The City of Palaces (46 page)

T
he battle continued for a third day. The servants, like cats, disappeared into the crevices of the palace, ignoring La Niña's summonses. She stalked them until she found each one of them, cursed them for their laziness, and threatened to turn them out into the inferno if they did not return to their duties. Late in the morning, the pastor of San Andrés church pounded at the doors of the palace seeking refuge. One of the rebels' explosive shells had struck the bell tower and leveled it. The debris had collapsed the roof of the rectory, leaving him without a home. He was admitted and later, with trembling hands, said Mass in the family chapel for the entire household. Even Sarmiento attended.

As the day wore on, the rattle of machine gun fire joined the explosions of shells. Soldiers' voices could be heard shouting above the din, loudly and then trailing off as they ran through the streets. The old families who had lived in the neighborhood for generations and over whom the Gaviláns had once exercised suzerainty now also appeared at the gates. La Niña instructed the porter to let them in. Soon the elegant courtyards were filled with men, women, children, and infants surrounded by the piles and bundles of their possessions. There were wounds to tend to and hands to hold, keeping Sarmiento and Alicia busy. La Niña and Chepa inspected the larder and discussed how to stretch the food to feed the masses in the courtyards. José leaned on the walkway of the second floor and looked down at the silent Indians crowding the courtyards. Their appearance in the palace was more frightening to him than the explosions and the machine guns outside the walls. After a few minutes, he went into his room. Almost mechanically, he began to collect his dozens of tin soldiers. He dropped them into his toy box and shut the lid.

A
licia rose early the next morning. After dressing in old clothes, she went into the kitchen to help prepare food for the families crammed into the courtyards and the lower rooms of the palace. Chepa smiled when she saw Alicia. At the far end of the room, where the entire wall was taken up with adobe stoves, ovens, and fireplaces, scullions stirred pots and turned tortillas. The cooking fires illuminated walls hung with braids of garlic and chilies and the high ceiling, a rich, greasy brown from the smoke of generations of meals.

“Are you hungry,
Hija
?” Chepa asked.

“No, I came to help you feed our neighbors who are staying with us.”

Chepa replied tartly, “What shall we feed them? José's little cat? There's not enough food.”

“Remember what Jesus did with five loaves and two fishes,” Alicia replied mildly. “Everyone will eat, if only a bowl of beans and tortillas. Give me an apron and put me to work. What do you need done?”

Chepa said reluctantly, “Well, the
molendera
ran away during the night, but grinding corn for tortillas is no work for a lady.”

“Show me her place,” Alicia replied, reaching for an apron hanging on a peg on the wall.

When Sarmiento came into the kitchen looking for her, she was soaking the ground corn in lime water. He took her aside and said, “I'm going to go out while the guns have stopped.”

“The streets are dangerous, Miguel,” she protested.

He lifted his hand, showing her his black bag. “I'll take this,” he said. “A doctor will be safer on the streets than a senator.”

“No one is safe in the streets.”

“I've been in battle before,” he said.

“But where will you go?”

“To scrounge whatever medical supplies I can and go to the National Palace,” he said. “To see if Madero is still president.” He kissed her forehead. “I'll be back soon.”

“Won't you eat something first?”

He took a roll, warm from the oven. “This is enough.”

“Please, be careful.”

He kissed her brow. “I will return alive and in one piece. I promise.”

T
he damage from the previous day's bombardment was apparent as soon as Sarmiento stepped outside the palace. There was a crater in the
plazuela
where the bandstand had been. Flower urns had been overturned and shattered on the cobblestone, spilling black soil and red geraniums. The body of a soldier lay in a pile of debris in a corner. Sarmiento approached. The soldier had been shot through the head, and his shoes and rifle had been taken. He closed the boy's eyes and began walking toward the Zócalo down narrow streets that seemed suddenly foreign and treacherous. The devastation was worse as he approached the great plaza. The sides of buildings looked as if giant bites had been taken out of them. Walls were collapsed and roofs had fallen in. Lampposts were bent down and ruptured telegraph and telephone wires festooned the deserted roadways. The Zócalo was strewn with rubble and bodies. A half-dozen green streetcars had been blasted into burned-out shells. Trees still smoldered from the shells that had hit them. In front of the National Palace, soldiers lay on their stomachs guarding the entrances, and there was a row of artillery guns in front of the cathedral. He willed himself to be calm as he walked through the wreckage toward the entrance of the National Palace. At the door, a captain stopped him and said, “
Quién vive?
”

Sarmiento took a guess. “Madero.”

