The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes

  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 narr
ow 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.