Before he left the city to rejoin Madero’s campaign, Luis had given Sarmiento a copy of Edward Carpenter’s book The Intermediate Sex, which purported to be an explanation of homosexuals.
“You’re a rationalist,” Luis had challenged him. “You pride yourself on your scientific objectivity, but you think of men of my type with the same ignorant contempt as the most benighted parish priest. Acquaint yourself with the facts, Primo, before you draw your conclusions.”
“A scientific fact is a conclusion based on measurable observations that can be reproduced by experimentation,” Sarmiento replied pedantically. “Will I find those kinds of facts here?”
Luis smiled. “All I ask is that you keep an open mind. Isn’t that also the way of science?”
One evening, Sarmiento opened the book and began to read. As he suspected, what Carpenter offered were not facts but a hypothesis: there existed a class of men who, although biologically male, were by temperament female—emotional, sympathetic, and kind—and, as such, were inclined to form romantic attachments with other men rather than with women. These homosexuals, Carpenter argued, were not pathological but anomalies, not mentally ill but simply a variation from the norm. As proof, Carpenter cited the historical persistence of such types, particularly among the ancient Greeks, who recognized and honored love attachments between men. He also claimed that certain famous individuals, including Michelangelo and Shakespeare, were homosexuals. These celebrated artistic personalities, Carpenter contended, typified the homosexual temperament in its highest form: passionate, sensitive, and creative. The only science he cited was a handful of studies of sex by the Germans Karl Ulrichs and Richard von Krafft-Ebing and the Englishman Havelock Ellis that, to varying degrees, supported his hypothesis.
“What are you reading so intently?” Alicia asked, coming into the sala with her embroidery.
Sarmiento’s first impulse was to hide the book, but he had always freely discussed his reading with her, whether it was a scientific monograph on public health issues or the poetry of the Nezahualcoyotl, the Texcoco philosopher-king. These conversations were invariably stimulating to him, her innate intelligence shedding a new or different light on the text.
“An Englishman’s book that Luis gave me to explain … men of his kind. What the author calls ‘homosexuals,’” he said, pronouncing the term in English. “A made-up word that means men who are attracted to one another.”
“Men who love other men?” she queried, slipping a thimble on her finger, taking her needles and hoops from her basket. She was embroidering a bedspread with roses and lilies as a wedding gift for an Indian couple who were to be married at San Francisco Tlalco. Her fingers were a marvel of agility.
“You could call it that, I suppose, although I’m not certain that ‘love’ describes their physical activities.”
“Of course that is a sin,” she said, “but if they are led to it by real, if misguided, affection, like Luis and his friend Ángel, God will not judge them too harshly, nor should we.”
“Carpenter makes the same plea for tolerance,” he said, “although he wouldn’t call what these men do a sin.” He closed the book. “He would say, as Luis does, that what they do is natural to them.”
She shook her head. “What is natural to them is the same as is natural to all men,” she said. “To marry and to make children.”
“But what of those marriages where children are not possible because of the sterility of the man or woman?” he wondered. “Is it unnatural for those spouses to have sexual relations for pleasure?”
She paused in her stitching. “If pleasure is the only reason for such relations, then they are merely expressions of lust. But for husband and wife, even those who cannot have children, those relations serve another purpose.”
“Which is?” he pressed her.
She quietly worked on the bedspread for a moment before answering. “To deepen the bond of marital love.”
“If that’s true, why wouldn’t it also be true of two men who have sexual relations out of real affection?”
“Because, my dear, two male bodies are not made for the natural expression of physical love.”
He shook his head. “Carpenter would say men’s bodies are quite capable of giving and receiving what you call physical love.”
She looked at him. “Do you think that because something is possible it’s also natural?”
“The very thought of two men attempting coitus repels me,” he replied. “So I suppose the answer is no. There are many things one can do with one’s body that could scarcely be considered natural. Still, if subscribing to Carpenter’s theory helps Luis accept his … condition and preserve his self-respect, then I suppose it serves a useful purpose.”
“Luis’s condition is but a small part of who he is,” she said. “And he is otherwise quite admirable.” She smiled. “So, yes, I suppose we must accept his eccentricity.”
