A Visit to Don Otavio (13 page)

‘Poor Anthony.’

‘I was right, wasn’t I? What would you have done?’

‘Never ask for a member of the family that isn’t on the table,’ said E.

‘What happened finally,’ said I.

‘Well, the father of Don Joaquím came in. And he said it was the best joke he had heard in a long while, and I was a Yankee but a good boy, and they all calmed down. So I said, let’s forget about it, and what about a round on me. Then they got mad again and acted as though I’d insulted them. Jesus, what a night.’

‘Poor Anthony.’

Nevertheless his touchy new friends seemed to love him well enough. And when at last the interest in Rosenkranz and Guildenstern had abated and a letter to them been dispatched to a putative address, and we were able to leave for the Lake of Chapala, we did so in a fine motor lent for the occasion to Anthony, clutching a paper with the address of one of the uncles of Don Joaquím, the son of an ex-governor of the state, whom we understood to be prostrate with joy in anticipation of receiving us on his Hacienda expressly erected for that purpose on one of the lake’s remoter shores.

W
IDE FRENCH WINDOWS opened from the domed, white-washed room on to a sun-splashed loggia above a garden white and red with the blooms of camellia, jasmine and oleander and the fruits of pomegranate, against a shaped luxuriance of dense, dark, waxed, leaves; and below the garden lay the lake, dull silver at that hour. At the end of a balustrade, the extravagant stone figure of St Peter, fleeced with moss, raised a broken arm towards the waters. Another figure sprawled ensnared among the creepers where it had fallen a decade or two ago, and from an Italian urn grew a crimson flower like a banner. Three tall, tall, tapering palms swayed lightly on the shore. The air was sweet with tuberose and lime, and dancing like a pointilliste canvas with brilliant specks, bee and moth, humming-bird and dragonfly. Birds everywhere: slender birds with pointed scarlet tails, plump birds with yellow breasts and coral beaks, smooth birds with smarmed blue wings; darting birds and soft birds and birds stuck all over with crests and plumes and quills; tight-fitted birds and birds that wore their feathers like a Lully flourish, and striped birds as fantastically got up as cinquecento gondoliers; ibis and heron, dove and quail, egret and wild duck, swallows and cardinals, afloat, in the trees, on the lawn, dipping and skimming, in and out, out and in of a dozen open windows. A white cockatoo shrieked hideously from a shrub and was answered by the house parrot in Spanish. Bead curtains clicked from the kitchen quarters; and below, under the shade of a papaya-tree I could see Anthony reclining on a bamboo chaise-longue engaged in reading the works of Mr Somerset Maugham.

The room behind me was all space and order and that aired and ample, hard white cleanness of the South that has the quality of lucidity substantiated and forms the limpid element in which the mind and body move at ease. An almost abstract room, rejecting the clutter of personality – a ceiling vaulted by an Indian whose father was taught by a Spaniard taught by a Moor; walls that were walls, and windows that were windows; a red-tiled floor; two or three pieces of Mexican Louis Seize beautifully waxed, a bed designed in another century and built in this one, a rug of shampooed angora goat and a pair of easy-chairs, perennial local products of pigskin and bamboo.

The house was built in the eighteenth century for a family that would spend three months a year, and added on to later without a visible break in style. It is a two-storeyed Hacienda, washed apricot, with wings enclosing quadrangles and a long south-western front facing the lake. The ground plan is native, the statuary was brought from Italy; the garden is believed to be English. All is tempered by alternate periods of prosperity and care, absence and neglect.

Presently we shall bathe. E will call to me, or I shall call to Anthony; we will walk to the end of the garden and slide into the lake without a shock, and with one leaping stroke coolly out of depth splash upon the mild and level water. The lake is immense, an inland-sea with bays set deep into three provinces, freshened by many rivers. A hundred miles of shore, undisgraced by rail or concrete, curve eastward toward Michoacán; and opposite our inlet one can see the outline of green hills upon another coast. Trees dip their branches over the calm waterfront, a donkey drinks stiff-legged and two Indian women stand waist-deep washing each other's hair, while we lie under the palms on coarse sand and crackling
birch-bleached
weed, Anthony in full repose like an animal that has run, E and I more restless, teasing a complacent fowl with pebbles and a rhyme in the manner of Edward Lear.

