by John Harris
A roar of indignation went up and carts and automobiles were overturned. There was a sound of breaking glass as windows were smashed and the two opposing mobs outside the National Palace came together, scuffling and fighting and screaming on the steps of the Cathedral. With difficulty, Atty forced the Studebaker past and they made their escape just as cavalry appeared, swinging sabres and batons, to break up the disturbance. As they headed home, they passed a company of infantry advancing from their barracks at the double, then ambulances and cars full of doctors and nurses heading for the city centre.
The next morning they learned that the candidate in Veracruz had bolted to the American Consulate to claim political asylum. In view of the result and the uproar it had caused, the election had been declared null and void and it had been announced that a new election would be called the following year. Meanwhile, Huerta would continue as president – ‘to save the country’. There were noticeably no objections from Congress.
‘Of course not,’ Horrocks said dryly. ‘It’s so packed with his bloody officers, they ought to use a bugle instead of a division bell.’
That night Magdalena was in a strange frame of mind, and they decided to celebrate the end of the election with dinner in town. But, because of the lack of currency, growers outside the capital were refusing to bring in their produce, restaurants were closed and kitchen staffs were having to search the markets for something to eat.
‘It looks as though we’re going to have to eat at home,’ Slattery said. ‘Can you cook, Magdalena?’
She turned, her eyes bright. ‘I open a good tin of corned beef.’
With the Mexican housekeeper’s knowledge of the back street shops and Atty’s barefaced cheek, they found wine, whisky and a brandy-fed turkey which, although it was on the skinny side, fed all five of them. Magdalena was a terrible cook and her share of the proceedings was a disaster.
‘I could learn,’ she said. ‘When I marry, I’ll have to learn.’
‘Who’re you marrying?’ Slattery asked.
She didn’t react. With Atty in the kitchen in shirt-sleeves and with a dishcloth over his arm pretending to be a waiter – squeezing Pilar’s waist, pinching her behind or pretending to waltz with her – she sat in a comfortable silence in the salon staring at Slattery over the top of her glass. They could hear Jesús giggling at Atty’s antics and the laughter was infectious.
‘I’ve been offered the role of Arline in The Bohemian Girl in the United States,’ she said suddenly. ‘If it’s successful they’re prepared to try me in Fra Diavolo.’ Her face lit up with pleasure. ‘The music of Auber and Balfe are a step towards opera. With that experience behind me, they think I could make a start on the less powerful roles like Amina in La Sonnambula and go on to Puccini.’
‘Who’s behind it? Our fat Junker friend?’
His arrogant comment annoyed her and her eyes flashed. ‘Hermann has my interests at heart. Even before his own. He’s encouraging me, even though it means he’d have to find and train a new lead singer. An associate of Charles Frohman’s behind it. I suppose you’ve heard of Frohman. He’s the leading New York producer.’
She was silent for a moment, then she sat at the piano and began to sing, not with passion or power but, he suspected, because she didn’t always know how to behave with him and it was a good way to hide her feelings. At first it was melodies from zarzuela, then tunes by French composers, before finally moving to soft Mexican love songs. Finally, she began to play a phonograph, Lehár and Strauss waltzes, and Slattery took her in his arms and made her dance. At first she tried to free herself but eventually she allowed him to guide her round the furniture.
After a while, he changed the record to ragtime, and they started to do a foxtrot. As they moved backwards and forwards, she clung to him, moulding her body to his, matching her steps to his, her attention concentrated on her dancing.
‘Do you do the Turkey Trot as well?’ he asked.
Her eyes lifted. ‘Badly,’ she said.
‘The tango?’
‘Not much. Too daring. Nice women don’t go in for it.’
‘Let’s try it.’
Putting his arm round her waist, he began to move around the room in quick swoops, deliberately over-emphasising the drama of the dance as he bent her backwards. She started to giggle at his antics and in the end they had to stop, helpless with laughter, and start again with something simpler. Holding her close, her perfume went to his head a little.
