Do not hesitate, dear Venancio. Come, bring your funds, and in a very short time we can be rich. Please extend my warmest regards to the general, to Anastasio, and to my other friends there.
Your caring friend, Luis Cervantes.
Venancio finished reading the letter for the hundredth time and again repeated his comment with a sigh:
“That curro really knew how to pull the whole thing off!”
" ’Cause the thing I just can’t get my head around,” Anastasio Montañés observed, “is the fact that we have to go on fightin’ . . . Didn’t we already defeat the federation?”2
Neither the general nor Venancio answered him. But his words continued to resonate in their rough minds like a hammer on the yoke of a plow.
Thoughtful, with their heads bowed, they climbed up the hillside on their mules, proceeding at their mounts’ slow gait. Anastasio, restless and stubborn, took the same observation to other groups of soldiers, all of whom laughed at his candor. Because if one carries a rifle in one’s hands, and the cartridge belts are filled with bullets, it is surely to fight. Against whom? On whose side? No one has ever cared about that!
The endless wavering column of dust stretched out in either direction of the path, in an ant line of palm-leaf sombreros, filthy old khakis, mossy blankets, and the black swirling of the horses.
Everyone was hot and thirsty. Not a single water well, nor creek, nor even puddle had they encountered along the way. A fiery fume of vapor rose from the white, barren bottom of a ravine and quivered above the curled crests of the huisache trees and the fleshy light green stems of the nopal cacti. And as if to mock them, the flowers of the cacti opened out—some with cool, leafy, bright colors, others thorny and diaphanous.
At midday they came across a hovel clinging to the cliffs of the Sierra. A little later, three small houses scattered along the banks of a river of calcined sand. But everything was silent and abandoned. As the troops approached, people hurried to hide in the surrounding canyons.
Demetrio became indignant.
“Grab anyone you find hidin’ or runnin’ from us and bring ’em to me,” he ordered his soldiers, in a harsh voice.
“What! What did he say?” Valderrama exclaimed, surprised. “To bring ’im men who live in the Sierra? These brave men, the ones who didn’t act like the chickens who are now nesting in Zacatecas and Aguascalientes? Our own brothers, who weather all manner of storms, clinging to the rocks like moss itself? I protest! I protest!”
He spurred the side of his miserable nag and trotted up beside the general.
“The men who live in the Sierra,” he said to him, with emphasis and solemnity, “are our own flesh and bone . . . ‘Os ex ossibus meis et caro de carne mea.’3The men who live in the Sierra are made from the same substance as we are. Of this solid substance out of which heroes are made . . .”
And with a confidence as unexpected as it was courageous, he pounded his fist against the general’s chest. Demetrio smiled benevolently.
Did Valderrama—a mad vagabond and a bit of a poet— know what he was doing?
When the soldiers reached a rancho, they whirled ravenously into the surrounding houses and shacks, all of which were empty. But they did not find a single stale tortilla, nor one rotten chili, nor even a pinch of salt with which to flavor the horrible taste of jerked meat. Their peaceful brothers, the owners of the huts, would then come out of their hiding places, some impassive with the stonelike impassivity of Aztec idols, others with more human reactions. With a sordid smile on their pale lips and beardless faces, they looked on as the ferocious intruders, who just a month earlier would have made their miserable, remote homes tremble with fear, now emerge from the same small, poor houses—where the stoves were cold and the water tanks dry—with their heads bowed, humiliated like dogs kicked out of their own homes.
But the general did not cancel his orders, and a small group of soldiers brought him four well-bound fugitives.
II
“Why do you hide from us?” Demetrio asked the prisoners.
“We weren’t hidin’, General. We were just on our way.”
“Where to?”
“To our own homes . . . In the name of God, to Durango. ”1
“Is this the road to Durango?”
“Peaceful men can’t walk on the roads these days. You know that, General.”
“You’re not peaceful men, you’re deserters. Where’re you comin’ from?” Demetrio asked, looking at them with a keen eye.
The prisoners became confused and looked at each other, perplexed, unable to come up with a quick answer.
“They’re Carranzista scorpions,”2one of the soldiers said.
This comment brought the prisoners immediately back to their senses. The terrible enigma that had arisen from the beginning, with respect to this unknown army, had been completely dissipated.
“Us, Carranzistas?” one of them answered proudly. “We’d rather be pigs!”
“Truth is, we are deserters,” another said. “We cut out from General Villa’s troops on this side of the Celaya,3after the beatin’ they gave us.”
“General Villa, defeated? Ha, ha, ha!” The soldiers burst out laughing.
But Demetrio knitted his brow as if a very dark shadow had passed before his eyes.
“The son of a . . . with enough to defeat General Villa has not been born yet!” a veteran with a coppery face and a scar from forehead to chin exclaimed insolently.
Unfazed, one of the deserters looked firmly into his eyes, and said:
“I know you. When we took Torreón, you were fighting with General Urbina.4In Zacatecas you were already with Natera, and there you joined up with those from Jalisco . . . Am I right?”
