A Visit to Don Otavio (14 page)

‘Yes, these are lime-trees. My great-grandfather planted them. He had them brought from England. Now that our land is taken, my brothers and I are going to have an hotel at the Hacienda. Do you not think that a good idea? We hope to have some sympathetic travellers from abroad. This is a
guanábano
. The fruit is good. You will be able to enjoy it at Christmas.

‘Of course you must. You must stay a very long time. And this is the Hacienda San Pedro. I so hope you will like it.'

Thus, in the twilight, we saw the apricot façade, the open loggia, the garden and the lake, the fallen figure and the upright one.

‘But it is lovely,' we said, ‘lovely, lovely.'

‘It is yours,' said Don Otavio.

O
URS IS NOT an age of luxury, nor one of domestic comfort. Order and space, the sine qua nons of daily freedom, are rareties of great price, exorbitant in effort and in money. Without space, order is hard to maintain; and space is hard to keep warm and polished. Never before has house work been done by so many and so badly. Reluctant amateurs and semi-professionals scurry to and fro in a hum of Hoovers but fail to bring about the perpetual resurrection on the inviolate bedroom, the well-set table and the somnolent kitchen from under the hourly detritus of existence. Men come home to no privacy, women to no leisure, and over the careless flow of hospitality falls the shadow of its aftermath.

Latins do not seem to share that sense of struggle. Their wives and mothers swing impeccable establishments, and put up the jam besides, without that air of participation in the rearguard’s last and unsuccessful stand; but women of the Anglo-Saxon middle classes seldom have the Carthusian cast of mind and steadfastness of will conducive to a tidy house. Their drawers brim with single stockings and their sinks with tea leaves; they feel they waste their time, which indeed they do, and either settle in the mess like duck in duck-soup, or grapple on, morning after morning, until the world becomes the size of their unmanageable home and their sole memento vivere the grease, the crumbs, the ashes where so short ago the pleasant company had sat, and their families are driven from house to flat and from flat to the confinement of the hotel bedroom.

Don Otavio de … y … y … has been ruined these thirty years. He has seventeen servants to look after him. Mexico is its own place and lives its own age, or composite of ages, and whatever that may be, it is not the age of post-war England; and in Mexico, San Pedro Tlayacán is a backwater. All the dirty work is done by many for a few. By so many, for so few, that the work must surely cease to be so dirty. Someone sits on a stool in the shade waving a painted fan before a charcoal fire; someone else is walking in the garden carrying Don Otavio’s box of sweetmeats; in the back yard four people sit chattering with vegetables in their laps, a child has wandered off to prod the nests for an egg, another person is pushing a straw whisk about the patio tiles raising a few geranium petals: and thus here the enchanted ease, too, is spread over the many.

Don Otavio keeps house all day. He appears on the terrace of the villa and claps his hands.
Niños
, the papayas must be picked.
Niño
, there are roses again in the water tank. Has the boat gone for the butter? Has Jesús made it up with his wife? Has Carmelita been able to do something about the spell on the tomatoes? Would she like the priest? The white turkey is not well:
niña
, the brandy flask, and a teaspoon. Is the cook herself again today?
Niñas
, there is that ibis sitting on the washing. He wants to see the jam; he needs a bigger vase; the lamp in the hall was smoking; he would like his purse; and a little cinnamon, please, in his chocolate. What, out of beeswax? There’s another hole in the billiard table; his brother is coming out tomorrow, they might have a suckling pig. He will have his dinner on the east terrace, in the moonlight. No, it is chilly; will they bring him a shawl? Dinner is to be laid in the back drawing-room. For four. No, perhaps for nine.

Everybody hops and skips and pricks up their ears. There is endless talk, to and fro, about everything. And meanwhile, prodded and subsiding, spurred and delayed, through regular drinking bouts and exceptional drinking bouts, through fits and visitations and fiestas, the household jogs on its course like a donkey through his working day. Early fruit and coffee, the birds noisy in the trees, water pumped up from the lake, the servants’
tortillas
and the servants’
frijoles
, beefsteak and chocolate at the Villa, tea and eggs at the Hacienda, the patios watered and the linen spread out on the
lawn, the mule with provisions in from Jocotepec, the long midday meal and the longer afternoon lull, lemonade and iced tea, the nets cast on the lake before sunset, the wild fowl settling in the rushes, the lamps brought in and trays with manzanilla and fried
charales
, Don Otavio’s card table set up, the servants’
tortillas
, the servants’
frijoles
and somebody singing, dinner at ten and the shutters fastened down for the night.

