The City of Palaces (40 page)

B
eneath the summer sun, the air was as warm as flesh. It released the scents of earth and water as long, flat-bottomed vessels—
trajineras
—drifted beneath stone bridges among the ancient floating gardens on the still, green waters of the canals of Xochimilco. In La Niña's childhood, the canopied
trajineras
of the great families were guided along the placid waterways by Indian gondoliers to the tiny villages that dotted the banks of the canals. Indian women rowed out on fragile skiffs selling flowers and fruit and food, and other canoes carried musicians. Back and forth, too, went the innumerable punts that carried vegetables, fruits, and flowers from the floating gardens—the
chinampas
—to the city's markets. The banks of the canals were lined with
ahuejote
, the native junipers. The scent of flowers—for the name Xochimilco meant garden in the language of the Aztecs—was deep in the air, a sweetness that La Niña had imagined was the scent of Eden. She remembered herself on her eighteenth birthday: long, black hair loose around her slender shoulders, sinking into a pile of silk pillows while a band of floating musicians serenaded her.

She had described this scene to José so often it seemed to him that he must have been there with her. He watched his grandmother settled by her maid on a throne of cushions at the back of the
trajinera
. It was another birthday, her eightieth. She had commanded the family to join her on this outing. There was not enough room for everyone on her vessel, so it carried only his aunts, his mother, himself, and servants, while a second vessel carried his father and his
tíos
Damian and Gonzalo—Tío Saturino, the banker, had gone to Paris after Don Francisco Madero had become president and he had yet to return. In the warm air his thoughts drifted and he smiled as he recalled his friend, the funny little man whom he knew as Don Panchito.

W
hen his father had told him that the next president of the Republic was coming to the palace for dinner, José had expected someone old and frightening, like Don Porfirio. But Don Panchito was boy-sized, scarcely taller than José himself, and he had a boy's giggle and soft, high voice. Emboldened by the man's small stature and kind eyes, José had offered to show him his room, as if he were a classmate. José had performed for him a version of
Aida
in the toy theater his grandmother had given him for his birthday until his father came to remind Don Panchito there were other guests who wished to meet him. The next time José saw Don Panchito was at a reception at Chapultepec Castle, after he had become president. The president and his sad-eyed wife, Doña Sara, were in the receiving line shaking hands with dignitaries. When he saw José, the president scooped him into an embrace and told José he still owed him the last two acts of
Aida
. A few days later, José had received a package from Chapultepec. Inside, he discovered an Italian-made toy theater, an exquisite miniature La Scala, with papiermâché casts of three Puccini operas. José was perplexed by the terrible things that were said about his friend in the newspapers. He asked his father, who told him they were lies.

“But why would the newspapers lie about Don Panchito?” he asked.

His father sighed and said, “Because he gave them that freedom,” an answer that left José even more perplexed.

T
he gondoliers dipped their oars into the canal and the water slid beneath them as the boat began to move. José was fascinated by the
chinampas
, the tiny plots of land built on twigs and branches that dotted the canals and were farmed by the Indians. Some held a single row of pumpkins or a solitary rose bush yielding tall columns of blood-red roses. Others were spacious enough for a small thatched hut and a pretty little garden where naked Indian babies watched their mothers harvest chilies and corn. He was dimly aware of the buzz of his aunts' complaining voices like mosquitos in the background. His grandmother crooked her finger at him, and he joined her on her pile of pillows. He lay against her bony shoulder and watched the sunlight flash between the shaggy branches of the juniper trees.

“Abuelita, do the gardens really float?” he asked her.

“They did once,” she replied, “but now they are so old they are rooted to the canal beds. When I was little girl, some of them still drifted, and it was lovely to see. What are your aunts saying?”

“They say the water smells and the insects bite them.”

“Cows,” she commented. “I wish my sons had lived.”

“Why, Abuelita?”

“Because they would have left,” she replied. “Unlike daughters. Daughters never leave. Promise me,
mijo
, that you will go and see the world.”

“I do not wish to leave you,” he said.

She stroked his hair. “You are my precious boy,” she said. “But you will leave. Men cannot help it. Restlessness runs in your veins. What book is your mother reading?”

“I think it is the life of Santa Teresa de Ávila.”

“Ah,” she said. “Seeking instruction for sainthood, no doubt. Well, at least she does not complain, and she has in her own way lived.”

“What do you mean, Abuelita?”

“To visit God in his heaven is to go somewhere even if it is only in her mind. Where would you like to go, José?”

“Oh,” he murmured drowsily. “Everywhere.”

A
licia, overhearing the conversation between her mother and her son, smiled to herself. They spoke to each other like old friends across the decades that separated them. A kind of innocence united them, but while José's was born of wonder, La Niña's was the product of world-weariness. Alicia's childhood memories of her mother were of a woman who labored grimly and ceaselessly at the innumerable tasks required to preserve her family's status in the tumultuous times that followed the expulsion of the French. The Marquesa María de Jesús had been sharp-tongued and humorless, a social arbiter and a stickler for propriety who raised her daughters in the language of threats, proverbs, and admonitions. That woman had decamped, leaving in her place La Niña, an old widow who was by turns sentimental and tactless, caustic and tender, conniving and selfless, and utterly indifferent to the social mores that she had once fought to preserve. This elderly edition of her mother was easier to love, but there was no greater understanding between them than when Alicia had been the unmarriageable and pious thorn in the
marquesa
's side.

