by Michael Nava
Beneath a circular ceiling painted with plump putti, the Teatro de México was a rococo pile of white marble, pink damask, and gold. The facades of the tiered boxes were plastered with gold-leafed allegorical figures. Above the proscenium arch were two other massive arches thickly decorated with gods and angels. The proscenium itself was plastered with gilded fleur-de-lis. Enormous mirrors set along the sides of the house redoubled and echoed the decorative frenzy, and the soft light lilting down from the dazzling crystal chandelier added depth and dimension. The stage was hidden behind heavy gold curtains, the apron ablaze with footlights. As the musicians filed into the orchestra pit and began to tune their instruments, José’s heart raced with anticipation. A few minutes later, the lights dimmed. The conductor emerged to a torrent of applause. His grandmother, who had been sitting beside him with regal indifference, now touched his hand. The moan of a single violin began the overture. Within moments, currents of music swelled through the still, scented, hothouse air. As the golden curtains slowly parted, José thought his heart would explode with excitement.
And then, he frowned. The stage was bare but for a row of battered papier-mâché palm trees against an immense painting of a dark stone wall and a pair of seated hawk-headed Egyptian gods. Two fat men stood near the center of the stage. One wore a long, white tunic, his arms covered with snake-shaped bracelets. The other was clad like a soldier in a leather skirt and breastplate, but his face was pink and jowly. José thought he looked more like a butcher than a general. The two men declaimed to the music in Italian, facing the audience rather than one another. The fat soldier burst into a song and when he finished, the audience applauded. He bowed and waved his hand. A stout woman emerged from the wings in a gold gown and a long headdress surmounted by a crown. She and the soldier sang for a moment and then another woman appeared, this one so fat that her chins bobbled like a windup toy. She wore a black wig that came down in a curtain of hair on either side of her face and a midnight-blue gown. The audience roared and there were cries of “Tetrazzini!” She and the two men sang for a moment and then a procession of singing soldiers filled the stage, followed by a man wearing the headdress of a pharaoh. The music grew loud and martial. José understood from the repetition of the word “guerra” that the soldiers were going to war. When the song ended, everyone departed the stage but the woman called Tetrazzini.
José knew that the opera was make-believe, but the make-believe seemed to him, who dwelled so deeply in his own detailed fantasies, shopworn and perfunctory. He could not bring himself to imagine that this porcine woman who looked like a cook was the beautiful Princess Aida. He slumped back in disappointment and began to fidget with the creases in his trousers. The opening notes of a lovely song drew his attention to the stage. Tetrazzini lifted her heavy arms, tilted her head, and, alone in the footlights, began to sing. The house was hushed as she cast her song into the silence. It was not the purity of her voice as much as her certitude that pierced his heart. With every cell in her body she communicated her conviction that she was Aida. He leaned forward, captivated, and he believed her. Her singing spun a web of enchantment that transformed the painted backdrop; the leaves of papier-mâché palm trees rustled with a desert breeze and the painted walls acquired the heft of stone. In the mesmerizing pool of her voice, everything had changed, not only on the stage, but in himself. He was still aware he was watching an illusion—paper trees, fat woman—but simultaneously he was transported to Egypt, where a beautiful young girl sang of love. He experienced something similar when he reread his favorite novel, imagining himself in a ship scouring the bottom of the ocean with Captain Nemo, but all that took place in the solitude of his mind. Here, his imagination was stimulated and intensified by the woman on the stage. When she reached out her hand as she ended her song, she seemed to be reaching for him, beckoning him to enter this marvelous fantasy. He reached back, his hand floating in the air, and in his mind their fingers touched.
“José, what are you doing?” his grandmother asked, breaking the spell.
“Applauding, Abuelita,” he replied, raising his other hand and joining the deafening cheers and applause.
He had never felt such grief as he did when the opera drew to a close, Aida and Radames buried alive in the crypt, Princess Amneris prostrate above them. When the princess intoned her final “pace” to the imprisoned lovers, he could not see the stage for his tears. His head was filled not only with thoughts of the dying lovers but of David. He felt his grandmother’s hand in his and glanced at her. She, too, was weeping. And then the music stopped, the curtain swung shut ending the tale, and the house exploded. The audience cheered, applauded, stamped its feet, and wailed the name “Tetrazzini!” He jumped to his feet and joined the cries, his grief transformed into wild joy. The curtains opened and Tetrazzini appeared on the stage, where she was soon ankle deep in roses flung from the crowd. He wished he had brought some gift to thank her for the journey she had led him on, but he could only beam love and gratitude toward her. He wept and applauded with the rest of the audience, demanding curtain call after curtain call. Tetrazzini burst into joyous laughter, her head bobbing with delight and cried out, “Viva México!” which incited the crowd to even higher peaks of delirium. “Viva Tetrazzini!” it roared back, in a single mighty voice that rattled the crystals of the chandelier. “Viva! Viva! Viva!”
