So Far From God

by John Harris

  For once there was no smile. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  Slattery grinned. ‘Same as you, I suspect. Looking after General Villa’s interests.’

  Graf scowled then, suddenly, the devastating, disarming smile came. ‘Let’s not fight each other, Englander,’ he said. ‘There is enough fighting going on in Mexico without us starting another war. Have you seen my sister? She’s here somewhere. They’ve been doing The Merry Widow at Monterrey and were to put it on in Torreón. But Torreón’s a little too preoccupied to enjoy Lehár just now and they can’t get through the lines. Come along to our tent for a drink. We have some excellent Mosel.’

  As the group moved away, Slattery stared after them. Horrocks was more right than he had believed.

  Villa was indifferent to his warning, however. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Germans. He told me Huerta’s proposing to hold elections. He said there are at least four candidates, one of them Porfirio Díaz’s nephew.’ He grinned. ‘But he’s decided to run his campaign from Veracruz so he can bolt to the American fleet if there’s trouble.’ The grin vanished, to be replaced by a frown. ‘I should be in Mexico City. That’s the only place where the election will count. The German said so.’

  ‘His name’s Graf, Don Pancho. He’s the leader of the German-Mexican Bund.’ Slattery was struggling to convince Villa of some obscure danger he wasn’t sure of himself and it occurred to him he was doing exactly what Horrocks and the men in Whitehall had wanted him to do. ‘He may be Mexican, but his interest isn’t Mexico. The blond one’s name is Kloss. He’s a German general.’

  Villa gestured. ‘I know him. He was in charge of munitions and ordnance. But not any longer. Who are the others?’

  ‘One of them’s called Von Raschstadt. He claims to be a banker but I think he’s a German naval officer. I think they’re all German officers and all German agents.’

  Villa nodded placidly. ‘I thought they might be.’

  ‘They work for Germany, not Mexico, Don Pancho.’

  ‘Sure. I know this, too. What he didn’t tell me I guessed.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  Villa grinned. ‘What you said they’d want. To supply us with arms. He talked about concessions when we’d won. But when we’ve got the arms, we just forget the concessions.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, Don Pancho.’

  ‘Germans can’t interfere with Mexico.’

  ‘They’ll try.’

  Villa scowled. ‘Well,’ he conceded. ‘Perhaps we can leave it for the time being. There are plenty of arms in Torreón. I’ll tell them I’m not interested.’ He put an arm round Slattery’s shoulder and gave him a bear hug. ‘All right, compadre, I’ll do as I’m told.’ He winked. ‘This time, anyway.’

  The shooting swelled to a roar and wounded began to trickle back, some on foot, dumbly clutching their injuries, some helped by friends, some carried in bloody blankets that left a trail of dark drops on the ground. Moving up with Atty and Jesús and, as often as not, the strange old fiddler, Gomez García, Slattery found the Villistas sheltering from the firing behind the hills. They were hiding among the rocks on either side of the road, only their tall hats showing. Because Villa always put arms before personal comfort, they were still in a picturesque state of poverty – some in store suits, some in coveralls, some in the white peón cotton, but all with the all-purpose sarape that served as coat, blanket and makeshift shelter from the rain. The flop-brimmed sombreros were decorated according to taste with flowers, sprigs of brush, ribbons, a woman’s scarf, or pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe. They were cleaning guns, grooming horses, playing cards or dice, their women blowing at smouldering twigs to heat water for coffee.

  Women from the towns around had arrived in dozens at the prospect of fighting, some to sell themselves for money, some to set up hospital tents and dressing stations in the scattered farmhouses. Nearby was a large marquee with a home-made Red Cross flag flying from a pole and the words Brigada Sanitaria on a poster. A few lightly wounded men were waiting outside for a cart to take them to the rear. Moving in and out of the tent were women who were more flamboyantly dressed than the local women and there were men helping with stretchers. A high tenor voice started.

