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.