The City of Palaces (33 page)

T
he Mexicans killed my mother.”
Plink, plink, plink.
“I wanted to avenge her.”
Plink.
Tomasa lifted her fingers from the piano keys and glanced at Alicia. “I know now that not all Mexicans are bad. Maybe they sent all the bad ones to Sonora to make war on my people.”
Plink.
“That is why I left my brother in Arizona and followed the warriors home, so I could fight with them.”

“You followed the warriors into the desert? Why didn't you go with them?” Alicia asked. She was teaching Tomasa to play by ear the Chopin prelude that had attracted the girl. She made it clear she did not wish to learn anything other than that piece and she refused to learn to read music. Alicia would play a few notes while Tomasa studied the placement of her fingers and then she would imitate her. The girl had intense concentration and fierce persistence, and she was well on her way to mastering the piece. As they worked together, she had begun to speak about herself in short bursts. She told Alicia her father was a warrior killed in battle against the Mexican army and that she had a younger half-brother. Her mother was hanged in a roundup of the Yaquis. She and her brother escaped with a band of refugees to an American border town in Arizona. Today, for the first time, she spoke of how she had come to the orphanage.

“The men would not take me,” she said. “They said I was a child and a girl besides, but I am the daughter of a warrior.” She pressed a half-dozen keys as if for emphasis. “They left at night. I waited and then tracked them. I planned to come into their camp the next day when we had gone too far for them to take me back.”

“Weren't you afraid of becoming lost?”

She seemed surprised by the question. “I followed the road of the ancestors,” she said. “Their souls burned in the night sky and lit the path to the homeland.”

“The stars,” Alicia said, grasping her meaning. “You were guided by the stars.”

She nodded. “The men moved faster than I could follow and I lost them,” she said. “After three nights I reached the homeland. I had brought no food or water, only the clothes on my back. When the Mexican soldiers found me, I was too weak to fight.”

Alicia glanced at the girl. There was nothing special to distinguish her from all the other Indian girls Alicia encountered in the course of a day in the city, drawing water from communal fountains, selling lottery tickets, minding fruit and vegetable stalls in the markets, carrying tiny black-eyed babies in slings across their backs. But this girl had walked across the desert without food or water to become a soldier. She began to understand why, after thirty years of warfare, the Mexican army had been unable to defeat the Yaquis.

“The soldiers took me in chains to their fort at Potam. I was happy to breathe the air of the homeland again, even with an iron collar around my neck, but then they tried to …” She slammed her hand on the keyboard. “I fought them off but there were too many. Six of them held me while another put his thing in my mouth. I bit down so hard I could taste his blood. They beat me and threw me into a room with other Yaquis. They chained us together and marched us to a freight car and nailed it shut. We waited there for two nights before it began to move.”

“Without food or water?” Alicia asked.

Tomasa nodded. “We drank our piss until we were dry. We licked our skin for the flavor of salt. We began to die.” She added fiercely, “But we died like Yaquis, in silence or cursing the Mexicans.” She played the first notes of the prelude before continuing. “After seven nights, we came here, to this town. They opened the doors of the car and the ones who were alive were put in a corral, like animals. Our feet were still chained together, but my legs are thin and I slipped out of the shackles. I escaped! But this town …” She shook her head. “There are so many people, more people than I have ever seen in one place. I did not know where I was or where to go. I stole some food from a market and wandered for a day until I saw a church that was like the churches of our villages, small and white and plain. I sought refuge there.”

Alicia imagined the confusion and terror of the child as she wandered the streets of the city, hungry, thirsty, and alone.

“Inside there was an altar for San Miguel, the warrior. I prayed to him for help. The monks found me—the brothers of San Francisco. They fed me and let me bathe. I would not answer their questions because I was afraid they would return me to the soldiers. They brought me here.” She gently pressed a key. “Now my mother comes to me in my dreams. She is very angry that I left my brother alone. She tells me I must return home to him. This is what I must do. As soon as I can, I will escape.”

