The Battle of Tomochic

by Heriberto Frías

  An extraordinary sweetness coursed through his being. Her frank glances captivated him. They were full of enchanting magic, somehow free of the sad mystery deep in her black eyes.

  “How is it possible that you love him? Listen to me, Julia!”

  “Quiet! Look out!” The poor girl could not go on. With a motion of her head she indicated old Mariana who, with her back turned, was pouring the ground chile into a crock.

  The second lieutenant understood and fell silent. Then he said aloud that he would like to make Don Bernardo a gift of some canned sardines and good liquor.

  “Doña Mariana, while I’m making the soup, would you go for them? And get more masa for the tortillas; this won’t be enough,” said Julia.

  The taciturn Mariana lifted her head and focused her clouded eyes on the two young people. Then, wordlessly, she took a shawl from the green trunk and accepted the bill that Mercado held out to her with a look of horror and revulsion. The old woman set off like a sleepwalker, soundlessly, and without the slightest indication of having any will of her own.

  Once they were alone, Miguel approached Julia, who, bowing her head, left off cutting a piece of cheese. “Look here, Julia, God is good and doesn’t wish such things, won’t tolerate them. You, so lovely, so young … with him … This is evil! It isn’t good … No!”

  Then, silence. He could not continue, and the poor girl, sensing everything with her budding feminine instinct, was equally unable to reply. After a few moments she managed to stammer, “I know that. But what can I do? Who would believe me? He would kill me if …” And she began to sob.

  “Don’t cry, you can’t cry.” The officer’s voice grew warm, confident, and consoling.

  “Don’t cry, now … Do you want to be my wife? We’ll go away from here, very far away, to Chihuahua, to the capital. You will be my wife. No, it makes no difference that you have lived with him. I know you don’t care for him; I know that he is killing you, my sweet! Look here, I love you because you have suffered, because you know what it is to suffer, because you are intelligent, gentle and good … so good with your sad, dark, beautiful eyes!”

  Enchanted yet fearful, the trembling Julia had stopped sobbing. She let herself be lulled by the music of Miguel’s words, sinking into the warm current of his vehement, youthful tenderness. Her pain dissolved in a languid voluptuousness in which all thought, all action disappeared. Vibrating with an unknown ecstasy, she let herself be lulled, she let herself be swayed.

  Haughtily shaking out their feathers, the cocks crowed one after the other. Flies buzzed in lazy circles above the dog sleeping in the sun. From far away the call of a bugle sounded in the warm air. Then a great silence, an infinite peace.

  “Shall we, Julia? Tell me! Can you love me? Do you want to live with me? Do you want to go away together, just the two of us? Do you want that?”

  Faintly, wistfully, she replied, “Just the two of us? Together? Why are you saying this? Why? It is evil of you. Oh, you are mean, sir.” Once again she sobbed convulsively, holding nothing back, and then stared at him with wide, swollen eyes.

  “Don’t cry, for the love of God, please … I’m saying it because I love you, because you’re going to be the woman I adore, don’t you know that?”

  “No, no! How can you say that? Don’t you know? Haven’t I told you I’m from Tomochic?”

  A flash of haughty rage illuminated her moist eyes as she spoke the heroic name, but Miguel’s pained expression, both submissive and fond, won her over again. Indeed, she grew calm and sweet again as a smile broke through her proud tears. “You don’t know how much I want to leave here … but not like this! Do you understand?” And the divine smile that dawned on her fine, dark face made her lips even more alluring and the fire in her feverish eyes more splendid.

  “If only I could go to Chihuahua or write to my godfather. It might be that I’ve already forgotten how to write … But no … no, leave me alone, go away! You see? You’re the same as he is … No!”

  Miguel tenderly put his arms around her waist and tried to kiss her forehead.

  Taken aback by the officer’s audacity, the trembling girl turned bright red with embarrassment; she lifted her arms into the void and withdrew to the back wall. Miguel followed and then brought his face close to hers and planted an innocent kiss on her cheek. It was a kiss devoid of passion, as if meant for a sister.

