The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

by C. M. Mayo

  “En écus bien comptés?”

  “Thirty thousand dollars in cash, and the balance in bills, payable on February 15, in Paris.”

  “Paris!” Agustín Gerónimo laughed. He raised his glass. “Cheers—well—” He remembered himself, and twisted around to Angelo. “He’s your boy. What say you?”

  “N—no!”

  “Well, that’s that.” Agustín Gerónimo turned to Pepa. “Tough potatoes.”

  “Tough potatoes?” Pepa’s expression was rabid.

  “Keep your bonnet on, sister.” Agustín Gerónimo flipped his hand. “What do you say, Father, can you go back and tell Maximilian, how ’bout he gives us our pensions, and Salvador the education, but not for my infant nephew, Agustín. He stays with his parents.”

  Father Fischer’s eyes seemed to sink into his fleshy cheeks. “As you wish,” was all he said.

  Angelo had been flummoxed, not only at the unexpectedness—the audacity!—of this proposition, but that, then, in the days that followed Alicia entertained the idea. She implored him, pestered him, pushed him! Do you care nothing for your family? Your son could have the finest education in Europe! Think of his future! Your country’s future!

  Where, how had they lost the thread of reason in this fog of sparkles and genie dust?

  One night, over a game of cards with his two brothers, Angelo said to Agustín Gerónimo, “I do not want to do it, but Alicia . . .”

  Agustín Gerónimo counseled, “This is what the woman’s got a fix on, she’s the mother, you ought to agree.” He covered his mouth with his cards and coughed. “I would.”

  “You would?” Angelo blinked.

  Agustín Gerónimo pulled a card from his hand and placed it on the table. Jack of spades. “Go deaf, never hear the end of it.”

  “You would?”

  Agustín Gerónimo palmed another card. When he’d arranged his hand, he looked out the window to the street. “That’s what I said.”

  “It’s so damned much money,” Angelo said darkly.

  The youngest, Agustín Cosme, said soothingly, “It’s not just the money. But, yes . . . and Pepa says—”

  “I know what Pepa says.” Appalled, Angelo pushed himself to his feet so violently, his chair tipped over behind him. He walked out. He was not going to hand over his own flesh and blood to some other man. And the idea that little Agustín would be Heir Presumptive—or Apparent, or whatever—maybe so, but that anything would come of it, this was laughable! Maximilian and Carlota were still young; Carlota was only twenty-five years old!

  Had he not given the clearest possible signal?

  But the very next day, preceded by an arrangement of birds-of-paradise, orange blossoms, lilies and roses, and orchids and tuberoses, and ferns so extravagant that the thing could not fit through the door (the servants had to take the bouquet apart and then put it back together), the empress herself arrived at number 11, Calle de Coliseo Principal. Leaving her bodyguards in the street, she ascended the stairs to their third-floor apartment. In a rustle of silk and taffeta, Her Majesty alighted on their sofa and accepted a cup of coffee. The servant who brought it shook so badly she nearly dropped the tray. The rest of the servants pressed their ears to the door (Angelo could see beneath it the shadows of their feet). To Angelo, it was not thrilling but grimly disconcerting to have Carlota—daughter of King Leopold of the Belgians, granddaughter of King Louis-Philippe of the French, first cousin of Queen Victoria of England, sister-in-law of Kaiser Franz Joseph of Austria—here in this Mexican apartment. Everything was wrong with it, the torn thumb of wallpaper behind the sidetable, the cheap carpet, the frayed upholstery on the arms of the chair. The stale smell of fried bacon. On the sofa cushion, next to the sleeve of Her Majesty’s lace-and-velvet pelisse, was a stain where, months ago, the baby had spit up. (To flip the cushion would have revealed a coffee splotch.)

  After the baby had been handed back to his nanny, Carlota said: “We can assure you that you will have frequent news of Agustín.”

  Alicia, her face innocent as a child’s, was on the edge of her chair. “Every day?”

  “Constant communication,” Carlota said.

  Alicia had placed the bouquet, precariously, on the mantel. The sight of that thing, so ridiculously out of proportion, and its cloying stink, made Angelo ill.

  That night he had a dream that he was at sword point, being backed up to a precipice, and then, with no one to help him, he fell. He woke with a start, covered in sweat. Within the week he had an attack of gout so excruciating he had to hobble with a cane. And then a nasty boil on the back of his neck.

