Mexico: A Novel Part 35

No matter how hard he worked at the Mineral, Jubal could not lessen his infatuation with Alicia, but history now removed her from his presence. Major Echeverria had a.s.sociated himself with the rising fortunes of Porfirio Diaz, whom the Palafox men had supported for years, and who showed promise of correcting the excesses perpetrated by the Indian president, Benito Juarez. Now Diaz was about to make his move to stabilize the nation, and Echeverria went with him, taking his wife and family to Mexico City.

But as Alicia left Toledo she did a somewhat surprising thing: when she looked at the China Poblana dress that four generations of girls in her family had treasured, she impulsively wrapped it and attached a hastily penned note: "Senor Clay, you are a dear, loyal man whom we all appreciate. I pray that you will find yourself a good wife and much happiness. This dress is a remembrance. Alicia Palafox Echeverria." Handing the package to one of the family's Indian servants, she said: "Take this to the Mineral and leave it in the room of Senor Clay," and she went off to the capital.

When my grandfather returned to his quarters, he told his family later: "I wondered what this gift could be, because the note was inside. When I opened it and saw the colorful dress I was still confused. But then I read the letter." He never told his family what he had made of Alicia's strange gesture, but I at least know what he did, because I still retain proof. He went to an Indian wood-carver and asked him to make a st.u.r.dy doll, the size of an eight-year-old girl. When it was delivered he dressed it in the China Poblana dress, and the doll stayed with him till he died. My father, John Clay, then kept it, and I have it in my apartment in New York.

Alicia's prayer, which Grandfather interpreted as a command that he find himself a wife, arrived at a time when he, too, had begun to think about this, for his Confederate friends who had married Mexican girls were constant proof that even when the Rebel was Protestant and his bride Catholic, a strong union could result. And just at this time, circ.u.mstances developed that required him to see more and more of Maria de la Caridad. No longer a teenager-she was now twenty-four-she had tired of climbing the perilous steps more often than was absolutely necessary and she had taken to sleeping now and then in the lowest cavern, down with the donkeys and the Indian men who elected to remain there permanently. One such man, Elpidio, who had not seen sunlight in years, explained when she asked why he never climbed up: "If the priest sends me here and if Senor Clay makes me work so hard, they have taken the sun from me and I don't give a d.a.m.n when I die."

This bitter lament so distressed her that the following night she took Elpidio's complaint to Senor Clay, and as he listened to her report of how the Indian men lived in that bottom cavern he began to question the slave-owning mentality he had brought with him from Virginia. For some weeks he did nothing about it, contenting himself with visiting the caverns each day and inspecting the tragic conditions in which the brown-skinned men labored. But one evening as he was about to climb the appallingly inadequate stairway, he felt invisible hands clutching at his throat, and at each step upward the strangulation became more real, until he halted in the topmost cavern, one abandoned more than a century before. Here he formed the self-incriminating judgment: On the day we send them into this mine, we condemn them to death! It was a moment fraught with overwhelming guilt.

The next morning he told the Palafoxes: "There are engines now that can haul a cage up out of the mine loaded with ore and lower it back down with men. to work the ore. We must use those, no matter the cost." They agreed, and were pleased when he added: "And they have a new wire rope in place of the bulky manila hemp."

Immediately Clay drew the specifications for a cage capable of negotiating the diameter of the existing shaft, and where the stone sides were close together he appointed workmen to cut away protruding stone. In this way he created one of the first humane mines in Mexico. During this hectic time when the engine was being installed and the diameter widened he saw a good deal of Caridad, who helped by supervising the traffic on the stairs that were soon to be abandoned. He found her extremely quick in comprehending his orders and helpful in explaining Indian traditions and preferences to the other Confederates, so that by the time the new system was installed he and Caridad had achieved such rapport in working together that she became in effect his a.s.sistant.

When the conversion was completed and the new engine from England, appropriately called a donkey, was bringing ore above ground and taking workers down, he arranged two celebrations: a fancy one in the House of Tile attended by local officials, friends of the Palafoxes and a mariachi orchestra; and a much quieter get-together of the Confederates, including any living in the area, whether they worked at the Mineral or not. Jubal, aware that many Mexican wives would be present, invited Caridad to attend-he wanted to show his grat.i.tude for the help she had given.

The highlight of the Confederates' party was a report from a Baptist clergyman from Alabama who was quietly proselytizing for Protestantism among the devout Catholic Indians: "Wonderful news from the North," he said. "Their President Grant is proving to be the most corrupt, stupid and inadequate leader they've ever had. A thieving a.s.s." After the cheering, a man from an important family in North Carolina asked with mock grief: "Why didn't he show those attributes when he was fighting us?"

Jubal saw how easily the Mexican wives fitted into the gathering, speaking freely, making jokes, teasing their voluble husbands. One wife who had become proficient in English said: "When I listen to you muchachos I find it difficult to remember that you lost the war." Her husband snapped: "But we took care of you paisanos in 1848," and everyone cheered.

As the party ended, Caridad took Jubal aside and said bitterly in her broken English: "Always the same. You give big party for Palafoxes, mariachi band. You give one for Americans, lots of beer. But n.o.body do nothing for Indians-we do all the work. You saw it," she stormed. "You not ashamed?"