His heart did not return to its normal beat until he was in his bed, hours after his last glance at the empty, flower-strewn stage. As he looked around his moonlit room in the deepening silence, he felt as if his feet had at last touched ground after descending the steps of a great height. Almost instantly, he was asleep.
Sarmiento lay on the sofa in the bedroom he had shared with his wife for over a decade, smoking. He pretended to read a medical journal while he watched her out of the corner of his eyes as she loosened her hair, shook it out, and reached for a silver-handled brush. She was the least vain woman he had ever met, but he assumed the pleasure she took in this nightly ritual derived in part from the matchless beauty of her long, black, glossy hair. The pinkish light of the paired Argand lamps that illuminated the mirror softened her facial scars. She wore a white nightgown, her shoulders covered with a beige cashmere shawl. Around her neck was the crucifix she never removed and on her fingers two rings, her wedding band and a gold ring set with a pearl. She brushed her hair with long, slow strokes. This is her place, he thought. She belonged here in this absurd but charming palace where the roof leaked, the servants stole, and La Niña refused to install electricity because she was convinced it would seep from the outlets and poison the household. This was her place in the world, but not his.
“Miguel, may I disturb your reading?” she asked tentatively.
“I am only pretending to read while I watch you,” he said.
“Your journal must be very dull,” she replied, smiling.
“What would you like to talk about?”
“There is a girl at the orphanage. Tomasa. She is a Yaqui who was captured by soldiers in Sonora and arrived here after terrible hardships. Her parents are dead. Killed by our soldiers, but she has a younger brother in Arizona for whom she is responsible. I promised her I would help her reunite with him.” She paused in her brushing. “I told the director of the orphanage if he released her to my custody she could enter service here. He agreed. But I must still find a way to get her to the border.”
He sat up. “How old is she?”
“Thirteen, perhaps. Not old enough to travel alone for such a distance, particularly without proper documents. Padre Cáceres said he would try to find a couple to adopt her and escort her, but his parishioners are …”
“Incapable of such an undertaking,” Sarmiento said. “They are good people, but poor. Not the kind of people who travel for leisure. They could attract the attention of the authorities and be intimidated by them into confessing their true purpose.”
“Yes,” she said. “If Tomasa were an infant or even a small child, they co
uld claim her as their child and who would question them? But a girl on the verge of womanhood is a different matter, and, well, she is rather fierce, Miguel. I’m afraid if she were questioned, she would run away.”
He stood and walked behind her. “I will take her myself, Alicia.”
With a puzzled expression, she said, “You?”
He placed his hands gently on her shoulders and said, “I will take her to the United States. Once I reunite her with her brother, I will continue on and join Madero, who has escaped to Texas, where he plans a revolution against Díaz.”
She had been expecting this, or something like it since he had resigned his position at the Superior Sanitation Council. His restlessness and unhappiness had decreased, and he had begun to seem his old self again. Until this moment, she had not understood that this was because he had been coming to a decision and now he had made it. She knew she had the power to prevent him from leaving, although she doubted that even she would be able to restrain him for long. Once he was in thrall to an idea, he would suffer under its compulsion until he carried it out. This was their most basic difference. For her, ideas were phantoms that had only such power as one gave them, while humans were real with actual needs. Ideas were men’s Moloch, the false gods they fabricated, clothed in purple, crowned, and to whom they then sacrificed themselves. Themselves and others, spilling real blood for an illusion. So she thought as he spoke of democracy and freedom and liberation.
“Miguel,” she said, cutting him off. “Are you prepared to kill?”
Startled, he said, “I don’t understand.”
“Don Francisco wants to lead a revolution,” she said. “Revolution is war. War, Miguel. Will you fight? Will you kill?”
She saw from his frown that this was not a question he had asked himself. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. After a moment, he said, “No, I will not kill.”
“How can you be sure?” she pressed.
“I have already killed once,” he said softly, and she knew he was speaking of the servant girl who had died at his hand when he tried to abort their child. “That was enough for this lifetime. Besides, I am a doctor. I am sworn to preserve life, not to take it.” With a resolute expression, he continued, “Yes, there will be war and death, but no man will die at my hands and I will save those who I can save.” He reached for her hand, smiled sadly, and said, “Why couldn’t you be like other women and throw yourself at my knees, weeping and begging me not to go? Instead, you ask me the one question that makes me doubt myself.”
