So Far From God

by John Harris

  ‘What’s your name?’ she demanded.

  ‘Pierce Fitzpatrick Slattery.’

  ‘That’s romantic.’

  ‘The Irish are a romantic people.’

  ‘My last boyfriend was called Charley Cleaves. I don’t like Charley. Makes me think of that little guy on the movies with the cane and funny feet.’

  She insisted on calling him Fitz and spent most of the crossing in his cabin. ‘Saves opening and shutting doors when we want to see each other,’ she said. She was lusty, full of joyous good humour, and admitted quite frankly that she was looking for a husband.

  ‘Not you,’ she said, as they clutched each other on Slattery’s bunk. ‘We’re just good friends.’

  She was quite prepared, however, to take a few short cuts and claimed that any girl would want to get herself a new name if she were called Frankfurter. ‘It makes you sound like a sausage,’ she said.

  When they reached New York, Slattery moved in with her in her mother’s apartment where she threw a party at which most of the guests were German-Americans like herself, as arrogant as ever and boasting of Germany’s growing power. Slattery avoided argument and some of them even thought he was one of them. Among them was a youngster from the German Consulate who told him enthusiastically of German plans for the future. He was engaged in building up a German following in the United States, Mexico and places like Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia.

  ‘I can talk to you,’ he said warmly. ‘Germans can be relied on to keep a quiet tongue.’

  Slattery smiled. He couldn’t resist it. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’m British.’

  The German looked disconcerted. ‘I was told your name was Fritz,’ he said.

  ‘No. Fitz. It’s different.’

  Two mornings later, Helen Frankfurter appeared alongside Slattery’s bed with his shoes and the information that her mother was due to return from Europe.

  ‘She wired,’ she explained. ‘And she doesn’t like Englishmen. If she arrives and finds you here, it’ll be the Battle of Bunker Hill all over again.’

  Thrown out on the street, Slattery still managed to enjoy himself in New York. It was a remarkable place with its tall buildings and the enormous number of cars in its streets, all with honking horns and headlights like huge staring eyes. Life seemed twice as fast as in London and twice as informal, but everybody seemed nervous about the international situation, because someone had started up a bogey about Japanese designs on America; and the fact that the Japanese were making common cause with the Mexicans who were creating so much trouble just beyond the border, seemed to unnerve people.

  It was beginning, in fact, to seem as if Slattery’s presence in Mexico could be urgently needed. Madero’s presidency had been fraught with difficulties and the people who were against him were being backed by the hacendados, the Church, the army and the foreign investors, all of whom had a lot to gain from their support.

  Within a week, Helen Frankfurter’s mother had disappeared again to California and by the time Slattery moved back into the apartment with her daughter, the situation in Mexico had changed again. The Mexican army were slugging it out in the capital with what were supposed to be rebels, but it seemed that the only people being hurt were disinterested observers, and as casualties mounted up and building after building was knocked down by artillery, it was becoming clear that the battle was a put-up job by the anti-Madero faction to provide the excuse that Madero had lost control and had to be removed.

  Slattery was largely indifferent. It now looked as though the war wasn’t going to last until he arrived, after all, and he had almost decided to give up his ideas of moving south and setting himself up in some way in business in New York when a cable arrived from Amaryllis. She had somehow acquired his address and the text was brief and to the point.

  ‘Arriving 12th. Have booked apartment Meurice Hotel 5th Avenue.’

  It was time to leave.

  El Paso on the Mexican border was a long way from New York and there wasn’t much to do on the long train journey except drink warm beer laced with lemonade and stretch your legs alongside the track whenever the train stopped for water or to change locomotives.

  Whatever had been happening in Mexico seemed by this time to have happened. Madero had been arrested and, so it was claimed, had been shot while trying to escape.

  ‘Ley fuga,’ someone had explained. ‘The law of flight. It’s a law that allows you to shoot your prisoners. They use it a lot in Mexico.’

