The 42nd Parallel (40 page)

“Jez, lemme think it over, Ben . . . but I got to go back to the daily bunksheet.”

So Mac found himself running a bookstore on the Calle Independencia with a line of stationery and a few typewriters. It felt good to be his own boss for the first time in his life. Concha, who was a storekeeper’s daughter, was delighted. She kept the books and talked to the customers so that Mac didn’t have much to do but sit in the back and read and talk to his friends. That Christmas Ben and Lisa, who was a tall Spanish girl said to have been a dancer in Malaga, with a white skin like a camellia and ebony hair, gave all sorts of parties in an apartment with Americanstyle bath and kitchen that Ben rented out in the new quarter towards Chapultepec. The day the Asociacion de Publicistas had its annual banquet, Ben stopped into the bookstore feeling fine and told Mac he wanted him and Concha to come up after supper and wouldn’t Concha bring a couple of friends, nice wellbehaved girls not too choosy, like she knew. He was giving a party for G. H. Barrow who was back from Vera Cruz and a big contact man from New York who was wangling something, Ben didn’t know just what. He’d seen Carranza yesterday and at the banquet everybody’d kowtowed to him.

“Jez, Mac, you oughta been at that banquet; they took one of the streetcars and had a table the whole length of it and an orchestra and rode us out to San Angel and back and then all round town.”

“I saw ’em starting out,” said Mac, “looked too much like a funeral to me.”

“Jez, it was swell though. Salvador an’ everybody was there and this guy Moorehouse, the big hombre from New York, jez, he looked like he didn’t know if he was comin’ or goin’. Looked like he expected a bomb to go off under the seat any minute . . . hellova good thing for Mexico if one had, when you come to think of it. All the worst crooks in town were there."

The party at Ben’s didn’t come off so well. J. Ward Moorehouse didn’t make up to the girls as Ben had hoped. He brought his secretary, a tired blond girl, and they both looked scared to death. They had a dinner Mexican style and champagne and a great deal of cognac and a victrola played records by Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin and a little itinerant band attracted by the crowd played Mexican airs on the street outside. After dinner things were getting a little noisy inside so Ben and Moorehouse took chairs out on the balcony and had a long talk about the oil situation over their cigars. J. Ward Moorehouse explained that he had come down in a purely unofficial capacity you understand to make contacts, to find out what the situation was and just what there was behind Carranza’s stubborn opposition to American investors and that the big businessmen he was in touch with in the States desired only fair play and that he felt that if their point of view could be thoroughly understood through some information bureau or the friendly coöperation of Mexican newspapermen.

Ben went back in the diningroom and brought out Enrique Salvador and Mac. They all talked over the situation and J. Ward Moorehouse said that speaking as an old newspaperman himself he thoroughly understood the situation of the press, probably not so different in Mexico City from that in Chicago or Pittsburgh and that all the newspaperman wanted was to give each fresh angle of the situation its proper significance in a spirit of fair play and friendly coöperation, but that he felt that the Mexican papers had been misinformed about the aims of American business in Mexico just as the American press was misinformed about the aims of Mexican politics. If Mr. Enrique would call by the Regis he’d be delighted to talk to him more fully, or to any one of you gentlemen and if he wasn’t in, due to the great press of appointments and the very few days he had to spend in the Mexican capital, his secretary, Miss Williams, would be only too willing to give them any information they wanted and a few specially prepared strictly confidential notes on the attitude of the big American corporations with which he was purely informally in touch.

After that he said he was sorry but he had telegrams waiting for him at the Regis and Salvador took him and Miss Williams, his secretary, home in the chief of police’s automobile.

“Jez, Ben, that’s a smooth bastard,” said Mac to Ben after J. Ward Moorehouse had gone.

“Mac,” said Ben, “that baby’s got a slick cream of millions all over him. By gum, I’d like to make some of these contacts he talks about . . . By gorry, I may do it yet . . . You just watch your Uncle Dudley, Mac. I’m goin’ to associate with the big hombres after this.”