  They would have to flee Mexico, but how?

  In the north, insurgents controlled the countryside. The French had finally taken Chihuahua, but they were still waging pitched battles against the guerrillas in the pueblos. On all the roads heading north, stagecoaches were regularly ambushed. There were snipers on the cliffs.

  Instead, the family might take the stagecoach road southeast to Veracruz, on a route almost as treacherous, and from there a steamship north. But to arrive in Veracruz now, in the rainy season, the season of yellow fever, would be madness. And if they made it out of Mexico alive, without a post in the diplomatic corps, without land, without pensions, where could they live?

  Angelo knew the answer, and it made his intestines grind: Washington, under the same roof with Mrs. Green. On her damned farm.

  “You are being selfish,” Alicia accused him. “We must consider our son’s future!”

  It was, Angelo had to admit, fabulous to consider that their son could be educated under the tutelage of a Habsburg.

  Pepa, like a second in a duel, came in right behind her sister-in-law. “This is larger than you are, brother. Our sovereign is requesting our help and making a magnanimous offer. Is it not dear to you also that Mexico be a Catholic country? Would you have Juárez and his criminals destroy our country? Are you not godfearing? We are, all of us in this family, and you, brother, in a crucial position to be of service.”

  The maid saved the teaspoon that had touched Carlota’s lips, tied a ribbon around its neck, and left it out on the mantel by those awful flowers. The cook put the teacup and saucer on a high shelf, apart. Angelo had never seen his sister so energetic, so smilingly solicitous of Alicia—whom, up until now, she had merely tolerated, as one would an inconvenient and silly child. The empress visited their apartment again, urging them with honeyed smiles to do this beautiful, noble thing, but underneath Her Majesty’s polished-as-silver poise, which so awed the women and the servants, Angelo could detect the threat: Or else! Nothing will come of it for any of you.

  Maximilian could, after all, take their child by force and then exile the rest of them without a peso. Or much worse. Maximilian relished the grandiose show of mercy (it was an open secret that General Bazaine was increasingly provoked), but His Majesty was, after all, the younger brother of Kaiser Franz Joseph, whose Geheim Polizei plucked scores of inconvenient people off the streets of Vienna, Trieste, Milan. Liberals, anarchists, hotheaded students, no matter, they were shot, strangled, tortured, gang-kicked to pulp. Such things had always happened in Mexico, and only a simpleton could expect it to be different now. Last week, for example, the milliner, whose shop was on their corner had been frog-marched out, with his head bleeding and his hands roped behind his back, in broad daylight. Why? Doña Juliana did not know, and neither did the servants. There was nothing about it in La Sociedad, of course. One’s luck could change with the snap of His Majesty’s fingers. Or with the snap of a flunky’s. Without favor in the highest echelons, one was vulnerable, a bull without horns—or, more apt, a wrinkled little turtle crawling along without its carapace.

  But with Maximilian’s arrangement, Pepa said—Alicia nodded, yes, yes, yes—“we can not only count on His Majesty’s protection, but brilliant prospects for our Agustín.”

  On the drive to the signing ceremony at Chapultepec Castle, Angelo had to stop the carriage twice so he could get out and
throw up. In Chapultepec Castle, they were shepherded up the marble staircase and then down a hall hung with Venetian glass chandeliers, then past a gauntlet of footmen and guards, into a red-velvet-draped salon. The contract lay on a spindle-legged table shining with ormolu. Maximilian took up the pen and signed. How it stung Angelo, that sound. Like metal scratching on glass. Agustín Gerónimo was the first of the family to sign, then, because Angelo did not step forward, Agustín Cosme signed. Pepa signed, scratch-scratch. And then Alicia signed, scratch.

  When again Angelo did not move to pick up the quill, Father Fischer pressed it into his hand.

  “For Mexico,” Father Fischer said. His little eyes darted about, but his voice was a bell, low and mellifluous. “For Mexico.”

  Don José Fernándo Ramírez, Mexico’s foreign minister, put his fist to his mouth and coughed.