  With Madero gone, General Huerta, the man who had deposed him, had been recognised by sixteen countries, though it was obvious that his position was still shaky because the newly-elected president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, who regarded himself as an apostle of decency and had pledged himself to sweep away maladministration and restore integrity to United States politics, had no sympathy with usurpers.

  El Paso was a bustling town, almost Mexican in appearance though the old border saloons, dance halls, brothels and gambling dens beloved of cowboys, smugglers, gunmen, rustlers, train robbers and scarlet women were disappearing. Two- and three-storey business blocks with brick fronts and false cornices were taking the place of the shanties; and anti-alcohol and purity campaigns were driving the gambling dens and saloons across the border to Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, where it was still possible to exist happily indifferent to American hygiene. Where not many years before gunfights had been common in El Paso, there were now trolley-cars and street lighting and a woman-dominated attitude of piety and order.

  Slattery had been engaged in sorting out the kit he had bought – a wideawake veldt hat against the sun and a warm overcoat against the cold nights in Mexico’s uplands – when a man appeared at the door of his room. He was dressed immaculately despite the flying dust from the Mexican deserts across the river that filled the air. He wore a blank look which changed from time to time to a hard alert expression. He was tall, a good six-foot-three, graceful and handsome, and there didn’t seem a line or a curve in his body that had any strength in it anywhere. His hair and eyes were pale to the point of anonymity.

  ‘Horrocks,’ he introduced himself. ‘Sholto Horrocks. Told to look you up.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Oh – people. Hear you’re going down into Mexico.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Any business of yours?’

  ‘Matter of fact, yes.’

  Slattery shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t know yet. I’m looking for General Villa.’

  ‘Why him?’

  ‘He’s nearest. I’m told he needs experts. I’m an expert.’

  ‘Ever been to Mexico before?’

  ‘No.’

  Horrocks pulled a face. ‘Everybody’s shootin’ everybody else like billy-o down there. It don’t pay to let them think you’re American. They remember the Alamo, too.’

  He went on to talk about Japanese resentment against the United States and pointed out that the Japanese had sold Huerta arms and that Mexico had two thousand miles of undefended coastline and twelve hundred miles of frontier common to the United States.

  ‘So?’ Slattery said.

  ‘I take it you’ve heard of the Kaiser. The German Emperor. Wilhelm Without Warning.’

  ‘Of course I have.’

  ‘He’s a bit keen on Mexico. He tried to buy land south of California for a naval base but, as usual, he talked too much and the Americans found out and stopped it. If the Americans still had Teddy Roosevelt for a president that would have been that, but now they’ve got Woodrow Wilson, an ex-professor who dreams about democracy and never going to war.’

  Slattery studied the other man, puzzled. ‘So?’ he said again.

  ‘So Mexico is the soft underbelly of the States and if it comes to war in Europe–’

  Slattery frowned. ‘A lot of people keep talking to me of war in Europe.’

  ‘Of course. There’s goin’ to be one.’

  ‘You seem sure.’

  ‘Natu
rally.’ Like the man in London, Horrocks seemed to have no doubts whatsoever. ‘The balance of power’s all wrong, and the Germans are being led by the nose by the Prussian junkers. They’re shovin’ their agents out everywhere and recruitin’ everybody they can to work for ’em.’

  ‘Mexicans?’

  ‘And Americans. German-Americans, that is. America has several million people who were actually born in Germany. And a lot more who’ve not been in the States long enough to forget their German origins. There are also four million Jews, mostly Polish, who are also pro-German because they’re anti-Russian, and two million Swedes who admire German Kultur. There are large German communities in and around places like Milwaukee, St Louis and Detroit. American politicians who are known not to have German antecedents would find it very difficult to push through anti-German policies.’

  ‘And this affects me?’

  ‘You are naive, old boy, aren’t you? Of course it does. If it comes to war in Europe, the Americans would be in the business of selling guns immediately, so all those Germans on this side of the Atlantic would be beavering away like mad to make sure Germany got more than her fair share. Stands to reason, don’t it?’