  ‘–Venimos todos con gusto

  Y placer a felicitarte’

  – and immediately a chorus rose –

  ‘Quisiera ser solecito

  Para entrar por tu ventana–’

  Then Slattery recognised the plump shape of Hermann Stutzmann, and it dawned on him the Red Cross tent was being run by his company of singers and actors from Monterrey. As he approached, Stutzmann smiled.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Slattery demanded. ‘You’re almost in the front line.’

  Stutzmann gave an embarrassed grin. ‘Ich bin Sanitäter, Herr Paddy,’ he said. ‘I have become a medical orderly. We should have been playing The Merry Widow in Torreón for a week. Instead we’re playing heroes outside. It was decided to stay and help.’

  ‘Who decided?’

  Stutzmann flushed. ‘I was persuaded.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Die schöne Magdalena, who else? She suggested it to me. So here we are. Can you imagine her missing the chance to be kind, to be good?’

  When Magdalena appeared, the delight in her face at seeing Slattery was obvious. As he grinned back at her, however, her face changed. ‘I thought you were in Nogales. I thought you were just an adviser. A staff officer.’

  ‘I earn my keep in a variety of ways.’

  She studied him for a moment, her expression grave. ‘Why did you come to Mexico, Fitz Slattery?’ she asked. ‘It’s dangerous in Mexico these days. Why don’t you go home?’

  Slattery shrugged. ‘I’m not very much at home at home. Do you want me to go away?’

  Her expression changed again, and this time it contained unhappiness. There was a long pause then she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘No, I don’t.’

  She avoided looking at him by gesturing at the hospital tent with its fluttering flag. ‘It’s a poor effort,’ she said. ‘But men are always so anxious to start a fight. They never think who’s going to pick up the pieces afterwards.’

  Slattery said nothing. To Magdalena – to many Mexicans – the revolution had long since ceased to be an adventure.

  He remained with the Stutzmann group for some time while scattered fighting went on ahead and the number of wounded increased, the injured being brought in swathed in bandages made from their own shirts. Then Jesús arrived to say he was wanted forward.

  As he left, Slattery was surprised to see Magdalena’s eyes sparkling with tears.

  ‘I shall be all right,’ he said.

  ‘Always it’s someone else who’s going to be hurt,’ she said. ‘The man in front. The man behind. Never you.’

  He kissed her gently on the cheek and turned away, aware that she was watching him all the way until he was out of sight.

  By next evening the Villistas were in the outskirts of the city and that night Villa flung them forward in a final massive attack – without their huge hats to avoid confusion in the darkness. Within an hour the cheers were going up as the Federals began to abandon their positions and retreat. Trains carrying Federal troops began to pour out of the city to the east and whole groups, trapped in the streets, began to throw down their arms, the officers ripping off their insignia of rank and trying to escape down the back alleys where they might buy or loot a civilian suit to save their lives. As the Villistas entered the city centre through a jungle of hanging wires, Slattery was leading a group of young American mercenaries. There were running figures ahead and as a field gun fired and brought down a wall, the Americans fired back. The running men fell, then, as they turned a corner, a machine gun opened up. The Americans dived for shelter as the bullets struck the pavement and whined away.

  Diving after them, Slattery saw the field-gun fire again and saw the shell strike the corner of a house just in front of him. T
he flash filled his eyes and he saw bricks arc into the air and felt something strike his arm. As he stumbled away, he was hit on the head by something that felt like a hammer blow. Spinning round, he toppled to safety in a doorway. For a moment he thought he was dead but he could still move, though the pain in his head blinded him and as he struggled to keep his senses he found himself instead sinking rapidly into darkness.

  Three

  Slattery came back to consciousness to find himself staring into Magdalena Graf’s face. Her blue eyes were huge with anxiety.

  He smiled weakly. ‘Am I dead and in Heaven?’

  She gestured irritably. Behind her he could see Jesús, spotlessly clean and brushed so that he knew she’d been at him. The first thing she always did when she appeared was to make sure Jesús took a bath and put on clean clothes. Beyond Jesús, Atty was wearing an expression that seemed to indicate that he thought everything that had happened was Slattery’s fault and nothing to do with him.

