The City of Palaces (35 page)

His father lifted him out of the buggy, as if he were a baby and not a ten-year-old boy. His protest died on his lips because the power of his father's body as he lifted and held him made him feel warm and protected.

“Not inside the cathedral,” his father said. He crooked a finger upward. “To the top.”

He followed the direction of his father's finger. Outlined against the sky's faded brocade was the west bell tower, where Santo Ángel de la Guarda lived. He was the little brother of Santa María de Guadalupe, who lived in the east tower. She was so immense that, when she was rung on a clear day, she could be heard all the way to heaven.

His father reached into the buggy for a lantern and handed José the blanket. “You may need this when we reach the top,” he said. He stopped a passing Indian and gave him a peso to watch the horse and buggy.

He followed his father through the small, wooden door that led into the bell tower. His father lit the lantern and began to ascend the narrow stone risers. José tried to keep pace but the stairs were steep and the walls sweated a piercingly cold chill that made his teeth rattle. Cold and tired, he stopped. In a moment, he had lost sight of the lantern and stood in utter darkness.

“Papá!” he called, frightened. “Papá!”

His father came back down the stairs to where José was leaning, breathless, against the damp wall. “Do you remember when you were very little and rode on my back?” He stooped down. “Come on,
mijo
. Climb up and I will carry you the rest of the way.”

He clambered onto his father's back, tucked his legs beneath his father's arms, and clasped his father's chest. He could feel the heat of exertion rising from his father's body, deepening the familiar scents of tobacco and bay rum. He leaned his cheek against his father's neck and closed his eyes, and he was a toddler again being swept off his unsteady feet by his enormous father, who slathered him with kisses and called him “
mi hombrecito
”—my little man.

José did not doubt that his father loved him, but it was the bodies of the women of his family from which he ordinarily received the animal intimacy that created love's profoundest bond. The smooth, soft, and yielding bodies of his mother, grandmother, and aunts swaddled him in flesh. His father's embrace was very different. His body was hard and his skin covered with bristly hairs. In his barbed embrace, José did not lose himself, as he did in his mother's arms, but remained a distinct entity. His mother's body sheltered him; his father's body challenged him. His mother's touch was imbued with the nostalgia of the womb, calling him back to a place of unquestioned safety. His father's strong hands had delivered him from that womb and continued to push him forward into the world.

They reached the cavernous room where a dozen lesser bells were hung and ascended a final flight of stairs to the top of the tower, where they stood on a platform beneath the three tons of Santo Ángel. José eased off his father's back. His father draped the blanket around José's shoulders, took his hand, led him to the east side of the tower, and said, “
Mira
,” as the eyes of morning began to open above the snow-shrouded peaks of the volcanos, Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl.

He watched the light break across the valley, revealing the green and brown of farmland. The occasional flash of colored tiles marked the dome of a church of one of the outlying villages. He could see the silvery sheen of the five small lakes that, in ancient times, had filled most of the valley. His eyes traced La Viga, the last surviving canal from the time of the Aztecs, as it flowed toward the city from Lake Xochimilco. As it had in Moctezuma's time, it connected the countryside to the city, and its surface was clotted with barges and canoes laden with food and flowers for the markets. His father led him around the platform, and he saw the Paseo de la Reforma, almost deserted at this hour, cutting west toward the mossy forest and castle-covered hill of Chapultepec. He could see the domes and towers of the colonial city amid the marble structures of the Centenario, seventeenth-century tenements, and the new suburbs of the rich. Electric streetcars and horse-drawn carriages shared the same venerable cobblestone streets. Far off, a train crossed an iron trestle and plunged into a remnant of primordial forest. He saw everything all at once as the sun rose higher in the sky, and he could only murmur, “Oh, Papá, it is so beautiful. I never knew it was so beautiful.”

“It is,” his father said. “This is our patrimony, José. Do you know what that means?”

José, still astonished by the landscape unfolding beneath him, could only shake his head.

“This is México, Josélito. This is what our fathers have given us to love and protect and, if need be, to lay down our lives to preserve it for our sons. This is our world, José.”

José's heart beat with pride for his country and love for his father, and he could not tell where one ended and the other began.

“Yes, Papá,” he said, slipping his hand into his father's. “This is our world.”

O
n the sidewalks of El Carmen, awed passersby stopped and pointed at the Silver Ghost. Even on the
colonia
's gouged roadways the Rolls-Royce's engine purred, unlike the firework explosions of less opulent automobiles. The vehicle moved steadily forward in the direction of the polychrome-tiled dome of the church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen, visible above the row of palm trees that marked the plaza.

Tío Damian's new car had only recently arrived from England, complete with the broad-shouldered, hard-faced English driver whose black uniform gave him a martial look. The sensation of traveling in a coach not being pulled by horses made José feel like a character out of a Jules Verne novel. From his perch beside the driver, he turned to share his glee with his mother, but she and his uncle were deep in conversation.

“I can't believe you intended to come here unaccompanied,” Damian said. “The streets are filled with thieves and worse.”

“They are poor, not criminals,” Alicia said shortly. “There is a difference.”

“I do not see it,” he replied.

She bit her lip. “It was good of you to escort us,” she said.

“Well, since your husband has decided to run off and play the revolutionary, someone needs to watch over you,” he replied and added, with feigned casualness, “Have you heard from him?”

“Not since January,” she said. A month earlier. “He told me he would be traveling in areas from which he would be unable to send letters.”

