“Providence is not fate.”
“Indeed it isn’t. Fatalism is rational.”
He had followed events, on television and in the newspapers, the great deceivers. What an ass Theophilus Grady was, in his nineteenth-century getup, Teddy Roosevelt redivivus. The man made one long for the return of the death penalty. Even better, when the man was arrested they should deliver him up to the mercies of the Mexican mob.
And now Don Ibanez was back. One could almost believe that the old hidalgo had been rejuvenated by all these events, despite the anguish they must cost him. Imagine, popping off to Mexico on the spur of the moment. By contrast, Jason felt rooted in his retirement home.
The second night, sipping wine, Catherine had told him of her most recent affair, mindless days in Chicago with a man she had known when they were young. There was no need for her to describe those days of wild passion, even if she had been inclined to do so. He could sense her carnal appetite, the eager despair of the would-be libertine.
“He was killed in Mexico City, Jason. He had gone to the shrine, no doubt out of remorse. It is awful to think of oneself as an occasion of sin, but I am sure that was his judgment of me.”
“Nonsense.”
Seneca had been right about sensual pleasure. After many years, Phelps had come to agree with the old Stoic. The pleasures of the flesh cannot satisfy and invariably they bring on unpleasant complications. Hilda had been a complacent wife but of course she must have suspected. But his affair with Myrna had been too much. In his passion, he had become careless, almost taunting his wife, gone now to where betrayed wives go. And all of us, eventually. Seneca had recommended the pleasures of the mind. Moderate catering to the fire of the flesh, to be sure, but keep it cool, as students would say. Having Catherine in the house brought back wistful memories of the desires of the flesh.
VIII
“He wore a medal.”
Clare regarded Catherine as her replacement and so the two women worked well together. One afternoon, Clare took her home to show her the hacienda and of course the basilica.
“Basilica!”
“It’s the exact replica of a church in Mexico.”
“Where the picture was stolen?”
“I’m praying so hard that it will be returned unharmed.”
Catherine had fallen silent, her eyes fixed on the basilica.
“Would you like to see it?”
A nod.
Inside, Catherine drifted in a trance toward the altar and stopped. When Clare came up beside her, she found the older woman weeping. She would not have expected such religious devotion of her. Why? Because she had volunteered to help Professor Phelps? But she worked for him herself. Clare helped Catherine to a pew.
“My lover was killed here.”
“Here!”
“In Mexico City. When the picture was stolen. He tried to stop them. . . .”
Of course people had been killed at the time; it seemed awful not to have remembered that. Now Clare did and she remembered as well reading of the American who had confronted the thieves and been shot down in consequence.
“He’s a martyr,” she declared.
“He’s dead.” Catherine looked toward the altar. “Is that a copy of the picture that was stolen?”
“Yes.”
Catherine took a deep breath, as if to prevent herself from crying again. Clare said, “Let’s go outside. But say a prayer for him first.”
Catherine swung on her, angry. “I don’t pray!”
Clare was stunned. They did go outside then, in silence, and Clare suggested going into the hacienda for tea. “Or a drink, if you want one.”
“Yes, I do.”
Clare led her to the sideboard, so she could make her own drink. But all Catherine did was fill a glass half full of rum and bring it to her lips. She looked at Clare over the rim of the glass. After tasting the drink, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“Tell me about it.”
“About what?” She was angry again.
“You said he was your lover.”
“That’s a fancy word for it, as fancy as calling what we had an affair.”
Catherine drank more rum and then they went onto the veranda and sat.
“He was someone I knew when we were kids. He was a writer, so I became aware of him. His wife died and I wrote him. Then there were telephone calls. So we met in Chicago. Three days.” She bit her lip, as if to stop herself from saying more. “Afterward, he went on pilgrimage to that shrine and was killed.”
“Oh, Catherine, that’s so sad.”
“He believed all those things. He wore a medal. . . .”
Clare wanted to tell her again that the way he had died did make him a martyr, at least she thought it did. She would not have wanted to try to explain it to Catherine.
“You’re not Catholic?”
“No!”
“But he was?”
She nodded. “I was, too, long ago.”
There must be things to say in such a situation, but Clare could not think what they might be. To fill the silence she began to talk about George Worth. Whether in relief to have the subject changed or because she was interested, Catherine listened avidly. When Clare described the Catholic Worker house, Catherine said, “I don’t blame you.”
“I blame myself.”
Before that afternoon, Clare had regarded Catherine as a self-possessed professional woman, poised, successful. Now they were two women, disappointed in love, sharing their stories.
“And so you came here to work with Professor Phelps. Had you known him before?”
Catherine told her about her friend Myrna, whose doctoral dissertation had been directed by Phelps. “He can help me more than I can help him.”
“Help you?”
“It’s a long story.”
After she had taken Catherine back to Professor Phelps’s house and returned home, Clare thought about the strange conversation they had had. The man she called her lover had been gunned down in the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He had been a Catholic, and Catherine said she had been one, too, long ago. Suddenly Clare was filled with dread at the kind of help Professor Phelps might be to Catherine.
