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The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

Page 22

by C. M. Mayo


  There is much that Pepa should like to put in Father Fischer’s ear. Other than Maximilian, the German curate is her single trusted ally in this court. But with the difficulties Maximilian has been having with the church, after the papal emissary left the country in a high dudgeon, Father Fischer was sent to smooth feathers in Rome. Rome: the other side of the world. It could be weeks, even months before Father Fischer returns to Mexico—if he returns. It could well be that Pepa will have to fight her battles, and the battles for the future of this precious child, alone.

  Things have so changed, only time will tell whether we shall all be here in another year.

  Frau von Kuhacsevich dots this last sentence in the letter to her chum, and she startles: Princess Iturbide’s carriage clatters past the window. Princess Iturbide would be bringing her nephew and his nursemaid back up from the park.

  Frau von Kuhacsevich now considers adding a few more lines about the little boy, how he has grown, some of the funny things he says—and how very like Crown Prince Rudolph when he was that age. Agustín is one of those rosy-cheeked children, you just want to pinch their cheek all day! No angel, but what healthy two-year-old is? His presence, his gales of laughter, have made them all smile in these difficult days. But to think of this child cannot but also remind her of a disquieting unpleasantness.

  Frau von Kuhacsevich heard about it from her coachman, who got it from Maximilian’s coachman, who made her coachman swear never to repeat it (but, it turns out that Tüdos, the chef, of all people, was already in on it, thanks to blabby old Schertzenlechner). The child’s mother, brokenhearted, rushed back to Mexico City and attempted to get up an intrigue with General Bazaine. Maximilian, with his typical generosity, did not arrest her but only had her detained and returned to her husband and his brothers, who were waiting for her out on the highway—as Maximilian himself supposedly put it, “with all the courage of a pair of hyenas.” The latest is, their steamer departed Veracruz on October 2—more than a month ago. Probably, they are already in Paris.

  Would that Frau von Kuhacsevich could live in Paris! Well, Trieste would be her first choice, and Vienna her second, but she would trade Mexico City for Paris in the twinkle of a crab’s eye!

  A wonder it was, to Frau von Kuhacsevich, that the parents, both in good health, had been induced to give up their child. But the mother, an American, was so young, apparently, her head must have been easily turned. Whose wouldn’t, with such an offer from a Habsburg? The woman changed her mind, but too late, and that was a pity. Poor little boy, to have had such unsuitable parents. Frau von Kuhacsevich has heard, and finds it convenient to believe without question, that those Iturbides are gamblers and drunkards. She gives those ne’er-do-wells not another thought.

  As for Princess Iturbide, her lizard eyes, her coiled-up hair, her sharptongued pronouncements on Prince Agustín’s bath, Prince Agustín’s naptimes, Prince Agustín’s hot milk with sugared bread—Frau von Kuhacsevich feels dizzy with exasperation just to think of that woman. At the very first, Frau von Kuhacsevich remarked to her husband, wasn’t it striking, how much Princess Iturbide resembles that steel-jawed Countess Haake, lady-in-waiting to the empress of Prussia?

  “Frau Furchterregend, Madame Formidable,” was Herr von Kuhacsevich’s judgment.

  Well, Frau Furchterregend had assumed her place in this court with the confidence of someone one would think had a family in the Almanach de Gotha. Typical parvenue. The housemaids and footmen were complaining about her by the first afternoon, but they hopped to her calls like frogs on a hot skillet, and when Her Highness was not satisfied, she took it upon herself, without the courtesy of consulting one, to dismiss them! A chambermaid who did not change the bedpans was one thing, but Princess Iturbide fired the nursemaid, Olivia What’s-her-name, leaving one to scramble—another to be found and within twenty-four hours! Lieber Gott, it was excessive. In twenty-four hours, one has to take what one can get—which is the assistant pastry chef’s teenaged sister.

  All of this Frau von Kuhacsevich was tempted to write in this letter to her chum, but a wary hesitation has kept her hand hovering above the page. Or, perhaps, more than the cold stiffens her fingers. She thought to light the stove, but in these difficult days, one must set an example and economize with the charcoal. At last, she lowers her pen to the paper and pulls it across the page in tight little loops:

  I beg you, burn my letters. God keep you. Your loving friend,

  And she signs her name, with her quick practical scribble.

