The Shadow of the Shadow (23 page)

"What's an atheist doing painting the Virgin of Guadalupe?"

"You think she's a virgin? Look at the colors. Maybe she's not
a virgin at all. She is very Mexican, though, isn't she? And she's
dressed for a party, her and the people worshiping her, too. And
the worshipers are the people. I'm sorry, but I'm not explaining
myself very well, am I?"

"No, you explain it just fine. I'm just not so sure I can explain
it to my readers that clearly. I'm really an action writer at heart. I
write about accidents, gunfights, crimes of passion. I didn't really
come here to talk about murals."

"Do you like Tintoretto's virgins, Botticelli's winged women?
What would you think if we erected the Eiffel Tower in Alameda
Park?"

"Is it true that Rivera's painting the Creation in the
amphitheater?"

"Don't let the title fool you. Just take a look at his women's
thighs. 'here's more than one road that leads to Rome. Mine is
color."

"I understand you studied painting in Chicago."

"For all the good it did me," said the young artist, contemplating his brightly colored Virgin of Guadalupe, for which the
Ministry of Education would pay him four hundred pesos when
the mural was finished.

"I hear there's been some shooting in the halls."

"There's been more insults than bullets. The students get all
upset because we're covering the walls with ideas. They paint over
our work, throw gum, spitballs, that sort of thing. And sometimes
we've exchanged more than words, if you know what I mean... Do
you like it?" asked the painter, motioning toward his work.

"Very much," said Pioquinto Manterola who, say what you
will, was highly receptive to any act of passion, not just the day's
sanguinary headlines.

Manterola left the young painter gazing at his Virgin from a
scaffold buttressed to protect him from the students' attacks.

He wandered through the halls of the National Preparatory
School. Charlot, the Frenchman, was working on a group of
Spanish conquistadors looking like metallic monsters in a fight
against Aztec warriors. Rivera wasn't on the scaffolds today.
Stomachaches, romantic troubles, back pain kept him shut in at
home.

When the reporter circled back, he found Revueltas armed
with an enormous brush dripping yellow paint, fighting off a pair
of dandily dressed but rather effeminate-looking students.

"If you don't like it, you've got your ass to look at instead,
gentlemen," shouted the muralist.

"Instead of painting that kind of crap, you should leave the wall
painted white. This is a house of study. And that's the way it ought
to be," said one of the students whom the reporter recognized as a
certain Salvador Novo who brought his ingenuous poems by the
newspaper every now and then.

"Need a hand, painter?"

"No, I can hold them off, thanks. Come on by some evening after the light's gone and we'll go have a drink."

"Have you wounded any students yet?"

"Three so far, scratches, nothing much, but these two jackanapes are going to make it five," said the painter, advancing on
his attackers. A small dark-skinned helper came to his aid armed
with a spatula instead of a dripping brush.

The reporter smiled.

ALTHOUGH THE AFFINITY GROUP Fraternity was small,
its members filled Tomas' tiny house to the seams, occupying the
bed and the few chairs, leaving no room for them to pace up and
down as they talked. Each man took his place and stayed there
until the meeting was over. The group had no rules. No affinity
group did. They were drawn together by chance and sympathy of
ideas, and they took an active part in the movement according
to agreements arrived at during their interminable meetings.
There were groups dedicated to promoting the idea of free love,
the concept of rational education, violent direct action, groups
dedicated to propagating the classic anarchist texts, and simple
discussion groups.

Six men made up the group Fraternity. They made no effort
to recruit more members, but if someone else happened to join it
was fine with them-the same as if one of their members left the
group due to a conflict of ideas, travel, or boredom. Their main
concern was propaganda work to further the cause of radical
unionism. Besides printing an occasional pamphlet, they'd taken
on responsibility for the distribution of the CGT newspapers in the
southern part of the city, the tabloids Our Ideals and Solidarity. But
the group had another distinguishing feature. Its members were
widely recognized in union circles as "men of action." They were
armed and always ready for a fight, and they'd taken to the front
lines in the growing conflict between the anarchist-led unions and
the police and the CROM's hired gunmen. If you were to ask
them their position on violence, each of these men-Varela (who
hailed from Veracruz), the gimp-legged Paulino Martinez, the pastry cook Hidalgo (born in Badajoz, Spain), Hector (a sixteenyear-old black from Tabasco), Manuel Bourdillon (the bastard son
of a French mill foreman who worked as a machinist at the Santa
Teresa Mill) andTomas Wong-would tell you that violence on the
part of the workers had to be a function of the masses, a defensive
weapon-a protective shield for mass demonstrations and strikes,
a righteous and just violence that would allow the movement to
spread by protecting its flanks from the violence of the system.
There was a time when they'd debated the need for individual acts
of violence, especially in the summer of 1920 following Gomez'
bombing of the archbishopric and the Recuerdo costume jewelry
factory. The group had unanimously agreed that this sort of action
could never help to advance the movement, its ideas, and the
organization of anarchist unions-and that it would only serve to
scare off the weaker segments of a movement that was just then
gaining strength and which, a few months later, would bring about
the creation of the CGT. So Tomas regarded the presence of San
Vicente and his friend Lefty, just in from Puebla for the meeting,
with cautious skepticism.

