No Job for a Lady

by Carol McCleary

  I shake my head no as I quickly swallow my food. “Nineteen.”

  Lily looks up from the rim of her champagne glass. “Nellie, my dear, you definitely are a true woman, but I’ll let you in on a secret. You can’t fool a woman about age, especially me. I’m a professional. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d say you are around twenty-one or twenty-two.”

  I just smile.

  “Not to worry. It’s our secret. I’ll let you in on a secret of mine. Frederic thinks he’s older than I am.”

  After we stop laughing, I ask her, “Why did Mr. Gebhard want you to spend time with me?”

  “Frederic has never had the best of relationships with reporters, and your being a reporter has him worried. He fears you will reveal to your paper that he is buying prize stallions descended from Cortés’s warhorses, while claiming they are ordinary Thoroughbreds to avoid customs duties. That, my dear, is how the rich get even richer, cheating on taxes and paying people to help them do it.”

  My mother would say that greed is universal.

  “Also, I would not appreciate the negative publicity generated by such a story. So … may I assume that this is our secret and you will not reveal Frederic’s scheme to your paper?”

  I think for a moment. Not because I plan to, but only that I find it interesting how the rich are always trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes all the time.

  “You assume correctly. I promise not to utter a word about seeing you or Mr. Gebhard. I came here to report about Mexico and its people; that is all.”

  “Thank you, Nellie, I really appreciate this.”

  This gives me a window of opportunity, and I decide to take it. I’ve been dying to know why Mr. Gebhard’s coach was at the museum and if she was there and why.

  “Lily, this morning I went to the museum, and as I was leaving, I saw that really fancy coach the Mexican president has loaned you and Frederic.” I pause for a moment because I know I need to word this right, in order to get her to tell me. “I didn’t see you, and I was wondering whether Mr. Gebhard was there because he shares my interest in Aztec artifacts.”

  “I wasn’t there and have no interest in the objects. And you are correct. It was Frederic. He has the finest collection of Aztec artifacts in the world and is thinking of donating some pieces to the museum.”

  Her neutral tone gives me the feeling that Lily isn’t telling me the truth—or at least not the whole truth. But I’m curious as to whether Mr. Gebhard is the “trade secret” rich man who is supporting Traven’s work.

  “Then Mr. Gebhard must know Traven. He’s an archaeologist I met on the train.”

  “Of course, darling! Don’t you find it odd that he goes only by Traven? The man’s so secretive. I’ve done my best to find out why, but he’s mum. Tell me, what are your plans for tomorrow?”

  “I’m thinking of going to that ancient city called Teo—something.” I wasn’t really, but I threw it out to see what reaction I would get.

  “We’re going there and I was going to suggest you come along with us. We’ll see Traven when we get to Teo. Why don’t you join us?” Not waiting for a reply, she continues, all excited. “I insist. El presidente is loaning us a stagecoach. It’s much too dusty for an open carriage. You will find it more comfortable than riding in a hired coach with those hard seats they all have. And the road to the place is infested with bandidos. You’ll be much safer with us. We’ll have an armed escort.”

  I’m amazed. Everyone and everything appears to be pointing me to Teo. I have to wonder whether La Bruja is using some of her occult powers to lure me there.

  “It’s settled,” Lily says, without waiting for an answer. “You’re going with us.”

  “Señoritas,” our boatman says, “the Floating Gardens. There.” He points ahead. “La Viga is about six to twelve feet deep and thirty feet wide. The trees you see lining it on both sides are willow and silver maple trees. It starts from Lake Tezcuco, about eight miles from the city, forms a ring, and goes back to the same source. Look.” He points to an area in front of us. “There are the Floating Gardens. They are just above the Custom House.”

  Lily gestures to where he is pointing. “Isn’t that solid land?”

  “No, señorita. With your permission, we will take a canoe and go in among them.”

