“Be careful,” said Icaza, rejoining Laura and Juan Francisco. “Obregón is a fox. He wants worker support so he can undercut the followers of the peasant rebels, Zapata and Villa. He talks about a proletarian Mexico to provoke peasant and Indian Mexico. According to the Creole revolutionary leaders, who are cautious on this subject, that’s still the reactionary, backward, religious Mexico, suffocated by its scapularies and fumigated by the incense of too many churches. Be careful with the fraud, Juan Francisco, very careful.”
“But it’s the truth,” said Juan Francisco heatedly. “The peasants wear the image of the Virgin on their hats, they go to Mass on their knees, they aren’t modern, but Catholic and rural, Dr. Icaza.”
“Listen, Juan Francisco, stop calling me doctor or we’ll end up in a fistfight. And stop acting like such a hick. When you meet a young lady from high society whom you like, you do not address her as ‘miss,’ you dummy. Stop behaving like a reactionary, retarded, premodern peasant.” Xavier Icaza’s voice pealed with laughter.
But Juan Francisco insisted, with no trace of humor, that peasants were reactionaries, that urban workers were true revolutionaries, the fifteen thousand workers who fought in the Red Battalions, the hundred and fifty thousand members of the House of the Workers of the World—when had anything like that ever been seen in Mexico?
“Want some contradictions, Juan Francisco?” Icaza interrupted him. “Think about the battalions of Yaqui Indians who joined General Obregón to defeat the oh-so-agrarian Pancho Villa at the battle of Celaya. And start getting used to it, my friend. Revolutions are contradictory, and if they take place in a country as contradictory as Mexico, well, it can drive you crazy,” Icaza wailed, “as crazy as when you stare into Laura Daz’s eyes. In short, López Greene: when the Revolution came to power with Carranza and Obregón, did those leaders accept self-governance in the factories and the expulsion of foreign capitalists as the Red Battalions had been promised?”
No, said Juan Francisco, he knew “we” were going to live through a constant give-and-take with the government, but “we” are not going to give in on our fundamental principles; “we” have organized the biggest strikes in all Mexican history, we’ve resisted all the pressures of the revolutionary government that wanted to turn us into official labor puppets, we got salary increases, we always negotiate, we made Carranza nuts because he couldn’t figure out where we were vulnerable, he jailed us, called us traitors, we cut the light in Mexico City, they captured the head of the electricians, Ernesto Velasco, and put a gun to his temple as they asked how to turn the power back on, they broke us again and again, but “we” never give up, we always return to the fight, and we always go back to the negotiating table, we win, we lose, we’ll win a little and lose a lot, but it’s fine, it’s fine, no need to strike the colors, we know how to turn the lights on and off and they don’t, they need us.
“Armonía Aznar was an exemplary fighter,” said Juan Francisco López Greene when he unveiled the plaque in honor of the Catalan woman in the house where Laura and her family lived. “Like all the anarcho-syndicalists, she came to Veracruz. She arrived with the Spanish anarchist Amedeo Ferrés and secretly organized the printers and typographers during the Porfirio Díaz presidency. Then, during the Revolution, she fought in the House of the Workers of the World—with heroism and, which is more difficult, without glory, secretly delivering mail right here in Xalapa, carrying documents to and from Veracruz to Mexico City.”
Juan Francisco paused and sought out, among the hundred or so at the ceremony, the eyes of Laura Díaz.
“All she did was made possible thanks to the revolutionary generosity of Don Fernando Díaz, president of the bank, who allowed Armonía Aznar to take refuge here and carry out her work in secret. Don Fernando is ill, and I will be so bold as to salute him and thank him, his wife, and his daughter in the name of the working class. This discreet and valiant man acted in this way, he told us, in memory of his son Santiago Díaz, shot by thugs in the pay of the dictatorship. Honor to all of them.”
