of your force couldn't be too far away. You even smelled out the route we've been following back north. But since you don't know that pass through the mountain, you would have had to cross the flatland and that takes a few days. Well then: How many men are behind us? Are there troops who've gone ahead by train? What kind of supplies do you have? How much artillery did you bring along? What are your plans? Where are the separate brigades trailing us going to rendezvous? See? I'm not asking for that much. You tell me what I want to know and you go free. Word of honor."

"Since when have you been giving out guarantees?"

"Damn it, Captain, we're going to lose this thing no matter what. I'm being straight with you. The Northern Division has collapsed. It's broken down into small bands that will get lost in the mountains, and even the bands are thinning out, because, as we go along, the men are deserting, going back home to their towns and farms. We're tired. We've been fighting for a long time, ever since we took up arms against Don Porfirio. Then we fought for Madero, then against Orozco and his reds, then Huerta's ragpickers, then you Carranza guys. A lot of years. We're worn out. Our people are like lizards, they're turning the same color as the dirt, they're going back to the shacks they came from, they dress like field hands and wait for the time to start fighting again, even if they have to wait a hundred years. They know we've lost this one, the same way Zapata's men know it down south. You have won. Why should you die when your side's already won? Let us go down fighting. That's all I'm asking. Let us lose with a little honor."

"Pancho Villa's not in this town."

"No. He's up ahead. The men are deserting in droves; there are only a few of us left."

"What kind of guarantees can you give me?"

"We'll leave you here-alive-in the jail until your pals rescue you."

"Sure, if we win. If not…"

"If we win, I'll give you a horse so you can get away."

"So you can shoot me in the back when I go."

"Come on…"

"No. I've got nothing to say."

"We've got your friend the Yaqui in jail, along with a lawyer named Bernal, some kind of envoy from Carranza. You can wait with them until the order for your execution comes through."

Zagal stood up.

Neither one took the matter personally. Their feelings had been worn away, effaced by everyday events, by the relentless grind of their blind struggle. They had spoken mechanically, without revealing their true emotions. Zagal asked for information and offered him the opportunity to choose between freedom and execution; the prisoner refused to supply the information. They spoke not like Zagal and Cruz but like gears in two opposed war machines. For that reason, the prisoner received the information about his execution with absolute indifference. An indifference, of course, that obliged him to realize the monstrous tranquillity with which he accepted his own death. Then he, too, stood and set his jaw.

"Colonel Zagal, we've both been following orders for a long time, without giving ourselves the chance to do something like-how can I put it?-something that would say: I'm doing this as Artemio Cruz; I'm doing this on my own, not as an officer in the army. If you have to kill me, kill me as Artemio Cruz. You've already said that all this is coming to an end, that we're all tired. I don't want to die as the last sacrifice in a winning cause, just as you don't want to die as the last sacrifice in a losing cause. Be a man, Colonel, and let me be one. Let's shoot it out with pistols. Draw a line down the patio, and we'll both come out of opposite corners. If you shoot me before I cross the line, you get to finish me off. If I cross it without getting hit, you let me go."

"Corporal Payán!" shouted Zagal, with a glint in his eye. "Take him to his cell."

Then he turned to face the prisoner. "You will get no advance notice of when the execution will take place, so be ready. It might be an hour from now, it might be tomorrow, or even the day after. Just think about what I told you."

The setting sun came through the barred window and outlined in yellow the silhouettes of the other two men, one standing, the other on his back. Tobias tried to murmur a greeting; the other, who paced nervously, came up to him as soon as the cell door screeched and the keys of the corporal of the guard scraped in the lock.

"You're Captain Artemio Cruz? I'm Gonzalo Bernal, envoy of our commander, Venustiano Carranza."

He was wearing civilian clothes, a coffee-colored twill suit whose countrified jacket had a false belt sewn onto it. Artemio looked at him as he looked at all the civilians who tried to come close to the sweaty nucleus of those who did the fighting-he looked at him with a rapid glance of mockery and indifference, until Bernal, wiping his high forehead and blond mustache with a handkerchief, went on: "The Indian is in a bad way. His leg is broken."

The captain shrugged. "For the time he's going to last, it doesn't much matter."

"What do you know?" asked Bernal. He kept the handkerchief over his lips, and his words were muffled.

"They're going to shoot us all. But they won't say when. Did you think we'd be dying of colds?"

"There's no hope our troops will get here first?"

Now it was the captain who stopped-he'd been turning, peering at the roof, the walls, the tiny barred window, the dirt floor: an instinctive search for a means to escape. He looked at the new enemy: the informer planted in the cell.

He asked: "Isn't there any water?"

"The Yaqui drank it all."