  We climb from our boat into an even smaller dugout. Wading in the water, he pushes us under a low stone bridge, at the risk of being beheaded. We salute the owners of a little castle built of cane and roofed with straw and go on, in high anticipation, to see the gardens.

  I feel like we are entering into some secret fairyland, for in blocks of fifteen by thirty feet the gardens are nestled, surrounded by water and rising two feet above its surface. The ground is fertile and rich and anything will grow in them. Some have fruit trees, others vegetables, and some look like one bed of flowers suspended in the water.

  “This is absolutely breathtaking.” I am in awe. Never have I seen anything so pleasing to the eye. All around in the little canals through which we drift are hundreds of elegant water lilies.

  “May we take some?” I ask our boatman.

  “Sí.”

  Eagerly, we gather them with a desire that never seems to be satisfied, and even when our boat is full, we still clutch ones that are “the prettiest yet.”

  On the solid part of some of the gardens, cattle and horses, sheep and pigs are tied to trees to save them from falling into the water.

  The quaint little homes are some of the prettiest features; they are surrounded by trees and flowers, and many of them have exquisite little summer houses, built also of cane, which command a view of the gardens. The hedges, or walls, are all of roses, which are in bloom, sending forth a perfume that is entrancing. The gardeners water their plots every day, the boatman tells us.

  They fasten a dipper on the end of a long pole and with it they dip up water and fling it over their vegetables in quite a deft and speedy manner.

  “Do the gardens really float?” Lily asks me.

  “No, they don’t anymore. They are stationary, according to my librarian, Mrs. Percy.”

  “Nellie, please do not spoil the pretty belief about them by telling me the truth.”

  “The gardens did originally float. Mrs. Percy says they were built of weeds, cane, and roots and were banked up with earth. The Aztecs had not only their gardens on them but also their little homes, and they poled them around whenever they wished. They’re now rooted, but that doesn’t make them any less marvelous.”

  We bask in the sun as our boatman pulls us through the gardens.

  Scattered around in front of some of the homes are wooden crosses with cotton cloths tied to them, and I ask our boatman what they’re for.

  “They are believed to prevent storms from visiting the land. The theory is that after the wind has played with the cotton cloth, it is unable to blow strong enough to destroy anything.”

  Along each side of La Viga are beautiful paseos, nature pathways and horse trails bordered by large shade trees. The boatman tells us they form some of most beautiful carriage drives in the city.

  “This is one of the things I wanted to see,” Lily says. “Look at all of the ladies and gentlemen on horseback.” She looks back at me. “Did you know this is also one of the favorite places for racing? Frederic hopes to come back here before we leave Mexico. Are you fond of fine riding?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I have won some ribbons.”

  “That’s fabulous! Once I tell Frederic about your love for horses, he will forget that you are a reporter.”

  “Lily, look!” I point to two young fellows who are racing their horses bareback. What a fabulous exhibition.

  My happy mood is suddenly quenched when I spot the tanned hide of a jaguar hanging up to dry on the wall of a cottage. The reality of what I experienced yesterday comes back and smacks me in the face. I turn my head so that Lily can’t see my features turn sour.

  THE FLOATING GARDENS

 
; (Six Months in Mexico)

  44

  When I arrive back at my room, there is a note from Gertrude and a surprise: Roger is gone. Vanished without a trace.

  Gertrude’s note is on the washbasin, but no message from Roger. Nothing. Nada. Not even a scribble letting me know that he has vacated and wishing me luck on my reporting, or inquiring how I feel after being attacked by nightmarish creatures on a public street two days ago.

  He has simply taken his luggage and slipped away like a thief in the night. The only evidence in the room that he ever existed is a lingering scent of his cherry-scented pipe tobacco, and my annoyance at the affront. The one thing I hate more than being confronted is being ignored.