“I am like other women,” she said unhappily. “I do not want you to go. I do not want you to be injured or killed, and if this revolution fails, I fear I will never see you again.”
“If the revolution fails,” he said, “I will seek refuge in the United States and you and José will come to me and we will begin a new life there.”
“Oh, Miguel,” she cried. “To give up everything for these ideas?”
“The suffering all around us is not an idea, Alicia, it is reality. Like the suffering of the girl, Tomasa. Don’t you want to help more than one child at a time?”
She threaded her fingers through his and came to a decision of her own. “If you must go, I will go with you.”
“War is no place for a woman,” he said firmly.
“I don’t mean that I will join your revolution,” she replied. “But you will be less conspicuous if we travel as a family. We can go together as far as the border. I will take Tomasa to her brother and you will go to Don Francisco. And then I will return here to our home and wait for you.”
“It’s not necessary,” he said quietly.
“It is,” she told him. “I am like other women, Miguel. I know I cannot prevent you from going, but I am not ready yet to let you go.”
He nodded, took her hands in his, and kissed them.
José felt a hand stroke his cheek and then gently shake his shoulder. He opened his eyes to the sight of his father sitting at the edge of his bed. A single lamp lit the room. His father was fully dressed in his habitual black suit. His face was grave but his eyes were filled with a tenderness José rarely saw in them.
“Papá, is something wrong?” José asked, sitting up in bed.
“No, mijo, just get dressed,” he said quietly. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
His father left the room. José yawned and glanced at the window. He could see from the ashy pallor of the sky that it was near dawn. He drew the blankets around him to ward off the chill and considered the situation. He might have worried that he had angered his father except for the gentleness in his eyes and voice. Could his father be planning a surprise for him? This seemed unlikely because his birthday had passed and the Nativity was still two months away. Sleepily he tossed aside his blankets—waking El Morito, who hissed a complaint—and dressed quickly in his cadet’s uniform, fastening its many buttons with icy fingers.
His father was waiting in his buggy at the doors of the palace. José climbed in beside him, wishing that his father had chosen to take his grandmother’s carriage, which was large and warm and comfortable.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see, José.”
“Is Mamá coming?”
“No, what I have to show you is for your eyes alone.”
José shivered, his mind filled with questions, but just then Chepa came running out of the palace with chocolate and pan dulce, a horsehair blanket draped over her shoulder. She chided his father for taking José out into the morning vapors without sufficient covering as she laid the blanket across José’s lap and gave him his breakfast.
She concluded her scolding by saying, “And where are you taking him? Decent people do not go abroad at this hour. Only thieves and, well, worse, Doctor, and I’m sure you know what I mean.”
Sarmiento smiled. “I will avoid the riffraff, Chepa. As a matter of fact, we are going to church.”
She scowled. “Now you’re mocking me!”
“No, I am sincere,” he said. “I am taking my son to the cathedral.”
She glared at him, decided he was being truthful, and said to José, “Remember to say your prayers for your family, Josélito. God loves the prayers of children above all others. And you,” she said to his father, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but you might try a prayer or two yourself, if the words don’t scorch your unbelieving mouth!”
His father laughed, shook the reins, and they trotted toward the Zócalo.
José sipped his chocolate and nibbled his gingerbread as his father drove them through the quiet streets, steering by the rows of red police lanterns in the middle of the roadway. The flicker of gas lights gave way to electric street lamps as they approached the great plaza. His father halted the buggy in front of the cathedral across from the streetcar kiosk where the big green and yellow cars were lined up in a double row readying for the day’s runs. José looked at them longingly. He had never been on a streetcar, but he loved to watch them race along their tracks, sparking the electric lines overhead, the windows filled with the faces of their passengers. David had promised to take him on a streetcar to San Ángel, but then David had left.
His father, getting out of the buggy, said, “Here we are.”
“Are we really going into the cathedral, Papá?” José asked.
He hadn’t thought his father was serious when he told Chepa they were coming here because, as was well known, his father did not believe in the existence of God. José himself was quite satisfied that God existed, although his picture of God owed a great deal to the glowering portrait of his grandfather—long dead before he was born—that hung in the grand sala. That God was perpetually enraged but also quite remote, and José knew he was too unimportant to engage the deity’s interest. He believed he was watched over by gentler spirits: by Jesus, whom Chepa called “diosito lindo” as if he were another of her grandchildren; by Jesus’s mother, Mary, who had the same calm and loving eyes of his own mother; and by his guardian angel, whom he was
always trying to catch in the corner of his field of vision, where Chepa told him he could be seen.
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.”
