by C. M. Mayo
An hour before vespers, Princess Iturbide said to Olivia, “Prince Agustín has lost his ball. It’s gone down the stairs, I suppose. Tell one of the footmen to bring it up at once.”
“Yes, Your Highness, ma’am,” Olivia said. But she wondered, how in God’s good heaven could a nursemaid, a servant on her first day, presume to ask the Mistress of the Imperial Household to give it back? (And the silver cigarette case!) Olivia badly wanted a cigarette, and in this country, ladies of even the highest rank had always smoked, if they fancied the taste. Olivia’s mamá smoked! All of her sisters, and her granny enjoyed a cigarette after their meals. Madame Almonte and the general used to live just up the street from the shop—well, Madame Almonte smoked, too. Era la costumbre. It was the custom. And who was this foreigner, this Señora von Cucaracha, to tell her about that?
About the prince’s blue ball, Olivia said nothing. Señora von Kuhacsevich never did bring it back. Why, Olivia wondered, would that lady want to keep his toy? He may have been a brat, but wasn’t he just a little boy? It was a cruel thing to do.
What kind of people were these?
Olivia’s eyes took on a hard shine; in her mind, resentment, fright, and confusion lashed as the wind that whipped the flag out on the terrace.
Señora von Kuhacsevich, or rather, as the Mistress of the Imperial Household thought of herself, Frau von Kuhacsevich, had a bundle of things on her mind. Her work, she frequently complained to her husband, was akin to being asked to push a wheelbarrow piled with sawdust in a high wind whilst juggling coconuts and a watermelon and fending off marauding monkeys! Once she had brought the nursemaid Olivia to Princess Iturbide’s apartments, so as not to be late for yet another interview she’d hurried back down, all out of breath, to her office. Tucked in behind the pantry, it was a mean little room without much light, just big enough for her desk and a stool, a straight-back chair for visitors on business, and a shelf for the heavy leather-bound ledgers, a cuckoo clock, and the pie basket she used for the receipts. The wall behind her desk had a moth-shaped water stain that had, during this rainy season, spread into a very big moth indeed and begun to turn a greenish black at the edges. But she had covered this with a framed water-color of orchids. It was an amateurish picture, but she treasured it because it had been given to her by the botanist, Professor Bilimek, one of Maximilian’s favorites. Professor Bilimek was a Capuchin friar, and so shy that people laughed behind his back about how little he spoke, how he kept to himself, always busy, busy pinning butterflies, cataloging beetles. All the Germans who happened into her office remarked on this watercolor. They would say, “Professor Bilimek gave that to you, really?” And because she was a respected married woman, Frau von Kuhacsevich could answer with a smile and proudly.
Out the window, birds were being blown about in the sky, and in the distance, rain clouds draped like a filthy rag over the sierra. At the rate the clouds were moving, rain would arrive in a matter of minutes. This room smelled disagreeably sour. For a bit of air, she pulled the one small window in, just a crack. The receipts in their basket rustled.
She checked her schedule, which was pinned to a corkboard by the door. Interviews were marked with a red pencil. A candidate for the just-opened position of assistant pastry chef should have been here already. Well, with the rain, probably, he would arrive later, if at all. Heavily she sat down at her desk, and then, ignoring the calls of the cuckoo that popped put of the clock, dipped her pen in a pot of ink.
Meine Lieber Freundin!
She had just begun this letter to her dearest chum in Trieste, when a gust of wind pushed the window further in, knocking over her inkpot. “Ach!” she cried out in horror. Not only was a good quantity of scarce letter paper now ruined; ink had splashed her jacket. This was a costly turquoise blue chamois jacket, with toggles of carved horn that fastened with Chinese red froggings; she’d had it made the year she and her husband came from Vienna to look after Maximilian, a bachelor then, in Trieste. It had been meant to be worn over a bulky sweater; for this reason, it was one of the few articles of clothing she’d brought with her from Europe that still fit her.