The Indian moaned. Cruz approached the coppery face resting against the stone head of the bench that served as both bed and chair. His cheek was next to Tobias's when for the first time, with a force that made him step back, he felt the existence of that face, which had never been more than dark clay, one of the troops, more recognizable in the nervous, rapid wholeness of his warrior's body than in this serenity, this pain. Tobias did have a face; he saw it. Hundreds of white lines-lines of laughter and rage and eyes squinting into the sun-covered the corners of his eyelids and inscribed squares on his wide cheekbones. His thick, protruding lips smiled gently and in his gray narrow eyes there was something like a well of turbid, enchanted ready light.

"So you made it, too," said Tobias in his own language, which the captain had learned in his daily contact with the troops from the Sinaloa mountains.

He squeezed the Yaqui's sinewy hand. "Yes, Tobias. It's better that you know it now, once and for all: they're going to shoot us."

"It had to be that way. You'd do the same thing."

"Yes."

They remained silent as the sun disappeared. The three men got ready to spend the night together. Bernal paced slowly around the cell: he got up and then sat down on the dirt to scratch some lines in the floor. Outside, in the hall, an oil lamp went on, and they could hear the movement of the jaws of the corporal of the guard. A cold wind sprang up over the desert.

On his feet again, he went to the cell door: thick slabs of rough-cut pine, and a small opening at eye level. On the other side, the plume of smoke from the cigar the corporal was lighting floated up. He closed his hands on the rusty bars and observed his guardian's flat profile. Tufts of black hair sprouted out of his canvas cap and only stopped at his square, beardless cheekbones. The prisoner caught his eye, and the corporal answered by rapidly moving his head and free hand to express a silent "What do you want?" His other hand clutched his carbine in the usual style of those engaged in this kind of work.

"Got your order about tomorrow yet?"

The corporal looked at him with long, yellow eyes. He didn't answer.

"I'm not from these parts. What about you? What kind of place is it?"

"What place?"

"Where they're going to shoot us. What can you see from there?"

He stopped and waved, so the corporal would bring the lamp over.

"What can you see?"

Only then did he remember that he'd always looked ahead, beginning with the night when he'd crossed the mountain and escaped from the old ruined house in Veracruz. From that day on, he'd never looked back. From that day on, he'd willed to know he was alone, with no strength other than his own…And now…He couldn't resist asking that question-what's it like, what can you see from there-which perhaps was his way of disguising the anxiety of memory, the slope toward an image of leafy ferns and slow rivers, tubular flowers over a shack, a starched skirt and soft hair that smelled of quince…

"They'll just take you to the patio out behind here," the corporal was saying, "and what you can see-what did you think it'd be?-is a damn high wall, all pockmarked with bullet holes. We shoot so many people…"

"But the mountains. Can't you see the mountains?"

"You know, I swear I don't remember."

"Seen a lot of executions, eh?"

"You said it."

"Maybe the guy who does the shooting can see what's going on better than the guys being shot."

"You mean you've never been in a firing squad?"

(Yes, I've been in firing squads, but without thinking about what the other guy might feel, or that someday it might be my turn. That's why I have no right to ask you anything, right? Like me, you've only killed, without noticing. That's why no one knows what the other guy might feel and no one can tell about it. If the other guy could come back, if he could tell all about hearing shots and feeling them hit his chest and face. If he could tell the truth about all that, it might be that we wouldn't dare to kill anyone ever again; or it might be that dying wouldn't matter to anyone ever again…It might be terrible…but it might be just as natural as being born…What do you and I know?)

"Listen, Captain, you won't be needing your insignia anymore. Give it to me."

The corporal stuck his hand through the bars, and he turned his back on him. The soldier laughed a stifled screech.

Now the Yaqui was whispering in his language. He dragged his feet over to the hard headrest to touch the Indian's fevered brow with his hand and to hear his words. They ran along in a gentle singsong.

"What's he saying?"

"He's telling things. How the government took away the land where his people had always lived, to give it to some gringos. How they fought for their land; how the federal troops came, cut off the men's hands, and chased them into the hills. How they took the Yaqui chiefs up to a bluff, loaded them down with weights, and threw them into the sea."

The Yaqui spoke with his eyes shut. "Those of us who were left were dragged into a long line and from there, from Sinaloa, they made us walk all the way to the other end, to Yucatán."

"How they had to march to Yucatán and the women and the old people and the kids in the tribe were dying. Those who made it to the hemp plantations were sold as slaves, and husbands were separated from wives. How they made the women sleep with the Chinese workers, so they'd forget their language and give birth to more workers…"

"I came back, I came back. As soon as I heard the war had started, I came back with my brothers to fight against the evil."