The effect of these words was sudden and definitive. The prisoners were then allowed to give a detailed account of Villa’s tremendous defeat in Celaya.5
Everyone listened to them in stupefied silence.
They lit fires to roast bull meat before resuming their march. While he was off searching for firewood among the huisache trees, Anastasio Montañés saw the close-cropped neck of Valderrama’s nag in the distance, behind some boulders.
“Come on back now, you crazy fool, they didn’t cook no stew after all . . . !” he shouted in his direction.
Because the romantic poet Valderrama always managed to keep a good distance for the entire day whenever they started talking about firing squads.
Valderrama heard Anastasio’s voice from afar, and he must have been convinced that the prisoners had been freed, because soon thereafter he was back near Venancio and Demetrio.
“Did you hear the news?” Venancio asked him, very seriously.
“I don’t know anything.”
“It’s very grave! A disaster! Villa defeated in Celaya by Obregón. Carranza’s winning everywhere. We’re ruined!”
Valderrama’s expression was solemn and disdainful, like that of an emperor, as he said:
“Villa? Obregón? Carranza? X ... Y ... Z! What do I care? I love the revolution like I love an erupting volcano! I love the volcano because it is a volcano and the revolution because it is the revolution! But the rocks that remain above or below after the cataclysm, what are they to me?”
And since the image of a white bottle of tequila was reflected on his forehead with the glare of the midday sun, he turned on his heels and rushed off toward the bearer of such a tremendous wonder, his soul brimming with joy
“I like that crazy fool,” Demetrio said, smiling. “Because sometimes he says some things that make ya think.”
The march was resumed, and the overall uneasiness translated into a lugubrious silence. Quietly but unfailingly they carried with them the news of the catastrophe: a defeated Villa was a fallen god. And fallen gods cease being gods, or anything else for that matter.
When Quail spoke, his words were a faithful transcription of the general feeling:
“Well, this time it’s really true, muchachos . . . Now it’s every man for him
self!”
III
The next small town, like all groups of houses, haciendas, and ranchos, had emptied out and everyone had fled to Zacatecas and Aguascalientes.
It was thus a small miracle that one of the officers had found a barrel of tequila. Thorough care and much secrecy were undertaken so that the troops would be ready to leave the next morning, at dawn, under the leadership of Anastasio Montañés and Venancio. When Demetrio awoke to the sound of music, his general staff—now composed primarily of young ex-Federales—conveyed to him the news of the discovery. Quail, articulating the thoughts of his colleagues, spoke as if he were declaring a maxim:
“The times are bad and we have to take advantage of whatever we find, because ‘if there are days when the duck swims peacefully, there are others when he doesn’t even have a drop of water to drink.’”
The string musicians played all day long, and solemn toasts were made to the barrel. But Demetrio remained very sad, constantly muttering under his breath “not knowing why, nor do I know why” as if it were a refrain.
Cockfights were organized for the afternoon. Demetrio and his chief officers sat in the shade, under the cover of the municipal arcades, in front of an enormous plaza with overgrown weeds, a decrepit old stand, and a handful of abandoned adobe houses.
“Valderrama!” Demetrio called, looking wearily away from the ring. “Come sing me ‘The Gravedigger.’”
But Valderrama did not hear him, because instead of paying attention to the cockfight, he was watching the sun setting behind the hills and reciting an impassioned soliloquy. In an emphatic voice, with solemn gestures, he was saying:
“My Lord, my Lord, it is good that You have brought us here! I shall raise three tents: one for You, another for Moses, and another for Elijah.”
“Valderrama!” Demetrio yelled again. “Sing me ‘The Gravedigger.’”
“Hey, ya crazy fool, the general is callin’ ya,” an officer closer to him said.
Valderrama, with his eternally complacent smile on his lips, finally came and asked the musicians for a guitar.
“Silence!” the gamblers yelled.
Valderrama finished tuning the instrument. Just then, Quail and the Indian threw a pair of cocks—armed with long, very sharp blades—into the ring of sand. One was wine red, glimmering with beautiful obsidian streaks; the other, sandy yellow, with iridescent feathers like fiery copper scales.
The fight was swift and almost as fierce as a human battle. The cocks lunged at each other as if shot out of a spring. Their feathers standing on end, their necks arched, their eyes like corals, their combs erect, their legs sticking straight out—for a moment they did not even touch the ground, as their plumage, beaks, and claws were lost in a dizzying whirl. Then the wine-red cock broke away and was thrust outside the line of the ring, its legs sticking straight up. His vermilion eyes became extinguished as his leathery lids slowly closed, his tangled feathers quivering as the animal convulsed in a pool of blood.
Valderrama, who could not repress an expression of violent indignation, started strumming his guitar. His anger dissipated with the first solemn sounds of the song. His shining eyes gleamed with the light of madness. Letting his gaze wander over the square, the ruined stand, and the old houses, with the hills behind him and the burning sky above, he began to sing.
He was able to put so much soul in his voice, and such feeling in the chords of his old guitar, that when he finished Demetrio had turned his face away so that no one would see his eyes.
