18

Messages from Elsewhere

Victoriano Huerta pushed open the Colonial’s heavy front gates with such force that they slammed against the walls alongside them. He charged through them like a gorilla headed for a grudge match. Grace was feeding stale bread crumbs to the goldfish in the fountain. She snapped erect when he came stomping through the covered entryway and into the courtyard.

With one hand on the butt of his revolver, Rico followed close behind Huerta. He was determined to shoot his commander-in-chief in the back of the head if he lifted a hand against Grace, and to hell with the consequences. His resolve was admirable, but it proved that he didn’t really know Grace yet.

She advanced straight into the general’s trajectory, her hand out in welcome. “General Huerta, what a surprise to see you.”

She didn’t say “Pleased to see you,” Rico noticed, nor “Honored to have you back.” He was impressed by how fast she could act, and with tact and honesty to boot. He was astonished by Huerta’s reaction.

The smile that broke out on the general’s havoc of a face was genuine. Grace’s hand disappeared in both of his, then he threw his arms around her in a hug.

When Huerta let go of Grace he was beaming. “Ay, Mrs. Knight, I have missed the Colonial’s stewed plums. My digestion has not been right since I left here.”

“And shall you be needing a room, General?”

“Yes, my dear Mrs. Knight.”

Lyda appeared in the archway leading to the lobby and announced, “A whoop-and-holler from Em Cee for the general.”

When Huerta stalked off to answer the telephone, Rico took Grace’s arm and guided her into the small room she used as an office. He held her face in both hands and kissed her for a long time. She kissed him back, then wound her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest.

“I have missed you,” she murmured to the first brass button on his tunic.

“Mi cielo, every moment away from you is an eternity.”

When Grace looked up at him, Rico could see the anxiety in her eyes. Huerta had made the Colonial his home a year ago and Rico could well imagine the tense scenes he had caused.

“Will the general be quartering with us?” she asked.

“He’s supposed to be on his way to the capital right now.”

“Then why is he here?”

“The general is used to giving orders, not taking them.”

The telephone hung on the wall just outside the office door. Huerta’s rapid-fire Spanish carried across the lobby and echoed up the stairwell.

“To whom is he speaking?”

“The president, I assume.”

“Madero?”

“Yes. We had surrounded a few of Zapata’s troublemakers and were about to capture them when a message arrived. Madero called Huerta back to the capital.”

“Huerta brought an army to Morelos for a few troublemakers?”

“It’s nothing to concern yourself about.”

Grace pulled out of his embrace. Placing the palms of her hands against his chest, she held him at arm’s length.

“I am not a child, Federico Martín, to be shielded from the truth. This is my country, too.”

In a long exhale Rico set his illusions free. He had thought he could avoid discussing politics with Grace. He had not been acquainted with her for long, but he had observed her closely enough to know better. He kept his voice low even though his commander-in-chief was still upholding the holler part of the whoop-and-holler. Huerta didn’t understand much English, but he assumed any hushed conversation was about him. Caution was the wisest course anywhere in Huerta’s vicinity.

Rico explained the situation, in brief.

“President Madero has not moved fast enough to return land to the farmers. Many of them have joined Zapata. To finance their campaign they’re demanding money from the hacendados. They’ve burned sugarcane fields, lured away the workers, and fired on the trains. I don’t agree with Huerta’s methods, but if Zapata is not stopped, war will break out again and this time it will destroy the country.”

“Zapata laid down his arms right here in Cuernavaca a year and a half ago. He disbanded his army. Do you think he plans to start another rebellion?”

“I don’t know what he plans. Madero may be too slow with land reforms, but he is our best hope. Even Zapata knows that.”

“General Huerta is a very dangerous man, Federico. Do you think the president is safe?”

“Madero’s too popular for anything bad to happen to him.” Which was half the truth. The people loved him, but many of the old Porfiristas, men who still wielded influence, did not.

Rico stroked her hair. How he had missed the wiry wilderness of it.

“Two good things have come from this,” he said.

“What would those be?”