  Angelo could feel their stares. Maximilian, ripe with hair lotion, waited with one hand’s fingertips pressed to the table, as if posing for a photograph. It struck Angelo at that moment that the fabric of His Majesty’s uniform was uncannily fine; the gold-fringed epaulettes—it was remarkable—fit him perfectly. Angelo’s father’s uniform never did hang so well. He had worn-at-the-heels boots and the old-fashioned starched collar that brushed his jaw. Where was his face? Why could he never, in all these years, conjure in his mind his own father’s face? Angelo was groggy with nausea. His right toe, afflicted with the gout, was throbbing agony. His eyes filled with tears (he blinked them back) and, in such a jagged movement it seemed some outside force moved his feet to the table and his hand to the sheepskin, he signed. He lifted the quill from the paper, and he felt the blood drain from his face. It was as if, in that instant, a limb of his soul had been amputated. Dear God, a small voice within him cried. Dear God.

  Now in the stagecoach, Angelo cannot get comfortable, not with his cane between his knees and his shoulder jammed against the window, his elbow to his wife’s hatbox. Through the downpour, dim outlines of doorways file by. Now and again, the coach’s lantern casts a veil of light over a length of telegraph wire, a dripping bank of bushes, a cross, askew in the mud. A moth, he notices for the first time, flutters, trapped inside the lantern just outside the window. The Belgian grocer snores. Agustín Gerónimo starts coughing, a dry, trembling hack.

  Angelo has such a sick feeling. In Paris, if they make it that far, there is a slim chance that the Mexican legation might have something for him to do, translating, tasks of that nature, he cannot expect more, as the ambassador there will be jealous of his own responsibilities and relationships. It has occurred to him that, with the money from the pensions, he could set himself up with some kind of exporting company, sewing machines or pianos, but when he thinks of having to arrange permits, calculate customs duties, budget for bribes, it is as if he were watching someone else, some soulless marionette of a philistine, and from a great distance.

  He might play scholar and write a history of his father, the revolutions for Mexican Independence, the First Empire, and its fall. Many people, including the archbishop, have suggested it. But for Angelo to dwell on those times would be to peel back his rage and expose such grief, he knows he is not equal to it.

  God protect you, the widow de Gómez Pedraza had said. For the first time since Angelo was a child, Doña Juliana put her hand on the back of his head and kissed him on the forehead. She had stayed awake, so long past midnight, to send them off.

  Angelo says, “Darling?” He leans toward his wife, and the hatbox on her lap jabs him in the rib.

  “What.”

  He touches her hand, and it is so cold, the horrible idea penetrates his mind: they are dead. In a way, he realizes, they are, and this, this pitching, cramped box of misery, is their Purgatory. An image of a bullfighting ring comes to mind: the antique ceremony finished, the mulillas, the team of mules, dragging by ropes the carcass, and the areneros, behind, stirring, raking the sand.

  “What?” she says again, raising her voice over the creaking and the thundering of the hooves. “What is it?”

  He warms her hand in both of his. “Nothing.”

  “Your hands are ice,” she complains, and she takes her hand back.

  Half an hour ahead of the stagecoach, a covered wagon rocks along on wobbling wooden wheels. In its back, Lupe sits huddled among jiggling stacks of boxes. She is as old as Methuselah, but she fears, far more than this wet cold, it is the sustos, the frights she’s suffered that will be the death of her. The first susto was when Doña Alicia told her the baby was going to live with the emperor. Then, last morning in the full of the sunshine, the empress came to the apartment, and she and Doña Pepa took the baby away. Then, Doña Alicia and Don Angel said they were leaving. They were going to cross the sea. Even now—it comes in nauseating rolls—Lupe feels as if the floor she’s been standing on has given way.

  For a time, in the back of this rattletrap wagon, she’d rubbed and clapped her arms to keep from shivering, but now she simply sits, her teeth chattering and her eyes squeezed in numb, exhausted sorrow. The jouncing and jolting is torture on her old bones; she’s banged her shoulder twice and bruised her back; every joint from the crick of her neck to her toes aches. Rain roars onto the canvas, and rushing in through a tear in the cover, cold water has been puddling around her huaraches. They are tiny huaraches. Lupe is no bigger than a malnourished twelve-year-old.