  Julia sighed, covering her face with her kerchief, while a cowed Miguel contemplated her in melancholy silence.

  “How I love you, Julia!” he said, calmer now. Then he brought his lips, still aflame from the kiss he had given her, close to her blushing face.

  The youthful kiss, miraculously dissolving the anguish in the heart of the melancholy girl from the mountains, kindled a soft, voluptuous flame that burned for the first time in her eyes, her breasts, her belly.

  Suddenly the yellow dog awoke, lifted its head and legs, and began to sniff the air and wag its tail.

  “Here he comes. For the love of God, sit down!”

  The impassioned young man nearly abandoned himself to his fury, but—as was not always the case—reason got the better of blind impulse. He controlled himself, sat down, and pretended to examine one of the cocks.

  Don Bernardo, already drunk, stopped in the doorway to kick the dog as it came up to lick his hand. He squinted good-naturedly at the officer out of the corner of his eye, then slowly held out the bottle to him.

  “Ah! Chief, you’re a good man! Look at the fine tequila I’ve brought you. Hey, there—Julia! A glass. Right now, damn you to hell!”

  Humbly, still dazed, she approached Miguel and held out the glass of tequila to him with a trembling hand. Miguel took it, squeezing the girl’s hand. When she raised her head, her eyes gleamed with gratitude and love. Don Bernardo, stooped over against the wall, coughed long and hard, panting and spitting. A repugnant sight!

  CHAPTER 12

  Toasts on the Eve of Battle

  That evening, sounds of a strange and joyous revelry pulsed through the camp on the Alameda. Previously a sad, deserted space, it had been transformed with new life and the vendors were having a field day. Lieutenant Torrea, the officer of guard, could hardly keep up. He was overseeing the registration of the soldaderas, and he couldn’t keep order in the camp at the same time. Bustling around the cooking fires were more than sixty voluble women whose presence enlivened the rectangular space the troops inhabited, its periphery marked by pyramid-shaped stacks of rifles.

  While the off-duty soldiers stretched out on their serapes1 to rest from the exhausting march, the women collected kindling, stole chickens, and bought bread, cheese, and meat. Throughout the day thick plumes of smoke roiled upward, enveloping everything in a bluish haze, including the bayonets gleaming in their stockpiles. Groups of men and women stepped around pieces of baggage; hungry men circled the piles of kindling, blowing on them with bulging cheeks until the flames began to glow. Meanwhile, the officers strode back and forth, yelling out orders.

  Some of the soldiers sang sad songs of the wilderness that lamented the plight of a savage brigand or the death of an unlucky bullfighter, their monotonous, plaintive voices sounding like brutish moaning.

  Rosa, Rosita

  Red, red rose

  Lino Samara has died …

  The doomed resignation of a vanquished people seemed to throb in those songs.

  The ragged, filthy chimoleras2—women vending cheap plates of food at two or three centavos—tended their enormous casseroles and black pots. With unkempt hair and bare arms, they pushed and shoved, yelling and gesticulating, and unleashed a barrage of obscenities as they argued with the soldaderas.

  That night there was more reason for excitement than usual. The troops were relatively rested and had eaten well, since the women had rounded up some cheap meat and lard. Indeed, they could ask for no more.

  In preparation for their departure the next day, men and women alike reinforced their huaraches with new soles. Renewed, they
felt ready to march across the world, if so ordered. Although the poor devils were being led into the depths of the Sierras to die like sheep or to kill like beasts of prey, they were utterly calm; some even lounged like lords alongside their women.

  A few steps away from the campsite was a house hidden in the darkness. Inside, two men paced back and forth in a room where a pool of reddish light was created by the open door. The men spoke urgently and then fell silent.

  The men, Lieutenant Colonel Florencio Villedas and Captain Eduardo Molina, were reviewing their commander in chief’s general plan and shaping their own in accordance with it.

  While the two troop commanders continued their measured conversation, the camp grew livelier. In a spacious tavern behind the arches that circled the town plaza, the jovial officers grew animated and expansive as they drank and joked about their future, singing loudly of victory.

