On the afternoon of the seventh day of the battle, Alicia returned from visiting families who had chosen to remain in the neighborhood. She hurried to the toilet, where she gushed watery diarrhea. She composed herself and started toward the kitchen to help the cooks, but she did not get out of the room before she again had to seek the toilet. By now, with the onset of a headache and nausea, she was forced to admit she was ill. The symptoms were familiar—she had seen them among the poor of San Francisco Tlalco—but she hoped she was wrong about what they indicated. She changed into a light shift and lay down, but every few minutes, she was back on the toilet, the expulsions progressively more painful as there was less and less to expel. The headache throbbed in her temples. She thought back to the cup of tepid, muddy tea she had accepted two days earlier from a woman in Tepito to whom she had brought food. The woman—Luz, she remembered, her name was Luz—had poured her gratitude into the cup, and Alicia could not refuse to drink even though it was a near certainty the water had come from the fetid communal well she had passed earlier. A simple cup of tea, no more than two swallows—how fragile the body was, she thought. She was convulsed by abdominal cramps and staggered to the toilet. As she tried to make her way back to the bed, she was overcome with dizziness and fell to the floor. Her last conscious thought was cholera.
Sarmiento had been working at a Red Cross field hospital set up in the Alameda, but on the morning of the seventh day, restless to see the damage to the capital, he had gone out in one of the vans. The city was a sepulchre. The police had abandoned their corner posts, the priests locked up their churches, and even the doors of the great cathedral were closed against the importuning of the faithful. The thirty boxcars of pulque that slaked the thirst of the city did not arrive at the Estación de Colonia, and the fruit-, flower-, and vegetable-laden trajineras did not skim the surface of La Viga. The big green and yellow tranvías remained parked at the station in the Zócalo. The stables were filled with restless, hungry horses. The familiar trucks of the Buen Tono cigarette factory were nowhere to be seen, and the factory was shut down. The great department stores along the Avenida San Francisco—the Port of Veracruz and the Iron House—and the lowliest dry goods shops on the dirt streets of Colonia San Sebastían were shuttered and barred against looters. Theaters were closed, the billboards of cancelled performances still splashed across their entrances. As they passed through the Colonia Guerrero, Sarmiento heard a cellist playing Bach’s second cello suite, the “Sarabande.” The complex, mournful music crossed the courtyard of a once grand building, now pockmarked with bullet holes, and spilled into the clear, still air. The light, as always, was dazzlingly pure, and above the roofs and domes of the city, Popocatépetl released white puffs of smoke and Iztaccíhuatl spread her snowy body beside him.
The van approached the streets surrounding the Ciudadela, where the rebels remained firmly ensconced despite the government’s superior numbers and weapons. As it approached an army checkpoint, Sarmiento observed a truck flying the American flag laden with food and water. The soldiers waved it through. At first, he thought the Americans were bringing food to the starving civilians as a humanitarian gesture, but to his astonishment, the truck drove up to the gates of the Ciudadela. They were thrown open to receive it without any interference by the government soldiers. The same soldiers who had casually allowed the rebels to be provisioned with food and water detained the Red Cross wagon for an hour before they finally admitted it into the battle-torn streets. While he stood with other volunteers at the side of the road waiting to be cleared to enter, Sarmiento saw two other supply trucks admitted into the Ciudadela. He began to understand why the rebels had been able to hold out. Instead of starving them out of their citadel, government soldiers were helping to feed them. The sheer brazenness of the treason made it clear to Sarmiento that the orders to assist the rebels came from very high in the army. He needed to get a message to his cousin, but that would have to wait until he helped scour the area for the wounded or the dead.
In the long evenings, Sarmiento had been passing the time by rereading Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s account of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empires. He had last read the Spanish soldier’s eyewitness account of the destruction of Tenochtitlán as a boy. Then all his sympathies lay with Cortés’s men, who were, after all, his people. This time through the narrative he found himself mourning for the defeat of the Aztecs. Sarmiento did not sentimentalize the Aztecs—Bernal Díaz’s horror at their practice of human sacrifice was too vivid and unguarded to have been a falsehood planted by the conquerors to justify their bloody annihilation of the Indians. But Sarmiento knew something that Bernal Díaz did not know: the annihilation of the Indians would continue for centuries after the conquest, by war, disease, enslavement, and destitution, until their population had been reduced to a tenth of what it had been when Cortés reached the shores of México. Sarmiento saw in the streets of the capital that the degradation of the Indians continued to this very moment. At least, as Cáceres had argued, the Aztecs’ practice of human sacrifice was ritualized and had served a religious purpose, however benighted. The human sacrifice inflicted by the Spanish had been indiscriminate and pointless. Moreover, it seemed to him that the Spanish had infused their own casual cruelty and contempt for the native people into the Mexican race that emerged from the conquest. Because this Mexican race was half-Indian, this in turn created a nation permanently divided against itself, driven by a self-hatred that expressed itself in paroxysms of violence such as that which now filled the streets of the capital with corpses.
