So Far From God

by John Harris

  ‘I didn’t come to rob Mexican coffers.’

  Villa shrugged. ‘At least you are different, inglés. Mexicans usually grab what they can when they see it – against the day when it’s not there and they are poor. I think you must be honest.’ He grinned. ‘It makes a change. Nobody else is.’

  Within minutes he was heading out of camp, his men yelling like Apaches. When they returned their saddle bags contained a hundred and twenty-two bars of pure silver.

  ‘That was good information, inglés,’ Villa said, grinning with triumph. ‘You are a better soldier than I thought. It will buy many guns. I think from now on we can trust you. We hanged the paymaster who was guarding it from a telegraph pole.’

  ‘That will win you a lot of friends,’ Slattery commented dryly.

  Villa rounded on him. ‘You are telling me how to behave, inglés?’

  ‘Isn’t that what I’ve been hired for?’

  Villa glared at him, his eyes aflame, then his gaze dropped. ‘Perhaps you’re right, inglés,’ he growled. ‘But a dead man’s dead for keeps. If you let one go, he could come up behind you next time with a gun. Get yourself ready. The general in Chihuahua City’s been asked by Huerta where I am. The operator at Chavarria told me. He said I am in all parts but in none in particular. I’m going to show him just what a man who can be in all parts yet in none in particular can do. There are four hundred of Orozco’s men in Casas Grandes. They won’t be there when I’m finished.’

  Casas Grandes was on the site of a pre-Columbian settlement and, believing that Villa was nowhere in the vicinity, the garrison had grown careless. Villa’s plan was for what he called a ‘golpe terrifico’, a tremendous blow.

  ‘We’ll attack as the sun is coming up,’ he said. ‘It will dazzle them.’

  ‘It wouldn’t dazzle me,’ Slattery said bluntly.

  Villa frowned. ‘You don’t like my plan, inglés? Perhaps you can think of a better one.’

  ‘You’ll never succeed in full daylight. Wait until the sun’s gone down.’

  ‘Mexican soldiers don’t like fighting after dark. Dark is for food and drink, for music, for women, for sleep.’

  ‘They might think we’re twice as many as we are if they see us gathering at dusk. Let every man have two hats. One to wear. One to prop up beside him. It’s a trick I saw in the Balkans.’

  ‘What is this Balkans? A city in England? We’re short of rifles. The only way to do it is in daylight, so that when a man is hit the man behind can see to pick up his gun.’

  ‘Suppose we make them think we all have guns. Let every man have two hats and a rifle and a stick. If he hasn’t a rifle, he has two sticks. In the dusk they’ll look like guns. The Orozquistas might not even wait for us. They might bolt.’

  Villa stared at Slattery with a new interest. ‘You have ideas, inglés. Perhaps we’ll try this idea of yours.’

  He moved with incredible swiftness and as the sun sank a terrifying army of conical hats appeared behind every bush and rock outside Casas Grandes. And alongside every hat was the long straight shape of a weapon. As daylight faded, scattered shooting broke out to wild yells of ‘Qué viva Villa!’ and ‘Qué viva la revolución!’

  The Villistas moved forward warily, knowing how weak they were, but as darkness fell they found the reply to their firing was only half-hearted and they pushed into the main street to find only a token resistance. As they had come in at one side, most of the Orozquistas had slipped out at the other.

  In only one area did they come up against any resistance, in the shape of an enormous barricade. In front of it Villistas sprawled like broken dolls, their faces hidden by the wide brims of their sombreros. With the houses built hard up against each other, there was no shelter for the attackers and there were men on every flat roof. Peering round the corner of a doorway, Villa had to withdraw his head as one of them took a pot shot at him.

  ‘We can’t get past that,’ he said.

  ‘So let’s go through the houses,’ Slattery suggested. ‘That’s what they did when they entered Khartoum.’

  Villa’s head jerked round. ‘This Khartoum? It is another city like the Balkans, I suppose, where we can learn a lesson?’

  ‘The walls are only mud. We can hack our way through.’

  Villa grinned. ‘I have a better idea. We will blast our way through.’