  Slattery looked up at Magdalena again. ‘Gnädiges Fräulein, are you going to sing for me?’ he asked.

  She seemed startled.

  ‘I heard you in Nogales,’ he said. ‘I thought you were the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. How did I get here?’

  He saw there were tears in her eyes. ‘Dummkopf,’ she said gently. ‘Oh, you fool, Slattery. I warned you and you still got hurt.’

  ‘Does it bother you?’

  ‘No.’ The word was delivered sharply, but then her face crumpled and her manner changed and she gave him a doomed sort of smile. ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘Why?’

  She seemed confused. ‘Because I hate to see people suffer,’ she said. ‘I hate the sight of blood.’

  He could see he wasn’t going to get any confessions from her and began to look about him, becoming aware at last that there was a bandage on his head and that his right arm was in a sling.

  ‘What happened? Was it the shell?’

  She looked angrily at him, tears still in her eyes, and it was Atty who answered.

  ‘You got a flying brick along the skull, me dear. Mebbe you’ve got a thick head. ’Tes not as bad as it looks.’

  Without thinking, Slattery tried to lift his hand to his head to feel the wound but the pain in his arm flung him back against the pillows. ‘And this?’ he gasped.

  ‘Another brick.’

  ‘Is it broken?’

  ‘It’s cut and badly bruised,’ Magdalena said. ‘It’s black, blue, green and yellow and will get worse.’ She seemed to enjoy the thought. ‘You’ll not be using it for a week or two.’

  ‘Not even for grabbing at you? Where am I?’

  ‘In a bed in the Hospital of the Holy Virgin.’

  ‘It would be more interesting if you were in it with me.’

  Atty grinned and she blushed.

  ‘Where is the Hospital of the Holy Virgin?’

  She responded briskly as though she felt herself on safer ground. ‘In Torreón.’

  ‘We picked up guns, grenades, rifles, machine guns and half a million cartridges,’ Atty said.

  ‘How are the boys behaving?’

  ‘Villa threatened to shoot anybody who looted, and he’s put a clamp on liquor. He’s told all the Spanish they’ve got to go. He says they’re all Huertistas.’

  ‘He’s probably right.’

  ‘He’s confiscating their property and he’s told them if they don’t go they’ll be put against a wall and shot.’

  ‘Did he pick up rolling stock?’

  ‘Forty railway engines and a lot of freight cars. He can move his men on wheels from now on. He could be running Mexico next year.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Liebe Himmel,’ Magdalena said, ‘you could be out of here tomorrow. Today, in fact, if you don’t mind the headache. The scar will show but you can comb your hair over it. There’s nothing wrong with you.’ She seemed brusque and indifferent again. ‘I’m going to Mexico City. Hermann has arranged for us to appear at the Opera House there. The Opera House is a good booking and worth a lot of money.’

  ‘Zapata’s playing hell to the south.’

  ‘He won’t be in the Opera House.’

  ‘You could always stay here and look after me.’

  She sniffed. ‘You don’t need looking after. Jesús can do it. Hermann and the rest of them have already gone. I only waited until you began to show signs of life.’

  ‘Is it that important?’

  She flushed pink again. ‘I am just the nurse – Schwester Magdalena – just a woman trying to help and you happened to be my patient. I’m going to my house in Mexico City and nothing’s going to stop me. Villa’s laying on a train to Durango. He wants to get the wounded away because he doesn’t think he can hold Torreón, and there’ll be newspapermen wanting to go south for the election. I’ll go to Zacatecas and pick up the train there.’

  Slattery was silent for a moment then he smiled. ‘This house of yours – is it big?’

  ‘Dios, too big!’

  ‘Roomy?’

  ‘If you mean has it got a lot of rooms, yes, it has.’

  ‘Then why not get Atty to take the Studebaker to Durango and meet you? He can take you across country from there. Save time.’