  I sit down on the cot—now my bed—and pout. The fact he has made a quick and silent departure irks me no end. How dare he? He doesn’t know it, but he filled the void of my absent mother, despite being my unwanted traveling companion and verbal adversary for days. I was thoroughly annoyed that he forced himself upon me in the train and at the hotel, but he was company. And he has no right to sneak out without a word, depriving me of another opportunity to kick him out. Especially after all we have been through together.

  Outrageous and completely thoughtless—typical of Roger.

  A dark thought occurs to me: He’s gotten a superior room. A suite all to himself, leaving me with this rat- and roach-infected hovel. It would be just like him.

  I stare around the room. It’s empty. I can’t boast to him about my day with the Jersey Lily and the invitation to go to Teo.

  No question about it, Roger is a scoundrel, leaving me like this.

  It’s tough being an independent woman and keeping up a brave front without a man when bloodthirsty things from centuries past have raised their ugly heads, so it was nice to have his company at a time when things that go bump in the night were bedeviling me.

  I hate to admit it, but he really wasn’t that bad in many ways. For one, he has a sharp mind—a character trait that is on the top of my list of what I would like in a husband. I liked that he often won the battle of wits between us. It showed me he isn’t a wimp.

  Then there was that kiss on the train. It was an accident—no more than a brush of lips. And even though there was no passion in it, and I may have been stirred up a bit by it, it was meaningless.

  So why am I acting this way?

  Because it excited me at the time. My face got flushed, my heart beat rapidly—a natural and harmless reaction. Besides, he’s rather attractive in body. But I certainly wouldn’t have shared a train compartment or hotel room with him had he been someone I felt I could not trust or was repulsed by.

  Angry for my feelings about him and realizing that he doesn’t share them, I pace back and forth from the door to the cot, hoping that I will meet him one more time so that I can give him a piece of my mind.

  “Men! They are nothing but trouble.”

  As I crunch up my hands in frustration, I feel Gertrude’s message get all squished up. In my ranting about Roger, I had forgotten all about it. I quickly open it and smooth it out to read.

  Nellie dearest: So sorry to have ignored you. Been busy with Don Antonio’s clan. We are going tomorrow to Teotihuacán with Langtry and Gebhard. Would be lovely if you can join us. Do try.

  Your friend,

  Gertrude

  Teo. Again.

  Everybody wants me in Teo.

  Is there some sort of cosmic force drawing me to Teo? I’ve gotten an invitation from everybody but La Bruja. But then again … maybe she’s the one stimulating all the invitations.

  She is a witch, after all.

  Maybe I could get her to use her powers on Roger.

  45

  Ah … the life of the rich and famous. I am so grateful to be floating on a cloud again, this time over the bumpy road to Teotihuacán. Left to my own limited resources, I would have been bouncing on hard seats in a grimy public coach.

  El presidente’s stagecoach is a Concord, a vehicle so comfortable that Mark Twain described it as a “cradle on wheels.” Rigged in a four-in-hand fashion so a single driver can handle the four big horses pulling it, the Concord also has a suspension system that consists of leather straps underneath, which cause the body of the coach to swing back and forth, far preferable to the jarring, up-and-down bouncing motion of the springs used in less superior rigs.

  My description of this particular coach as a “cloud” is more accurate than Mr. Twain’s baby cradle, because the interior seats are nothing like the hard leather ones in the public conveyances we have back home, Concord or not.

  As with the town carriage the president provided for Lily and her lover for city use, this stagecoach is heavily endowed with teak from the tropical jungles of the Far East and precious metals from the mines of Mexico.

  A loaded wagon drawn by two mules trails behind us. It’s filled with travel trunks, many times bigger than my small carpetbag, and two large wardrobe trunks, which not only have room for hanging clothes but have drawers, as well. I’m sure my entire wardrobe back home would fit into just one of these mammoth wardrobes.

  As I observed at the rail station the first time I saw Lily, a world-famous actress doesn’t travel light.

  The trek to Teo, which is about thirty miles from Mexico City, is accessed on what we’d call back home a beaten path, rather than a road.