I don’t blame you, Catherine had said when she told her that she couldn’t face life in a place like the Catholic Worker. No doubt she was just being kind or polite, but, remembered, the remark did not console. Catherine had also said that she didn’t pray, that she had been Catholic once, and far from being ashamed of what she would not call her affair with the man who had been killed in the basilica in Mexico City, she clearly regretted that it had ended. It was even clearer what she thought of a man who, in remorse, had made his fateful pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe. All that made Catherine’s sympathy feel like an accusation.
Her father’s understanding of her return home was different. For him, people were called to different vocations and that was that. His own vocation consisted of wealth and ease and enormous holdings in Napa Valley, the deference of all. . . . She stopped. How many wealthy men were there who lived as her father did? He was proud of his property and had made it far more prosperous than how he had received it, but in a way George Worth probably could never understand, Don Ibanez was poor in spirit. Clare had no doubt that if tomorrow he lost everything, he would not lose the simple devotion that had led him to construct a replica of the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the grounds. If God’s will had made him the heir of wealth, God’s will could make him poor, and he would continue to say his prayers and show devotion to Mary. Her father, she realized, could very well reconcile himself to the kind of life George led.
Thus everything returned her to her sense of shame that she had turned away from the life the man she loved was resolved to lead.
IX
A version of Montezuma’s revenge.
In Congress the usual cacophony went on, expressions of outrage, condemnation, demands that something be done, pleas for caution and prudence. Negotiations were urged
. Negotiations with whom? The Mexican government disavowed any part in the skirmishes along the border as if it was simply a squabble among drug dealers. It was a further insult to suggest that there was any official sanction for what was going on. Senator Gunther from Maine and a half dozen apoplectic patriots demanded a lightning strike by the Marines to clear up the southern border once and for all. The White House insisted that progress was being made. Progress!
Theophilus Grady smiled. What a sorry bunch members of Congress were, and of course the administration continued being the administration, all its attention on the Middle East. The whole spectacle made Theophilus Grady even more pleased that he had taken the matter into his own hands.
Morgan said, “I’m glad we struck our camps.”
We? Our? But Grady only said, “The Minutemen are doing all right.”
They were installed in the mountain redoubt of one of Grady’s financial supporters, Dougherty, a zealot from Pocatello who had three television sets on in the hope of getting news of the fighting. Dougherty had a huge battle map installed in the front room, next to the fireplace. But news from the various fronts was scattered. It was a harmless pastime. Grady’s men among the Minutemen kept him informed. There was guerrilla warfare going on across much of the Southwest but casualties were low. Except at Gila Bend, Arizona, where a band of Latinos had emerged from the back of a semi and wiped out the Minutemen who had retreated to that city.
Grady wished now that they had stayed on the border. He did not like being above the fray, subjected to the enthusiasms of Dougherty and Morgan’s assumption that he was in the inner circle. If chaos had been the purpose of the theft, the goal had been reached, but public outrage had yet to translate into the kind of action that would close the border definitively. Through network telephone he expressed his dissatisfaction with Gunther’s efforts.
“Introduce a war resolution, Senator.”
Silence. “How much do you know of the way the Senate works?”
“I am counting on you knowing.”
“How are things really going?” the senator asked.
“On schedule.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that we have reached the point where the goddamn government has to get off its duff and defend the border.”
“I’m working on the governors down there. They can call up the National Guard on their own authority.”
Grady could see now that he should have gotten ironclad assurances from Gunther before the event. He had not expected this shilly-shallying; he had counted on a bipartisan reaction and swift retaliation, in the manner of the immediate aftermath of 9/11. That hadn’t happened. He still held the ace of spades, the stolen picture, but where were the other players?
It was time to issue a statement.
In the headquarters of Justicia y Paz in Los Angeles, the statement from the head of the Rough Riders had everybody jumping. Grady had announced that if the Mexican and American governments didn’t move immediately to shut down the border he could no longer guarantee the safety of the picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe that had miraculously appeared on the cape of Juan Diego when he brought it filled with unseasonable roses as proof to the archbishop.
Miguel Arroyo tried to convince his staff that Grady’s statement was just a psychological ploy. Suarez, who hadn’t been inside a church in years, swore that he would track down Grady and kill the son of a bitch if it was the last thing he did.
Madelena assured him that Our Lady would strike Grady dead if he harmed her portrait.
“The way she did when he stole it?” Suarez asked.
Arroyo retreated to his office. Fiery as he was in his public statements, his calmness when the cameras were not on him had begun to annoy his companions in Justicia y Paz. Grady’s statement had been an inspired stroke, no doubt of that. The question was, what effect would it have? Arroyo slipped away from the building and headed north. On an impulse, he stopped off at Palo Alto.
George Worth’s accusation was more in his expression than in his quietly spoken words.
“You have blood on your hands, Miguel. You must stop this.”