‘I like looking at you,’ he said and she laughed.
‘Don’t laugh. I mean it.’
She looked at him, her eyes steady and unwavering.
‘The theatre’s full of women with better looks than I have,’ she murmured, though he could tell she was pleased.
‘You’re different. It comes from inside. You can’t hide what you feel.’
She looked up quickly. ‘Oh, but I can,’ she said briskly. ‘I do. More than you realise.’
She began to hum the tune – to stop him talking, he suspected – then she looked up at him, smiling. ‘Did you dance with Amaryllis?’
He looked at her sharply. ‘How do you know about Amaryllis?’
‘I was told.’
‘Who by?’
‘Somebody who knows her. He said she was coming to Mexico City.’
‘I’ll make a point of being somewhere else.’
‘That’s no way to court a woman.’
‘I’m not courting her. I’m dodging her.’
‘She must think you want her. Or she wouldn’t chase you. You should make your peace with her.’
‘I didn’t know we were at war. Are you taking her side?’
‘I’m taking the side of any lonely woman.’
‘Then you should look to your own interests.’
Indignation flashed in her eyes and Slattery apologised at once.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. You don’t deserve it.’
The phonograph came to a stop and as their steps slowed he kissed her on the lips. At first it was gentle but when she didn’t resist and even lifted her mouth, he became more ardent and she responded just as ardently. Then, slipping from his arms, she abruptly stopped the phonograph, slammed down the piano lid, and began collecting her music.
Pilar was still clearing the dirty crockery with Jesús and Atty and, as Magdalena vanished, she gave Slattery a curious look, her eyes moving to the stairs as if to encourage him.
Going to his room, he undressed slowly, his mind on the moment of happiness they had experienced. Magdalena had touched his hand more than once during dinner, almost as if by accident, as though reassuring herself he was there. But finally she hadn’t seemed to want him and, in his anger, he wondered how she would react to a foray by him along the corridor and up the stairs to the third floor where she had installed herself in a room as far away from everybody else as possible.
For a moment longer, he considered trying his luck but, as his anger declined, he changed his mind and, with a shrug, he yanked back the curtains and turned out the light.
Six
Mexico City was nervous. The northern armies were drawing nearer and in Morelos just to the south Zapata was conducting a campaign of blood-curdling cruelty in which hacienda owners and their mayordomos who were unwise enough to allow themselves to be taken prisoner were butchered or tortured.
But Mexico’s earth had always been saturated by the blood of its people and Mexican memories were long and the desire for vengeance terrible.
Because of Zapata’s reign of terror, farmers were afraid to move their produce and the food situation in the capital was growing worse. The traffic continued to flow, but it was thinner with the absence of petrol, and there were soldiers everywhere. Occasionally you saw groups of men, often manacled, being led away by recruiting officers to the army depots for shipment north.
As the panic died down a little, the Opera House managed to recruit fresh stagehands and new singers were found in Cha
pultepec and Querétaro and, as the performances restarted, Magdelena became busy and preoccupied. Slattery occasionally found her sitting in a chair wearing spectacles, supposedly studying a score but with a faraway look on her face. He could move his arm now and was able to comb his hair without ending up looking like one of the Mexican pimps whose girls operated round the back of the Cathedral.
From time to time, Horrocks appeared, full of information, not pushing but somehow always with a sense of having Slattery well under control. Usually he appeared alongside him as he sat at some sidewalk café, popping up like a pantomime demon, all smiles and bland sophistication.
‘Huerta’s in trouble,’ he announced. ‘Picking up recruits by press-gang methods that would have shamed Nelson’s navy. Seven hundred seized at the bullfight on Sunday. Another thousand at a fire in the east end. The American Embassy didn’t get its groceries last week because the delivery boy was taken. He’s making a mistake, of course. The Indians’ll do as they’re told. Always do. But he’s picking up educated people as well. He’ll have desertions.’