“Madero must realize that allowing Huerta to…” he searched for an English word “…to destroy those who disagree with government policies is wrong. Maybe he intends to compromise with Zapata. And…” This was the best part. “He knows that keeping soldiers garrisoned in Cuernavaca is essential for the safety of the capital.”

“Does that mean you’ll stay here?”

“It does, my heaven.”

As Rico breathed in the perfume of her hair he had an insight, like a telegram from the cosmos. He realized that his duty to his country superceded other obligations. If he had not enlisted in the army his grandfather would require him, as the only son and heir, to accompany the family wherever they went. Where they went could be anyplace from Mexico City to El Paso to Manhattan to Paris.

Rico might not have guessed how Grace would react to an irate tyrant, but he did know one thing for certain. He could not ask her to choose between him and her beloved hotel. He was a gambler, but he did not bet on losing propositions. Anywhere his family lit other than Cuernavaca would lack Grace.

He would stay on with President Madero’s army, flawed as it was. He would fight and die if need be, to re unite his country and to protect the woman he loved more than life itself.

 

When the president of Mexico came to the Colonial for dinner in January of 1913, he brought his own Ouija board. It was a beauty, made of wood laminate with a bird’s-eye maple veneer, but that wasn’t why Francisco Madero treasured it.

When he stayed at the Colonial before his election in November of 1911, he had confided to Grace that this particular talking board had foretold he would be president. At the time, Grace didn’t think it much of a prediction. After all, the day he entered Mexico City 100,000 people had thronged the streets to greet the man his followers called The Apostle. Behind him rode a revolutionary army with the likes of Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and Venustiano Carranza leading them. Grace had seen it all from a third-floor balcony of her late husband’s family home. It was a day she would never forget. It was the day she knew she could return to her beloved hotel and resume her life there.

Now she had another thought on the subject of Francisco Madero’s presidency. Be careful what you wish for.

Grace liked Madero. She respected him. But Mexicans must think him an unusual man. He not only had stated the day his revolution would begin, but had fixed the hour: November 20, 1910, at six in the evening. Six in the evening. Why not seven? Or five past ten in the morning?

Grace imagined him telling his compatriots to calibrate their watches. The revolution will start promptly at 6 P.M. Did he equate overturning a government, plummeting his countrymen into a civil war, and defying the world’s most powerful nations with attending a theater performance?

Madero didn’t seem a rebel. His voice sounded like it should come fluting from a canary cage. He belonged to a very wealthy family, members of Mexico’s elite. He had studied in Paris and at the University of California in Los Angeles. He was an intellectual and a vegetarian. He had helped organize the first Spiritist Congress in Mexico City in 1906. He had formed a federation of Mexican spiritist societies and established a center for the study of the supernatural.

Grace wondered where he had found the time to foment revolution. Maybe that was why he had been so precise. The revolution had to start at a certain hour to fit into his hectic schedule.

He barely topped out at five feet in height. Grace could imagine Jake McGuire saying of him, “If he were to hit me and I were to find out about it…” Grace was glad Jake was not here to say anything. He made no secret of how unhappy he was with the increase in workers’ wages that Madero’s rebellion had cost his bosses at Standard Oil.

By the time Grace and the Maderos finished dinner, the restaurant had emptied. Maybe the bodyguard of half a dozen armed soldiers made the diners nervous. Grace would have felt safer if Rico and Juan were here, but they had been called for duty at the rail depot at Tres Marías. It wouldn’t do to have disgruntled peasants blow up the president’s train.

As the waiters cleared away the remains of a meatless meal, President Madero sent his compliments to Wing Ang in the kitchen. When he picked up the leather case sitting by his chair, Mrs. Madero excused herself. Perhaps she didn’t want to know what the spook in the Ouija board would say tonight. Or maybe she was tired of her husband’s trysts with spirits.

Socrates was waiting to drive her to the home of friends.

“Mr. President,” Grace said, “please allow me to apologize again for asking that you and Mrs. Madero keep elsewhere.”

“I perfectly understand, Mrs. Knight. This is a large building with more than one entrance. Our safety would be difficult to ensure, and our presence would put your other guests at risk.”