He was ashamed, but as a Virginia planter he was astounded that a woman who was virtually a slave with a different skin color should have talked to him so bluntly and on a subject so out of line with customary practice. Of course, on his plantation when a job was well done he might have given the slaves a side of beef, and maybe Zephania would have helped her cooks bake some pecan pies, but no slave would ever have demanded any of this-least of all a woman. But the idea was so clearly right that he was humbled. He clasped her hand and said: "You're right in what you say. I need your help." And then he added: "And I need you, too," to which she whispered: "Yes, you do."

At first they did not get married. Quietly she moved into his quarters and cleaned the place. In the following days each of his two main Confederate workmen, accosting him separately, said: "You'll never regret it," and the two wives told Caridad with considerable firmness: "Learn English."

Their marriage took place in one of the cathedral's ornate chapels, not in the outdoor chapel, where the Indians had attended rites during the rule of the first Palafox bishops, and in due course they had a son, who would become my father. In naming him John, Jubal said: "I've always hated my name, that Old Testament stuff. And I think the names Mexicans give their boy babies are worse: Hilario, Alipio, Candido. I want the simplest name there is. Sam would be good, but the women would call him Samuel. Maybe John. It's biblical too, but people forget that," and John it was.

When Jubal was older he received a surprising letter from the Cold Harbor post office. It was from Grace Clay Shallcross and said that to her delight, her husband, an important lawyer with government connections thanks to his having been an aide to General Grant, had saved his salary, taken her back to the land she owned at Newfields and built there a replica, no, an improved version, of the old plantation house. The letter ended: "Your spirit dominates the place, Father, the same fields, the same crops, many of the same Negroes but working for wages now. Please come home and help us enjoy it."

Caridad, who could now read English easily, appreciated the grave threat this letter was to her and did not protest when he burned it without taking down the new address, nor would his son, John, ever visit the place, nor John's son, myself.

The act of Jubal's that had the most lasting effect on Toledo-for in time the silver mine petered out and all he achieved there was lost-was something he did in the 1890s, when he was an old man. While attending the spring fiesta in the plaza it occurred to him that this affair could be made much grander, so he hurried to the Palafox mansion and he and the Palafox men, all very old, made ambitious plans for the next fiesta: "We could have a Tournament of Flowers, for all the poets of the region. There'd be dancers from Oaxaca in their colorful costumes. We could build thirty stalls, all the same size, and store them from year to year." They gave full rein to their imagination, because they knew they would not see many more fiestas. The main innovative idea came from Don Alipio: "My Palafox bulls have become the best in Mexico, no contest. The city wants to make our plaza bigger. We'll help them. And to make the fiesta real, we'll have three grand bullfights, Friday, Sat.u.r.day, Sunday." Jubal said: "We'll give a hundred-peso prize to the best mariachi band." The men liked the idea, but the Palafoxes who handled funds asked: "Where will we get the hundred pesos?" and Jubal said: "From me. Do you know what my name means in the Bible? The father of all who play the harp and flute." One of the men pointed out: "No harps or flutes in a mariachi band," and Jubal retorted: 'Those trumpets make up for them."

When the time came to make colorful posters announcing the celebration, Jubal drew the sketch using the word "Festival," which is p.r.o.nounced like "Mineral" with a heavy accent on the last syllable. But when the Palafoxes saw his proposal they protested: "There's no such word in Spanish. Fiesta, Festivo, but no Festival." When he asked others, they confirmed that he had used a word that did not exist at that time in formal Spanish, but he was stubborn: "It has a singing sound, and the foreigners who come to Toledo to watch will know what it means," and the name stuck.

My grandfather did not die happy. He was protected by a wonderful wife, his son was now grown and Mexico was at peace under the iron dictators.h.i.+p of Porfirio Diaz. But then, as if to signal that the good old days were ending, in the northern city of Monterrey an anarchist tried to a.s.sa.s.sinate Diaz but struck instead the carriage of Colonel Echeverria, killing him and his wife, Alicia. Within three months Diaz had abdicated and the infamous General Gurza was destroying north-central Mexico, with Emiliano Zapata doing the same to the south.

Jubal was distraught. He had thought of Alicia Palafox as a member of his family. At times she was that child of eight in the sacred China Poblana, again the delicately beautiful bride he had seen on his return to Toledo, at other times the gracious woman in the plaza who had caught him buying the doll, or the sensitive person who had sent him the dress and the note, both of which he still kept. I think it is fair to say that in some quiet way these two had loved each other, but maybe I'm searching for a new word. I do know that the memory of Alicia Palafox lives in our family's memory as vividly as on that dreadful day when she was killed and Mexico began to fall apart.

Since I was born in 1909 and left Mexico permanently in 1938, it is obvious that I witnessed the continuing Revolution that scarred the country during those years; however, this pa.s.sage will be a story not about me but about my father, John Clay, who saw the tragedies not as a child but as a partic.i.p.ating adult. It is also the account of how Toledo reacted to the fighting, for our family lived there throughout the wars. To bring some order to the confusion I shall identify the people who play recurring roles, and some of the stages on which they acted.

Dominant in the rebellion was General Saturnino Gurza, a b.u.t.terball of a man six feet tall with an enormous belly that protruded from just below his rib cage, but faded away to almost nothing down to where he used a length of rope as a belt. Since he was proud of being a Peon, he wore the Peon's costume: sandals, unpressed loose white pants, no unders.h.i.+rt beneath his open-necked white s.h.i.+rt, a red bandanna and an enormous white straw sombrero.