  The coach holds six comfortably, and that is its manifest today. The seating is vis-à-vis, three of us on each side.

  Across from me is Don Antonio, the Jersey Lily is to his right, and man-about-town Frederick Gebhard sits next to her.

  I have the window seat, with Gertrude to my left. Mr. Thompson, the farm equipment salesman I met on the train, is beside her. He gives Gertrude and me a smile that makes me rethink my desire to make the trip to Teo. He started antagonizing me the moment I saw him this morning.

  “So nice to see you again, Miss Bly,” Thompson said when had we gathered in front of the hotel to board. “Heard you’ve been getting too much sun and seeing more bloodsucking were-jaguars!”

  He gave a good laugh and I gave him a smile, while I wished I could have kicked him in a most delicate area. I haven’t forgiven him for insinuating that what I observed on the train was the result of an overactive imagination and my delicate female constitution. His little joke at the hotel was rubbing salt in a still-raw wound.

  I would have thought that a farm equipment salesman would be an odd bedfellow for a high government official to have invited to share the coach with the famous actress and her paramour, but it is soon apparent that the “farms” that Thompson sells to are those vast holdings called haciendas and that his work brings him into contact with the owners and their horseflesh because he sells tack. And as I catch bits and pieces of their conversation, it is obvious he was invited along to give Gebhard some tips on where to find the best horses.

  Another surprise is the more familiar faces from the train—the cowboys and their foreman, Mr. Maddock. They are the security escort Lily alluded to. I thought she meant Mexican troops.

  “I asked the ranch hands to come along to Teotihuacán,” Don Antonio says after we are under way. “The hacienda with the cattle they’ll be herding back to Texas is in the area, so I asked if they would accompany us. They will come in handy if bandidos decide to pay us a visit.”

  The mounted cowboys form a double column far enough to the rear to keep from eating too much dust. They also have a heavy-duty wagon drawn by big workhorses, but it’s not even half full with their gear.

  “Rightly considerate of you, Don Antonio,” Mr. Thompson says. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to these pretty ladies.” He pulls out a cigar to light but puts it away when Lily gives a smile and a “Please.”

  Just before we got moving, Sundance came trotting by my window and gave me a big cocky grin and a wave of his hat.

  “I see you have an admirer,” Lily teases me.

  “I understand you also have a westerner for an admirer,” I r
eply.

  I am referring to the notorious Judge Roy Bean, the Texas “hanging judge,” who hands out hard justice from his saloon in a small Texas town, coincidentally called Langtry, near the Pecos River. Bean is known to be an ardent admirer—a worshiper—of Lily, so much so that he named his roughneck saloon the Jersey Lily.

  “So I’ve heard.” Lily gives her hearty yet so delicate laugh—I wonder how she does that. “I know nothing about the man except that he is said to administer justice in an ironfisted manner. I like the American West and have traveled from coast to coast on the rails. Someday, I will stop at Judge Bean’s saloon and pay him a visit.”7

  While the two men discuss the bloodline of Mexico’s horses, including the greatest prize of all, the bloodline of the horses of the conquest—descendants of the thirteen horses Cortés brought over from Spain—I mention to Lily and Gertrude that Mrs. Percy, my librarian, believes there are many similarities between the Aztec and Egyptian cultures.

  “Unfortunately, books about Mexico are not on the purchase list for our little library,” I add, alibiing for my own ignorance.

  “Well, in truth, there aren’t that many books that deal in depth with the Mexican civilizations anywhere. They’re hard to find,” Gertrude says. “And your librarian was right. Most Americans and Europeans fail to recognize the incredible accomplishments of Latin American and Asian cultures because their education is directed toward Europe and the Mediterranean.

  “If they thought about it, they would realize that the Mesoamerican civilizations, like the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan, had accomplishments as great in science, medicine, language, and art as those of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, and Romans.”

  “You are quite the history scholar,” Lily says. “And I must say it’s fascinating. Do tell us more.”