Caramelo (19 page)

There were fires everywhere, it seemed, a string of sticky smoke stinging his eyes. Narciso covered his nose and mouth with his handkerchief. There was no time to bury anyone. Under orders, they were to burn the dead where they fell, otherwise epidemics could start. Sometimes the bodies jumped and squirmed like crackling in the pan.
Ay, qué feo
. It was horrible to watch. They sizzled and snapped, the fat running off them in streams. Narciso felt nauseous, his head light and dizzy, his eyes smarting.

Now he was making his way home as fast as he possibly could. He would only be gone from his work duty for a little while, he reasoned. Who would miss him? In the distance along a church, Narciso saw a desperate woman scuttling across a courtyard with a white flag tied to a broom. Somebody’s mama, he thought.
Pobrecita
, and his heart contracted.

On a corner in front of a photographer’s studio, an unfortunate in
campesino
whites lay jerking on the ground, black blood trickling from his eyes and mouth and ears.
Mamá
, he thought he heard the dying man cough before letting go life. Narciso shuddered and stumbled on. The shadows were long and slanted now and made him aware he needed to get home before dark. After sunset the city was totally dark except for the funeral fires.

How desolate the city looked. Every shop was closed, the metal curtains pulled shut over the entrances. Broken glass from upper windows lay scattered everywhere. It frightened Narciso to see the familiar streets so heavily damaged. Stay close to the walls, he told himself. Snipers were hiding on rooftops. When he reached the Zócalo he wanted to cry, but he reminded himself he was too old to cry. The plaster on several of the building facades was pocked with bullet holes and in some places a window opened to a piece of sky.
Feo, fuerte, y formal
. A man has got to be ugly, strong, and proper, he kept repeating to himself in order to keep from buckling under.

—¿Quién vive?
a voice called out from under the darkness of the
portales
. The question meant—Whose side are you on? Madero? Or Huerta? Narciso paused for a moment. The wrong answer would surely be followed with bullets.

—Who lives, I said.

—I do, if God wills it.

Laughter.

—Shoot him first, talk politics later.

—¡¡¡…!!!

—Stand him up against the wall.

—I say we execute him under the law of flight. Let him run and we say he was trying to escape.

—We might miss. Better he stand up against the wall.

Two soldiers escorted Narciso by either arm, because by now he could barely walk. He had to be dragged and forced to stand, since his legs had turned to rags and no longer obeyed him. His captors were arguing again as to how best to do away with him when, as Divine Providence would have it, at that very moment an officer passed by.

—What happened here?

—A prisoner attempting to escape, my captain.

—Let him go. I know this boy. His father and I visit the same barber.

A
fter a very long time, long enough for Eleuterio to worry about his wife’s health and regret he hadn’t gone out himself, Regina appeared as joyous as if she’d just come back from a Sunday promenade in the Alameda park.

—¡Viejo!
What luck is mine! Who do you think I ran into? Remember Agapito Molina? Agapito. You know the one. The fatty who works in the stables of
los ingleses
. That’s him. Well, you can’t imagine. He promised to deliver two sacks of oats tonight in exchange for the piano!

—No, not my Bosendorfer!

—Now, don’t you start with one of your
berrinches, viejo
. This is no time for sentiment over a silly piano. I promise I’ll get you another one later.

—My Bosendorfer for two sacks of oats? Regina, in the name of God, you have no idea of the value of this instrument. It isn’t just a piano, it’s a Bosendorfer, made by one of the oldest and finest piano makers in the world, the choice of European kings. Why, Franz Liszt owned a Bosendorfer. They say the young Liszt ruined several instruments in a single performance, so powerful was his playing, until a Bosendorfer was introduced and survived his fury!

—I don’t want to hear another one of your stories. I’ve spent all morning risking my life looking for food while …

—But consider this,
señora
, Soledad interrupted. —Consider how the piano has served as a barricade against the door. In these times of trouble we may need it for more than music.

—Well … true enough. I hadn’t thought about that. Let me see what else Agapito might like.

N
arciso found his legs running and his body being dragged along following. He ran along the deserted streets like a madman. He stumbled, crawled, rolled, slid along walls, scraped his knuckles, dove into doorways, and scurried off with his bladder about to erupt, but he did not stop running until he could see the corner building on Misericordia and Leandro Valle. Clambering up the stairway two steps at a time, Narciso did not stop until he stood before the huge doors of his apartment, which he thumped savagely with his foot.