The Yaqui laughed softly, and Artemio Cruz felt the need to urinate. He stood up, opened the fly of his khaki trousers, found a corner, and listened to the splashing on the dirt. He frowned, thinking of the usual end for brave men, who die with a wet spot on their uniform trousers. Bernal, who had his arms crossed, seemed to be looking through the high bars for a moonbeam on this cold, dark night. Sometimes a persistent hammering from the town reached them; the dogs howled. A few lost, meaningless conversations managed to penetrate the walls. He slapped the dust off his tunic and went to the young lawyer.

"Got any cigarettes?"

"Yes…I think so…They're somewhere."

"Offer one to the Yaqui."

"I already did. But he doesn't like mine."

"Does he have any of his own?"

"It seems he ran out."

"Maybe the soldiers have cards."

"No. I couldn't concentrate. I think I wouldn't be able to…"

"Sleepy?"

"No."

"You're right. There's no need to sleep."

"Think you'll be sorry?"

"What?"

"Sorry, I mean, for ever having slept…"

"That's a good one."

"Right. So it's better to remember. They say it's good to remember."

"There's not much life behind."

"Why not? That's the Yaqui's advantage. Maybe that's why he doesn't like to talk."

"Right. No, I don't get you."

"I mean, the Yaqui has a lot to remember."

"Maybe in his language they don't remember the same way we do."

"That march, from Sinaloa. What he told us just now."

"Yes."

"…"

"Regina…"

"What…"

"Nothing. I was just saying names."

"How old are you?"

"I'm just turning twenty-six. What about you?"

"Twenty-nine. I don't have much to remember either. Even though life got pretty hectic all of a sudden."

"When do people start remembering, for instance, their childhood?"

"That's true; it's hard."

"Know something? Just now, while we were talking…"

"Yes?"

"Well, I said a few names to myself. Know something? They don't mean anything to me anymore, nothing."

"Sun's coming up."

"Don't take any notice."

"The sweat's pouring down my back."

"Pass me a cigarette. What happened?"

"Sorry. Here. Maybe you don't feel anything."

"That's what they say."

"Who says that, Cruz?"

"The ones who do the killing."

"Does it matter much to you?"

"Well…"

"Why don't you think about…"

"What? That everything's going to be the same even if they kill us?"

"No. Don't think ahead; think back. I think about all those who've already died in the Revolution."

"Right. I remember Bule, Aparicio, Gómez, Captain Tiburcio Amarillas…just a few."

"I'll bet you can't even remember twenty. And not only them. What are the names of all those who died? Not only in this Revolution but in all the wars, and even those who died peacefully, in their beds. Who remembers them?"

"Look. Give me a match."

"Sorry."

"The moon's up now."

"Want to see it? If you stand on my shoulders, you might catch a glimpse…"

"No. It's not worth the trouble."

"It's good they took my watch."

"Yes."

"I mean, otherwise I'd be counting the minutes."

"Of course, I understand."

"The night seemed more…well, longer…"

"This stinking pisshole."

"Look at the Yaqui. Fast asleep. It's good no one showed he was afraid."

"Now, another day stuck in here."

"Who knows. They're liable to walk in any time."

"Not these guys. They like their little game. It's too traditional to be shot at dawn. They're going to play with us."

"He wasn't impulsive?"

"Villa yes. Zagal no."

"Cruz…isn't this really absurd?"

"What?"

"Dying at the hands of one of the big bosses, and not believing in any of them."

"Think we'll go all three of us together, or they'll take us out one at a time?"

"Easier in one haul, don't you think? Hey, you're the soldier here."

"Don't you have any tricks up your sleeve?"

"Shall I tell you something? You'll die laughing."

"What is it?"

"I wouldn't tell you if I weren't sure we aren't going to get out of here. Carranza sent me on this mission just so I'd get caught and the other side would be responsible for my death. He got it into his head that he'd rather have a dead hero than a live traitor."

"You, a traitor?"

"Depends on how you look at it. You've only been in battles; you've followed orders and have never had any doubts about your leaders."

"Correct. Our mission is to win the war. Aren't you with Obregón and Carranza?"

"The same way I could have been with Zapata or Villa. I don't believe in any of them."

"So?"

"That's the drama. They're all there is. I don't know if you remember the beginning. It was only a short time ago, but it seems so far away…When the leaders didn't matter. When we weren't doing this to raise up one man but to raise up all men."

"Are you trying to get me to find fault with the loyalty of our men? That's what the Revolution's all about, nothing else: being loyal to the leaders."

"Right. Even the Yaqui, who went out to fight for his land, now he's only fighting for General Obregón against General Villa. No-before, it was something else. Before it degenerated into factions. Whenever the Revolution passed through a village, the debts of the peasants were wiped out, the moneylender's property was confiscated, the political prisoners were let out of jail, and the old bosses were run out. But just look at how the people who thought the Revolution was not to puff up leaders but to free the people are being left behind."