  Dynamite was brought forward and men started hacking at the mud walls of the houses with picks, knives and bayonets. Holes were knocked in them so they could pass through to the next house, and where the walls were of stone they used dynamite. The explosions filled their eyes with dust and grit and sent smoke puffing through the windows in yellow clouds.

  Wall by wall, they cut their way past the barricade until they reached a cross-street behind, then at Villa’s signal the attackers rushed forward. The Orozquistas fought desperately in a whirling melee of guns, bayonets, swords, fists and boots. They were led by a tall, handsome young officer who seemed to be everywhere at once, indifferent to the flying bullets. His clothes torn and bloody, one arm hanging limp, he continued to encourage his men long after they were surrounded.

  ‘Throw down your arms, man,’ Slattery yelled at him. ‘You’ve done enough. You can surrender with honour.’

  The sky was already full of vultures as the prisoners were herded together. The looting had already started and men were running in and out of shops, snatching at the debris to see if there was anything worth having. One man pushed a perambulator away. Another, grinning with delight, was dragging one coloured shirt after another over his blood-splashed clothes. A third was pulling on the boots of a dead man.

  A breeze was moving the flames as Villa appeared through the smoke. Seeing the young officer Slattery had taken prisoner leaning on the arm of one of his sergeants, he drew his pistol and shot him almost without bothering to look at him. As he sank to the ground, Slattery’s infuriated shout made Villa whirl.

  ‘What happened?’ he said. ‘What did I do?’

  ‘We don’t fight that way in Europe,’ Slattery snapped.

  ‘There’s a different way?’ Villa said. ‘Fighting is killing. What other way is there?’

  Fires were lit and a captured band started playing patriotic airs as the dead were lifted into mule carts for burial. Down the street there was the crash of musketry, drowning the thump of the band, then another and another. As Slattery lifted his head, Villa gestured.

  ‘It’s nothing, compadre. We’re getting rid of the prisoners. I had them lined up three deep because we’re short of ammunition. That way we can polish off three men with every bullet. They’re only Orozquistas.’

  The victory at Casas Grandes had been unexpectedly easy. Villa’s men were cock-a-hoop at their success and García, the old troubadour, stood in the street playing his fiddle for dancing. It didn’t take much to set the Villistas dancing. When there wasn’t a woman handy, they danced with a boy or even with each other, and the drink flowed freely until the night was noisy with singing and shouting. The morning found huddled shapes, half-hidden under their sombreros, slouched in the street, stinking of drink, trying to sleep off their excesses.

  Villa himself didn’t celebrate. He was a non-smoker and almost a teetotaller and he seemed indifferent to his success. But he enjoyed the dancing, watched cockfights or played a hand of cards, and for food nibbled titbits from other people’s plates.

  ‘I’m not one for banquets,’ he said.

  He had moved north again when Carranza’s envoys arrived to talk with him. There were three of them and Villa was eating a meal of fried beans and eggs and playing a lazy hand of cards when they were announced.

  ‘The Magi,’ he said contemptuously. ‘Come to pay homage. They amount to nothing and they’ll get nothing.’

  He didn’t bother to rise and was still sitting under the flaring naphtha lights outside a cantina, his face greasy from the food he was eating. Carranza’s envoys were well-dressed men with none of the dust and dirt of the camp on them.
Behind them stood three more men who to Slattery looked subtly different.

  ‘I know why you’re here,’ Villa said at once through a mouthful of food. ‘Carranza wants me to set things going against Huerta.’

  Carranza’s spokesman shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Don Venustiano is the First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army,’ he said.

  Villa wiped food off his moustache with his sleeve and tossed down his cards. ‘All Don Venus does is put out rallying calls and demands for greater effort.’

  There was a murmur of laughter from the Villista officers behind him and the envoys looked uneasy. Expecting to find a dull-witted peasant flattered by Carranza’s offer of an alliance, instead they had found a man with a well-organised, well-equipped army newly flushed with victory. They shifted their position, and as they did so, the light fell on their faces. The rearmost of them looked familiar and, as he turned his head, Slattery saw it was Fausto Graf.

  What was he doing there, he wondered immediately. And with envoys from Carranza? Unwillingly, he found himself remembering the words of the old naval man in the office in Whitehall. ‘Half Germany’s agents seem to be going to Mexico at the moment.’ It seemed he might be right and that Graf might be one of them.