  Her manner changed at once. ‘Will he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Atty said enthusiastically. ‘Sure will.’

  ‘Then you can look after me,’ Slattery said.

  She stared at him, startled. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘With you.’

  ‘You’re not fit to go anywhere.’

  ‘You’ve just told me there’s nothing wrong with me, and Atty can put the Studebaker on a flat car in Durango, so that we’ve got it with us for use in Mexico City.’

  Monserrat and Preto appeared. Preto shyly carrying a wilting bunch of flowers, then Jesús bringing the newspapers and full of praise for Magdalena who had bought him a new pair of shoes. Finally, later in the day, Villas himself arrived. He seemed amused.

  ‘Hola, inglés,’ he said. ‘Do all English soldiers behave as stupidly as you? You should remember what I told you. Like a little cat. That’s how we move about. It’s a good job Preto of the Holy Trinity brought you in. You’re going to Mexico City, I hear.’

  ‘I can’t do much here for a while.’

  ‘Well, it suits me. Look at the elections for me. They’ll be fixed, of course, but I want someone to see them being fixed. You’re a good telescope, and far more use to me telling me what the enemy’s going to do next than getting yourself knocked about in an attack. We’re winning this war, inglés. Now we have Torreón we can go on elsewhere. Especially now. People love me, inglés.’ Villa grinned and gestured. ‘I borrowed three hundred thousand pesos from the business houses here. They complained a bit but I told them I’d hang them if it didn’t appear. I used some of it to buy clothes and food for the poor. I also ordered the bands to play in the square to cheer them up. Oh–’ he added as an afterthought ‘–I shot the prisoners. But only the Orozquistas and the Federal officers. Nobody minded.’

  ‘They will when they think about it, Don Pancho. America especially.’

  Villa’s head went down as it always did when he was angry, and he looked like a bull at bay in the bullring. ‘In 1862,’ he pointed out harshly, ‘when Benito Juárez was fighting with his back to the wall against the usurper, Maximilian of Austria, the Chamber of Deputies – the first democratic assembly in the history of Mexico, compadre, remember that – passed a law decreeing instant execution for any Mexican captured with the enemy forces. There were a few in those days, too. I was only obeying that law. Revolutions aren’t made with rose petals and the United States doesn’t rule Mexico yet!’

  It wasn’t hard to get to Mexico City. The fighting was only where the armies were and they were mostly near the rail junctions and the garrison towns, and in the rest of the vast territory that was Northern Mexico there was only emptiness, even areas where the peóns had never seen an army and didn’t
want to.

  The journey was more uncomfortable than Slattery had anticipated. His head continued to ache, his arm was painful despite the sling he wore, and the jolting of the train didn’t help. Atty was waiting at Durango, which still hadn’t recovered from Urbina’s recent sacking. There were bullet marks on the façades of all the buildings, shop windows were boarded up, and there were still burned-out houses, debris in the streets, and here and there bunches of flowers, a candle, a little homemade shrine, to indicate where someone had died violently.

  They spent the night in the open country for safety. Magdalena wore a simple dress and coat with a shawl over her head. It stripped her of all the glamour of the theatre. As it grew dark, despite Slattery’s objections she insisted on him having the whole of the back seat of the car to sleep in while she and Atty and Jesús slept on the ground.

  ‘’Twill be as cold as Finegan’s feet the day he was buried,’ Atty grumbled.

  Before they reached Zacatecas, on Atty’s advice she removed Slattery’s sling and helped him into a loose jacket and buttoned it up.

  ‘’Tes Federal agents there are, all over the place,’ Atty explained. ‘Watchin’ for fellers with bandages. They know they’re not Federal soldiers or they’d be in a Federal hospital.’

  The station was full of refugees from the fighting, but Magdalena managed to bribe her way into a first-class compartment. She was beginning to enjoy the adventure. Her hair twisted up into a dark helmet on her head, her face alive with an unexpected happiness, she was revelling in the outburst of domesticity after the unreal world of the stage.