by C. M. Mayo
As for France, it is entirely too much for Angelo to swallow the idea that Mr. Bigelow, this New York lawyer, friendly as he may be with Louis Napoleon, could persuade the latter to sully French prestige.
Maximilian von Habsburg abdicate? Just as soon as Bigelow was in the corridor and the door closed, Agustín Gerónimo remarked, “Eh, takes the biscuits!”
Agustín Cosme spoke at last. “But people say that in the tavern.”
“What?” Angelo had said.
Agustín Cosme said, “That Louis Napoleon will slough off Mexico and get rid of Maximilian.”
Agustín Gerónimo had the last word. “Louis Napoleon would sooner stand up in his box at the opera, turn ’round, and show the house his bare buttocks.”
Head down and collar up, Angelo starts across the Pont Neuf. The sky has dulled the Seine to rippled lead. A barge, trailing a chevron, disappears beneath his feet. His nose smarts from the cold, yet in this cashmere coat, he is sweating. He unwinds his scarf, then he stuffs it in his pocket. He crosses over the to Île de la Cité; to his left, the grim towers of the Conciergerie press against the water. In the past two weeks, he has crossed this bridge so many times, he no longer glances at the buildings nor meditates on their meanings. He does not hear the clang of the bells of Notre Dame, nor notice the snow-flakes, one, then three, wisp-like feathers, beginning to float down.
He thinks: Moreover, Maximilian’s father-in-law would not permit Louis Napoleon to wiggle one inch. According to yesterday’s newspapers, Leopold remains gravely ill. But Leopold has been ill before and recovered; what man over the age of twenty-five has not? The other day, in the tobacconist’s, Angelo happened to see, among the cartes de visite of opera singers, the Prince Imperial and his two spaniels, and Queen Victoria, and Leopold’s most recent: a Saxe-Coburg with the constitution of an ox.
It boils down to this: If they cannot get through to Louis Napoleon, the baby could grow into a little boy who loves Maximilian—the thought makes Angelo sick. He covers his mouth with his glove.
The crowd, a sour-smelling woollen river, pushes and jostles around him.
Angelo may have a delicate stomach, but he is not squeamish. He was just two years older than his little son is now when he yodeled with delight to see cocks shred each other with the razor-sharp knives on their claws. His bodyguards took him to bullfights. When the matador plunged the estoque into the heart, and the beast kneeled before him, blood dripping from its snout onto the sand, Angel would toss up his sombrero, his high-pitched child’s shout into the roar: “Olé!” He was six years old when, from a balcony, he and his sister Pepa saw a sentry shot in the chest. It was so queer, the way the soldier spun and then, like a marionette, sat down on one leg. Then he tipped over, and his shako tumbled into the street. As the sentry lay twitching, the blood bloomed, a rose on his chest. Angel had wanted to watch, but a bodyguard picked him up and carried him kicking into the nursery.
His favorite book was one his father had given him: X. Salvatierra’s Los conquistadores delmar (The conquerors of the sea). Its every page was soaked in blood. Men-of-war lowered their cannons. The enemy swarmed onto the decks, slashing sabers, blasting muskets! In the island jungles, men in feathers loosed arrows dipped in toad venom; the survivors mowed them down with mortars and buckshot. But more than savages, more than sandpaper-thirst, more than hunger “fiercer than wild beasts gnawing their innards,” their mortal foe was Sir Rupert, whose final outrage was to loot the mission’s chapel and, using his necklace of dog’s teeth, scrape the pearls from the cloak of the Virgin’s effigy. In the end, Sir Rupert’s arms were roped behind his back. A pistol at his kidneys, he walked the plank. Many times Angel had squinted in gruesome fascination at the minuscule typeface:
Below the scuffed toes of his boots, in the ice-cold ocean, the sharks’ fins, those arrows of obsidian, went churning in hungry circles. His appointment with Destiny had arrived, but know ye, Sir Rupert did not flinch.
Their father had read the beginning of Los conquistadores del mar to the family and servants when, after his abdication, they sailed to Leghorn. Below deck, swaying on their hooks, the lanterns shed a queasy light. The ship creaked and groaned. The children sat around their father, rapt. But Mamá protested, this novel was too violent. Agustín Gerónimo laughed at the wrong places, and their sisters, and especially the eldest, Sabina, cried at the part where the marooned men, having eaten their mules, had to butcher their dog. Or else it was cannibalism!