"Time will tell."

"No, it won't. A revolution starts in the battlefields, but once it gets corrupted, even though military battles are still won, it's lost. And we're all to blame. We've let ourselves be divided and directed by the lustful, the ambitious, the mediocre. Those who want a real, radical, intransigent revolution are, unfortunately, ignorant, bloody men. And the educated ones only want half a revolution, compatible with the only thing they really want: to do well, to live well, to take the place of Don Porfirio's elite. That's Mexico's drama. Look at me. I spent my entire life reading Kropotkin, Bakunin, and old Plekhanov, buried in my books since I was a kid, and talk, talk, talk. And when the time comes to make a decision, I have to join up with Carranza, because he's the only one who seems a decent sort, the only one who doesn't scare me. Doesn't that make me sound like a faggot? I'm afraid of the people, of Villa, and of Zapata…'I'll go on being an impossible person as long as the people who are possible today go on being possible'…Oh, yeah. Sure, sure."

"You start in with all this now, when you're about to die…"

"That's the radical defect in my character: my love of the fantastic, of adventures hitherto unseen, enterprises that open infinite, unknown horizons…Oh yeah! Sure, sure."

"Why didn't you say all that when you were out there?"

"I did say it, beginning in 1913, to Iturbe, to Lucio Blanco, to Buelna, to all the honorable military men who didn't try to become big chiefs. That's why they didn't know how to nip Carranza in the bud. I mean, his whole life he's done nothing but turn people against each other and divide them, because if he didn't, who wouldn't take his command from him, the old mediocrity? That's why he promoted mediocrities, the Pablo González types, who'd never put him in the shade. That's how he divided the Revolution, turning it into a factional war."

"And that's why he sent you to Perales?"

"My mission was to convince Villa's men to give up. As if we all didn't know that they're running away in defeat and they're so desperate they shoot every Carranza supporter they can get their hands on. The old man doesn't like getting his hands dirty. He'd rather have the enemy do his dirty work for him. Artemio, Artemio, the leaders, haven't been equal to the people and their Revolution."

"So why don't you go over to Villa?"

"Why would I want more of the same? So I could see how long he lasts and then go over to another and then another, until I find myself in another cell waiting for orders for my execution?"

"But you'd save yourself…"

"No…Believe me, Cruz, I'd like to save myself and go back to Puebla. See my wife, my son. Luisa and little Pancho. And my little sister, Catalina, who depends on me for so much. See my father, my dear old Don Gamaliel, so noble and so blind. I wish I could explain to him why I got involved in all this. He never understood that there are obligations we've just got to see through, even though we know it's all going to fail. For him, the old order was eternal-the haciendas, the camouflaged loan-sharking, all of it…I wish there was someone I could ask to go see them and give them a message from me. But no one's getting out of here alive, that I do know. No; it's all a sinister game of musical chairs. We're living among criminals and pygmies, because the big boss only favors midgets who won't stand over him, and the little boss has got to murder the big one to get ahead. A shame, Artemio. How necessary everything that's happening is, and how unnecessary it is to corrupt it. That isn't what we wanted when we started the Revolution of the people in 1913…As for you, you'd better decide. As soon as they eliminate Zapata and Villa, there will be only two bosses left, the two you work for. Which one will you go with?"

"My leader is General Obregón."

"Well, at least you've made a choice. I hope it doesn't cost you your life; I hope…"

"You're forgetting that they're going to shoot us."

Bernal laughed in surprise, as if he'd tried to fly, forgetting the chains that held him down. He squeezed the other prisoner's shoulder and said: "This damned mania for politics! Maybe it's an intuition. Why don't you go with Villa?"

He couldn't make out Gonzalo Bernal's face clearly, but in the darkness he could feel the mocking eyes, the know-it-all air of a shyster who never fights but just talks while others win battles. Abruptly, he moved away from Bernal.

"What's the matter?" asked the lawyer, smiling.

He grunted and lit his cigarette, which had gone out. "That's no way to talk," he said between his teeth. "Where do you get this stuff? Am I telling you everything? Well, let me tell you that people who tell everything without being asked really bust my balls, especially when they're going to die any minute. Shut up, Mr. Lawyer, tell yourself whatever you want, but let me die without spilling my guts."

Gonzalo's voice sounded as though sheathed in steel: "Listen, he-man, we are three men sentenced to death. The Yaqui told us his story…"

His rage was directed against himself, because he had allowed himself to drift into intimacy and talk, he had opened himself to a man who did not deserve that kind of confidence.

"That was the life of a real man. He had a right to tell it."

"What about you?"

"All I've ever done is fight. If there was more, I don't remember it."

"You loved some woman…"

He clenched his fists.

