Keeping Secrets

by Suzanne Morris

  “Pardon my changing the subject, but having worried over you for all this time, I do wonder just what is going on down there.”

  “Huerta’s about ready to give up—he’s nearly bankrupt. Villa is gaining strength all the time; he has about twenty-five thousand men behind him now. And it’s beginning to look like I was right about Carranza and Villa—they’re quarreling.”

  I shook my head. “It seems endless.”

  “I know it, but one purpose of this conference is to find a neutral—someone without ties to any faction—to serve as Provisional President until free elections can be held.”

  “But will Carranza and Villa go along with that?”

  “Villa has indicated he will; Carranza can either co-operate or go hang. If he can’t get foreign recognition, he can’t hold on to Mexico, and if he doesn’t play according to ABC rules, he won’t get recognized.”

  I thought about that for a while, then suddenly something dawned on me and I looked up. “Are you hoping to get Barrista in as Provisional President?”

  “Exactly.”

  Just then he walked into the bedroom, his shirt off, beard trimmed, looking like a pirate who’d won a sword fight and sent the loser down the plank. “I’ve been thinking about shaving my beard. Facial hair is going out of style, and it’s going to be hot this summer. What do you think?”

  “I think if you do, you will find yourself short one wife.”

  I was unbuttoning my blouse with one hand and pulling the pins from my hair with the other. He stood back and watched me, one eyebrow raised. “How quickly you move,” he remarked.

  “How long you have made me wait,” I reminded him.

  Barrista proved to be everything Emory claimed and more. By the time he arrived I knew quite a bit about his background—he was educated both here and in Europe, and had married a native of Greece. He was devoted to his country and wouldn’t live anywhere else. Now fifty years old, he was a widower with one daughter. His family, including four brothers, stretched to all corners of Mexico, and many of his kinsmen had counted among public office holders and high military officials over the years. “At the same time, they’ve all managed to keep their noses clean,” Emory pointed out.

  Because of his enormous land holdings Barrista moved easily within the circles of wealthy Mexicans, but he was also the common man’s friend. He helped educate the workers on his plantations and ranch, sponsoring more than his share of foreign exchange students over here, and he also maintained private hospital facilities for his laborers.

  “He’s a whole lot like Francisco Madero, the leader of 1910, but he’s also practical and shrewd—that’s what I like about him. He’s fed up with war and revolution, and thinks maybe through this conference he can take hold of the government reins peacefully.”

  Through Emory’s description, I had begun to visualize the tall, distinguished man with his flawless command of the English language and all the markings of the citizen of the world; yet he had one characteristic that Emory didn’t put into words: there was an immense power in his presence.

  As soon as he walked into our house, everything around him seemed to fade in contrast. I got through the hand-kissing introduction as gracefully as possible, though I was almost afraid to speak at the risk of stepping on my tongue. I thought as we walked into the parlor, now I know what it is like to meet a statesman. He had stern, Indian laws and questing eyes beneath strong dark brows so unruly that here and there the hairs shot up into bristly rings. Barrista looked as if he had once possessed a violent nature, which had mellowed with age and experience into forceful diplomacy. The longer we talked that evening, the more I was convinced this was true.

  After dinner, Nathan, servantlike, silently lit cigars for him and for Emory, and at my urgings Barrista began to speak of matters in Mexico. For the first time I began to get a clear picture of why solutions to the problems were so difficult to find.

  He spoke at length of the horrible inequities in distribution of property and wealth, begun in the days of Spanish colonialism and compounded down through the ages by first one self-interested government then another. “Even the short and isolated periods of reform have done little to help the common people in Mexico. They have no land, and because they are largely illiterate, would not know how to cultivate it if they did.

  “As a result, they will follow any revolutionary leader until another offers them a little something better. Madero disappointed them in 1910 because he lacked the strength and wisdom to hold the government together while he put his reform ideas into action. So, the people are disheartened once again.”

  “If you were chosen as Provisional President, what would you do?” I asked him.

  “At first I could do little more than educate the people about my ideas of reform. But if my official recognition as head of the government were to follow I would begin to carve up the huge land holdings and set limitations on the number of acres per family in one state—including my own properties and those of my brothers.

  “Immediately, I would increase land taxes, and use the revenues for building free schools, and housing and hospitals on part of the land taken from the big estates. Some land would be held aside for five to ten years, while the literacy level is upgraded.”

  He then explained in detail his ideas of compulsory education for Mexican young people, and broad-scoped foreign-exchange programs both for teachers and medical students.

  “For those who chose not to enter the professions, there would be industrial and technical schools,” he added, with a nod toward Emory. “Your husband suggested the need for this sort of program.”

  Emory’s face was suffused with pride as he remarked, “They’d be in a devil of a fix with every Mexican walking around with a diploma ten years from now, while no one was able to wire a building for electricity or put in a plumbing system.”

  It occurred to me for the first time that Emory and Barrista had conducted discussions in Mexico about subjects more far-reaching than I’d known.

  Barrista was continuing, “In ten years, the land set aside would be available for sale to the masses able to pass a literacy test and prove they could maintain and cultivate it.”