She spoke with certainty and Alicia did not doubt she would escape the orphanage on her own if she could find no other way to return home.

“I can help you, Daughter,” Alicia said. “If you will let me.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“Your brother needs you. Your people need you.”

“I will leave soon,” she replied, “for I have learned what I wished for you to teach me.”

Then she played the prelude faultlessly.

S
armiento reread the telegram. “Package safe in El Paso. When will you come to claim it?” It was signed by “LP.” He smiled at his cousin's attempt at discretion. There was no need. All of México knew that Madero, released on bail, had crossed the border into the American state of Texas and issued a call to rebellion. Thus far, the call had not been heeded. Two months after the Centenario celebrations Don Porfirio seemed as entrenched as ever. There were reports of fighting in Morelos between the government and a ragtag Indian army that called itself the Ejército Libertador del Sur, the Liberation Army of the South, led by a self-appointed general named Zapata. The official press, however, assured its readers that General Huerta, called the “Indian butcher” for his ruthless suppression of the Mayas, had been dispatched to Morelos and would soon extinguish the revolt. Beyond that, the Pax Porfiriana kept the country in its iron thrall. The apparent hopelessness of Madero's cause should have made his cousin's invitation to join the rebellion—“When will you come to claim it?”—seem, at best, quixotic if not deluded. Much had changed for Sarmiento in the eighteen months since he had sat in the strange, squalid
pulquería
with Luis—it was called, he remembered, the Valley of Paradise. Even then, he had understood Díaz's government to be autocratic and corrupt, but he had held out hope that some incremental and positive change was possible, if only as a matter of the regime's self-interest. Don Porfirio's cynical motto—
Pan o palo
, bread or the stick—had once at least acknowledged some payment was due to the people in exchange for their freedoms. This was no longer true. Somewhere along the line the old man, hearing the cries of his people for bread, had muttered, like another autocrat, let them eat cake. Now there was only the stick, the billy club, the shackles. Díaz was a cancer on México and, if the patient was to survive, he must be carved out of its body. As a physician, Sarmiento saw his duty clearly. Now he must explain to his wife why it was necessary for him to leave her and their child, perhaps never to return alive.

J
osé was mesmerized by the sight of himself in the long, gilded mirror. He loved his new evening clothes—black tailcoat with silk facings, black trousers with a satin stripe, glossy black pumps, white waistcoat, stiff shirt and wing collar, and a white silk bowtie. His suit had been made for him to accompany his grandmother to his first opera by Señor Vargas, the ancient tailor who had cut his grandfather's clothes. In his dusty shop, Vargas curtly instructed José to remove his cadet's uniform and to stand perfectly still while the old man took close measurements of every part of José's body, withered fingers brushing José's flesh, while mumbling to himself, “
Qué buena forma
.” The tailor's touch was discreet but approbative, as if José were a rare and particularly fine bolt of cloth, one with which he could make something extraordinary. The tailor's appreciative attentiveness to his body made José flush with pleasure. José did not understand his reaction, any more than he understood why he disliked it when his grandmother's confessor, Padre Juan Pablo, cupped José's face between his liver-spotted hands and lifted it as though he were about to kiss him with his fishy mouth. Yet both men, when they laid their hands on José's body, touched in him the same chord, one producing pride and the other repulsion.

Reluctantly, José tore himself away from the mirror to present himself to his grandmother. La Niña was dressed in her habitual black but not the rusty widow weeds she ordinarily affected. Rather, she wore a resplendent ball gown of jet, painstakingly sequined and beaded so that when she moved, it shimmered like starlight on black water. Her seamed cheeks were powdered smooth and rouged with a subtle tint of rose. Her mouth was painted in the same shade. She exuded lavender and jasmine. In place of her mantilla, her heavy white hair was piled on her head and adorned with a tiara. Around her neck hung a latticed necklace ablaze with diamonds, and diamond earrings dripped from her ears. José was amazed at her transformation from crone to queen, like a character in a fairy tale. She crooked a bejeweled finger at him and beckoned him forward.