“Even though he will go to hell for it?” Sarmiento joked.
“Don’t be absurd, Miguel. He will have to repent in purgatory, of course.” She added seriously, “But I’m certain that God will be merciful to him.”
“Will I also have to repent my atheism in purgatory before I can join you in paradise?” he asked, smiling gently.
“Oh, Miguel,” she said in exasperation, “do you think God cares that you say you don’t believe in him? He created you, doubts and all.”
At the end of May, a note arrived from Luis inviting Sarmiento to hear Madero speak in the city on San Juan’s Day, June 24. “Madero,” Luis wrote, “is anxious to meet the son of Rodrigo Sarmiento.” The postscript startled him—how would Madero know his father?—but touched him, too, and swept away his misgivings about attending so public a protest against Don Porfirio’s reign. Liceaga frequently reminded Sarmiento, sometimes jovially, sometimes with exasperation, that he was politically naive but even Sarmiento knew Madero was playing cat and mouse with the regime. Ostensibly, Madero’s campaign to limit presidential terms was directed not at Díaz and the 1910 election but at whomever might succeed Díaz in 1914. His stated intention was not to challenge Díaz in 1910 but to persuade Díaz to appoint him as vice president and his likely successor in 1914.
Nonetheless, implicit in Madero’s campaign was a devastating attack on the old man. His campaign slogan—“no reelection and effective suffrage”—was a denunciation of four decades of Díaz’s system of fixed elections at every level of government from president of the Republic to the mayor of the lowliest villages. His book, The Presidential Succession of 1910, had ventured to criticize the effects of one-man rule, however tepidly, questioning the regime’s brutal war against the Yaquis, its repression of labor unions, and its excessive concessions to foreign investors. The very mention of these topics had, for decades, sent newspaper editors to Belem jail and shut down their presses. That Madero had written about them extensively in a best-selling book was incendiary. Finally, in what was the most personal affront, were the intimations of Díaz’s mortality, the assumption that by 1914 he would either be dead or too enfeebled to seek a ninth term.
Over drinks at the Jockey Club, Sarmiento asked his brother-in-law Damian, who was close to Díaz’s inner circle, why the old man had not banned Madero’s book and thrown him into jail.
His handsome brother-in-law smiled his feline smile, sipped his scotch, and said, “Tell me what happens in September 1910, Miguel.”
“The Centenario,” Sarmiento replied.
“And what does that mean?”
“The usual official bombast, I imagine.”
Damian stopped a passing waiter. “Another.” To Sarmiento, he said, “Yes, that, of course, but also, Miguel, the eyes of the world will be on México, and what do you think Don Porfirio wants the world to see?” He dropped his voice. “A dictatorship? No. México is, in theory, a democracy and that’s what the old man intends to show the world. Free press, free speech, open elections. This is the only reason he hasn’t crushed Madero,” he continued, taking the heavy crystal glass the waiter offered him. “I would not want to be Don Panchito Madero on October 1, 1910, however.” He frowned. “You’re not thinking of getting mixed up in all that anti-reelection stuff, are you?”
“No, of course not.”
Damian lifted a doubting eyebrow. “Some friendly advice, Hermano. When the Madero ship goes down, there won’t be any lifeboats. Entiendes?”
Sarmiento smiled. “You know I’m not interested in politics.”
“Good, because this is no time to become interested.”
The summer rains began with a downpour that turned the dirt streets surrounding the railway station into sinkholes. The horses strained to pull Alicia’s carriage through the mud. More than once, the man in the carriage with her—Padre Cáceres dressed as her servant—had had to get out and push the vehicle forward. Eventually, they reached their destination, a livestock pen at the edge of the station, guarded by soldiers. Inside the pen, a group of dispirited men sat in the mud as the rain came down. Alicia waited in the carriage while Cáceres looked for the captain of the guard. Her face was heavily veiled, but she had dressed richly and adorned herself with jewels. She knew that the success of her plan depended entirely on her ability to awe and intimidate. She steeled herself, assuming for her purposes her mother’s imperious character.
Thick knuckles tapped the window. The captain’s round, porcine face stared suspiciously at her. She lowered the glass.
“Señora,” the captain said. “Your servant said you wished to see me.”