‘The fish's come in.' Without lifting head from arms, Anthony has sensed the boat. Now the
comida
will be ready at the house; we shall eat under the thick shade of a west pergola, with the quick, straight, insouciant appetite of these altitudes: rice stewed with vegetables, fried eggs,
blanco
, a
kind of small fat sole, very firm, brought up from the cold centre of the lake, avocados and fruit; attended by runners, two stocky Indian boys, Andreas and Domingo, swarthy, eager, tireless and headstrong like a pair of young mules. Something retrieves the meal from chaos:

The household and Anthony, who is reverting to some planter ancestry, will sleep the afternoon away. I, enlivened rather by these days of peace, have the choice of many shades to take my book. E will pace the loggia swinging a small stick, the single upright figure during the slow hours, east west, west east, composing step by step, clause by clause the periods of an exegesis of one of the more incomprehensible personages of seventeenth-century France.

We owe it all to Anthony. He had not been able to enjoy the driving of his automobile for long. Thirty miles out of Guadalajara, at Chapala, the lake began and the road ended. He made an attempt to continue on the rutted trail replacing it, but had to give up. A number of Indians, rigid in their blankets, looked on without comment. We studied the address on Anthony's bit of paper.

‘I can hardly pronounce it,' said E.

‘Just ask for Don Otavio's place,' said Anthony.

They said, ‘A boat will come.'

‘Indeed. A boat.
When?
'

‘In the little future.'

A child was sent to the shore on look-out, Anthony gazed at his engine, I at my wrist-watch, E flicked the pages of her detective story. The Indians sat well content.

But the boat did not come.

Then a mule cart passed. The Indians stopped it, made the old man who was driving turn round, dump his load, and pile on our bags instead.
Anthony and I were helped on to a trunk, a space was cleared for E on the driver's plank. Somebody stuck flowers into the mule's hat. E was still sitting in the Cadillac firmly, clutching her book. ‘Ask them how far it is,' she said.

‘Es un poquito retirado.'

‘They say it's a little retired.'

Then suddenly we were off. The Indians poked the driver and the beast, and shouted,
‘¡Tlayacán, Tlayacán! ¡que les vaya bien!'
E bowed from her plank and said politely,
‘boo-ainous dee-as, moochas gratsias, viva Mexico.'
The mule feigned a second's trot and everything began to shake, sway and rattle in the most concentrated manner.

The trail consisted of two not always parallel ruts of varying depth and gauge, caked hard, strewn with boulders, cut by holes and traversed by ditches. The cart had solid wooden wheels and no springs.

First we passed some stucco villas decaying behind tall enclosures. Sixty years ago, during the hey-days of the dictatorship, Chapala had been a modish resort. The driver pointed,
‘la casa de la hija de Don Porfirio Diaz.'

‘Look,' we said, ‘that villa belongs to Diaz' daughter.'

‘I am not going to be diverted by historical interest,' said E. The plank she was trying to remain on was narrow as well as wobbly.

‘Doña Carmen comes here in the winter,' said the driver, ‘but the
ferrocarril
her father built for her is broken.'

‘A railway?' said E. ‘A railway, where?'

‘From Guadalajara.'

‘Where is it now?'

‘Broken. Now we have the road.'

‘What road?'

‘The road from Guadalajara.'

‘But it doesn't go on.'

‘Yes, to Guadalajara.'

‘What
is
he talking about?'

‘The Señora wants to know whether there was a road or railway from Chapala.'

‘Yes, Don Porfirio's railway. Now the road.'

‘We meant round the lake.'

‘Round the lake one goes by boat.'

‘The hell one does,' said Anthony.

‘How did Don Porfirio and Doña Carmen go?' said I.

‘Don Porfirio and Doña Carmen and the Excellencies did not go farther than Chapala.'

‘Very sensible of them,' said E.

Soon we were in open country. On our left lay the lake, almost colourless under the still vertical sun; on our right, behind a fringe of fields, a row of humpy hills covered with lush green shrub. Nasty clusters of black carrion birds hung watchful in the sky. The trail, conservative in the rhythm of its vagaries, continued small hole, big hole, boulder, ditch; small hole, big hole, boulder, chasm. In turns we walked, we rode, we pushed, propped luggage, steadied shafts, picked up E's book and helped the mule. We sat by the chasms in discouragement. After some time, pigs appeared and baby donkeys, then a banana grove, and presently we reached a sub-tropical village. Women with children at their breasts peered at us from leaf huts.

‘Anthony, is
this
your friend's place?' said E.

‘What is this village called?' said I.

