by James Blake
John Roger smiled and said that with one arm he could hardly do other than stay out of it. Then saw how near to enraged tears she was and gave his promise.
“Thank you,” she said. “Besides, this is our country now.”
He agreed it was. The notion that patriotic fidelity was irrevocably bound to birthplace had always seemed to him logically indefensible. You could not choose where you were born but you could choose where to make your home, and it was to homeland that you owed allegiance. She was right that Mexico had become their home. They had chosen it. They had borne a son who was native to it.
Charles Patterson made no secret of his Confederate sympathies but admitted his gladness at being too old for the ranks. He had fought for Texas in its war of independence and had been with Houston at San Jacinto, where they slaughtered the Mexican force and then committed a great many defilements of the dead and wounded, and he had seen enough of such mad carnage for one lifetime. He retained his post at the U.S. consulate, absent all hope it would ever fly the flag of the C.S.A. and not unaware of his underlings’ jocular references to him as Colonel Dixie. Young Bentley, too, was a Southerner, but had been orphaned in Charleston when he was nine and then lived in a detested foster home until he went away to college on a scholarship, and the idea of risking his life for a cause in which he had no personal stake struck him as absurd.
The war boosted prices for the Trade Wind’s coffee and tobacco, and in the first year of hostilities the company’s profits boomed. But when Union forces took New Orleans in the spring of ‘62 they robbed the Trade Wind of its store of commodities and razed its warehouses and offices together with all its records. The bad news came to John Roger and Amos in a letter from Richard Davison, who gave them the name of a Yankee entrepreneur in New Orleans eager to assume the contract for Buenaventura’s coffee. He himself did not know what he would do next but promised to write to them soon.
They heard nothing from or about him for the next eight months. Then Jimmy Bartlett sent a letter from Washington with the report that Richard Davison had tried to smuggle a shipment of arms past the Federal blockade off the Texas coast and was killed when a gunboat sank his vessel. His body had not been recovered and his kin might never have known what became of him except that his crew’s only survivor named him as the captain. Mrs Bartlett, Jimmy wrote, was inconsolable.
On receiving the news about Richard, Elizabeth Anne said only “God damn war,” then went up to her room and wept in private. She spoke barely a word during the next few days. She had never said so, but John Roger knew she favored her Uncle Redbeard over her own brother, her own father.
Even as the war in the United States intensified, Mexico got into another war of its own, though this time not with itself. The Reform War had ended in a Liberal victory but left the country bankrupt, forcing President Juárez to declare a two-year suspension of payments on the nation’s foreign debt. The moratorium angered European creditors. In a united effort to exact payment, France and Britain and Spain sent troops. John Roger and Elizabeth Anne heard all about it from Patterson and Bentley when they came to visit Buenaventura—about the warships in the Veracruz harbor, the foreign uniforms in the plazas. The Brits and Spanish were soon placated and withdrew, but the French remained, no longer making any secret of their colonial intentions. They were all the more emboldened by the United States’ incapacity to enforce its Monroe Doctrine against European incursion in the Western Hemisphere, distracted as the Americans were with a civil war that threatened their very nationhood. The Church, which had been pillaged by the Juárez liberals, was in vehement support of the French. So too were the majority of Creoles, who believed only a monarchy could both restore civic stability and preserve their economic advantage. Backed by these two powerful Mexican blocs, France sent more soldiers and the war was on. The Juárez republicans achieved some early victories, the most noteworthy in Puebla—where a firebrand young officer and devoted Juarista named José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz gained renown for his battlefield valor. But only a year later the French were ensconced in the capital and Juárez was in refuge in Texas and Díaz was a prisoner of war—though he would soon escape and resume the fight. The year after that, the provisional government of conservatives and French interventionists declared Mexico a Catholic empire and persuaded Erzherzog Maximilian of Austria to accept the Mexican crown.
John Roger and Elizabeth Anne were among the witnesses on the fine day in May when Maximilian arrived in Veracruz on the SMS Novarra. In the company of Patterson and Bentley, peering through field glasses from the roof of the U.S. consulate, they had a good look at the lean blond emperor with the lush muttonchop beard as he debarked. On his arm was the Empress Carlotta, a blackhaired beauty with doleful eyes. Maximilian would swiftly come to love Mexico. He would become fluent in Spanish, prefer Mexican food, wear Mexican clothes, esteem Mexican customs and take part in Mexican festivities. But irrespective of his great love for the country, he was no less an invader of it, and the war went on. Veracruz was again spared major damage and the port remained in operation. John Roger contracted with the American agent who had been recommended by Richard Davison and continued to ship coffee to New Orleans. At such far remove from the war, Buenaventura continued to flourish.
Came the news of Appomattox. Shortly after which the reunited States of America warned the French to get out of Mexico. By then the tide had anyway turned against the monarchists in their war with Juárez, and the French—who had been losing battles to the forces of Porfirio Díaz—were swift to disengage, leaving Maximilian on his own. The abandoned emperor fled to Querétaro with the remnant of his imperial army and withstood siege by the Juaristas for one hundred days before surrendering. On a bright June morning in 1867, and notwithstanding the pleas of a number of European heads of state for Benito Juárez to spare him, Maximilian was stood before a firing squad and shouted “Viva Mexico!” before the rifles discharged into his heart. The following day, Porfirio Díaz liberated Mexico City from the last holdouts of the imperial army.