  Aside from agrarian reform measures, the Mexican notable had definite ideas regarding compulsory military service with fair pay and benefits, and, finally, a sure-fire way to avoid any future dictatorships in his country. “I would work with the legislature on a new constitution stating there would be one presidential term of eight years, with no re-election rights for the incumbent. Nor could any member of his cabinet, staff, or family run until one full eight-year term followed.”

  As he ended with a long draw on his cigar, I could see why Barrista commanded so much respect.

  In the next few weeks, conditions worsened in Mexico as peace talks continued far away at the Clifton Hotel in Niagara Falls. In the meantime, the rift between Pancho Villa and Carranza stretched at last to the breaking point.

  No place in the daily news did I see Barrista’s name mentioned, though I looked for it carefully. Near the end of the month the mediators, about to throw up their hands at trying to deal with the obdurate Mexican leaders, finally managed to persuade Carranza and Huerta to agree to send agents to a separate treaty table in Washington. Men from each side could have a copy of the peace plan drawn up in Ontario, and look over it together.

  Barrista sent a letter to Emory informing him of this, adding that the Ontario conference would adjourn until a Washington treaty meeting could be held. He would be coming to San Antonio to stay until such time as he had to return to Ontario, or could go home to Mexico. He asked Emory to reserve a suite at the St. Anthony’s for him and his daughter Aegina, who would be joining him there.

  “It’ll be nice to meet her,” I said.

  “Aegina won’t get here for another week or so. I doubt we’ll see her,” he said.

  I thought no more of it at the time.

  Barrista returned looking tired and somewhat disp
irited, and more out of kindness to him than for any other motive, I opened up the dinner-table conversation by asking if his daughter Aegina had arrived in San Antonio. Barrista glanced quickly at Emory, then at me, shifting nervously as he answered, “Why, no, not yet. I expect her within the week.” Something in his manner made me uncomfortable, but I couldn’t tell what. The moment passed.

  When he turned to the subject uppermost in our minds, his voice was far less animated than when he had visited us before, and Emory listened to the unfolding of muddled events with a frown of concern, puffing on his cigar.

  “Time after time my name was mentioned as a possibility for the provisional government, and each time overlooked. I did not realize how blinded the ambassadors could be. I have been in the forest, yet I can better see the outlines of the trees than they can.”

  “They’re all stupid,” Emory said abruptly. “I never thought it would work, and I told you so.”

  Barrista leaned back and drummed his fingers on the table. “It is going to get worse down there. I need to get back to look after my own affairs. Yet I’m afraid I would be a fool to be absent if the meeting takes up again.”

  He lacked the decisiveness he’d shown before, and throughout that evening I was able to see where Emory’s traits fell into place to allow for his shortcomings. It occurred to me that if Barrista were king, Emory would be the power behind the throne, the “trusted advisor” you often read of as being in accompaniment with heads of state. Then I remembered something Emory said just before he left for Mexico in May about talking over things with Barrista that might prove advantageous. That, put together with Emory’s dinner-table remarks and Barrista’s answers, evoked a frightening prospect.

  I interrupted their conversation. “You men have discussed the possibility of staging a new revolution in Mexico, haven’t you?”

  They both looked at me thoughtfully. “Hopefully one far less costly in human lives than ever before,” Barrista added.

  7

  I lay awake for many hours that night, still in awe of what had been said. It began to dawn on me how deeply involved Emory was. Every time I felt I’d come to grips with one aspect possibly facing us, another would come to mind. Emory would surely be away a lot. All right, I suppose I could learn to endure that, if it did not go on forever. He would be facing dangers thus far unfamiliar. Well, he had already proven he could look after himself, and certainly knew the territory well enough after all the traipsing north and south between his copper mines and his ranch. Some Mexican might try to pick him off, though, just because he is American. But then, surely he’d be somewhat protected by his friendship with Barrista. Or would he? How safe would Barrista be, after the revolution was under way?

  The worries were endless, like sparks from a forest fire being carried by the wind to ignite other dry timber, farther and farther away.…

  Emory lay rigidly beside me. He wasn’t sleeping either. Finally I said, “I suppose there’s a small chance Barrista could yet be named—”

  “He isn’t willing to give up on that, yet.”

  “How nice that would be,” I said with a gulp. “No more blood spilling … oh Lord, I’m afraid.”

  He pulled me closer to him. For all the questions bursting in my mind, I was unable to frame one of them aloud. It was comforting, at least, that he was there, warm against me. “Don’t worry; nothing can be done, at least for now,” he said.

  “I never thought you’d be involved in anything like this.”

  “Neither did I.” He kissed my hair; his voice was placating. “Please, don’t worry—I wouldn’t go down and enlist in the troops or anything. Hell, I’m too young to die and too vain to risk losing an arm or a leg … or something worse.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. Sometimes his sense of humor came just in time. “Well if that means you won’t be taking a direct part, I feel better already,” I told him, but could not resist the temptation of reminding him he still could pull out, sell his interests, and put his investments in San Antonio alone.

  “I have a good bit more than you realize down there,” he said, “and while it’s a big risk, if it works it could bring in the biggest dividend of all. So it’s worth it.”

