“Do all my years of loyalty count for nothing?”
“The act may have been unpremeditated, but a state of inebriation is not an extenuating circumstance in the courthouse of Santos Banderas. You are a piss-pot and you spend your nights bingeing in bordellos. Santos Banderas knows your every move. I’m warning you that truth and truth alone will cool my ire. Master V, I would like to give you a hand and drag you from the quagmire where you’re floundering helplessly. You know treason incurs a very harsh sentence under our laws.”
“Mr. President, sir, there are circumstances in life that cause total panic, circumstances that could come straight out of a novel. On the night in question I visited a psychic pussycat.”
“A psychic pussycat that inhabits a cathouse where you court her?”
“Well, that’s what happened last night down at Baby Roach’s joint. I want to make a full statement and clear my conscience. We were both in a state of sin. It was the Day of the Dead last night, Generalito! Gentlemen, I swear on my word of honor that that dark-skinned girl lit a holy candle that revealed all these mysteries. She could read minds!”
“Drunken fantasies, Master V. You were blotto when you took up with the hooker. In vile commerce with a common whore you betrayed me, you disclosed my secrets. Well the first thing you need, in order to cool your burning flesh, is some time in the stocks. Master V, go into that corner, kneel, and lift your thoughts—try!—to the Supreme Being. This crew of select colleagues will then pass sentence on you, and a sentence of death is not at all out of the question. But Master V, the eyewitnesses you have described will speak in your defense, and if their statements exonerate you, I, for one, will be delighted. Colonel López de Salamanca, sir, I request that immediately and by any means necessary you produce the doctor and the whore!”
III
The Honorable Colonel López de Salamanca, who’d been loitering by the doorpost, thrust Dr. Polish into the room. Lupita la Romántica was peering over his shoulder. Tall and bewhiskered, with a broad domed forehead and the locks of a sage, Dr. Polish sported a dinner jacket with two sashes over his chest and a rosette in the lapel. He greeted them with a pompously sweeping bow and tucked his top hat under his arm. “Allow me to render homage to the Supreme Highness of the republic. Michaelis Lugín, Ph.D., University of Cairo and initiate in the secret knowledge of the Brahmins of Bengal.”
“Do you subscribe to the teachings of Allan Kardec?”
“No, I am a modest disciple of Mesmer. Kardecian spiritualism is a childish travesty of ancient necromancy—the art of summoning the dead that derives from Egyptian papyrus and Chaldean masonry. The word designating these phenomena derives from two Greek ones.”
“This doctor of ours expresses himself very doctorally! And does your renown as the prophet from Cairo allow you to earn your bread?”
“President, sir, my merit, such as it is, is not manifested through money or wealth. My mission is to propagate the doctrines of theosophy and to prepare people for the next era of miracles. The shadow of New Christ walks the paths of the planet.”
“Do you admit to employing magnetism in order to put this girl into a trance?”
“I admit to conducting the occasional experiment. It is a remarkable field.”
“List each and every experiment you have conducted.”
“President, sir, if you so wish, you can see the programs of experiments I have conducted in the coliseums and academies of St. Petersburg, Vienna, Naples, Berlin, Paris, London, Lisbon, and Rio de Janeiro. Recently prestigious publications in Chicago and Philadelphia have been devoted to debating my theories on karma and bio-magnetic suggestion. The Havana Club of the Theosophical Star has conferred the title of Perfect Brother on me. The empress of Austria does me the honor of regularly consulting me about the meaning of her dreams. I possess secrets that I shall never reveal. The president of the French Republic and the king of Prussia tried to bribe me when I performed in their capital cities. To no avail! The path of theosophy teaches one to scorn titles and wealth. If I have your permission, I will place my photograph albums and press cuttings at the disposition of the president.”
“And how come somebody so versed in such austere doctrines and so highly initiated into theosophy happens to be bingeing in a bordello? Would you be so good as to scientifically illuminate and justify such apparently aberrant behavior?”