He had a face to match his torso-big, round, hair in his eyes and a mustache that drooped below his chin line. On several occasions I heard him give orders, and I remember his coa.r.s.e voice, which seemed always to end with a sardonic laugh, as if he enjoyed doing the terrible things he did.

Gurza had growrf up in poverty in one of the bleak northern Mexican states along the border with the United States, a country for which he developed an abiding hatred. As a boy he had terrorized his companions and at the age of nineteen declared himself to be a colonel, fighting for whoever paid him. By twenty he was a self-appointed general, in which capacity he demonstrated such mastery that he quickly converted himself into a real general. So from boyhood he had been fighting constantly, but against whom or for whom he seemed never to understand. He became famous as the general with two wide bandoleers laden with cartridges crisscrossing his chest, a huge rifle slung in his left hand and a sneer on his lips. When that burly figure stormed into a meeting, it commanded respect.

In his lawless activities Gurza always seemed able to win the support of an army of ragtag dissidents called los descamisados (those without s.h.i.+rts), who enjoyed serving under him when he raided the sites between the American border and Mexico City. He also had no trouble taking control of an apparently limitless supply of trains that had now penetrated most parts of Mexico's corners. Regardless of which railroad he stole them from, they all looked alike: a wheezing engine whose water tank could be easily punctured by enemy bullets, maybe one ordinary coach with windows, one baggage car with heavy bars protecting its windows, followed by a string of flatcars-occasionally one would have fencelike sides-and the inevitable caboose in which rode enthusiastic soldiers who found joy in firing at anyone the men on the forward flatbeds had missed. Since three railway lines now crossed in Toledo, one leading to the capital, one to Guadalajara and one to San Luis Potosi, it was inevitable that we would be seeing a lot of General Gurza, whose short name was easy to remember.

In fact, during my childhood the history of Toledo was so entangled with the exploits of this wild man that in my mind Gurza and Toledo have become fused as one ent.i.ty. His excursions into town were inevitable, for he and his army lived on railroad freight cars, and that brought him to us constantly. I saw his troops in action on four terrifying occasions: in 1914, when the nuns were murdered; in 1916, when he killed five men of my family; in 1918, when he torched the town and murdered our priests; and in 1919, when he destroyed our mine. And there was that fifth excursion when he dandled me on his knee as if he were my loving uncle.

There were other visits, of course, for he was always on the move, but he came so often, either chasing or being chased, that specific events and their dates become a blur. What I can state for certain is that in my childhood he was an ogre, in my boyhood a terror, and in my later years a perplexity, the most remarkable Mexican I have known.

In our city the general had clearly identified enemies: the Palafoxes with their big homes and large tracts of land; Mother Anna Maria, the superior of the convent northwest of town, who had the bad luck to be known as a member of the Palafox family, thus incurring a double enmity; and Father Juan Lopez, an underweight, s.h.i.+fty-eyed village priest with a bad complexion and a burning desire to see his church sponsor and deliver justice to his Indians. In these years Father Lopez served as a minor functionary in the cathedral, which had a cadre of four other priests who discharged the traditional duty of catering to the well-to-do families in the region.

Each of these enemies of the general was a.s.sociated with some building or buildings, so that whenever he rampaged through Toledo he had no problem finding targets on which to vent his spleen. Mother Anna Maria's convent was a late-eighteenth-century building erected by the Palafoxes of the day. Situated on a hill north of Toledo, it commanded perhaps the finest view in the district, for one could see not only the pyramid and the smokestacks of the Mineral but also the profile of the city and the rolling countryside. The convent itself was a thing of beauty with secluded cloisters and low towers, but its surroundings alone would have made it special.

Ineffectual Father Lopez worked in the cathedral and lived in meager quarters on its grounds. The Palafox holdings included the Mineral, the big houses behind adobe walls and the bull ranch. But it was the city itself, a kind of self-contained refuge in the vicinity of Mexico City but not contaminated by it, that const.i.tuted the major target for an a.s.sailant. Any marauding army able to invade Toledo sent a message of fear to the capital: "Might we be next?" so government forces sometimes tried to forestall such attacks by encircling Toledo to defend it, but such futile efforts merely made the conquering armies more vengeful when they marched in as victors.

It would be helpful if I could explain who was fighting whom in those chaotic years, but I was unable to keep such things straight then any more than I can now. In 1911 the dictator Porfirio Diaz was overthrown by the poetic dreamer Francisco Madero, who was soon murdered by more practical people. Then a man named Victoriano Huerto battled for supremacy with a man named Venustiano Carranza, whom my father did not like. When the three famous bandits-Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata and Saturnino Gurza-took control, h.e.l.l broke loose across Mexico. At last Carranza was a.s.sa.s.sinated and Obregon resumed power, but he was a.s.sa.s.sinated, too, and in 1934, a black day in Mexican history so far as the Clay family was concerned, Lazaro Cardenas, a wild-eyed radical, became president, and our drift to exile began.

I hope you've been able to make sense of all this because, as I said before, I was never able to. What I knew was that General Gurza came and went, and when he came people died, and when he went they lamented their losses. Our first experience with him was in 1914, when I was five years old. One of his open trains approached Toledo from the north, and when a scout galloped into town with the terrifying news "Here comes General Gurza!" my father, who had become manager of the Mineral at my grandfather's death, put my mother and me in an inner room, saying: "No matter what happens, stay here," and he ran off to protect the mine.

