by John Harris
For Slattery it wasn’t so easy. He had fought all along to avoid becoming involved with Horrocks. But Horrocks had never really left him alone, hinting, nudging, persuading, and he had constantly pushed him off, feeling vaguely that Horrocks followed a shabby profession. But now he was committed, part of Horrocks’ organisation, available to betray, to cheat, to listen at keyholes, to be as dishonest as Horrocks for the dissemination of falsehoods and the repudiation of other people’s falsehoods. He managed to persuade himself that the fact that his country was at war made it acceptable.
When he moved Magdalena back to the house in the Avenida Marseilles, Pilar immediately threw up her hands and started wailing with dismay at her wound, until Atty fetched her a clout at the side of the head and told her yelling was no help.
It took only twenty-four hours for the newspapers to become aware of her arrival and they became ecstatic about their wounded heroine. Discreetly ignoring her German father and her American naturalisation papers, they chose to consider her Mexican, and there were paeans of praise about her courage, and artists’ pictures in the coloured magazines the Mexicans enjoyed at weekends – alongside drawings of girls being snatched from their families by bandits, and monks being eaten by coyotes – of her running from shellfire along the deck of a ship, her arms full of children. They made Magdalena laugh, even though laughing was still painful.
With Huerta gone, the Federal troops had moved out of the capital and the city uneasily awaited the arrival of the Constitutionalists. Tired of playing politics, Zapata had retired once more to the hills of Morelos and, because Villa was stalled by lack of coal for his locomotives, Obregón was the first to arrive. He was followed shortly afterwards by Carranza who headed towards the National Palace in a typically splendid procession that was marred only by the squabbling of his generals about which side of the First Chief they should ride. Attempts to include Zapata were rejected at once. Zapata didn’t like Carranza any more than he had liked Díaz or Madero or Huerta.
With the police disarmed and no one to prevent thieving and killing, the northern generals began to move into the homes of wealthy families, while their soldiers contented themselves with confiscating horses and cars and settling private scores. For safety, Slattery moved into the house in the Avenida Versailles, with Atty and Jesús in the servants’ quarters with Pilar – and an attempt to loot the place was stopped on the front steps by Atty’s pistol.
The would-be looters were four Zapatista stragglers, small dark-eyed and swarthy, swathed to the eyebrows in bandoliers of ammunition. They started by begging but were on the point of drawing their guns when Slattery arrived, with Jesús just behind with an ancient muzzle-loader.
‘You must be quiet,’ Slattery begged. ‘Because of the wounded Diva lying upstairs at death’s door.’
His words silenced the argument, and when he produced the newspaper with pictures of Magdalena, the Zapatistas were immediately full of apologies and one of them shyly asked for a postcard of her which, to show his admiration, he stuck in his hatband with the picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Aguascalientes, where the Constitutionalists’ planned convention was to take place, was a quiet spa town crowded with Mexicans of all shapes and sizes, all armed to the teeth. They sat in the Morelos Theatre clutching their weapons and signifying their approval of what was being said by crashing rifle butts to the floor, and their disapproval by shooting holes in the ceiling.
It was obvious the convention could only end in disarray. In the circus atmosphere that existed, nothing could come of its deliberations, but as a show it was a great success, moving constantly from tragedy to farce and back again. Everybody appeared to be praying for Mexico but nobody could agree on the form of prayer. Solemnly the delegates signed the national flag and exchanged embraces, and that night, as a newsreel of the revolution was shown, unable to find seats in the crowded hall, Slattery and Horrocks took their places among the diplomatic attachés, intelligence men and newspaper correspondents who had appropriated chairs and were watching from behind the screen.
As the heroes of the revolution appeared on film there were cheers and vivas from the audience. Only Carranza’s face produced a chorus of boos and, as he was shown making his triumphal entry into Mexico City, the uproar culminated in some over-excited delegate firing two shots at the screen. They penetrated it at the First Chief’s chest to strike plaster from the wall just above the heads of the men in the chairs.
