A Visit to Don Otavio

by Sybille Bedford

  They did not, however, and by next evening the petrol had run out again.

  The car was now well advanced into the town. It stood in the main street of Morelia, the mozo sitting inside hat and all, and the sight was one not easy to avoid. Whenever I saw him he was in that position; I did not go into the question of his sleeping one at all. Every morning I took him a peso, but he continued to nourish himself exclusively from a stock of tortillas and red pepper. Once E bought him a meat-cake. He appeared not to see it, so E left it by him on the seat and next time we went it was gone. After this we would leave fruit and sandwiches in the car. Sometimes they disappeared, sometimes not. We would bring a bag of sweet buns, saying ‘for your dinner,’ and find them untouched two hours later. We learnt that he took food only when it was not wrapped, in small quantities and placed quite near him. It made us feel very uncomfortable.

  Every night, warming over dinner, I would tell E what I was going to say to the mozo, how I would beg him to communicate, implore him to speak. Every morning it seemed unattemptable.

  More petrol arrived and I spent an afternoon moving the car a few feet every ten minutes. At closing time, it was opposite the Virrey de Mendoza where it was much admired. The handsomest car we’ve had in the queue yet, they said.

  Next morning it was moved on again towards more humble quarters. Then the garage shut for the week-end.

  Don Otavio sent an anxious telegram. We re-assured him with the reason for our delay. On Monday morning we received a second:

  ASK FOR ONE JOSE MARIA ARTEGAS AND MENTION ENRIQUEZ NAME

  ‘Indeed,’ said the manager, ‘José María Artegas. He is well-known. At present he is working with the film artists at the Mendoza. He is their local confidence man. I shall send him to you at once.’

  José María Artegas said that he had the honour of being our and Don Enriquez’ servant. He said his poor house and humble person and meagre services were at our disposal though at present it was petrol people were most after. He said that as it happened he was managing certain international stores which, though not exactly for liquidation, were in excess of computed consumption to the extent of a disposable surplus. At the door he said not to bring the car but to bring a mozo and a barrel.

  I did. The mozo paid. There was no change.

  ‘What I should like to know,’ said E, ‘is whether we are instrumental in rooking Hollywood, or whether Hollywood is in with Señor José María Artegas.’

  Don Otavio had had the considerate idea to save us a change of car and break of journey at Guadalajara, as well as the long boat trip from Chapala. We were not to go by either of these places but continue west in the state of Michoacán, take the Colima road and, at the point from which we would see Lake Chapala, leave the car and proceed to a village on the south shore, named Tuscueca, from where a boat would take us across the narrow part to San Pedro in less than forty minutes. The car would be fetched and driven back again to the Guadalajara highway – a matter of a mere hundred miles – by Doña Concepción’s cousins and their chauffeur. Don Otavio wrote that this was the way his father used to travel when arriving from Mexico; nobody had tried it for some years, but Mr Middleton had said that he saw no reason why it should not work. I looked at the map and saw that he might be right.

  ‘My father,’ said E, ‘told me never to trust a short-cut.’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t call it that.’

  We had a hard time finding Tuscueca as the lake could be seen from many points, and villages from none.

  The south shore of Lake Chapala, so pleasantly divined from the other side, is reedy, bare and windy. After taking several wrong cactus fields, we got at last to Tuscueca and found it darkest mud-hut.

  There was no boat.

  The inhabitants lay doggo. There was nowhere to sit down. We felt somewhat conspicuous. ‘What if there is no boat?’ said E.

  ‘There will be a boat.’

  ‘What if they mixed up the day? What if they didn’t get our telegram? S, I had a bad feeling the moment I heard that Mr Middleton was in on this.’

  ‘I think I can see a sail.’

  ‘I am not going to stand here like Madame Butterfly.’

  ‘We could go back to the car, if we can find it. We could sleep in the car. Like the mozo. You know, I believe he did all the time.’

  It was not a sail.

  ‘Oh, for an honest train,’ said E. ‘This teaches us for trying to travel like nineteenth-century satraps.’

  Then there was the sound of an engine. Don Enriquez’ launch slid through the waters. In the prow stood Domingo and Andreas holding blankets, shouting, waving.

