That morning I was on horseback.
That I remember: I received a letter with foreign stamps on it.
But to think of it.
Ah, I dreamed, imagined, found out of those names, remembered those songs, oh, thank you, but knowing, how can I know? I don't know, I don't know what the war was like, whom he spoke with before dying, the names of the men and women who accompanied him to his death, what he said, what he thought, what he was wearing, what he had to eat that day. I don't know any of it. I invent landscapes, cities, names, and I just don't remember them anymore: Miguel, José, Federico, Luis? Consuelo, Dolores, María, Esperanza, Mercedes, Nuri, Guadalupe, Esteban, Manuel, Aurora? Guadarrama, Pyrenees, Figueras, Toledo, Teruel, Ebro, Guernica, Guadalajara? The abandoned body, the ice and the sun that buried it, the eyes open forever, devoured by the birds.
Oh, thank you for showing me what my life could be.
Oh, thank you for living that day for me.
But there is something more painful.
What? what? That really exists, that really is mine. That's really what it's like to be God, for certain, isn't it?-to be feared and hated and whatever, that's what being God is, really, right? All right, priest, tell me how I can save all that, and I'll let you go through the ceremony, I'll strike myself on the chest, walk on my knees to the sanctuary, drink vinegar and crown myself with thorns. Tell me how to save all that, because the spirit…
"…of the Son and of the Holy Ghost…"
There is something more painful.
"No, if that were the case, there would be a soft tumor, but there would also be a dislocation or a partial displacement of one or another of the major organs…"
"I'll say it again: it's the valvulae. That pain can only be caused by the twisting of the intestinal folds, which in turn causes the occlusion…"
"If that's the case, then we've got to operate…"
"Gangrene might be developing right now, and we couldn't do a thing…"
"Obviously, there's cyanosis…"
"Facies…"
"Hypothermia…"
"Lipothymia…"
Shut up…Shut up!
"Open the windows."
I can't move, I don't know where to look, where to go; I don't feel any temperature, only the cold that comes and goes in my legs, but not the cold or heat of everything else, of everything hidden that I never saw…
"Poor girl…She's had quite a shock…"
…Shut up…I can guess what my face is like, don't say a word…I know I've got blackened nails, bluish skin…shut up…
"Appendicitis?"
"We've got to operate."
"It's risky."
"I'll say it again: a kidney stone. Give him two centigrams of morphine and he'll be all right."
"It's risky."
"He's not hemorrhaging."
Thank you very much. I could have died at Perales. I could have died with that soldier. I could have died in that bare room, sitting across from that fat man. I survived. You died. Thank you very much.
"Hold him down. Bring the basin."
"See how he ended up? Do you see? Just like my brother. That's how he ended up."
"Hold him down. Bring the basin."
Hold him down. He's going. Hold him down. He's vomiting. He's vomiting that taste that he only smelled before He can't even turn his head anymore. He vomits face up. He's vomiting over his shit. It's pouring over his lips, down his jaw. His excrement. The women scream. They scream. I don't hear them, but someone has to scream. It's not happening. This is not happening. Someone has to scream so that this won't happen. They hold me down, they keep me still. No more. He's going. He's going without a thing, naked. Without his things. Hold him down. He's going.
You will read the letter, sent from a concentration camp, with foreign stamps, signed Miguel, which will be folded around the other, written hastily, signed Lorenzo. You will receive that letter, you will read: "I'm not afraid…I remember you…You wouldn't be ashamed…I'll never forget this life, Papa, because I learned everything I know here…I'll tell you everything when I get back." You will read and you will choose again: you will choose another life.
You will choose to leave him in Catalina's hands, you will not bring him to that land, you will not put him at the edge of his choice; you will not push him into that mortal destiny, which could have been your own. You will not force him to do what you did not do, to ransom your lost life. You will not permit that this time you die on some rocky path and she be saved.
You will choose to embrace that wounded soldier who enters the providential woods, to lay him down, cleanse his wounded arm with water from the tiny spring scorched by the desert, bandage him, stay with him, keep him breathing with your own breath, wait, wait until both of you are found, captured, shot in a town with a forgotten name, like that dusty one, like that one of adobe and thatched roofs: until they shoot the soldier and you, two nameless, naked men buried in the common grave of those sentenced to death, who have no tombstone. Dead at the age of twenty-four, with no more avenues, no more labyrinths, no more choices-dead, holding the hand of a nameless soldier saved by you. Dead.
You will say to Laura: yes.
You will say to the fat man in the bare room painted indigo blue: no.
You will choose to stay with Bernal and Tobias, take your chances with them, not go to that bloody patio to justify yourself, to think that by killing Zagal you paid for the killing of your comrades.
You will not visit old Gamaliel in Puebla.
You will not take Lilia when she comes back that night, you will not think that you will never again be able to have another woman.
You will break the silence of that night, you will speak to Catalina, you will ask her to forgive you, you will speak to her about those who died for you, you will ask her to accept you as you are, with your sins, you will ask her not to hate you but to take you as you are.
You will stay with Lunero on the hacienda, you will never abandon that place.
You will stay at the side of your teacher Sebastián-what a man he was, what a man. You will not go out and join the Revolution in the north.
You will be a peon.
You will be a blacksmith.
You will remain an outsider with all those who remained outsiders.
You will not be Artemio Cruz, you will not be seventy-one years old, you will not weigh a hundred and seventy-four pounds, you will not be five feet eight inches tall, you will not have false teeth, you will not smoke French cigarettes, you will not wear Italian silk shirts, you will not collect cuff-links, you will not order your ties from a New York shop, you will not wear blue, three-button suits, you will not prefer Irish twill, you will not drink gin and tonic, you will not have a Volvo, a Cadillac, and a Rambler station wagon, you will not remember and love that painting by Renoir, you will not eat poached eggs on toast with Black-well's marmalade, you will not every morning read a newspaper you yourself own, you will not leaf through Life and Paris Match some nights, you will not be listening to that incantation next to you, that chorus, that hatred which wants to wrench your life away from you before it's time, which invokes, invokes, invokes, invokes what you could have smilingly imagined just a short time ago and which you will not tolerate now.