Everything is done for us.
Aquí nada nos falta.
We are those sacred animals, guests at a Mexican gentleman’s house, or rather at a Mexican gentleman’s gates, for Don Otavio keeps to the El Dorado and we might be said to have the run of the Hacienda if so hearty a term could be applied to that halcyon sweetness of existence. Don Otavio cannot know how happy he has made us, or he would not try so hard to improve on our happiness: messengers appear from the Villa with offers of saddle horses and canoes; with a camellia – it bloomed this morning; with pot-pourri – my aunt at Guanajuato makes it; with a bowl of pork-and-barley – it is the speciality of this Saint’s Day, you may not find it entirely repulsive; with inquiries – have we slept at all? was there anything fit to eat for breakfast? are we tolerably in spirits? Then, after Mass and the toilet, Don Otavio himself strolls over for a talk. It is always the right moment. He glides into a chaise-longue beside one.

‘Yes, yes, the Empress Carlota, poor woman. My mother’s favourite uncle was one of her ADCs. He died at Querétaro.’

‘No, my father’s people were Juaristas at that time. Poor Don Masimiliano.’

Then, again at the right moment, or rather a little before, Don Otavio rises,
‘¿con su permiso?’
and withdraws with smooth abruptness.

We lunch and dine together, and at nightfall Don Otavio and I play four hands of piquet in the El Dorado drawing-room, a very large room, bare and stuffed at the same time, where every piece of furniture that is not a straight-backed chair or a footstool is a full-sized Victorian sideboard, and the crucifix alone is machine-made and modern. We play five centavos a point and chalk up the score. So far, thank God, I am a little to the good. Anthony has warned me to stay so.

‘Don’t you lose or there’ll be this terrible rumpus,’ he said. ‘
I
know.
You haven’t been through what I went through at Guadalajara. Punctilio, see?’

It appears that Don Otavio cannot take money from a lady under his roof, and nor may he pass over a card debt.

‘Try and cheat a bit,’ said Anthony.

‘Well, you know, I think Don Otavio
does
. I daren’t look.’

The seventeen servants sleep in a house of their own: that is, those who do not sleep at the Villa and the two or three who, apparently by choice, sleep across thresholds with Marshal Bazaine’s cumbersome 1860 rifles at their sides, so at night we are alone at the Hacienda in our flight of rooms. Anthony has taken happily to the vast apartment that used to be the bedroom of Don Otavio’s father, the Governor, a man we gather of ample and fulfilled ambitions who made himself one of the right hands of Porfirio Diaz, raked a huge fortune out of politics and acquired another by marriage to Don Otavio’s mother, who brought him besides ten thousand acres in Jalisco and a string of titles, the major portion of the Province of Colima. He died in the nick of time, two months before the outbreak of the Revolutions. Don Otavio has given us to understand that he, himself, has taken more after his mother.

‘My father had a difficult disposition.’

‘Did you see much of him then? You must have been quite a small boy, Don Otavio?’

‘We always went with him.’ From the Hacienda to the Gubernatorial Palace at Guadalajara, to the Capital, to Chapultepec for an afternoon’s cabinet meeting, down the Pacific slopes to the estates in Colima, on tours of inspection of the Southern Provinces, over the Sierra Madre to the mining towns of Durango, to Vera Cruz, to Paris in the wake of Diaz, to Seville for Holy Week, to Homburg, to Carlsbad and to Monte Carlo, by steamer, in private railway carriage, on horse and mule and Daimler, the family and household had followed. Don Otavio’s mother, Don Otavio’s maiden aunt, his three brothers, a cousin who acted as his father’s private secretary, the bodyguard, his brothers’ English tutor, his mother’s confessor who to save the anti-clerical face of the régime would
be passed off as the librarian by his father, Don Otavio’s governess and a score of servants.

‘Doña María Carmen, such a sweet woman, you would have adored her.’

‘Now you can’t remember Diaz’ wife?’

‘She was my mother’s and my aunt’s dearest friend and my second brother’s Godmother.’

‘Diaz died in 1915? He must have been eighty.’

