Mexico (14 page)

"We're glad to get the norteamericanos," she assured me. 'They behave well and spend money, and I have many friends among the tourists, people who come back year after year. But they do create a problem with the bread."

"What problem?" I asked with irritation.

"When a Mexican comes," she explained, "he eats one roll, and we take this into account in our price, which you must admit is reasonable."

"No complaint," I said. "In the States a meal like this would cost twice as much."

"So I'm told," she nodded. "But here is the trouble. Apparently in the States there is no bread. Because whenever an American sits at this table he does just what you have done. He sees the basket of rolls, grabs one, and says, T haven't tasted bread like this since I was a boy.' And he eats not one roll but four and kills my whole budget."

I felt self-conscious, sitting there with a half-eaten roll in m
y h
and, but I knew that what she said was true. In civilized America we no longer had bread; we had something sanitized and puffy that no self-respecting man would want to eat. I remember working on an article that our magazine ran some years back in which four scientists claimed that our bread was not only a sad travesty of what the staff of life should be, but that it was actually poisonous as well. I seem to recall that when boys in my class at Lawrenceville forced rats to eat it, either the rats died or their hair fell out.

But here in the peasant culture of Mexico there was still bread made from the simple ground wheat of the countryside, filled with impurities and flavor, and when we Americans tasted it after many years of chewing paste, we devoured it like starving pigs. "Look!" Dona Carmen said as two tourists who had come to the fair sat down at a nearby table. The woman looked about her and said: "Isn't this a charming plaza? Listen to the music!" But her husband cried: "Oh boy! Look at that bread!" He was well on his way to consuming his third roll before the meal even started.

"So now we have to charge," Dona Carmen said, shrugging her shoulders.

"Put me down for three. I love your soup and your rice, but what I really came for was your bread."

"And look at that one in the corner," Dona Carmen muttered in disgust. She pointed to one of the tables where an American sat wolfing down the rolls, and I saw that it was the blond young man from the bus, still dressed in his outsized, rumpled Pachuca sweater.

"I don't think he's hungry for bread," I told Dona Carmen. "I think he's just hungry."

"Do you suppose he has money?" the proprietress asked.

"If he doesn't, Don Eduardo will pay," 1 assured her.

"I like to see young people eat," my uncle said. Then he added: "Looks like we're going to have music," and he was correct, for the tourist couple at the next table had summoned a mariachi band to play for them during the meal, but they had called a band quite different from the flashily dressed and somewhat mechanical musicians we'd heard earlier. This was a group of Altomec peasants who had come down from Durango to see the fair and to pick up what pennies they could by offering themselves as mariachis. They had no uniforms, no big hats, not even shoes. Nor did they have the customary instruments of the real mariachis. There were only six--a bass drummer, a snare drummer, two clarinet players, a huge guitarist and a tall, thin man with an extremely sad face and a dented trumpet. They looked an epitome of the real Mexico, and on their faded blue pants and worn sandals there was dust.

"What shall we play for you, senor?" I heard the bass drummer ask in Spanish.

"We don't know," the husband replied in English.

The leader shrugged his shoulders, consulted with his companions, and told them in Spanish: " 'Cielito Lindo' and 'San Antonio Rose' for the norteamericanos," and I thought: This is going to be pretty bad, so I said to Don Eduardo, "I'd better speak to them."

I went to the other table and asked in English, "Excuse me, but could I be of help with the mariachis?"

"You might tell them to play some real Mexican music."

"If you would permit me."

"Oh, please do!" the wife pleaded. "We don't want to hear American music on our first visit in Toledo."

"I thought you wouldn't," I said. I then turned to the mariachis and said in Spanish: "These visitors love the music of Mexico. Please play only the real songs of your country."

"Like what?" the leader asked suspiciously.

I gave some examples of wonderful songs rarely heard, ending with: "And you might give them a battle cry like 'The Ballad of General Gurza.' "

The men's eyes lighted up with pleasure--all, that is, except those of the tall, sad trumpeter, who merely fingered the valves on his instrument, as if warming up. I bowed to the tourists and returned to Don Eduardo.

With two quick waves of his drumstick, the leader started the music, but I was not prepared for what followed, for in the first blaring passages of a robust folk dance the lean trumpeter unloosed a cascade of purity such as I have rarely heard matched in any orchestra. He played passionately, his hollow cheeks distended with air, his thin lips wedged against the mouthpiece, and his tongue ripping out triple and sextuple passages. He was truly a heavenly trumpeter, lost in some Durango village, and whenever he rested it was to gain fresh strength for some new display of virtuosity. He never smiled, and always seemed removed from the simple realities. Throughout the time of the Festival of Ixmiq I saw him only as a disembodied talent who mysteriously produced music of the angels. In the nights to come I would often hear his tongue-splitting rhythms echoing in various parts of the plaza, and no one could confuse him with the other mariachis. His companions seemed to recognize this, for when during a song the time came for him to rest, they merely limped through their part of the music, waiting till his liquid trumpet sound exploded once more behind them, and then they would play with added spirit. Now, as they wound through the final passages of the vigorous dance, I sat back contented.

"I've never heard a better trumpeter," I told Don Eduardo.

"I've often thought," the old rancher mused as we waited for our soup, "that a lot of people from other parts of the world are going to be surprised when they enter heaven and find that God entertains himself with mariachi music." But then he suddenly scowled, as the new selection began. He asked abruptly: "Did you tell them to play that?"

"I did," I confessed.

"You have a curious taste. To sing of General Gurza in this place." And he pointed to the broken tiles on the wall in back of where the mariachis stood, the tiles against which I had been measured as a boy. Having rebuked me, Don Eduardo fell silent and I could tell that he was recalling his encounters with the murderous general who had been the scourge of Toledo. And I recalled my own experiences.