That night, Laura stared intensely into the mute eyes of her invalid father. Then she slowly repeated what Juan Francisco López Greene had said at the ceremony, and Fernando Díaz blinked. When Laura wrote on the little blackboard the family used to communicate with him, she wrote simply, THANK YOU FOR HONORING SANTIAGO. Then Fernando Díaz, as was his custom, opened his eyes very wide and made an immense effort not to blink. All of them, the women in the house, knew those two gestures well—blinking over and over again or not blinking until his eyeballs seemed ready to pop out of their sockets—though they had no idea what either meant. On this occasion, Fernando tried to raise his hands and clench his fists, but they fell on his lap, defeated. He simply arched his eyebrows like two circumflexes.
“Soon we’ll find a house where we can live and have hoarders right here on Bocanegra Street,” Mutti Leticia announced a few days later.
“I’ll read to Fernando every night,” said the writing aunt, Virginia, her lips tight and her eyes feverish. “Don’t worry, Laura.”
Laura went in to say good night to her mute father, to read passages from Jude the Obscure to him for half an hour, and she could imagine her father dead, his face made beautiful by death, death that would rejuvenate him. They would all have to wait for his death with confidence, even joy, because death would erase the traces of time from Don Fernando, and Laura would always have with her the image of a tender, strong man whenever she needed it.
“Don’t let this chance slip by,” said her aunt the pianist, Hilda Kelsen, that same night. “Look at my hands. You know what I could have been, isn’t that true, Laura? I never want you to have to say the same thing.”
Laura Díaz and Juan Francisco López Greene were married in a court in Xalapa on May 12, 1920, Laura’s birthday, and she who sang on the twelfth of May the Virgin dressed in white came walking into sight with her coat so gay, and the black Zampaya swept and sang ora la cachimbá-bimbá-bimbá now my black girl dance to me now my black girl dance away, and Laura Díaz went out with her husband on the Interoceanic to Mexico City and halfway there she burst into tears because she’d forgotten the Chinese doll Li Po in her pillows back in Xalapa and at the Tehuacán station Juan Francisco was told that President Venustiano Carranza had been assassinated at Tlaxcalantongo.
6.
Mexico City: 1922
THERE ARE NO SEASONS in Mexico City. The dry period runs from November to March, and then comes the period of rains from April to October. There’s no way to get a grip on the weather except for the water and the sun, the real heads and tails of Mexico City. And that’s quite a lot. For Laura Díaz, the image of her husband, Juan Francisco López Greene, became permanently fixed one rainy night. Hatless, right in the center of the city, the Zócalo, addressing a multitude, Juan Francisco did not have to shout. His speaking voice was deep and strong, the opposite of his low, private voice. His image was the quintessence of combat, with his heavy soaked hair dripping over the nape of his neck, on his forehead and ears, water pouring off his eyebrows, out of his eyes, and into his mouth, with an oilcloth cape covering his huge body, which she, on their newlywed nights, had approached with fear, respect, suspicion, and gratitude. At the age of twenty-four, Laura Daz had chosen.
She remembered the boys at provincial dances whom she couldn’t tell one from the other. They were interchangeable, pleasant, elegant …
“Laura, the thing is, he’s very ugly.”
“But Elizabeth, he doesn’t look like anyone else.”
“He’s dark-skinned.”
“No more so than my Aunt María de la O.”
“But you’re not going to marry her, are you? There are so many white boys in Veracruz.”
“This one’s stranger or more dangerous, I don’t know.”
“And that’s why you chose him? You’re crazy! And how dangerous, Laura! I envy you, but I’m also sorry for you.”
The newlyweds left Xalapa, and no sooner had Laura r
eached Mexico’s central plateau than she missed the beauty and balance of the provincial capital, its nights so perfect that with each evening they bestowed new life on all things. She would remember her home, and her family misfortunes would seem to dissolve in the all-encompassing harmony of the life she’d lived and recalled with her parents, with Santiago, with her maiden aunts, and with her dead grandparents.