Carranza was still playing at being president in the north, appointing ‘ministers’ to a non-existent administration, ambassadors, consuls, and advisers to foreign capitals for when the time came for them to take up their posts.
‘He’s picked his son-in-law as ambassador to Washington,’ Horrocks said. ‘So you’d better warn your friend, Villa, that he’s going to have to endure a bit of back-stabbing north of the border.’ He paused, smiling. ‘How’s the diva, by the way? Are you chasing her or is she chasing you? Because if she ain’t, Amaryllis is.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Have done for years. She was in the El Presidente Hotel last night when I returned. Asking at the desk for you. Seemed to think you might be staying there.’
‘Was it you who told Magdalena about her?’
‘My dear chap’ – Horrocks was all pained innocence – ‘never speak a lady’s name in the mess. Never speak a gentleman’s in a lady’s boudoir.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’re a born bloody liar. Do you know Amaryllis well?’
Horrocks’ face was blank and Slattery wondered if he’d ended up in Amaryllis’ bed, too. ‘Well enough,’ he said. ‘How well do you know her?’
With the success of The Merry Widow at the Opera House, suddenly there were Americans making the hazardous journey south to hear Magdalena and Slattery saw less and less of her at the house in the Avenida Versailles. But he was always waiting outside when she appeared after the final curtain surrounded by admirers and members of the cast, all of them eyeing him with slow speculative glances. She was usually tired and in no mood to argue with him, and was content to eat a quiet supper provided by Pilar and drink a glass of wine.
‘You know,’ he said one night when things had gone wrong and the performance had been particularly trying so that she sat in a cool withdrawn silence, ‘you’ll suddenly wake up to find you’re not who you thought you were. You’re not Arline or Rosalinda or Hanna Glawari or any of those people in your operettas. You’re Magdalena Graf – here, with me.’
She gave him a narrow look, startled at his shrewdness. With her better voice and superior technique she had always been isolated from the rest of the Stutzmann Company, living in their melodious smiling world without ever being part of it.
‘I sometimes grow tired of being someone other than myself,’ she admitted. ‘To sing Fra Diavolo or The Bohemian Girl would be good. Bohème would be better, but that’s beyond me for a while yet. And none of them would be the same as having a permanent home and being myself.’ She shifted restlessly. ‘I’m tired of living in hotels. I want to stay still, to cultivate a garden, to watch it grow for next year, to build a place that doesn’t have to rely on Pilar who doesn’t bother to dust when I’m not here to see it. A singer’s a woman, too, and I want to live in a house that doesn’t just spring to life when I appear in it.’
The taut look in her face had softened to a sad, longing sort of loneliness.
‘Sometimes,’ she went on, ‘I think I’d be happy to give it all up. But it’s not easy. After the Opera House, we go north again. Perhaps to El Paso and into Texas. We have a good reputation, and the chance of singing in New York is important. Will you be going back to Villa?’
‘Yes.’
Her hand touched his gently, affectionately, as if its proximity meant a great deal to her, as if she longed to keep him beside her. ‘He has many enemies,’ she said. ‘Don’t go.’
‘I engaged to serve him.’
‘You’re sick.’
‘I’m better.’
‘Who says?’
‘I do. I’ve decided. It keeps things simple.’
She tried to smile. ‘He has many enemies,’ she said. ‘Others have left him. Some have changed sides.’
‘It’s not a habit of mine.’
‘Killers don’t make rulers.’
‘Are you advocating Don Venus?’
‘He knows how to make laws.’
‘You sound like Brother Fausto.’
She turned away, a hurt expression on her face. ‘Don’t go,’ she said quietly. ‘Please don’t go.’
But he did.
When he returned to Torreón, Villa had emptied the railway yards to mount his troops on wheels for the coming offensive against Huerta. But the looting had been stopped, citizens were not interfered with, and the heavy drinking that had led to the shooting out of windows had been halted.
Almost the first person Slattery saw was Consuela Lidgett. She hadn’t found her husband but the newspapermen had been helpful and she had been able to send a few stories north.