“Come inside,” she commanded, “but try not to ruin the upholstery with your wet clothes.”
He flinched at her tone and entered the plush carriage almost apologetically. She caught the sour whiff of pulque on his breath. She let him sit for a moment and absorb the luxuriousness of the carriage, the sparkle of her gems, and the richness of her gown.
“Señora, how may I help you?”
“I wish to buy some of your Yaquis,” she replied, as if negotiating for bolts of cloth. “I will pay gold coin—none of this worthless paper—and I will pay well, assuming you haven’t starved or beaten the goods half to death.”
The captain said, “Señora, that is not possible.” His tone, she noted with relief, was deferential, that of a servant unable to comply with his mistress’s request for an out-of-season fruit.
She made a dismissive noise. “Not possible? These men are destined to be sold to the henequen hacendados in the Yucatán. My family needs workers to harvest our maguey crop. Why should we not also benefit from the Yaquis’ labor? I am told one Yaqui works harder than ten Mexicans.”
“But, Señora, these men must all be accounted for when I reach Mérida.” Now his voice was nearly a whine.
“Oh, come now, Captain,” she sneered. “You have never had any escapes? Some of them don’t die en route? We both know there are a hundred ways to put your thumb on the scales.” She opened the purse she had brought with her, withdrew a dozen gold pesos, and tossed them into his lap. “This is a gratuity.”
He picked up a coin. “Solid gold,” he remarked.
“What did you expect? Tin?” She sighed loudly. “Make up your mind, Captain. I can’t sit here in the rain all day.”
He gathered up the coins and clanked them together in the palm of his hand. After a moment, he said, “I can give you ten without raising suspicion.”
“Well, that’s a start,” she said. “But our fields are vast and we need a regular supply. Will there be other shipments?”
“Once a month,” he said. “I will let you know.”
“No, not me, Captain. My majordomo,” she said. “Work out the details with him. Pedro!”
Cáceres came to the window. “Yes, Doña.”
“Captain—what is your name?”
“Henriquez, Señora.”
“Yes, Captain Henriquez has agreed to provide us with some livestock. Go with him and pick them and arrange for payment and transport. And remember, Pedro, strong backs!”
“Yes, Doña,” he said.
“Thank you, Captain,” she said, dismissing him. After he left, she fell back against the cushion and exhaled, her heart beating so hard she wondered how the soldier could not have heard it.
Rain dripped from the ceiling in José’s bedroom into an eighteenth-century delft chamber pot depicting a trio of wispily bearded Chinese sages ascending a mountain path. He stood in front of his mirror, fingers glistening with pomade, which he worked into his tumble of hair until it lay flat on his head, and then, like David, he parted it in the middle. He imitated the older boy’s habitual half-smile and ran downstairs to the sala to practice “Claire de Lune” before David arrived. El Morito was asleep on the sofa. As José began to play, the cat lifted its small black head and listened with sharply pointed ears. A moment later, José felt the cat rubbing itself against his ankles.
“Stop it, Morito,” he said, but it was he who stopped to stroke his cat’s soft fur. The cat jumped into his lap and purred.
“So you like Debussy,” he said. “Can you see the moonlight on the roofs of the city? I can, but don’t tell David. He says only girls make pictures in their head when they listen to music. He says music is mathematics.”
“Are you talking to the cat?” David asked, behind him.
José turned so abruptly that El Morito, startled, hopped off his lap and ran beneath a cabinet. The older boy was drenched, rain having plastered his hair to his head and soaked his coat and trousers. He removed his mud-splattered coat and boots, hanging the coat over the back of a chair and setting his boots against the wall. José noticed the hole in his stocking where his big toe poked through. His shirtfront was wet, the white linen transparent against his chest, revealing two dark nipples and a triangle of wiry black hair. When he sat down on the bench beside José, he smelled of rain and sweat and tobacco, and heat seemed to rise from his flesh like steam. José scooted closer to him.
“You’re dripping,” he said.
“Brilliant observation, peanut,” David replied. “I got caught in the rain on my bicycle and was nearly killed by a streetcar that sprayed me with mud. Come on, let’s start, I want to get home to take a bath. Play for me.”
