I don't know…I don't know…if I am he…if you were he…if I am the three…You…I carry you inside me and you are going to die with me…God…He…I carried him inside and he is going to die with me…the three of us…who spoke…I…will carry him inside and he will die with me…alone…
You will no longer know: you will not experience your open heart, tonight, your open heart…They say "Scalpel, scalpel"…I listen to it, I who go on knowing when you no longer know, before you know…I who was he, will be you…I listen, in the bottom of the glass, behind the mirror, deep inside, underneath, on top of you and him…"Scalpel"…They open you up…They cauterize you…They open your abdominal walls…The thin, cold, precise knife part them…They find that liquid in your stomach…They part your iliac fossa…They find that cluster of irritated, swollen, intestinal loops tied to your mesentery, which is hard and shot through with blood…They find that circular plaque of gangrene…bathed in a liquid of fetid stench…They say, they repeat…"Infarct"…"mesentery infarct"…They look at your dilated, bright-red, almost black intestines…They say…they repeat, "Pulse"…"Temperature," "perforation"…Eat, gnaw…The hemorrhaged substance runs out of your open stomach…They say, repeat…"Useless"…"useless"…all three…the coagulation wrenches itself from the black blood…will run, will stop…stopped…your silence…your open eyes…which cannot see…your frozen fingers…which cannot feel…your black, blue nails…your shuddering jaws…Artemio Cruz…name…"Useless"…"Heart"…"Massage"…"Useless"…You will no longer know…I carried you within and I shall die with you…all three…We shall die…You…are dying…have died…I shall die.
Havana, May 1960 Mexico City, December 1961
Carlos Fuentes