“Old Vargas knows his business,” she said approvingly. “You are as handsome as a prince. Come, let us go.”

W
hile they inched toward the entrance of the brilliantly lit theater, behind a long line of carriages and automobiles, La Niña provided detailed instructions on how he was to comport himself, but José's attention was captured by the sight of the beautifully dressed men and women alighting from their vehicles at the door of the great theater. When at last they reached the entrance, a uniformed usher rushed to open the carriage door, but La Niña waved him away in favor of her own footman. They descended the carriage to a red carpet. José offered his arm to his grandmother and led her beneath the great stone arch carved with the masks of comedy and tragedy into the foyer. The floor, white marble veined with gold, reflected the opalescent light of the dozen enormous lanterns and the massive chandelier. It was as if they had stepped into a pearl. The air was heavy with the scents of perfumes and colognes—in the garden of fragrances he detected rose, gardenia, clove, lime, and bay rum—and filled with the rumble of conversation. From fragments of conversation—“that beautiful boy? Her grandson,” “one of the last grand ladies,” “looking every minute of her age”—he realized that some of the talk was about his grandmother and him. A few women half-curtseyed as they passed, eliciting from his grandmother a curt nod of acknowledgement, but as he had been instructed, he looked straight ahead. He escorted her up the wide stairway to their box. A footman bowed at the sight of them, pulled back the heavy red drapes, and stepped aside to allow them to enter. Two gilt chairs had been set in the center of box, close to the railing. José stood behind his grandmother's chair, pulling it back slightly, and waited until she was seated before he took his own seat beside her. The vast theater was beginning to fill and José was again aware of the attention he and his grandmother attracted from the crowd, but he was too dazzled by all that lay before him to do more than dimly notice the fingers pointed at their box and the half-heard remarks.

Beneath a circular ceiling painted with plump putti, the Teatro de México was a rococo pile of white marble, pink damask, and gold. The facades of the tiered boxes were plastered with gold-leafed allegorical figures. Above the proscenium arch were two other massive arches thickly decorated with gods and angels. The proscenium itself was plastered with gilded fleur-de-lis. Enormous mirrors set along the sides of the house redoubled and echoed the decorative frenzy, and the soft light lilting down from the dazzling crystal chandelier added depth and dimension. The stage was hidden behind heavy gold curtains, the apron ablaze with footlights. As the musicians filed into the orchestra pit and began to tune their instruments, José's heart raced with anticipation. A few minutes later, the lights dimmed. The conductor emerged to a torrent of applause. His grandmother, who had been sitting beside him with regal indifference, now touched his hand. The moan of a single violin began the overture. Within moments, currents of music swelled through the still, scented, hothouse air. As the golden curtains slowly parted, José thought his heart would explode with excitement.

And then, he frowned. The stage was bare but for a row of battered papier-mâché palm trees against an immense painting of a dark stone wall and a pair of seated hawk-headed Egyptian gods. Two fat men stood near the center of the stage. One wore a long, white tunic, his arms covered with snake-shaped bracelets. The other was clad like a soldier in a leather skirt and breastplate, but his face was pink and jowly. José thought he looked more like a butcher than a general. The two men declaimed to the music in Italian, facing the audience rather than one another. The fat soldier burst into a song and when he finished, the audience applauded. He bowed and waved his hand. A stout woman emerged from the wings in a gold gown and a long headdress surmounted by a crown. She and the soldier sang for a moment and then another woman appeared, this one so fat that her chins bobbled like a windup toy. She wore a black wig that came down in a curtain of hair on either side of her face and a midnight-blue gown. The audience roared and there were cries of “Tetrazzini!” She and the two men sang for a moment and then a procession of singing soldiers filled the stage, followed by a man wearing the headdress of a pharaoh. The music grew loud and martial. José understood from the repetition of the word “
guerra
” that the soldiers were going to war. When the song ended, everyone departed the stage but the woman called Tetrazzini.