Father did not have to worry about this incursion from the north, because the train came on a rickety track well to the west of the pyramid. This put the loaded cars close to the convent, and when our spa.r.s.e government troops halted the train at the edge of the city, Gurza, in a rage at having been prevented from entering Toledo, led a charge on the undefended convent, broke down the fragile gates, rousted out all the nuns and shot seven. He would have especially liked to execute Mother Superior Anna Maria, since she was a Palafox, but he could not find her. Loyal nuns at the risk of their own lives had hidden her-they were the ones that Gurza shot.

I was, as I said, five at the time, and although I can remember the horror with which my family heard of this outrage, I did not understand the euphemisms with which Mother and Father discussed the tragedy. They used the Spanish violado las monjas (violated the nuns) to describe what had happened before the women were killed, and perhaps it was better that I did not understand, but by the next time Gurza came through I knew that the nuns had been victims of indecent games, rape, torture and shooting. There was much violating of women when Gurza's bullies ransacked a place.

In the aftermath of this obscene attack, Father bought two pistols and coached Mother and me: 'They're beasts. Shoot them if they ever come to this side of the pyramid and try to force their way into the house." Taking Mother aside to where they supposed I could not hear, he told her: "If they're about to capture you, use the gun on them. If they're too many, use it on yourself." At the age of six I learned how to load, care for and use a revolver. And at night I had visions of holding off General Gurza, whom I had not yet seen, with my revolver and shooting him dead when he attempted to violate Mother.

I did get to see the general some years later when his dreadful train came down again from the north, this time without opposition. Backing it into town so as to provide a quick getaway if troops from the capital moved in, he rounded up all the citizens, including those of us at the Mineral, and herded us into the plaza. There, on a sunny July day in excessive heat, we sweltered with Father whispering: "Say nothing. Do nothing. Attract no attention," and in abject silence we watched as Gurza's men, working from lists that the officers read, rounded up the landowners of the district, the big ones with more than two hundred thousand acres each, and hauled them into that part of the plaza facing the cathedral. There put them against the stone wall of one of the towers and shouted accusations against them in a voice so loud it terrified me: "Good people of Toledo! These men, you know them, they stole your lands, threw you off, turned you into slaves. Isn't that right?" and from the listeners came many voices: "Yes, yes!"

Then he cried to one of his officers: "Read the list!" and the man, with no insignia showing that he was an officer, read: "Aureliano Palafox, sixty thousand acres. Belisario Palafox, forty thousand acres. Tomas, twenty thousand acres," and the litany continued to those who owned only a few thousand acres. In later years I remembered those figures and wondered how the Palafoxes had acquired so much land. I was not aware that our acreage extended far into the countryside.

When the list was completed, Gurza cried to one of his men: "How did these thieves get their land?" and the man shouted: "They stole it!"

"From who?"

"From the Peons."

"And what do we do with such thieves of honest people's land?"

"Shoot them!" The heat of the moment was so intense that many voices in the plaza screamed: "Shoot them!"

"My G.o.d," Father cried. "They're going to do it!" and he whispered to Mother: "Cover his eyes," and her hand came over my face, but a crack was left and with one eye I watched General Gurza, his bandoleers glistening in the sun, give the order to fire. I saw the muskets jump, the muzzles smoke, and the landowners fall as blood began to stain the foot of the cathedral tower.

Thinking the execution over, Mother dropped her hand, so I clearly saw that one of the owners had not been killed-in later years I would learn that this frequently happened in ma.s.s shootings-so now General Gurza whipped out his revolver, went to the wounded man and shot him through the head. Four Palafoxes had been executed-their careful ama.s.sing of land, usually with government approval, had signed their death warrants.

The bodies were left in the hot sun until evening, when Gurza gave the crowd permission to return home, but before we left the plaza I had a chance to look closely at the tower wall and saw that it was pockmarked with scars from bullets. In the decade ahead a thousand buildings would suffer similar marks.

How did the public executions affect our family? A kind of numbness spread over us. Father refused to believe that he had seen what happened, for he was revolted by its calculated brutality. He could not eat that night: "I'm still nauseated," he said. The effect on Mother was quite different-it was one of sullen rage. She was, after all, a Palafox, the daughter of Alicia Palafox, that beautiful woman whose China Poblano had so captivated my Grandfather Jubal. Having seen men related to her-one was an uncle-shot simply because they owned land had to be a warning that one day she too might be executed for a similar reason. She thought that perhaps we ought to leave the Mineral, since it was known as a Palafox holding, and she proposed this to Father and me, but we insisted on staying, for as he explained: "This is my job. It's a decent one and I've treated our people fairly." So we clung to our home and our occupation, but now we lived in apprehension, for if seven nuns and nine landowners could be shot without trial-the seven because they were religious, the nine because they owned land-anything could happen.

By the time I was eight, that is, in 1917, I had invented a gruesome game that any child in those turbulent years could have played. From newspapers of the day and the numerous cheap magazines featuring stories about various aspects of the endless war, I began to follow the careers of individual officers whose records attracted my attention, and when the file on some individual officer was completed, I had a representative account not only of his extremely active life but of Mexico in its agony. I had nine such compilations, each a duplicate of the others; the one for a young lieutenant named Fermin Freg stands out in my memory as epitomizing the period: 1910 newspaper. Brave Lieutenant Fermin Freg, who led the charge that defeated the rebellious enemies of our beloved protector of the nation, Porfirio Diaz.

