Most unforgivable of all, the Mexican carries his courtesy and his gesturing into business. He seems to regard business as a regretable interruption of a pleasant life rather than the aim and purpose of existence. It is an unbelievable fact that he refuses to adopt the snappy business methods of the gringo, who sails the placid sea of Mexican commerce, with his crass assurance for a compass that is wavering and wrong.
Fancy a merchant class that would not abandon the afternoon siesta for a Midas monopoly of commerce! That considers it a rude breach of form to plunge at once into a business discussion on meeting. A traveling salesman calls on a Mexican merchant—say, a seller of shoes. They are friends. They embrace. They inquire about each other’s families and discuss weather conditions and the state of the latest revolution. The meeting ends with an invitation to dinner at the merchant’s casa and a game of chess afterward.
On the second day, the commercial traveller begs the favor of escorting the merchant and his family to the teatro. Another dinner perhaps and an evening at the club. Perhaps as early as the third day, the merchant casually mentions his need of shoes to sell and gives his order.
It all could be done in ten minutes. It is the same in the stores. The “one-price” emporium of the gringo would rob the Mexican of all the joy of buying. He must bicker and bargain and argue. Stores with a fixed price are rare and exist only when it is understood that the fixed price may be altered after a dramatic dialogue.
The gringo sighs. It is the same in the diplomacy of the country with other nations. All gestures and courtesies. It is not excusable, especially in view of the fact that in the end the straight-forward gringo statesman finds he has signed the dotted line on a document that seems to have been dictated by the ambassadors of the southern republic.
They teach their children these tricks, too. It is almost uncanny to watch the poise and graceful manners of a Mexican child of seven. Black eyes, that twinkle with the mischief of all children, turn grave as the youngster adapts himself to the formalities of any occasion. One wonders if Mexican children play perfectly at being grown-ups or whether Mexican grown-ups attempt to mask the fact that at heart they are children.
Mexicans a block apart conduct important conversations entirely by gestures. It is an eloquent and charming sign-language.
To be solicited by a Mexican runner for a brothel—a common enough occurrence on the contaminated border—is to enjoy at least the emotions inspired by acting that comes from the soul. It is a graphically gestured portrayal of delights—a thespian, incitative recital that must challenge the merchandise on sale.
Perhaps gringo eyes would be more tolerant if they knew of the one grand gesture of insult. Or rather of the many gestures by which this one devastating insult may be delivered. There are seven major methods, and many minor ones, of hurling the ultimate contempt, defiance and scorn. And only one gesturing come-back.
They are telling gestures. Their range runs from the use of three fingers of one hand to the use of both hands, the full length of both arms and the nose. The reply is an impassioned clinching of the fists and a jerk of the arms that indicates the violent snatching of a body toward the one who replies.
Once there was an assemblage of American troops and Mexican troops at their respective sides of the international bridge over the Rio Grande between El Paso and Juarez. A conference between war chiefs of the two republics. From the Mexican side the insult in its most popular form—employing the right hand, with forefinger outpointed, slapped into the left—was shot at the American troops. It was lost on the gringo army and all Mexico laughed at its stupidity.
At a dance two rivals passed each other on the ballroom floor with their partners. One of them sought to humiliate the other. He used the three-finger gesture with the hand resting on the back of his dancing partner. The other could not make the solitary answer. His arms were engaged. He danced bitterly and furiously on.
As he did, the players in the orchestra dropped their instruments. They leaped to their feet and, with impassioned arms, replied to the insulter. They had intercepted the gesture and took it as a comment on their playing.
There was a certain nobility to the employment of the gesture in the bull-ring on an historic occasion. The bull-fighting favorite had an off-day. The crowd, always quickly critical, hissed and shouted its disapproval. The matador suffered. He summoned all his skill for the climax, the slaying of the bull. Precisely, he plunged his sword for the vital spot. The bull refused to fall dead. It seemed to giggle as it turned and ran around the ring. With a shudder of its muscles, it sent the blade spinning into the air.