She said the word “harmony” and was upset by the memory of the heroic Catalan anarchist whom Juan Francisco referred to that rainy evening when defending the eight-hour workday, minimum wage, paid maternity leave, paid vacations, everything the Revolution had promised, he was saying in his deep, resonant voice, speaking to the crowd gathered in the plaza to defend and demand enactment of Article 123 of the Constitution that May 1, 1922, in the nocturnal rain. This was the first time in the history of humanity that the right to work and the protection of the worker had constitutional status, which was why the Mexican Revolution was a real revolution, not a military coup, not a revolt, not the kind of riot that took place elsewhere in Spanish America. What happened in Mexico was different, unique, everything created from the ground up in the name of the people, by the people, Juan Francisco was saying to the two thousand people gathered in the rain. He was saying it to the rain itself, to the night as it fell, to the new government, successors to the assassinated Venustiano Carranza, who had been eliminated, everyone thought, by the triumvirate of the Agua Prieta rebellion—Calles, Obregón, and de la Huerta—who now held power. López Greene addressed all of them in the name of the Revolution, but he was also speaking to Laura Díaz, his young wife just arrived from the provinces. A beautiful girl, tall, strange with her conspicuous, aquiline features, beautiful because of her very strangeness; he’s talking to me as well, to me, I’m part of his words, I have to be part of his speech.
Now it was raining all over the central valley, and she was remembering the ascent in the train from Xalapa to the Buenavista station in Mexico City. I’m exchanging sand for stone, forest for desert, araucarias for cactus. The ascent to the central plateau passed through a landscape of mists and burned lands, then over a hard plain of quarries and workers quarrying stone who looked like stone; occasional poplars with silvery leaves. The landscape took Laura’s breath away and made her thirsty.
“You fell asleep, honey.”
“The landscape frightened me, Juan Francisco.”
“You missed the pines in the high forests.”
“Ah, that’s why it smells so good.”
“Don’t think everything here is just bald plains. Look, I’m from Tabasco, I miss the tropics as much as you, but now I couldn’t live without these highlands, without the capital.”
When she asked him why, Juan Francisco changed his tone of voice, falsified it, perhaps made it a bit high-flown in order to talk about Mexico City, the very center of the country, its heart, you might say, the Aztec city, the colonial city, the modern city one on top of the other.
“Like a layer cake,” laughed Laura.
Juan Francisco didn’t laugh. Laura went on making comparisons. “Like one of those food trays that would be brought up to Mrs. Aznar, your heroine, my love.”
Juan Francisco became even more serious.
“I’m sorry. I’m just joking.”
“Laura, weren’t you ever curious about seeing Armonía Aznar?”
“I was just a girl.”
“You were already in your teens.”
“It’s probably that my childhood impression lasted, Juan Francisco. Sometimes, no matter how old you are, you’re still frightened by the ghost stories you were told when you were little.”
“Forget all that stuff, Laura. You’re not the little girl of the family anymore. You’re at the side of a man fighting seriously.”
“I know, Juan Francisco. I respect that.”
“I need your support. Your logic, not your fantasy.”
“I’ll try not to let you down, my love. I respect you greatly. You know that.”
“Begin by asking yourself why you never rebelled against your family, why you never went up to the attic to see Armonía Aznar.”
“It’s that I was afraid, Juan Francisco. I tell you, I was just a little girl.”
“You missed the chance to meet a great woman.”
“Forgive me, my love.”
“You must forgive me.” Juan Francisco hugged her and kissed a nervously clenched fist. “I’ll take care of educating you about reality. You’ve lived for too long in infantile fantasies.”
Orlando was no fantasy, she wanted to tell him, knowing she’d never dare mention the disturbing blond young man. Orlando, who was a seducer, wanted to meet me in the attic, and that’s why I never went up there; besides, Mrs. Aznar wanted to be respected, she asked for that.
“She herself gave orders that she not be bothered. Who was I to disobey?”
“In other words, you didn’t have the nerve.”
“No, there are lots of things I don’t have the nerve to do.” Laura smiled, making a face of false repentance. “With you I would have the nerve. You’ll teach me, won’t you?”