  “I’ve a good mind to go up to Ontario and tell those numbskull mediators what’s what,” I told him.

  “You sound like a suffragette.”

  “It’s obvious they’re all too busy parading around like peacocks to see the facts.”

  “You’ve probably hit the nail squarely on the head. And you’re probably just sassy enough to push your way right into the exalted chambers up there, but once they got a look at you, they wouldn’t be able to concentrate on Mexico anymore.

  “Which reminds me, right now I’m a little tired of the subject myself. Doesn’t this damned nightgown of yours have a bottom?”

  In July Barrista returned to Mexico, and, anxious for his daughter’s safety, left her in San Antonio to enroll for teaching courses at a small Catholic college in the fall. I felt a little sorry for her, alone in a foreign country, and offered to have her stay with us from time to time. However, Emory was against the idea and assured me she was well-educated, world-traveled, and had many friends among the students here with whom she would be in contact. “Nathan might like to meet her, though. They’re probably near the same age.”

  “He has already met her, once or twice in Mexico, and believe me there were no sparks between them. Aegina wouldn’t be interested in staying with us.”

  I dismissed her from my mind.

  Whether because word had gotten around that the Cabot home was the guest residence of a Mexican notable, or because of my continued friendship with Woody, I began receiving occasional invitations to tea receptions, for various women’s clubs, and one Thursday afternoon was invited to a coffee klatch. I had seen them in progress on my way to the market from time to time, at one or another of the larger and more impressive houses. I suppose the heat drove the ladies out on the big porches, and they’d be sitting around a table with formal tea cloth and silver service, dainty china cups, and a variety of cakes and pastries. Probably eight or ten in number, they seemed an impregnable force as I walked in solitude down the shady lanes, their chitchat halted momentarily as I passed by and gave and received a polite nod. They never invited me to join them at those times, and as soon as I was a few steps down the block, I would hear the drone of neighborhood gossip start up again, always half believing they were talking about me.

  On that hot Thursday afternoon in July, a young woman named Lyla Stuttgart, who’d surprised me by introducing herself a few days earlier, came by at two o’clock and invited me to go with her to one of the more stately mansions on King William.

  “Are you sure it’s all right? They aren’t expecting me.”

  “I can bring anyone I please,” she said breezily. “We aren’t all that formal around here.” I could have taken exception to that remark, but didn’t.

  Lyla was twenty-four years old and married, with three children. She had grown up in a house on King William, and moved but three doors down when she married Arnold. Their home—a wedding gift from her parents—was one of those raised cottages which looked deceivingly small from the front, yet spread far to the rear of the lot and included three levels: two above, with one a few steps below ground for the kitchen. On the day we met she was sitting in a little breezeway under the tall front porch, with her feet propped up, swinging a palmetto fan. When she first called out to me, I thought I was hearing things. Then I saw her, partially hidden from view by the porch stairs. Our introduction didn’t seem very promising—she didn’t bother to walk over to the fence—but I stopped to chat.

  “On your way somewhere?” she asked.

  “Haymarket Plaza. Care to come along?”

  “Heavens, no. I once had my purse snatched there. You’d better be careful. Why don’t you send someone to do your shopping, or have it delivered? Butler’s up on River Avenue is good. My housekeeper swears by hi
s meats.”

  “I don’t have a housekeeper.”

  “My goodness, how do you manage without one?”

  “Oh, I like doing things for myself, and the house doesn’t get all that messy.”

  Just then, as though by signal, two of Lyla’s children came charging out of the kitchen door nearby, quarreling over a toy and bringing our conversation to an end.

  Lyla had auburn hair, freckles across her upturned nose, and green eyes that lit up when the subject of high fashion arose. On coffee-klatch day, she was formally dressed in white tunic, hat, and gloves, and carried a smart-looking parasol with an ivory handle.

  “I go to these things to get away from the children,” she remarked as I put on my hat. “Even with their own nurse and a housekeeper, they’re under my feet all the time. How many do you have?”

  “Children? None.”

  “My dear, how did you manage that?”

  I ignored her question and presented myself. “Do I look proper for a coffee klatch?”

  “Hm … well … except that hat is awfully large, isn’t it?”

  “I prefer large hats.”

  “You do have the carriage for them—wish I had! Last week I bought three of the new smaller ones with single plumes in the back—they’re just in from Paris. Arnold nearly died of heart failure, poor dear, but I told him he could send the bill to Papa. That always shuts him up, and quick.”

  Lyla’s voice was light as a butterfly most of the time. She continued to speak on whatever subject came to mind all the way to the awesome-looking house with the mansard roof two blocks away, and quietened down only once we entered the stifling parlor—why, I wondered, did they not have coffee on the porch that day? She was quickly introducing me to a dozen or so ladies, several of whose German surnames I could not quite grasp. The conversation centered mostly on homes and children, with incidental comments now and then—some young girl’s canoe ride down the river lately, and the daring new tango steps; the alarming frequency of automobile accidents out on the South Loop near the asylum, and many veiled remarks and raised eyebrows about the females involved in them.