“Mr. President, sir, allow me to call upon my medium. Señorita, overcome your natural modesty and tell these gentlemen whether concupiscence mediated at all. President, sir, a scientific interest in bio-magnetic experiments, without ulterior motives, regulates my activities. I visited the bordello because people had told me about this young lady. I wanted to meet her and, if at all possible, lift her life to another, more perfect circle. Señorita, did I not offer you redemption?”
“Pay my debts, you mean? No, it was Master V who rattled on about that all night.”
“Señorita Guadalupe, do you not remember how with fatherly concern I proposed that you come with me on my pilgrim’s path?”
“Go on stage, you mean!”
“And demonstrate to incredulous audiences the occult, demiurgic powers that slumber within our human clay. You rejected my proposal, and I was forced to withdraw and lament my failures. President, sir, I think by now I must have allayed any suspicion regarding the purity of my actions. In Europe the most renowned men of science are engaged in research on these phenomena. Mesmerism is widely studied in German universities.”
“You will now repeat, step by step, the experiments you engaged in last night with that girl.”
“President, sir, I am completely at your disposal. Yes, I can offer you a select program of similar experiments.”
“As is due to her sex, the girl will be the first to be questioned. Master Veguillas has claimed that at some stage a magnetic flow from the aforesaid allowed her to read his thoughts.”
The girl glanced at the paste jewels on her fingers and said, “If I had powers like that, I wouldn’t be up to my neck in debt to Baby Roach. Master V, you know that.”
“Lupita, you bio-magnetic viper.”
“What are you talking about? After I gave you all that ammoniac!”
“Lupita, confess you were in a trance last night. You read my thoughts while that fool Domiciano was making the rounds on the dance floor. Then you tipped him off with a glance.”
“Master V, both of you were plastered! I just wanted you out of my room.”
“Lupita, you guessed what I was thinking. Lupita, you know how to commerce with the Spirits. Don’t deny that Dr. Polish put you to sleep and you served him as a medium.”
“Yes, indeed, this young lady is a most remarkable case of magnetic lucidity. So that our distinguished audience can better appreciate these phenomena, she will now take a seat in the limelight. Señorita Medium, if you will allow me.”
He took her hand and ceremonially led her to the center of the room. The girl tiptoed, eyes down, innocent as can be, the keyboard of her nails hovering above Dr. Polish’s white gloves.
“Chop-chop!”
IV
The Indian mummy’s sarcastic grimace was evergreen from old age. Dr. Polish plucked his magic wand, forged from seven metals, out of his dinner jacket and touched Lupita’s eyelids. He concluded with the most courteous of bows and a wave of his wand. The strumpet sighed and swooned. Kneeling in his corner, Veguillas waited on the miracle: the light of his innocence was about to shine. The Lupita show bewitched him there and then with the hallowed magic of serial fiction: he hoped in his heart of hearts that those mysteries would return him to Tyrant’s grace and favor. He shuddered. The green grimace champed on the rusty silence. “Chop-chop! You will now repeat, step by step, as I believe I already requested, the experiments you performed on this young lady last night.”
“President, sir, telepathy can assume three temporal forms: past, present, and future. This triple phenomenon is rarely present in a single medium. It is usually dispe
rsed. Señorita Guadalupe’s telepathic powers do not extend beyond the circle of the present. Past and future are sealed to her. Telepathically speaking, the nearest yesterday is the remotest past for her. This young lady is absolutely unequipped to repeat a previous experiment. Absolutely! This young lady is somewhat underdeveloped as a medium. An uncut diamond! I await the president’s orders so I may offer him a select program of similar experiments, insofar as it is within my powers.”
A sour grimace wrinkled Tyrant’s face. “Doctor, don’t seek to dodge your obligations to me. It is my wish that she repeat every one of last night’s experiments in the cathouse.”
“President, sir, I can only perform similar experiments. The medium cannot look back into time. In that sense, she really is quite limited as a clairvoyant. She can read thoughts, witness an event at a distance, or even guess a number the president might care to think of.”
“A bitch as clever as all that, and she’s a pro in a whorehouse?”