Thus was the Mexican republic restored. And thus did Porfirio Díaz become a national hero. In the course of the war he had twice been badly wounded and twice been captured and twice escaped. He had subsequently led his army in a series of spectacular victories, most of them against superior numbers. When he was told that Juárez, his estimable mentor, was jealous of his growing fame, Díaz dismissed such talk as foolish rumor. But when he congratulated Juárez on his triumphant return to Mexico City to resume his presidency, the little Indian snubbed him. The insult pained Díaz as much as it angered him, and the two men were evermore estranged.
In the autumn of that year, Díaz unsuccessfully challenged Juárez for the presidency. He was publicly gracious about the defeat, but his pride seethed.
A few months earlier, Amos Bentley had begun courting a comely eighteen-year-old Creole named Teresa Serafina Nevada Marichál, whom he had met at the wedding of a mutual friend. She was the only child of Victor Mordecai Nevada Oquendo, who owned a number of silver mines in western Veracruz state as well as the most lucrative gold mine in eastern Mexico. In addition to his high-country hacienda called Las Nevadas, that overlooked the mines, Don Victor owned a house in Jalapa and another in the heart of Mexico City.
At first, the don gave little import to young Bentley’s formal visits to his daughter in Jalapa. Teresa had been receiving suitors since the age of fifteen—the visits always conducted in the parlor and of course always overseen by her trio of dueñas, the watchful old women Teresa referred to as the Three Black Crows. Thus far no aspirant beau had managed even slight purchase on the girl’s affections, and that had been fine with Don Victor. None of his sons had survived infancy and he was relying on his daughter to bear him a grandson to whom he would by one means or another bequeath legal title to the Nevada properties. But it was crucial that she choose her husband wisely, and he assumed that she shared his standards for a proper mate. As the beautiful and sole heir of an immensely rich
man, she was an outstanding prize, and it was Don Victor’s ambition to see her wed into a family no less wealthy than her own and with no heirs but her husband. The first criterion did much to narrow the field of possible candidates, and the second reduced it to a very rare few. Yet Don Victor was optimistic that the right suitor would soon enough present himself. That she entertained so many admirers who stood no chance of gaining her hand was not so much a puzzle to him as an irritation. She had always been a quirksome girl and he supposed it gratified her vanity to receive even the most hopeless of wooers. Whatever the case, she had been motherless since the age of seven and had grown up under his guidance and so could be as headstrong as himself. He knew better than to argue with her if he could help it.
But as the months passed and Amos Bentley’s visits persisted, it became clear to Don Victor that Teresa was taking uncommon pleasure in the young gringo’s company and he began to sense the seriousness of things. But he had kenned to it too late. Before he could decide what to do, Teresa announced at breakfast one day that Amos had asked her to marry him and she was giving the question serious thought. Don Victor masked his apprehension with a fatherly smile and said, Of course. You are too kind to break a heart in any way but with gentleness. To know that you have given serious thought to his proposal will soften his disappointment at least a little.
Actually, she said, I think I love him.
Don Victor’s shock was exceeded only by his barely suppressed alarm. He did business with Yankees, yes, but business was a thing apart from personal emotions. He had in truth felt a great bitterness toward Americans ever since their invasion of his country. The only imaginable thing worse than an impoverished son-in-law was an impoverished gringo son-in-law. Over the next days he tried with calm logic to dissuade Teresa from accepting Amos’s proposal. He said it would be the gravest of mistakes to marry any man beneath her social station, and worse still one from another culture. But the more he argued against the marriage the more he could see by the set of her face that he was losing ground.
Then one morning she was decided. She told Don Victor she was going to say yes to Amos. There followed a loud and heated argument in which Don Victor only just did manage to restrain himself from forbidding the marriage outright, fearing she would make good on her threat to elope—a threat that did not waver even in the face of his counterthreat to disinherit her if she should marry without his permission.
She confided the entire argument to Amos, who in turn confided it to John Roger, admitting to him that he had gone weak in the knees when Teresa told him of the don’s warning of disinheritance. “I’m sure you can understand my concern, John,” he said. “I mean, of course I love her very much and admire her passionate nature and willingness to place love above all and so on and so forth, but one should not permit one’s emotions to supersede practical consideration entirely, should one?” John Roger smiled and said, “Not entirely, I shouldn’t think.” He understood the practical consideration Amos had in mind was the young lady’s birthright, which through marriage would of course also become his.
Don Victor at last offered his daughter a compromise. He would consent to the marriage on condition that she agree to a courtship period of one year to be followed by a formal engagement of yet another year. If she still wanted to marry Mr Bentley after the year of betrothal, they would have his full blessing.
Teresa insisted to Amos that they should refuse her father’s conditions. We must not permit him to make the rules for any part of our lives, she argued. If we do, we are no different from his peons, we are only better dressed and better fed. Please, my love, we don’t need anything from him.