The Red Cross wagon entered the neighborhoods surrounding the Ciudadela, where bodies festered and rotted like the fallen leaves of a ghastly autumn. Gaunt survivors flitted like shadows from one ruined building to another. Sarmiento remembered the passage from Bernal Díaz describing the entry of Cortés’s soldiers into Tenochtitlán after forty-five days of siege: “When we returned to the City we found the streets full of women and children and other miserable people, thin and afflicted who were dying of hunger and we found in the streets gnawed roots and bark of trees, the most pitiable thing in the world to see.” Sarmiento could have left behind his black bag because all he did that day was help collect bodies and stack them like cordwood in the wagon for incineration.
Sarmiento asked to be let off at the Zócalo. Since it was no longer possible to penetrate the barricades that surrounded the National Palace, he and Luis had worked out a way to communicate by leaving notes in the shattered masonry of the arcade that surrounded the great plaza. He scribbled his observations of provisions passing through government checkpoints in the Ciudadela, stuck it in the crevice they had designated for the exchange of messages, and then hurried home before the fighting resumed.
José lay on his bed looking through his stereoscope at peaceful scenes of the French countryside. By habit, he reached out his hand to pet El Morito, but the cat had disappeared on the first day of the fighting and had not returned. His grandmother had assured him that El Morito was simply hiding somewhere and would emerge when the gun blasts stopped shaking the walls. José believed her, if only because the alternative was too terrible to think about. He tried not to think at all, but unlike the adults who seemed frantically occupied, José had nothing to do with the long hours of the long days. His parents were gone most of the day to help where they could. His grandmother commanded the remaining servants like a household general, keeping them at their work even as the bombs rained down a half-dozen blocks away. The people of the neighborhood who had sought shelter the first days had either returned to their homes or fled the city. José was alone. He had always enjoyed his solitary pursuits, his soldiers and books, toy theater and marionettes, but that solitude was an oasis from the routines of school and family. Those routines had been shattered, and his current solitude felt more like a prison than a garden.
He was no longer as frightened as he had been after he and his father had driven through the Zócalo and he had seen the dead bodies and the menacing soldiers. He took his cue from the grown-ups. His father was still his father, brisk and energetic; his mother had become, if anything, even gentler; and his grandmother was more imperious. It was if they were actors playing themselves, exaggerating their basic qualities to mask their fear. José imitated their attitudes as well as he could and played himself. But at a deeper level, he was enraged by the grown-ups, by all grown-ups. They had created this horror. They were the ones who slaughtered people in the streets and turned the world upside down for reasons that no one—not even his brilliant father—could satisfactorily explain to José. He could not understand why it mattered so much whether Don Porfirio or Don Panchito wore the presidential sash, that ordinary men and women should pay the price of their lives to decide the issue. For once, he knew his lack of understanding was not because he was unintelligent in adult matters—it was because the carnage in the streets was pointless. The adults had started this stupid fight and inflicted it upon him. José hated them for it. He would never again accept their words with the same credulity as before the war. He promised himself he would not grow up to be like them.
In the meantime, he pretended the sound of the guns was thunder and distracted himself from his anxiety with his toys and books and the piano. But a low, ever-present thrum of fear still ran through his body and fed itself on his thoughts. What if a bomb fell in the palace? What if the fighting never stopped? What if El Morito never returned? And worst of all, what if something happened to his parents or his grandmother? The only way he could overcome these thoughts was by imagining in exacting detail being somewhere other than where he was and removing himself completely from the present.
He put another card in his stereoscope—a hand-painted scene of the endless lavender fields of Provence. He imagined himself walking through the aisles of lavender. He felt the sun on the back of his neck, the soft ground beneath his feet. He imagined a breeze stirring the purple tips of the plants, creating a cloud of fragrance, and the smoky sweetness of lavender filling his lungs.
When Sarmiento found Alicia collapsed on the floor of their bedroom, he thought she was dead, killed by an errant bullet or bit of shrapnel. Then her body moved with her breath and he dropped to his knees beside her. Her skin was cold and clammy and she had soiled herself. He called for her maid, Catalina. Together they cleaned and changed her. He carried her to their bed.
“Alicia,” he murmured. “Darling, can you hear me?”
She opened glazed, unfocused eyes. “Miguel?”
“I found you on the floor. How long have you been like this?”
“The water was bad,” she whispered. “Cholera, I think.”
He had guessed as much. “How long have you been sick?”
“Today. It started today.” She grimaced. “Toilet.”
He helped her up and settled her on a chamber pot, where she expelled another blast of fishy smelling ordure. When she was back in bed, he emptied the pot but kept a specimen. While she slept, he examined the specimen under his microscope and saw the rice-shaped bacterium—Vibrio cholerae—that was the agent of cholera. All he could do for now was restore fluids to her body to avoid death by dehydration. He was hopeful she would recover—she was strong, seldom ill, and he was there to nurse her—but outbreaks of cholera in the city had claimed thousands of lives so he did not deceive himself about the gravity of her condition.