"…You had a father, a mother; hell, you may even have a son someplace. You don't? I do, Cruz. I do think I had a man's life-I'd like to be free to get on with it. Don't you? Wouldn't you like to be caressing…?"

Bernal's voice broke when Artemio's hands sought him in the darkness, beat him against the wall without a word, with a muffled bellow, his nails stuck into the twill lapels of this new enemy armed with ideas and tenderness, who was merely repeating the secret thoughts of the captain, of the prisoner, his own thoughts: What will happen after our death?

And Bernal went on, despite the fists that pounded him: "…If they hadn't killed us before we were thirty?…What might have become of our lives? I wanted to do so many things…"

Until he, his back covered with sweat, his face close to Bernal's, also murmured: "…Everything is going to go on the way it always does, don't you get it? The sun is going to come up, and kids will keep on being born, even if the two of us are dead and buried, don't you get it?"

The two men separated after their violent embrace. Bernal dropped on the floor; Cruz walked toward the cell door, his mind made up: he would tell Zagal a cock-and-bull story, he would ask him to let the Yaqui go and would leave Bernal to his fate.

When the corporal of the guard, humming, led him to the colonel, all he felt was that lost pain for Regina, the sweet and bitter memory he'd hidden, which was now boiling to the surface, asking him to go on living, as if the dead woman needed the memory of a living man to be something other than a body gnawed by worms in an unmarked grave in a nameless town somewhere.

"Don't get any cute ideas about pulling a fast one on us," said Colonel Zagal in his eternally smiling voice. "We're sending two patrols out right now to see if what you're telling us is true, and if it isn't, or if the attack is coming from another direction, make your peace with God and figure you've done nothing more than earn yourself a few more hours of life-at the cost of your honor."

Zagal stretched out his legs and wiggled his stocking toes one after the other. His boots were on the table, worn out and sagging.

"What about the Yaqui?"

"He wasn't part of the deal. Look: the night's drawing long. Why tease these poor bastards with the idea that they're going to live another day? Corporal Payán!…Let's send the other two prisoners off to a better life. Take them out of the cell and bring them out back."

"The Yaqui can't walk," said the corporal.

"Who does he think he is, the cucaracha in the song? Fine, give him some marijuana," cackled Zagal. "All right, bring him out on a stretcher and prop him up against the wall as best you can."

What did Tobias and Gonzalo Bernal see? The same thing the captain saw, except that he was at a greater elevation, standing next to Zagal on the balcony of the town hall. Down below, the Yaqui was carried out on a stretcher and Bernal walked with his head slumped, and the two were set against the wall between two oil lamps.

A night in which the glow of dawn was slow in showing itself, in which the silhouette of the mountains did not allow itself to be seen, not even when the rifles thundered with reddish blasts and Bernal stretched out his hand to touch the Yaqui's shoulder. Tobias stayed against the wall, held in place by the stretcher. The lamps lit his shattered face, wracked by bullets. They lit only the ankles of Gonzalo Bernal's prone body, out of which flowed rivulets of blood.

"There are your dead," said Zagal.

Another fusillade, distant but heavy, served as a commentary on his words, and immediately a hoarse cannon joined in the blowing away a corner of the building. The shouts of Villa's men rose confusedly to the white balcony, where Zagal was bellowing disarticulate commands:

"They're here! They found us! It's Carranza's men!" And he knocked him down and squeezed his hand-alive once more, concentrated in all its strength-around the butt of the colonel's pistol. He felt the metallic dryness of the weapon in his fingers. He stuck it into Zagal's back and wrapped his right arm around the colonel's neck. He squeezed, keeping him on the ground, his jaws set, his lips foaming. Over the edge of the balcony he could see the confusion down in the execution yard. The soldiers in the squad ran around, trampling the corpses of Tobias and Bernal, kicking over the oil lamps. Explosions rained down on the town of Perales, accompanied by shouts and fire, galloping and whinnying horses. More of Villa's troops came out into the yard, pulling on their jackets and buttoning their trousers. The fallen lamps etched every profile, every belt, every brass button with a golden line. Hands reached out to pick up rifles and cartridge belts. Quickly they opened the stable doors and neighing horses came out on the patio. Their riders mounted and galloped out the gates. Stragglers ran behind the cavalry, and now the patio was deserted. The corpses of Bernal and the Yaqui. Two oil lamps. The shouting faded off into the distance, headed for the enemy attack. The prisoner released Zagal. The colonel remained on his knees, coughing, rubbing his nearly strangled neck. He could barely raise his voice: "Don't give up. I'm here."

And the morning finally showed its blue eyelid over the desert.

The immediate din ceased. Zagal's men ran through the streets toward the siege, their white shirts tinged with blue. Not a murmur rose from the patio. Zagal stood up and unbuttoned his grayish tunic, as if offering his chest. The captain also stepped forward, pistol in hand.