‘If he’d entered on foot they’d have hit us,’ Slattery said through the shout of laughter.
‘If he’d entered on foot,’ Horrocks observed dryly, dusting plaster from his clothes, ‘he wouldn’t have been Carranza.’
Carranza had refused to attend the conference, while Zapata had sworn to have nothing to do with it until there was a promise to give back the land stolen from his followers by the hacendados. The possibility of trouble between the Constitutionalist generals was increased with every word that was spoken and, as the two opposing forces began to take shape, the rebel leaders who had defeated Huerta had to decide to which side of the fence they belonged. Most of them stayed exactly where they were, but Villa was shocked to learn that several of his best men had refused to back him.
It was noticeable that Sjogren, the chargé d’affaires from the Swedish Embassy, was keeping a sharp eye on the voting from one of the boxes of the theatre where he was making extensive notes. Doubtless Graf was also somewhere around, Slattery decided.
The convention bogged down into stale arguments but the unexpected arrival of delegates from Zapata brought it to violent life, with shaking fists, threats and pistol shots, and the confusion was completed with a letter from Carranza demanding the immediate disappearance from the field of his old enemies, Zapata and Villa. Zapata’s men greeted it coldly. Villa insisted that Carranza should retire before he would, and the farce ended in a complete split.
‘Madre de Dios,’ Villa growled. ‘It’s going to start all over again. I shall need you, inglés.’
‘Not any more, Don Pancho.’
Villa scowled and for a moment, remembering the fluky pistol, Slattery thought he was going to kill him on the spot. But Villa stepped up to him and, with an enormous abrazo, half-lifted him from the ground in his arms. ‘Why, inglés?’
‘My own country’s at war now, Don Pancho. Things have changed.’
‘I know. I understand. Don’t talk about it. What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to Mexico City.’
The amber eyes glittered, and the burly figure tensed. ‘You’re not going to join the Huertista lot, are you? Everybody’s trying to cut everybody else’s throat these days – especially their friends’ throats.’ Villa put his arm round Slattery’s shoulders and, knowing his ability to change moods at lightning speed, Slattery wondered again if it were the preliminary to a bullet in the back.
He explained about the war in Europe and how it affected him, and they talked for an hour, Villa still angry that he had been betrayed by the men who had gone over to Carranza. ‘Why didn’t you desert me too, inglés? Maclovio Herrera did. Guzmán gave me a Judas kiss. Why not you?’
‘Perhaps because I can beat you at cards, Don Pancho.’
Villa laughed and gave him another abrazo.
‘I knew Benavides might betray me,’ he said. ‘And, of course, Roblés. I never trusted him and should have had him shot long since. Never you, though, inglés. I never understood you, but I always trusted you.’
He accompanied Slattery to the station and watched him board the Pullman coach. On the platform he spoke to the conductor.
‘This is one of my men,’ he pointed out. ‘Take good care of him. Remember how well I shoot.’
There was a last abrazo.
‘Look after yourself, inglés. I have no complaints. You served me well. Do the same for your own country. You’re free now.’
As the train began to speed into the darkness, Slattery looked back, Villa was still standing on
the station platform, his hands on his gun belt.
‘So much for your little playmate.’ It was Horrocks, popping up as usual from nowhere and appearing in the compartment. ‘You’ll have to watch your step, old boy. He’s a difficult man to cross.’
Two
Mexico City was worried. Though Huerta had gone, nobody felt they had seen the last of him.
As Horrocks had predicted, there were no hurrahs for President Wilson. The Mexicans weren’t interested in moralising from north of the border. The only thing they wanted from the Americans was guns, and with the country on the point of becoming a battleground again, hordes of pistol-happy horsemen began to move.
As the opposing sides began to line up, it was clear that Obregón at least had not forgotten the idea that lay behind the revolution and the talk swung away from fighting for loot to hammering at the foundations of a better life. Some of the land stolen by the hacendados was returned, self-government was given back to the municipalities and trades unions were allowed. In return, the unions raised battalions for Obregón; and Turner, Horrocks’ English printer, found himself installed with a printing press in a boxcar in the railway sidings, with an editorial office to produce propaganda, the one essential for winning wars that Villa lacked but which Obregón understood perfectly.