  Just as on the preceding day, rounds of tequila were handed out in rapid-fire succession, accompanied by applause and toasts. A livid-faced Castorena, completely in his element, his tangled hair sticking up in disorderly tufts, sent couplets and quatrains flying left and right. “A verse from Castorena! Castorena, give us a toast!”

  “Silence! The poet’s going to speak … Pass him another round and let him toast,” someone boomed.

  “Now, Brains of Bronze! Who’d like some brains spiced with Castorena and washed down with tequila?”

  “Bring him a keg so he can toast our health!”

  “Let’s have it, you feather brain!”

  “Quiet! Let him speak.”

  The walls of the tavern vibrated with drunken hilarity.

  Then, with a trembling hand, a beaming Castorena tried to lift his glass without spilling. Over the growing tumult of voices, he recited:

  I humbly beg your leave to speak

  Although the night is growing late:

  I toast to each and all who seek

  Tomorrow to annihilate

  The outlaw town of Tomochic!

  “Bravo, bravo! Here’s to the poet!” While thunderous applause rang out, outside a few impassive natives wrapped in thick red blankets gathered at the threshold of the door and observed the wild melee inside the smoke-filled tavern.

  The enthusiasm verged on delirium; it was madness.

  A captain forecast a brilliant future for the man who could compose such verses, and the bard began to prepare a new toast while the others continued talking in small groups. Then an uncouth man with long hair and a beard bellowed drunkenly. The officers’ wild revelry was infectious, and Second Lieutenant Mercado began to drink too. Swept along in the drunken tide, his mind cloudy, Miguel vainly protested that this was the grossest stupidity, that poetry should be banished from a world where the most corrupt reality reigned. Thus he grimly soliloquized to himself amid the tumultuous din.

  Once again alcohol had won, and he experienced an odd exultation, followed by a rush of bitter memories. In this melancholy moment, surrounded by the wild uproar, he tried to be philosophical. “Well, after all, what’s so bad about a little drinking? Blots out the pain, doesn’t it, Martínez? And I haven’t drunk my share yet. Let me offer a toast, as well … A drink! Bring me a drink!” said Miguel.

  “Friar Mercado wants a drink—a shot for the philosopher!” Castorena yelled out.

  “The next round’s on me,” said Lieutenant Ramírez. “Let Mercado be the next to toast.”

  When the waiter set the drinks on the counter “in marching order,” as Castorena put it, Ramírez, who had paid, served each man his glass. All the others, with their instinct for tactical formations, formed a circle around Miguel. The second lieutenant waited for silence before he began: “I’m not here to improvise quatrains like Castorena. I have no patience for verses, or for poetry either for that matter, because it’s nothing but a lie, and all that is false is contemptible. Only truth has beauty, even when it kills.

  “I am here, just as my comrades and superiors are, to live up to the worthiness of our mission. We are the sacrificial lambs needed to expunge society’s errors. Our lives are offered up to destiny or chance in our mission as soldiers … Let us fulfill our duty, even if it costs our lives. I offer a toast … I want to offer a toast—to duty, and to the soldiers of Mexico!”

  No one, not even Miguel, fully grasped this utterance, but it was applauded by all as elegantly expressed.

  The glee continued unabated. As the officers gesticulated heatedly in the smoky atmosphere reeking of drink, the three lamps hanging from the ceiling bathed the sea of dingy twill uniforms in a sickly yellow light.

  Castorena, who did guard duty from nine to eleven o’clock that night, yelled at Miguel as he made his exit: “Don’t forget guard duty, Mercado. From eleven to one, it’s your turn!”

  CHAPTER 13

  The Satyr’s Trap

  Bernardo was stretched out on a bench in a corner of the tavern, snoring with his mouth wide open, his head propped against the wall, and the short upturned brim of his old straw hat covering one side of his face. His dirty, tangled mane and grizzled beard made him look like a wild beast.

  As Miguel downed another drink in a rage worthy of a madman, his gaze came to rest on the ogre who lived in the hut by the river. An idea flitted through his agitated brain that made him sit up and think.