It was Regina who opened the door, startled and slightly annoyed. Before her stood her son, sweaty, filthy, exhausted.

—I knew it, I knew it. I knew I couldn’t depend on you. You’re just like your father. Don’t worry about me. Who cares if I starve, I’m only your poor mother …

Narciso opened his mouth. He opened his throat, he emptied his lungs, he pushed and pushed, but no sound came out except a little hacking like when one has swallowed a chicken bone. He was not able to produce a syllable beyond letting go a weak cackle just before slumping to his knees and collapsing onto the red tiles that were never quite as clean as Regina would’ve liked them.

All the cathedral bells in the city were ringing when Narciso opened his eyes. For a moment he thought he was in heaven, but no, it was only the infirmary, and the ringing bells were welcoming the new president, General Huerta. Narciso had suffered a collapsed lung and had to be admitted at once to the army hospital, where they removed three of his ribs as easily as if they were sawing off three rungs of a ladder. They sent him home with a hole in his chest from which they say he breathed—I don’t know how this is so, but this is the story told—and with the three pieces of bone that had once been his ribs wrapped in a gauzy bundle, like lunch knotted in a handkerchief. Thereafter the opening had to be daubed
daily with iodine and bound in clean bandages, so that for the rest of his life Narciso Reyes could no longer enjoy the pleasures of soaking in a hot tub or swimming in the frothy bay of Acapulco.

The diagnosis was a collapsed lung, but the real cause of Narciso Reyes’ trouble, as Regina never tired of explaining, was
susto
, fear, a Mexican malaise responsible for centuries of harm:

—It happened during the Ten Tragic Days when they stood him against the wall. My son Narciso expected a bullet, but it was
puro susto
that lodged itself inside him like a bit of metal.

28.

Nothing But Story

      L
ater in life Narciso would brag how he’d lost three ribs in the decisive battle at Celaya, but, of course, this was nothing but story. Long before that historic battle he was already waiting out the end of the war in the United States. Narciso was just a kid with more acne on his face than facial hair. But he would remember his bachelor days in Chicago with fondness. He’d outgrown the patriotic notions about dying wrapped in the Mexican flag after the Ten Tragic Days. He’d seen enough of war to realize it was all senseless.

All his life Narciso would remember the bodies he’d been ordered to burn during the Ten Tragic Days, the dead children and women and
ancianos
. Just the thought of them made him feel like vomiting. He wondered if all soldiers felt that way, but were too cowardly to say so. It made him shudder. Any pang of guilt he felt for deserting his country fled the moment he touched the hole in his chest. He’d done his part, hadn’t he? His mother didn’t deserve to have her only son reduced to three ribs.

—I don’t want my son reduced to three ribs, Regina said. —There. It’s decided. Narciso, I’m sending you to your father’s family in Chicago.

—But didn’t Uncle Old commit unforgivable sins that have the whole family not speaking to him?

—Believe me, you’re in less danger with your Uncle Old than if you stayed here in your own country,
mijo
.

Then she retreated to her bedroom and proceeded to light candles to all her saints, to la Divina Providencia, and especially to a huge gilded statue of la Virgen de Guadalupe ransacked from who knows where that dominated an entire wall of her room.

—Virgencita, I promise if you send my boy back to me whole, I’ll do
whatever is your will, do you hear me? she said, shouting to the wooden statue of Mexico’s patroness. —Well, what? Have we got a deal? La Virgen de Guadalupe seemed to nod her head meekly.

Satisfied, Regina let her son wait out the revolution with a scoundrel who had run off to Cuba and later to the States after stealing the Mexican army payroll. I wish I could tell you about this episode in my family’s history, but nobody talks about it, and I refuse to invent what I don’t know.

It was a good thing Narciso left when he did. By the end of 1914 any man between the ages of fifteen and forty caught wandering the streets was rounded up, uniformed, and given a gun. Hunchbacks, invalids, vagabonds, street peddlers,
borrachos
, no one was safe. They caught them coming out of the bullring, or
cantinas
, or the movies. After dark everyone took cover or the draft wagons would collect you and you were in the army. If you were not good enough to kill, you were good enough to be killed. Even Eleuterio had to hide and stay indoors; well, even the old ones were being taken.

Water and light were hard to come by during the war. The
azoteas
of every home were filled with vessels of every type catching rainwater. Electricity was turned on intermittently and never when you expected, and candles were exorbitantly expensive. Due to their demand, people had to resort to making their own candles or returning to oil lamps, though oil was in short supply too.