Her mother's essential and unchanging quality was her worldliness. From her mother's perspective, Alicia knew her religious devotion had always seemed like a way to avoid the painful reality of her disfigurement. La Niña could not understand that the point of Alicia's faith was not to project herself into a distant heaven to escape the actualities of life on earth. To the contrary, as Jesus had insisted, the kingdom of God was to be found on earth, in the day-to-day life of flesh and blood. God had not descended from heaven and lived as a man so that men might awaken in paradise when they died. He had lived as a man to make human life sacred. She could not be a true follower of Christ without living as though every moment on earth was luminous.

She glanced across the water at her husband, engrossed in conversation with his brothers-in-law, his broad back turned to her. Upon his return from the north, they had discovered a depth of desire for each other that had surprised them both. Her relief that he had returned alive, and his gratitude after the horrors of war for the life she provided for him, had renewed their marriage. Night after night, they explored together the intense animal comfort of bodily closeness and the joy of giving and getting pleasure. Her avidity had startled him at first. He had imagined she would feel constrained by what he awkwardly called her “piety.” She had laughed and told him, “We are husband and wife, Miguel. There is no shame between us.” Inspired, he had introduced new ways for them to wring every last drop of bliss from each other's body. Now, as she watched him, she was imagining the familiar body naked atop her, the prickle of his chest hair, his warm, smoky breath, his hard buttock muscles contracting and relaxing beneath her hands as he drove into her. A flush of longing heated her breasts and colored her throat. She looked down at her book and fell upon the words with which Santa Teresa described her union with God: “The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several moans; and so excessive was the sweetness caused me by this intense pain that one can never wish to lose it.”

S
armiento sat beneath the canopy of the
trajinera
that carried him and his brothers-in-law alongside the women. It was named
La Sirena
and decorated with primitive paintings of large-breasted mermaids wearing seaweed tiaras. The canal had narrowed and the Indian oarsmen stopped pulling to let the vessel fall back for the women to pass. He watched Alicia disappear with a pang in his chest and a twitch in his groin as his tongue recalled her briny savor, like a pearl freshly cut from an oyster.

“Miguel! Pay attention!”

He returned his gaze to Gonzalo and the deck of cards laid out on the table before him. His brothers-in-law were attempting to teach him how to play a gambling game, but he kept losing the thread of the explanations, which involved French and English phrases and a complicated system of betting.

“He's hopeless,” Damian said with a smile. The small, handsomely formed man was impeccable in a white linen suit and straw boater. “Let's just drink, shall we?”

“And eat,” gluttonous Gonzalo chimed in. He snapped his fingers and a servant brought a picnic basket stocked with imported foods from his department store and a bucket holding a half-dozen bottles of champagne on ice. “We must keep up our strength for our encounter with our mother-in-law.”

“I am very fond of her,” Miguel protested.

“Of course, you are her favorite,” Gonzalo replied. “She barely suffers me and Damian. I wonder what our father-in-law would have made of you.”

“I never had the pleasure of meeting him,” Sarmiento replied.

Damian laughed. “It was no pleasure!” He turned to Gonzalo. “Did you get the lecture on the ranks of nobility?”

“Ah, yes,” Gonzalo replied. “A duke outranks a
marqués
, but a
marqués
outranks a count, who in turn outranks a viscount …”

“Duke from
dux
,” Damian quoted, “meaning leader in Latin, and
marqués
from the Old French
marchis
, the ruler of a frontier.”

Gonzalo paused midbite and said to Sarmiento, “The old man took all that crap quite seriously. He fancied himself the last civilized man in barbaric México.”

“Yes, he was a real bastard,” Damian said. “Let's eat.”

The food was served, the wine poured. Damian, sampling the wine, said, “It's just as well that we don't teach Miguel to play faro. With his luck, he'd clean us out.”

“My luck?” Sarmiento asked. “I've never been good at gaming of any kind.”

“You bet on Madero,” Damian said. “He was what the Americans call ‘the long shot.' ‘Long shots' pay off quite well, yet you seem reluctant to collect your winnings.”

Sarmiento set his glass down. “You're being typically obscure.”

“He means,” Gonzalo said, his mouth full of bread and ham, “Madero owes you for sticking your neck out for him.”

“Exactly,” Damian said, smiling. “He is in your debt.”

“I supported Madero on principle. I don't want anything from him.”

“Then you are the only man in México who doesn't,” Damian said.

“What do you want, Damian?”

He shrugged modestly. “Nothing specific, Miguel, but in my business, it is often useful to have well-placed friends. I would like an introduction.”

“To Madero? I don't think—”

“No, of course not,” Damian said soothingly. “Not to the president, but you must also know his brother, Gustavo.”

“Yes, speaking of bastards,” Sarmiento replied.

He had last seen Gustavo Madero, the president's one-eyed brother, holding forth at the Madero family's mansion in Colonia Roma when he had gone to examine Madero before his inauguration. As a functionary led Sarmiento to Madero's third-floor bedroom, he heard Gustavo say, “In a family filled with clever men, the family fool is going to be president.”

“He is someone I could do business with,” Damian said.

S
armiento had found Madero in a large, sunny bedroom filled with congratulatory baskets of fruits and flowers. He sat with ink-stained fingers at a little writing desk wearing a maroon robe with a white silk scarf knotted at his throat. Just as on the first day they had met, the little man was alone; not even his wife with him. On a table beside his bed was the famous Ouija board. There were scraps of paper on the floor on which were answers from the spirits to the questions Madero and his wife propounded to them.