  Villa was pointing with his knife. ‘Your First Chief,’ he was saying, ‘has been beaten too often. Now he’s been run out of Coahuila into Sonora.’

  The three envoys looked at each other. ‘The First Chief’s trying to unite all loyal revolutionary forces under one command,’ the spokesman said.

  Villa’s head jerked up. ‘Carranza’s?’

  ‘The First Chief’s willing to offer himself for the job.’

  Villa was cleaning his plate with a rolled-up tortilla. ‘When I came back to Mexico he didn’t want to know me because he was a lawyer and I was just a peasant. But it’s different now. I’ve captured Casas Grandes. You tell Don Venus that round here I have the Federals running in circles.’ He paused, wiping his moustache again. ‘On the other hand, perhaps something could be agreed. Do you have artillery?’

  The envoys were delighted to concede something to gain support. ‘The First Chief has four French 75s but no crews.’

  Villa showed his teeth in a grin. ‘Well, I have crews and no cannons,’ he said. ‘I’ll make a bargain. Send me the 75s and I’ll recognise Carranza.’

  The new insurrection south of the Rio Grande was raising considerable interest in the United States and newspapermen were crossing the border in dozens. For the most part they were loud-mouthed, harsh-tongued, gum-chewing rumour-mongers, ignoring truth for sensation, their lurid stories slotting easily among the columns of brothel raids in New York, the exposure of love nests in California, the doings of the notorious in Chicago. They had been hanging round the bars in Chihuahua waiting for someone to make a move and now, after Villa’s victory at Casas Grandes, they drove in on horses, in buggies and cars, dressed in Norfolk jackets, celluloid collars and wideawake hats. They carried typewriters and film equipment and they pounced on Slattery at once.

  ‘When’s Villa goin’ to move?’ they asked. ‘Casas Grandes was peanuts. Torreón’s where he should go for. Torreón’s a railroad centre and with Torreón he could dominate the north.’

  They brought news of Mexico City and what Huerta was doing.

  ‘He’s gettin’ rid of the opposition,’ they said. ‘That’s what he’s doin’. He shot about twenty guys who objected to him and seized a lot more at a banquet. That guy don’t want colleagues. If he looked in the mirror he’d see the whole of his government.’

  With them came Carranza’s guns and men who preferred the bustling activity of Villa’s headquarters to the political wine-and-dine atmosphere that surrounded Carranza. Some had been sent as civil advisers, some even as plain spies. Three of them caught the attention at once because they were young, good-looking and eager to prove themselves. Known immediately as the Holy Trinity, they were Segismondo Monserrat, who had an English mother and fair hair, had been educated at the Jesuit College at Stoneyhurst in Surrey and spoke excellent English; Onesimo Preto, a professional soldier who looked a little like Slattery and had changed his allegiance because he loathed Huerta; and Florentino Vegas, a smooth-looking type who seemed to be attached to no one in particular. ‘Used to be mayordomo at a ranch outside Chihuahua,’ Atty said.

  To Slattery’s surprise, with them also came Magdalena Graf. She brought medicines, bandages and surgical instruments.

  ‘Why?’ Slattery asked.

  A half-smile parted her lips and her eyes lit up with mischief. ‘The Hermann Stutzmann company have to live. We can’t get south of Torreón because the line is packed with troop trains, so Hermann has arranged for us to remain in Chihuahua for another month.’

  ‘So why the medicines and bandages?’

  ‘Because many of Villa’s men are still only boys, and some of them I taught to sing.’

  ‘Are you backing Villa for the presidency?’

  She smiled again. ‘Villa hasn’t the education to be anything but a rebel.’

  ‘Your brother was here.’

  ‘My brother’s a very busy man.’

  ‘Is he working for Carranza?’

  She shrugged. ‘I expect that above all he’s working for Fausto Graf.’

  She refused his suggestion that they had dinner together, with the excuse that she had to return to Chihuahua, but she agreed to have coffee with him at a bar in the Avenida Santa Ana. She seemed happy and excited to have run into him again and her smile transformed her.