José began the piece. David listened for a moment, stopped him, and had him replay a phrase.
“No, José,” he said impatiently. “Like this.”
Even though his fingers touched the same keys as José had touched, the music had a seamless quality that eluded José.
“I can’t make it sound like that,” José complained.
David got up, stood behind José, and then, leaning down, placed his fingers over José’s, almost covering them. José could feel the subtle gradations in pressure as David pressed down on his fingers, manipulating them as if they were a part of the instrument. His breath grazed José’s neck. For a second José imagined that David was going to kiss him, and he had to press his legs together to keep from squirming with pleasure.
“What is this?” At the sound of La Niña’s voice, David snapped upright. “You use my chair as a clothesline and remove your boots as if you were in your own home?”
“Señora Marquesa,” David stammered. “I am so sorry.”
“You are covered with mud, boy! No gentleman would enter a house in such a state,” she said, planting herself on a settee. “Please get dressed.”
David pulled on his filthy jacket and boots. He bowed. “I apologize again, Señora.”
“I should send you home,” she said.
“No, Abuelita,” José exclaimed. “It’s not David’s fault he got mud on him. We just started my lesson.”
“Very well,” she said. “Finish the boy’s lesson, but mind my furniture.”
David resumed his seat on the bench, but José could detect his anxiety. His grandmother’s occasional appearances during their lessons had had that effect on David since the first time he met her. She had interrogated him about his family and his background so relentlessly that he was soaked in sweat when she finished.
“And your father, tell me again, what does he do?”
“He is a postal clerk, Señora Marquesa.”
“A postal clerk.” She repeated each word slowly and distinctly as if they described a species with which she was unfamiliar. “Where is your family’s house?”
“In Colonia San Rafael,” he replied nervously. “Not a house, but an apartment, in a building with other apartments. Nothing as grand as this.”
She made a dismissive sound. “You study at the conservatory?”
“Yes, Señora Marquesa. I hope to become a concert pianist.” He smiled at her and said with enthusiasm, “José is very talented. He could also become a professional musician.”
“To play in front of strangers, for money? My grandson is being raised to be a gentleman, not an organ grinder’s monkey.”
“Yes, Señora Marquesa,” David replied, completely deflated.
José had listened to the exchange and understood that David was being, in some manner, reproached by his grandmother, but he did not know how David had given offense and so could offer no excuses for him. All he knew was that David behaved with uncharacteristic formality when she was in the room. Now he asked José to continue playing “Claire de Lune,” but instead of his usual caustic corrections, he said little, except to praise him loudly enough for La Niña to hear.
Your grandmother doesn’t like me,” David told him. They were sitting on a bench in the Alameda a few days later, on a Sunday afternoon. David’s bicycle was propped up beside them. The rain had broken and the summer sky was crystalline. The volcanoes rose in the distance, still snowcapped in June. The tree-lined walkways of the gracious old park were filled with well-dressed strollers: men in summer suits and women corseted into the fashionable hourglass shape, carrying fringed parasols. Indian vendors patrolled the park selling ice cream out of pushcarts. José was finishing a cup of chocolate ice cream, while David had eaten strawberry.
“What do you mean?” José asked.
“She doesn’t think I’m good enough to be your friend,” he said. “Not the son of a postal clerk.”
“But you are my friend,” José insisted. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course I am, peanut,” he said, patting José’s head. “Hey, look at those girls coming this way. Qúe lindas, no?” He threw his arm around José’s shoulder. “Smile at them when they pass, okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
The two girls, one dark, the other blonde, were David’s age. They wore candy-colored lacy confections, the dark girl in pink, and the blonde girl in mint. The prettier of the two, the dark-haired, olive-skinned one, stopped when José smiled, exclaiming, “Oh, what a beautiful little boy!” To David, she said, “Is he your brother?”
Before José could respond, David said, “Yes, miss. This is my hermanito José.”
“He’s a perfect doll,” the blonde girl said.
“My name is David,” he said. “I have been teaching my brother how to ride a bicycle. Would you like to see him?”
“Well,” the dark girl said, “I don’t know. We aren’t supposed to talk to boys. But all right, just for a minute. Josélito, show me how you ride a bicycle.”