1911 magazine. Major Freg as loyal defender of Francisco Madero, who had driven the hated dictator Diaz from Mexico.

1913 magazine. Lieutenant Colonel Freg in guard of honor for General Huerta, who ordered the murder of Madero.

1913 small booklet. Colonel Freg, aide-de-camp to General Carranza, who has ousted General Huerta from power.

1914 big book. Generals Prado, Gurza and Rubio signing The Pact of the Three Generals.

1915 large booklet. Colonel Freg in command of the firing squad that executed General Prado.

1916 very big book. General Freg taking salute after great victory at San Luis Potosi.

1917 largest book. Full page in garish color, body of General Freg fusilladed by troops still loyal to General Prado.

The biographies are monotonous in their predictability. The final photos of men like Madero, Carranza, Zapata and Obregon, each the recipient, for a few years, of enormous acclaim, show the men stained with their own blood, from "a bullet fired by a onetime friend.

T was a.s.sisted in this gruesome game by my grandmother, Maria de la Caridad, who was now a widow in her sixties, and as concerned as ever about the welfare of her family and her Indians, in that order. She lived with us in warm harmony and helped Mother raise me. Curiously, she spoke English better than Mother did and was determined that I learn it as well as Spanish. Thanks to her I grew up bilingual without a p.r.o.nounced accent in either language.

In this memoir I've said that the major characteristic of the Clays of Virginia was their ardent patriotism, but I myself had never witnessed this. I was relying upon family legend, but in 1917, while General Gurza was running wild in our part of Mexico, my father's attention was diverted to Europe, where the kaiser was trying to remake the world. When an American expeditionary force was dispatched across the Atlantic to oppose the Germans, Father growled: "It's about time," and he met with men in Toledo to follow the progress of the war. One night he cried out at supper: "If they threaten your way of life, you've got to do something!" and the next day he paid a hasty visit to the American emba.s.sy in Mexico City, where he learned that even though he was not an American citizen, he could volunteer for overseas service.

"Could it be with the Virginia regiment?"

"If you pay for the telegram, you'll find out."

When permission was granted he hurried home to Toledo with news that startled us: "The military attache at the emba.s.sy swore me in as an officer candidate. I'm to report immediately to Fort Dix." Then he added, almost as an afterthought: "Graziela, you and Mother can mind the Mineral while I'm gone."

When my mother began to cry, he comforted her and told me: "Watch after her while I'm gone." She sobbed: "You said you never wanted to see the United States again," and he explained: "I'm not doing this for the U. S. I'm doing it for Virginia." And he was off to the h.e.l.lish ditches of northeastern France.

In his absence our family purchased a map of the battle area and with pins and arrows followed his supposed exploits, and we were fairly accurate in our guesses as to where he was fighting. During the final drive on German positions, what we did not know was that he behaved with valor, winning commendations and medals.

His bravery on the field had an unexpected consequence. As the general pinned the medal on Father's tunic he said: 'This makes you eligible for automatic American citizens.h.i.+p," and on the sensible grounds that "in time of trouble, it's better to have two pa.s.sports than one," he accepted the offer, so that when he returned to the Mineral he could boast: "I'm a Virginian at last."

He had been home only a few weeks in 1918 when Mexico's permanent warfare engulfed him once more, for General Gurza launched his third attempt to capture Mexico City. Local patriots, goaded by a handful of federal troops, tried vainly to halt him north of the city, an act that so enraged him that he drove one of his trains right into the heart of Toledo, used troops from the other train to throw a cordon around the city and began what historians call the Sack of Toledo. He began with the cathedral, that gem of colonial architecture. Bringing up a small cannon, he fired numerous blasts at the eight majestic columns, destroying some completely, shattering portions of others. His men, with great effort, knocked the front doors off their hinges, then rushed inside and with their gun b.u.t.ts smashed decorations in the various chapels. Statuary was crushed, paintings slashed, and the altar area totally demolished in a frenzy of destruction. In less than an hour, one of the treasures of central Mexico was a shambles.

When the vandals reached the robing area where the priests stored their gold-ornamented festive robes, three young priests who had not fled Toledo after previous raids tried to protect these treasures. Enraged, the soldiers knocked the young men down and then, dragging them through the gaping front entrance, they shouted to those on guard in the plaza: "What shall we do with these?" and General Gurza gave the answer: "Shoot them!" so within a few minutes of their capture they were lined up against one of the walls of the church, and shot by a firing squad.

Then the rioting began in various parts of the city. Old buildings were set on fire. Others were ravaged. Stores were smashed. Women were raped in the street; at the height of the fury a man who had once worked for old Don Alipio, the bull breeder, shouted: "Let's get those d.a.m.ned bulls!" and he led a large gang of men waiting in the second train out to the Palafox ranch, where they methodically slaughtered by gunfire those proud black bulls that Don Alipio had imported from Spain. When they were finished, the leader of the gang cried: "Let the people eat the good meat!" and frightened Indians who ha^ been watching were told they could butcher the carca.s.ses if they wished, and the herd vanished under the knife.

When the grisly day ended, Toledo had been taught the grim lesson that it must never waver in its support of General Gurza. Its mission accomplished, the train backed away, turned at the edge of town and headed north.