"My offer still stands," he said in a dry voice to the colonel.

"Let's go downstairs," said Zagal, relaxing his arms.

In the office, Zagal picked up the Colt he kept in a drawer.

They walked, both armed, through the cold corridors out to the patio. They divided the rectangular space in two. The colonel moved Bernal's head out of his way with his foot. The captain picked up the oil lamps.

Each man stood in corner. They moved forward.

Zagal fired first, and his shot pierced Tobias the Yaqui again. The colonel stopped, and a flash of hope lit his black eyes: the other walked forward without firing. The duel was turning into a ritual of honor. The colonel clung-for one second, two seconds, three seconds-to the hope that the other would respect his courage, that the two would meet in the middle of the patio without firing another shot.

They both stopped at the halfway point.

The smile returned to the colonel's face. The captain crossed the imaginary line. Zagal, laughing, was making a friendly gesture with his hand when two quick shots pierced his stomach, and the other man watched him sag and fall at his feet. Then he dropped the pistol on the colonel's sweat-soaked head and stood there, not moving.

The desert wind shook the curly hair over his eyes, the tatters of his tunic stained with sweat, the strips of his leather puttees. Five days' growth of beard bristled on his cheeks, and his green eyes were lost behind eyelids covered with dust and dry tears. Standing there in the patio, a solitary hero surrounded by corpses. Standing there, a hero without witnesses. Standing there, surrounded by abandon while the battle raged on outside the town, with a roll of drums.

He lowered his eyes. Zagal's lifeless arm pointed toward Gonzalo's lifeless skull. The Yaqui was seated, his body against the wall; his back had left a clear outline on the canvas of the stretcher. He knelt next to the colonel and closed his eyes.

Suddenly he stood up and breathed the air he'd wanted to find, thank, and use to give name to his life and his freedom. But he was alone. He had no witnesses. He had no comrades. A muffled shout escaped from his throat, drowned out by steady machine-gun fire in the distance.

"I'm free; I'm free."

He held his fists over his stomach, his face twisted with pain.

He raised his eyes and finally saw what someone sentenced to die at dawn must have seen: the distant line of mountains, the now whitish sky, the patio's adobe walls. He listened to whatever it was someone sentenced to die at dawn must listen to: the chirping of hidden birds, the sharp cry of a hungry child, the strange hammering of the worker in the village, remote from the unvarying, monotonous, lost clamor of the artillery and small-arms fire still raging behind him. Anonymous work, stronger than the clamor, with the certainty that, once the fighting was over, and the dying, and the winning, the sun would shine again, every day…

I cannot desire; I let them do whatever they wish. I try to touch it. I run my finger over it, from my navel to my pubis. Round. Puffy. I don't know. The doctor's gone. Said he was going to bring in some other doctors. He doesn't want to be responsible for what happens to me. I don't know. But I see them. They've come in. The mahogany door opens, closes, and their footsteps go unheard on the thick rug. They've closed the windows. They've closed the gray curtains with a hiss. They've come in.

"Go over to him, child…so he can recognize you…Tell him your name…"

She smells good. She smells pretty. Oh yes, now I can make out the blush on her cheeks, her shining eyes, her young, graceful body, which approaches my bed in short steps.

"I…I'm Gloria…"

I try to whisper her name. I know they don't listen to what I say. For that at least I have to be thankful to Teresa: for having brought her daughter's young body close to me. If only I could make out her face more clearly. If only I could see the expression of disgust on her face. She must be aware of this stench of dead scales, vomit, and blood; she must see this sunken chest, this gray, matted beard, these waxy ears, this fluid I can't keep from pouring out of my nose, this dry saliva on my lips and chin, these unfocused eyes that will have to try to take another look, these…

They take her away from me.

"Poor thing…She was upset…"

"What?"

"Nothing, Papa, just rest."

Someone said she was going out with Padilla's son. How he must kiss her, what words he must say to her, ah, yes, what a blush. They come and go. They touch my shoulder, they nod, they whisper words of encouragement, yes, they don't know that I'm listening in spite of everything: I hear even the remotest conversations, the talk that takes place in the corners of the room, but I don't hear what they say nearby, the words spoken into my ear.

"How does he look to you, Mr. Padilla?"

"He looks bad, very bad."

"He's leaving behind a veritable empire."

"Yes."

"So many years he's spent running his businesses!"

"It'll be hard to find someone to take his place."

"I'll tell you what: the only person fit to fill his shoes is you…"

"Yes, I've been so close to him…"

"And who would take your place, in that eventuality?"

"Oh, there are so many qualified people."

"So you think there will be quite a few promotions?"

"Certainly. A whole new redistribution of responsibilities."

"Ah, Padilla, come closer. Did you bring the tape recorder?"