The displeasure of the crowd sounded like the retreating roar of an ocean wave. There came excited cries of disgust. Personal remarks about the bull-fighter. Hissing.
His suffering patience vanished. He dropped his red cloak. His right arms shot out full length. The left hand rested on the right shoulder. The widest gesture of all. With his arm extended and aimed, he ran around the circle of the bull-ring. He shook his extended arm to be sure that none escaped the wholesale insult.
The crowd raged helplessly. The broad slabs of color—vermillion, yellow, purple and green—broke into excited, furious patterns. The band stopped playing. Men tried to answer the matador. But what avail were solitary, feeble, isolated gestures against that tremendous inclusive gesture that swept them all with its insult?
Soldiers leaped to the rim of the ring and struggled with men who sought to cut the matador’s throat. The band was ordered to play again. “Carmen” was drowned in the roar of angry voices.
Not always are Mexican gestures a decadent decoration. It ended with the closing of the bull-ring. After that, the matador was always called by the name of the gesture he had made. It may not be translated in print.
Don Juanito, a genius among the liars of the border, once amused himself with the gesture and a group of gringo wool merchants. Heavy with their gold, they were in Mexico to look into the apologetic industry of raising sheep. They became acquainted with Don Juanito, who was lonesome for want of an audience for his lies. He told them of Mexico. Don Juanito once said that any one could tell the truth. It was lying that called for the artist.
Mexico, he told the wool merchants, would be difficult to deal with because of the great fraternal organization that ruled it. This was a surprise to the merchants? Ah, but every man, woman and child in Mexico was a sworn member of this fraternity. And knew its passwords and countersigns. It was more powerful than the Church. The Masons were amateurs in comparison.
Did the wool merchants doubt this story in any detail? Or, Dios forbid, fancy that Don Juanito was making up a tale? He would demonstrate. He himself knew the secrets of the country. Don Juanito inserted this truth regretfully. He had been made a member of this powerful fraternity. He knew the high-signs and the pass-words.
He would show them. He would hail members of this fraternity and give them the high-sign thus. And they would reply in this fashion. At the next stop a gang of Mexican workmen stood at one side of the track as the train moved out. Juanito waited until the train was safely started.
Then he cried, in Spanish and in a cheery, good-fellow tone:
“Attention, you ill-favored Mexican cockroaches! See what I think of you, offspring of deformed and mummified parents! Take this as a token of your worthlessness and my disgusted contempt!”
The Mexicans looked up in surprise at the genial scurrility. Don Juanito, with quick moves, slapped at them the most popular of the seven major gestures. His extended finger leaped to each of them as if he was firing a pistol.
The workmen threw aside shovels and picks. Their enraged arms made passionate reply in jerks that shook their whole bodies.
The wool merchants were much impressed. Juanito was engaged as their guide throughout the tour.
Later Don Juanito was killed during the war overseas. There were no worth-while revolutions in Mexico at the time. Juanito joined the gringo army. He found the European war boring. H
e borrowed his captain’s uniform and went to London. There, he impersonated an officer. Even going so far as to pass bogus checks.
He was caught and put in a stockade. There he was bored again by an unappreciative audience. He broke from the stockade and was shot to death as he tried to escape.
The gringo always boasts that when his country takes over Mexico—he takes this eventual occupation for granted—there will be a swift end to gestures and such foolishness. If there were not a hundred other reasons against the conquest of Mexico by the northern republic, this one would be enough.
HONOR OF THE FAMILY
Jesus Lastro lifted his sombrero with a gesture that was a token of affliction, a respectful greeting and a notice that he was about to disclose matters of great moment. Such things can be told in a gesture—in a Mexican gesture.
El Humoristo was not pleased at the meeting. Lastro’s friendship was a doubtful boon in these troublous days. The ambitious capitan’s rivalry of Fierro was the gossip of the captured town. Lastro even dared to wear a diamond in the knot of his neckerchief. Not as large as the diamond that Fierro wore. But still a diamond and a challenge.
El Humoristo was satisfied to take sides against the federalista government. He did not care to be involved in a clash between rival executioners.
