by Michael Nava
An American colleague had sent him a copy of Jacob Riis’s book How the Other Half Lives, about the tenements of New York City. It was filled with shocking descriptions and illustrated with even more shocking photographs. What was most impressive to Sarmiento, however, was that the plight of the destitute had even been deemed worthy of public exposure and discussion. He despised the Americans for their hypocrisy—defending democratic values in principle while behaving like the most retrograde colonialists—and their adolescent vulgarity. Still, he had to admit their imperfect democracy permitted, tolerated, and sometimes even rewarded scathing criticism of the status quo. A book like Riis’s was unimaginable in México, where the government regarded the Indian poor as a state secret, and the upper classes dismissed their misfortunes as the fruit of racial degeneracy.
“The government?” he muttered aloud, casting a scornful glance at his big desk covered with papers bearing the seal of the Superior Sanitation Council. “I am the government.”
He got up from his desk and walked to the window, gazing at the volcanoes that floated like mirages in the distance over the domes and towers and ochre-colored roofs of Ciudad de México. How beautiful his city was, how much he loved her, how hopeless he felt about her future.
“Señor Vice Director?”
He turned and saw his secretary standing at the door. “Yes, Juan.”
“Sir, there is an Indian out here. He gave me this note to give you. The man cannot speak.”
Sarmiento took the note, opened it, and immediately recognized his wife’s handwriting. It implored him to come immediately to Coyoacán and to bring his medical bag and surgical tools. Sarmiento brushed past his secretary and saw Padre Cáceres’s Yaqui servant, Ramoncito, standing in the anteroom.
“Did you just come from my wife with this note?” he asked.
The man nodded.
“Is she injured?”
He shook his head.
“But someone else is?”
Ramoncito again nodded.
“Very well, let me get my things.”
She had sent her carriage and had evidently instructed the driver to race back because the journey was swift and bumpy. At last, they reached their destination, a decaying mansion at the outskirts of the village. When he alighted from the carriage, she was standing at the door to meet him.
“Alicia, what is this place? What are you doing here?”
“A family property,” she said. “The rest I will explain later, but now I need for you to come with me.”
In the overgrown courtyard, a half-dozen men were smoking and sunning themselves. They were all Indian and their kinship was obvious in their skin tone and features, but they were unlike the servile Indians of the city, for these men, even at rest, were coiled and watchful, like serpents or soldiers. They followed him with hard, wary eyes.
“Who are these people?” he asked her in a low voice.
“Yaquis,” she said.
“What are they doing here?”
“This is their sanctuary.”
Her response raised more questions than it answered, but he saw she was agitated and did not press her. They passed through a long room arranged like a hospital ward and into a smaller room where a man lay on a narrow, iron-framed bed, staring at the ceiling. His right leg beneath the knee was a swirl of searing red and putrid green. The air was foul with the smell of rot.
“Gangrene,” Alicia said. “His leg must be amputated.”
“This is why you called me? To chop off the leg of some stranger?”
“Miguel,” she pleaded. “He will die unless you help.”
“Before I agree to anything, I want an explanation of all this.”
She nodded. “Come.”
They stepped into a courtyard and sat on a stone bench beneath an ancient olive tree. She told him everything. He listened, with incredulity, then anger, and then grudging admiration at her courage and resourcefulness. When she finished he asked, “Do you have any idea of the trouble that you would bring upon yourself and our family if you are found out?”
“My rank will protect us from the harshest sanctions,” she replied. “Carmen Díaz is my friend. She would not abandon me.”
“And how long were you planning to continue this … I don’t even know what to call it. Mission?”
“For as long as the government seizes these people and sells them into bondage.”
The government, he thought. That word again. “I am the government, Alicia. I hold a public office. My commission was signed by Díaz himself.”
“I know. That is why I kept this from you as long as I could. But you are not simply some bureaucrat, Miguel. You are a humanitarian. You could never execute orders that would cause the kind of suffering we have inflicted on the Yaquis.”
He thought about the three people killed by the police to enforce his quarantine in La Bolsa. “Hard choices are sometimes required to achieve the general good,” he said softly.
“What good is accomplished by driving the Yaquis from their land, killing their women, placing their children into orphanages, and enslaving their men?”
He was quiet for a moment. “The issue is more complicated than your question,” he said. “We can discuss it after I operate. I have no anesthetic. This will not be easy.”
“I will assist you,” she said. “And Santiago—that is his name, Miguel—he is like the other Yaquis. They pride themselves on their ability to withstand pain without a murmur.”
“Well,” he said, rising and extending his hand to her. “This will put him to the test.”
He explained to the Yaqui what he needed to do. The Indian gave a curt nod, took a long drink of the brandy that Alicia had brought for him, and clamped his teeth on a gag of rope. He did not flinch at the sight of Sarmiento’s bow-framed saw. The operation was grisly but short and he made a clean cut. As he sutured the flap over the stump, he felt confident that his patient would make a good recovery. The Indian had endured the operation with scarcely a sound.