  ‘¡Adiós, Adiós! Doña E, Doña Sibilla, Adiós!’

  And in the stern, gleaming, stood a large tea-basket.

  E and I looked at each other: ‘It is not possible. It cannot be. All as before?’

  ‘All as before.’

  PART FOUR

  The End of a Visit

  CHAPTER ONE

  Return to San Pedro

  Pervixi: neque enim fortuna malignor unquam eripiet nobis quod prior hora dedit.

  HOW DESCRIBE that slow winter, so leisured in unfolding, so brief in passage, that was a radiant summer? How record the long lull, the safe sequence, the seamless span of equal days …

  Tâche donc, instrument des fuites, Ô maligne

  Syrinx, de refleurir aux lacs où tu m’attends!

  * * *

  Ainsi, quand des raisins j’ai sucé la clarté

  Pour bannir un regret par ma feinte écarté,

  Rieur, j’élève au ciel d’été la grappe vide

  Et, soufflant dans les peaux lumineuses, avide

  D’ivresse, jusqu’au soir je regarde au travers.

  O nymphes, regonflons des souvenirs divers.

  We were then each working on a book and had reached midstream, that prosperous passage between the struggle of the beginning and the obsession of the end, when the book moves with its own existence and has not yet absorbed one’s own, and the daily quarrying is an anchor rather than a burden, a secret discipline at once attaching and detaching, muffling and heightening the rest of living. Within these shafts we strayed at will between two dreams, the life of our books, and the life of the Hacienda.

  Every day we wore linen clothes, every day we bathed. We had never been so free. Letters were lost or late, everything else in abeyance among those birds and fruit and flowers – anxiety, money, love; the vicissitudes of friends, the miseries of politics, ourselves perhaps.

  Christmas was celebrated with barbarity and opulence.

  At midnight on Christmas Eve, a harassed wanderer was reported at the gates, requesting the loan of a mule, a mozo and a lantern. Don Otavio went out to see.

  It was Mr Waldheim. ‘He was much upset, poor man. He would not come in.’

  ‘What is he doing with your mule and lantern at this time of night?’

  ‘He said he was going to Ajijíc to spend Christmas with the witch from Germany. I hope there is nothing wrong.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  Next morning early, Mrs Waldheim rode over and had a talk with Don Otavio. Diana Rawlston was supposed to have been madly in love with Don Otavio fifteen years ago, with the mothers all against it; though Mr Middleton said that there was never anything in it, and one’s own impression was that she adored her dachshund husband. Mrs Rawlston, it appeared, had turned him out of the house last night for singing a German song. Just as Karl was sitting down at the piano, with the tree lit up too … Karl had cried.

  ‘Diana is miserable, and Mrs Rawlston won’t have him back,’ said Don Otavio. ‘Diana says it will break his heart if he has to spend Christmas without her and the children. We must try to do something.’

  ‘What was the German song?’ said E.

  ‘A Christmas song. Holy Night.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said E, ‘those Germans.’

  ‘Would it do any good if you talked to Mrs Rawlston?’ said Don Otavio.

  �
�No,’ said E.

  ‘Otavio, what if you asked them all to your tertulia tonight?’ said I. ‘Mrs Rawlston could scarcely … though of course she could. Perhaps it isn’t such a good idea.’

  ‘What if Mr Waldheim feels like singing Stille Nacht here?’ said E.

  ‘It is not a good idea at all. Mr Middleton is coming. Do you not remember, or had you left when Mrs Rawlston called Mr Middleton a nigger-lover? He has been very angry ever since. He says he will see anyone he pleases in his house. Poor Blanche says that now he wants to ask a Negro friend to stay, only Mr Middleton does not know any Negroes and he does not like anyone to stay with him.’

  ‘He might draw Mrs Rawlston’s thunder tonight. Mr Middleton is made of sterner stuff than poor Waldheim seems to be.’

  ‘I cannot ask Mrs Rawlston having asked Mr Middleton first and knowing how he feels about her,’ said Don Otavio. ‘It is unthinkable.’