"You'll take responsibility?"

"Where Artemio…Here it is…"

"Yes, sir."

"Be ready. The government is going to intervene in a big way, so you have to be ready to take charge of the union."

"Yes, sir."

"Let me warn you in advance that quite a number of old foxes are getting ready. I've already hinted to the authorities that you're the man we know we can count on. Wouldn't you like a little something to eat?"

"No, thanks, I already ate. Much earlier."

"All right, then, get cracking. Go shake some hands, over in the Ministry of Labor and the Confederation of Mexican Workers-you know what I mean…"

"I'll get right on it, boss. You can count on me."

"See you soon, Campanela. Keep a low profile. Be careful. On your toes. Let's go, Padilla…"

There. It's finished. Ah. That was everything. But was it? Who knows. I don't remember. I haven't listened to the voices in that recorder for a long time. I've been playing dumb for a while now. Who's touching me? Who is that so close to me? How useless, Catalina. I tell myself: How useless, what a useless caress. I ask myself: What are you going to say to me? Do you think you've finally found the words you never had the courage to say? Ah, so you did love me? Why didn't we ever say it? I loved you. I don't remember anymore. Your caress makes me see you and I don't know, I don't understand why, sitting next to me, you share this memory with me at the end, and this time, without a reproach in your eyes. Pride. Pride saved us. Pride killed us.

"…for a miserable salary, while he shames us with that woman, while he rubs our noses in his money, he gives us what he gives us as if we were beggars…"

They didn't understand. I did nothing for them. I didn't even take them into account. I did it for myself. I'm not interested in these stories. I don't want to remember Teresa and Gerardo. They mean nothing to me.

"Why didn't you demand that he give you your rightful place, Gerardo? You're as responsible as he is…"

I have no interest in them.

"Calm down, Teresita, how about trying to understand my point of view? You don't hear me complaining."

"Personality, that's all you needed, but not even that…"

"Let him rest."

"Don't start siding with him now! He made no one suffer as much as he made you…"

I survived. Regina. What was your name? No. You, Regina. But what was your name, soldier without a name? Gonzalo. Gonzalo Bernal. A Yaqui. A poor little Yaqui. I survived. You died.

"He made me suffer, too. How can I forget it. He didn't even come to the wedding. My wedding, his daughter's wedding…"

They never got the point. I didn't need them. I created myself by myself. Soldier. Yaqui. Regina. Gonzalo.

"He destroyed even the things he loved, Mama, and you know it."

"Just stop talking, for God's sake, just stop…"

The will? Don't worry: it exists, an officially stamped, notarized document. I don't leave anyone out: why should I leave anyone out, hate anyone? Wouldn't you have secretly thanked me for hating you? Wouldn't it give you pleasure to know that even at the end I thought about you, even if it was to play a trick on you? No, I remember all of you with the indifference of a cold bureaucratic formality, my dear Catalina, my charming daughter, granddaughter, son-in-law: I'm doling out a strange fortune to you, a wealth which you will all ascribe-in public-to my efforts, my tenacity, my sense of responsibility, my personal qualities. Please do so. And remain calm. Forget that I earned that wealth by risking my skin without knowing it in a struggle I didn't try to understand because it wouldn't have helped me to define, to understand, because only those who didn't expect anything from their sacrifices could know and understand it. That's what sacrifice is-am I correct?: to give everything in exchange for nothing. If it isn't, then what should we call giving everything in exchange for nothing? But they didn't offer everything to me. She offered me everything. I didn't take it. I didn't know how to take it. What could her name be?

"Okay. The picture's clear enough. Say, the old boy at the Embassy wants to make a speech comparing this Cuban mess with the old-time Mexican Revolution. Why don't you lay the groundwork with an editorial…"

"Yes, yes. We'll do it. How about twenty thousand pesos?"

"Seems fair enough. Any ideas?"

"Sure. Tell him to show the sharp differences between an anarchic, bloody movement that destroys private property and human rights and an orderly, peaceful, legal revolution like Mexico's, a revolution led by a middle class that found its inspiration in Jefferson. After all, people have bad memories. Tell him to praise Mexico."

"Fine. So long, Mr. Cruz, it's always…"

Oh, what a bombardment of signs, words, and stimuli for my tired ears. Oh, how tired I am. They will probably not understand my gestures, because I can barely move my fingers: turn it off, it's boring me, what does it have to do with me now? What a bother, what a bother…

"In the name of the Father, of the Son…"

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

"Why did you take him away from me?"

I'll bequeath to them all the vain useless deaths, the lifeless names of Regina, the Yaqui…Tobias, now I remember, his name was Tobias…Gonzalo Bernal, a soldier without a name. And the woman? The other one.

"Open the window."

"No. You might catch cold and make everything worse."