Did George really think that he or anyone else was in control of the guerrilla bands who were harassing the Minutemen and in turn being harassed by Anglo volunteers arriving daily?
“I did not produce their outrage.”
“You called them to arms.”
In the Catholic Worker house, things went on as they always did. The defeated pushing their trays along the soup line, come to be fed, come for a place to sleep. Food for now and a bed for tonight. Beyond that their vacant eyes could not see. How could George stand it, being around such losers? Miguel took some satisfaction in the fact that most of the derelicts were Anglos. No wonder Clare had fled the place. George was someone you could admire from afar, but to work at his side required the same devotion he had. Miguel had heard the explanation. These derelicts were in effect Christ in disguise. Well, God bless him, but Miguel felt the same way Clare had. Let George do it.
“Has Clare come back?”
George looked at him, turned away, shook his head.
Miguel had asked the question in order to hurt George. Or maybe just to see how much he missed the beautiful daughter of Don Ibanez. He wished now he hadn’t asked.
He continued north and on the way he thought of Clare Ibanez. Don Ibanez regarded him as a rabble-rouser, Miguel knew that. He understood it. It was obvious that the old man considered the way he lived sufficient victory for the moment. And of course his basilica meant more to him now than ever. He did share Miguel’s conviction that this state and many others had been unjustly occupied for centuries by the foreign government in far-off Washington, D.C. Latinos were treated worse than blacks; they were treated as badly by blacks as by Anglos. Worse, they were treated as invaders, illegal aliens. But they or those whose blood ran in their veins had settled these lands. They had far more right to them than the Jews who insisted that the state of Israel had biblical warrant to their land. Don Ibanez, it turned out, took the long view.
The old man had patiently laid out the forecasts of the National Policy Institute and the polls of the Pew Research Center.
“Young man, by midcentury, there will be 127 million of us in this country. And the population of Mexico will reach 130 million. Sheer numbers will decide the issue. Anglos do not breed. They kill their unborn children. They have become sensualists. Justice will be done peacefully, no need to fire a shot.”
“And we’ll be dead by then.”
“Not you.”
What the old man suggested seemed like a version of Mon-tezuma’s revenge. Miguel didn’t doubt those projections, but he didn’t quite believe in them either. How often had such visions of the future been thwarted by unforeseen events? The present uproar would put the fear of God into Anglos, but then what? In public harangues, he suggested that what Don Ibanez thought would be settled by the silent swelling of the Latino population could be had now. He wished he believed that. But he had his own projections.
Clare was still a wounded bird, ashamed of herself because she could not share the squalor of the Catholic Worker house with George Worth. That would pass, he was sure of it. Miguel had been all but overwhelmed by the peaceful affluence of the Ibanez hacienda, the grounds, the miles and miles of vineyards. That was a future Miguel could understand, not that he thought that everyone would end up in such a hacienda and with such extensive holdings. It was best not to think of the political corruption of Mexico extending over the Southwest. Had Don Ibanez given any thought to what Latino dominance might mean? A nearer and surer future had become Miguel’s aim.
By marrying Clare he would immediately come into possession of all that the generations of the Ibanez family had acquired. What a headquarters for Justicia y Paz that vast estate in Napa Valley would be. Or he could turn the organization over to Suarez and cast blessings on the effort from an affluent distance. He had little doubt that he could, eventually, win the l
ove of Clare Ibanez. But a first condition of that would have to be getting that picture back to the basilica in Mexico City. Until that happy day, he could not woo her. Nonetheless, the absence of the picture from its shrine had to continue. The one thing Miguel dreaded was that Theophilus Grady would disclose the secret alliance between the Rough Riders and Justicia y Paz. Between Grady and Miguel would be more accurate. None of their followers knew of it. Without Grady’s help the movement of the picture from the basilica in Mexico City would not have been possible.
Lulu shook Neal Admirari awake, pointing at the television where the statement of Theophilus Grady was being read by a fatuous television reporter, seated on a stool, legs crossed, her skirt up to her hips, the golden hair a sprayed cloud about her empty head. She might have been reading of a wedding, a plane crash, the birth of quintuplets in Peru, anything, and the same manic smile would carry her through.
“Maybe it will work,” Neal said, smacking his dry mouth and looking around for a glass of water.
“Do you know you do that in your sleep?”
“What?”
She tried to make the same sound, but she had been up for an hour, brushed her teeth, had a cup of coffee.
“How would I know, if I’m asleep?”
“Neal, what are we doing in California?”
“Making noises in the night.”
But he took her point. The trouble with this story was that it was everywhere and nowhere. Grady spoke as if from a cloud, politicians from Washington, Miguel Arroyo from L.A. Grady was the story, but where in hell was he?
After a quick breakfast—he didn’t want to spoil his appetite for lunch—Neal put through a call to Empedocles. No answer. He looked at his watch. No wonder. He would try again after lunch.
In the dining room Lulu had a glass of juice in her hand and sat frowning over it. “What doesn’t make sense, Neal, is the claim of the ransom.”
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