by Maria Duenas
Nicolás was going to be another matter entirely, and Mauro Larrea’s worst nightmare. Mercifully for them all, news of the catastrophe would reach him in France, at the Pas-de-Calais coal mines, where an old friend had taken him under his wing with the aim of getting him away from Mexico for a while. Larrea’s son was a strange combination of angel and devil: smart and selfish, reckless, unpredictable in his actions. His own good fortune as well as his father’s protective shadow had followed him always, or at least until he began to go too far. At nineteen he had developed a sudden infatuation for a congressman’s wife, and months later a wild spree ended with a ballroom floor caving in beneath him. By the time his son reached twenty, Mauro Larrea had lost count of the scandals he had been obliged to bail him out of. Fortunately, despite all this, he had arranged a favorable marriage between his son and one of the Gorostiza daughters, and in order for him to finish his apprenticeship before joining his father’s business, as well as to avoid any further shameful episodes prior to his marriage, he had persuaded Nicolás to spend a year overseas. From now on, however, everything would be different, which was why each move Mauro Larrea made required the utmost consideration. In confronting his imminent ruin, one of his most pressing concerns remained his son, Nicolás.
Closing his eyes, Larrea tried to empty his mind of problems, at least momentarily, setting aside all thoughts of the dead gringo, the machinery that would never reach its destination, the colossal failure of his most ambitious project to date, his son’s future, and the abyss that had opened beneath his feet. What he needed to do now, urgently, was to move forward, to advance. Having weighed up the options from every angle, he knew there was only one surefire way out. Think twice, sonofabitch, he told himself. Like it or not, you have no other choice. There’s nothing you can do in this city without giving yourself away. The only solution is to leave. So, damn it, decide once and for all.
Like many men shaped by ceaseless struggle, Mauro Larrea had developed an astonishing ability to seize life by the horns. His character had been forged in the silver mines of Guanajuato during his early years in the Americas: toiling endless days in the bowels of the earth, grappling with the rock face by torchlight, dressed only in a pair of scanty leather pants, a soiled bandanna covering his brow to protect his eyes from the vile mixture of dirt, sweat, and dust. Pummeling rock with brute force for eleven hours a day, six days a week, in that dismal, godforsaken place had instilled in him a permanent tenacity.
Perhaps that was why now there was no trace of bitterness in him as he sat steeping in that magnificent enameled bathtub imported from Belgium, something that on his arrival in Mexico would have been a dream to which he never dared aspire. During those early years he would wash under a fig tree in a barrel of rainwater, and in the absence of soap he scrubbed the grime off his skin with a rag. For a towel he used his shirt and the sun’s rays, and for toiletries the harsh wind. His only luxury was a crude wooden comb, and the lemon-scented hair oil he purchased in quarter-liter bottles on payday, which helped tame his thick, unruly locks, which back then were chestnut-brown. What terrible times those had been! Eventually, when the mine began to take its toll on his body, he decided the moment had come for him to move on.
And now, with this rotten luck, the only way for him to avoid absolute ruin was by revisiting his past. Notwithstanding his agent’s sound advice, if he wished to keep this hidden from the circles he moved in— if he wanted to move on before everything came out and there was no way for him to pick himself up—he had only one recourse. Despite the intervening years and life’s vicissitudes, he was now forced to travel down murky pathways populated by shadows.
He opened his eyes. The water was growing cold, and so was his heart. Stepping out of the tub, he grasped the towel. Drops of water trickled down his naked skin to the marble floor. Time had treated him kindly, as if his body wished to honor the titanic efforts of bygone days. At forty-seven, besides a few old wounds, including the still-visible scar on his left hand and two mutilated fingers, his arms and legs were sinewy, his belly firm, and he possessed the same broad shoulders that never went unnoticed by tailors, enemies, and ladies alike.