José, eager to show off his skill, mounted the bicycle. David pushed him down the path and whispered, “I want you to ride around the fountain and the bandstand very slowly.” He let go. After a few panicked, wobbly seconds, José steadied himself and found his stride. He pedaled down the broad path, steering out of the way of baby prams and other cyclists. He reached the fountain where water roared from the mouths of stone lions, circled it, and rode back toward David, who, as José passed, was deep in conversation with the two girls and did not see him wave. He turned around again at the bandstand, where a police band was warming up, and when he came around the second time, David was waiting for him, alone. He caught the bicycle and helped José off.
“Did you see me go by? I waved at you.”
“Of course, peanut, didn’t you see me wave back?”
“No, you didn’t. You were talking to those girls. Why did you tell them I was your brother?”
“Because you’re like my little brother,” David said and pecked the top of José’s head. “Whatever your old witch of a grandmother thinks.”
David had kissed him! He thought his heart would burst from happiness.
The last of the Gaviláns’ lands that had not been confiscated or sold in the dark days after Maximiliano’s fall was an ancient country house in the village of Coyoacán. In colonial days, the Gaviláns had used it as a summer retreat before the civil wars that followed independence made the roads impassable. By the time the roads had been cleared of bandits and mercenaries, the family was out of the habit of making the hour-long journey from city to country. For fifty years, the house had stood unused and dilapidated on a dirt road bordered by tall cactuses, the ochre-colored walls peeling, the carved doors worn away by the elements, the gardens turned to jungle, and the rooms filled with moth-eaten carpets and termite-eaten furniture.
Discreetly, Alicia had opened the house and hired workmen to repair the kitchen, prop up walls and pillars, and join the two largest rooms into a single long gallery that she filled with beds, converting it into a hospital ward. Cáceres found a cook and a half-dozen other trustworthy servants to staff the house. It was soon filled with the Yaquis whose freedom Alicia had purchased from corrupt Captain Henriquez. The manor’s isolation and the status of its owners protected the men from prying officials and neighborhood gossip. The Yaquis remained sequestered at the house until they were fit to travel. They left at night, with forged identity papers, money, and a third-class railway ticket to the American border. All this had taken time to work out and it had to be done in the utmost secrecy.
Alicia, who deplored falsehood, had needed to become a convincing liar. The deceptions weighed on her conscience, particularly her lies to Miguel. She longed to tell her husband about the house in Coyoacán, but she refrained, fearing not his anger but his powers of reason. She had no doubt he would raise a hundred irrefutable reasons why she was acting foolishly. Even in her own mind, the faith that had inspired her to help the Yaquis wavered as she came to know them.
For as she heard their stories, she realized that, with a few exceptions, the men were warriors. Some of them had been fighting against the Mexicans for decades in defense of their homeland. In that long war, they had killed not only Mexican soldiers but the Mexican settlers to whom the Díaz government had given their land, including women and children. The men were grimly unapologetic for these atrocities and they made it clear that they intended to resume the war as soon as they returned to their land. She began to see how naive she had been. Not only was assisting these men treasonous but by becoming an accomplice to their violence, she endangered her soul.
She turned to Cáceres, her spiritual guide and confessor, as they sat at the kitchen table, where she peeled potatoes for the evening meal. He listened to her intently and then said, “Doña, do you not recall that the hardest teaching in all the Gospels is to love your enemies? ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who persecute you.’ Isn’t that what you are doing here, for these men?”
“I can’t believe that God intends for us to save their lives so they can return home and kill others.”
“You must not presume to know the mind of God,” Cáceres said sharply. “Of course, it is not his will to continue the cycle of violence between the Yaquis and ourselves.” Then, more gently, he continued, “That is the very reason we are called upon to love them and to help them. We free ourselves from that cycle of killing by saving their lives, and in this way we follow Christ’s directive to do good to those who would hate us.”
“Is it not selfish of us to secure our own salvation by putting the lives of others at risk?”
“You assume these men will inevitably return to Sonora and make war on the Mexicans there, but hasn’t your compassion taught them that not all Mexicans are their enemies? Can you be so certain that your example will not soften their hearts and stay their hands against violence?”
“How can I be sure?”