The departure of General Gurza left Toledo in a stupor. Dazed people wandered about trying to a.s.sess the damage, and at the Mineral we heard reports of all the terrible things that had happened. My parents were gloomy: "This may be the end of our world. Can Toledo survive such a disaster?" and I could see that Mother felt that there was no future here, but Father reminded her that our family still had its home at the mine and its good health. There were also two surprising survivors of the destruction; against all odds they had kept alive by keeping themselves hidden.

The first was Father Lopez, the scrawny Indian priest at the cathedral. When the fury was at its height, he managed to hide in the small room allotted to Indian priests who served the peons. They belonged to the cathedral, but were never a true part of it, as their fellow priests refused to acknowledge them. For two days he was afraid to let anyone know he was alive, afraid that Gurza's men might be waiting for him. Unaware that he was the only member of the Cathedral priesthood alive, he finally slipped out of his hiding place and tried to mix in un.o.bserved with the people in the plaza. But as soon as he was recognized his appearance was treated as a kind of miracle: "We were sure you were dead. How did you escape?" He deemed it best not to share his secret, and after a while they left him alone, but there was no place for him to go. He knew that the surviving women at the convent had fled, as they were doing over much of Mexico, and he supposed that most of the priests in the Toledo area had been slain in the savage attacks that had been pursued with the hope of driving all Catholic clergy out of Mexico.

Afraid to remain in Toledo lest Gurza and his madmen return, he walked slowly north until he came to the Mineral. I was first to see him and recognized him by his furtive manner: "Dad! It's Father Lopez!" and when my parents joined me they saw it was indeed the priest, but since they had neVer had anything to do with him they felt no personal responsibility. But Grandmother Caridad said: "He's one of the good ones," and prevailed upon my parents to take him in. Thus the Clay family became the protectors of the last Catholic priest in the region, and, even though they knew the risk they were taking, they gave him a hiding place among the mine buildings and instructed the workmen to tell no one of his presence.

The other survivor of the attack on Toledo involved a more complicated rescue mission. One night Don Eduardo Palafox, accompanied by a foreman from his bull ranch southwest of town, sneaked up past the ruined convent and around the pyramid and, like Father Lopez, came to our door. They had a remarkable story to tell: "They killed all our bulls, wiped out the bloodline. But one male calf has survived. He was with his mother and although Gurza's men killed her, they missed the calf. If we can save him, we can restore the line, if peace ever comes."

"It will," Father said and forthwith took steps to save the valuable animal. That was the year he had introduced automobiles at the Mineral. So it was in a truck that Don Eduardo, his foreman, Father and I rode out to the Guadalajara Road and started for the ranch, but when we reached the cutoff to the left, the one that would have taken us to the main gate, the foreman said: "No, straight ahead six kilometers," and at the designated point he directed Father to turn sharp left over untended ground. After a b.u.mpy ride we reached a spot where two foremen with shaded lanterns were holding thfe ropes that kept a spirited young calf under control. Deftly they worked the animal into the truck and with this precious cargo the five of us drove back into town.

During the trip to and from the ranch, Father had conversed with Don Eduardo in a low voice that I had trouble hearing. As we reached the western entrance to Toledo they did a daring thing, one so improbable that we laughed about it years later. They drove out to the Mineral, followed Father's directions to a cave hidden behind a pile of slag, and eased the little bull into a neat sanctuary, where fodder was awaiting him. With a snort and a chop of horns that had not yet fully sprouted he ran about his new home. "His name," said the foreman, "is Soldado, the little soldier. Protect him. He's precious."

So at age nine I became custodian of one of Spain's best fighting bulls-a young fellow, true, and with only budding horns-and a more exciting pet no boy ever had. He was stubborn and was becoming so powerful that sometimes I was unable to make him go where he didn't want to, no matter how I pushed or pulled. But he obviously liked me and was pleased whenever F rejoined him after an absence. I think he understood that he had to hide in our cave, and although I grew tired of cleaning up after him, I came to think of him as my bull and watched with the satisfaction of a father as he grew more powerful and bull-like.

Occasionally, being careful not to arouse suspicion, the ranch foreman sneaked in to see how Soldado was doing, and when he saw the magnificent promise of the young bull's physique, especially his big chest and slim hindquarters, he told Father: 'Time we got him out of here. We think we have a place to hide him in a far corner of the ranch. We'll have a herd rea.s.sembled one of these days," and it was that conversation which spurred me to an action that I look back upon with amazement. Aware that I had under my care a fighting bull of pure Spanish caste-for the men reminded me of that repeatedly-I felt a nagging desire to see if he would know how to fight the way the big Palafox bulls had done during the spring festivals in the Toledo bullring.

In time that inquisitiveness became a driving compulsion, so I stole one of Mother's checkered red tablecloths, took it out to the cave, which provided enough light for my experiment, and tried to do the things I'd seen the great matadors do. I held the cloth with two hands, stamped my left foot, and waited for the bull to charge. He did, and with the flat part of his forehead he knocked me flat against the wall so that I fell in a heap. I had seen matadors take knocks like that and get up again, so once more I had my cloth out, held firmly with both hands, and stalked toward the bull. He charged and tossed me right back against the wall. This time the two smacks hurt, both his little horns in my stomach and the stone wall as I smashed into it. But a matador is a man who fights bulls, no matter how they knock him about, so once more I approached my bull, and this time I kept my left hand far out, my right close to my leg, and the bull dove straight for the extended cloth, pa.s.sing me by a matter of inches.