This time there was no escape from Jesus Lastro, who had been waiting for the simpatico gringo. He went quickly enough through the formal overture to his real topic.
“Amigo, I am distracted,” he said, at last. “That disgrace of the family, Enrique, has had the misfortune to displease my most gracious general, Don Pancho. Who but that brainless husband of my sainted sister, Inez, would do such a thing?
“He should have remained with his guitar and his love songs. He was never meant to be a soldier. And now Don Pancho has decreed that Enrique must die.”
El Humoristo was sorry and guardedly sympathetic. It was not good to be too quickly partisan, even with one’s sorrow.
“But that is not all, amigo,” Lastro went on. “It was I who brought Enrique into the army. The buen Dios did not smile that day. And Don Pancho, no doubt as a just rebuke to me, has ordered that Enrique shall be executed by my own firing squad.
“I, the brother of Enrique’s wife, my forlorn sister, Inez—I must give the command that will send the cruel bullets tearing into his body. Inez pobrecita! With her two children orphans. Is it not enough to make a man mad with grief, amigo mio?”
Again El Humoristo was sympathetic in a discreet measure. Lastro eyed him shrewdly. As if he suspected a lack of appreciation.
“And is it not what might be called dramatic?” he asked. “Does it not seem like something you might read in a book or see an actor do on the stage? Is it not enough to test the heart of a brave man?”
El Captain of the Firing Squad
“That is why I have come to tell you,” continued Lastro. “You have always had the goodness to seem interested in what miserable things I have done for the glory of my country. Do me the favor to be at the cemetery tomorrow at sunrise, amigo. You will see Jesus Lastro do something really big and worthy. Yes, Jesus Lastro will do his duty as a soldier. Ai, a soldier must do his duty, must he not? Yet it is sometimes sad.”
El Humoristo said he would try to witness the spectacle that did such things to the emotions of Capitan Lastro.
“And now I must go to the penitentiary and notify Enrique,” said Lastro. “No doubt the poor boy will find some consolation in learning that it is my firing squad he will face. He shall have an execution as few patriots, more gifted, achieve. I will do it nobly, though my heart rebels at the task. My soul is stern. Jesus Lastro is a true soldier in the army of Don Pancho. Adios, amigo.”
El Humoristo wasn’t at the cemetery next morning. He had been altogether too lenient with the aspiring one who longed to do such things as men do in books or on the stage. He would have preferred avoiding him altogether.
But the Calle Guadalupe is not wide and Lastro was watchful, for all his air of brooding abstraction. He wore a new sarape with stripes of violet and vermillion and yellow over gray. In the center was a conventionalized bird design.
Lastro’s sombrero was lifted with a world of studied repression. He asked of news from the border, of the report that El Humoristo was to leave on a scouting trip into Durango—of many things. He asked courteously for permission to walk at El Humoristo’s side.
“It will be a great favor,” he said. “I grow nervous, I am afraid. Certain things, of little enough importance, have happened to annoy me. Strange, is it not?”
El Humoristo refused to rise to the bait. They walked across the Plaza Mayor.
“Sometimes a soldier’s task is difficult,” said Lastro. “The soldier has the hardest lot of all. Especially the patriotic soldier. Is it not so, compañero mio?
At the Avenido Gampo he tried again.
“We approach the penitentiary,” he said. “The penitentiary sees many sad things, does it not?”
El Humoristo admitted as much and turned the walk across the Arroya de la Canoa. Lastro watched sharply. As they approached the alameda, Lastro threw back the loose end of his sarape with the gesture of a stage magician uncovering a magic gold-fish bowl. From his canary yellow sash he took a packet of cigarettes. He unrolled the husk, measured the tobacco and began to roll the cigarette. Suddenly, he jerked the tough husk apart and loosed a sharp oath.
“Spoiled it!” he exclaimed. “I am indeed upset when I do such a stupid thing. Why, the rolling of a cigarette was done better by—por Dios! That reminds me ! Enrique ! I am glad I remembered. It might interest you to hear of him, amigo?”