He finished drying himself, shaved hastily, rubbing Macassar oil blindly onto his jaw, then selected the clothes most suited to his purpose. Dark and resilient. He dressed with his back to the mirror, buckling on the protection that always accompanied him in situations such as the one he anticipated now. His knife. His gun. Lastly, out of a desk he retrieved a folder tied with red ribbon and removed from it several documents, which he folded without reading and tucked away close to his chest.
Only when he was completely ready did he turn to face the large mirror on the wardrobe.
“This is your last shot, compadre,” he declared to his reflection.
Snuffing out the oil lamp, he shouted for Santos Huesos and stepped into the corridor.
“Tomorrow at dawn, walk to Don Elias Andrade’s house and tell him I’ve gone where he would never want me to go.”
“To Don Tadeo?” Santos Huesos asked uneasily.
But his master was already striding toward the stables, and the youth had to break into a run to keep up with him. His question remained unanswered as the instructions continued to flow.
“If Mariana comes here, not a word of this to her. And if anyone calls asking for me, tell them the first thing that enters your head.”
The servant was about to speak when his master took the words out of his mouth:
“No, my lad, this time you’re not going with me. Regardless of how this madness ends, I’m going into it alone, and coming out of it alone.”
It was past nine o’clock, but the streets were still filled with hustle and bustle. Wrapped in a Querétaro cape and seated astride a criollo horse, his face partially hidden beneath a wide-brimmed hat, Larrea purposefully avoided the busiest intersections and alleyways. He used to enjoy the swarming crowds, usually because they preceded his arrival at an interesting gathering or a dinner that might prove beneficial to his business interests. Sometimes a rendezvous with a woman. However, that night, he longed only to leave everything behind.
Gringo sonofabitch, he muttered to himself, spurring his steed on. But he knew the gringo wasn’t to blame. A former officer in the US Army Corps of Engineers, and moralistic to the core, he had honored his side of the bargain. He had even had the decency to provide his wife and sister to tell Larrea what he would never be able to say to him in person, buried as he was in a common grave, one eye blown out and his skull shattered. That filthy war, those accursed slavers, Larrea muttered.
How could this string of mishaps have come to pass? How could fate have dealt him such a rotten hand? These questions were pounding his brain as he galloped down the Calzada de los Misterios.
Despite his flash of resentment, Mauro Larrea was fully aware that Thomas Sachs, otherwise known as the Yankee, had been an honest, upright Methodist and never a scoundrel. Thirteen months earlier, Sachs had come to him on the recommendation of an old friend from San Luis Potosí. He had arrived just as Larrea was finishing his breakfast, when the house was barely ready to receive guests, and the prattle of young servant girls chopping onions and milling corn reached them from the depths of the kitchens. Santos Huesos showed the visitor into the study, where he was asked to wait. The gringo did so standing, swaying from one foot to the other as he gazed at the floor.
“I hear you might be interested in purchasing some machinery for one of your mines” was his greeting when he saw Larrea enter the room. The miner contemplated the man before replying. He was stocky, with a complexion that reddened easily and a tolerable level of Spanish.
“That depends on what you’re offering.”
“A state-of-the-art steam engine, manufactured by Lyons, Brookman and Sachs at our factories in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Custom-made to our purchasers’ requirements.”
“Capable of pumping out
water at two thousand feet of depth?”
“More: up to twenty-eight hundred feet.”
“In that case I’m interested.”
As Mauro Larrea listened, he became aware once more of the murmur of something that had lain dormant inside him for many years. To resurrect the old mine Las Tres Lunas, to return her to her former splendor.
The potential of the machinery Sachs was laying before him was tremendous. Nothing like this had ever been attempted before in Mexico, not by the Spanish miners during the time when it was a colony, nor by the English who had settled in Pachuca and Real del Monte, nor even by the Scots in Oaxaca. Larrea knew from the outset that what Sachs was proposing was something different. Immensely promising.
“Give me a day to think it over.”
