"…they allege that those same cars can be made here in Mexico. But we're not going to allow it, right? Twenty million pesos is a million and a half dollars…"
"Plus our commissions…"
"The ice isn't going to do that cold of yours any good."
"Just hay fever. Well, I'll be…"
"I'm not finished. Besides, they say that the fees charged by the mining companies for freight from the center of Mexico to the frontier are extremely low, that it costs more to ship vegetables than the minerals from our companies…"
"Nasty, nasty…"
"Of course. You understand that if the fees go up, working the mines won't be cost-efficient…"
"Less profit, sure, lessprofitsure, lesslessless…"
"Padilla, what's wrong? Padilla. What is that racket? Padilla."
"The tape ran out. Just a second. I'll just turn it over and play the other side."
"He's not listening, Mr. Padilla."
Padilla must be smiling his smile. Padilla knows me. I'm listening, all right. I sure am. Ah, that noise fills my brain with electricity. The noise of my own voice, my reversible voice, yes, there it goes, it screeches again and runs backward, squeaking like a squirrel, but it's my voice, and my name, which has only eleven letters and can be written a thousand ways: Amuc Reoztrir Zurtec Marzi Itzau Erimor, but there's a key to that code, a modeclass="underline" Artemio Cruz, ah, my name, I hear my screeching name, it stops, now it runs the other way:
"Mr. Corkery, would you be so kind as to communicate this information to all interested parties in the United States. They should stir up the newspapers against the Communist railroad workers in Mexico."
"Sure, if you say they're Commies. I feel it's my duty to uphold by any means our…"
"Sure, sure. It's wonderful that our ideas and our interests are the same, isn't that right? And one other thing: have a talk with your ambassador, so that he will put some pressure on the Mexican government, which is just taking power and is still a little green."
"Oh, we never intervene."
"I'm sorry, I was too brusque. Suggest he study the matter calmly and then offer his objective opinion, given his natural concern for the interests of U.S. citizens here in Mexico. He should explain that we must maintain a climate favorable to investment, and that with this agitating…"
"Okay, okay."
Oh, what a bombardment of signs, words stimulants for my tired ears. Oh, what exhaustion, oh, what language without language. Oh, but I said it, it's my life, I have to listen to it. Oh, they won't understand my gesture, I can barely move my fingers: I want them to turn it off now, I'm bored, what difference can it make, what a nuisance, what a nuisance…I have something to tell them:
"You dominated him and stole him away from me."
"That morning I waited for him with pleasure. We crossed the river on horseback."
"I blame you. You. You're to blame."
Teresa drops the newspaper. Catalina, coming closer to the bed, tells her, as if I can't hear her: "He looks very bad."
"Did he say where it is?" asks Teresa in a lower voice.
Catalina shakes her head. "The lawyers don't have it. It must be handwritten. But he would be capable of dying intestate, anything to make our lives difficult."
I listen to them with my eyes closed, and I dissimulate, dissimulate.
"The priest couldn't get anything out of him?"
Catalina must have shaken her head. I sense that she's on her knees near the head of the bed and that she says in a low, broken voice, "How do you feel?…Don't you want to talk a little?…Artemio…There's a very serious matter…Artemio…We don't know if you've made out your will. We'd like to know where…"
The pain is passing. They don't see the cold sweat pouring down my forehead or my tense immobility. I hear their voices, but it's only now that I can once again make out their silhouettes. Everything's coming back into normal focus, and I can see both of them perfectly, their faces and gestures, and I want the pain to come back to my stomach. I tell myself, I tell myself lucidly that I don't love them, that I never loved them.
"…We'd just like to know where…"
All right, then, bitches, just imagine you're standing in front of a shopkeeper who doesn't give credit, that you're being evicted, that you're up against shyster lawyer, a thieving doctor, imagine you're from the shitty middle class, bitches, standing on line to buy adulterated milk, to pay property taxes, to get an audience, to get a loan, standing on line to dream you'll do better someday, envying the wife and daughter of Artemio Cruz as they cruise by in their car, envying a house in Las Lomas de Chapultepec, envying a mink coat, an emerald necklace, a trip abroad, imagine yourselves in a world in which I was virtuous, in which I was humble: down below, where I came from, or up above, where I am. Only in those two places, let me tell you, is there any dignity, not in the middle, not in the envy, the monotony, the lines. Everything or nothing: know how I play the game? understand how? everything or nothing, put it all on the black or all on the red, you need balls, see? Balls, putting it all on the line, shooting the works, running the risk of being shot either by the ones on top or by the ones at the bottom. That's what it means to be a man, which is what I've been, not the way you would have wanted, half a man, a man with his little temper tantrums, intemperate shouts, a whorehouse, a saloon man, a postcard macho, no! no! not me! I didn't have to shout at you, I didn't have to get drunk to scare you, I didn't have to smack you around to show you who was boss, I didn't have to humiliate myself to beg your tenderness: I gave you wealth without expecting anything back, tenderness, understanding, and because I didn't demand anything from you, you haven't been able to abandon me, you latched onto my wealth, cursing me probably the way you'd never curse my poor pay packet, but forced to respect me the way you'd never have respected my mediocrity-ah, assholes, conceited bitches, impotent bitches, who had everything money could buy and who still have mediocre minds. If at least you had taken advantage of what I gave you, if at least you had understood what luxury items are for, how they're used: while I had everything, do you hear me? everything that can be bought and everything that can't be bought. I had Regina, do you hear me? I loved Regina, her name was Regina, and she loved me, she loved me without money, she followed me, she gave me life, down below, do you hear me? I heard you, Catalina, I heard what you told him one day:
"Your father; your father, Lorenzo…Do you think…? Do you think anyone could approve of…? I don't know, about holy men…real martyrs…"
Dominie, non sum dignus…
In the depth of your pain, you will smell that incense which lingersand lingers and you will know, behind your shut eyes, that the windows have been closed as well, that you no longer breathe the cool afternoon air: only the stench of the incense, the trace left behind by the priest who will come to give you absolution, a last rite which you will not request, but which you will nevertheless accept, just so as not to gratify them with your rebelliousness in your last moments. You will want all of this to take place so you won't owe anything to anyone, and you will want to remember yourself in a life that owes nothing to no one. She will stop you, her memory-you will name her: Regina; you will name her: Laura; you will name her: Catalina; you will name her: Lilia-which will summarize all your memories and will oblige you to acknowledge her. But you will transform even that gratitude-you know it, behind each scream of sharp pain-into pity for yourself, in a loss of your loss. No one will give you more in order to take away more from you than that woman, the woman you loved with her four different names: who else?