  It will take a month for these words to arrive in Trieste; in another month after that, by God’s grace, she might have her reply. In the long and lonely meantime, she must fortwursteln—slog on, with the strength of Job and the go-lucky concentration of a Chinese plate-twirler! The laundry, the pantry, the kitchen, the missing epergnes, and the problem of last Tuesday’s delivery of tallow candles in lieu of seven kilos of lard, there is an impossible amount to do! But first, she slides open the desk drawer and reaches into the back for her secret stash of Brombeeren mit Mandeln. Her clothes being so tight, she should not eat one, but, she tells herself, she deserves two. They are so old, she has to use a blade of the scissors to scrape away the wrappers. But even stale, ach, how this chocolate sweetness brings back the good days . . .

  As she does not have a handkerchief, and no one can see, she licks her fingers.

  At this hour in the morning, the shadow of Chapultepec and the mount of basalt it stands upon reaches long into the park below. A little while earlier, that shadow was long enough to enclose, crouching and shivering in her rags, little Lupe.

  “Ten thirty-seven,” El Mapache said, and he shoved the watch in his pocket. He was proud to not only own a watch but know how to read it, for this, he believed, was the sign of a gentleman.

  They had hidden themselves behind bushes. The ahuehuete trees, huge overhead and dripping with ghostly gray moss, made Lupe think of La Llorona. Her stomach made a fierce growl. She had not had a bite since yesterday morning, and she couldn’t helping thinking that, had she stayed at Doña Juliana’s, she could have been warming her bones by the fire and dipping her tamale into a steaming hot cup of champurrando.

  But, in the past days, she has seen her Agustinito three times! Each time, her heart smashed like a broken dish.

  El Mapache swatted dirt from his knees. “Get up, abuelita.” He pushed at her shoulder. Abuelita means little granny; grateful that he calls her that, she obeyed, though her body ached. She shuffled behind him on the pathway out of the park.

  Two months ago, when his wagon was run into that ditch, El Mapache had grabbed the lantern and run. Why would he abandon the boxes of saints, the poor thrashing mules—why run? And into the downpour? Lupe had scrambled out after that light, her huaraches sucking mud, falling, picking herself back up, crying, “Father, I am alive! Father, do not leave me!” She’d thought he hadn’t heard her, and then—this terrified her—she realized he had. “Keep up!” was all he said, as he kept on, his lantern swaying like a disembodied head.

  After the rain stopped and the sun came up, he began to walk faster—she had to trot! “Father?” She tried again. In the daylight, now she saw that he had a meaty, sunburnt face, full of cruelty.

  They came to a road, but he crossed that and took a narrow trail into the mountains. Shreds of mist clung in the trees. They saw a deer’s tracks; there were quails, and jays, and hanging in midair, the little green-bodied flies. It had been such a long time since Lupe had been in the forest. She had forgotten the clammy air and the razor-like scent of pine. She wondered, were they not far from San Miguel de Telapón? Why was the father in such a hurry?

  All day they had nothing to eat, and for water only handfuls scooped from a buggy creek. In the afternoon, they climbed over an oak that had been riven by lightning, and from there, she could see the snowy crest of Popocatépetl. In the thin air, they were both breathing heavily. But on he walked, and on she followed. It was not until the sky began to pale, and a
quarter-moon appeared above the trees, that finally, in the shelter of a shallow cave, he stopped. Bats swooped from the trees. He kicked away some pine cones and the carpet of soggy brown pine-needles, and when he had cleared a circle of earth, he allowed her to bring twigs in for a fire. The walking had kept her warm, but now, her skirts still damp from the rain, her thin blouse and her scalp wet with sweat, she shivered. Her feet were bloodied, and her arms and legs badly bruised when the cart crashed. Slowly, with a whimper of pain, she sat down next to him.

  “Not so close,” he said.

  She scooted away.

  “I said—”

  He did not have to say more. She moved out to the edge of the cave. She hugged her knees, but she could not keep her teeth from chattering. Coyotes, or maybe they were wolves, began howling in the distance.

  “Father?” she said in her tiny voice.

  Instead of answering, he yawned.

  He worked at the fire. When it was roaring nicely, he laced his fingers together, and cracked his knuckles. Then, he sang a song, a queer one with mermaids in it and rum and playing cards. His voice was rough and nasal. He wandered off key, and sometimes, it seemed to her, he was making up the words. As he sang, he poked at the fire with a stick, and every once in a while, he reached behind himself for a branch or twig and flung that on the pile.