  Suddenly he bolted out of the tavern to cross the dark, lonely plaza. Taking infinite detours, tripping and falling down deserted side streets, at last he reached the river and was standing outside the low door to Julia’s hut. He knocked and the dog began to bark, then was quickly silenced. The door opened soundlessly.

  It was not yet ten o’clock, yet in the distant darkness the river’s faint lapping could be heard, and the stars sparkled with uncommon clarity. At the river’s edge, the north wind violently bent the dry shrubs.

  The intense cold helped Miguel sober up, and when the door opened, he sprang inside. The lamp burning in a corner of the room went out, but not before he glimpsed an enchanting vision. Julia, shivering, having just risen from bed, stood barefoot in her nightdress that revealed her bare arms and breasts.

  Then the maddening darkness snatched her away as she tried to retreat into the hut, alarmed at the vision of a man other than her master. “Julia, it’s me. Where are you? Don’t be afraid. It’s me, Miguel. Come here! Come on, come on.”

  When she realized who it was, she stammered, “You, sir? How … Hush! But … for God’s sake, where is Don Bernardo? Tell me. He’ll be coming along … What do you want with me? What? Ah, no! No, I tell you, no …”

  Miguel heard nothing, heeded nothing. In a fit of frustrated desire, he stumbled and groped for her in the darkness and then became increasingly agitated when he couldn’t find her. In vain she tried to ask where Bernardo was. Under her breath she said, “I tell you, no, sir. You are so bad, so mean! Look, you’ll wake up Doña Mariana!

  The second lieutenant sensed her nearness from her heat, her smell, her frightened, pleading breathlessness as she evaded him in the dark. In the unfamiliar darkness, he couldn’t see her though he sensed her proximity, but she was wary and agile, and eluded him again and again! Finally he resorted to tenderness—the lasso he would use to rope her in.

  “Come here, my lovely one, I just came to tell you I love you, to tell you I love you and to give you a kiss, just one kiss … That’s right, silly thing, one little kiss, just like this morning. One kiss. Give me one and I’ll go. Come on, come closer, a hug and a kiss—please? Don’t be mean. See, you’re the mean one … Making me suffer, I who adore you, the only one who loves you so much I want to make you my wife in the church. Come now …”

  “Quiet, I beg you, for the love of the Holy Virgin! Don’t you see you’ll wake up Doña Mariana, that Don Bernardo will come back? Go away. Don’t say these things to me! Please don’t. Go!”

  “I love you, my word of honor. I swear by the almighty power of God. You are my wife now … God wills it!”

  Hearing him invoke the divinity,
Julia was shaken to the core. Then she sighed, dropped her arms, and did not resist. She let herself be taken.

  Yes, she let herself be taken. The drunken second lieutenant crushed her and pressed her to him, fondling her, his eager hands and triumphant lips making their way down her fine throat to the small, erect nipples, then to her naked thighs. These sudden caresses unnerved the girl, yet an unknown delight surged through her at the same time.

  Submissive, resigned, she let herself be taken. Resigned yet joyful, she abandoned herself. In the dark, on the brute’s bed, she swooned in an ecstasy of sighs and kisses, in delicious agony.

  CHAPTER 14

  Forward … March

  At half past noon on October 17 the buglers of the 9th Battalion sounded the “first marching order.” The second lieutenant had eaten little and with a poor appetite. After mechanically arranging the administrative papers containing detailed company information, he left the others on the pretext he had received orders from general headquarters. Then he ran to Julia’s house.

  He found it closed up. Could they have left? He reflected for a moment, recalling the previous night’s rites, remembering the madness that had driven him fearlessly to the ogre’s den to steal his prey from him, had driven him to force himself on the vulnerable Julia. He called up the scene vividly in extraordinary detail, reliving in the plain light of day all that had happened in the dark.

  He knocked on the door. When it opened, he saw, in a blinding flash, the nubile young woman from Tomochic, half clothed and shivering. Assault and eclipse. He flung himself forward in pursuit of the female body whose smell and warmth were just beyond his reach.

  Then he relived the dialogue between them in the shadows as he ruthlessly pursued her, hunting her down with the fury and wanton desire of a drunken satyr.