“Hang on,” Papá said. “You’ll get that chapter tomorrow.”
To Angel, it was all so wonderful, and forever after, whenever he read his book, he imagined his father’s voice in his head, rich like whiskey, telling the story to him, and him alone.
That their father had been murdered on his return to Mexico was something no one spoke of; all Mamá would say, apropos of one thing or another, was “before God took him.” As the book’s hero, Captain Calderón, told his men:
A warrior turns to death, as a sunflower to the sun.
They had not been in Georgetown long when, after Christmas, their next-door neighbor on N Street began to waste away. Miss Fitzgerald’s skin turned ashen and her eyeballs yellow. It was springtime, and the air smelled of lavender and damp earth as he watched her casket being lowered into its grave in Dumbarton Oaks. The sounds—shovelfuls of earth hitting the casket’s lid—the women crying—birds singing—this—death—was stunning to him. He had known infants to die of measles, or fevers, but that the body of a grown-up could turn against itself? And that he, who was all of nearly nine years old, had not understood this—how, he asked himself over and over, could he have been so stupid? That night, he burned three candles re-reading Los conquistadores del mar. He tallied the deaths with his pencil. One hundred and thirteen men were killed by, variously, cannonballs, machetes, an axe, arrows, a boa constrictor, two-headed cobras, a python, a pit viper, a tiger, a poisoned Manila cheroot, Foo Chong Ta (the most excruciating kind of water torture), and a category he labeled “falling objects & misc.” No one had expired of something so boring as a tumor. Well . . . he sighed when the dawn seeped through the thin curtains, his destiny was not his father’s. As Angelo (he’d added the “o” lest he be teased), his schoolboy’s existence in the United States had a blandness to it—but a dash of style, if he could help it.
Over the years, he devoured The Last of the Mohicans, Ivanhoe, everything by Dumas, Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe (whom he once happened to see coming out of a Pennsylvania Avenue barbershop with his cloak on inside out). But it was his book of the sea that Angelo read again and again, until the binding began to fray, the once bright turquoise morocco leather took on a dark sheen. There was something magical about this little tome, printed so long ago in Mexico City. In the story of Calderón, captain of the most magnificent galleon that ever sailed the Seven Seas, he could open it to any page and lose himself, all his fears and worries gone, like the breath from a mirror. Merely holding this book in his hands steadied his mind. It was the connection to his father. It was the triumph, always, over dangers, over evil, and more: Angelo, too, knew what it was to stand on an open deck, feet splayed wide for balance, and take the salt spray. He knew the dawn, a sun so huge there is no hiding from it; and the moon brighter than any seen from mere land. To be upon the open sea is like being inside the sky. He knew the sea’s miseries, hammering nausea, the last despairing days of having to drink brackish water from the bottom of the barrel and gnaw hardtack crummy with worms. Now with steamers, an ocean crossing is not the hardship it once was. But always there is the sea’s huge rage, its beauty, and the realization that steals upon one, especially at sunset: what dazzling hubris it is to have sailed into the heart of it.
Yes, it had impressed him that Maximilian had been commander of the fleet. He had forgotten that. How could he have forgotten that?
“I am at a total loss as to why you should have involved yourselves in such a scheme.” That was what Mrs. Green had said about the contr
act with Maximilian. And then, having said her piece, as was her way, she said no more. Last month, when they passed through Washington on their way to Paris, he and Alicia stayed in her farmhouse, Rosedale, in the heights above Georgetown and just south of Fort Reno. Mrs. Green had managed to save her orchards, while others in the neighborhood had been chopped down for firewood for the soldiers. The whole hill to the west, in years past ablaze with autumn colors, was bald. In the District of Columbia, the slaves had been freed at the beginning of the war, which Mrs. Green had accepted without protest. She had often stated that emancipation was inevitable. But now, what was she supposed to pay the Negroes with? She could feed them, but that wasn’t good enough. An acre of pumpkins was rotting on the ground.
As always at Rosedale, Angelo wore long underwear, spoke as little as possible, and avoided the pickled asparagus.
“Creamed turnips?” Alicia passed him the chipped dish and wooden spoon. Mrs. Green had Wedgwood china and good silver, but she certainly wasn’t going to take it out for this son-in-law.
