TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border

by Clifford Irving

  Sipping his brandy, Von Papen pretended to think that over. Then he said, “You may be right. But there is one thing Villa could do to provoke it.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Declare war on the United States. Make war … with German arms and German money.”

  I took a shaky breath. “But, Captain, if we did that. it would light such a fire under Wilson’s ass that he’d go to war with you as well!”

  “Ah, but not in Europe!”

  Suddenly I saw his point. His point; our army.

  “Come on, Captain,” I said, smirking. “Why should Villa do such a thing? What is poor Mexico to gain by making war on the United States other than more bloodshed and more suffering? There’s everything to lose. But what’s to gain?”

  “I should think,” he replied calmly, “that in the hour of victory the main thing she would lose would be the adjective you applied to her. She would be proud Mexico, not poor Mexico. With Germany’s help she would take her rightful place among the world’s great powers.”

  “Those are pretty words. I’m not sure Pancho Villa would be impressed by them.”

  “I’ve never met the man. What would impress him?”

  The whole idea had begun to horrify me, but I was too curious to hold back.

  “A specific promise. Not for himself. For Mexico.”

  “How about Texas?” Von Papen said, without even pausing to think. “Arizona. California. Her lost territories.” He smiled, as I gasped.

  I had to call time out then. This had gone far beyond my anticipation and to the limits of my imagination. I hadn’t known what to expect, but it surely wasn’t a proposition that the Northern Division join up with the Krauts, then invade Texas and get it, plus California, as a prize!

  Already I imagined General Pershing peering through his binoculars at our whooping, charging brigade, muttering to his aide, “That crazy fellow on the chestnut looks familiar to me. See if our snipers can pick him off.”

  I strolled alone through the orchard to mull things over. Then we met for tea and biscuits, and after that we wandered off to the library.

  I settled back into the soft red-leather easy chair and put my feet up on an ottoman.

  I got the jump on him this time before he could begin to lather up.

  “Captain, I think I understand the situation now — what you’d like General Villa to do. I know the army of Mexico, especially the Northern Division. I’ve fought for it for two years, and I didn’t get to be a colonel at my age because I parted my hair in the right place. Our soldiers are as brave as the next man, when they’re fighting for land and liberty. Their land … their liberty. But they’re not much interested, the way you Germans are, in fighting to take over some other fellow’s backyard. It’s my opinion that they wouldn’t get ten miles inside of Texas before they’d have more troubles out of Black Jack Pershing’s army than Job had boils. And when Scott wheeled out the light artillery, they’d just turn around and hightail it for home. Now, that’s no way to win a war.”

  Elisa translated my Spanish into a flowing German, while Von Papen started currying his mustache again.

  “Colonel Mix,” he said, when he finished spiffing up, “ten miles inside the border would be more than enough. A single mile would do. We wouldn’t expect you to fight a major campaign. We would merely expect you to strike, then regroup to a more secure position.” Thinking I was Mexican, he of course avoided the word retreat. “Such an act of incursion would be sufficient to bring the American army after you, and then you need but wait for the inevitable.”

  “What might that be?” I asked, more and more amazed.

  “Our intervention on your behalf, followed by American surrender to German military power. Our submarines can blockade their eastern coast. Our troop transports can reach it. Once we have brought England and France to their knees, our full might will be thrown against the United States. It will be a matter of weeks before there is a negotiated peace. Mr. Wilson has no stomach for a serious war. And you will recover all that you lost in 1848.”

  Time, I thought, to nail this down. “Would you put that in writing?” I inquired.

  “At the proper time,” he said cordially.

  I nodded and asked where he, as a cavalry officer who knew the Texas border, thought the Mexican army could strike most effectively for the common cause. He smiled beautifully then. As far as he was concerned, I was netted and ready to be fileted.

  “General Villa would surely know that better than I,” he said, with a nice deference.

  “He’s always open to advice. You say you’ve never met him?”

  “I’ve not yet had that honor.”

