by James Blake
Úrsula’s parents would return to Patria Chica in February of the following year to dote upon their newborn grandchild, Hector Louis Little Bos. Then visit again in January to cuddle their first granddaughter, Luisa Raquel. She was named in honor of Luis Charón and John Louis’s mother, Raquel. Four months later, however, Don Hector and Doña Martina would be back yet again, this time to attend the baby girl’s funeral after her death by a swift-acting sickness of the lungs.
In the summer of 1899 Luis Charón’s children, motherless for four years, became orphans when his company engaged with bandits a few miles outside of Coyoacán and a bullet shattered his jaw and ricocheted up through his brain. His body was conveyed to Patria Chica for burial and the funeral was attended by several army generals and the highest officers of the Guardia Rural. Standing at the side of a stone-faced Edward Little, Porfirio Díaz wept as Louis Welch Little delivered the eulogy.
Louis and Gloria endured in their separate ways the sorrow of losing their only child. Gloria devoted herself to helping the maids with the grandchildren. Louis devoted himself to drink. He could afford the indulgence, having relinquished the management of the hacienda—with Edward Little’s sanction—to his half-brothers, Zack Jack, now thirty years old and well-trained to the duties of a manager, and John Louis, a most capable segundo.
Edward Little would not remonstrate his eldest son about his drinking. Louis was a grown man and responsible for himself. But Edward did not know that Louis had also reverted to his former penchant for occasional dalliances. Louis told himself he was simply seeking solace against the pain of his son’s death. A kind of solace unattainable from his wife, who could not help it that her body was almost fifty years old and had lost all allure. They had years ago taken to separate bedrooms on the mutually accepted pretext that his snoring interfered with her sleep. In truth he no longer wanted even to lie beside her and she knew it—and she preferred to sleep alone than in the heartbreaking company of a husband who could no longer bear to touch her.
A fact Louis chose to ignore was that he had resumed his infidelities prior to the death of his son. Moreover, he believed himself a master of discretion, and for good measure always threatened the woman of the moment with severe punishment if she should say a word of their assignation to anyone. But although he had been an able patrón in his father’s stead, Louis had never really understood the society of a hacienda and was ignorant of the impossibility of keeping such secrets within it.
PLEASURES
OF A LATER HOUR
By the fourth year of Amos and Sófi’s acquaintance, it had become their custom, as soon as María Palomina retired for the night and left them alone in the parlor, to move from their separate chairs and sit together on the sofa and hold hands as they talked to a late hour before at last saying goodnight. One night he dared to kiss the inside of her wrist, an act that caught her by surprise and seemed so sensual—so long had it been since she’d had any intimate touch from a man—that her breath caught. He said he felt her pulse quicken in the vein under his lips. Don’t, she said. You mustn’t. We mustn’t. But made no effort to withdraw her hand. It was another year more before he ventured to kiss her on the lips, to which she reacted by yielding to the kiss for a moment before drawing back and saying, This is not right. But did not stop him from kissing her again. And then one night kissed him in return. Another year passed before the first touch of their tongues left her breathless and wondering how she had managed for so long to do without such delectation. In time they were kissing as if seeking to remove each other’s mouth, and by the end of still another year she had ceased pushing his hand away and left it to its playful explorations of her clothed breast. Not until the ninth year of this relationship of steamy restraint did he finally summon the courage to confess he had loved her since the day they met. She had of course known that for many years but she said he must not say such things. You have a wife, she said, you have children. It is terrible enough, what we do, without saying such a thing. He said he was only saying what was true and she should not prohibit him from saying it to her in their private moments. She hushed him with a kiss.
The following year he said he would get a divorce. His daughters had grown up as strangers to him, and the last of them had got married within the past year without inviting him to the wedding. It had been almost five years since he had seen his wife, Teresa, and they had not written to each other in the past two. His father-in-law, Don Victor, now white haired and in tenuous health, had years ago come to accept that his daughter’s marriage had been drained of all affection and there was no hope at all of a grandson. But Sófi would not hear of a divorce. You cannot do that, she said. No matter your daughters are grown, no matter how small your feeling for Teresa, they are still your family and you cannot do that to them. She had, however, confided to him her terrible history with marriage and children and had even told him of her fear of being cursed, and he was sure that her opposition to his divorce was more a matter of that lingering superstition than of concern for the sentiments of Teresa and his daughters.
And, all the while, their amorous diversions grew bolder. She had at last granted his hand entry into her dress top, and his fingers at her nipple made her bite her lips to keep from crying out and waking her mother. Soon her own hand was on him through his trousers and she had to shush him too. For many months thereafter she would not allow him any greater liberties, and then one night she relented and let him delve under the hem of her dress as she loosed his buttons and took him in hand. They bit each other’s clothes to stifle their moans—and then had to muffle the gasping laughter of their pleasure.
So did it go for yet another year. Until the winter day a pair of attorneys presented themselves in Amos’s office to inform him that Teresa Serafina Nevada de Bentley wished to be divorced. She was offering a substantial settlement in hope that the matter could be concluded with dispatch.