After he had made her comfortable, he went into his mother-in-law’s apartment, where he found her at her desk going over the household accounts.
“Alicia is ill,” he said. “Cholera. She drank tainted water. If she drank it here, the household may be in danger of an outbreak.”
La Niña blanched. “But I instructed the servants to boil all of the drinking water as you directed.” She stood up and came around to him. “How is she?”
“She’s still in the first stage,” he said, casting about for a euphemism. Finding none, he said, “Extreme diarrhea. There is little I can do until these episodes end except to give her fluids.”
La Niña frowned. “What do you need?”
“Pure, unadulterated water,” he said.
She nodded. “I will personally supervise the boiling.”
“All of our water containers must be cleaned and purified,” he said. “The latrines should also be cleaned and scoured with carbolic acid. If anyone else begins to show any signs of the disease, you must let me know immediately. I will stay with Alicia.”
“Have you told José?”
“No,” he said. “Perhaps you can talk to him. I prefer he not visit his mother in her current state. It would be too distressing for him.”
She nodded. “Yes, but you must let him see her as soon as she can receive him. He is already badly frightened. Once I tell him his mother is ill, he will be even more fearful.”
“This barbaric rebellion!” he exclaimed. “How can civilized men in the twentieth century be tossing bombs across a city filled with their own people? What madness has poisoned México!”
She looked at him for a long moment. “In the years since you took up residence in my house, I have become very fond of you, Miguel. I am grateful for the happiness you have given my daughter and for my exquisite grandson, so what I say now I say without malice. You are not a Mexican.”
“I beg your pardon, Señora. I was born here.”
“Yes, but you are a full-blooded Spaniard like your father, a gachupín.”
“Surely, those colonial classifications are irrelevant in modern México.”
A knowing smile wrinkled her lips. “That you speak of modern México only reveals that you do not know what it is to be Mexican.”
“Then what is it to be Mexican?”
“To live in the friction of being half-civilized and half-barbaric, the one half always at war with the other. This revolution is not about politics. Nothing in México is ever about politics. The bombs that explode around us are the sound of our self-hatred.”
“You are a fatalist, Señora.”
“No. I am a Mexican,” she said. “Go and care for your woman. I will see to José and to the household.”
Sarmiento slipped his stethoscope from his ears and touched his wife’s pale face. The room filled with the pink light of dawn. Alicia slept beneath thick blankets packed with hot water bottles. Her skin was cold; her lips were cracked. Twelve hours had passed since he had discovered her collapsed on the floor. The diarrhea had abated and she had entered the second, graver stage of the disease. The loss of fluids had caused her blood pressure to drop dangerously, and her pulse was fast and weak as her heart tried to push the diminished supply of blood through her exhausted body. She had vomited the sips of water he had given her earlier. When she awakened, he would have to try another tactic to keep her alive. He slumped into a chair. He had not allowed himself to consider the possibility of her death even as it hovered in the air. When José had come to see her and burst into tears, Sarmiento had sent him away with furious words that had expressed his own terror. Life without Alicia was unimaginable, now more than ever as the world collapsed around them in the thunder of artillery shells and the rattle of machine guns.
“You must live,” he whispered.
“Miguel?” Her voice was a dry husk.
“I’m here, darling,” he said, standing, stroking her face.
“I see only white. Am I going blind?”
“No, darling, that’s the disease. It will pass.”
“The guns have stopped.”
He thought at first she was describing another symptom, a loss of hearing or cognizance, but then he realized that it had been hours since the sounds of battle had echoed in the air. Had another truce been declared? Not that that mattered. All he cared about was keeping her alive.
“Miguel, if I am dying, I require a priest.”
“You are not dying, Alicia.”
A thin smile pressed itself on her lips. “I have seen this disease before.”
“Then you know it is not invariably fatal.” He smiled back. “Place your trust in your physician.”
“More than trust … love.” Her eyes closed, then opened. “I am so thirsty.”
“You can’t keep water through the mouth, but there is another way. Unpleasant and painful, I’m afraid.”
“Do what you must,” she said. “I want to live.”
Late in the evening, a servant appeared with a plate of food for him. He wolfed down the beans and rice, his first food in more than a day. He set aside the plate and stroked Alicia’s hair. He had been giving her rectal injections of water, tannin, salt, and gum arabic. The first injection had simply flowed back out, but he had continued, reasoning that whatever she could absorb would help her. The treatment was working. The third time he injected her, she retained the fluid. Her skin was detectably less desiccated, and her breathing, once rapid and shallow, had deepened. He was exhausted, not merely from lack of sleep but from the grinding anxiety that he might lose her. He lay down beside her and closed his eyes.
He was awakened by the clamor of bells so loud it seemed as if every bell in every church in the city had been struck by lightning at precisely the same moment. He shook off his fatigue. Alicia was still sleeping. Her breath was deep and slow but that she had slept through the explosion of bells was evidence of her deathly debilitation. Her pulse, still erratic and weak, confirmed this. When she awoke, he would give her more fluids, orally if she could tolerate it. Perhaps a crust of bread? She had gone forty-eight hours without food.