Amos gently but with equal insistence entreated her to agree to the don’s terms. Her father was only trying to assure his only child’s happiness, Amos told her in his most earnest manner. By agreeing to Don Victor’s conditions, they would prove to him what she already knew—that he, Amos Bentley, loved her so much that he was willing to meet any stipulation to satisfy her father of the sincerity of his affection. Believe me, my love, said Amos, who had told her of his orphan childhood, I have long known the pain and loneliness of being without a family. You do not want to be estranged from the only family left to you. How much better if we can live in harmony with your father and preserve the family. Don’t you see? Don’t you agree? Isn’t that more reasonable?
She finally gave in. But not without a woeful suspicion that, in some vital aspect, Amos might not be so different from her father. A suspicion that, like her father—perhaps like all men—Amos was not averse to using any tactic necessary, with anyone, in order to have his own way.
In addition to the certainty that young Bentley would persuade Teresa to accept his conditions for their marriage, Don Victor fully expected that, at some point before the elapse of the two years, his daughter’s infatuation—he was certain it was no more than that—would come to an end and she would send the gringo packing. Not only did that not happen, but as the don became better acquainted with Amos he found the young man to be quite pleasant and, even more important, possessed of a shrewd talent for business in general and bookkeeping in particular. In fact, Don Victor was so impressed with the young American’s talents that, by the day of the wedding, Amos had already been the head bookkeeper of the Nevada Mining Company for almost a year.
The nuptials took place in the ballroom of the Hacienda de las Nevadas. The spring day was bright as a jewel, the air cool and sharp and seasoned with pine. John Roger and Elizabeth Anne were among the guests, as was Charles Patterson. Many of the attendees were from Mexico City, and nearly as many of them British or American as Mexican. Don Victor was effusive in his welcome of the Wolfes and said he had been looking forward to meeting them. After the ceremony, the party sat to a banquet in the central courtyard, followed by dancing to the music of a full orchestra. Spiders of special breed imported from Guatemala had spun canopies of connecting webs from tree to tree in the courtyard and the webs had been sown with gold dust, suffusing the courtyard with a lovely amber haze. At one point John Roger saw a young mestizo waiter gazing in open wonder at the enwebbed gold whose worth he could not have begun to estimate—then receiving a rap to the ear from his overseer who barked for him to get to work if he knew what was good for him.
When Don Victor joined the Wolfes and other guests for a glass of wine at the newlyweds’ table, the topic under discussion was national politics. There was a chorus of loud approbation in response to someone’s expressed hope that Porfirio Díaz would become the next president, and glasses were raised in tribute to the general. Don Victor took the opportunity to inform the Wolfes that he had been friends with Don Porfirio since the time of the Yankee invasion, when they were both fifteen. They had served together in a Oaxaca guard battalion composed of schoolboys like themselves, but much to their great disappointment they had not been sent into combat. At the end of the war Victor returned to his engineering education, but Porfirio, who had been studying for the priesthood prior to joining the ranks, had found his true calling as a soldier. Do you know, Don Victor said, that Porfirio’s birthday is on the eve of Mexico’s day of independence? It’s the truth—and what could be more fitting? It was Don Victor’s iron opinion that only General Díaz could end the antagonisms between Mexico’s many political factions and unify the nation in a common cause. He is destined to be the president, Don Victor said. Take it for a fact.
John Roger had heard the same thing from almost every hacendado of his acquaintance. He thought it curious that so many Creoles held in such esteem a man whose own blood was mostly indigenous. It was no secret that Díaz’s mother was a Mixtec Indian and his father a mestizo. Despite a warning look from Amos, John Roger said that Don Victor might be right that General Díaz would one day be president, but Benito Juárez was very popular with the masses and it should be as difficult for Díaz to beat him in the next election as in the last one.
Juárez! The don spoke the name as if it were a vile taste in his mouth. That
heathen half-pint and his filthy Indian rabble are the ruin of the nation. It is long past time for the makers of Mexico to rescue the country from them. General Díaz is our greatest hope, and I assure you, sir, that one way or another he will become the president!
Before the don’s fervor grew any hotter, Amos Bentley stepped up on a chair and called for everyone’s attention and proposed a toast to his dear friend, John Wolfe. I owe my happiness to him, Amos told the assemblage. It was Don Juan who secured my employment with the Trade Wind Company, and it was through the Trade Wind that I was able to make the acquaintance of so many fine people, a series of acquaintances that led me to my darling Teresa Serafina. So here’s to you, Don Juan, for your hand in the making of my great happiness. “Salud!”
The toast was cheered and—for the moment—the subject of Díaz set aside.
It was the finest spring they’d known in Mexico. The hacienda abloom with color, the air rich with the aromas of flowers and rain-ripened earth. As they took their post-dinner stroll in the garden one evening, admiring the beauty of the quarter moon, the brightest comet either of them had ever seen flashed across the sky. Elizabeth Anne shut her eyes and he knew she was making a wish, as she always did on spying a shooting star. Then she looked at him and said, “You too, quick!” He smiled and said there was nothing to wish for, that a man could not ask for better fortune than his.