  “He’s the most reasonable man you’re ever likely to come across. Always eager to listen, always ready to take help from the right people. And speaking of help, what exactly are you prepared to offer?”

  “Give us a list of your needs.”

  “No, Captain,” I said firmly. “Give us a list of what you can supply. And when. And by what method of transportation.”

  “But surely, Colonel, you can’t expect such a commitment at this stage.”

  “It’s not what I expect. It’s what General Villa will require. If I come back empty-handed, he might get to thinking he’s buying a pig in a poke and that all we did up here in Parral was punish the air. And that might not suit him.”

  He thought that over for a while, then chattered something in German to Elisa, who nodded.

  He turned back to me.

  “Are you in a great hurry, Colonel? Can you give me a week? Perhaps even ten days? I would like to send some cables, and they must be coded, and the response is not always as swift in your country as one might wish.”

  It was my turn to look at Elisa, and I broke into rapid Spanish that I knew he wouldn’t follow. “Frau Griensen,” I said, “can you stand my smelly hide around here for another week? Or would you rather we skipped to a hotel in town?”

  “There’s no hotel here where you’d be comfortable, my colonel, and I like your smelly hide.”

  And then, just as Von Papen swung his monocle back to look for my reaction, she winked.

  I cleared my throat dramatically. “It seems to be in the interest of my country and my general to stay. What about you, Captain?”

  “With your kind permission, Colonel, I will return to Juárez. Our communications facilities are better there.”

  “You’ve got my permission. I don’t know what we’ll do here, but it’s been a long and fatiguing war. Colonel Cervantes says the mountain air suits him. We’ll wait here for you.”

  “Soldiers deserve a rest and rarely get one,” Captain von Papen replied sympathetically.

  He stood up, stiff as a steel bar, cracking his heels together again. He saluted me again. I liked it.

  Right after tea, with his Mexican escorts roweling their horses and firing their rifles gleefully into the air, Von Papen set out for Chihuahua City to catch the northbound train.

  As soon as he was vanished into a fog of alkali dust, Elisa took my arm. She walked with me into the shade of her bountiful garden and threw a crafty smile at me.

  “What a good actor you are, Thomas,” she murmured. “You may have missed your true profession. I almost applauded.”

  She had spoken to me in English.

  “What are you talking about, Elisa?” I answered gruffly in Spanish. “I don’t understand.”

  “Did you enjoy Tristram Shandy?” She paused. “I’ve been following the progress of your bookmark. Oh, don’t look so worried and conscience-stricken. I know you’re not a spy sent by General Pershing. If Villa gave you his trust, that’s good enough for me.”

  I kept frowning, while she kept smiling. Eventually her smile conquered, as smiles do. And this smile was on the face of a beautiful woman.

  “Did you tell Von Papen?”

  Elisa laughed, and squeezed my arm. “He wouldn’t have understood. These military people are so damned stuffy. I’m German, but
I’ve lived here most of my life. One’s sympathies change. Whatever I did was in order to help my country, and my country is Mexico. It just struck me that Mexico might be helped more if this meeting took place than if Captain von Papen bolted because he wouldn’t believe Villa would send a gringo.” She smiled at me. “Now, I myself think the gringo was an inspired choice. And how would the gringo feel about a siesta?”

  That week, one of the more memorable ones of my life, passed quickly—too quickly. Candelario was content. He had his Francisca, who stroked his beard lovingly and rubbed axle grease on his back when he got drunk and took a nasty fall from the pinto, and eventually moved in with him after asking permission of her mistress. And I had Elisa.

  This was new to me, and wondrous—a powerful word but an accurate one. I had never known a full-grown independent woman before, someone at the zenith of her beauty and power. She played no games with me … at least none that I didn’t enjoy.

  “I want you to know who I am, Tom, so that you won’t make any serious mistakes or have too many illusions. I’m thirty-seven years old, and I’ve had a bellyful of the world. I haven’t seen and done everything, and I hope I never do—but what’s happened to me has been enough to make me glad I lived. I value my independence above everything. I won’t let any man, or anything, take it from me. I mean,” she said, shrugging, smiling softly, “I’ll put up a hell of a fight.”