“Thank you,” Angelo murmured, grateful that Alicia had indicated what the vegetable was. Mrs. Green was a skinflint with the candles; in this light, the food all appeared the same unappetizing gray.
His brothers had not been invited to Rosedale. They stayed at the Willard Hotel, where they ran up staggering bills for oysters and beefsteak dinners with champagne.
The bitter fragrance of roasting coffee brings Angelo back as he arrives on the Rive Gauche, into St-Germain-des-Prés. The snowflakes are coming down thicker, leaving his cashmere coat damp and his boot soles gummed with slush. In Mexico City, on this day, the streets would be streaming with pilgrims, Indians bent double under their loads of rolled-up straw mats and clay pots, some wearing an image of the Virgin on their chest, and many making a good part of the journey on their knees. Tomorrow is the Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe—and the night will crackle with fireworks. What he would give to taste a mango, a chirimoya, a steaming mug of champurrado . . . he would trade these oily omelettes and toast points slicked with foie gras, this watery coq au vin for the smell—just the perfume!—of tortillas warming on a comal. Or to hear, sweet caress, the strum of a Mexican harp.
He buys an umbrella, a fine one of silk and with an ebony handle. He turns off the Rue Dauphin and into a crooked street of little shops, antiquarians, and book dealers.
He has always had a weakness for bookshops. But in Washington, Philadelphia, New York, London, Mexico City, never in all his forays has he come across another copy of Los conquistadores del mar, nor anything else by X. Salvatierra. No, the book dealers all say, they have never heard of X. Salvatierra.
Before leaving Mexico City, he had his library packed pell-mell into crates. The single volume he brought with him was the X. Salvatierra. He keeps it wrapped in a flannel nightshirt at the bottom of his steamer trunk, along with his medal of the Order of Guadalupe and a miniature of his parents. Years ago, in Washington, a British diplomat had told him about Hafiz, whose poetry the Persians use as an oracle. Often, when alone, Angelo holds his little blue book on his lap and then, eyes closed, allows the pages to fall open. Yesterday he placed a finger on this passage:
Sir Rupert said, “The coconut is the most useful fruit in the world. Un-milked, it makes a mightyprojectile.”
“I’ll make us a catapult!” the carpenter shouted.
“Aye!” Sir Rupert cried, holding up his fat green trophy. His rabble hooted and clapped. One banged the barrel of his musket against his drinking cup. Another, a grizzled old one-armed mate, clashed his cutlas against his hook. Such was their happiness, for though shipwrecked, with the bounty of these coconuts, they believed, they could save themselves from being utterly annihilated by Captain Calderón. But all of a sudden, there was a rustling in one of the trees and,
THUK!
The smallest cabin boy’s skull had been split by a falling coconut. The boy, Jesus in his mouth, fell into his own shadow. His brains oozed into the hot sand.
“Stop it!” Sabina had cried with her fingers in her ears.
Pepa, indignant, said, “Papá, please, read us something nice.”
The boys groaned.
“Well,” their father said, closing the book—though he’d kept his place with his thumb. “The best part of the story is coming up.”
This was after the cannibalism chapter and the Foo Chong Ta.
“Go on! Keep reading!” Angel had urged.
“No!” cried the girls.
“Yes!” said the boys. Unsteadily, for the ship was rolling heavily, Angel had gotten up from his place on the floor and gone over to his father and pulled at his sleeve. “Please, Papá. Please, the part that happens next.”
His father, having received an imperious glance from Mamá, placed the book back inside the trunk. “Another time, son.”
But there was not another time. In Leghorn, his father set to work, began traveling, and after depositing Angelo and the older children in school in England, returned to Mexico. It was later, after England, when he was sent to the Sulpician Brothers in Baltimore, which did not feel to him any nearer to his mother in Georgetown, that Angel, the boy who had become Angelo, read the rest of Los conquistadores del mar, whispering the Spanish words, in-candescent music, to himself alone.
Paris is his Purgatory, shuttered city under mansard roofs, its patches of dirty winter sky stitched with crows. A chiffonier works the alleyway with his hook.
The English bookshop: for the second time this week, Angelo pushes in the door, tinkling the bell, a Hindu contraption made of brass. From the counter the marmalade cat leaps down and brushes past his leg. Only then does Mr. Silvius Mackintosh lift his nose from his newspaper, Le Moniteur.
“Ah, Prince Iturbide. The Dickens has come in.”