  ‘I don’t see,’ said E, ‘why Mrs Waldheim and the Waldheim children cannot all have a nice Christmas with the homoeopathic lady from Magdeburg, which I understand is the place she originally came from?’

  ‘That would not be respectful to Diana’s mother,’ said Don Otavio, ‘the way Mrs Rawlston feels about the Germans, poor people.’

  ‘It did not prevent her from marrying one.’

  ‘I suppose in the circumstances Mr Middleton would be delighted to have the Waldheims to Christmas dinner,’ said I.

  ‘Diana would not wish to leave her mother all alone,’ said Don Otavio.

  ‘Mrs Rawlston can hardly be sharing her son-in-law’s sentiments about that festival,’ said E.

  ‘Besides we could ask her here,’ said I.

  ‘You forget Mr Middleton,’ said Don Otavio.

  ‘Mr Middleton is having the Waldheims at his house.’

  ‘He cannot,’ said Don Otavio. ‘He is dining with me. That is a previous engagement.’

  ‘You would be relieved.’

  ‘That is not the point,’ said Don Otavio.

  ‘Well, what are we to do? The Waldheims cannot be separated; Mr Waldheim and Mrs Rawlston, and Mrs Rawlston and Mr Middleton must be separated; Mr Waldheim is not allowed in Mrs Rawlston’s house, Mrs Waldheim may not go to the German witch’s, Mr Middleton may not ask anyone to his and Mrs Rawlston cannot be asked here. We need more houses.’

  ‘There is Peter Saunders and his sister at San Antonio,’ said Don Otavio. ‘They keep more to themselves, but Peter is a great friend of Diana’s and Mrs Rawlston likes Peter. You must take the boat and call at their place now and explain it all to them. You did meet them once, did you not?’

  ‘It is unthinkable,’ said I.

  ‘Impasse,’ said E. ‘I’ve never seen such a lot of people with so many different susceptibilities. I will go after all and speak to my countrywoman, these Southerners needn’t think they own the world.’

  But it was no good. Mr Waldheim would have to spend the evening at the witch’s harmonium, drinking herb tea; and Mrs Waldheim would sit with her mother under the blazing new electric light, trying to make it nice for the children, pulling crackers …

  Don Otavio’s housekeeping was at high pitch that day. In the afternoon I went for a long walk. It was warm and such Indios as I passed were carried by their donkeys. In a mango grove I met another figure evidently abroad for exercise. It was an old friend. The last time I saw him was in Paris in the spring of 1939, he was studying I think, with Lhôte; the last I heard of him was from Singapore in ’42.

  ‘Jack,’ I said, ‘this isn’t possible.’

  ‘I’ve been doing portraits of the Provincial Governor’s wife and sisters, and their jewels. Now I’m staying with a friend of mine down the lake.’

  ‘I always thought you wouldn’t stick to painting.’

  ‘Come back to Peter’s place with me and have some tea. It’s only a mile or so. You know Peter Saunders and his sister, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘They are charming.’

  He was right. In the next months we saw the Saunders constantly; we became great friends; we still are. Peter’s sister lives in England and if Peter ever leaves Mexico, he and I have an engagement to motor in the French Pyrenees. Yet during all that time, they never touched a card in my presence or mentioned that afternoon at Mrs Rawlston’s house. I often wanted to, but never brought myself to the point.

  That Christmas Day, Jack D and I walked into their patio.

  ‘How do you do,’ they said.

  ‘How do you do,’ said I.

  Later Peter showed me over the house he had slowly built with, and sometimes against, the advice offered by Mr Middleton. ‘The worst of it is,’ he said, ‘that the old boy is generally right.’

  Presently Peter said, ‘what is all this about Diana’s husband being turned out in the middle of the night? Do you know anything about it? Do tell us.’

  ‘Oh, it is too bad. Mrs Rawlston is naughty. Poor Diana. We must try to do something.’