‘The place of
el gringocito d'Inglaterra
,' said the old man.

‘What's that?'

‘A dear little dirty American from England,' said I.

‘From the map it must be San Antonio Something,' said Anthony.

‘Map!' said E. ‘Don't tell me.'

‘What about that American?' said Anthony.
‘¿Dónde? ¿Dónde?'

‘Not American,' said I. ‘Work him out in terms of
un cher petit boche d'Autriche.'

‘Oh,' said E, ‘a nice young Englishman.'

‘Let's call on him,' said Anthony.

‘What a dreadful idea,' said I.

‘My dear Anthony,' said E, ‘you have much to learn. If this hypothetical personage chooses, for no doubt some very good reason of his
own, to live in such a place as this, he does not do so in order to be called upon by the likes of us.'

‘He may be lonesome,' said Anthony.

‘Englishmen in sub-tropical villages never are.'

After another hour, we came to another much larger village with proper mud houses and a market place. For three hundred yards, potholes were agreeably replaced by cobble-stones.

‘Now what about this place?'

‘Ajijíc,' said the driver.

‘I dare say,' said E.

Then the trail resumed its character with a will. The countryside grew wilder, westering rays struck the lake and the water glistened in milky rainbow colours. Birds appeared. On we dragged and shook and rumbled with no end in view. Then a train of mules came into sight, broke into a gallop, raced towards us in a cloud of dust, reigned in and effected a trembling stand-still. A man leapt from the saddle. He bowed to E and handed her a large mauve envelope.

On crested paper, above a triple-barrelled signature, we read:

‘Your friend seems very civil, Anthony,' said E.

The mules, fine well-groomed beasts, were hitched troika-fashion on to our equipage; a third was to be Anthony's mount. The shelter was two parasols, and the sustenance a large Edwardian tea-basket in full polish. This was deposited on the ground.

Our new attendants withdrew some distance where they settled in expectancy. E and Anthony were as unfamiliar with the mechanism of this product of a pre-plastic age as Don Otavio's retainers, so I sat on the roadside, lit the spirit lamp and proceeded to make tea. The caddy had been freshly filled; there was thin bread and butter, there were cucumber sandwiches, ginger nuts, Huntley and Palmer biscuits. There was a jar of Patum Peperium. Thus we proceeded much refreshed on our travel. Thanks to the new turn-out, the progress of the last hours was a good deal faster and for E and myself more agonising, the parasols adding greatly to our insecurity and the indignity of walking having now become unthinkable. So it was with relief that at sunset, without warning and in a last excruciating spurt of gallop, we swung into the drive of the Villa El Dorado.

A youngish man stood on the terrace of a very ugly house. He ran out to meet us. He was wearing white flannels and a charming shirt decorated with sea-horses. A bunch of gold holy medals tinkled in the open neck. His hands and complexion were white as asses' milk; his face, a long oval with slightly softened contours crested by a plume of silvery hair, was a generic face: one of those inherited handsome faces of Goya's minor courtiers, where the acumen, pride and will of an earlier mould have run to fatuity and craft; a set face, narrow, stiff and sad. He turned out one of the kindest men I ever met.

‘Hello,' he said, ‘hello. I am Otavio de … y … y … I am so glad you got here at last. Nobody has come from Chapala by road for thirty years. You must be tired. That horrible cart, so like a tumbril.' Here he let off a burst of orders in Spanish. ‘I
am
sorry about the boat being late.' He kissed E's hand and gave Anthony two sketchy taps on each shoulder, the formal simulacrum of a hug. ‘Don Antonio! Joaquím and Orazio were down last Saturday to Monday, they speak of you as a brother.'

We thanked him for sending us tea and mules.

‘You were able to use the basket? I am so happy. It belonged to my mother.' His manner was simple and so, after all, was his English. ‘Now you must have some drinks. Or would you like to go up to your rooms first? No, not here. Over at the Hacienda. It is on the other side of these
trees.' He let off more orders. ‘Here is where I live now. The house is a replica of a villa at Monte Carlo my mother used to stay in when she was a girl. My father had it built for her as a wedding present. Now she has left it to me. The Hacienda belongs mostly to my brothers. I look after it for them. They do not live here. No one has lived on the Hacienda since the Revolutions, but my brother Enriquez and his wife come down for the week-ends. Would you like to see it now before it is quite dark? I am afraid we have no electric light. We had our own plant when I was a boy, with an Italian who ran it. He was shot by mistake by Villa's band.