He received the Yankee the following morning, extending his beefy miner’s hand. Sachs knew his type well: he was one of those intrepid, intuitive men who understood that his profession was an endless round of successes and failures. Who had a confident, unwavering way of taking challenging—even risky—decisions, constantly tempting fate and providence. Who were possessed of a tremendously pragmatic approach to life, and a keen, instinctive intelligence. The gringo was used to doing business with such men.
“Let’s discuss the details, my friend.”
They closed the deal. Larrea applied for the relevant licenses from the Mining Board and drew up a risky financial plan, to which Andrade was steadfastly opposed. And, from then on, Larrea began to lay out large sums in the agreed installments until he had used up his capital and investments. In return, every three weeks, he received like clockwork progress reports from Pennsylvania: about the intricate machines being assembled, the tons of material piling up in warehouses. Boilers, gantries, auxiliary equipment. Then one day, the letters from the north stopped arriving.
Just one year and a month had gone by between those days brimming with optimism and this night, when his dark outline sped along stark roads beneath a starless sky as he searched for a solution that might at least offer him some breathing space.
The sky was already growing light when he came to a halt outside a heavy wooden portal. His body was aching, his mouth parched, and his eyes red; he had scarcely given his horse or himself a moment’s rest. Even so, he dismounted swiftly. Moments later, the forelegs of the animal buckled and it slumped to the ground in exhaustion.
Dawn was breaking over a small valley at the foot of San Cristobal hill, a stone’s throw from the Pachuca mines. No one was expecting him at the lonely hacienda: Who would have imagined anyone arriving at such an ungodly hour? The dogs, on the other hand, immediately detected his presence, and a chorus of frenzied barks shattered the peaceful morning.
Almost instantaneously, Larrea heard footsteps, a cracking sound, and a voice commanding the dogs to be quiet. As their uproar died down, a youthful voice demanded brusquely from within:
“Who goes there?”
“I’ve come looking for Don Tadeo.”
Two bolts, heavy and thick with rust, screeched as they were drawn back. Then a third began to grate before stopping halfway, as if the person opening it had changed their mind. After a few moments’ silence, he heard footsteps padding away across the beaten earth.
Three or four minutes later, he became aware of another human presence on the far side of the door. Instead of one person, there were now two.
“Who goes there?”
The same question, but a different voice. Despite not having heard it for over a decade, Mauro Larrea would have recognized it anywhere.
“Someone you never imagined you’d see again.”
The third bolt was suddenly drawn back and the door opened. As though impelled by the devil himself, the dogs started up their frenzied yelping again. Amid the din came the sound of a gun being fired into the air. Still slumped after its long gallop through the night, Larrea’s horse lifted its head and rose to its feet. Four or five mangy dogs slunk away from the entrance, tails between their legs, whining pitifully.
The men stood waiting for him, feet set slightly apart. The youngest, a night watchman, was holding the half-cocked blunderbuss he had just fired. The other man’s rheumy eyes drilled into Larrea. Beyond them, at the far end of a broad path, the outline of the house was slowly becoming silhouetted against the morning sky.
The older of the two men peered at Larrea. Dimas Carrús, gaunt and melancholy as ever, with at least a week’s worth of stubble on his face, had been roused from the straw mattress that served as his bed. His lifeless right arm dangled at his side, maimed after a beating his father had given him in early childhood.
Finally, still staring at Larrea, he mustered a belch, which erupted like a gob of phlegm. Then came his greeting.
“My God, Larrea. I never thought you’d be crazy enough to come back here.”
A cold gust of wind blew around them.
“Wake your father, Dimas. Tell him I need to speak to him.”
The man shook his head, in a gesture of disbelief rather than refusal. At seeing him again after all that had happened.
He started toward the house without a word, his arm drooping from his shoulder like a dead eel. Larrea followed him as far as the inner courtyard, the gravel crunching beneath his boots, then waited while the heir of all this disappeared through one of the side doors. Larrea had only stepped across the threshold once since the days of the Real de Catorce mine had come to an end. The house was as he remembered it, although even in that dim light Larrea could tell it was dilapidated. The same large crude building with thick walls and few refinements. Discarded tools, various types of debris, and animal excrement.