  ‘Is Hermann another German?’ Slattery asked.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with being German!’ The smile vanished and she answered sharply. ‘And Hermann’s a kind man.’

  ‘Are all zarzuela singers German?’

  ‘Mostly they’re Mexican but a few came from Europe.’

  Enchanted by her smile, Slattery’s servant, the boy, Jesús, had switched his loyalty to run errands for her, ‘A los pies de Usted, Doña Magdalena’ – ‘At your feet, Doña Magdalena,’ – always on his lips.

  ‘Ein freundlich Kind,’ she said in the stiff Germanic way that often seemed to intrude into the warmth of her character. ‘A nice child.’

  Before they saw her into the big Stutz that was to take her back to Chihuahua she bought the boy new clothes, questioned him about his background and started to instruct him in the Catholic Church’s teachings she had learned as a child on the banks of the Rhine.

  ‘You’ve got to believe,’ she told him earnestly. ‘If you don’t, God will know.’

  Jesús looked puzzled. ‘God is here?’

  ‘God is everywhere.’

  ‘In the cornfield?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the street? In the square?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His eyes flickered. ‘In the yard of the orphanage where I grew up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He grinned. ‘He was very clever, Doña Magdalena. The orphanage where I grew up didn’t have a yard.’

  As the Stutz vanished, a wad of letters arrived for Slattery, brought from Chihuahua by Atty Purkiss who had been to collect the Studebaker. One was from Amaryllis but, as Atty handed it over, Monserrat, one of the new aides from Carranza, arrived with instructions for Slattery to report to headquarters. Stuffing the letter into his pocket unopened, he found Villa walking up and down talking to his officers. They crowded round him, dark-skinned men hung about with weapons and wearing breeches, leggings and American stetsons Villa had bought as a job lot from a travelling salesman. As Slattery appeared, he swung round.

  ‘I have a job for you, inglés,’ he said briskly. ‘You are a good soldier but you talk too much and you’re more use to me as a spy.’

  Slattery frowned. ‘I know nothing of Huerta.’

  ‘It’s not against Huerta. It’s against Carranza. It’s a job you can do better than anyone. Carranza is in Nogales and he’s behaving as if he’s God. He’s set up a headquarters there and issued a politi
cal manifesto. It doesn’t do much except tell us he’s the First Chief of the Constitutionalist Party and we know that already.’

  He was still walking up and down, a man who could barely read or write but was blessed with a tremendous driving energy and a great deal of peasant cunning.

  ‘In spite of his guns,’ he said, ‘he would willingly stab me in the back. So I need to know what he’s up to. Somebody soon will have to have a go at Huerta and I don’t think it will be any of that chocolatero lot in Nogales. They’re only concerned with making laws. Go there, inglés. Ask the questions newspapermen ask. Find out what Don Venus is doing. Because there’s a war on in Mexico and it’s time somebody started winning it.’

  Seven

  Nogales was a big straggling town where the boundary between Mexico and her northern neighbour ran down the middle of the street. Humorists liked to put one foot across the imaginary line of demarcation and observe that they’d been on a visit to the United States, and, while Americans crossed the border to eat cheaply, gamble and dance, the Mexicans hurried the other way to avoid the attentions of the police. The station was the usual ugly shed lined with wooden seats covered with the dust that blew in from the surrounding desert. Yaqui Indian women huddled inside, their children asleep on spread sarapes. At the Customs House a few ragged sentries were smoking.

  It was late as the train arrived, and an army of newspapermen were collecting luggage under flaring lights when Slattery saw Magdalena Graf standing in the shadows. She was dressed in the blue that matched her eyes so well, the waist of the outfit high so that her figure seemed more elegant and slender than ever, in a way that roused in him a sharp sense of excitement.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  She gave him a long unfathomable stare, and gestured at a poster stuck on the wall of the customs shed.

  La Verbena de la Paloma, it announced. Con Magdalena Graf y Hermann Stutzmann.

  ‘First Chief Carranza enjoys the theatre,’ she smiled. ‘And when we finished in Chihuahua Hermann decided to bring us here. He has a house here, for the same reason I have a house in Chihuahua. It’s easy to cross the border and there have been times when it’s been a good idea. I’m staying there.’