For such a stain there was no remedy. Ach, and wasn’t it just like everything in this waterlogged pesthole of an “Imperial Residence”? Frau von Kuhacsevich was sick to the teeth with this wind, the smell of mold in her rooms, mice droppings in every cupboard, her poor husband suffering with cramps and diarrhea, and the altitude—her lungs had not adjusted to it in a year and half. Having to trudge up and down, and up these stairs, oh, it was pure, wheezing torture! But worst of all was having to manage these lazy, thieving Mexicans. Did they think she didn’t realize they were pilfering the candles and soap? It was going to cut short her days, and her husband’s too. He was the Purser for the Imperial Household, a job for a Hercules! Whoever claimed Arabs were the best liars had not been to this country!
And bullfighting! Not only the footmen but the housemaids also went to that hideous Plaza de Toros to roar and cheer “Olé!” and toss around their sombreros, oh, they were as thrilled as Romans watching Christians being torn limb from limb by lions! As she’d already written to her chum in Trieste (and more than once)—for savagery, Mexicans outdid even Croats. And in today’s letter, she had been about to write: what’s more, the new nursemaid to the little Iturbide came into the residence with a cigarette case! She has a hook-nose, a gap between her front teeth you could drive a team of horses through, and such a complexion she could pass for a gypsy—and this is the flower of the lot one has to choose from!
Cork it, woman, her husband would say to her, the times she got going like this. A bitter pill is better swallowed than chewed.
With tears blinding her eyes, Frau von Kuhacsevich wrestled herself out of her ruined jacket and dashed the thing on the chair. Bitter pills, bitter pills, she was bone-tired of bitter pills. She swallowed them, by Jove, but she, who had no political responsibilities, should not have to lie about Mexico, that it was all sugar plums. She gritted her teeth. She yanked the bell for a servant.
In the Hofburg, a footman would appear before one could recite a paternoster. In Monza, when Maximilian had been viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia, it was the same as at Miramar Castle in Trieste, one never had to wait more than three minutes; more, and someone would have been dismissed. But here in Chapultepec Castle, it was just the same as everywhere, with everyone, about everything, in this pigsty: ¿Quién sabe?
Rain had begun to spatter the little window. She couldn’t help herself, she was weeping. She had no handkerchief! And why was that? Because the laundress had brought the handkerchiefs folded, but without having taken the trouble to iron them! Frau von Kuhacsevich, in a high dudgeon, had sent them back. She wiped her face with the back of her wrist, but that wouldn’t do; she picked up a sleeve of the ruined jacket and pressed the chamois to her face, which only—oh!—it was so soft, such a turquoise blue!—made her sob.
She collected herself. Sniffing, she rang the bell again.
A year ago, she would have had the charity to pretend that no one had heard the bell because of the rain. Last week, when she wanted tea, she had ended up going down to the kitchen herself for it, and she nearly tripped over the assistant pastry chef, who had drunk so much cooking sherry he was conked out on the floor. Where was Tüdos, the Hungarian chef? Sick with diarrhea. And the rest? She got it out of that bleary-eyed Mexican: they were having a fiesta in a footman’s room!
With these Mexicans it is nada, nada, and nada. No hay, there isn’t any. No sé, I don’t know. Es la costumbre, it’s the custom. Ahorita, in a little moment— they hold up their fingers as if to show a pinch of salt—but Frau von Kuhacsevich had learned the correct translation of that: Don’t hold your breath.
These people, they could not conceive the half of what she and her husband, not to mention Maximilian, had given up in order to bring civilization to their country. Gratitude? There was plenty of bootlicking around here, but not once did a Mexican express genuine, comprehending grat
itude.
It would be good if . . . and she had been about to confess this in the letter to her chum . . . (she bit her lip at the catastrophic and lovely possibility) . . . that . . . Maximilian . . . might . . .
Abdicate.
God forgive her, how she longed to go home! To Trieste! Oh, to anywhere within the realm of the merest gloss of civilization! If staying with Maximilian meant being sent to live in Dubrovnik, or God help her, winters on Corfu—she would manage on Corfu—oh, yes, Corfu, broiling hot, full of Greeks and their oily food, but it was Greece! The very cradle of civilization! Land of Aristotle! Euripides! Socrates! What had these Aztecs come up with but barbarous piles of rocks carved with snakes and skulls? Altars to the Demon!