Turner was also producing newssheets explaining the Allied cause in the war in Europe, but it was Slattery’s belief that in their spare time the Mexican workmen he employed were producing others for the Germans which said exactly the opposite. With the capital short of ready money, Turner was also being paid to turn out Carranza currency. But, as he watched the sheets running from the old flatbed machine he used, he was nervous and unhappy. ‘I wish I was my brother,’ he told Slattery. ‘He works for the telegraph office. If Villa comes he’ll probably shoot me.’
By this time Slattery had moved into Horrocks’ office in the Avenida Juárez, close to the Embassy. From there he was involved with Washington, New York and England, certain suddenly that he was doing the right thing. And when London newspapers turned up, the horrifying lists of the British army’s dead in France made him realise that Horrocks had probably done him a good turn.
Mexico City grew more and more dilapidated. Trams stopped running, cabs vanished as horses were stolen, and bandits of one side or the other entered houses as they pleased, making the girls they found there strip naked, not to rape them but because they wanted their clothes for their girlfriends. It was nothing to find a dead man lying in the porch after hearing shots during the night.
Magdalena was moving about almost normally now, and occasionally they dined in the city, drove to Chapultepec or walked in the Alameda Gardens. Other strollers watched them with interest because they were an eye-catching pair, Slattery tall, well-built and red-haired, Magdalena beautiful and well-known about the capital. Sometimes they even provoked a ripple of clapping.
‘You and I,’ Slattery observed, ‘could walk down Piccadilly, the Champs Elysées or the Unter den Linden, and make eyes click in their sockets every time.’
She laughed and hugged his arm. She had completely forgotten their quarrel in the security given by her rescue at Tampico, and she was warm, affectionate and happy. She had started a daily regime of practising so that the house was filled with throat clearings, trills and arpeggios. She seemed constantly to be singing – something from one of the operettas, traditional Mexican tunes, an aria.
‘Opera is a more serious taskmaster than operetta,’ she said. ‘But I can reach the high notes, and there is no longer any pain when I breathe.’
She was planning to go to Chihuahua until she felt it time to cross to El Paso for the train to New York. ‘If I’m in Chihuahua and fighting breaks out, I shall be close to the border and the International Bridge. I hope the New Yorkers will like me.’
‘They’ll love you,’ Slattery insisted.
She gave him a radiant smile. Then her expression became unexpectedly sad at the thought of parting. ‘I wish–’ she began. Then she stopped, drew a deep breath and went on briskly. She was taking Jesús with her, she said. He had grown very attached to her and had refused to stay behind, and she was happy to have him.
‘There’ll be plenty for him to do,’ she said. ‘Hermann will be coming as soon as his present show finishes. He will act as manager for me and arrange percentages, matinees and the number of seats. Jesús can be under-manager.’ She frowned. ‘There’s only one snag. What is his name? The Americans will want to know and he has no birth certificate and doesn’t know his parents or where he was born.’
‘Use your name,’ Slattery suggested. ‘Call him Graf. Atty will fix the documents. Atty can fix anything.’
With Atty taking to walking out with Pilar and Jesús discovering the joys of adolescent love with a girl from Hermann Stutzmann’s office, the house on the Avenida Versailles was often empty except for Magdalena and Slattery. The absence of other people seemed to worry Magdalena occasionally and certainly began to put ideas into Slattery’s head. But he wasn’t sure how to play his hand. He had never worried much about such things before but somehow Magdalena was different. Then, with the troops of Carranza and Zapata facing each other uneasily on the southern outskirts of the capital, in Europe the fighting flared up and Stutzmann turned up at Magdalena’s house in tears, his weak, handsome face gloomy, his plump cheeks trembling.