  “You sing one.” His gold tooth glinted.

  She sang a lullaby. He said he liked that. It reminded him of his mother.

  “Father? Aren’t we going to say the prayers?”

  He spit into the fire. “I ain’t no priest.”

  He said she could call him El Mapache, the Raccoon. She did not know what he meant. Was he making a joke?

  He said, “You’re looking at him.”

  She stared at him. Her teeth went on chattering.

  He said, “You never heard of me? El Mapache?”

  Mutely, she shook her head.

  “Never heard of El Tuerto and Los Ciegos?”

  “No,” she said in her tiniest voice.

  He hissed. That was all.

  It was the first night of her life that Lupe could remember not saying her prayers. Well, she said them in her mind, and she wasn’t sure that counted. She did not sleep at all, she was so cold, and afraid of wolves, and of La Llorona, and most of all that El Mapache might leave her here. She would not know how to get back to the highway. On her own, she had no way to get to San Miguel de Telapón.

  The next day, she followed him along a trail by a stream. When they had to cross the water, El Mapache gave her his hand. They would eat at his camp where there was always chito, roast goat leg, and in the meantime, it helped to hold a sprig of wild sage to your nose. He stopped to let her rest three times, once by a telegraph pole, the first of a line of them that marched down the side of a hill. With his knife he carved a skull into the wood. From this place, they could see an open stretch of the highway, and alongside, a ribbon of pasture with mules on it. That was the entrance to Río Frío, El Mapache said, where the stagecoach stopped. But he did not go down there; they went on through the forest and into the dusk.

  All the way up the steep trail to the clearing, she could smell, growing ever stronger, mouth-watering, roasting meat. There was almost no light at all when they arrived at what was only a clearing, a few thatched pine-log huts, a shed, and a hitching post. A rib-thin dog strained at its tether, barking and whapping its tail. All of a sudden, there were a dozen men around El Mapache, clapping him on the back. One of them had a lantern. Except for El Tuerto, their chief, they were even younger than El Mapache, and all dressed in a way Lupe had never seen before. One wore a blouse with lace cuffs, but his bare toes, dirt-black, poked out of his boots. Another wore breeches of that fine calfskin Don Manuel used to wear, but his coat was raggedy at the elbows and had no buttons. Several of the men wore earrings. They all swaggered around big-hipped with daggers and machetes and pistols. The ground, scorched in places, muddy in others, was littered with bottles. In the back of their camp, by the hitching post, another lantern cast a weak light upon a mountain of valises and crates and boxes and smashed-up baskets. They had a few sore-backed mules, a flock of chickens. She couldn’t see the goats, but she could hear them, their anxious bleating, the clank of their bells. Behind the hitching post, another trail disappeared into the forest.

  El Tuerto, a muscled monster, wore chaps so wide at the ankles they flapped when he walked, and his trousers had silver buttons all up the legs. His eye patch was fixed by a thong that disappeared into his greasy locks. His other eye was an irritated red. He flicked his hand. Except for El Mapache, the men melted away.

  El Tuerto stood with his thumbs in his belt. “And the rifles?”

  As if stung, El Mapache swung around and snarled at Lupe, “Get lost.”

  Lupe backed away until she could no longer hear what they were saying. El Tuerto threw his hands up, then crossed his arms over his chest, while El Mapache, it seemed, was trying to explain.

  Meanwhile, a woman came out from one of the huts. It was the hut that, on the side of the door, had a wolf’s pelt hung from its tail. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  Before Lupe could answer, a second woman said, “Ay, comadre, what did El Mapache drag in?”

  They looked at each other and sniggered. They had a wanton look; both wore pearl necklaces and earrings, but both were barefoot, and their serapes very dirty. The first one turned her head and scratched vigorously at the back of it.

  Lupe thought to ask, “Is that the trail to San Miguel de Telapón?”

  “It’ll get you there.”

  The first one made a noise with her nose. “By the Second Coming.”

  They started to circle her. And a third woman came out, this one with a cannabis cigar in her mouth and a baby on her hip, and began without a word looking Lupe up and down as if she were an animal in the zoo. Later, Lupe would learn their names: Jipila, Chucha, and Ceci. These were the women of El Tuerto, Piojo, and Sabandijas.

  The first woman put a hand on her hip. She tossed her hair. “Why do you want to know?”