“You cannot,” he replied. “We may never know what events our actions have set into motion, but we do know, from the mouth of Christ himself, what actions we must take. The rest is faith.”
She paused in her peeling. “Before all this, my faith was as light as feathers but this weight I feel in my heart is terrible and ponderous.”
He touched her hand. “What do you imagine the weight of the cross felt like on the naked shoulders of God as he trudged to his death on Golgotha? If the way of faith was easy, we would be living in paradise. Remember what our Lord told us. The gate we must enter is narrow, and wide is the road of the world that leads to suffering and destruction.”
“My faith falters,” she whispered.
“Then, like the father of the sick child in the Gospel, you must pray, ‘Lord, I believe; help me in my unbelief.’”
“Yes,” she said. “I do believe. Lord, help me in my unbelief.”
The Teatro Coliseo was a shabby little music hall a few streets north of the Zócalo, where working-class audiences cheered ribald zarzuelas—comic operettas—like Chin-Chun-Chan that lampooned the nouveau riche. On the evening of June 24, 1909, the feast day of San Juan Bautista, the theater’s well-worn seats were occupied by a different crowd. Sarmiento, glancing around the smoke-filled space, recognized types rather than individuals—humble factory workers, exuberant university students, frock-coated members of the petite bourgeoisie, the younger sons of cadet branches of old families, bon vivants seeking entertainment, cigar-smoking reporters, bespectacled intellectuals with nicotine-stained fingers, and plain-clothes officers of la seguridad. The tatty curtains had been drawn open, and on the bare boards of the stage there was a podium draped in red, white, and green bunting and flanked by tall arrangements of gladiolus. Behind the podium was a banner that proclaimed, “The Anti-Reelection Club of Ciudad de México.” Sarmiento was standing at the back of the house, beneath the balcony, scanning the room for his cousin.
From behind him, Luis said, “Miguel, you’re here,” and clasped his hand on Sarmiento’s shoulder.
Sarmiento turned and the two men embraced.
“Where is the man of the hour?” Sarmiento asked.
“Downstairs,” Luis said. “Come, let me introduce you to him. I’ve told him all about you and he is eager to meet you.”
To Sarmiento’s surprise, Madero was not surrounded by the usual entourage that accompanied politicians. Rather, the little man was alone in the dingy dressing room except for an even smaller woman, who sat at a desk in the corner writing a letter. Madero was dressed simply in a dark brown suit; his hips were wider than his shoulders and he had a small potbelly. His receding hair, plastered across his head, emphasized his bulbous forehead, and his lips were lost in a luxuriant mustache and goatee. Beneath thick eyebrows his eyes were curious, intelligent, and gentle. He radiated kindness, even before he clasped his small hands over Sarmiento’s and said, in a soft voice, “You must be Doctor Miguel Sarmiento. I had the honor of meeting your father many years ago. He is a great inspiration to me.”
“Did you say this man is a doctor?” a male voice asked.
The man, who entered the room smoking a cigar, bore a family resemblance to Madero but was clearly cut of tougher cloth. He regarded Sarmiento with a fixed stare made disconcerting by Sarmiento’s realization that his left eye had the lifeless glitter of glass.
“My brother Gustavo,” Madero said. “Gustavo, Doctor Miguel Sarmiento.”
“I thought perhaps you might be an alienist come to cart my brother away to the madhouse,” Gustavo said, exhaling a plume of rich-smelling smoke.
Madero smiled. “My family thinks I have lost my mind and have commissioned my brother to be my guardian. My father says that I am like a microbe challenging an elephant. Don Porfirio being the elephant, of course.”
From her desk, the drab little woman raised her eyes, paused in her writing, and in a high, grating voice declaimed, “Jesus’s mother and brothers came and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.’ And Jesus, looking around him, said, ‘Here are my mother and brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.’”
“This is my wife, Sara,” Madero said.
Sarmiento said, “You have great faith in your husband.”
“It is not a matter of faith,” she replied. “Francisco has been chosen for the task of restoring democracy to México.”
“Chosen by the spirits,” Gustavo sneered. To Sarmiento, he said, “They communicate with them on my brother’s Ouija board.”
“You are an idiot, Gustavo,” Sara said without particular heat and resumed writing.