The bells still clanged. He went to the door and called for Alicia’s maid, Catalina.
“Why are the bells ringing?” he asked her.
“They say the fighting is over, doctor.”
At last, he thought. The Ciudadela has been taken. He heard Alicia murmur his name. “Bring me water with a little lemon in it,” he told the maid. “Bread if there is any in the house.”
“The doña?” the maid asked hopefully.
“Yes,” he said with a tired smile. “We may have more than Madero’s victory to celebrate. And Catalina, send my son to us.”
José stepped tentatively into his parents’ room. He was still scalded by his father’s reproaches from when he had last visited his mother. When he had seen her on the bed, waxen, he thought she was dead. Convulsed by grief, he had doubled over, sobbing wildly. His tears had driven his father into a fury José had never seen before.
“Why are you whimpering like a little girl?” he had snapped. “Do you think this helps? My God, you have been treated too gently by your grandmother. She might as well put you in dresses and braid your hair. Get out of my sight until you can compose yourself like a man.” He had grabbed José by the collar, thrown him out of the room, and slammed shut the door.
It was the first and only time his father had laid a violent hand on him, and he had slumped to the ground, weeping out of shame as well as grief. The anger and contempt in his father’s voice had seared him. Even though the words were spoken in anger, José knew they were not words his father would have used at all had he not already believed them to be true. His father was brisk, disciplined, decisive, and rational. By contrast, José knew he was lazy and soft and emotional. He and his father had had many quiet talks about José’s poor showing in school and what his father called his “daydreaming.” If what it meant to be a man was to be like his father, José knew he was a failure. He could not bear the thought that his mother might die and leave him alone to be a continual disappointment to his father. He prayed for her recovery as he had never prayed for anything else in his life.
Come in, mijo,” his father said. “Your mother is feeling much better.”
José tentatively approached the bed, where his mother lay propped up by pillows, eyes open and shining with love for him. He bit back the sobs, but he could not prevent the tears from falling.
“Mamá,” he whispered, taking her hands. “Mamá.”
“Don’t cry, Josélito,” she said in a tired voice. “I’m going to get well.”
“I prayed for you,” he sniffled.
“Thank you, mijo. Now you must thank the Lord for hearing your prayers.” She smiled. “So few people remember to thank him that I know he will appreciate your gratitude.”
“Yes, Mamá,” he said, wiping his nose with his sleeve.
“Where’s your handkerchief ?” she asked, still smiling.
“I forgot.”
His father said, “Your mother needs her rest now, Son. You may return later.”
“Yes, Papá,” he said, reluctantly pulling himself away.
His father walked him to the door, his hand on José’s shoulder. “José, I am very sorry I lost my temper with you before. Your mother was so ill that I … forgot myself. Do you forgive me?”
“Yes, Papá,” José said. “I am sorry I disappoint you.”
His father kissed him. “You have never disappointed me, mijo.”
It was the first time his father had ever lied to him.
She had kept down the water and the morsels of bread and now she was sleeping again. Sarmiento thought he should bathe and change his clothes and report to his mother-in-law on Alicia’s condition. He stretched and wandered out into the corridor. He heard voices, Catalina’s and a man’s voice, insistent and weary. It was Luis. He looked down to the courtyard, where his cousin was demanding to be allowed to talk to Sarmiento.
“Primo, what are you doing here?” Sarmiento called down.
Luis looked up and said, “Madero’s been overthrown. I need a drink.”
“Catalina, go and stay with my wife. Luis, come up to my study.”
He had heard the words—“Madero’s been overthrown”—but he had not truly absorbed them until he sat across from Luis looking at his cousin’s stricken face, reading a depth of grief he had not seen in him since he had buried Ángel. Then his own hand began to tremble.
“I heard the bells,” he said, as if that explained anything.
“The church celebrates the end of Madero,” Luis said bitterly. “The archbishop hates Madero because he actually practices what the church professes. Humility, charity, peace …” His voice broke, but when he resumed it was with fury. “If Jesus appeared in the Zócalo, the Catholic Church would nail him to the cross all over again.”
“Luis,” Sarmiento said, extending his hand to the other man’s. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Huerta turned on him,” Luis said, draining his glass. He poured another drink. “Gustavo’s spies followed Huerta to a secret meeting with the American ambassador and Félix Díaz. Gustavo had Huerta arrested and brought before Madero. I was there. I told Madero that you had seen food and water being allowed in the Ciudadela. I advised him to shoot Huerta on the spot.”
“But he didn’t,” Sarmiento said. “He wouldn’t. It’s not in his nature.”
“He asked Huerta for an explanation. The bastard got on his knees weeping and said it was all a misunderstanding. Yes, he had met with Díaz only to arrange a truce. No, he had no idea that food and water were getting to the rebels, but he would put a stop to it at once. Madero lifted him to his feet and looked into his eyes and said, ‘I believe you.’ He let him go with orders to take the Ciudadela within twenty-four hours or lose his command.”