After that the party was not so refined. Ben brought out a lot more cognac and the men started taking the girls into the bedrooms and hallways and even into the pantry and kitchen. Barrow cottoned onto a blonde named Nadia who was half English and talked to her all evening about the art of life. After everybody had gone Ben found them locked up in his bedroom.

Mac got to like the life of a storekeeper. He got up when he wanted to and walked up the sunny streets past the cathedral and the façade of the national palace and up Independencia where the sidewalks had been freshly sprinkled with water and a morning wind was blowing through, sweet with the smell of flowers and roasting coffee. Concha’s little brother Antonio would have the shutters down and be sweeping out the store by the time he got there. Mac would sit in the back reading or would roam about the store chatting with people in English and Spanish. He didn’t sell many books, but he kept all the American and European papers and magazines and they sold well, especially
The Police Gazette
and
La Vie Parisienne.
He started a bank account and was planning to take on some typewriter agencies. Salvador kept telling him he’d get him a contract to supply stationery to some government department and make him a rich man.

One morning he noticed a big crowd in the square in front of the National Palace. He went into one of the cantinas under the arcade and ordered a glass of beer. The waiter told him that Carranza’s troops had lost Torreón and that Villa and Zapata were closing in on the Federal District. When he got to the bookstore news was going down the street that Carranza’s government had fled and that the revolutionists would be in the city before night. The storekeepers began to put up their shutters. Concha and her mother came in crying saying that it would be worse than the terrible week when Madero fell and that the revolutionists had sworn to burn and loot the city. Antonio ran in saying that the Zapatistas were bombarding Tacuba. Mac got a cab and went over to the Chamber of Deputies to see if he could find anybody he knew. All the doors were open to the street and there were papers littered along the corridors. There was nobody in the theater but an old Indian and his wife who were walking round hand in hand looking reverently at the gilded ceiling and the paintings and the tables covered with green plush. The old man carried his hat in his hand as if he were in church.

Mac told the cabman to drive to the paper where Salvador worked, but the janitor there told him with a wink that Salvador had gone to Vera Cruz with the chief of police. Then he went to the Embassy where he couldn’t get a word with anybody. All the anterooms were full of Americans who had come in from ranches and concessions and who were cursing out President Wilson and giving each other the horrors with stories of the revolutionists. At the consulate Mac met a Syrian who offered to buy his stock of books. “No, you don’t,” said Mac and went back down Independencia.

When he got back to the store newsboys were already running through the street crying, “Viva la revolucion revindicadora.” Concha and her mother were in a panic and said they must get on the train to Vera Cruz or they’d all be murdered. The revolutionists were sacking convents and murdering priests and nuns. The old woman dropped on her knees in the corner of the room and began chanting “Ave Marias.”

“Aw, hell!” said Mac, “let’s sell out and go back to the States. Want to go to the States, Concha?” Concha nodded vigorously and began to smile through her tears. “But what the devil can we do with your mother and Antonio?” Concha said she had a married sister in Vera Cruz. They could leave them there if they could ever get to Vera Cruz.

Mac, the sweat pouring off him, hurried back to the consulate to find the Syrian. They couldn’t decide on the price. Mac was desperate because the banks were all closed and there was no way of getting any money. The Syrian said that he was from the Lebanon and an American citizen and a Christian and that he’d lend Mac a hundred dollars if Mac would give him a sixtyday note hypothecating his share in the bookstore for two hundred dollars. He said that he was an American citizen and a Christian and was risking his life to save Mac’s wife and children. Mac was so flustered he noticed just in time that the Syrian was giving him a hundred dollars mex and that the note was made out in American dollars. The Syrian called upon God to protect them both and said it was an error and Mac went off with two hundred pesos in gold.

He found Concha all packed. She had closed up the store and was standing on the pavement outside with some bundles, the two cats in a basket, and Antonio and her mother, each wrapped in a blanket.