  “It is my village.”

  “It’s not a village.”

  “You know it then?” When Lupe got no response, she turned to the second woman. “You know San Miguel de Telapón?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  The light behind the treetops had turned purple. A smattering of stars winked overhead. Lupe looked at the ground; her shadow had melted into nothing. She was trying not to cry—from susto, from hunger. The smell, so good, of roasting goat made her feel faint.

  She said again, in her tiniest voice, “I was born there.”

  The women looked at each other. The third woman shifted the baby to her other hip. It had crusty eyes. It seemed less asleep than unconscious.

  Finally, the second woman said, “Listen, abuelita. Maybe you was born there and maybe you wasn’t, but it was a couple of sheds and half a fence. When the war started, the French burnt what was there, and all the trees around it, down to the ground.”

  “Comadre,” the first woman said, “those were Austrians.”

  The second one gave a shrug. Then, looking down at Lupe, she said, “Don’t think she’ll eat more than a rabbit. I’d give her a carrot. If we had some.”

  “Come,” said the first woman, taking Lupe by the sleeve. “There’s chito.”

  In Chapultepec Park now, El Mapache thinks, how strange is Lady Luck. It turned out this shriveled little apple held the seed to a golden prize that could bring him more than the good graces of El Tuerto, more than another chance to do business with the Juaristas. It could bring him unthinkable riches, and at the same time, genuine fame, for it would be he, by kidnapping Prince Iturbide, who would stab Maximilian in the heart. Or at least, make a jackass of him and get a pile of treasure for it! El Tuerto would give El Mapache his place then, wouldn’t he? And the Juaristas, too. They’d know then, he hadn’t double-crossed them about those rifles, eh? El Mapache could just se
e the look on that lieutenant’s face when he would return the salute.

  Respect, that’s what it was.

  Every day Prince Iturbide’s mornings run like clockwork. The castle’s chapel bells toll out nine, and not a moment later, his carriage starts down the ramp. At the bottom, in the park, they get out: the bodyguard, the nursemaid, the prince, and the one Lupe calls Doña Pepa. She looks mean enough to skin a maggot, but she’s got hip trouble, and Lupe says she’s deaf in one ear. This pretty party winds down the path to the pond, where the tyke throws some tortillas at the ducks. Then to the stables; then to the caged birds and a monkey. Then a ride in a pony cart. Nearing the top of the hour, they’re at the water tank—now, that’s tricky there. When Maximilian is swimming, it’s swarming with guards. With the bells of ten, they’re in the carriage again, hauling back up the ramp.

  In Chapultepec Park it’s a snap to blend in. El Mapache wears a sombrero with the brim down to his eyebrows. Lupe keeps her shawl over her head. Passersby have a goggle at the prince, but none dares get close—the bodyguard steps in if they try it. It was when Lupe first caught sight of the kid that El Mapache realized, for real, she hadn’t been shitting him. She damn near screamed, “Santa María!” He had to pinch her to make her quit.

  The other day, while the prince, his aunt, and the nanny were feeding the ducks, El Mapache went out in a canoe. The one he wanted to draw a bead on was the bodyguard. He was the tallest white man he had ever seen, a big-boned German with the plodding gait of an ox. At first, the bodyguard had seemed alert, constantly scanning the pathway, the bushes, the trees, but every once in a while, he would fall into a kind of a trance, staring as if he was watching something floating in midair. One time, he sat down on a bench, laid his pistol across his knees, and closed his eyes.

  The wanker was taking his siesta!

  This night El Mapache slaps down his decision. They will kidnap the prince at the pond. It is the farthest point from the carriage, from the stables, and from the water tank. On its rim, bushes give cover. The pathway curves as it approaches the water, so unless a person comes close in, he is blind to where the prince and the others are standing. This is no operation for a pistol; it needs knives—the sharpest of knives. There must be no more noise than a grunt. Lupe, he explains, will be kneeling in the bushes. When the ducks swim up to feed, and once the bodyguard looks drifty, she’ll make a duck’s honk. That’s the signal for El Mapache to creep up behind that lummox and bury the dagger in his back. Lupe will have the butcher’s knife, she can fend off the women. El Mapache will grab the prince and they will run like their clothes are on fire. Then, they’ll hide behind a hedge where Lupe can calm him down—that’s the trick. They’ll all change clothes. And then, under her shawl, she’ll carry the prince out of the park.

 

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