Sarmiento groaned. He admired Madero, perhaps even loved him, but his naiveté approached … foolishness. “Maybe Gustavo was right,” he muttered, remembering the cynical remark Gustavo had made about the family fool having been elected president. “Couldn’t you and Gustavo stop him?”
“Madero’s faith in his judgment about people is not open for discussion,” he said sourly. “When Huerta left, Gustavo said, ‘You have just released your assassin.’ Madero smiled and said, ‘I looked into his eyes and I saw his soul.’ Four hours later, Huerta sent Aurelio Blanquet into Madero’s office with ten soldiers and informed him he was under arrest. Huerta’s such a coward he couldn’t even come himself. There was a firefight at the palace and Blanquet’s men gained control. I just managed to escape.”
“Where is Madero now?”
“In a prison cell at Lecumberri,” Luis said. “He is still president, Miguel. I know him; he will not willingly resign. That is the only card we have to play to save his life. He must be persuaded to resign in exchange for a guarantee of his personal safety.”
“A guarantee from Huerta?” Sarmiento said incredulously.
Luis shook his head. “Huerta knows that without Madero’s resignation, his government would be illegitimate. No country will recognize him and Madero’s supporters in the army will revolt. I have been to see the Chilean ambassador. He has agreed to negotiate the deal.”
“Who will persuade Don Francisco to resign? You? Gustavo?”
“I urged him to shoot Huerta,” Luis reminded him. “If I show my face, I will be arrested. Gustavo has disappeared and I fear the worst. You must go, Miguel. You are his friend, perhaps the only friend who never asked anything of him. He will listen to you. Don Salvador, the Chilean ambassador, will arrive within the hour to take you to the prison under his protection.”
“Luis, my wife has been deathly ill. I cannot leave her.”
“If Madero cannot be persuaded to resign willingly, Huerta will torture his resignation out of him. He will murder him, Miguel. Our friend, our leader. Only you can save him.”
Sarmiento sighed. “All right. I will go. You stay here until I return. I don’t want to be anxious over your safety while I am trying to negotiate Madero’s.”
Luis nodded. “I will immerse myself in this delicious bottle of cognac. Bring back good news, Primo.”
At dusk, a black Rolls-Royce, flying the blue-and-white flags of Chile from its grille, pulled up to the palace gate where Sarmiento was waiting. A chauffeur opened the door for him. The Chilean ambassador, Salvador Gossens, a white-haired, avuncular man, greeted him. “Senator, it is always a pleasure to see you, although I wish we were meeting under happier circumstances.” A thick plate of glass, inset with a small sliding window, separated the back seat from the front. Gossens slid the window open, barked, “To Lecumberri” to the chauffeur, and then closed the window.
The darkening sky was pink and gold. The deepening shadows could not conceal the gouged walls, shattered windows, and collapsed roofs of shops and houses, churches and factories as the car bumped over the rubble-strewn roadway. The streets were empty except for a few dazed civilians picking their way through the ruins. The conspicuous absence of soldiers manning the makeshift barricades brought home to Sarmiento even more than the silence of the guns that the battle for the city was over and Madero had lost.
“México is the eldest daughter in the family of nations created from the old Spanish empire,” Gossens said. “This ancient, beautiful city is the spiritual capital of all of Spanish America.” He looked at Sarmiento beseechingly. “Tell me, Senator, how could this have happened here? The city in ruins, the president in prison? Tell me, so I can make sense of this horror and explain it to my government, to myself.”
Sarmiento, recalling Bernal Díaz’s description of the capture of Tenochtitlán by Cortés, said, “Perhaps we are haunted by the ghosts of the Aztec city that the Spanish razed and buried in the swamps beneath us.”
“That was in another time, primitive and cruel,” Gossens said. “This is the twentieth century, man! The age of progress and order and democracy. You can’t believe that a curse lies on this city because of something that happened almost four hundred years ago.”
“No,” Sarmiento said. “Of course not. I was being fanciful.” He sympathized with Gossens, the representative of a peaceful, stable, and prosperous nation, for whom México must have been a sinecure, the capstone of his career. “I have been caring for my wife, who is ill, and I just learned this afternoon of the president’s arrest. Is there a plan in place to guarantee his safe release?”
“I hope your wife is improved,” Gossens said automatically. “There is a plan, but it hinges on the president’s willingness to resign. Once he delivers his letter of resignation to me, I will keep it until he and his family depart from Veracruz to Cuba, where they have been offered sanctuary. At that point, I will hand over the letter to the minister of foreign affairs, who is next in line in succession for the presidency.”
“Pedro Lascuráin? Madero trusted him. Is he a traitor too?”
“Most assuredly not,” the ambassador replied. “He is an honorable man acting under duress. I need not tell you from whom.”
“Huerta,” Sarmiento said.