Dimas soon reappeared in a different doorway.
“Come in and wait. You’ll hear him arrive.”
CHAPTER THREE
The low-ceilinged room where Tadeo Carrús conducted his business deals appeared unchanged by the passage of time. The same rustic table cluttered with papers and open files. Half-dried-up inkpots and tattered quill pens, an old set of scales with two pans. And on the brown flaking wall was the same image of the dark-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe surrounded by faded golden rays, her hands folded across her chest, a moon and cherub at her feet.
He heard slow shuffling footsteps on the clay tiles out in the corridor, without even imagining they belonged to the man he was waiting for. Larrea scarcely recognized him when he entered the room. Once a tallish man, he appeared to have shrunk by a good twelve inches and his body had lost its former vigor and compactness. He couldn’t yet have been sixty but gave the impression of a decrepit ninety-year-old. Ashen-faced, crooked, and frail, Tadeo Carrús was dressed in ragged clothes and was protected from the cold dawn air by little more than a threadbare shawl.
“After so many years of not remembering me, you might at least have waited until noon to show up.”
Mauro Larrea’s memory flooded with images and sensations. The day the moneylender had sought him out at the mine he intended to exploit; the small-goods store he ran back then, next to the Real de Catorce mine shafts. As they sat on stools facing each other, an oil lamp and a jug of pulque between them, the moneylender had made an offer to the ambitious young miner. I’m going to back you to the hilt, Spaniard, he’d said, placing a heavy paw on his shoulder. You and I are going to make big money together, you’ll see. And although Larrea was perfectly aware how unfair the contract was, his lack of funds and surfeit of dreams had led him to accept.
Fortunately for both men, the profits from the mine were so huge he had been able to keep his side of the bargain: 70 percent of the silver for the moneylender, 30 percent for him. Then came another promising venture, and again he invested Tadeo Carrús’s capital. This time he suggested a fifty-fifty split. You lay out the money. I lay out the work. My instinct. My life, he said. The moneylender laughed out loud. Have you lost your mind, boy? Seventy-thirty, or there’s no deal. On that o
ccasion, too, Larrea had struck it lucky and made a handsome profit. And once more the division of the spoils was heavily one-sided.
When it came to his next venture, however, Mauro Larrea sat down to do his sums and realized that he no longer needed help from anyone: he could take care of himself. He told Carrús as much in the same store, over two fresh glasses of pulque. But the moneylender didn’t accept the parting of ways with good grace. If you don’t ruin yourself first, sonofabitch, I’ll do it for you. He proved himself to be a fearsome adversary, resorting to threats, harassment, skulduggery, obstruction. Blood was spilled among both men’s followers. Carrús’s men hobbled Larrea’s mules; they tried to make off with his iron ore and quicksilver. Several times they held a knife to his throat, and one rainy afternoon he felt the barrel of a gun brush against his neck. The avaricious moneylender moved heaven and earth to make him fail, but did not succeed.
It was years since Larrea had last seen him. And now, instead of the unscrupulous, corpulent bully he had been determined to confront, he discovered a walking skeleton, ribs jutting out obscenely from his chest, skin the color of rancid butter, and breath so foul he could smell it at five paces.
“Sit wherever you can,” Carrús ordered as he slumped behind his desk.
“There’s no need. This won’t take long.”
“Sit down, damn it!” exclaimed Carrús in a strangulated voice, lungs whistling like a two-holed flute. “If you rode all night, you can afford to spend a quarter of an hour with me before turning back.”
Larrea gave in and sat on a narrow wooden chair without leaning back or giving the slightest impression of getting comfortable.
“I need money.”
Tadeo Carrús made as if to laugh, but the phlegm impeded him and set off a loud coughing fit.
“You want us to be partners again, like we were in the old days?”