  She lay back on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. I watched the blue smoke swirl in front of the crackling fire.

  “My first marriage,” Elisa went on, “to Zambrano, wasn’t a very good one. He was muy mucho, muy Mexicano. You know what I mean. I didn’t cope too well. I could now, but not then. My only excuse is that I was young. He went haring off after the ladies, and I got back at him by having affairs with men. With a woman too, but only once. She was a girl from Berlin, my cousin, who came to visit. I’d always adored her, a schoolgirl crush, and it came to fruition. It ended, she went back, but I’ve never regretted it—I did it with a whole heart. And I see you’re shocked.”

  I wasn’t. I don’t think anything she had done could shock me, because she wasn’t the least bit ashamed and she made it sound natural. It was just something beyond my comprehension, and I said so. She smiled.

  When Zambrano’s appendix burst, as she had already told us, she married again and lost her second husband to one of Huerta’s firing squads. “That hurt,” she said succinctly. “He was a good man—much older than I and far wiser. And then I went through what the English call ‘a bad patch.’ I didn’t want anything to do with men, but they came round, as they always do to a woman on her own. Bringing me God’s gift in a pair of tight trousers.” She laughed merrily. “I turned them all away. I’d learned a long time ago that promiscuity wasn’t the answer—not for me. I needed someone, and I was willing to be chosen, but I wanted the right to choose too. There’s more than one revolution, you see. So I had to do a bit of kicking and scratching, which isn’t my style. I think I achieved a reputation in Parral as a tough hombre. The buck nun of Los Flores.” She chuckled again. “And I loved it as much as I hated it. What I hated was the loneliness, although I’ve discovered that human beings are constructed in such a way that they’ll get used to anything, no matter how /«human. Like war,” she said carelessly. “But never mind that. Getting back to me, what I grew to love was my bloody independence. And that’s a trap too. Believe me. The ego soars. You grow a little arm-weary patting yourself on the back. It’s so damned silly and so damned necessary. It’s the key to your life, but it’s a bore to make it a way of life. But I did. And still do. Can’t help it. I warn you.”

  She fell silent awhile, but I knew she wasn’t waiting for me to speak. She was mulling something over in her mind. I liked to watch that process of thought: I liked the changing shadows in her green eyes and the tightening of little muscles around her lips.

  Then she said quickly, “I want you to know something else. No illusions, no serious mistakes—isn’t that what I said? But still.” Again she hesitated before she spoke. “That time, when I wore the nun’s habit— I’m not speaking of the dead past. It’s lasted right up to now … that is, until the night after the charreada. You’re the first, Tom, in two years. Long years, I might add. Good years, but not the easiest ones.”

  I believed her instantly. She flattered me, but it wasn’t her intent. She wanted me to understand her and to be a shade more careful than I might have been otherwise. She was as vulnerable as I.

  “But why me, Elisa?”

  “Because you didn’t take me for granted,” she said. “Not before bed, not during, not after. You have some style, Tom, not just with Chihuahua longhorns and German staff captains. I like almost everything about you … so far,” she said, warier now, pulling back, but with a little smile.

  “You don’t know me yet,” I answered.

  “I have a good sense of smell. Age and experience, my sweet, have to provide some benefits.”

  No one had ever called me “my sweet” before Elisa, and nothing can move a man to lay out the raw truths of his life more than a woman who beats him to the punch. She hadn’t been shy; neither was I. I told her my story, what little there was. I didn’t leave out my courtship of Hannah or my living with Rosa and my visit to Tomochic. I didn’t leave out the corral in Torreón. I must have spoken for hours—not at one time, but over the course of our days and nights and even in the pearl light of dawn after we had wakened and made love. Elisa always listened. She was a woman of substance, and I knew she could help me.