Gossens gave a sharp nod. “General Huerta,” he said, not concealing the contempt in his voice, “is determined that his ascendance to the presidency accord with the requirements of your constitution. Once Lascuráin becomes president, he will appoint Huerta the minister of the interior, who, as you know, is next in the line of succession. Lascuráin will then resign and, voilà, General Huerta becomes the president of the Republic.”
“With all the legal formalities properly observed,” Sarmiento said. “Very neat. A complete farce, but very neat. What if Don Francisco refuses to resign?”
“Then I’m afraid Huerta might be tempted to choose expediency over formality. I’m sure you grasp my meaning, Senator.”
“Only too clearly,” he said. They had reached the outskirts of the city, where the only lights were the campfires of the destitute living in the ruins of their former residences. “What about the Americans? Their ambassador engineered this coup and Huerta is his creature. Wilson could guarantee Madero’s safety.”
A flash of anger crossed Gossens’s placid features. “The American ambassador takes the position that the fate of President Madero—to whom he is still accredited—is strictly an internal Mexican affair. He takes no position on the subject.”
“That bastard!” Sarmiento said. “Wilson brings down Madero’s government and now he washes his hands of him.”
“Do you know Rubén Darío’s ‘Ode to Roosevelt’?” the ambassador asked and then, without waiting for a reply, began to recite, “‘You are the United States, future invader of Spanish America.’” He tapped a heavy gold signet ring against the window. “Nothing good comes out of the North,” he said. “From that furnace of aggression and greed and self-righteousness. All of Spanish America feels its heat, but only México roasts on its spit.”
Miguel?”
“No, Alicia, it’s Luis. Miguel has gone on an errand. He will be back soon.”
Luis’s broad face and features came into focus. He looked melancholy and he smelled of drink.
“Something has happened,” she said. “The guns. They’ve stopped.”
“Thankfully,” he said with a sad smile, “the battle for the city is over. Unfortunately, Madero lost.”
“Where is Miguel?” she asked, suddenly panicked. “Has he been arrested?”
“No, nothing like that. He has gone to talk Madero into resigning so that he and his family can safely depart from México.” He grasped her hand. “Alicia, all will be well. You need not worry about Miguel. You need only think about recovering. Are you feeling better?”
“Yes, quite weak, but I’ll live,” she said, returning the pressure of his touch. She studied his face. Beneath the hard worldliness there remained an implacable sensitivity. She remembered that, while she had hovered between life and death, she had made a connection between Miguel’s cousin and her own son. She did not trust it because it had been the product of delirium, but now she felt compelled to take up the subject. “Luis, there is something I want to ask you about your … condition.”
He looked puzzled for a moment, then said, “Ah, my condition. Yes. Ask anything, Alicia.”
“When did you know that you loved men?”
He grinned. “Miguel is right about you. You don’t mince words. It’s rather terrifying.”
“I don’t ask out of mere curiosity,” she said.
“No? Then why?”
“José,” she said quietly.
“You think he may be like me? Why?”
She stirred, trying to sit up. He helped her, arranging pillows behind her, covering her with a blanket. “I must look a fright,” she said. “More than usual, I mean.” She cut off his protests with a smile. “I know you haven’t written verse in many years, but you have retained a poet’s sensitivity. It’s the same type of sensitivity I see in José, unusual in men in its depth and sweetness.”
He laughed a low laugh. “Sweetness is not a quality most people associate with me, Alicia.”
“I saw you with Ángel,” she replied.
A shadow of grief crossed his face. “Yes,” he allowed. “There was sweetness there. Many men are sensitive, Alicia, but not all sensitive men are homosexuals. Your husband, for example, although he would deny it, is a very sensitive man. Perhaps José has inherited that quality from Miguel.”
“No, it’s different,” she said. “And there was a boy, David, José’s piano teacher. I think José fell in love with him. He was only nine at the time, too young to understand what was happening to him, but I recognized the signs. He is twelve now and he will eventually meet someone else and fall in love again. How old were you?”
“Younger than José is now,” he said. “But like him, I did not understand what it was. Not for many years did I understand.” He looked at her. “What will you do if he is like me?”
“What should I do, Luis?” she responded pleadingly.
“You must help him accept his nature,” Luis replied forcefully. “Do not let him do as I did and stumble for years in the darkness trying to make sense of his feelings and his shame. Can you do that, Alicia?”
“I do not know if I can teach him to accept what I feel is … a sin,” she said apologetically. “A small sin, but nonetheless, a sin.”
“Sins are volitional, are they not, Alicia? A choice. Yet you yourself recognize that this quality is woven into José’s nature. If that is so, then did God not make him as he is?”
She considered him for a long moment. “You give me much to think about, Luis. I can make one promise to you about José. I will not love him any less, no matter what his nature is.”
“That may be enough,” Luis replied.