‘I don’t suppose they’ll use them, though,’ she admitted. ‘None of them had much to do with Gordonsboro.’
She looked tired and her clothes were too well-worn, and in an attempt to cheer her up, Slattery bought her lunch. In the square there were flags in every window and the bandstand was a blaze of the national colours of red, white and green, with foliage tied to every upright and sprays of wilting flowers edging the steps.
‘It was for General Villa,’ Consuela said. ‘They had a fiesta with music and bands.’
As they talked, borne on the shoulders of eight staggering cargadores, an enormous bed was making its way down the street. It was vast and wore sheets, blankets, covers, pillows and ribbon decorations. The porters were exchanging winks and bawdy comments with the interested crowd.
‘It’s for Don Pancho,’ one of the cargadores was saying.
It was Atty who provided the details. ‘He got married again,’ he said.
Slattery’s eyebrows rose. ‘For God’s sake, he has two wives already. Where is he now?’
‘With his train, me dear. He had the guard’s van painted red and fitted it up with a bedroom and a kitchen. All domestic bliss. He’s suddenly taken to gettin’ shaved and his shirts are washed and have all the buttons on ’em. He even combs his hair now and then.’
‘What about the other wives? He’s never divorced them.’
Atty grinned. ‘He says they’re too corecto for campaigning.’
‘Didn’t the priest raise any objections?’
‘Panchito showed him his gun and he found it was possible to overlook them.’
When they set off for headquarters, Consuela accompanied them to write an article on Villa. They found the red caboose without difficulty because it stuck out like a sore thumb among the ribbon of hooting engines and freight cars all covered with grey dust. There were curtains at the window and a vase of wilting flowers, and on the walls were pictures of pin-up girls showing acres of bosom and frothy underwear. There was also a picture of Carranza, tucked away in a corner where it could hardly be seen, and a much larger one of Villa himself occupying pride of place. Apart from the table, the only furniture consisted of two wide folding bunks.
Villa was eating a plate of beans and talking to Urbina and a few other men. In the background was a slender dark-haired girl with
eyes like pansies. As they appeared, Villa waved Urbina and the other men away and gestured at the girl. ‘My wife, Juanita,’ he said.
There was no explanation and nobody asked questions. Villa gestured at Consuela. ‘Who’s this?’
‘She’s a great admirer of yours, Don Pancho,’ Slattery explained. ‘She wants to write something about you for her paper.’
Villa eyed her for a moment then glanced at his new ‘wife’, as though assessing her charms against Consuela’s paler attributes. He leaned towards Slattery, his face sly. ‘I think Doña Magdalena will have something to say,’ he whispered, ‘when she finds out about this one.’
‘This one’s just a reporter, Don Pancho. Nothing else.’
‘Then you ought to make her something else. What a pity I have just got married.’
‘She wants to write about Mexican women, Don Pancho. How they’re helping the revolution. What they’re doing.’
‘They feed my soldiers,’ Villa said. ‘They bind their wounds and sleep with them. If their man is killed, they spend the day weeping, then take up with another man.’ He slapped Slattery’s knee. ‘You saw my bed, inglés? It gives me more elbow room, don’t you think. Tómas Urbina had the same feeling about a grand piano he heard of. He sent a squad of his men for it, but after they’d wrestled it down the front steps it dawned on them it had only three legs. They’d heard of animals with four legs and humans and birds with two and a few things like snakes with none, but they’d never heard of anything with three. So they ditched it and settled for an upright on four wheels.’ He laughed, then his grin died and he leaned forward. ‘What about you, inglés? What did you learn for me in the capital?’
‘I learned that the Ambassador-Designate for Washington is Carranza’s son-in-law, and that he’s paying out a lot of money to American newspapers to make out that the bogeyman of the revolution is General Francisco Villa.’
Villa frowned. ‘I can deal with him when the time comes. What about now? What else did you learn? What do they think of me in Mexico City?’