But Valderrama embraced him and held him tightly with that sudden closeness that he always assumed at some point toward everyone he met. And he said into Demetrio’s ear:
“Drink them up! Those tears are very beautiful!”
Demetrio asked for the bottle and handed it to Valderrama.
Valderrama avidly drank half of it down, almost in one gulp. Then he turned to everyone around him and exclaimed dramatically, in a declamatory tone, with tears in his eyes:
“Behold how the great wonders of the revolution are resolved in a single tear!”
And he proceeded to speak madly, but completely mad, to the dusty weeds, the decrepit stand, the gray houses, the tall hills, and the incommensurable sky.
IV
Juchipila could be seen in the distance. It was bathed in white sunlight in the middle of green foliage, at the foot of a tall, impressive hill that folded around the town like a turban.
A few soldiers looked at the towers of Juchipila and sighed sadly. Their march through the canyons was now the march of a blind man without a guide. They could already feel the bitterness of exodus.
“Is that town Juchipila?” Valderrama asked.
Valderrama, in the first stages of the first drunkenness of the day, had been counting the crosses they had seen by the side of roads and paths, put up on the rugged, stony slopes, in uneven creek beds, and along the banks of the rivers. Crosses made with recently varnished black wood, crosses made with two sticks of wood hammered together, crosses made with a pile of stones, crosses painted with cal on demolished walls, extremely humble crosses drawn with charcoal on the side of boulders. The trail of blood of the first revolutionaries of 1910, murdered by the government.1
When they are within sight of Juchipila, Valderrama gets off his nag, kneels down, leans over, and gravely kisses the ground.
The other soldiers pass by him without stopping. Some laugh at the madman, while others joke and jest.
Without hearing anyone, Valderrama utters his solemn prayer:
“Juchipila, crib of the revolution of 1910,2blessed land, land watered with the blood of martyrs, with the blood of dreamers . . . of the only good men!”
“Because they didn’t have time to be bad,” an ex-Federale riding by brutally completes the sentence.
Valderrama stops talking, thinks for a moment, knits his brow, and lets out a loud laugh that echoes through the hills. Then he remounts and hurries after the officer to ask for some of his tequila.
Maimed, crippled, rheumatic, and consumptive soldiers speak poorly of Demetrio. Men just off their mammas’ laps are given tin stripes to wear on their sombreros and made officers before they even know how to handle a rifle—while the veteran who has taken fire in a hundred battles, and is now incapacitated for any kind of work, the veteran who started off as a common soldier, is a common soldier still.
And the few officers who are left, old comrades of Macías’s, are also indignant because the ranks of the general staff have been filled with insignificant, perfumed, spruced-up dandies with capital.
“But the worst thing of all,” Venancio says, “is that we’re getting filled with ex-Federales.”
Anastasio himself, who usually finds everything that his compadre Demetrio does to be right, now agrees with the general dissatisfaction, and exclaims:
“Listen, comrades, I always say what’s on my mind . . . and I’ll go tell my compadre that if we’re gonna have all these Federales around all time, then we’re gonna be in real bad shape. Really! Ya mean you don’t believe me? I’m not afraid to speak my mind, and I swear by the mother who gave me life, that I’ll go tell my compadre Demetrio . . .”
So he told him. Demetrio listened, very generously. And once Anastasio was done speaking, he replied:
“Compadre, what ya say is true. We’re in a bad way: the soldiers grumble ’bout the promoted ones; the promoted ones, ’bout the officers; and the officers, ’bout us . . . And we’re just about ready to tell Villa and Carranza to go off and play without us . . . But I figure that what’s happening to us is the same thing as happened to that peasant in Tepatitlán. Remember? He never stopped complainin’ about his boss, but he never stopped workin’ neither. And tha’s just how we are: we complain and complain, and then we kill and kill . . . But this isn’t somethin’ we should be sayin’, compadre.”
“Why not, compadre Demetrio?”
“Well, I don’t know . . . ’Cause we just shouldn’t . . . ya know? What ya should be d
oin’ is getting’ our people up. I’ve received orders to go back to stop a dispatch tha’s supposed to go through Cuquío. In just a few days from now we’ll have to go up against the damn Carranzistas for real, and this time we’re gonna beat the hell out of ’em.”
Valderrama—the vagabond of highways who one day joined the troop without anyone’s knowing exactly when or where—caught some of Demetrio’s words; and since even fools don’t eat fire, he disappeared that same day as mysteriously as he had arrived.
V
They entered the streets of Juchipila just as the church bells were tolling, joyfully, loudly, with that particular tone that made the hearts of everyone from the surrounding canyons beat with emotion.
“Compadre, this reminds me of those times when the revolution was just startin’, when we’d arrive in any small town and all the bells would ring loud for us, and all the people would come out to welcome us with music, with flags, and everyone would shout ‘hurrah!’ and even set off firecrackers, ” Anastasio Montañés said.
“Now they don’t like us no more,” Demetrio replied.
“Yes, since we’re already ‘beaten and routed,’” Quail remarked.
“It’s not that . . . They can’t stand the look of the others, either.”
The Underdogs Page 14
