IT RAINED HEAVILY THAT NIGHT. The next morning, the streets in the central part of the city still ran with the dank overflow, and Diego was obliged to choose his way carefully as he proceeded on foot to the National Palace. He intended to make his case to the Austrian in person. But he was not alone.
An assembly of large, glass-windowed carretelas cluttered the side streets that adjoined the plaza—expensive carriages, the conveyances of the rich. It didn’t take long for Diego to realize why. With their families in tow, the conservative grandees of the city had gathered near the great plaza for much the same reason he had ventured there himself. They hoped to meet the Austrian—and, like him, they had no better plan than to simply show up. But, while he meant to save the life of a friend, they craved a different reward. Diego could readily divine what it was. Over the years, most of them had accumulated sheaves of musty documents attesting to some ancient privilege or other, and each had begun to press his cause almost as soon as the French began their occupation of Mexico City—so far to little avail.
Now, with the arrival of the Austrian, it seemed they had new hope. Surely this archduke who had been crowned the emperor of Mexico would recognize their claims. He too belonged to nobility and so must surely understand their own rightful ambitions on this score, their wish to be designated the duque of this or the conde of that. God willing, they might even be invited to join the Austrian’s court. Their wives might be appointed as ladies-in-waiting to his own wife, the empress. Just think of the distinction, the glory. Diego watched them as he made his way past. The men strode about in the rain-damp streets, smoked their cigars, grumbled among themselves. Meanwhile, their womenfolk remained aboard the carriages, all in full toilette, with flowers or jewels strewn through their hair, all eyeing one another jealously.
Diego pressed on, shaking his head at the folly of his compatriots. Did they not realize what an absurd picture they made? Did they imagine themselves to be European? Ángela had often lamented the provincial ways of Mexico’s haut monde. The women were shallow and uncultured, she said. Why, their taste in clothing lagged a good two years behind the fashions of London or Paris. And the men! They were backward in every way. Dear God—these were the 1860s, not the Dark Ages. This was a time of ferment and reform in Europe, where new ideas were emerging about justice and equality, the dignity of all men. Yet here in Mexico, what passed for learned discourse in conservative circles was nothing but cant, jealousy, and greed. Are women human? Does the killing of a Jew constitute murder? Do Indians have souls?
Diego picked his way through the mud, the ruts, and the rivulets that riddled the street until at last he reached the huge plaza, where hundreds of other supplicants had gathered—Indians, in this case. They, too, must have heard of the Austrian’s arrival, and so they had come to seek redress for their many grievances—debt peonage, the denial of holy sacraments, the wholesale seizure of their land. Diego was well aware of these offences.
The Indian men gathered in small groups, wearing loose button-less blouses of cotton and striped breech cloths. They peered out from the shadows cast by their straw hats, their sombre faces a dull bronze. Some were barefoot, but most wore crude handmade sandals, fashioned of maguey fibre or rawhide. The Indian women kept apart, whispering in clusters, their hair in twin plaits intertwined with ribbons of cotton. Most of them had small children bound to their backs in great handwoven shawls.
Diego joined neither group—neither the conservative potentates nor the Indian supplicants. Instead, he took up a position by himself about halfway between the two assemblies. He was mestizo, after all. The conservatives would not have welcomed him into their midst, for they considered him an Indian—and he loathed conservatives anyway. The Indians would have accepted him, but their purpose in being here had little to do with his own.
Three times, he marched across the square and spoke to the French soldiers who guarded the main entrance of the palace. He asked to be admitted. He meant to speak to someone who could arrange an audience with the Austrian. Each time, he was gruffly turned away. After his third failed attempt, Diego withdrew to the shade of the Monte de Piedad across the plaza, where he stood on his own, looking back at the sprawling stone edifice. The National Palace. He supposed it would be renamed the Imperial Palace, with an emperor in residence. But, apart from the guards in front, he detected no sign that it was occupied by anyone at all.
There was nothing for him to do but wait—wait and think about the events that had brought him here. It seemed to him now that Baldemar must have been plotting his act of revenge for years, possibly ever since the day he’d discovered the dangling corpse of his uncle in that forest clearing in the hill country of Michoacán. Diego should have known his friend was capable of such an act, should have seen it in advance. But how? Baldemar’s boastful talk had seemed to be nothing more than empty words. He recalled their times together, in the months and years that followed the death of Melchor Ocampo, searching for anything that might have warned him of Baldemar’s stupid, reckless plan.
After their return from Michoacán, they had both gone back to their sporadic labours, writing anti-clerical screeds for El Siglo XIX. Baldemar wrote badly, if with passion, whereas Diego was just the reverse, and that, too, was a measure of the differences between them.
Neither ever received any payment for this work and so relied on other sources of income for his upkeep. In Diego’s case, he accepted a monthly stipend from Eustacio Barron, his half-brother and a man of great privacy and even greater wealth. A poet, or one who calls himself a poet, has not the luxury of spurning his patrons. The best he can do is resent them, a practice to which Diego applied himself with spirit and invention.
At night, he and Baldemar frequented the capital’s pulquerías, cantinas, and cockfight rings, its brothels and gambling dens, where they drank, lost money at cards, and whored. One night, they ducked into a wretched old cantina near the Plaza Santa Cecilia, where they called out for beers, and then more beers, and more after that. At some point that night, a couple of men fell into an argument that got louder and more heated, till one of them drew a pistol and, without hesitation, pulled the trigger. His companion frowned and tilted his head, as if about to pose a question. Then he collapsed to the beer-soaked floor, dead. The killer merely smiled. He glanced over at Diego and Baldemar and nodded his head. He replaced his hat, turned, and sauntered out of the bar. Later, the bartender and another man dragged the corpse away. Following a brief, respectful silence, the assembly of drinkers went right back to swearing and banging their glasses on the tables. It was almost as though nothing had happened.
Eventually, his eyes half open, his voice slurred from drink, Baldemar pounded his fist on the table. He’d been born on the Day of the fucking Dead—he swore—and was damned from the start, fated to lead a short life and meet a violent end.
“You’re sure?” said Diego. He’d heard all this before.
“As sure as I am of anything. As sure as I am of the fucking past. But listen to this.” Baldemar leaned closer. His face seemed to expand in the candlelight. What he said now he’d never said before. “I won’t go alone. I’ll take someone with me. I swear.”
Diego reached for his glass, but he didn’t get there. A hand gripped his collar, a hand much stronger than his own. At once, Baldemar’s face pressed close to his. He felt the heat of Baldemar’s skin, the flecks of his spittle. He smelled his sour breath.
“I mean it. I’ll go. But I won’t go alone.” Baldemar sat back, still glaring at Diego, straight into his eyes.
Diego listened to those words again, this time in his mind, and what he heard was not the bravado of a drunken friend. Baldemar had been testing him. He heard it now. Why hadn’t he heard it then? Now, nearly three years later, Baldemar was in the Martinica, in danger of his life, and it was up to Diego to rescue him. But that didn’t seem likely, not today. He’d already waited several hours in this deadening sunlight, staring at the National Palace, that dreary heap of rocks, and so far he had nothing at all to show.