Sarmiento had no idea of what to make of this exchange. Madero laughed and said, “Don Miguel, you must think you really have entered an asylum. Let me explain. I am a spiritist, a disciple of the Frenchman Allan Kardec. You have heard of him?”
“I vaguely remember hearing the name when I was a student in Paris. He was a medium?”
“No,” Madero said. “He himself, as he freely acknowledged, lacked the medium’s gift, but he communicated through others with the spirit world. They taught him secrets that have, until now, been inaccessible to humans about the meaning of life and death. In summary, we are born, die, and are reborn again and again. In this manner we evolve spiritually until we are perfected and can achieve union with God. That is also the true message of Jesus of Nazareth and the meaning of his resurrection.”
“Do you communicate with the spirit world?” Sarmiento asked, scarcely believing he was addressing this absurd question to the leader of México’s opposition.
“We do, Sara and I, using a planchette. I fell into the habit after reading Kardec’s autobiography. The first message I received was ‘Love God above all things and your neighbor as yourself.’ I believe it was a message from Christ himself. Later, another guide told me I must abandon my private philanthropy and enter politics for the salvation of our country. That message was conveyed to me by one ‘BJ.’”
“BJ?” Sarmiento repeated.
“Benito Juárez,” the little man said, “whom your father served as you will soon serve me, Miguel.”
The sound of heavy feet rhythmically banging on the floor of the theater shook the ceiling of the dressing room and the crowd began to shout Madero’s name over and over.
“Come on, then,” Gustavo said. “Let’s get the circus started.”
“Good-bye, Miguel,” Madero said. “We will meet again soon. I am sure of it.”
As they made their way back to the theater, Sarmiento asked his cousin, in all seriousness, “Is he insane?”
“Listen to him speak,” Luis replied, “and then answer that question for yourself.”
They arrived at the floor of the theater just as Madero was taking the stage to loud, prolonged, and almost desperate applause. With difficulty, he quieted the crowd and began to speak. His voice like a flute—soft, clear, and intimate—reached to the farthest seats. He spoke first of himself, saying he was, in his heart and soul, a farmer who loved the country, its people, and its quiet pursuits. “I am not a politician,” he told them, “but I am a man of México, and México, in her chains, has called to me, as she has called to every one of you and begs us to release her from the bonds of autocracy. Our mother México groans under the weight of foreign domination. Her children go hungry and die of disease and neglect. She cradles these dying children in her arms, and she begs us, ‘For the love of God, save me!’”
A huge cheer erupted from the crowd. Sarmiento thought it a stroke of brilliance that Madero had invoked as a metaphor for México the image of a beggar woman holding a malnourished child. The streets of the city were filled with such women. They existed at the periphery of one’s vision, a shameful sight that one ignored, quickening one’s pace as they approached, bony hands outstretched, pleading, “Sir, for the love of God.”
The beggar woman was a living reproach to the Díaz government’s centennial slogan: Order and Progress. In invoking her, Madero allowed the people in the crowd to release the repressed guilt, anger, and shame that they felt at being part of a system that tolerated such inequality. Madero, it appeared, understood that human beings could not look away from human suffering indefinitely. Whether or not people were basically good, they were inescapably connected. Sarmiento himself had often thought that the suffering of others invoked a sympathetic response, as one nerve is sympathetic to the pain of an adjacent nerve.
For forty years, Don Porfirio’s government had told its people to ignore their reactions to the degradation of their fellow beings, in essence, to deny reality. In the last decade, that reality had started to close in on México, as the inequalities became every starker and the sense of personal powerlessness increased—a feeling Sarmiento himself knew all too well. To continue to deny reality required greater and greater mental and moral contortions until, Sarmiento thought, the nation must go mad. Madero obviously understood that the critical moment had arrived, and his message was to face reality. Face reality and change it. As Sarmiento joined in the thunderous applause that proceeded to nearly drown out Madero’s speech, he felt that he had been released from the web of lies that constituted the social fabric of Díaz’s México and given back the most basic freedom of all: the freedom of thought.
“Is he insane?” Luis shouted over the crowd.
“No,” Sarmiento replied. “He may be the sanest man in México.”