Lecumberri penitentiary was new, but it resembled a medieval castle with its thick, windowless walls, towers, and parapets. After anxious negotiations with the terrified warden, Sarmiento and Gossens were led across the prison yard, past the circular guard tower, to the small cell where the president of the Republic was sitting at a table in his shirtsleeves writing letters. He sprang to his feet when the iron door was opened and clapped his hands happily when his visitors entered the room.
“Don Salvador! Miguel!” He embraced each man. “I have never been happier to see either one of you than I am now.”
“Señor Presidente,” Gossens said, bowing a bit. “How are you being treated? Are you well?”
Madero shrugged. “They feed me and leave me alone. But yes, I am well.”
“I should examine you,” Sarmiento said.
“Unnecessary, Miguel. There is nothing wrong with me except, of course, for my unlawful detention.” A troubled look crossed his face. “They took me from the palace before I could speak to Sara.”
“I spoke to the first lady earlier,” Gossens said. “She is safe at Chapultepec for now. Don Francisco, we don’t have much time. We must speak of your future.”
“Please, sit,” Madero said, indicating the room’s single chair and the narrow bed. He perched at the edge of the writing table and in a mildly curious tone asked, “What do you have in mind for my future, gentlemen? Resignation? Exile? Am I to join Don Porfirio in Paris? Or,” he said with a smile, “is it back to that dreadful American city, El Paso?”
“Havana,” Sarmiento replied, smiling back.
“Ah, the Cubans have agreed to take me in.” He smoothed his goatee with slender, pale, beautifully formed fingers. A saint’s fingers, Sarmiento thought.
“Cuba,” he repeated. He looked at them, shook his head sadly, and said, “No.”
“Of course we could make other arrangements,” the ambassador said quickly.
“That’s not it, Don Salvador,” he said. “I mean, I will not resign and I will not leave México.”
There were sounds of shouting and rushed footsteps. Sarmiento reflexively cringed, but then there was silence. Madero poured himself a glass of water from a carafe on the table and sipped it.
“Señor Presidente,” Gossens said softly. “You must not think of this as a defeat but as a tactical retreat. As soon as you are out of México, you can renounce your resignation. I can assure you my government will not recognize … the usurper. You will remain the legitimately elected president.”
“The Americans have a saying I learned when I studied at the university in Berkeley,” he said. “‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law.’ I could call myself president of the Republic or like one of my predecessors, emperor of México, but once I leave the country, it will belong to Huerta, and your government, Don Salvador, and all the other governments will eventually be forced to recognize him.”
Sarmiento watched Gossens struggle to find a diplomatic response and interjected, “Do you still not understand what kind of man you are dealing with? Huerta will kill you if you try to stay in México.”
Madero eased himself off the table. “I have always known what kind of man Huerta is, Miguel. Vicious, unintelligent, murderous. But also shrewd, fearless, and respected by his troops.”
“You should have had him arrested when Gustavo told you about his meeting with the American ambassador,” Sarmiento said.
Madero focused his magnetic gaze on Sarmiento. “Arresting Huerta would not have solved the problem because the problem is not Huerta, it’s the army. Huerta’s replacement would have also schemed behind my back and his replacement and his replacement. Don’t you understand, Miguel? Until the army finally submits to civilian control, México will never be a real democracy. The army must stop thinking of itself as a branch of the government. Its generals must stop thinking of themselves as presidents-in-waiting. Until then, México will be condemned to repeat the last one hundred years of coups, countercoups, civil wars, and military dictatorships until Jesus arrives in the glory of his second coming and puts an end to it.”
“Did you think you could turn Huerta from his treason?” Sarmiento asked.
“I had to try!” Madero said fervently. “If I had succeeded, he would have ruthlessly suppressed any further rebellion in the army.” He paced the room. “I spent so many hours with him, explaining, threatening, cajoling, and praying. There were moments when I believed I had persuaded him to join me in building a true democracy for México. In the end, his vicious instincts won out over his decent ones. The prize of being president was too great a temptation. Poor, lost little man.”
Gossens spoke. “Don Francisco, your compassion is, as always, commendable, but the senator is right. You are not safe in México.”
Madero stopped midstep, dug into the pocket of his trousers, and then rolled a shining orb across the table toward Sarmiento, who stopped and inspected it. It was a glass eye.
He gasped, “Gustavo?”
“It was delivered to me as an inducement to resign,” Madero said. “Don Salvador, whether or not I resign, I will never be allowed to leave México alive. Huerta does not like loose ends.”
“You will be protected by the weight of the entire diplomatic corps,” Gossens replied.
“Except for the Americans,” Madero said, with a sad smile. “Their opinion is the only one that matters to Huerta. So if I am to be killed, let it be the assassination of the elected president of México and not the back-alley slaughter of a disgraced politician who tried to save his own skin by running away from his responsibilities.”
Gossens rose heavily from his chair. “Don Francisco,” he said, “I had hoped I would be spared the burden of what I must now tell you.” He cleared his throat. “If you do not resign, your wife, your mother, your father, and every member of your family within reach of General Victoriano Huerta will be murdered. One member of your family for each day that you refuse to resign.” In a broken whisper, he concluded. “Your mother first.”