He smiled and kissed her with the passion he’d been giving her since their wedding night, which they spent on the Interoceanic train. He was a big, vigorous, and loving man, with none of the mystery that had surrounded her other imminent love, Orlando Ximénez, but without his aura of evil, either. Next to the curly-haired blond of the San Cayetano ball, Juan Francisco was plainness itself, an open, almost primitive being in his direct sensual appetite. And because of that Laura was loving him more and more, as if her husband confirmed the first impression the young woman had felt in the Xalapa Casino when she met him. Juan Francisco the lover was as magnificent as Juan Francisco the orator, the politician, the labor leader.
(I don’t know anything else, I don’t know anything more, I can’t compare, but I can enjoy and I do enjoy, the truth is I enjoy myself in bed with this huge man, this male devoid of subtleties and perfumes like Orlando, Juan Francisco, mine.)
“You’re going to have to break the habit of calling me ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’ in public.”
“Yes, darling. Sorry. Why?”
“We’re in the company of comrades. We’re in the struggle. You just can’t do that.”
“Isn’t there any love among your comrades?”
“It isn’t serious, Laura. Enough.”
“I’m sorry. With you, next to you, for me everything is love. Even the union movement.” She laughed, as she always laughed, caressing her man’s long, hairy ear. She’d actually say that: “You’re my man and I’m your little wife, my love is macho but I mustn’t call him ‘darling.’”
“You always call me ‘girl,’ you’ve never called me ‘darling.’ and I respect you, I know it’s your natural way of speaking, just as it’s natural for me to call you …”
“Darling …”
He kissed her, but she was left with an uneasy, guilty feeling, as if, very secretly, the two of them had said something unrepeatable, fundamental, which they might one day either be happy about or deeply regret. That possibility was postponed indefinitely by the certainty that the two of them really didn’t know each other. Everything was a surprise. For both of them. Each expected that little by little they would reveal themselves to each other. Was that a consolation? The immediate reason for her misgivings, the one that registered in her head, was that her husband was reproaching her for not having had the courage to climb the stairs and knock at Armonía Aznar’s door. Juan Francisco’s presence and his own history abolished her motive and turned it into a pretext. Mrs. Aznar herself had requested isolation and respect. Laura had that excuse, but the excuse concealed a secret: Orlando, a subject not be mentioned. Laura was left with guilt, a vague, diffuse guilt which she could not defend, transforming it, she suddenly realized, into a motive for identifying with her husband, making it a motive for solidarity with the struggle instead of an obstacle between the two of them, a distancin
g—she didn’t know what to call it and attributed everything, in the end, to her inexperience.
“Don’t call me ‘darling’ in public.”
“Don’t worry … darling.” The young bride laughed and tossed a pillow at the tousled, hairy head of her sleepy husband, naked, dark, powerful, smiling now with his strong teeth, wide as an Indian frieze. Like kernels of white corn, said Laura in order not to deify her husband, “wow, you’ve got teeth like kernels of white corn,” Juan Francisco was the novelty of her life, the beginning of another history, far from her family, from Veracruz, from memory.
“I hope you’re not choosing him just because he’s different,” warned Aunt María de la O.
“Who’s more different than you, Auntie, and whom do I love more than I love you?”
Niece and aunt joyfully hugged and kissed each other, and now, near Juan Francisco’s face while they made love, Laura would feel his attractive darkness, his irresistible difference. Love was like satiating herself with brown sugar or getting drunk on that cinnamon perfume people from the tropics inherit, as if all of them had been conceived in a wild garden amid mangos, papayas, and vanilla. Which is what she thought about in bed with her husband, mangos, papayas, and vanilla, unable not to, thinking it again and again, understanding that in thinking these things she was paying less attention to what she was doing but also prolonging it, fearing at the same time that Juan Francisco might notice her distraction and take it for indifference and confuse the passion of their united bodies in bed with a comparison unfavorable for him, even though he’d proven that Laura was a virgin, that he was the first. Would he suspect that it wasn’t being first that was disturbing him but being another, one more, the second, the third, who knows?—the fourth—in the succession of his wife’s loves?