Laura. Why? Why did everything have to happen this way? Why?

You will survive: you will run your finger over the sheets and know that you have survived, despite time and the movements that hem in your fortunes with every passing instant. The line of life is located between paralysis and debauchery. Adventure: you will imagine the greater security, never to move. You will imagine yourself immobile, safeguarded from all danger, chance, uncertainty. Your quietude will not stop time, which runs without you, although you invent it, measure it, time that denies your immobility and submits you to its own danger of extinction: adventurer, you will measure your velocity with the speed of time.

The time you will invent in order to survive, to create the illusion of greater permanence on earth: the time your brain will create by perceiving that alternation of light and darkness on the clock face of dreams; by retaining those images of placidity threatened by the amassing of concentrated black clouds announcing a thunderclap, the posterity of lightning, the whirlwind discharge of rain, the certain appearance of a rainbow; by listening to the cyclical calls of animals in the forest; by screaming out the signs of time: the howl of wartime, the howl of mourning time, the howl of party time; finally, by saying time, speaking time, thinking the nonexistent time of a universe that knows no time because it never began and will never end: it had no beginning, will have no end, and does not know that you will invent a measure of infinity, a reserve of reason.

You will invent and measure a time that doesn't exist.

You will know, discern, judge, calculate, imagine, foresee, end up thinking that which will have no other reality than that created by your brain, you will learn to control your violence in order to control the violence of your enemies. You will learn to rub two sticks together until they catch fire, because you will have to throw a torch out of your cave to frighten off the beasts which will not make an exception of you, which will not differentiate your flesh from that of other beasts, and you will have to construct a thousand temples, set down a thousand laws, write a thousand books, adore a thousand gods, paint a thousand paintings, construct a thousand machines, dominate a thousand nations, split a thousand atoms in order to throw your flaming torch out of the entrance to your cave again.

And you will do all that because you think, because you will have developed a cluster of nerves in your brain, a thick network capable of obtaining and transmitting information from front to rear. You will survive, not because you are the strongest, but because of the dark luck of an ever colder universe in which only those organisms that know how to maintain their body temperature when that of the environment falls will survive, those organisms that concentrate that frontal mass of nerve tissue and can foresee danger, search for food, organize their movement, direct their swimming in the circular, proliferating ocean teeming with origins. The dead and lost species will stay at the bottom of the sea, your sisters, millions of sisters that did not emerge from the water with their five contractile stars, their five fingers sunk into the other shore, terra firma, the islands of the dawn. You will emerge crossed with amoeba, reptile, and bird, the birds which will launch themselves from the new peaks to smash in the new abysses, learning in failure, while the reptiles already fly and the land grows colder: you will survive with the birds, protected by feathers, clothed in the speed of their heat, while the cold reptiles sleep, hibernate, and finally die, and you will sink your hooves into the hard land, into the islands of dawn, and you will sweat like a horse, and you will climb up the new trees with your constant temperature and descend with your differentiated brain cells, your autonomic nervous system, your constant levels of hydrogen, sugar, calcium, water, and oxygen: free to think beyond your immediate senses and vital necessities.

You will descend with your ten thousand million brain cells, with your electric battery in your head, plastic, mutable, to explore, to satisfy your curiosity, to set yourself goals, to achieve them with a minimum of effort, to avoid difficulties, foresee, learn, forget, remember, connect ideas, recognize forms, to add degrees to the margin left open by necessity, to turn your will away from the attractions and rejections of the physical environment, to seek favorable conditions, to measure reality using the minimum as your criterion, even though you secretly desire the maximum, and not expose yourself to the monotony of frustration.

You will accustom yourself, mold yourself to the requirements of communal life.

You will desire: desire that your desire and the object desired be the same thing; dream of immediate gratification, of the fusion, without division, of desire and that which you desire.

You will recognize yourself.

You will recognize others and allow them to recognize you; and know that you are opposed to each individual because each individual is just one more obstacle between you and your desire.

You will choose, in order to survive you will choose, choose among the infinite mirrors one only, one only, one that will reflect you irrevocably, that will fill other mirrors with a dark shadow, kill them before offering you, once again, those infinite roads of choice.

You will decide, you will choose one of the roads, you will sacrifice the others. You will sacrifice yourself as you choose, will stop being all the other men you might have been, you will wish other men-another man-to carry out for you the life you cut off when you chose: when you chose yes, when you chose no, when you let, not your desire, identical to your freedom, but your intelligence, your self-interest, your fear, and your pride, lead you to a labyrinth.

That day you will fear love.

But you will be able to recover it. You will rest with your eyes

closed, but you will not cease to see, not cease to desire, because that is how you will make the desired object yours.

Memory is satisfied desire.

Today, when your life and your destiny are one and the same.