“You are a brave man,” Sarmiento told him.
The Indian removed the gag from his mouth. “I am a warrior,” he said in a guttural croak.
“Here,” Sarmiento said, handing him the brandy. “Drink this. It will help with the pain.”
The Indian took the bottle and, before drinking, said, “I bless you and your family for saving my life.”
Afterward, as he and Alicia were driving back to the city, he said, “You were very good today.”
She sighed. “It was all I could do to keep from fainting when you handed me Santiago’s leg.”
“But you didn’t faint,” he said. “You kept your head.” He put his arm around her. “You must know that your project will be discovered. A servant will talk or the captain’s superiors will become suspicious about the missing Indians. The villagers in Coyoacán will begin to wonder about your comings and goings. Or one of your patients will escape. You cannot continue this indefinitely.”
“What would you have me do, Miguel?”
“I have never commanded your obedience in anything,” he said. “I will not start now, but in this marriage we are not two people, Alicia, we are one. If you insist on continuing your work, I will have to resign my post. It is hypocrisy to take bread from Caesar with one hand and strike him with the other.”
“No one knows better than I how little you have been able to accomplish in your position.”
“Perhaps I have not done all I hoped,” he conceded. “But I have been able to accomplish a little and there is a little more I hope to achieve. Particularly now. Díaz wants the city to be a showplace for the Centenario and he has given us more money this year than in the past ten. I hope to use some of those funds to actually make the city a better place to live. Besides, Alicia, Don Porfirio’s time is coming to an end. Even he must see that, and accede to the demands of the people to make Madero his vice president. Then real change can begin.” After a moment’s silence, he continued. “I am asking you as yo
ur husband and your friend to give me a little longer in my work to do whatever good I still can.”
Reluctantly, she nodded. “As soon as the men are recovered and well enough to travel, I will close the house,” she said. “In the meantime, I will not take on any others. But I will find another way to help the Yaquis. I must.”
“Tell me, why do they matter so much to you?”
“At first, I had no reason other than my sympathy for what they have suffered,” she said. “But now that I have talked to them and learned something of their beliefs, I feel that they are … a kind of holy people.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“The Yaquis believe God gave them their homeland. They say his angels came down from heaven and established the boundaries of their land with prayer and music. They describe a river valley at the edge of the desert that is like a paradise. In thanks, they make their lives into a constant sacrament of praise to God. When they are born, their mothers promise them to Jesus or Mary or one of the saints and they are expected to fulfill that promise by undertaking lifelong religious duties that would be onerous for anyone else. But they do it freely, gladly.” A tear ran down her face. “In their minds, Miguel, our war to take their land is a war against their faith. If they are driven off their land, they will be driven away from God.”
“My dear,” he asked softly, “don’t all combatants in wars say God is on their side?”
“The Yaquis don’t say that God is their protector in this war. They say they fight to protect God. They would allow themselves to be exterminated before they would accept defeat.”
“And you believe them?”
“Yes. They will die to the last man before they surrender their homeland. They must be saved.”
“Very well, but next time, consult me,” he said. “I will help you if I can.”
José had known longing, but not loneliness, until his longing for a friend had been fulfilled by David. Only then did the hours he was alone take on the particular emptiness and weight created by the absence of the beloved. In that void, he was conscious of his solitude as he had never been before. The long galleries and empty rooms of the palace, which had been his playground, now seemed a kind of prison. School, which he had endured, was now unbearable because everywhere he looked he saw the friendships that his classmates formed and from which he was excluded. His parents seemed, more than ever, remote, benign giants who occasionally condescended to look down at him from their heights. As for his grandmother, with whom he would otherwise have filled the hours between his time with David, an estrangement had developed between them because of her dislike for his friend. Instead, he suffered those empty hours with thoughts and memories of David and anticipation at seeing him again. He imagined a future in which they would be together always, older and younger brother. They would live in the same house, where they would play piano duets and then go out and ride their bicycles and eat ice cream in the park before coming home to sleep in the same bed. When he dreamed of lying beside David, feeling his body’s warmth, inhaling his distinctive scent, listening to the timbre of his voice as they whispered confidences, a feeling stirred in the pit of his stomach. Indescribably sweet, it seeped through him as if his body was a comb filling with honey. He had no name for this sensation, but even as it thrilled him, it also frightened him with its intensity. When it passed, his loneliness for David made him weep.
Returning to the palace from school one afternoon, he was surprised to see David’s bicycle in the courtyard. It was not a lesson day nor had they made plans to see each other. Still, when he heard David’s voice coming from the sala, he ran inside to see him. There he found David sitting stiffly at the end of the settee delicately holding a cup, while his mother sat on the other end.
Alicia saw him first and said, “José, we’ve been waiting for you.”
“Hi, pea—uh, José,” David said with his endearing half-smile.