"Hell, Tomas, you know me well enough... I'm not crazy," said
San Vicente without wasting time. "I'm not the kind of guy who
preaches individual action and propaganda of ideas just for its own
sake. I'm against assassination as a basic tool in the struggle. I'm a
union organizer, you know that, but everywhere I go I see that what
we need's a real newspaper, a daily newspaper, and that's something
we'll never be able to pull off without a full staff of writers earning
a decent wage, and without buying our own printing press. What
happened during the railroad strike last year? They shut us out of
the presses. What happened in Atlixco a few months ago? Every
time we need our own propaganda the most, we don't have the
money to make it fly. Now Lefty and I made up some figures..."

Lefty carefully unfolded a single sheet of paper and read out
loud in a mechanical voice. "Two-year budget for organization
newspaper. Wages for three reporters, one typesetter, one compositor, one pressman, two distribution men, one administrator:
nineteen thousand six hundred pesos. Two used German Stein
linotypes, type, lead, paper, ink, typewriters, telephone, furniture:
one hundred and eighty-two thousand pesos. Mailing costs
for two years: six thousand pesos. We'll start out with a run of
five thousand copies and expand to twenty thousand. Also one
pamphlet per month, and a weekly magazine like La Protesta puts
out in Argentina. For office space, we could use the ground floor of
a union local, the upstairs can be used for meetings: five thousand
pesos. Total expenses: two hundred thirteen thousand pesos, give
or take a few."

San Vicente looked out at his listeners, their shining eyes.

"Where are you going to get the dough, San Vicente, and how
are you going to explain where it came from?" asked Bourdillon.

"We'll say it comes from the inheritance of a Turkish millionaire, distant relative of some imaginary comrade who gave it
all over to the movement. 'hat's not the problem, we'll work the
cover so it'll stick."

"Yeah, but whele's the money going to come tom, Sebastian?"

"Lefty, the other paper," he said with a smile, lighting up a
filterless cigarette.

Lefty took another sheet of paper out of the pocket of his
patched vest and read to the group.

"Mail train from Puebla, stopped at kilometer eleven in
Apizaco. Three men make the hit, we need one more at the
Apizaco station, one driver, and a man for the horses. Six comrades
in all. Estimated take: eighteen thousand six hundred to twentyone thousand pesos. The American Smelting Company payroll in
Aguascalientes. Paymaster collects the money from the bank every
Friday along with two armed bodyguards. Four men make the hit,
one more drives the car. Estimated take: nineteen to twenty-three
thousand, depending on the time of the month. Mexico City
Central Post and Telegraph Office..."

"We get the idea. How many more are there?"

"Nine," said Lefty. "I've got another sheet with details for each
operation. We can pull off all the jobs inside of two months. All of
them in different towns, no dead or injured, nice and clean. Isn't
that right, Sebastian?"

"Hell, man, that's how we want it. I'm not too hot on the idea
of taking out some paymaster or innocent bystander, myself. You
always hope that things'll go the way you plan them."

"Yeah, but if for some reason we get caught and they can
connect the robberies to the organization, that's all the government
needs to declare the CGT illegal and sink the movement."

"It's a risk we'll have to take. I'm not trying to fool anyone. I've
thought about that myself," said San Vicente, losing his smile.

"I don't like it," said Tomas, with his head propped between
his hands. "I don't like any of it. This newspapel idea is like a favol
we'd be doing fol the wolkels. But it's not the kind of thing we
need to move things ahead any fastel. Don't get me long, I'm not
aflaid of violence, and it's not like I think the money, the mail
tlain, the payloll, leally belongs to them. It's just as much outs as
anybody else's, they lobbed it off the wolkels in the filst place. It's
not that, but I still don't like it."

"I don't like it either," said Hector.

"Me neither," said Paulino Martinez.

"I'm not so sure," said Hidalgo. "Seems like they've got it
pretty well thought out."

"I think it's a good plan," said Varela.

"If the majority says no, will you abide by our decision?"
Bourdillon asked San Vicente.

"And if the majority says yes, does that mean all of you will
come in?"

"Thele's eight of us. We'll go along with the majolity, but I
don't think we should decide light now," said Tomas. "Let's take a
week to think it ovel."

The other men agreed. After that they spent a while talking
about propaganda distribution around the Abeja Mill, which was still on strike and surrounded by marauding gangs of CROM
gunmen. Finally the meeting ended just as it had begun, without
any kind of ceremony or ritual.

"Hell, man, I'm not going to offend you by trying to convince
you if you're dead set against it. I said what I needed to say already.
Here, I'll help you clean up a little bit," said San Vicente. "What
happened to your lady friend? Did you tell her not to hang around
while the meeting was going on?"

"I told hel to go out fol a while. She said she was going to see
a pictule show," said Tomas, emptying the ashes off a plate into a
garbage tin.

After a few minutes San Vicente stretched out on the bed
with a sigh.

"Looks like I got myself a gig at the Providencia. I used the
name Arturo Reyes. I think it would be better if the rest of the
comrades called me Arturo from now on. It wouldn't do for it to
get around that I was in town."

Tomas nodded, putting away a pitcher of water.

"They got her, Tomas! They got her!" shouted a young boy
bursting into the house. The open door swung back and forth on
its hinges.