The captain nodded. “Who are you, Señor?”

“Doctor Miguel Sarmiento,” he said. “I am the president's personal physician and a senator of his party. So he still governs México.”

The captain sighed. “Who governs México is anyone's guess, but the president is still in the palace. You may enter.”

Once inside he was confronted by other soldiers who detained him for nearly an hour until, to his surprise, Gustavo Madero himself appeared.

The president's brother wore a wrinkled suit and a collarless shirt. He was unshaven and his hair uncombed. His glass eye was bright and round as a marble but his natural eye was bloodshot and fatigued.

“Sarmiento,” he said wearily, “perhaps you have not been told, but the Senate is not in session today. You should get back to your family. Díaz may attack again at any moment.”

“I'm your brother's physician. I want to check on his well-being.”

Gustavo hesitated, but then said, “All right. Come. He is fond of you. Perhaps seeing you will raise his spirits.”

He followed Gustavo through the labyrinth of the palace to the presidential suite. In Madero's private office, cots had been set up and the room smelled of food, sweat, and fatigue. The president, as formally attired as his brother was casually dressed, sat in an armchair by a window reading. When he saw Sarmiento, he rose, set the book down on his desk, and went to embrace him.

“Miguel,” he said. “Thank God you are all right! And your family? Josélito? How are they?”

“Frightened, but unharmed. And you?”

“The rebels shelled my house, but fortunately it was not occupied,” he said. “My wife is at Chapultepec and they will not attack there.” He smiled. “This will soon be over.”

“Yes?” Sarmiento asked.

“Reinforcements are on their way. Once they arrive, the rebels will be vastly outnumbered and General Huerta can begin his attack …”

“An attack he should have launched this morning,” Gustavo grunted.

Madero threw him an exasperated look. “I have complete confidence in General Huerta.”

Sarmiento could tell this was an ongoing debate. He sided with Gustavo. “But surely the army outnumbers the rebels at this moment.”

Madero said, as if quoting, “The Ciudadela is a venerable fortress, Miguel. Overwhelming force will be required to take it.” He smiled his gentle, beneficent smile. “You must not worry about the situation too much. When I rode to the palace from Chapultepec, the people came out and threw flowers in my path. The people are still with us, Miguel, and as long as they are with us, all will be well. Your cousin is here. He has been doing good work for us.”

“Luis? May I see him?”

“Yes, of course.” He embraced Sarmiento again. “
Hasta luego
, Miguel.”

“
Hasta luego, mi presidente
,” Sarmiento said. From the corner of his eye, his glance fell on the book Madero had been reading.
The Bhagavad Gita
.

A young secretary escorted him down the hall, past soldiers and scurrying clerks, to Luis's office. Luis came out from behind his desk, held Sarmiento in a long, tight embrace, and, after inquiring about his family, asked, “What is it like on the streets?”

“Silence and horror.”

His cousin nodded. “This morning the rebels blew a hole through the wall at Belem prison, freeing all the scum of the city. Their thugs set fire to the offices of newspapers friendly to the government. Our thugs set fire to theirs.”

“Our thugs?”

He shrugged. “Don't look so surprised. Don Francisco doesn't know about them or pretends not to know, but without them we would be defenseless.”

“Madero says reinforcements are arriving for an attack on the Ciudadela?”

Luis looked disgusted. “So Huerta tells him, but then he disappears to his favorite bar, and our soldiers sit in the streets being picked off by the rebels. If Huerta fails to attack tomorrow, perhaps even Madero will come to the end of his patience. Until he opens his eyes to the actual situation, there is nothing anyone can do.”