And it could happen . . . soon . . . Frau von Kuhacsevich had a cherry-stone of a secret that she had been about to give herself the luxury of sharing, because she suspected that her chum in Trieste already knew. The gardens at Miramar Castle were open to the public on certain days, and so anyone in Trieste who took the trouble could go and see with their own eyes: Max was still constructing and decorating Miramar Castle.
For what possible purpose but his return?
It was her own husband, Jakob von Kuhacsevich, Purser of the Imperial Household, who was arranging the payments to the architects, decorators, and gardeners. Maximilian wanted eggshell white on the door trim and moldings, crimson damask on the walls and draperies with his imperial insignia, extra cages for the aviary, and four more loads of gravel for the drive.
What’s more, Count Bombelles, head of the Palatine Guard, had let slip that Maximilian would be sending him to Vienna to renegotiate the Family Pact. What a heartless thing for the Kaiser to have done, force his brother to sign such a document. In the Hofburg they were afraid of Maximilian, because Maximilian was so good, so capable, and dangerously popular, especially in Hungary. It was Franz Joseph’s old fogey hardliners who had made a muddle of Lombardy-Venetia, not Maximilian—though they blamed him for it. The Prince Imperial, Rudolph, is a frail child, and the Empress Sissi such an eccentric sickly girl, she is unlikely to provide another son. And who is in line for the throne of the Austrian Empire, directly after Prince Rudolph? Maximilian! And if Prince Rudolph is made emperor, who would likely be the natural choice for regent? Maximilian! Ah, but not when they have cut him off with that “Family Pact.” And after Mexico, if he were to return to Europe, could he have a future? Frau von Kuhacsevich had been bold enough to ask Bombelles. That little peacock puffed his chest out.
“I am going to Vienna to assure it,” he said.
And now, to think of Trieste, and the good God-fearing people there, it made Frau von Kuhacsevich’s heart break.
Oh, instead of these oceans of dusty cactus and corn stubble, what she would give to gaze upon the Adriatic again! The Hungarian chef, Tüdos, was doing his best, especially with the goulash, but oh, to be properly served an honest dinner of Tafelspitz mit G’röste, and cakes not with lard but with good German butter! A little spaghetti and a glass of Chianti. To sleep in a fresh sweet-smelling room, to find a mantua-maker who knows how to cut on the bias and stitch in a straight line, decent shoemakers, decent servants, priests who can say mass without making a mishmash out of the Latin, and to a congregation wearing shoes and sitting upright in pews, with proper respect for God. Here, half-naked Indians squat and loll in the aisles! When they fancy, they hack up a gob and spit on the floor! In Mexico City’s cathedral, she has seen cats and dogs, too, running right by the chapel of San Felipe Mártir, oh, the Mexican curs are scabrous. Get a mile near them, and you are infested for life. Let that little Prince Iturbide have Mexico, yes, hand it over to him on a platter and with a solemn mass, tacos for the people, and with firecrackers, too! Let Princess Iturbide, she certainly appears capable, be named regent . . . And to run the charade, General Bazaine and Generals Almonte, Miramón, Mejía, Uraga—there are generals aplenty, like locusts in Egypt!
By the cuckoo clock, it was eight minutes before a housemaid answered: the same moonfaced girl Frau von Kuhacsevich had caught smooching the assistant pastry chef in a closet. Holding the jacket by her fingers as if it were a dirty rag, Frau von Kuhacsevich dropped it in the girl’s arms. She had completely forgotten the little blue ball in its pocket.
“Do with this what you will,” Frau von Kuhacsevich said coldly. “Do not let me see it again.”
September 28, 1865
ONE TAKES IT COOLLY
One takes it coolly, Maximilian reminds himself. But a woman cannot be told everything; how easily Charlotte works herself into a lather. “When he was that age,” Charlotte is saying, “the Child of France had a specially built-up seat for riding in the carriage, so that the people could properly view him. Letting the child stand on your knees, letting him stumble around like a ninepin, why, he could have been injured.”
“He was not.”