‘He was eighty-four. Doña María Carmen came back from Paris twenty years later. She was much younger. They let her live in her house at Mexico. I always saw her and my aunt to Mass when I was there. She only died the winter before last.
Such
a sweet woman.’

‘Don Otavio,’ said E, ‘you must have seen great changes. Like a man born in France in 1770.’

‘We were ruined when I was a boy, and we had many troubles. When there was the rising at Guadalajara and my father just dead, we had to bar the shutters. My brothers’ tutor put out the Union Jack and they passed our door. So many of our friends were murdered in their houses that day.’

‘And how do you feel about it all now?’

‘We may still get compensation for our land. Some people did. My brothers are working on it.’

‘How do you feel about the present Government?’

‘My brothers say the President is a very reasonable man.’

‘Don Otavio, I have meant to ask you, where
did
you learn your English?’

‘Well, I could not be sent to Downside like my brothers, and Mr Beasely left us soon after the beginning of the Revolutions, so there was only the Spanish governess. But my mother made me keep it up. She always spoke English to me for part of the day.’

‘She means your written English, Otavio,’ said Anthony.

‘I do not write it. There was no one to teach me.’

‘But you sent us a letter.’

‘Oh that. That was a
lettre de politesse
.’

‘So it was. But who wrote it?’

‘Well, I did in a way. You see, my governess only spoke Castillian and French but she thought I ought to be able to write social notes in English. For deaths and invitations and occasions like that. She wrote out a dozen models for me in Spanish and made me put them into English, and use a dictionary for the spelling. I kept them.’

‘Did your governess foresee our arrival by mule cart?’

‘People who could read came by boat. I do not copy the models, I only look at them for the tone. It is not difficult. After all, formal letters are much the same in all languages.’

‘I’ve never seen one,’ said Anthony.

‘When we are going to have the hotel, I shall have to write business letters.’

‘Anthony shall help you. He will write you some models. They’ll be quite a change from your governess’.’

‘Thank you. That is very kind. Yes, I don’t think hers would be really suitable. They are more supposed for equals.’

‘Don Otavio, have you read many modern English novels?’

‘My mother read
David Copperfield
to us.’

‘And since?’

‘I do not read often. My Guadalajara sister-in-law has
The Forsyte Saga.
I began that.
¿Con su permiso?’
Don Otavio rose and vanished.

‘How would Otavio make out in the US?,’ said Anthony.

‘Don Otavio has seen so many changes that he has failed to notice them,’ said E, ‘the difference between lived and recorded history.’

L
AKE CHAPALA has tides and is subject to sudden and alarming squalls, but in the late afternoon it is smooth like gelatine and shot through with unexpected reverberated colours, ruby and amethyst, cornelian and reseda. I rowed E and myself into Jocotepec. We had not told Don Otavio for fear of escorts and assistance. Anthony had become as lazy as molasses and refused to budge from his chaise-longue on the Governor’s west loggia.

‘What do you want to look at an Indian village for?’ he said.

‘I feel a great need to buy my own postage stamps and matches,’ said E.

‘When you can get them here with no trouble?’

‘That may be the reason.’

‘Well have a good time. You might get me some cigars, if there are any. I can’t go on smoking Otavio’s.’

On the landing stage at Jocotepec stood an upright figure in a tweed suit and a planter’s hat, holding a telescope. ‘How do you do,’ he said. ‘Come and see my garden,’ and marched on before.

On the lake shore was a bungalow with a verandah, and before the verandah was a garden, an English garden, fresh and restrained, a lawn and a lily-pond, sweet peas and daffodils, lavender and primrose and lobelia all blooming demurely in and out of season at the same time.

‘The worst of it out here are the bees,’ said our host; ‘hybridise everything. And of course the climate. If you don’t look out you get delphiniums ten feet high.’ He clapped his hands. An Indio appeared.
‘Mozo, te.
And
llamar
Missis.’

Presently a youngish woman came out. ‘Richard. They seem to be having trouble with the kettle, Richard,’ she said.

‘What?’ said our host. ‘What? Again?’ and ambled into the house.

‘I can’t speak the lingo,’ said his wife. ‘Richard does. Now you sit down; you’ve had enough of Richard’s flowers. It’s nice to hear a human voice in this dreadful savage country. Richard likes it, he’s used to places like that. I like London but I’d like to live at Nice, wouldn’t you? Nice and quiet. Cheap too. Richard has promised me to when one of us dies. I’m only his second wife, you know; we got married during the war …’

‘Blanche,’ said her husband’s voice from the door. ‘Give us some tea. So you are staying at the Xs’ place?’