‘I have been told to report to the German Consul,’ he said, stroking Magdalena’s hand distractedly. ‘With the war, all Germans have to report. Not you, of course. You’ll still be able to go to New York without me. The contract is still good. Moore’s Theatre will be booked as soon as you’re fit. I received a letter from your brother, by the way. He now considers himself a German officer. He says he’s coming to see you.’
‘I don’t wish to see him.’
Graf turned up, nevertheless.
‘She is still my sister,’ he said furiously as he was halted at the door. ‘She is German. I insist on seeing her. You can’t stop me.’
Slattery didn’t move. ‘I could always shoot you,’ he said. ‘I once promised to and, given the state of the city at the moment, nobody would notice.’
The house was empty as usual, as Graf turned away angrily, Slattery ran upstairs to Magdalena’s room. It was a large salon next to her bedroom, decorated in blue with wispy drapes at the windows. On the piano was a photograph of Slattery and one of Hermann Stutzmann addressed to ‘Die schönste Magdalena.’
She was wearing a flimsy summer gown and looked up as he appeared. Putting down the score she was reading, she gave him a welcoming smile. He didn’t return it.
‘Fausto was here,’ he said.
Her eyes filled with a lost look. ‘Oh, Mother of God,’ she said. ‘Will it ever go away?’
‘He’s always around.’
She managed a twisted smile. ‘So are you.’
‘What does he want?’
‘To see me. He’s my brother.’
Fausto was more than that, Slattery thought. He was no longer just someone he disliked and distrusted, a foreigner stirring up trouble. He had become an enemy, and was dangerous and ruthless.
‘He likes to know what you’re doing,’ she went on.
‘And you tell him?’
‘No.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s none of his business.’
‘It always was before.’
She was angered by his unexpected aggressiveness and turned away from him, back to her desk.
‘He’s a German agent, Magdalena,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘Working to get Mexico involved in the war in Europe.’
‘I know that too. But I don’t think he means you any harm.’
Slattery gave a harsh laugh. ‘He tried to have me murdered, Magdalena!’
Her head swung round, startled. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘It’s true.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Slattery’s
voice rose. ‘For the same reason you don’t tell me things! Because he’s your damn brother!’
She put down her glasses and headed towards the bedroom. In the doorway, she turned, her eyes as angry as his now. ‘Why should he want to see you dead? Why?’
‘Because I saw him in Escotadura.’
‘I know. I told him.’
‘I saw him kill the Lidgett woman’s husband. That’s why he wanted me out of the way. He was with the Orozquistas. He’d been living with her and was worried she’d find out what he’d done. When he learned I’d seen him – when you told him – he tried to have me removed. Twice. Twice, Magdalena! But they were clumsy and two other men died in my place.’
She turned by the bed, her face shocked, her voice shaking. ‘God forgive me! I didn’t realise!’ She was contrite but he failed to notice in his anger.
‘Do you pass everything on to him?’
Suddenly she lost her temper, too. ‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘Yes, yes!’ There was anguish and despair in the way she swung round to face him. ‘I always told him what he asked!’
‘You were a German agent?’ Despite everything, Slattery found it hard to believe. ‘Do all Germans ask their sisters to do their dirty work? Their mothers? Their grandmothers?’ So he had been right all along when he had wondered about her, he thought bitterly. Horrocks had been right. ‘Is that why he was always turning up? Is that why he came today?’
‘He liked to ask questions. I didn’t understand at first why. I do now. And it wasn’t hard to give him answers. Because I was Magdalena Graf. I met everybody and they talked.’
‘Why are you telling me all this now?’
Her eyes sparkled with moisture. ‘Because people like Fausto and Kloss and Von Raschstadt are tearing Mexico apart.’ Her face was full of misery. ‘There were always questions! About Díaz. About Madero. About Huerta and Carranza and Villa. About Americans I met. About you. He’s still trying to get answers from me. He threatens to tell the Americans I work for Germany. So I shan’t be able to go to New York. He talks all the time about Kameradschaft and German solidarity.’