by John Harris
As Slattery was ushered in, the guerrilla chief gave him a long stare from jet-black eyes under heavy brows.
Slattery gave his name. ‘General Villa sent me to you,’ he said. ‘He’s heading for Mexico City and the overthrow of Huerta.’
Zapata said nothing, studying Slattery with a silence that was strongly menacing. He had never been a peón like Villa but was still a man of no learning, simple, vigorous and convinced that it was his duty to return to his people the land stolen from them by the hacendados. His brooding eyes seemed to burn with fervour. ‘Mexico will be a slave to no man,’ he growled. ‘It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.’
Slattery had heard the phrase before and decided that, having discovered he had made a profound statement, Zapata liked to repeat it whenever he could.
‘General Villa is dedicated to Mexico,’ he said. ‘Like you, Don Emiliano, he believes in democracy and the freedom to own land. He has sworn to get rid of Huerta.’
‘Huerta deserves to die,’ Zapata said in a flat voice. ‘What does General Villa want?’
‘He needs help. He wants you to make a move.’
Zapata thought for a moment silently, then he said, ‘Unlike General Villa, we’re short of arms. But I’ll put a ring of men round Cuernavaca. They’ll never dare let that go.’
When Slattery returned to Mexico City the place was in an uproar.
‘Villa captured Torreón,’ Atty said.
The vaunted Cerro de la Pilla had finally fallen, and Villa had battered his way into the city yard by bloody yard, dynamiting his way through houses as his artillery had pounded away at the place at point-blank range. In Mexico City, the exodus had already started, with all those people who had reason to fear Huerta’s fall heading for the coast in cars packed with their belongings.
‘Spanish, most of ’em, me dear,’ Atty explained. ‘They’ve got no hope here because Carranza’s told the Americans that expelling ’em’s part of his policy, too.’
It was obvious that all Americans didn’t think like President Wilson, and an El Paso newspaper Atty produced had exultant stories of American women in Juárez celebrating the victory at Torreón by dancing in the streets with Mexican soldiers.
The exodus of the Spanish from the capital went on all day. It was clear it wouldn’t be very long before the Constitutionalists arrived, because General Obregón was also now beginning to make swift progress in the west, while the army in the east, unable to make Monterrey and Saltillo, had simply swept past them to Tampico. Oil had made it a boom town and the eastern army was now within ten miles of its outskirts.
Zapata kept his promise and had started attacking trains, and there were stories of passengers stripped mother-naked, even of having oil poured over them and set on fire. Though they were largely Huerta propaganda, they were more than enough to throw the foreigners into a panic.
Even Stutzmann was packing up scripts, playbills and costumes. He smiled nervously at Slattery. ‘She isn’t here,’ he said. ‘She’s heading for Córdoba. It’s her last engagement before she goes to New York. It’s her farewell performance. Artistes give farewell performances as they give presents. Sarah Bernhardt has one every other year. She said she might go to Veracruz. She has property there.’ He gestured. ‘The south is no place to have investments these days, though, Herr Paddy. Veracruz is awful. Flies over everything, and dysentery kills all the children.’
Stutzmann sighed. ‘There was one whose father worked for her. He couldn’t afford a priest and he carried the coffin on his head. A grave had been dug but the coffin, the flowers and the shroud had to be returned to the shop where they’d been rented and, because they couldn’t pay the rent for the grave, the pobrecito was due to be dug up and tossed into a mass ditch at the end of the month and the plot re-rented. She bought it for them and put up a headstone.’ He shrugged. ‘They probably thought she was mad.’
‘I’m going to Veracruz. I might run into her, Hermann.’
‘Try her agent – a man called Agosto Parra. He’ll know where she is. I think she’d like it if you did.’
‘Why should she?’
Stutzmann’s shoulders moved again. ‘She didn’t explain. She just said “Because I’m Magdalena Graf and he’s Fitz Slattery.”’ Stutzmann looked up shrewdly. ‘I think that is sufficient explanation, don’t you, Herr Paddy?’
