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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?
The Death of Artemio Cruz 150
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
The Death of Artemio Cruz 151
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
The Death of Artemio Cruz 152
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, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]