“Sit down, José. It’s early, but if you like you can have a cup of chocolate.”
“No, Mamá,” José said, sitting in a chair across from them. “Is everything okay?”
The Americanism puzzled her. David said, by way of explanation, “It means, ‘is everything in order?’” He looked at José. “I have good news, José.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“I’m going to Paris, to study at the conservatory!”
José nodded. David had often spoken of his desire to study in Paris. José sometimes imagined them together walking along its snowy boulevards. “Yes, but what is the good news?”
“That’s the good news, peanut. I’m going to Paris.”
Suddenly, he understood. David was not referring to a future event but to the present. “When?” José blurted out.
“I leave in a month,” David said.
“Isn’t that wonderful, José?” his mother prodded gently. “Aren’t you happy for your friend?”
But all José could manage was a miserable question, “For how long?”
“The scholarship is for two years,” David replied. “José, are you all right?”
He looked back and forth at the concerned faces of David and his mother, then jumped up and ran to his room, where he threw himself on his bed and burst into tears.
He was not aware his mother had entered his room until he felt her weight on the bed and heard her say, “José, you were very rude to our guest. That is not suitable behavior. When he comes for your lesson, I expect you to apologize and to tell him how happy you are for him. He is fortunate to have this opportunity, and he wanted to share his good fortune with you as his friend. You will be glad for him, and there will be no more scenes.”
He rolled on his back, wiped his tears with his sleeve, and said, “I do not want him to leave. I love him.”
She gazed wonderingly at him for a moment and then stroked his cheek with her palm. “Of course you love him,” she said. “He is a sweet boy, and he has been kind to you.”
The warmth of her hand and the sympathy in her voice consoled him, but there was a part of him that knew she did not understand what he had meant, but then he did not fully understand himself.
“No,” he said emphatically. “I love him.”
She sighed. “I know. But when you love another person you must want what makes him happy, not what makes you happy. Do you understand?”
“No, Mamá,” he said dejectedly.
“All love comes from God, mijo, and God wants nothing from us except that we are happy. He loves us so much that he lets us choose our own paths to happiness, even when he would have us take another path, and even when our path leads us away from him. You love David and you want him to be happy. This is the path of happiness he has chosen, and, as you love him, you must let him take it, even though it takes him to Paris.”
He laid his head in her lap and wept scalding tears of loss.
Later, after he had cried himself into exhaustion and fallen asleep, she kissed his tear-stained face and marveled at the extremity of this grief. She had observed that José was infatuated with the older boy, but she had thought it was merely a kind of hero worship. When José had said, “I love him,” there was a nakedness in his declaration that had taken her aback because for a moment it seemed as if he was speaking of a lover. But, of course, she told herself, José was a nine-year-old boy who was innocent of such sentiments. No, she thought, José was simply an affectionate, sensitive, and emotional child who formed deeper attachments than other boys his age. She chided herself for letting him be alone too much. It was his loneliness that accounted for the depth of his affection for David. That was her fault, and she would correct it by seeing that José became more engaged with other boys his age.
At tea, her mother asked, “Where is my grandson?”
“He felt unwell and I put him to bed,” Alicia said. “By the way, Mother, do you know anything about a scholarship donated to the conservatory for David de la Torre?”
“I am not familiar with the name,�
� she said.
“José’s piano instructor,” she replied. “An anonymous benefactor made a gift to the conservatory to allow him to study in Paris. He thought I had made the donation and came to thank me. When I told him I was not his patroness, he thought it might be you.”
La Niña raised a thin eyebrow. “Me? How extraordinary! The only time I’ve spoken to the boy was to reproach him for entering my house with muddy boots.”
“Well, in any event, it’s a wonderful opportunity for him,” Alicia commented. Hearing voices approach the room, she said, “My sisters have arrived.”
“With better gossip than the prospects of a postal clerk’s son, I hope,” La Niña said.
Only later did it occur to Alicia to wonder how her mother knew David’s father was a postal clerk, and she meant to ask her, but the matter slipped her mind.
The Imparcial lay on Sarmiento’s desk, its front page dominated by large portraits of Don Porfirio and his newly announced choice for vice president—Ramón Corral, the former governor of the state of Sonora. “Scourge of the savage Yaquis,” the approving newspaper caption read. There was no mention of Madero, but the Imparcial, like almost all the city’s newspapers, was subsidized by the government.
“I see you have been apprised of México’s great good fortune,” Liceaga said with heavy sarcasm, entering the room. He was the picture of summer elegance in his lightweight gray suit, blindingly white shirtfront and collar, and pale blue necktie.
“It is … unbelievable,” Sarmiento replied.
“No, it is all too believable,” Liceaga said, sitting on the other side of the desk. He lit a cigarette. “Corral is a corrupt, syphilitic Indian killer.” He lightly exhaled. “Thus, no one wants to see him president, and, therefore, by choosing him, Don Porfirio guarantees that no one will intrigue to put Corral in his place.”