  “Oh, Tom!” she burst out. “These past years, you’ve lived. You’re learning! What good does it do to keep on torturing yourself? It’s not what you do that counts, it’s how you do it. With what spirit! Don’t you think, sometimes, that this life is a kind of game? Unlike any other, I mean, with rules that you have to make up for yourself. You play to win, but you sure as hell better enjoy playing or it makes no sense.”

  I reflected on that for a while. We were sitting in the library, with snifters of brandy. A good hickory fire blazed in the grate, fragrant and warm.

  “I suppose you’re like me,” she said. “You were brought up to be good, and truthful, and faithful. Isn’t that so? But to what? To other people’s idea of goodness, and truth, and fidelity, and heaven knows what else.” She tossed some stray yellow hairs from her forehead and spoke soothingly. “In the end, Tom, I think there’s only one judge of your life on this earth. That’s the man standing in your boots. He stands alone, and he’s usually damned lonely. No one else can see his vision. No one else has the right. Certainly not the knowledge.”

  “I suppose if you put it that way,” I said, “no one can judge Rodolfo Fierro. But I don’t care. I judge him. He’s a murderer. And I don’t think those men in the corral at Torreón thought much of the game they had to play.” I sighed; I never seemed to stray far from that memory. “And what about the campesinos, the ones who live in places like La Perla? You can’t tell a starving man that life is a game. You can’t tell a mother of fifteen Indian kids that it’s a game and she’s a fool if she doesn’t enjoy it. I mean, you can—but if there’s a rock handy, you’d better duck.”

  “I don’t mean that, Tom.”

  “I see. You mean for people like you and me.”

  “For anyone who can crawl out of the rut they were born into. Damn it, it’s not easy! But some people do it. They don’t spend their lives acting out a morality that they don’t believe in. They don’t inherit— they create! And you know I don’t mean they have the right to be cruel, or to cheat for the sake of gain. Unless,” she said, grinning, “it’s for a good quarter horse…”

  “But why not?” I said, trying to follow her thinking. “If I believe in that, if those are my rules, if that pleases me, why in hell shouldn’t I?”

  “But you don’t believe in it.”

  “No,” I sighed, “I don’t. Except for a quarter horse.”

  “And you surely have the right to tak
e pleasure when it’s offered to you with no strings attached. And give it in kind. I do what I please, Tom. I take the consequences, and I can live with that. If I make a mistake, no one pays but me.”

  “But what do I do now, Elisa? With you, I mean. Can’t you see? I’m falling in love with you.”

  It was a simple confession of simple fact, and she took it that way, without comment or fluttering of eyelashes. I suppose she had known without my having to say it.

  “Stay here with me,” she said, “until Captain von Papen gets back from Juárez. And then do what pleases you, whatever it may be. Just make sure it’s because you truly want to, and not because you feel obliged. Don’t do anything for that reason.”

  “I feel obliged to Pancho Villa,” I said, changing the focus. “Does that make it wrong to keep on fighting for him?”

  “You believe in his revolution, don’t you? Doesn’t it make you feel you can look yourself in the eye without flinching?”

  “You put it well.”

  “If your obligations are the same as your desires, you’re a lucky man. You can be whole.”

  I tried to see how that applied to my being torn between Hannah and Rosa in the past, and now so suddenly involved with her, but I got all muddled up. I told her so.

  “Ah, you’re young,” she said gently. “But that’s no crime. It’s something we all have to pass through, like Tristram Shandy kicking from the womb. Don’t think about it too much. The answers will come to you when you’re not thinking. Trust them when they come. Meanwhile, finish your wine. Come to bed.”

  Elisa Griensen wanted to sing again. I would oblige, and I had the desire to match the obligation.

  So I felt whole. Not terribly enlightened, but certainly lucky. The pleasure was unsullied by guilt or longings in any other direction. I tried not to think about Rosa. She was there, somewhere in Mexico and somewhere in the core of my mind and heart, but she wasn’t here. And I was. Elisa was a calm island bounded by warm waters in the midst of a turbulent sea. The revolution didn’t touch me during that week. I had a taste of what peace might be like, and it suited me as much as the other. So I was torn that way too but didn’t know it.