“The great neurosis of hysteria as described within modern science could afford a most likely explanation. Señorita, the president will deign to think of a number. You will take his hand and say the number out loud so we can all hear it. Loud and very clear, Señorita Medium.”
“Seven!”
“Seven as in seven daggers! Chop-chop!”
Nachito moaned from exile. “That was the spell you used to read my thoughts yesterday!”
Tyrant Banderas swiveled around, ever the sarcastic sourpuss. “Why do you visit evil dives, mon vieux?”
“Boss, even the Psalms say man is frail.”
Tyrant resumed his saturnine pose and stared suspiciously at the hussy. She was swooning in her chair, hairpins loose and topknot slithering like a black cobra.
Tyrant Banderas stepped into the circle of cronies. “As kids we were all treated to similar miracles for a few pennies: so many diplomas and sashes and so little to show for them. I’m beginning to see just what a phony you are, and I’m going to have those flowing Germanic locks chopped off. You have no right to them.”
“President, sir, I am a foreigner and an exile who has taken shelter under the flag of this noble republic. I teach the truth to the people, steering them away from materialist positivism. My little experiments give the proletariat a tangible notion of the supernatural world. The people are ennobled when they can look down into the abyss of mystery!”
“Don Cruz! As he’s got such a silver tongue, only shave half his head.”
Tyrant’s grimace rippled biliously. His tame sweeney’s black bunched fingers handed him a hairy hodgepodge. “It’s a wig, boss!”
V
The whore sighed as she came around, reemerging with a spasm on the frontiers of this world while the Indian mummy, from the pinnacle of his steps, aimed his telescope at the city. The wildly winking illuminations harbored a tumult of explosions, fire and bells and urgent blasts from military bugles. “Chop-chop! We’ve got action! Don Cruz, lay out my military apparel.”
The watchman in the tower had unclipped his bayonet from the moon and was shooting at the shadows full of alarums. The cathedral bells chimed midnight, and Tyrant issued orders from the top of his steps: “Major del Valle, take some men with you and go see if the garrison began the shoot-out.”
At the door, Major del Valle ran into the grinning valet bearing the general’s uniform and saber, and the saber clattered noisily to the floor. Tyrant bellowed and stamped, beside himself with rage. The steps shook and the telescope tottered. “Idiots, don’t touch it! What an omen! How do you read that, Dr. Magic?”
In a flash of inspiration, the mountebank took in the room, the fear spreading on every face, and Tyrant’s rampant superstition. He responded, “Under these circumstances, my oracle is dumb.”
“And couldn’t this honest young girl, who on other occasions has displayed clear vision, tell us what’s going in Santa Fe? Doctor, sir, please put Señorita Medium to sleep and interrogate her. I’m off to put on my uniform. And nobody touch my saber!”
A loud clash of weapons echoed down the moonlit cloisters. Troops arrived to reinforce the palace guard. The dark-skinned girl sighed in response to the bald mountebank’s magnetic powers. Her eyes rolled up to contemplate the mystery. “Señorita Medium, what do you see?”
VI
The cathedral clock falls silent. The twelve chimes still echo in the air, terrifying the combs of the weathercocks. Cats on the roofs query one another and bodies in nightgowns peer down from attics. The Portuguese Mothers bell clangs crazily. A string of bulls and oxen butt around the arcade in full flight, cowbells tinkling. Gunpowder blasts. Military bugles blast. A gaggle of bald, nightshirted nuns rushes at the profaned convent door, screaming devoutly. In remote reaches, crossfire crackles. Restless horses, turmoil, panic, fear. Conflicting tides of humanity. Escaped, bright-eyed tigers lick the cornerstones of houses. Two fleeting shadows drag a black piano across a moonlit terrace. Behind them, smoke billows out of the open trapdoor between tongues of fire. The two shadows, clothes alight, run, holding hands, across the parapet of the terrace and hurl themselves into the street, still holding hands. And the moon, wearing a patch of dark cloud, plays blindman’s buff with the stars above the revolutionized Santa Fe de Tierra Firme.
VII
Lupita la Romántica sighs in a magnetic trance, the whites of her eyes fixed on mystery.
Epilogue
I
“Chop-chop!”