“Ah, yes, Enrique,” El Humoristo murmured, “I had forgotten.”
In the moonlight, Jesus Lastro grinned. He had held himself in reserve long enough.
“You who appreciate such things, amigo, may admire the way in which Jesus Lastro handled that very difficult situation,” he said. “It really was such a deed as you might read in a book or see on the stage. Usually, perhaps, I am not clever in such things. But this time I feel I exceeded what poor talent I may have.
“I did it for the sake of Enrique and the love borne for him by my revered sister, Inez. Perhaps, in a way, I did wrong. I shall tell you and you shall judge. Let us drop into this cantina.”
In a few steps they were at the cantina called the Spring of Golden Dreams. It had three sticky tables and a bar from which the varnish had been eaten by raw liquors. A gutter of foul water stagnated in front of the bar. The floor was caked earth.
The keeper of the Spring of Golden Dreams brought glasses and a squat, thick-throated bottle of aguardiente. Jesus Lastro sniffed daintily and assured the keeper of his appreciation and the fact that he would pay him on the morrow. His host mumbled thanks.
“When I left you last evening, amigo,” narrated Lastro, “I went to the penitentiary to see Enrique, as you know. Despite my great fondness for him—did I not allow him to marry my blessed sister, Inez—I must confess that the boy disappointed me sorely. Amigo, you will scarcely credit what I say. But Enrique turned coward. I told you, did I not, that he had better have stayed his guitar with love songs than to try tuning it to La Cucaracha?
“Enrique wept and begged me to save him. He begged this of me, although he knew that if I so much as suggested to Don Pancho that he be placed before another firing squad I myself—but you know Don Pancho, too, compañero mio.
“I was glad that we were alone in one of the little cells. I was disgusted to see him play the poltroon. Think of the disgrace to the family! After all, I had to consider him as the husband of my beloved sister and also as the father of my dear little niece and that interesting infant, my nephew. Did I do wrong in considering such things at such a time? Did I err when I allowed such thoughts to come between me and my duty as a soldier of Don Pancho?
“Perhaps, after all, my heart is too soft for the stern duties of a soldier who aspires to the favor of the gracious General Pancho. But righ
t or wrong, I was touched. I could see the stricken face of my cherished sister and hear the sobs of her two fatherless children. I realized that even worse than by his death would they be hurt to know that he did not play the part of a valiant man. This pitiful cowardice of Enrique had made everything so difficult.
“I felt that I had to give such a situation my gravest thought. I bade Enrique cease his whimpering. I stepped away to the other side of the cell. I stood there with my arms folded and my head bent in thought—so; and looking at him.”
El Humoristo realized that it had been a pose such as a man might take on the stage.
“Enrique watched me like a dog,” said Lastro. “You have seen these dogs about a camp, amigo, always afraid that you will cut the quirt across their back but always hoping for a kind word instead. It was so that Enrique looked at me.
“Can you imagine my feelings? How my heart and my brain struggled? The voice of duty told me coldly to do my soldier’s task; to blindfold Enrique, if necessary, and drag him to his death. And my warm heart kept pleading for him and reminding me that he was, after all, the loved one of my heaven-kissed sister, Inez.
“In the end this soft heart of mine triumphed.
‘“Embrace me, Enrique!’ I said to him. ‘I am going to save you from a disgraceful death!’
“He fell on his knees and kissed my hands.
‘“Attend then what I have to say and show me your gratitude in obedience,’ I told him. ‘If you do not obey me we are both lost. Listen! Tomorrow I will call for you with the firing squad. We will march to the cemetery and you will be placed against the wall.’
“Before I had gone that far, even, Enrique began to wail again. It was enough to make your heart sick. I could scarcely quiet him. Time after time, because he was so frightened, I had to explain my plot.
“‘Listen to me, Enrique,’ I said. ‘Did I say you were going to die? No! You will be placed against the wall. But my firing squad will use only blank cartridges.
The Little Tigress: Tales out of the Dust of Old Mexico Page 10