With no audience to applaud what I knew was a decent pa.s.s, I shouted "Ole!" to cheer myself, but this attracted the bull's attention before I was ready, and at me he came. Since the tablecloth was now wrapped around me, the bull hit my legs with full force and not only knocked me flat but stomped on me and b.u.t.ted me again with his horns, which if they had been full grown would have killed me for certain. As it was, they were big enough to leave a small scar across my chest.

When my father, Don Eduardo and the foreman came to take the bull back to the ranch and saw that I had been giving pa.s.ses to Soldado, they were furious. "Don't you know that ruins a fighting bull?" the foreman shouted as he gave me a sharp blow to the head. "You've done a terrible thing," and again he clobbered me.

"Basta!" my father cried, pulling me away from further blows, and I have rarely heard that wonderful Spanish word for "Enough!" when I appreciated it more, for the rancher had a heavy hand.

As they herded Soldado back into the truck and allowed me to ride with them out to the ranch the foreman explained that a Spanish fighting bull had unusual intelligence: "Once he fights a man with a cape and makes three or four pa.s.ses. .h.i.tting nothing but cloth, he learns that he will not find his enemy that way. And pretty soon he's smart enough to leave the cape alone and drive his horn not at it but for the bundle, the man." The foreman astounded me by what he said next: "So you may have ruined the bull. You've taught him to go for the bundle, and he'll never forget. Three years from now when he goes into the ring, one more dead matador " and I felt sfck at having in a sense destroyed my friend.

But Father saved me with a thoughtful observation: "Pedro, think a minute. Soldado will be your seed bull. A jewel of great value. He'll never get into the arena," and when Pedro agreed: "That bull could be sensational as our breeder," I felt better.

As before, we drove past the road leading to the main gate to the ranch until we came to where men waited on horseback, and when we pushed Soldado out of the truck, he rushed about, smelled the horses, recognized them as fellow animals and fell in with them as if he were a docile lamb. As he trotted off to the safety of a far field, his black against the horses' roan, I cried: "Soldado!" but he did not look back at his friend.

Later, as the aficionados of Mexico know, Soldado became the most famous seed bull in their taurine history, sire of bulls that brought glory to the Palafox name. In those years I used to astound men by casually saying: "When I fought Soldado, he knocked me down three times," and they would look at me. I would add: "But I gave him one magnificent veronica," and they would treat me with respect.

While I was at the Mineral protecting my bull from General Gurza, our family's other secret guest, Father Lopez, was endangering both himself and us by resuming his priestly duties even though the countryside was full of people who approved of the government's persecution of priests in what it called "a drive to rid Mexico of the tyranny of Catholicism." On this point, which seemed to tear the nation apart, our family was split three ways. Mother, as a conservative Palafox, was strongly pro-Catholic. Father, as a Virginia Baptist, was pretty firmly against the Catholic Church. And I, who knew little of religion, approved of men like Father Lopez who did good work among his people and disapproved of other priests who ranted at me when I accompanied my mother to Ma.s.s. To put it simply, I didn't know what I thought.

What Father Lopez did that endangered us was to move about the rural areas north of the Mineral, quietly a.s.semble small groups of the faithful, and conduct ma.s.s in some barn or kitchen. He wore no clerical garb, of course, and was so scrawny that he sometimes had difficulty convincing the peons that he really was a priest, and once when I accompanied him I saw tears come into his eyes as he tried to a.s.sure the half-dozen people in a small kitchen that he was qualified to bring them the Ma.s.s: "Tell them, Norman, tell them who I am," and in my fluent Spanish, which rea.s.sured them, I told of his miraculous escape from the murders at the cathedral. Then they cl.u.s.tered about him and he prayed.

Fortunately, he and I were absent on another missionary trip when General Gurza's men made a visit to the Palafox silver mine, and when Father Lopez and I approached the place, he suddenly grabbed my arm and pulled me back. From a vantage point on a hillside we watched what happened.

Eleven soldiers, led by a young officer, stormed into the Mineral and began searching for Father and Mother. Finally locating them, they dragged them out, lined them up against the wall and were about to shoot them as agents of the Palafoxes when Grandmother Caridad came running out screaming "No! No!" One of the firing squad was a local man who had worked with her in the mine and he shouted: "She is one of us!" so the execution was stayed.

Trembling as I hid behind low shrubs on the hill, I watched as Gurza's men tied my parents and my grandmother to a tree to prevent them from interfering with the mission they had been sent to carry out. They took from the backs of three heavily laden mules large bundles of something, and although I couldn't guess what they were, Father Lopez whispered "Dynamite!" and when the bundles were opened I saw the sticks, which were taken to the mouth of the shaft and thrown in. Then a long rope was produced and individual sticks were tied to it, after which it was lowered in the shaft so that the dynamite was evenly distributed down the sides. When all was secure, Gurza's men lit a fuse that ran down beside the rope and at the same time threw four sticks of sputtering dynamite down the shaft. For a moment nothing happened, then came a t.i.tanic explosion as the mine blew itself apart.

The blast started fires in the various caverns and now Gurza's men threw into the smoking shaft the pieces of valuable machinery that either Grandfather and his Confederate engineers had constructed or Father had bought from companies in England. The entire apparatus of the Mineral crashed down to the raging fires below. Finally the men cut the wire that operated the cage Father had built, and it went smas.h.i.+ng itself to pieces as it careened down the rocky shaft, after which the men hacked the superstructure from which the cage was suspended, and it too went echoing down the hole that would never be mined again.