  She has no family. She does not know how old she is, only that she was still a very little girl in the orphanage the year the earthquake brought down the coal shed’s roof. She might have been eleven or fifteen the year the nuns sent her off forever, as a galopina, a kitchen maid, for one of their patronesses. For some sixty years, the Gómez Pedrazas’ was Lupe’s home. The nuns had taught Lupe to make many things, which she, as a child, had imagined to be the worldliest, quesadillas and gorditas stuffed with the brilliant orange squash flowers, and tostaditas of beans and shredded chicken with cinnamon shavings. Lupe had been allowed to stir the stew of pigs’ feet with onion, that, the nuns all agreed, tasted even better reheated. On special occasions, such as the day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, or when a priest or patron would come for a visit, Lupe helped to make the mole. She got down on her knees to grind the chiles, chocolate, and spices in the stone metate, and she tended the fire under the big pot, hour after hour, long into the night. Before dawn, Lupe helped prepare the jugs of watermelon water, mango water, horchata, and in the fall, after the rains, agua de tuna, cactus fruit water sweetened with piloncillo, molasses flavored with orange peel and spices.

  But in Doña Juliana de Gómez Pedraza’s house, it was another level! The cook there learnt her to grind almonds fine to powder, how to whip sweet cream to fluff. Doña Juliana had them make fancy things—oh, the fancies! Cream white trout on a bed of pickled lime-skins, sweetly mild poblano chiles stuffed with sautéed walnuts and minced beef and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds, and duck, and goose, and quail, pheasant in butter-nutmeg sauce with crisp diced peppers. Soon, by watching Chole, Lupe knew how to make the turtle soups with sherry, and the salads of lettuce, bananas, and peanuts broken fine (on top, very carefully, as Doña Juliana showed her, Lupe would arrange slices of strawberry into stars). Before the midday meal, for his digestion, Lupe served Don Manuel his shot glass of tepache, pineapple liquor. Lupe always added a squeeze of lime, for that was the way he liked it.

  “Gracias, Lupita,” Don Manuel would murmur, lifting the glass from the tray.

  Lupe would cast her eyes down to her feet and murmur, “Para servirle, to serve you, señor.”

  Don Manuel towered over most other men, and the thick hair that he brushed up from his forehead made him appear even taller. Knife-like sideburns framed his pale, narrow, clean-shaven face. He had thin lips that seldom smiled. But there was nothing mean about him.

  “I declare,” Don Manuel said to his wife, “there must be angels in your kitchen.”

  Well, huh, Lupe could have become the cook, but that was about as likely as a mouse laying
an egg, because Soledad—Doña Chole, those bootlicking vendors in the market called her—was the cook. Doña Chole, old garlic breath and flabby arms, who stood a head taller than Lupe, but she shrank as she got older until—the day did come—Chole and tiny Lupe stood eye-to-eye.

  But old or young, Chole could have made wax melt, she was that ugly. She had hands that could wring the neck of a big male guajolote on the first twist. Jutting up her lantern of a chin, Doña Chole always had her way of looking down on one. For no reason but spite, Chole would give Lupe a clout on the head. If Lupe burnt a tortilla, Chole slapped her. “You’re not worth a mustard seed,” she would sneer, never mind that Chole herself had burnt enough tortillas to feed an army, and more than a few cakes, ay, once Chole burnt a whole suckling pig to a blackened brick! Didn’t that cost the señora a pretty peso; she had to serve her guests leftovers, sliced up venison sausage from breakfast into the soup, and there was not enough of it. And how could anyone forget—it happened the year the cannonball crashed down the portico of Count Villavaso’s house across the street—the time one rainy season, when instead of putting it up in the zarzate, hanging basket, Chole left a bag of rice on the floor. For weeks afterward, the kitchen was overrun with mice, and their droppings, and cockroaches. Once, when she was taking it down from the high shelf, Chole dropped the blue-glass bowl that had been one of Doña Juliana’s own wedding gifts—smashed to bits! The señora came running into the kitchen, and in her camisole! It was a holy miracle Doña Juliana did not die of the grippe she got after that susto.

  But did the señora say one blessed word about any of this? Ay, never. Chole’s mamá had been Doña Juliana’s own nanny, so from all whichways, upside down and inside out, Shrove Tuesday to Shrove Tuesday, Chole was the hands-down favorite servant in the Gómez Pedraza house. Chole walked on water, and her farts were perfume of lilies. Chole knew it, too. If they had a cake to decorate—and Lupe, having prepared the pine-nuts, candied ginger, orange peel and raisins, set them out each in their little bowls—Chole would pick out the biggest onion, and say, “You, chop this.” Or, “You, throw the garbage in the alley.” Or, “You, sweep out the ashes.” Her Highness Doña Chole wouldn’t rinse a teacup if she could order the galopina to do it.