“Probably, but he said nothing more. Weygand himself says that his birth is the only event in his life for which he is not responsible and that he has no significant memories from his childhood.”
Constanza’s eyes were wide open. If Carlota had known, she thought, perhaps she wouldn’t have lost her mind. Perhaps she would have had a reason to stay sane and remain anchored to the world. It was too late now.
Philippe interlaced his fingers with Constanza’s, held them to his lips, and kissed the wrinkled hand of his former lover.
“Let her go, Constanza. Let’s let her go,” he said.
Constanza nodded in silence, because an accumulation of tears stifled her voice.
A carriage with an enormous plume bore the empress’s coffin away, escorted by lancers and grenadiers. That day there was heavy snowfall, and the tracks from the wheels were covered in a white veil as they passed. They were heading to Laeken, as Carlota had requested. At least, that’s how Constanza had interpreted her wishes one day when she had said I want to go to Laeken. You go up, and up, and then you disappear behind the towers.
Constanza, after half a life alongside her, knew what the empress was trying to say.
She wouldn’t be buried beside Maximilian, as would befit her as the consort of a Habsburg, since the marriage had been annulled. Instead, her remains would rest alongside her adored father, Leopold I; her mother, whom she barely knew; her brothers, who had gone ahead of her like the rest of her contemporaries; her beloved grandmother, and dear Marie Henriette. Finally, she would be with her loved ones after a long, long life of solitude.
Six old Belgian soldiers made the colossal effort to carry the empress’s coffin on their shoulders. They were survivors of the Mexican expedition.
“The Empress’s Dragoons,” said Philippe.
Constanza could see the pride on the face of the man in front of her. She felt enormous respect then for the empress’s deranged brain; even in her madness she’d managed to preserve a space for fond memories. In her sad mind, there had always been a place for her unrequited loves. For Mexico, a land that never belonged to her but which she loved like the greatest of lovers. Because Carlota’s sin was to always love in quantities that were too great: a husband unable to love her back, a son she never knew, a country snatched from her, an absent family, a lover lost.
Constanza, coming to the end of her days, was beginning to live in peace with the implacable silence of her conscience, because at last, having lived so long in penitence, she watched the empress’s coffin descend. And she understood that, at some point, even if only for a brief moment, she had received Carlota’s forgiveness.
Some Notes And Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank everyone who experienced the creation of this novel alongside me. Like any historical novel, while based on real historical events whose accuracy can be corroborated in various sources, it mixes fiction and reality. There is a legend that says that the empress lost her mind because she ingested herbs to conceive that in the long term proved to be poisonous. There’s also the theory that she went mad because of a nervous breakdown from which she was never able to recover. In any case, I used fiction to tell a possible truth. The myths about Maximilian’s homosexuality seem to have been proven. Schertzenlechner did exist and isn’t a figment of my imagination. The letters that Carlota wrote to Philippe in her madness, asking to be whipped, also existed, but they were addressed not to him but to Charles Loysel, a French commander in Marshal Bazaine’s general staff who barely appears in the literature on the empire. Whether these passionate and lustful letters were meant for him—and not Van der Smissen—remains a mystery; after all, madness sometimes takes us down passageways that are inaccessible to logic. For narrative purposes, I made Philippe the recipient of these letters: I have no difficulty imagining how fantasies with unconsummated loves can feature in delusions. These messages, which appear in a book by Laurence van Ypersele, are an interesting source for scholars of Carlota and of madness, and I highly recommend reading them.
Carlota and Maximilian’s supposed children survived and led the most remarkable lives, deserving of novels of their own. One was General Maxime Weygand, whose resemblance to Van der Smissen is easy to see in their photographs, and the other was José Julio Sedano y Leguizamo, a secretary of Rubén Darío—who always openly boasted that he had a Habsburg as an employee, even if he was a bastard—who years later met the same fate as his supposed father when he was executed for espionage in France. The line between fiction and reality is sometimes very thin.
Thank you to everyone who has eaten, drunk, and breathed the Second Empire with me over these years. Thanks to my sons, Alonso and Borja, for the enthusiasm they show for my work even at their young age. From time to time they checked in to see what I was writing and suggested titles for the novel. To my husband, for believing in second chances and for being able to change course when the wind changes direction. To the students of the #MiércolesDeTaller, because they experienced this novel’s creation from beginning to end: Juan, Vera, Érika, Eli, and Sara. I enjoyed every workshop with them. I hope I’ve taught them—as the firsthand witnesses that they were to the birth of this book—that a novel’s magic doesn’t come out of a hat. To Verónica Llaca, for giving me the impetus to start and the enthusiasm to finish. To my Mexican friends, who will forever be in my heart, in the distance, through madness and sanity. To Willie Schavelzon and Bárbara Graham, for their patience and encouragement in this long-distance race. And, of course, Martha Zamora, historian of the Second Mexican Empire, because without her exhaustive documentation, I couldn’t have discovered these characters who passed so briefly through Mexican history and whose lives were so tragic. This woman’s enthusiasm—devoting her life to researching the subject—moved me, and as if that weren’t enough, she welcomed me into her home when she barely knew me, to talk about Carlota until I’d run out of questions. My heartfelt thanks for your generosity.
Bibliography
I am indebted to the following books:
Del Paso, Fernando. Noticias del Imperio. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2012.
Moyano Pahissa, Ángela. Los belgas de Carlota. La expedición belga al Imperio de Maximiliano. Mexico: Pearson Educación, 2011.
Reinach Foussemagne, Comtesse H. de. Charlotte de Belgique, Impératrice du Mexique. Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie., 1925.
Van Ypersele, Laurence. Una emperatriz en la noche. Mexico: Martha Zamora, 2010.
Zamora, Martha. Maximiliano y Carlota. Memoria presente. Mexico: Martha Zamora, 2012.
About the Author
Photo © 2014 Blanca Charolet
Born in Barcelona, Laura Martínez-Belli has lived in Mexico, Panama, and Madrid. Her debut novel, Por si no te vuelvo a ver, was a bestseller in Mexico. She is also the author of El ladrón de cálices; Las dos vidas de Floria, which was translated into Italian with great success; and La última página, which was shortlisted for the Premio Letras Nuevas de Novela in 2013. Martínez-Belli has taught creative writing in universities and cultural institutions and has been a columnist for several print media outlets in Latin America. Currently, she runs writing workshops at the School of Writers (Escuela de Escritores) in Madrid, where she resides. The Empress (Carlota, in the Spanish original) is her first novel to be published in English.
About the Translator
Photo © Colin Crewdson
Simon Bruni translates literary works from Spanish, a language he acquired through total immersion living in Alicante, Valencia, and Santander. He studied Spanish and linguistics at Queen Mary University of London and literary translation at the University of Exeter.
Simon’s many published translations include novels, short stories, video games, and nonfiction publications. He is the winner of three John Dryden awards: in 2017 and 2015 for Paul Pen’s short stories “Cinnamon” and “The Porcelain Boy,” and in 2011 for Francisco Pérez Gandul’s novel Cell 211. His translations of Paul Pen’s The Light of the Fireflies and S
ofía Segovia’s The Murmur of Bees have both become international bestsellers.
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