Damian nodded. “The Sierra Madre,” he said. “That's where Madero and his people are holed up.” He tapped his finger on the seat rest. “Twenty years ago, Díaz would have flushed them out and …”

She completed the sentence in her head—
and shot them
. Aloud she said, “But he has not. Even the government newspapers are filled with stories of fighting in the north and in Morelos.”

He grunted. “A dozen tiny fires in a country the size of México do not make a revolution,” he said uncertainly, as if trying to convince himself.

A
licia looked out the window and saw not the dusty barrio of El Carmen but herself embracing Miguel at the railway station in the American town of Douglas while Tomasa stood impatiently at her side. January in the Sonora desert was cold and bright, the winter sun refracted off the bare surfaces of rock and earth. The train station buzzed with activity. The conductor shouted, “All aboard,” in the harsh syllables of English. Reluctantly, she released her husband.

“I will return to you,” he said defiantly. “When I do, I will bring with me hope for a better México.”

“I only care that you bring yourself home safely,” she said.

“I must go,” he said, picking up his satchel. “Good-bye, Tomasa.”

The girl had slipped her hand into Alicia's. “Good-bye, Doctor,” she said. “I will take care of Doña Alicia.”

Miguel smiled. “I have no doubt of that.”

And then he was gone. She stood with Tomasa at the platform until his train was no longer visible on the eastern horizon. She sighed, squeezed the girl's hand, and said, “Now we must find your brother.”

The American town astonished her after the long journey across the vast expanses of dun-colored Mexican desert. When the train did stop, it was in villages where she witnessed scenes of poverty that still woke her at night. Packs of skeletal feral dogs, starving children, vultures swarming an unseen corpse, the slow parade of men and women so caked with desert dust they seemed to have sprung from the earth. She had always imagined that hell would be a place of caves and darkness, but here it was, brilliantly and cruelly lit, every horrifying detail laid bare beneath the relentless sun. After five days, the train pulled into Douglas, passing beneath an iron archway inscribed with the words “Welcome to America.” Miguel, translating the words for her, had snorted, “America! Typical Yankee arrogance. We were America when these people were living in hovels.”

As she and Tomasa rode through the streets of Douglas, she thought the days when the Americans lived in hovels were long past. The roads were wide and smoothly paved. In place of the familiar street markets of México were rows of dry goods stores, which displayed everything from shoes to hammers, sewing needles to candy confections, behind immense plate glass windows. As evening fell, the entire town was lit by electric lamps, creating a bright oasis in the surrounding darkness of the desert. The effect on Alicia was as disorienting as it was impressive. It seemed to her she had entered not simply a different country but a different time—the future. It was a future filled with the jangly language of the Americans, of which she spoke only a few carefully memorized sentences; with incessant mechanical noises—sputtering automobiles, ringing telephones, whistling trains, and water rushing through plumbing; with the acrid stink from the copper smelters at the edge of town; and with the Americans themselves, pale-eyed and sunburned, careening along the sidewalks as if cherub-sized demons prodded them forward with tiny pitchforks. She was both fascinated and repelled by the Americans, who, she thought, were like the food they served her, appetizing in appearance but flavorless.

Padre Cáceres had sent messages ahead to Douglas that Alicia was arriving with a daughter of the Yaquis. A message had returned that she would be met, but no details were given other than that she should wait. On her second evening in the town, the manager of the hotel knocked at the door to her room. Frowning, he communicated to her that she had a visitor downstairs. Leaving Tomasa behind, she followed him to the lobby filled with potted palms and horsehide furniture, where, to the manager's clear disapproval, a thin, hawk-faced, white-haired Indian with eyes like flints stood on the oriental carpet.

The Indian spoke in Spanish, saying, “I have come for Tomasa Flores.”

“May I ask your name?” Alicia asked politely.

“Sacramento Matus,” he replied. “I took custody of the girl and her brother after their mother's murder, and I brought them here. Where is she?”

Before she could respond, Alicia heard Tomasa, behind her, say quietly, “I am here, Don Sacramento.” She walked past Alicia to Sacramento. “I have returned to care for my brother as my mother wishes.” After a moment, she added, “I only wanted to be a warrior, like my father.”

A faint smile flickered across Sacramento's lips. “You have shown you have your father's blood in you, now you must show you have your mother's as well. Mateo needs you.”

She bent her head slightly. “Yes, Achai. I will get my things and come with you.”

She turned and went up the stairs, leaving Alicia alone with Sacramento. She was aware not merely of his physical strength—he was spare as a rod of steel—but of a spiritual power that glowed in the depths of his eyes. She felt, as she did with the Americans, that he occupied a different dimension of time than she, not the future, not the past, but a place beyond the reach of time.

“She called you ‘father,'” Alicia said, recognizing the Yaqui word by which Tomasa had addressed him.

“I have tried to be a father to her and Mateo,” he replied.

“Where will you take her?” Alicia asked.

“To her home,” Sacramento said.

“Here, in this town?”

“Be assured, she will be safe,” he said. “I am grateful to you for bringing her back to her people. Our children are so few that each one is precious to us.”

“It is only a small restitution for what my people have done to yours,” she said.

He cast a long look at her. The light in his eyes seemed to illuminate every cell in her body, every moment of her life. It was all she could do to endure his scrutiny.

At length he said, in a soft, kind voice, “Daughters of Jerusalem weep not for me, but for yourselves and your children.”

She recognized the words that Jesus had spoken to the women who wept for him as he dragged his cross along the Via Dolorosa to Calvary.