‘We love it.’

‘Shiftless fellow, Otavio. Lazy. The way they’ve let those grounds of theirs run down, shocking. And he won’t take advice … You saw what his man did to those lime trees? Now if I told Otavio once to leave those limes alone, I told him a dozen times. No mind. They’ll never make something out of that place.’

‘Their land was confiscated, wasn’t it?’

‘And a good thing too, if you ask me. They don’t know how to look after their land. Never did. Money, money, money, and sitting in a chair all day at their clubs waiting for it to roll in. Diaz did what he could, but he couldn’t do much with these Creoles. Hand in glove with them too at the end through that priest-ridden wife of his.’

‘They are all RCs here,’ said our hostess.

Her husband gave her a look. ‘Not that the present so-called owners are any better. The natives plant a few acres with what they think they’ll need, and let the rest lie fallow. A new child weaned means planting another couple of acres of maize, that’s their idea of food production. The Government’s been importing grain for the towns.’

‘What do you think of the present Mexican Government?’ said E, looking up like Pavlov’s dogs.

‘A pack of thieves. No worse though than the last lot. All that can be said for them is that they stick to their own muttons. Don’t poke their damn noses into everything; a man can still build himself a greenhouse
without having to get a permit from some fool ministry.’

‘At home, Richard votes Conservative,’ said his wife.

‘Mind your business, Blanche,’ said her husband.

‘But you do, Richard, don’t you?’

‘Not that you can call it government. Centralised administration in a country of this sort, I ask you. Universal representation. It doesn’t work. Natives don’t want it, don’t understand it, and they haven’t got it. Whatever those jabberers at Mexico may tell you. A pity this place was ever allowed to set up on its own – not that the Spanish knew how to look after their people – what they need here is local administration: civil servants who know their jobs, a medical staff, honest magistrates. But where’d you find them?’

‘In a Crown Colony,’ muttered E.

‘Get on with your tea, Richard,’ said his wife.

‘There hasn’t been anyone fit to run a village police station since they kicked out Diaz. I was out here in ’09 and I can tell you that the country was a damned sight better off than it is now. Diaz was a good man. Pity he got unstuck. Trouble with him was that he was weak. These dictator fellows always are. Didn’t stand up to the army lads, didn’t really stand up to the radicals, didn’t stand up to his wife and her grand wastrel connections. The old boy was a bit of a snob, never got over his getting married into that set, but he was sound enough for all that. Now take Otavio’s papa, there was a tough old bird for you though you wouldn’t think so looking at Otavio. I won’t say he wasn’t out for number one, or that he was exactly one’s idea of a public servant, but he kept things going. Hanged half the bandits in the province and put the rest into the militia. Not new, but it served. He started a railway service between Guadalajara and Chapala that ran about as well as things ever do in this country.’

‘What
did
they want a railway for out here?’ said I.

‘Well, quite a lot of people had places on the lake then. For one thing there was Diaz’ girl with that villa at Chapala. Oh I wouldn’t say it
paid
, but the old man knew what he was doing. More than those sons of his ever will, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for compensation; Enriquez and Jaime at Guadalajara dickering with the law, Luís at Mexico
trying to sell building lots nobody’s ever laid eyes on, all with large houses and expensive wives and huge families, and Otavio running around San Pedro like a chicken without a head chattering to a pack of servants.
He’ll
never see a penny of that compensation – if it ever comes – his brothers’ll see to that. As it is they’ve pretty damn near done him out of everything. His mother meant him to have the place as he seems the only one who cares for it and the others have all got professions, for what they are worth. Well, they palmed him off with that joke of a villa and kept the Hacienda, and left him to look after it for them while they made off with the cash. Enriquez, that’s the eldest – you’ll find him quite an impressive chap – even took the motor boat. Oh, Otavio is the best of the lot when all’s said and done, even if he doesn’t know how to stand up for himself. And now they’re going to turn that place into an hotel. A bear-garden full of trippers on the lake. That was Enriquez’ idea. Typical. I dare say it’ll all come to nothing. Unless they can wangle the road from Chapala.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘that road.’