Tyrant keeps a wary, suspicious eye on the defenses, orders sandbanks and parapets be built, visits bulwarks and trenches, issuing orders: “Chop-chop!”
Enraged by his fainthearted warriors, he swears that cowards and traitors will be harshly punished. How galling to fail in his first goal: to descend on the revolutionized city and teach it an exemplary, bloody lesson. Surrounded by his aides, taciturn and contemptuous, he withdraws from the front after haranguing his squads of veterans, the advance units on the Field of the Frog: “Chop-chop.”
II
Before dawn he realized that he was under siege from revolutionary partisans and insurgent battalions from the Santa Fe garrison. He climbed the belfry without bells and studied the positions and tactics of his attackers. The enemy was scattered along twilight paths and looked to be in good military shape. The besiegers were still reinforcing the approaches with trenches and parallels. Informed of the danger, Tyrant Banderas grimaced more greenly yet. Two devious women were digging with their hands around the Indian buried up to his waist in the monastery’s fallow ground. “Those old bitches have already given me up for lost! What are you doing, idiot sentinel?”
The sentinel slowly took aim. “It’s difficult to get a clear target!”
“Put a bullet in the bastard and in them, too, for good measure!”
The sentinel fired, and his shots could be heard up and down the front line. The two women fell in a heap on either side of the Indian, amid the gun smoke, in the terrifying silence that then descended. And the Indian, with a hole in his head, waved his arms in a farewell to the stars. Generalito: “Chop-chop!”
III
At the first onslaught the soldiers in one frontline unit deserted. Tyrant saw it all from his tower. “Bugger! I knew you’d run for it in my time of need! Don Cruz, you’ll make a prophet yet!”
He made that remark because his renowned sweeney often whispered tales of betrayal in his ear. Meanwhile, the two sides continued to exchange fire. The insurgents were seeking to tighten their grip on the besieged fortress, cutting off any hope of escape. They lined up cannons, but, before they opened fire, Colonel de la Gándara rode out in front of the lines on a handsome steed. He risked his life by crossing the battlefield and shouted an invitation to surrender. Tyrant in his tower: “Bastard buccaneer, I should have shot you in the back!”
He stuck his head out over the soldiers lined up at the foot of the tower and ordered them to fire. They obeyed but shot so high that it was clear they weren’t shooting to kill. “You’re shoot
ing at the skies, you sons of bitches!”
At that very moment, riding out on a foray that was much too sweeping to be useful in defense, Major del Valle joined the enemy camp. Tyrant shouted, “I have nursed vipers!”
And he gave orders for his troops to withdraw to the monastery and left the tower. He asked his barber for a list of suspects and ordered that fifteen be hanged, attempting to curb desertions with that exemplary act. “Does God think a few bums are going to make me give up the ghost! He doesn’t know me!”
He was planning to resist for the rest of the day and then to escape under cover of darkness.
IV
In the middle of the morning, the rebels opened fire with their cannons. Soon the way was open for them to attack the bastion. Tyrant Banderas tried to fill the breach, but his troops were deserting and he was forced to retreat to the barracks. Then, assuming his time had come, seeing that his only ally left was his barber, he unbuckled his pistol belt, salivating poisonous, green spittle, and handed it to him. “How sweet it would be if the master chorister were to join us on our journey to Hell!”
Prowling as ever like a snoopy rat, he went to the chambers where he’d shut up his daughter. As he opened the door he could hear demented cries. “Dear daughter, you never married and never became the noble lady that this sinner meant you to be—this sinner who now must take away the life he gave you twenty years ago! It’s hardly right you should stay in this world and be enjoyed by your father’s enemies, and that they should add insult to injury by calling you the daughter of that Banderas bastard!”
When they heard him, the maids looking after the mad girl pleaded with him desperately to spare her. Tyrant Banderas slapped them in the face. “Bitches! If I let you live, it’s because it will be your task to shroud her like an angel.”
He took a dagger from his chest, gripped his daughter by the hair to hold her still, and shut his eyes. According to a rebel report, he stabbed her fifteen times.
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