Taking only Jesús and leaving Atty in the capital searching for coal, Slattery headed for the station. The forecourt was crammed with Spanish, Americans and other foreigners, with their children, servants and luggage, their voices querulous under the arched roof as they demanded the times of trains to the coast. They were all worried because the rebels were close to the railway line and if they cut it there would be no more trains south.
The journey was hot as the train dropped down from the highlands into the tropical zone. It was crowded and uncomfortable, and the bullet holes in the windows didn’t add to anybody’s confidence. In addition, there was depressing news that the incident in Tampico involving the Americans had blown up into a major crisis.
With the rebels approaching, bandits had proliferated and wealthy rancheros in the area were sitting up all night with guns in their laps. Because of rebel activity near Veracruz, the train went via Jalapa and turned south to the coast.
At Cordel they learned that the train just ahead of them had been dynamited, and the stationmaster informed them that it would probably mean delays. Then they were told that they had to get out and walk past the wrecked train to another which had been sent to meet them from Veracruz. Their clothes damp, their faces streaming with sweat, they began to struggle with heavy suitcases, children, even pets, and after a while both Slattery and Jesús were carrying exhausted infants.
The dynamited train was slewed across the rails. It had carried a brigade of Huerta’s conscripts, some of whom were lying by the track with dreadful injuries. A French priest was kneeling on the floor of a carriage that was slippery with blood, to administer the Last Sacrament to a dying boy, and stretcher parties were carrying blanket-covered figures that moaned and twisted as they passed. The engine, which was lying on its side, had taken three coaches with it and men were working with axes to free people trapped in the wreckage. Near them a woman was kneeling in the shadow of an up-ended coach, rocking backwards and forwards, the body of a child in front of her on the dusty grass.
The huge driving wheels had gouged deep ruts in the ballast and the smashed coaches were telescoped into the tender and locked in a tangle of splintered wood and twisted metal. Indians had appeared from the trees and were dragging boxes of beer, sardines and conserves from the wreck. Nobody seemed to take any notice.
Passengers from Veracruz going north passed them in exactly the same condition as they were in themselves, struggling under luggage, children and pets. The waiting train was another battered wreck with the stuffing oozing from the seats and bullet holes in the windows and woodwork. There were more rebels across the line further along, but this time there was no attempt to stop them and the train moved slowly past, the passengers crowded at windows for a glimpse of the terrifying men who were bringing down a government. They looked small and dirty but they were all well-armed, and they waved and grinned as the train edged past their positions.
Veracruz came up at last, a squalid town that was still an artist’s delight with its blue sea and sky and the whitewashed walls of the Fortress of San Juan de Ulua where vultures, seagulls and lugubrious pelicans perched. But, as they entered the city, Slattery could see dozens of men-o’-war in the bay. At first he thought they were there to take off refugees but then he learned that the rattling of sabres between the United States and Mexico had increased and that the murmuring over the incident of the flag had grown to a shout.
Ten
They seemed to have run straight into preparations for war and there were soldiers everywhere.
With difficulty, Slattery obtained a place in a hotel, but because of the crisis visitors
had not been expected, and when he went to his room he found the maids had simply whisked the sheets off the bed after the last visitor and were ironing them unwashed on the floor.
Almost the first person he met as he went downstairs was Sjogren, the Swede, advancing across the hall. As he swept past, swinging his cane, Slattery stared after him. If Sjogren was there it meant the Germans were there, too.
The commercial and government buildings, the hotels, markets and churches were close to the waterfront, mostly old structures of Spanish design with flaking plaster and peeling paint. The plazas and gardens had once been enjoyed by Spanish Viceroys but the streets were narrow and still mostly cobbled, and there was a brooding stillness everywhere.
Magdalena’s agent, Parra, had an office in an old building surrounded by arcades where dogs fought with the vultures for rubbish tossed from a nearby restaurant. To Slattery’s surprise, Horrocks was sitting in the most comfortable chair. He didn’t seem at all startled at Slattery’s appearance and gestured languidly at Parra. ‘Friend of ours,’ he explained. ‘Has been for years. You’ve arrived at the wrong moment, old son. The Americans are about to invade.’