General Gurza had come roaring into Toledo on one of his periodic raids to rob the city's citizens. I was at the Mineral when Gurza led a detachment to the mines in a search for silver, and I was sure they were going to shoot us. Father whispered: "Stay very still. Say nothing," and we watched as Gurza and his men overlooked several tons of black ore from which silver could be extracted. They ransacked our quarters, and had the calf been sequestered there according to the original plan, both he and we would have been shot.

At the end of the search, General Gurza assembled our family and I remember standing in front of my mother, hoping to protect her, and I could feel her legs trembling. The general was not my idea of a general at all, for he certainly did not look like any of my tin soldiers, with brightly colored uniforms and colored bands across their chests. General Gurza was a big man, both taller and heavier than my father. He had a round face with a black mustache, and wore a huge sombrero and silver-studded chaps. He carried a shotgun. And on his hips were two pistols, while crossing his chest was a bandolier, with here and there a cartridge missing.

He nudged me in the stomach with his rifle and asked: "When you grow up will you fight for the Revolution?" I said, "I don't know what a revolution is. But I'm going to fight against you and help my mother."

General Gurza laughed, poked the gun deeper into my stomach, and said, "When you grow up you'll know better." He then made a short speech in which he said that he had found what he had come for. He whistled sharply without moving his lips, and from our stables four of his men approached leading one of our miners with his hands tied and a rope around his neck. "This is what we are going to do with all our enemies," he said. And without further ado the four soldiers threw the rope over a beam projecting from the cloisters and hanged the man. Because our cloisters were not high, the man's feet were never far from the ground, and he seemed to dance in our faces. I could feel my mother's knees start to give way behind me and I cried: "Mother's going to fall down." My father leaped to catch her, but General Gurza got there first and, dropping his gun, he carried her to a table. When she opened her eyes she expected to see my father but instead looked directly into the eyes of the general. His black mustache must have been only a few inches from her face, and she began to scream.

This angered the general particularly because he thought that she must be an American, since she was married to one. He slapped her, then laughed and said: "We don't hurt norteamericanos--if they remain neutral." He then directed my father to come to him, and with the dead miner's body swinging between them, the two men discussed how the silver from the Mineral was to be delivered to the general's forces and what records were to be kept. I remember how the interview ended. General Gurza said: "You understand, Mr. Clay, that if any of this silver falls into the hands of Carrinza we shall hav
e t
o shoot you?"

My father replied: "But I thought you were fighting for
Carranza."

General Gurza scowled and said, "That was last month. Now he's our enemy. No silver to him."

"I understand," my father said, and the two men shook hands as if they were bankers. But when the time came to leave, some of Gurza's men saw the dangling body and were apparently infuriated by the sight, for they began shooting at it from horseback, and many of the shots went wild, ricocheting down our cloisters. All the way back to the gate the men kept up their wild shooting, and when they had ridden safely down the hill, my father systematically inspected all the workers to be sure none were hurt, then gave orders to cut down the dead man and bury him. When the others were busy with this task, he and I went cautiously to the cave below the slag heap and satisfied ourselves that Soldado was safe. Father directed me to give the calf some hay, and we left the animal content and eating.

Well, I thought now, sitting on the terrace of the House of Tile, that was a rare peaceful moment in a turbulent past.

"Where were you in those years?" I asked Don Eduardo, who was attacking his soup.

"What do you mean, 'those years'?" he asked without looking up. He loved food.

"I was thinking of the years when we hid Soldado from the Gurza troops," I explained.

He put his spoon down, thought a moment, and said, 'That would have been 1916 to about 1919,1 guess. I was hiding out in Mexico City, working like the devil with Carranza to keep control of my lands. I didn't succeed."

Laughing at his own incompetence, he said, "In 1536 we Palafoxes were granted a quarter of a million choice acres and by 1580 this had grown, by thefts from Church and state, to a third of a million. By 1740, due to shrewd management and further thefts from everyone in sight, our holdings had increased to over a million acres and the labor of nearly a hundred and twenty thousand Indians, who were for all practical purposes our slaves." At this point in the narration he sighed.

"In the 1810 War of Independence, of course, the Conde de Palafox sided with the Spaniards, so that when relative peace came he was penalized by the victorious Mexicans, who took back half his vast holdings."

In the 1860s the Palafoxes guessed wrong again and supported the Austrian usurper, Emperor Maximilian, as did all decent people, and when the rabble shot him to restore Mexican independence, they also shot the then conde, whereupon the Palafox holdings fell to about two hundred and fifty thousand acres. In the Revolution of 1916, as we have seen, Don Eduardo came out strongly against General Gurza and lost another hundred and fifty thousand. Finally, in 1936, the family guessed wrong again and fought President CSrdenas, who had the land courts legally divest the Palafoxes of most of their remaining acreage.

"As a result of always being on the wrong side," Don Eduardo concluded, "our once-vast Palafox dominion now consists of nine thousand arid acres of bull ranch in a corner of our state, the skeletons of a few haciendas that General Gurza gutted, and the abandoned Mineral."

But if the Palafoxes invariably guessed wrong about the advantageous political affiliation, thereby losing their land, they displayed canny judgment where investments were concerned, thereby maintaining their family security. With the business acumen that had always marked the Spanish branch of the family the Palafoxes had invested in railroads, in French mercantile companies, and more recently in Swiss and American pharmaceutical corporations, so that while their land holdings were steadily diminishing, their equity in the business wealth of the world rose comfortably. In 1961 the family was at least as wealthy as it had ever been, and with this wealth the members had been able to buy favor with whatever administration was in power, regardless of its politics.