Charlotte stiffens. “The Child of France—”
“Enough!” Maximilian says, dropping his head in his hand. “One has heard quite enough about the Child of France.”
They are alone in his study, facing the windowed doors to the terrace overlooking the Valley of Anahuac. The day’s work is finished, and they sit, each in a chair, solemn as the deities of Memphis. It was years ago, on his first cruise to Africa, that Maximilian began to be religious about watching the sunset; here in Chapultepec Castle, it is like watching from aloft in a balloon: a luxury of sky. Miramar, “view of the sea” is the name he had given his castle in Trieste; Chapultepec, then, must be Miravalle. This stupendous valley with its lakes of molten silver, and the snowcapped volcanoes, Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, the one a cone, the other a sheered-off wedge: nothing in the Alps compares. For this alone, one would have come to Mexico.
Kein Genuss ist vorübergehend, No pleasure is transitory, as Goethe said. Each moment of life engraves itself upon Eternity.
“Bonbon?” He holds out the bowl of bonbons, Brombeeren mit Mandeln. It is a stunning bowl, orange red as a harvest sun, and curled around it, carved deep into the clay, a black caterpillar. The bowl is Totonac; possibly several hundred years old.
“Thank you,” Charlotte whispers. She picks at the wrapper, but it has melted stuck.
“They are old,” he says.
“Who?”
He looks at her as he would a dunderhead. He plucks up another bonbon. “These.”
On the other side of the glass, the horizon, jagged with mountains, is paling, and the snowcaps of the volcanos tinged a fiery lavender, the exact shade, it occurs to Maximilian, of the inner lip of a Phalaenopsis orchid. For the past month, it has rained almost every afternoon, and sometimes all through the night, but this afternoon, the clouds, titanic puzzle pieces, have sailed apart to reveal a stretch of translucent ocean blue. To the east, a cloud bank soft as charcoal smudges the sierra; closer in, an island cloud shoots out swords of gold. The birds are coming in to their roosts around the lake in the park below. An eagle skims the tops of the ahuehuetes. In the distance, church bells begin to gong and chime.
A southern twilight: can there be anything in this world more sublime? Until coming up here to Chapultepec, “mount of the grasshoppers” in the Aztec language, one had believed that the neplus ultra was the sunset over the Gulf of Naples, as seen from Capodimonte. The burning orb, the very eye of the Great Artist—Helios-Huitzilipochtli—how its setting sears one’s thoughts with longing and the tender hope that one shall behold it again.
But to consider the next day, more meetings with the finance minister, and then that antediluvian, General Bazaine, one’s stomach knots.
Bazaine won’t say so, but he will consider this morning’s carriage ride with Prince Agustín both a provocation and a serious miscalculation. One intended to content one’s subjects, to impress upon them that the empire is securely anchored—to use General Almonte’s words, that one’s government is not a French puppet show! But, more likely, to Bazaine’s crude way of thinking, the sight of the little Iturbide, w
ho behaved no better than a jackanapes, served merely to remind one’s subjects that, after eight years of matrimony, their sovereigns have not produced a child. The Juaristas have been spreading propaganda about syphilis, gynecological deformities, calumnies too vile to deign to think about.
But the worst was not that some rascal had the audacity to smack the imperial carriage with an egg. Nor that some lunatic was executed this morning for plotting to assassinate one (such things one must steel oneself for; it comes with the job). No, it was that the little Iturbide’s American mother, having breezed through Río Frío and then spent several days in the city of Puebla, got the notion to turn around! And go straight to General Bazaine! That vain fathead, who is at this very moment, no doubt, mocking one to his officers.
The day before yesterday, one read Bazaine’s letter, and that American Iturbide woman’s, which Bazaine had enclosed (such pathetic whining! Poor me, and, justice to my feelings), and one quaked with anger. One threw down the both of them on the desk.
And then, that same afternoon, came another letter, from Agustín Gerónimo de Iturbide, the head of that family—a letter so audacious, so lacking in protocol, the penmanship so absurdly sloppy, one had to read it thrice, to believe it. Every word is pricked into one’s brain.
Puebla, 23 Sept. 1865
To HM the Emperor, Mexico.
Sir
