The house was built in the eighteenth century for a family that would spend three months a year, and added on to later without a visible break in style. It is a two-storeyed Hacienda, washed apricot, with wings enclosing quadrangles and a long south-western front facing the lake. The ground plan is native, the statuary was brought from Italy; the garden is believed to be English. All is tempered by alternate periods of prosperity and care, absence and neglect.
Presently we shall bathe. E will call to me, or I shall call to Anthony; we will walk to the end of the garden and slide into the lake without a shock, and with one leaping stroke coolly out of depth splash upon the mild and level water. The lake is immense, an inland-sea with bays set deep into three provinces, freshened by many rivers. A hundred miles of shore, undisgraced by rail or concrete, curve eastward toward Michoacán; and opposite our inlet one can see the outline of green hills upon another coast. Trees dip their branches over the calm waterfront, a donkey drinks stiff-legged and two Indian women stand waist-deep washing each other’s hair, while we lie under the palms on coarse sand and crackling birch-bleached weed, Anthony in full repose like an animal that has run, E and I more restless, teasing a complacent fowl with pebbles and a rhyme in the manner of Edward Lear.
‘The fish’s come in.’ Without lifting head from arms, Anthony has sensed the boat. Now the comida will be ready at the house; we shall eat under the thick shade of a west pergola, with the quick, straight, insouciant appetite of these altitudes: rice stewed with vegetables, fried eggs, blanco, a kind of small fat sole, very firm, brought up from the cold centre of the lake, avocados and fruit; attended by runners, two stocky Indian boys, Andreas and Domingo, swarthy, eager, tireless and headstrong like a pair of young mules. Something retrieves the meal from chaos:
this eternal spring,
Which here enamels every thing,
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air; …
The household and Anthony, who is reverting to some planter ancestry, will sleep the afternoon away. I, enlivened rather by these days of peace, have the choice of many shades to take my book. E will pace the loggia swinging a small stick, the single upright figure during the slow hours, east west, west east, composing step by step, clause by clause the periods of an exegesis of one of the more incomprehensible personages of seventeenth-century France.
We owe it all to Anthony. He had not been able to enjoy the driving of his automobile for long. Thirty miles out of Guadalajara, at Chapala, the lake began and the road ended. He made an attempt to continue on the rutted trail replacing it, but had to give up. A number of Indians, rigid in their blankets, looked on without comment. We studied the address on Anthony’s bit of paper.
‘I can hardly pronounce it,’ said E.
‘Just ask for Don Otavio’s place,’ said Anthony.
They said, ‘A boat will come.’
‘Indeed. A boat. When?’
‘In the little future.’
A child was sent to the shore on look-out, Anthony gazed at his engine, I at my wrist-watch, E flicked the pages of her detective story. The Indians sat well content.
But the boat did not come.
Then a mule cart passed. The Indians stopped it, made the old man who was driving turn round, dump his load, and pile on our bags instead. Anthony and I were helped on to a trunk, a space was cleared for E on the driver’s plank. Somebody stuck flowers into the mule’s hat. E was still sitting in the Cadillac firmly, clutching her book. ‘Ask them how far it is,’ she said.
‘Es un poquito retirado.’
‘They say it’s a little retired.’
Then suddenly we were off. The Indians poked the driver and the beast, and shouted, ‘¡Tlayacán, Tlayacán! ¡que les vaya bien!’ E bowed from her plank and said politely, ‘boo-ainous dee-as, moochas gratsias, viva Mexico.’ The mule feigned a second’s trot and everything began to shake, sway and rattle in the most concentrated manner.
The trail consisted of two not always parallel ruts of varying depth and gauge, caked hard, strewn with boulders, cut by holes and traversed by ditches. The cart had solid wooden wheels and no springs.
First we passed some stucco villas decaying behind tall enclosures. Sixty years ago, during the hey-days of the dictatorship, Chapala had been a modish resort. The driver pointed, ‘la casa de la hija de Don Porfirio Diaz.’
‘Look,’ we said, ‘that villa belongs to Diaz’ daughter.’
‘I am not going to be diverted by historical interest,’ said E. The plank she was trying to remain on was narrow as well as wobbly.