Amos conjured an aspect of Deep Concern even as his spirit soared and wheeled. A double windfall—his freedom and a trove of cash! And however much she was offering, when he was done with these fellows it would be a fortune for sure.
He propped his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers in an attitude suggestive of prayer. She’s fallen in love with someone else, has she? His voice quivered with injury. His eyes shone with heartbreak. She wants my daughters to call another man Father, is that it?
The lawyers smiled with no hint of humor. They knew the man’s daughters were married and had children of their own, and according to Doña Teresa they had not even mentioned their father in years. One of the men said the amount of the offer had been determined by Doña Teresa herself, and despite their advice that it was too high she would not reduce it. However, the doña wanted it understood that it was the only offer she would make and she would tender it but this once. Either Mr Bentley agreed to it here and now or she would employ every legal means necessary to effect the divorce without his cooperation and at the same time see to it that he received not one cent.
I’m not sure she can do that, Amos said. Either legally or, ah, morally, I suppose is the word.
The lawyers smiled their mirthless smiles and began replacing papers in their cases.
Well now, gentlemen, Amos said, let’s not be hasty.
He signed every paper they put in front of him. The settlement was not insignificant. Just before they left they handed him a letter from Don Victor. It expressed the don’s deep regrets at his daughter’s decision, assured Amos of his position with the Nevada Mining Company, and awarded him a raise in pay.
He went straight to Sófi and told her what happened and asked her to marry him. She said no. He was stunned and asked why not. She said he knew why not and that he could think her as foolish as he liked but she would not be persuaded otherwise and if he should persist in so trying to persuade her she would no longer see him at all. On the other hand, she said, we are now truly free to disport ourselves, are we not?
Amos accepted her terms�
��and disport themselves they did. They established the routine of her visit to his house every Wednesday afternoon for several hours. “El miércoles magnífico,” they called the weekly tryst. The residents of his neighborhood were so private in their ways he never saw them but for glimpses as they came or went in their coaches. There was no need for Sófi to worry about what they might think of her visits, on each of which they would get naked and indulge in every sort of pleasure they could devise short of copulation, as she would take no risk at all of pregnancy. She was still a lean beauty at forty-five, and he apologized for his own lack of physical attraction, for his gray hair and the size of his belly. She said not to be silly, that she liked having so much of him to hug. Besides, she said with a wicked smile, the size of this is just right.
And María Palomina? She had for years been aware of the intimacies they thought she was unaware of, and she had no doubt about what took place on Sófi’s visits to Amos’s house. But she believed that if anyone deserved a little happiness it was Sofía Reina, and if all the happiness her daughter needed was no more than the sort to be had in nakedness with a man who loved her, well, what of it? It wasn’t as if she were some blushing maiden, for God’s sake. She was four times widowed. Which fact reminded María Palomina that she herself was now on the very cusp of seventy. And how in the world, she would have liked to know, had that happened?
UNDER THE PORFIRIATO
Under the rule of Porfirio Díaz, Mexico boomed. He assembled a singular group of technical and financial advisors, highly educated and worldly men who approached their national objectives with the rational and clinical dispassion of scientists, which was in fact the collective name they were known by—Los Científicos. Even as Díaz established the civil order necessary to the protection of capital interests, he brought economic order to the country. He made good on Mexico’s foreign debt. He reformed the banking system. Most important to Mexican progress, he attracted a steady influx of foreign investment through every sort of incentive—tax breaks, mineral rights, long-term leases, railroad and telegraph rights-of-way, autonomy of operation, whatever was wanted. American and European entrepreneurs mined copper and silver and gold, operated plantations of henequen and tobacco and coffee, raised cattle on the lushest and largest pasturelands, and—as Amos Bentley had predicted to John Roger Wolfe only a few years before—expanded the railroad like a great steel web to every profitable pocket of the country. And when the old century would give way to the new, there would arrive the first seekers after petroleum, a commodity whose worth was heralded by the horseless carriages already puttering over Yankee roadways.
Besides the raw riches of the Mexican earth, the greatest boon to foreign investors was the inexhaustible supply of peón labor so cheap it was almost costless. And on those inevitable occasions when some insubordinate bunch should go on strike or otherwise impede the orderly operation of a business, well, there were the army and the Rurales—the Rules, as the gringo bosses called that vaunted organization of law enforcement—to set things aright.
This singular era, known as the Porfiriato, would be the most industrially ascendant and most economically prosperous in Mexican history—and there would be much international trumpeting of Porfirio Díaz for his intrepid transformation of a lawless wilderness into one of the most progressive of nations.
At the same time, barely audible through all the fanfare, came the rumblings of a swelling fury in the hopeless impoverished. The distant thunder of a forming storm.