  So Mrs Rawlston dined with the Saunders’ at San Antonio, and the Waldheims came to Don Otavio’s party at San Pedro. They brought the wild boar, half cooked, and Domingo and Andreas handed it round, hair and all, after the ninth posada just before the nesselrode pudding and the marzipan camel. Mr Middleton enjoyed himself like one o’clock with Doña Anna; Doña Anna’s band never ceased the mañanitas and Mr Waldheim sat good and quiet with his wife and children.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Clouds

  AMONG THE SERVANTS all was regular: Guadalupe nursed the fowls, the cook cooked, the laundress washed, Jesús gardened. ‘What has happened to all of them?’ I said to Guadalupe, ‘Angelita is sober, Carmelita isn’t being beaten, Andreas doesn’t eat the sugar and say it was the horses. What is going on?’

  ‘It is the priest,’ said Guadalupe. ‘When Jesús started beating his wife again, we sent for him. He frightened them very much.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ I said, ‘of course Jesús is back. Wasn’t he off to make his fortune in Texas?’

  ‘He did not go to Texas, niña; he drank his mother’s cow.’

  Preparations for the hotel were going on in a leisurely way. Things arrived from Guadalajara and Don Otavio was having them polished and put away in cupboards. Don Enriquez had won a big case for a big politico – ‘I believe it was settled what they call out of court,’ said Don Otavio – and he and Doña Victoria had gone to Paris. Doña Concepción was expecting a baby and did not come out so often now, so it was I who sat with Don Otavio and Don Otavio’s Juan over lists and plans, and rowed with them in the cool of the evening to Tarrascan villages to order rugs and glass. The current products of those local manufacturers were usually hideous but they were able to copy the decent older designs, often their own, Don Otavio asked them to reproduce. Don Otavio loved to shop. His difficulty lay in getting anyone to make or sell him more than six of anything, which was perhaps just as well as at the time there wasn’t too much money. There was the capital his aunt had put up, Don Otavio explained, but she was not letting him have that all at once. Doña Isabella-María had a new confessor who was interesting her in a grotto in the valley of Zapopan where a boy had seen a blue light that spoke. When the boy recovered, his goitre had gone. It was all very pious and important, Don Otavio said, his aunt and the Bishop of Guadalajara were looking into it, there were more cures of goitres, but just at the moment the grotto did rather hold up the hotel. They had meant to open for Holy Week, at the latest for the rains, now what with Enriquez away too, one did not know. Also there was the question of the clientele.

  ‘Enriquez says the way to get one is to advertise. In foreign newspapers. But all kinds of people read them nowadays … It is a little delicate.’

  ‘Otavio,’ I said, ‘do you really want this hotel?’

  ‘Naturally. People all the time, and dinner parties. We may get quite rich. Why do you ask in that way?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. Only, if I had a place like San Pedro I couldn’t bear the
thought.’

  ‘Ah niña, it is well for you to talk … You would not know that times have changed. Here we are all ruined and have to make our money. Enriquez says we must be realists.

  ‘But do not worry yourself. I will have a manager to see to all that. A gentleman-manager, not a business man from Mexico who would run the hotel like a ministry. An English gentleman gentleman-manager. I do hope we can get the one your friends said they would write to, the one they said you knew.’

  ‘Oh Otavio I told you they aren’t friends. And I can’t think of a single gentleman-manager I know. Though it was kind of you to put them up.’

  ‘They were two very charming gentlemen,’ said Don Otavio, and I let it go at that.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A Trip in the Jungle: Mr Middleton Wins

  ‘YOU ARE RIGHT, I cannot stand Acapulco,’ said Peter Saunders. And I have no wish to see that other place. All the same the Pacific Coast must be lovely. If only one could get to the parts one cannot get to. And now I know one can. There is a place below here, an Indian fishing port with one clean inn on a cool beach. No mosquitoes. The Middletons have been going every January, sly-boots. That’s the one time of year you’re supposed to be able to get a car through the Colima jungle. I wish we’d all go. There aren’t many places like that left, you know; in a few years it’ll be an airline and bungalows. Do come. You can go to Yucatán in February. It won’t take us long. A day or two down to Autlán, that’s the last place one can stay in before the jungle. One day each way for that. One’s got to get through in one go. It’s heavenly, full of orchids and dwarf parrots. If only I knew the way.’