‘What in God’s name for?’
‘Well, they’re calling it an occupation but it looks uncommonly like an invasion to me.’
‘The incident was magnified, señor,’ Parra insisted. ‘The arrest of the American sailors was nothing. An apology was made at once and everybody thought it had been accepted, but it just goes on and on. The Americans are looking for an excuse.’
‘They can’t invade over a misunderstanding, surely to God?’
‘Oh, yes they can!’ Horrocks was in no doubt. ‘The Ypiranga’s expected at any moment with the German arms for Huerta and there are trains waiting at the station for its cargo. Washington thinks the arms could help Huerta win the war and that’s something they don’t want, so they’ve sent their fleet down from Tampico to stop it.’
So it had finally arrived, the crisis everybody had feared. They’d been expecting for months that the disputes American and Mexican interests had been shouting about for years would come to this, and now it had. Without doubt, the Germans had had a hand in it.
‘The Mexicans are going to resist,’ Horrocks said. ‘But it’ll be a token resistance because they’ve only a thousand men. They’ve had to recruit prisoners from San Juan de Ulua to make up their numbers. They daren’t surrender, of course, because there’s been a law providing death for any Mexican who helps an invader ever since Maximilian.’
At Parra’s invitation, they joined him on the roof of his office, borrowed binoculars in their hands. The day was dark, with no sun and massed clouds. The waters of the bay were grey with whitecaps. Beyond the breakwater they could see the warships. Between the wharves floated the refuse from the city, coconut husks and palm fronds, watched by hundreds of vultures on the seawall – scaly, hunched, wings akimbo, hopping on their skinny legs, privileged creatures because they cleaned up the city’s garbage and couldn’t be harmed. Behind the city were the houses of the wealthy, of brick, granite, concrete, even white coral, with painted balconies and thick doors of carved wood and studded metal. Cheek by jowl with them were the slums of the poor, overhung by a blue haze of smoke from cooking fires.
Judging by the sky, it was building up to one of the northerly gales that blew away everything not staked to the ground, stripping the palms of old fronds and bringing down any tree with its roots in shallow soil. The waves were higher than before and the grey light seemed ominous. Then, as Slattery watched, the clouds parted and the hot sun filled the plaza beneath them. Labourers on the pier were preparing for the departure of a liner carrying refugees to make way for the German arms ship.
Parra reappeared from a visit to his office. ‘The German ship’s arrived,’ he announced. ‘I’ve just heard from the Customs House. It’s outside the breakwater, waiting to come in.’
With the binoculars, Slattery swept the hotels, the lighthouse, the market area, the plaza with the statue of Juárez and the nearby naval cadet school. There seemed no sign of danger, however, and in the market area, people were still haggling over chickens, fish and fruit, while naked children played among the stalls. Under the arcades of the hotels he could see both Mexicans and Americans enjoying a late breakfast, and women were selling candles outside the cathedral. Newsvendors shouted on corners. Children pestered drinkers to buy lottery tickets. Shoeshine boys yelled under their metal stands. Tortilla makers squatted over their primitive braziers. Deformed beggars wailed over outstretched palms. Donkeys jogged from door to door, tin jugs of milk in their leather panniers. Servant girls in rebozos gossiped on corners. There was even a merry-go-round working under the trees.
Then Horrocks touched Slattery’s arm and gestured seawards. Suddenly there seemed to be a great deal of activity around the American ships, with flashing signal lamps and strings of flags, and the water came alive with launches for the shore. Horrocks watched calmly, Parra quivering alongside him, twisting his hands and tugging at his lower lip.
American sailors and marines were scrambling up the granite steps of the piers now. Crowds of curious civilians had gathered to watch. The Americans among them, who’d long been hoping for intervention in the civil war that so inconvenienced them, were in a gala mood and a woman was waving a flag. Not a shot had been fired.