‘Doña Carmen comes here in the winter,’ said the driver, ‘but the ferrocarril her father built for her is broken.’
‘A railway?’ said E. ‘A railway, where?’
‘From Guadalajara.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘Broken. Now we have the road.’
‘What road?’
‘The road from Guadalajara.’
‘But it doesn’t go on.’
‘Yes, to Guadalajara.’
‘What is he talking about?’
‘The Señora wants to know whether there was a road or railway from Chapala.’
‘Yes, Don Porfirio’s railway. Now the road.’
‘We meant round the lake.’
‘Round the lake one goes by boat.’
‘The hell one does,’ said Anthony.
‘How did Don Porfirio and Doña Carmen go?’ said I.
‘Don Porfirio and Doña Carmen and the Excellencies did not go farther than Chapala.’
‘Very sensible of them,’ said E.
Soon we were in open country. On our left lay the lake, almost colourless under the still vertical sun; on our right, behind a fringe of fields, a row of humpy hills covered with lush green shrub. Nasty clusters of black carrion birds hung watchful in the sky. The trail, conservative in the rhythm of its vagaries, continued small hole, big hole, boulder, ditch; small hole, big hole, boulder, chasm. In turns we walked, we rode, we pushed, propped luggage, steadied shafts, picked up E’s book and helped the mule. We sat by the chasms in discouragement. After some time, pigs appeared and baby donkeys, then a banana grove, and presently we reached a sub-tropical village. Women with children at their breasts peered at us from leaf huts.
‘Anthony, is this your friend’s place?’ said E.
‘What is this village called?’ said I.
‘The place of el gringocito d’Inglaterra,’ said the old man.
‘What’s that?’
‘A dear little dirty American from England,’ said I.
‘From the map it must be San Antonio Something,’ said Anthony.
‘Map!’ said E. ‘Don’t tell me.’
‘What about that American?’ said Anthony. ‘¿Dónde? ¿Dónde?’
‘Not American,’ said I. ‘Work him out in terms of un cher petit boche d’Autriche.’
‘Oh,’ said E, ‘a nice young Englishman.’
‘Let’s call on him,’ said Anthony.
‘What a dreadful idea,’ said I.
‘My dear Anthony,’ said E, ‘you have much to learn. If this hypothetical personage chooses, for no doubt some very good reason of his own, to live in such a place as this, he does not do so in order to be called upon by the likes of us.’
‘He may be lonesome,’ said Anthony.
‘Englishmen in sub-tropical villages never are.’
After another hour, we came to another much larger village with proper mud houses and a market place. For three hundred yards, potholes were agreeably replaced by cobble-stones.
‘Now what about this place?’
‘Ajijíc,’ said the driver.
‘I dare say,’ said E.
Then the trail resumed its character with a will. The countryside grew wilder, westering rays struck the lake and the water glistened in milky rainbow colours. Birds appeared. On we dragged and shook and rumbled with no end in view. Then a train of mules came into sigh
t, broke into a gallop, raced towards us in a cloud of dust, reigned in and effected a trembling stand-still. A man leapt from the saddle. He bowed to E and handed her a large mauve envelope.
On crested paper, above a triple-barrelled signature, we read:
Villa El Dorado, San Pedro Tlayacán
YOUR MADAMS, DISTINGUISHED ESQUIRE – Your entire servant, being apprised to his profoundest confusion of Your unbecoming way to his undignified house, the disgraced rascals through obdurate tardiveness having returned the insufficient boat without Your Unparalleled Favours to his eternal shame, is sending three unworthy mules, scant shelter and a humble sustenance for Your Facile progress and implores You to dispense him for the abomination of the travel!
Q.B.S.P.
Otavio de … y … y …
‘Your friend seems very civil, Anthony,’ said E.
The mules, fine well-groomed beasts, were hitched troika-fashion on to our equipage; a third was to be Anthony’s mount. The shelter was two parasols, and the sustenance a large Edwardian tea-basket in full polish. This was deposited on the ground.