“Our Mutual Friend?”
“Aye. I can recommend it.”
“My wife hasn’t—” Angelo realizes, by the puddle on the floor, he should have wiped his boots. He returns to the doormat.
Mr. Mackintosh says, “When the Princess asked for it the other day, it wasn’t in yet.”
Angelo hangs his hat and coat on the pegs by the door. He smooths the top of his hair. “She’s been reading Bleak House.”
“Has she now?”
“It’s depressing, she says.”
“Well, the tonic might be Our Mutual Friend.”
Angelo runs a finger over the spines of the Shakespeares: MacBeth, Hamlet, As You Like It.“Don’t tell me the ending,” he calls over his shoulder, “but is it uplifting?”
“Pooh!” The Scotsman puffs out his cheeks. “It’s Dickens.”
“Right.”
With a rustle, Mr. Mackintosh returns to his newspaper. It’s a good sign when a customer not only removes his coat and hat but helps himself to the ladder. Last week when this one came in, Mr. Mackintosh had taken him for an American—until he gave his name, to have a package sent to him at the Grand-Hôtel. Already, most of the English-speakers resident in this city have heard that Prince Iturbide and his American wife are here to procure the return of their child, who has been kidnapped by Maximilian von Habsburg, so-called emperor of the Aztecs. Some, such as himself and Mrs. Mack-tintosh, are of the opinion that Queen Victoria ought to step in, and shame those German cousins of hers into a sense of decency. Taking a child from its parents, what is this world coming to? Others say those Iturbides are ne’er-do-wells. The youngest son of the emperor has become the proprietor of a tavern! But stones and glass houses, eh? What will happen? No one claims to have a crystal ball, except Mrs. Bigelow, it seems. After church services last Sunday, at the coffee urn, Mrs. Bigelow told Mrs. Macktinosh that, before the new year, rely on it, the “archduke” will be on the boat back to Europe.
The front-page news today is that King Leopold of the Belgians, father of the empress of Mexico, has died. Mr. Mackintosh is curious to know what Prince Iturbide would have to say about that. But he would not presume.
“Finding everything
?” he calls out, but Prince Iturbide, at the top of the ladder, is engrossed in what appears to be—is that Gibbon’s Roman Empire? Wouldn’t that three-volume set be a nice one to sell, and at full price? The cat lands on the newspaper, making a loud meow.
“Naughty Ginger,” Mr. Mackintosh scolds, pushing her away.
January 22, 1866
FLOWERS & FISH & BIRDS & BUTTERFLIES
Depend on it: Maximilian is shepherding Mexico into the modern world—so José Luis Blasio, His Majesty’s secretary, has told his family and tells himself. And this is no small task when His Majesty must grapple not only with our backwardness and ingratitude but suffer that thorn in his side, General Bazaine. The rumor is that, abetted by his Mexican wife’s family, Bazaine schemes to push aside Maximilian; they aim to have Louis Napoleon make Mexico a French protectorate, with himself in charge—not that José Luis would give that a peso of credence. But José Luis does consider it an outrage, the latest of many, that Bazaine would wire a complaint that Maximilian has removed his court to Cuernavaca, rather than “attend to business in the capital.”
Yes, they are here in the Casa Borda, among gardens and fountains, fruit trees, palm trees, parrots of every size and color—a world away from Mexico City. But does not Louis Napoleon go to Plombières and Biarritz? Queen Victoria, who has sterner blood, travels as far as Balmoral in the Scottish Highlands. Dom Pedro II of Brazil retires to his villa in Petropolis. And did not the empress’s late father, Leopold, absent himself from Brussels in the Château Royal at Laeken? It is natural that for the winter, His Majesty should hold court in a healthier clime. But even here where he siestas in a hammock, drinks limeade from a coconut shell, and wears an ecru linen suit with an open-necked blouse, Maximilian’s work never ceases. It is a wide rushing river that José Luis can only hope will not overspill its banks. In the past year, José Luis has come to appreciate the uncompromising necessity of working long hours (indeed, his eyesight, never strong, has deteriorated from so much reading in the dim of early mornings). Maximilian arises at four; his valet attends him, and though he might linger over breakfast, by no later than six, he is at “the bridge,” as he says, that is, at his desk—or, as here in Casa Borda, a folding table on the veranda. His Majesty’s dispatch box is heavy, and growing ever heavier . . .