TAMPICO
The town stood some six miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, on the north bank of the Río Pánuco, in the southeast corner of Tamaulipas state. Smaller than Veracruz City, Tampico was even hotter for being those few miles removed from the coast. When they arrived in that late July the air was like steam. The country about was swampland, all marsh and hammocks and shallow lakes. The swamps sometimes pulsed in the night with strange glowings said to be restless spirits of the dead. Because the city had once been a haven for pirates, some of the locals believed the lights were the ghosts of those damned to remain forever at the site of their buried booty. There were countless stories of men who had gone into the night swamp in search of treasure marked by the eerie lights and had not come out again. The first time the twins found themselves on the edge of the swamp at night rise and caught a glimpse of such a light, one of them wondered aloud if Roger Blake Wolfe had ever been in Tampico, and the other said he would wager that he had. They stood a long while in the closing darkness, now losing sight of the spectral light and now seeing its glow again, fainter each time, as if, as it receded into the deeper shadows, it was daring them to follow.
They claimed to be Thomas and Timothy Clayton, American sons of Irish parents and fishermen by trade. Marina was María Sotí. They did not explain her relation to them and no one asked to know it. They rented a three-story house on Calle Aduana. A tall narrow structure overlooking the Plaza de Libertad and only a short walk from the river port, where they moored the Marina Dos. The neighborhood featured numerous balconies and galleries of lace ironwork such as the twins had seen in Veracruz and in pictures of New Orleans. Part of the house roof was peaked and part was flat and on the flat part there was a ramada and a table and chairs and it was a good place to eat supper and from which to observe the plaza and listen to its nightly music. On the hottest evenings they all three slept up there where the river breeze could reach them and on cloudless nights the stars looked close enough to touch. They liked hearing the trains at the loading docks, the ship whistles and bells in the night.
All her life Marina had lived within twenty miles of the Gulf of Mexico without ever having seen it until she went to the cove with the twins. And as happened to them before her, she loved the sea at first sight. She was sorry they did not spend more than one night there. The twins had dug up the strongbox containing their savings in coin and paper of high denomination and transferred the contents into several money belts they would wear to Tampico, joking that if they fell overboard they would sink like bricks. Marina had more reason than they to fear drowning, as she had not yet learned to swim, but she was never truly afraid of anything when she was with them. They hated having to abandon their books but did take with them an atlas of the world and one of North America. On the way to Tampico they began teaching her the rudiments of seamanship and by the time they entered the mouth of the Pánuco she was an able hand with sheets and tiller.
They could not know how much effort Mauricio Espinosa might put into searching for them, but their seekers would for sure be looking for twins, so James Sebastian had Marina crop his hair very short and he remained clean shaven and took to wearing plain-lensed, wire-rimmed eyeglasses in public. Blake Cortéz let his hair grow to his collar and cultivated a sparse goatee. The physical distinctions made Marina feel for the first time as if she were sharing a bed with two different men.
And? said James.
Woo-woo, she said.
They would not go unarmed in public, but the Colts were too cumbersome to carry in concealment, so they made inquiries and were directed to a small, signless shop next to the docks where they bought a pair of .36-caliber two-shot derringers. Easy to hide on their persons even when coatless.
They had plenty of money and passed their days at play and at familiarizing themselves with the city and its surrounding world. The Plaza de Armas was but a short walk from the Plaza de Libertad, and some nights they went dancing at one square and some nights at the other and some nights at both. They bought nautical charts and books of all sorts, including volumes of poetry and stories, and on some evenings took turns reading to each other. Marina at last grew tired of telling them to speak only Spanish in her presence and asked to be taught English. They said of course—though Blake affected disgruntlement and said, Well hell, no more telling secrets in front of you.
They bought a canoe and three paddles and began to explore the outlying swamps and on occasion took the pistols with them for target shooting. They tried t
o teach Marina to shoot, but she could not overcome her fear of guns and fired only a single round with a derringer, flinching at the report, and then would shoot no more.
They took coach trips to Mante, to Victoria, and when the railroad arrived from Monterrey they went for extended visits to that large and rowdy city. They kept the Marina Dos in ready trim and sometimes went cruising for weeks at a time, acquainting themselves with the shoreline for more than a hundred miles in either direction, putting in at seaside hamlets not to be found on any map. They entered rocky passes and navigated lagoon waterways where the only sign of people was the pluming smoke of steamships out on the gulf.
They took her to a dentist who was able to fit her with front teeth. When the job was finally done she could hardly believe the woman grinning from the mirror was herself. It was all she could do to keep her hand from her mouth, so ingrained was the action whenever she smiled, and she would be a long time undoing it.
Do I look . . . better? she asked.
Prettier than ever, James Sebastian said. Blake Cortéz said she’d always had pretty hair and pretty eyes and now had a pretty smile too.
It was not just sweet talk. She had in truth acquired a kind of prettiness in spite of the facial scars. Since joining herself to the twins, she had known danger and uncertainty and yet, paradoxically, had at the same time felt more secure than ever before. She loved them very much and felt very much loved by them, and in that strange way that happiness in love can affect a face, her scars seemed somehow less stark, the misalignment of her cheekbones almost beguiling.