Their work done, the soldiers released their three prisoners, and from what I saw I could deduce they told my parents they were lucky that old Caridad had been in the house, for as they departed, one of the men kissed her.

When Father Lopez and I crept back to the Mineral, we joined the family members in surveying the ruins, and I think all of us realized that a way of life had ended-at the mine, in the plaza, and in Toledo generally. Father Lopez said: "Whatever priests come back to reopen the cathedral, they'll no longer be able to tell the people what to do and how to think." When Father and I peered down the shaft he told me: "It can never be revived. Look at the steps," and when I said: "But there's still silver down there," he corrected me: 'The vein had already begun to peter out. With the cage and the donkey engine gone, we'll never go down there again." And I knew that our famed Veta Madre (the Mother Lode) had expired.

Mother, who had seen so many of her family murdered by Gurza's men, knew that the remaining Palafoxes would be forced to live in vastly different ways, and as a strong woman she was prepared to make the effort. And even I would have to accept changed conditions. Now that the mine no longer functioned, I might have to leave the Mineral. I knew that the school I attended had been destroyed by the rebels, and that the parents of many of my schoolmates had been murdered and their big homes burned, so I could not guess what new arrangements would be made for me. Each of us had a personal reason for despair, but we agreed on one thing: General Gurza was a monster who had ravaged Toledo as if he were some invading barbarian from Central Asia come to reduce the rest of the world to ashes. Father Lopez thought that it was G.o.d's responsibility to strike down the murdering infidel. Father growled: "He should be hanged." Mother wept over the murder of her relatives and repeated grimly: "An avenger will come." I spent the hours in bed before falling asleep dreaming of coming upon Gurza in some village, he bloated with pride over his latest outrage, I with two revolvers moving in on him, step by step, remorselessly, and growling in a voice lower than I then possessed: "This is for slaughtering our bulls, you vile animal!" and I had the satisfaction of hearing him beg for mercy as I pulled my forefingers against the triggers.

Gurza must have heard my threat, for he responded by horribly sacking three villages and roaring off toward Sinaloa in his death-dealing train. His continued success, even against the Americans sent against him, was a frustration to the northerners and, dishearteningly, a cause of joy and pride among our own peons. Father would cry: "Someone must strike him down!" and the family would cheer the idea. But not quite all of us. I noticed that whenever our family and Father Lopez cursed Gurza for his brutality, Grandmother Caridad kept silent, but one day when reports reached us of three more instances of Gurza's besting General Pers.h.i.+ng and his Americans, she cried jubilantly: "He's doing the job for all of us!" When we looked at her with mouths agape, she realized that she could continue her deception no longer. We were a.s.sembled on a patio with only three enclosing walls, the fourth side left open so that Father or whoever was in charge of the mine could watch its operation, and I shall never forget the astonishment we felt when she pointed to the handsome stone fringes Grandfather had built around the top of the shaft and said: "Gurza did a grand thing for Mexico when he destroyed that place of h.e.l.l:'

Father was so astounded at his mother's words that he could not speak, but Mother, who was a Palafox and an important one now that her uncles and cousins were dead, said: "What a horrible thing to say!" but Caridad continued pointing at the shaft, now forever silent, and said in the kind of resolute voice her ancestor Lady Gray Eyes must have used when she decreed the destruction of the Mother G.o.ddess: "It was an evil place and it had to be destroyed."

Now Father regained control of himself: "What are you saying, Mother?" and she told him plainly: "I was conceived in what was then the lowest cavern-the only place my father and mother could be together. The workers called it Caridad's Cavern. With the donkeys that would never see the sun I lived down there, and I came up those dreadful steps only to carry silver ore on my head."

"But we built the cage," Father protested. "Those ugly days are gone."

"And why wasn't it built years ago? A hundred lives ago?"

'These things take time," Father Lopez said. With a fury that surprised us, she turned on the priest and said with teeth clenching at times and her hands formed into fists: "You were worse than the managers. Where do you suppose they found their endless supply of Indians? Where did Jubal get the little girls who worked with me? From you priests in the villages, who sent them to the mines, told them that's their work."

"Indians always worked in the mines," Father Lopez said, and for the first time I became aware that he was not backing down when she stormed at him because he was protecting his Church against accusations he had heard before. I was ten years old when these conversations at the Mineral occurred, and although I could not understand fully the complicated arguments of the four adults, I did see that Father defended anything that had happened at the mine, Father Lopez championed his Church, Mother saw the Palafoxes as the people who had always known what was best for Toledo, while Grandmother Caridad said repeatedly that General Gurza was a far better man than they thought he was. At times I had the feeling that they were arguing to convince me, as the only uncommitted person in the group, and I listened with equal attention to whoever was speaking.

Father Lopez, whom no one had ever taken seriously, was especially careful to see that I understood what he was saying, for after partic.i.p.ating in some general discussion about Indian rights or landowners.h.i.+p, he would take me aside and say: "Can't you see, Norman, that it's the big landowners who give us the money to keep the cathedral working? They have a right to large fields because they know how to use them. An Indian? What does he do with his milpa?" That was the word for a little plot of land owned by one family, and I was hearing it a lot. "On his milpa he grows just enough corn for his wife to make her tortillas. But the big man grows more than his wife can use, and with the money he earns he supports the Church."