They found the station so packed full of people and baggage they couldn’t get in the door. Mac went round to the yards and found a man named McGrath he knew who worked for the railroad. McGrath said he could fix them up but that they must hurry. He put them into a secondclass coach out in the yards and said he’d buy their tickets but would probably have to pay double for them. Sweat was pouring from under Mac’s hatband when he finally got the two women seated and the basket of cats and the bundles and Antonio stowed away. The train was already full, although it hadn’t backed into the station yet. After several hours the train pulled out, a line of dusty soldiers fighting back the people on the platform who tried to rush the train as it left. Every seat was taken, the aisles were full of priests and nuns, there were welldressed people hanging onto the platforms.

Mac didn’t have much to say sitting next to Concha in the dense heat of the slowmoving train. Concha sighed a great deal and her mother sighed, “Ay de mi dios,” and they gnawed on chickenwings and ate almond paste. The train was often stopped by groups of soldiers patrolling the line. On sidings were many boxcars loaded with troops, but nobody seemed to know what side they were on. Mac looked out at the endless crisscross ranks of centuryplants and the crumbling churches and watched the two huge snowy volcanos, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihatl, change places on the horizon; then there was another goldenbrown cone of an extinct volcano slowly turning before the train; then it was the bluewhite peak of Orizaba in the distance growing up taller and taller into the cloudless sky.

After Huamantla they ran down through clouds. The rails rang under the merry clatter of the wheels curving down steep grades in the misty winding valley through moist forestgrowth. They began to feel easier. With every loop of the train the air became warmer and damper. They began to see orange and lemontrees. The windows were all open. At stations women came through selling beer and pulque and chicken and tortillas.

At Orizaba it was sunny again. The train stopped a long time. Mac sat drinking beer by himself in the station restaurant. The other passengers were laughing and talking but Mac felt sore.

When the bell rang he didn’t want to go back to Concha and her mother and their sighs and their greasy fingers and their chickenwings.

He got on another car. Night was coming on full of the smells of flowers and warm earth.

It was late the next day when they got into Vera Cruz. The town was full of flags and big red banners stretched from wall to wall of the orange and lemon and bananacolored streets with their green shutters and the palms waving in the seawind. The banners read: “Viva Obregon,” “Viva La Revolucion Revindicadora,” “Viva El Partido Laborista.”

In the main square a band was playing and people were dancing. Scared daws flew cawing among the dark umbrella-shaped trees.

Mac left Concha and her bundles and the old woman and Antonio on a bench and went to the Ward Line office to see about passage to the States. There everybody was talking about submarine warfare and America entering the Great War and German atrocities and Mac found that there was no boat for a week and that he didn’t have enough cash even for two steerage passages. He bought himself a single steerage passage. He’d begun to suspect that he was making a damn fool of himself and decided to go without Concha.

When he got back to where she was sitting she’d bought custard-apples and mangos. The old woman and Antonio had gone off with the bundles to find her sister’s house. The white cats were out of their basket and were curled up on the bench beside her. She looked up at Mac with a quick confident blackeyed smile and said that Porfirio and Venustiano were happy because they smelt fish. He gave her both hands to help her to her feet. At that moment he couldn’t tell her he’d decided to go back to the States without her. Antonio came running up and said that they’d found his aunt and that she’d put them up and that everybody in Vera Cruz was for the revolution.

Going through the main square again Concha said she was thirsty and wanted a drink. They were looking around for an empty table outside of one of the cafés when they caught sight of Salvador. He jumped to his feet and embraced Mac and cried, “Viva Obregon,” and they had a mint julep American style. Salvador said that Carranza had been murdered in the mountains by his own staffofficers and that onearmed Obregon had ridden into Mexico City dressed in white cotton like a peon wearing a big peon hat at the head of his Yaqui Indians and that there’d been no disorder and that the principles of Madero and Juarez were to be reëstablished and that a new era was to dawn.

They drank several mint juleps and Mac didn’t say anything about going back to America.

He asked Salvador where his friend, the chief of police, was but Salvador didn’t hear him. Then Mac said to Concha suppose he went back to America without her, but she said he was only joking. She said she liked Vera Cruz and would like to live there. Salvador said that great days for Mexico were coming, that he was going back up the next day. That night they all ate supper at Concha’s sister’s house. Mac furnished the cognac. They all drank to the workers, to the trade-unions, to the partido laborista, to the social revolution and the agraristas.