  ‘I’m going to Mexico.’

  ‘Oh, yes, but in Mexico there’s an English chap called Lord Cowdray who has Mexican oil to sell. So the Germans would need to make sure it went to them not to their enemies, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘We won’t be their enemies.’

  ‘You never know. So they’re taking precautions. There’s a German-American Bund, at least fifty naturalised Germans serving as officers in the Mexican army, and a general called Maximilian Kloss who’s been made director of the manufacture of ordnance and munitions by the new President, General Huerta. German wireless operators are also being installed in Mexico City’s receiving station and there are groupings of German ex-officers in Tampico, Monterrey and along the border. The Union of German Citizens has many branches and is still expanding. There’s a German Minister, German consuls, German commercial agents, a German community of several thousand in Mexico City, and German-subsidised newspapers. As a result, they’re not short of agents, and the whole shebang is run by a chap called Wertz.’

  Horrocks beamed. ‘We’re watching the death of Mexico, old boy. But it’s a violent death and the corpse won’t lie down. So I’d advise you to make sure your powder’s good and dry. You don’t carry a pistol in your pocket to accompany a body to the grave, but with that sort of funeral, you have it more accessible – up your sleeve.’

  Slattery studied him. He had identified him as ex-army. You could tell it from the confidence, the way he carried himself, the casual way he spoke, the fashionable slang picked up from London cabbies by young officers on leave. But Slattery still wanted to know more and he suddenly had suspicions. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

  Horrocks looked pained. ‘Just a chap,’ he said. ‘Sort of Foreign Office type. Here to look after our nationals.’

  ‘I’ve never needed anybody to look after me before. Who sent you?’

  ‘Well, the boss, of course.’

  ‘Who’s that? That old stringbag with the dyed whiskers in London?’

  Horrocks sniffed. ‘We do better these days than those two old jossers in Whitehall.’

  ‘Same limited company, though?’

  ‘I suppose you’d say so.’

  ‘Well, I’ve finished with the old jossers, so I’m finished with the company, aren’t I?’

  Horrocks sighed. ‘Our people never “finish with” us,’ he pointed out. He seemed politely determined to be stubborn. ‘Thought we might have a meal together. Not that the meals here are anything to write home about. Might even have a little chat.’

  ‘I’m not interested in little chats,’ Slattery said. ‘And if that chap with the whiskers in London told you to get in touch with me to be an agent, you can tell him I’m not interested in that either.’

  With the meal and the chat rejected, Horrocks vanished quietly into the woodwork. ‘I’ll be back.’ he said cheerfully as he drifted away. ‘I wouldn’t dream of letting you go now.’

  Four

  So here he was, in San Marina de Bravos, with a bunch of total strangers, looking for someone he didn’t know in a country he’d never seen before.

  The wind died during the night, and as Slattery woke at first light so did the rest of San Marino de Bravos. Children started to shriek in the street outside, cockerels crowed, dogs barked, burros brayed.

  The town lay among scattered little fields, and on the road the dust was a foot deep. To the west and north lay the lower slopes of the Sierra Madre, desolate, red flinty hills covered with scattered mesquite. To the south the country fell away to the valley, motionless and silent in the brassy sunshine. Although it was still early in the year, the heat was already rising from the earth.

  A mangy goat wandered down the street, a piece of rag hanging from its working mouth. In front of the church, chickens scratched round a somnolent long-haired sow suckling her litter against the steps. A peón’s wife, bowed under a load of sticks, shuffled past, her bare brown feet kicking up little puffs of dust. There was a smell of urine in the air and the whole atmosphere was one of brooding silence under the harsh sunshine.

  As Slattery appeared, a group of raisin-eyed urchins, their skins so coated with dirt they looked as if they hadn’t been washed since the day of their birth, held out their hands. He dropped a few centavos in each. Immediately, an old woman in black rags stuck out her hand, too.