Grace lit candles and turned out the lights while Madero took a dark green velvet drawstring bag from the leather case. He slid the board out of it and set it on the table with the pointer on top.

“Do you know what Mr. Fuld says about the talking board?” Madero asked.

“Mr. Fuld is the manufacturer of your Ouija?”

“Yes. He said ‘It surpasses, in its unique results, mind reading, clairvoyance, and second sight. As unexplainable as Hindu magic—Ouija is unquestionably the most fascinating entertainment for modern people and modern life.’”

In her youth, Grace had seen too many sleight-of-hand stunts from behind stage curtains to be anything but skeptical about the Ouija’s “unique results.” But she could agree with Mr. Fuld that his board was entertaining.

The alphabet was painted in black in two concentric arcs on the face of it, with numbers from one to ten in a horizontal line below them. “Yes” was printed in the top left hand corner and “No” in the right. From the scratched and worn condition of the letters and numbers it was obvious that the board had had a lot of use.

Madero ran an affectionate hand over the surface of it. “The interesting thing about this board is that it seems to have several spirits willing to speak through it. Let us see which one we can summon tonight.”

Skeptic or not, whenever Grace put her hands on the wooden pointer a tingling sensation started in her fingertips and ran up her arms. As the planchette moved under her hands and Madero’s, the rest of the world dissolved. Grace’s attention narrowed to the print on the Ouija. When the pointer stopped at a letter Grace wrote it down.

She was concentrating so hard that a loud rapping startled her into overturning the board. She looked around and saw a figure silhouetted in the doorway. The light was behind the stranger and a shawl threw a deep shadow across her face. She knocked on the door frame again.

For several thundrous heartbeats, Grace thought she and Francisco really had summoned up one of the Ouija board’s resident spirits. Then Leobardo, the nightwatchman, appeared behind the mysterious figure. Grace relaxed. Leobardo had hard and fast rules about consorting with ghosts.

Grace had made an exception to her no-firearms policy for the members of Madero’s bodyguard. All of them drew their pistols at the first rap. If the intruder was a ghost, they were ready to kill her again.

“I told her to go to the rear entrance, Mamacita,” Leobardo said, “but she claims she has a letter for the president. She says it’s very important. She says she was told to wait for an answer.”

Grace couldn’t see the messenger’s face, but she guessed she was young and pretty. Leobardo’s wife probably had her reasons for paying a witch to tie knots in the drawstrings of his underwear. This woman had no doubt sweet-talked him into letting her in.

“Tell her to give the letter to Captain Salazar,” said Madero.

Salazar brought it to Madero. He read it slowly, then looked up at the messenger.

“Tell Mr. Zapata that I thank him for his offer, but my own guard is protection enough.”

When the woman left, Madero translated the letter for Grace.

“Emiliano Zapata thinks my life is in danger. He has offered to provide men as protection. He says he will come with them to assure my safety.”

“You were right to turn Zapata down, Francisco. You can’t trust him, after the trouble he has caused.”

Madero’s face, lit by the flickering candles, was a study in weariness, disillusionment, and grief.

“Ah, Mrs. Knight, I do trust him, more than any of the men who surround me. He alone has stayed true to his principles. Is not irony the most tantalizing of life’s conceits?” His smile had little humor in it. “If Emiliano Zapata comes to the capital, I am certain someone will assassinate him. And then…how do the Americans put it? All hell will break loose. It is best that he stay here, in Morelos.”

Madero and his guard left with Socrates. The Motorette wouldn’t accommodate them all, so Grace had arranged for a horse-drawn station taxi to wait out front.

Grace blew out the candles. She had cause to worry about Madero’s safety. His old nemesis, General Huerta, had eaten his breakfast of steak and eggs and plums in this room two weeks ago. When he left for the train station afterward, the look in his eyes could not be interpreted as anything short of murderous.

She had been relieved when he left, but now she would rather he were here than in Mexico City. There he could cause a lot more trouble for the friend she called Panchito Madero than he could here in Cuernavaca.