Often the city was plunged in total darkness, which gave the false appearance of safety from snipers, bullets, and cannonballs. The whole population scurried about like mice grazing the walls. On some moonless nights one moved about discovering the world by hand, sometimes stumbling into doorways where couples were involved in peaceful pursuits. —Oh, pardon me!

As in the case of wars, those who benefited were not the most devout but the clever ones, and Regina was clever. She sold what came her way as people slowly parted with their possessions, but what she became famous for, what people knocked on the door for, day and night, night and day, was her cigarette business. She and Soledad rolled homemade cigarettes, because cigarettes are what people need most when they are afraid.

The years Narciso was away, so many unbelievable things happened to the citizens of Mexico City, they could only be true. The servant girl Soledad Reyes, in her kitchen kingdom, witnessed many things. A dog
carrying away a human hand. A Villista shot dead while squatting to put on his
guaraches
. A cross-eyed
soldadera
leading a troop of soldiers. The fearsome Zapatistas marching into Mexico City, dusty as cows, humble and hungry, politely begging for hard
tortillas
.

Soledad Reyes saw cannons, and mausers, and neighbors hiding horses in upstairs bedrooms to keep them from being stolen. She saw a man waltzing across the Zócalo with a crystal chandelier bigger than he was tall. She saw a dismembered head mumble a filthy curse before dying. She saw a mule enter the main cathedral and genuflect when it reached the main altar. She saw the magnificent Zapata riding on a beautiful horse down the streets of the capital, and just as he crossed in front of her, he raised an elegant hand to his face and scratched his nose. These things she saw with her own eyes! It was only later when she was near the end of her life that she began to doubt what she’d actually seen and what she’d embroidered over time, because after a while the embroidery seems real and the real seems embroidery.

What she could vow was true was the hunger. That she remembered. During the war they’d eaten nothing but beans,
atole
, and
tortillas
, it seems, and, when they could get it, a bit of greasy bad-tasting meat that was supposed to be beef but was probably dog, a watery milk, coffee spiked with bread crumbs and chickpeas, lard and butter with cottonseed oil, and bread that tasted like paper.

In the meantime, Narciso wandered the streets of Chicago, where recruitment posters shouted:
WE MUST HAVE VILLA, CAPTURE VILLA, WHO DO WE WANT
?—
VILLA, LET
’
S GET HIM
. But even if they could catch the man who spat in the face of America and thumbed his nose at the red, white, and blue, what would they do with Villa if they caught him?

The invasion at Veracruz, the invasion sent to capture Villa. This was when the Mexicans began to name their dogs after Wilson.
^*

^*
In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson authorized the Marines to invade the port city of Tampico after American sailors entered a restricted dock and were arrested. At the time the U.S. was trying to bring about the destruction of General Huerta’s government by encouraging the selling of American arms to northern revolutionaries like Pancho Villa. (This is interesting, since Wilson had supported this same General Huerta when he ousted President
Madero from office with a military coup. Madero and his vice president were arrested at the National Palace and under mysterious, or not-so-mysterious, circumstances were shot point-blank while being taken to the penitentiary for “safety.” Newspapers reported he died during an attempt by his supporters to free him, but nobody believed this even then. Thanks to Woodrow Wilson’s and the world’s lack of protest, Huerta became president of Mexico. But I digress.)
   
Although Mexico released the detained U.S. sailors within the hour, on April 21 the U.S. Marines landed in “the halls of Moctezuma,” and what resulted was a bloody battle with hundreds of civilian casualties. This “invasion” created strong anti-U.S. feelings, with the Mexican press urging citizens to retaliate against the “Pigs of Yanquilandia.” Riots in Mexico City occurred. Mobs looted U.S.-owned businesses, destroyed a statue of George Washington, and scared the hell out of American tourists
.
   
Of course, later Pancho Villa would counter with an invasion of his own. In March 1916, Villa and his men crossed the U.S. border and attacked Columbus, New Mexico. One of the first shots stopped the large clock in the railroad station at 4:11 a.m., and by the time the skirmish was over, eighteen Americans had been killed. President Wilson sent General John J. Pershing and six thousand American troops into Mexico to find Villa. But Villa and his men eluded them to the end. Wilson withdrew the forces in January of 1917, $130 million later
.