‘It was voted seventy years ago. The money was raised twenty-three times.’

‘Richard!’

‘It always vanished in some way or other. Even Otavio’s papa couldn’t do anything about it.’

‘Richard!’

‘What is it?’

‘Someone at the gate.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Our host raised his voice, ‘
Adelante
, adelante, vengo
.’

A boy advanced.

‘Vengo. Vengo. ¿Qué quiero?’

‘Telegrama, Señor,’
said the boy.

‘Oh yes, yes.’ Our host stretched out his hand. ‘Blanche: my spectacles.’ He looked at her over their rims. ‘Mrs Jackson’s mother missed her boat at San Francisco.’

‘Poor Mrs Jackson will be ever so upset.’

‘I told the old girl not to go by South-Pacific. If I told them once … Oh.
Tengo
.’ He fished in his waistcoat, produced a copper and handed it
with the telegram.
‘Tengo, tengo, esto por Señor Jackson, traer esto pronto casa Jackson.’

‘Si, si Señor,’
said the boy,
‘regulár,’
and went off.

‘Shiftless fellow, Jackson,’ said our host.

‘Now, Richard, it wasn’t his fault the roof wasn’t finished when Mrs Jackson’s mother came out. You took the mason for your hole in the lily-pool.’

‘Do you have many people living round here?’ I said.

‘Eleven,’ said our host. ‘Seven of them Americans. And there are some Germans and a Frog. He died. Didn’t know how to look after himself.’

‘Richard sees all their telegrams. They come to him first; he told the postmistress. There are not very many …’

‘We are a small colony out here,’ said her husband, ‘and must do all we can for each other.’

‘He reads the post-cards, too. Every morning, at the post-office. But we never see anyone. Everybody lives miles away.’

‘My wife doesn’t like to go out; she’s afraid of the natives. Very foolish of her.’

‘I should like to sit on the beach, if I had someone to sit with me. The natives stare so.’

‘Now, I’ll tell you what you want to do,’ said our host, ‘you don’t want to stay on at Otavio’s. For one thing the place isn’t an hotel yet and well, I mean to say, well, you don’t want to be the fellow’s guests forever, and if I know those Creoles that’s what you are. Typical of them, poor as church mice, not that the Xs haven’t got something salted away somewhere.’

‘Don Otavio has been extremely kind to us,’ said E on a rising note. ‘Anthony, my young cousin, second cousin I should say,’ something seemed to compel her to shed full light, ‘made great friends with two of Don Otavio’s nephews, and their uncle was good enough to ask us all to stay with him. The boys are going to visit Anthony in his home at Baltimore next summer.’

‘Quite. Yes, yes, quite. Now there’s a furnished cottage here at Jocotepec, just the thing. There are three of you, you said? Just the thing. You won’t find it large; it’s got a little patio though, not a view exactly but
it’s only the other side of the road from the lake. Furniture isn’t much, but you wouldn’t expect that out here; sooner or later you’ll have to build anyway. The Xs always did themselves well, the old man had a Liverpool firm to do the plumbing. In ’95 it must have been. I suppose those great big bathrooms still work?’

‘They do. Perfectly.’

‘Thought so. Well, at Jocotepec you’ll have to have a boy to fetch your water. And mind he doesn’t charge you for the donkey. Your landlady lives across the patio, nice woman, Elvira, if you can shut her up. I’ll talk to her tomorrow morning.’

‘Richard!’ Our host’s wife showed again the signs of disturbance caused in her by a native at the gate.

‘What is it? What’s he want?’

‘Oh, it’s Andreas,’ we said, ‘
Adiós
,
Andreas
.’

‘Con permiso de Ustedes,
’ said Andreas and came forward.

‘Adiós Señora. Adiós Señora. Adiós Señor. Adiós Señora,’
for it is considered extremely rude not to greet every person present individually. ‘Don Otavio salutes the Señoras and told me to row them home. The waters are a little agitated. I have brought the Señoras’ blankets,’ he held out our coats.

‘Now isn’t that like the fellow,’ said our present host. ‘Nannying you, interfering ass. And that reminds me, you want to get one good servant for your house and keep an eye on him. One. Whatever they may tell you. If you have more they’ll start waiting on each other. Now what about having a look at the house tomorrow? You’d better come to luncheon. Bring your cousin. We lunch at a quarter past one.’