“What is the actual situation, Luis?”

“Huerta is a traitor. I believe that he is exchanging secret messages with Díaz through the American ambassador but I cannot yet prove it. Gustavo has men watching Huerta and in the embassy.”

“Why would the Americans help the rebels bring down a democratically elected government?” Sarmiento asked incredulously.

“Dictators are better for American business,” he said. “While Don Porfirio was in power he made enormous concessions to the American mining and railroad companies without consulting anyone. Madero has been looking at those deals and making noises about revising their terms so that México gets more than a few pennies on the dollar. Wilson, the American ambassador, is determined to prevent Madero from interfering with American profits. He has been attacking Madero privately for months, and now he sees his chance to get rid of him. We have intercepted his cables to Washington telling his government that Madero is finished and urging them to recognize Don Félix. So far, their fat President Taft has been cautious, but Wilson is pushing for intervention.”

“An American invasion? On what grounds?”

“All it would take is a misplaced shell or the accidental killing of one of their citizens and they would have their pretext to invade in support of the rebels.”

“This situation—it seems unreal, unbelievable, Luis.”

Luis sighed. “México's history is a series of coups and rebellions, Miguel. I know we hoped it would be different, but evidently political violence is in our blood.” He forced a smile. “Well, one way or the other it will all be settled soon. Perhaps in a day or two we will meet for a drink at the Café Colón.”

Sarmiento could not respond with equal gaiety. Instead he embraced his cousin, kissed him, and murmured, “Take care of yourself, Primito.”

“Go home to your family,” Luis said. “I will see you soon.”

T
he shops were closed, but Sarmiento found a looted pharmacy. He entered and took whatever had been left of value he could use to doctor. As he emerged from the wrecked building, a long car slid imperiously through the bloody streets on its way to the National Palace. American flags fluttered from its corners and he saw in the back seat the profile of the American ambassador.

F
or the next three days detonating shells and bombs echoed through every quarter of the city. To José, the silence in the lulls between the bombing was even more frightening than the bombings themselves. The ordinary noisiness of the city to which he was accustomed was human noise, from the songs and cries of the street peddlers to the pleading whispers of the beggars. Those voices were utterly still, as if the city were empty. He sat at his piano, playing every piece he knew, trying to fill the silence with something other than his terror.

The courtyards of the palace continued to fill with refugees from the neighborhood, many sick or wounded. Miguel saw to their injuries and Alicia nursed them afterward. During pauses in the fighting, she went out with Chepa to forage for food and medicine. The sights of destruction and death were searing. Bodies had been piled into mounds, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. The corpses twitched as they burned, and the smell of roasting human flesh made her dizzy with nausea, but she dare not stop. In the rubble of a collapsed building, she heard a child whimpering. She dug through the brick until she found it, an infant clinging to her mother's corpse. She carried the baby to the palace, but Miguel was unable to save the child, and they buried her in the garden. In stolen moments, she went into the chapel and prayed, with more passion that she had ever prayed for anything, saying again and again, “Dear God, let it be over soon.”

A
t dawn on the sixth day of the battle, soldiers marched through the streets proclaiming a twenty-four-hour truce. Sarmiento wandered through once familiar streets that had been pummeled beyond recognition. Thousands of residents piled their possessions into carts or on their backs and began walking out of the city. Red Cross vans went around the Zócalo picking up bodies. These were taken to the plains of Balbuena and incinerated. A few stores reopened and were immediately mobbed by crowds looking for food and drink. Barricades of broken furniture and overturned carts were put in place to seal off the streets to the Zócalo. Artillery guns were wheeled into place. The rebels remained ensconced in the Ciudadela and the government clung to possession of the National Palace. In the late afternoon, a delegation of opposition senators was admitted to the Ciudadela ostensibly to negotiate with Félix Díaz. When they emerged, they announced that Don Félix had demanded Madero's resignation as the price of peace. This news was conveyed to the National Palace. Madero refused. At five in the afternoon, the bombing resumed.