“No!” Sarmiento protested. “No! He can’t be serious.”
“Look in your hand,” Madero said, “and tell me he is not serious.”
Sarmiento opened his hand. Gustavo Madero’s glass eye stared back at him; it was both comical and horrifying. He dropped it, and the orb rolled back toward Madero, who scooped it up.
“My brother saw more clearly with one eye than I saw with two,” Madero said. He sat at the table, pulled a fresh sheet of paper, and quickly began to write out his letter of resignation.
The idling locomotive expelled puffs of steam that quickly dissipated in the cool night air. A small group of people huddled on the platform. There were no other trains that night, only the locomotive and two passenger cars of the Interoceanic Railway. Soldiers patrolled the empty station and prevented anyone from entering. Sarmiento glanced at his pocket watch. It was closing in on midnight and Madero had still not arrived. At the far end of the platform, Don Salvador was in an agitated, whispered conversation with Sara Madero while other members of the Madero family gathered around them. Their stiff postures indicated anxiety and anger.
More than twenty-four hours had passed since Madero had handed his letter of resignation to the ambassador. After Gossens had had his car drop Sarmiento at the palace, the ambassador had gone to present the letter to the minister of foreign affairs, Lascuráin. Huerta had been waiting and he had insisted that the ambassador hand over the letter to him, ostensibly to authenticate Madero’s signature. Surrounded by Huerta’s bodyguards, exhausted and in fear for his own safety, Gossens surrendered the letter. In the morning, Sarmiento had awakened to the news that Madero had resigned and Huerta was the new president; Lascuráin’s presidency had lasted forty-five minutes, just long enough for him to appoint Huerta minister of the interior and then step aside. Sarmiento had hurried to the Chilean embassy, where Gossens had described the meeting with Huerta.
“I exacted his promise that Don Francisco will still be allowed to leave the city,” the ambassador said. “He has arranged for a train to depart tonight to Veracruz.”
“His promises are not exactly binding,” Sarmiento observed.
“The ambassadors of Cuba and Argentina are at Lecumberri even as we speak,” Gossens replied. “They will not let Don Francisco out of their sight until he is safely on the train. Will you come to the train station and be a witness to his safe departure?”
“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”
That was how Sarmiento had come to be standing on the platform. Madero had been expected shortly after nine. Three hours late. With every passing second, Madero’s safe passage from México became less and less likely, ambassadorial escort or not. Gossens disengaged himself from the Madero family and strode to Sarmiento’s side.
“I am going back to the National Palace to speak to Huerta,” he said. “Will you stay here until I return?”
Sarmiento nodded. “What will you tell our new president?”
“I will demand that he release Don Francisco from wherever he is being held and allow him to leave, as he promised, or I will make my personal mission to see to it that not a single country in Spanish America recognizes Huerta’s government. I will make him a pariah.”
“Do you think he will care about his international reputation?”
“He will care about the ability of México to borrow money and export its goods,” Gossens replied. “Those things are much harder to do when your government is an international outlaw.”
Before Sarmiento could reply, they were interrupted by the screech of wheels and shouted voices outside the station. A moment later, several men dressed in the dark clothes of the diplomatic corps rushed in with soldiers on their heels. One of them, tall and bulky, came breathlessly to Gossens. Sarmiento recognized him from receptions at Chapultepec as the Cuban ambassador, Carlos Salvatierra.
“Don Salvador, we lost him.”
“What! How?”
“The military escort insisted that we travel separately from the prison,” Don Carlos replied. “Our car left first and then the car with Don Francisco. There was a barricade. We were detained, but his car continued on. I demanded that we be allowed to continue, but by the time the soldiers waved us on, he was gone.”
“When was this?” Gossens asked.
“A half hour, forty-five minutes ago,” he said. “I came as quickly as I could but the city is difficult to travel.”
“I am going to see Huerta,” Gossens said. “Come with me.”
Don Carlos nodded. “I hope it is not too late.”
The two men hurried off, Gossens calling to Sarmiento over his shoulder, “Wait here, Miguel.”
They bustled off. He sensed Sara Madero’s spidery presence before he heard her demand, “What happened?”
He told her. She stared at him with her black, perpetually aggrieved eyes, as if her husband’s abduction were his fault, but instead she said, “Your wife has always been kind to me.”
“Señora?”
“The rest of them, all the society women, they scorned me and closed their doors to me, but not your wife. I will not forget her kindness,” she said, stepping away from him and fading into the darkness like a wraith.
After that, the blackness seemed to deepen rather than lighten as night crawled slowly toward dawn. When he next heard the approach of vehicles outside the station, it was without the urgency of the Cuban ambassador’s earlier arrival. Wheels ground to a stop, footsteps labored across the empty station, and then he saw the defeated figures of the two ambassadors as they climbed the steps to the platform, eyes downcast and faces grim. They brushed past him and went directly to Sara Madero. When she began to scream, he knew Madero was dead.