  Magdalena Graf appeared soon afterwards and they drank their coffee together on the patio of the hotel. Once or twice he caught her watching him with interest, studying his face with its rocky planes and humorous mouth, and the high beak of a nose.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘I’m going to join General Villa,’ he said.

  ‘To fight?’

  ‘I’m a soldier.’

  ‘Are you a Catholic like me?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It helps in Mexico. They’re a devout people.’

  Slattery shrugged. ‘Yes, I am. But a poor one. The British army’s full of Irish Catholics.’

  ‘So what is a British Catholic soldier doing in Mexico?’

  ‘He’s not a British soldier any more. He’s just terminated his agreement.’

  ‘Cashiered?’

  ‘Resigned. We didn’t see eye to eye about things. I believe there are plenty like me with Villa.’

  As they talked, the other passengers from the train began to appear, among them a tall, good-looking, weak-chinned blond man whom she introduced as Hermann Stutsmann, the owner and leading tenor of her zarzuela company. Finally, Lidgett appeared, his mouth working as though his tongue was cleaved to his palate. He seemed to have been doing a lot of drinking.

  As they ate their sugary rolls on the patio of the hotel they heard shouts and a cavalcade of horsemen appeared. Women screamed, snatched up children and threw stones at the pigs and chickens to clear the street. Shutters and doors were still slamming as the horsemen swept in.

  ‘Federals,’ Lidgett said, ‘Government troops. Huerta’s boys.’

  The soldiers wore uniforms that looked like something from the French Second Empire, probably left behind by the French commissariat after their attempt to put the puppet emperor, Maximilian, on the throne in the middle of the previous century. Riding in the middle of the cavalcade was a young man in shirt-sleeves, his hands tied to the pommel of his saddle, his ankles lashed together beneath the horse’s belly. A black dog was following the cavalcade close to the prisoner’s mount. Its tongue was hanging out and it looked exhausted.

  As the cavalcade stopped, the lashings were cut and the man was wrenched from the saddle. It was only as he was dragged across the wide dusty street that it dawned on the people on the veranda of the hotel what was about to happen.

  ‘Oh, María Madre de Dios!’ Magdalena Graf’s words came in a gasp. ‘They’re go
ing to shoot him!’

  Opposite the hotel at the side of the church was an open space and the man was slammed up against a wall, his back against the stone. The dog immediately took its place at his feet. The officer commanding the soldiers kicked out at it and it dodged away, but as he moved to a position alongside his squad it returned to squat in front of the condemned man.

  The travellers on the veranda of the hotel were staring with wide eyes as the soldiers began pushing townspeople into a line to watch the shooting. A low moan escaped the crowd and a few women began to weep. As the people on the veranda of the hotel rose to go, the officer, who was dressed in a uniform that looked German in origin, shouted at them to stay where they were. Magdalena Graf turned away and automatically Slattery, who happened to be standing alongside her, put his arm round her. Just as automatically, she turned to him and hid her eyes.

  The officer took his place in front of the firing-squad. The man standing with his back to the church wore no blindfold but his head was erect and the dog was still at his feet, occasionally looking round at him in a questioning way as if wondering what was happening. As the officer’s arm swept down, the crash of the rifles filled their ears. Slattery saw little explosions of plaster leap from the stone as if several shots had gone wild and, in the same instant, the young man, his chest and face a bloody mass, was flung back against the wall. At the crash the dog leapt up, its tail between its legs, and bolted into the crowd.

  As the dead man slid down the wall, leaving a smear of red on the stone, Magdalena Graf cringed in Slattery’s arm. For a long time after the thunder of shots had died away there was silence in which Slattery could hear the sobbing of women. He could feel Magdalena Graf shaking, her face buried deep in his shoulder. The officer turned to the watching people. ‘You may go,’ he said coldly.

  For a long time the crowd stood silently as though they didn’t understand, then the officer pushed at those at the end of the line and they began to shuffle off. The people on the veranda of the hotel returned to their places. No one wanted breakfast any more.