Our new attendants withdrew some distance where they settled in expectancy. E and Anthony were as unfamiliar with the mechanism of this product of a pre-plastic age as Don Otavio’s retainers, so I sat on the roadside, lit the spirit lamp and proceeded to make tea. The caddy had been freshly filled; there was thin bread and butter, there were cucumber sandwiches, ginger nuts, Huntley and Palmer biscuits. There was a jar of Patum Peperium. Thus we proceeded much refreshed on our travel. Thanks to the new turn-out, the progress of the last hours was a good deal faster and for E and myself more agonising, the parasols adding greatly to our insecurity and the indignity of walking having now become unthinkable. So it was with relief that at sunset, without warning and in a last excruciating spurt of gallop, we swung into the drive of the Villa El Dorado.
A youngish man stood on the terrace of a very ugly house. He ran out to meet us. He was wearing white flannels and a charming shirt decorated with sea-horses. A bunch of gold holy medals tinkled in the open neck. His hands and complexion were white as asses’ milk; his face, a long oval with slightly softened contours crested by a plume of silvery hair, was a generic face: one of those inherited handsome faces of Goya’s minor courtiers, where the acumen, pride and will of an earlier mould have run to fatuity and craft; a set face, narrow, stiff and sad. He turned out one of the kindest men I ever met.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘hello. I am Otavio de … y … y … I am so glad you got here at last. Nobody has come from Chapala by road for thirty years. You must be tired. That horrible cart, so like a tumbril.’ Here he let off a burst of orders in Spanish. ‘I am sorry about the boat being late.’ He kissed E’s hand and gave Anthony two sketchy taps on each shoulder, the formal simulacrum of a hug. ‘Don Antonio! Joaquím and Orazio were down last Saturday to Monday, they speak of you as a brother.’
We thanked him for sending us tea and mules.
‘You were able to use the basket? I am so happy. It belonged to my mother.’ His manner was simple and so, after all, was his English. ‘Now you must have some drinks. Or would you like to go up to your rooms first? No, not here. Over at the Hacienda. It is on the other side of these trees.’ He let off more orders. ‘Here is where I live now. The house is a replica of a villa at Monte Carlo my mother used to stay in when she was a girl. My father had it built for her as a wedding present. Now she has left it to me. The Hacienda belongs mostly to my brothers. I look after it for them. They do not live here. No one has lived on the Hacienda since the Revolutions, but my brother Enriquez and his wife come down for the week-ends. Would you like to see it now before it is quite dark? I am afraid we have no electric light. We had our own plant when I was a boy, with an Italian who ran it. He was shot by mistake by Villa’s band.
‘Yes, these are lime-trees. My great-grandfather planted them. He had them brought from England. Now that our land is taken, my brothers and I are going to have an hotel at the Hacienda. Do you not think that a good idea? We hope to have some sympathetic travellers from abroad. This is a guanábano. The fruit is good. You will be able to enjoy it at Christmas.
‘Of course you must. You must stay a very long time. And this is the Hacienda San Pedro. I so hope you will like it.’
Thus, in the twilight, we saw the apricot façade, the open loggia, the garden and the lake, the fallen figure and the upright one.
‘But it is lovely,’ we said, ‘lovely, lovely.’
‘It is yours,’ said Don Otavio.
CHAPTER TWO
A Well-Run House
Par ici! vous qui voulez manger
Le Lotus parfumé! c’est ici qu’on vendange
Les fruits miraculeux dont votre coeur a faim;
Venez vous enivrer de la douceur étrange
De cette après-midi qui n’a jamais de fin.
OURS IS NOT an age of luxury, nor one of domestic comfort. Order and space, the sine qua nons of daily freedom, are rareties of great price, exorbitant in effort and in money. Without space, order is hard to maintain; and space is hard to keep warm and polished. Never before has house work been done by so many and so badly. Reluctant amateurs and semi-professionals scurry to and fro in a hum of Hoovers but fail to bring about the perpetual resurrection on the inviolate bedroom, the well-set table and the somnolent kitchen from under the hourly detritus of existence. Men come home to no privacy, women to no leisure, and over the careless flow of hospitality falls the shadow of its aftermath.