Then the Mexicans suddenly seemed to realise what was happening and the atmosphere changed at once. Soldiers waiting in the Calle Independencia suddenly began to move with purpose and as the crowds fell back under the arcades, iron shutters clattered down, and children started pouring out of a nearby school and bolting for the suburbs. The market vendors were folding their awnings and gathering up the heaps of fruit and vegetables. Even the vultures seemed to sense danger and were leaving the area to roost on buildings and trees, half a dozen of them on the arms of the cross above the cupola of a church.
‘I ought to get out of this bloody place,’ Slattery observed. Horrocks shrugged. ‘Save your breath,’ he said. ‘The railway terminal’s come to a standstill because they’re expecting the Americans to seize it to get control of the trains.’
‘They’ll be too late,’ Parra said. ‘The trains have all been sent to Tejeria.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I am a Mexican and I telephoned the terminal that they were on their way. The Norteamericanos will find nothing but a few old coaches and two or three disabled locomotives.’
From the roof, they saw a sailor on the railway terminal flagwagging the ships. Khaki-clad marines were advancing in silence across the Plaza and down the street towards the cable station. There was still no sign of resistance and the only sound came from the barked orders and the rhythmic tramp of heavy boots. But along the Puente Independencia and under the arcades Mexican soldiers were waiting, and on the corner a group of prisoners from San Juan de Ulua lay on the rough cobbles. Others had taken up positions on the roofs of hotels and offices.
Sweeping the streets with the binoculars, Slattery suddenly saw a familiar figure standing behind a pillar in one of the arcades. It was Fausto Graf and he immediately understood the presence of Sjogren in Veracruz. Enamoured of German strength, he was lickspittling round the Germans in his attempt to feel he was part of the Potsdam Empire.
Swinging his binoculars again, Slattery wondered what Graf was up to, then, as the German raised his arm, he realised he was holding a pistol and was staring out of the arcade towards the advancing Americans. At first Slattery thought he was going to fire at them, then it dawned on him that in the hair-trigger atmosphere that existed, he didn’t need to.
As the head of the American column came into the line of fire of the Mexicans, he saw Graf pull the trigger. He wasn’t aiming at the Americans but the shot shattered all hopes of a peaceful occupation. Immediately, men nervous under the tension fired from every direction and the signalman on the roof of the Terminal fell out of sight. Bunched together, the advancing Americans
made an excellent target. Men dropped, but the rest continued to advance, moving in close order, shooting at rooftops and church steeples and into the arcades – wherever they suspected there was resistance.
There were already more casualties among the bystanders than among the combatants, and as firing swept the roof where he was watching, Slattery went down to the street where by slipping through offices and out of back doors it was still possible to move about. Some of the Americans had smashed down the door of an export house and were dragging out sacks of rice and coffee to make a barricade, stuffing their pockets with cigars and cigarettes as they emerged. Machine guns had been set up at street corners, there was a field gun in front of the US Consulate and cannon shots driving snipers away from the Juárez statue had smashed off one of the decorative eagles.
In the naval school there were a few teenage cadets, and as the Americans advanced across the open ground of Juárez Park, an affronted boy, taking a potshot at them, started a scattered volley. As the soldiers dispersed, a signal went out for artillery support, and warships lying broadside-on at close range, poured a barrage of shells into the building.
When Slattery returned to his hotel, Jesús was missing.
In a rage, Slattery set off to find him. All manner of people were in the back streets now, attending to the injured. Jesús was among the helpers and, as he watched him, Slattery realised that he was no longer a child but a strong, tall and eager youth.
They began leading moaning men and hysterical blood-splashed women to shelter. Foreigners, even a few Americans, were working with the Mexicans as doctors, nurses, orderlies and stretcher-bearers. Parra was there and Slattery was surprised to see Horrocks also, his jacket discarded, his white duck trousers splashed with blood.
‘Well, the Germans have got their incident,’ he snapped at Slattery.
