Carlos Fuentes - The Old Gringo

THEOLD GRINGO

by

CARLOSFUENTES

Translatedfrom the Spanish by MARGARET SAYERS PEDEN and the author

FarrarStraus Giroux

NewYork

Copyright 1985 by Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica Translation copyright 1985 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. All rights reservedDistributed in Canada by Douglas & Mcintyre Ltd. Printed in theUnited States of America Designed by Claudia Carlson First publishedin 1985 by Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, Mexico, as Gringo viejo FirstEnglish-language edition published in 1985 by Farrar, Straus andGiroux First Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback edition, 1997 9 II12 10

ToWilliam Styron

whosefather included me in his dreams of the American Civil War

Butwho knows the fate of his bones or how often he is to be buried?

SirThomas Browne

Whatthey call dying is merely the last pain.

AmbroseBierce

THEOLD GRINGO

Nowshe sits alone and remembers.

Shesees, over and over, the specters of Tomas Arroyo and the moon-facedwoman

andthe old gringo cross her window. But they are not ghosts. They havesimply mobilized ~their old pasts, hoping that she would do the sameand join them.

Butfor her it took a long time.

First,she had to stop hating Tomas Arroyo for showing her what shecould be and then forbidding her to ever be what she might be. And heknew that she could never be that, and in spite of knowing it, he lether see it.

Healways knew that she would return home.

Buthe let her see what would become of her if she remained.

Shehad to purge herself of this hatred. It took her many years to do so.The old gringo was no longer there to help her. Arroyo was not there.Tom Brook. He might have given her a child by that name. She had noright to think this. The moon-faced woman had taken him with hertoward their nameless destiny. Tomas Arroyo was over.

Sothe only moment she had left was when she crossed the border andlooked back at the two men, the soldier Inocencio and the boyPedrito. Behind them, she now thought she saw the dust marshalingitself into some kind of silent chronology that told her to remember;she had come back to her land without memory, and Mexico was nolonger available, Mexico had disappeared forever, but across thatbridge, on the other side of the river, a memorious dust insisted onmarshaling itself for her, on crossing the frontier and sweeping overthe shrub and the wheat fields, the plains and the smoky mountains,the long deep green rivers that the old man had pined for, right upto her walk-up apartment in Washington, D.C., on the shores ofthe Potomac, the Atlantic, the center of the world.

Thedust blew and told her that she was alone.

Sheremembers.

Alone.

"Theold gringo came to Mexico to die."

ColonelFrutos Garcia ordered the lanterns placed in a circle around themound. Sweating soldiers, naked to the waist, with sweaty necks,grabbed their shovels and began to dig in earnest, driving theirspades into the mesquite.

Oldgringo: that's what they called the man the Colonel wasremembering now as young Pedro followed every move of the menlaboring in the desert night; again, the boy saw a bullet piercing asilver peso in midair.

"Itwas pure chance that we met that morning in Chihuahua. He never toldus, but we all knew why he'd come. He wanted us to kill him, usMexicans. That's why he was here. That's why he'd crossed thefrontier, back in the days when very few of us ever left the placewhere we were born."

Thespadefuls of dirt were like red clouds strayed from the sky: too low,too near the lantern light. They did, said Colonel Garda, yes, thegringos did. They spent their lives crossing frontiers, theirs andthose that belonged to others, and now the old man had crossedto the south because he didn't have any frontiers left to cross inhis own country.

"Easythere."

"Andthe frontier in here?'' the North American woman had asked, tappingher forehead. "And the frontier in here?'' General Arroyohad responded, touching his heart. "There's one frontier we onlydare to cross at night," the old gringo said. "The frontierof our differences with others, of our battles with ourselves."

"Theold gringo died in Mexico. And all because he crossed the frontier.Wasn't that reason enough?" asked Colonel Frutos Garda.

"Doyou remember how he trembled if he cut his face shaving?" askedInocencio Mansalvo, his narrow green eyes no more than slits.

"Orhow afraid he was of mad dogs?" added the

Colonel.

"Thatisn't true," said young Pedro. "He was brave."

"Well,I always thought he was a saint," said La Gardufia,laughing.

"No,all he ever wanted was to be always remembered as he was," saidHarriet Winslow.

"Easy,easy there."

"Muchlater, when little by little we were able to piece together the bitsof his life, we understood why the old gringo had come to Mexico. Hedid the right thing, I suppose. As soon as he came, he let everyoneknow he was tired, that things just weren't the same anymore, but werespected him because we never saw him tired here, and he provedhimself as brave as any man. You're right, boy. Too brave for his owngood."

"Easy."The spades struck wood and the soldiers paused for a minute, wipingthe sweat from their foreheads.

Theold gringo used to joke: "I want to go see if those Mexicans canshoot straight. My work is finished, and so am I." I like thegame, he'd said, I like the fighting; I want to see it.

"Yessir, you could see 'farewell' in his eyes."

"Hedidn't have any family."

"Heretired and then wandered through the lands of his youth-California,where he'd worked as a journalist; the southern United States, wherehe'd fought during the Civil War; New Orleans, where he liked todrink and womanize and feel he was the devil himself."

"Ah,our know-it-all colonel." "Watch it with our colonel; hemakes you think he's dead drunk but he's really listening."

"Andnow Mexico: a family memory. His father had been here, too, as asoldier, when they invaded us more than a half century ago."

"Hewas a soldier, he fought against naked savages and followed hiscountry's flag to the capital of a civilized race far to thesouth."

Theold gringo joked: I want to see whether those Mexicans can shootstraight. "My work is finished, and so am I."

"Thisis something we didn't understand because what we saw was an erectold man, stiff as a ramrod, with hands steady as a rock. Yes, if hejoined General Arroyo's

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troopsit was because you yourself, Pedrito, gave him the chance and heearned it with a Colt 44" The men knelt aroundthe open grave and scrabbled at the corners of the pine box.

"Buthe also said that to be stood up against a Mexican stone walland shot to rags was a pretty good way to depart this life. He usedto smile and say: 'It beats old age, disease, or falling down thecellar stairs.' "

TheColonel was silent for a moment: he had the distinct impression thathe'd heard a raindrop falling in the middle of the desert. He lookedat the clear sky. The ocean sound faded away.

"Wenever knew his real name,'' he added, looking at Inocencio Mansalvo,half naked and sweating, on his knees before the heavy coffintenaciously clinging to the desert, as if in such a short time it hadtaken root. "We have trouble with gringo names, just like gringofaces, they all look alike; their language sounds like Chinese.''

LaGardufia, who wouldn't miss a burial for anything in this world, tosay nothing of an exhumation, bellowed her laughter. "Theirblurred faces are Chinese to us, all exactly alike."

InocencioMansalvo ripped a half-rotten plank from the coffin and they saw theface of the old gringo, devoured more by night than by death:devoured, thought Colonel Frutos Garda, by nature. Theweather-beaten, greenish face was strangely smiling; the rictus ofdeath exposed gums and long teeth-the teeth of a gringo or ahorse-forming an eternally sardonic grimace.