Latins do not seem to share that sense of struggle. Their wives and mothers swing impeccable establishments, and put up the jam besides, without that air of participation in the rearguard’s last and unsuccessful stand; but women of the Anglo-Saxon middle classes seldom have the Carthusian cast of mind and steadfastness of will conducive to a tidy house. Their drawers brim with single stockings and their sinks with tea leaves; they feel they waste their time, which indeed they do, and either settle in the mess like duck in duck-soup, or grapple on, morning after morning, until the world becomes the size of their unmanageable home and their sole memento vivere the grease, the crumbs, the ashes where so short ago the pleasant company had sat, and their families are driven from house to flat and from flat to the confinement of the hotel bedroom.
Don Otavio de … y … y … has been ruined these thirty years. He has seventeen servants to look after him. Mexico is its own place and lives its own age, or composite of ages, and whatever that may be, it is not the age of post-war England; and in Mexico, San Pedro Tlayacán is a backwater. All the dirty work is done by many for a few. By so many, for so few, that the work must surely cease to be so dirty. Someone sits on a stool in the shade waving a painted fan before a charcoal fire; someone else is walking in the garden carrying Don Otavio’s box of sweetmeats; in the back yard four people sit chattering with vegetables in their laps, a child has wandered off to prod the nests for an egg, another person is pushing a straw whisk about the patio tiles raising a few geranium petals: and thus here the enchanted ease, too, is spread over the many.
Don Otavio keeps house all day. He appears on the terrace of the villa and claps his hands. Niños, the papayas must be picked. Niño, there are roses again in the water tank. Has the boat gone for the butter? Has Jesús made it up with his wife? Has Carmelita been able to do something about the spell on the tomatoes? Would she like the priest? The white turkey is not well: niña, the brandy flask, and a teaspoon. Is the cook herself again today? Niñas, there is that ibis sitting on the washing. He wants to see the jam; he needs a bigger vase; the lamp in the hall was smoking; he would like his purse; and a little cinnamon, please, in his chocolate. What, out of beeswax? There’s another hole in the billiard table; his brother is coming out tomorrow, they might have a suckling pig. He will have his dinner on the east terrace, in the moonlight. No, it is chilly; will they bring him a shawl? Dinner is to be laid in the back drawing-room. For four. No, perhaps for nine.
Everybody hops and
skips and pricks up their ears. There is endless talk, to and fro, about everything. And meanwhile, prodded and subsiding, spurred and delayed, through regular drinking bouts and exceptional drinking bouts, through fits and visitations and fiestas, the household jogs on its course like a donkey through his working day. Early fruit and coffee, the birds noisy in the trees, water pumped up from the lake, the servants’ tortillas and the servants’ frijoles, beefsteak and chocolate at the Villa, tea and eggs at the Hacienda, the patios watered and the linen spread out on the lawn, the mule with provisions in from Jocotepec, the long midday meal and the longer afternoon lull, lemonade and iced tea, the nets cast on the lake before sunset, the wild fowl settling in the rushes, the lamps brought in and trays with manzanilla and fried charales, Don Otavio’s card table set up, the servants’ tortillas, the servants’ frijoles and somebody singing, dinner at ten and the shutters fastened down for the night.
Everything is done for us. Aquí nada nos falta. We are those sacred animals, guests at a Mexican gentleman’s house, or rather at a Mexican gentleman’s gates, for Don Otavio keeps to the El Dorado and we might be said to have the run of the Hacienda if so hearty a term could be applied to that halcyon sweetness of existence. Don Otavio cannot know how happy he has made us, or he would not try so hard to improve on our happiness: messengers appear from the Villa with offers of saddle horses and canoes; with a camellia – it bloomed this morning; with pot-pourri – my aunt at Guanajuato makes it; with a bowl of pork-and-barley – it is the speciality of this Saint’s Day, you may not find it entirely repulsive; with inquiries – have we slept at all? was there anything fit to eat for breakfast? are we tolerably in spirits? Then, after Mass and the toilet, Don Otavio himself strolls over for a talk. It is always the right moment. He glides into a chaise-longue beside one.
A Visit to Don Otavio Page 12
