A Visit to Don Otavio (15 page)

A
T SAN PEDRO, we found a band in the garden playing good and loud.

‘It is Doña Anna’s band,’ said Andreas. ‘Doña Anna is calling on the master.’

‘Is the lady a band-leader?’

‘No, Señora. Doña Anna is a lady who lives on the other side of the water. A rich rich lady, she has music all day. It is the band from Ajijíc, the best band in Jalisco. It is Doña Anna’s band now. The
mariachis
go to her house every morning. On feast-days too.’

‘And do they also follow her about?’

‘Yes, yes. Where Doña Anna goes go the
mariachis
.’

‘Did you get me any cigars?’ said Anthony.

‘No.’

‘Did you see your Indian village?’

‘No.’

‘We may be seeing a great deal of it if we don’t look out,’ said I.

‘
You
didn’t show much character,’ said E.

‘No,’ said I.  

‘Otavio’s been clucking like an old hen,’ said Anthony. ‘Why you didn’t tell him you were going into Jocotepec. It seems there is a character, Mr Middleton or Middleman or something, you are supposed to call on and look at the garden.’

‘We did see the garden.’

‘Oh you did? Good. Poor Otavio was so upset, he said Mr Middleman’s or Middleton’s feelings were going to be hurt.’

‘And you’re going to see it too, dear. We are all to lunch there tomorrow.’

‘Rush around in the middle of the day? Not me.’

‘Spineless fellow, Anthony,’ said E.

‘And what’s more you’re going to live in a cottage at Jocotepec with a back-patio and a landlady and one servant you have to keep an eye on, and your bath water will come by donkey. No, not by donkey, by boy. At least that’s what you are paying for.’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Anthony.

‘It is not an empty threat,’ said I.

‘A cloud as large as Mr Middleton’s hand,’ said E.

‘It isn’t
his
business,’ said Anthony.

‘I am an American,’ said E in an uncertain tone, as though she were practising for her level; ‘I am an American. I will not be pushed around.’

Below, the band was still blaring away at the
Mañanitas
. ‘Anthony, what
is
this din?’

‘Oh I don’t know. They came in a lot of boats with this widow an hour or so ago. She’s a knockout. And wait till you see her pearls. They’re grey. I’ve never seen grey pearls. Dinner’s an hour late and we’re going to have suckling pig.’

Presently Don Otavio came over to say his word.

‘I hope you will like Doña Anna. She is a great friend. She has had a sad life, poor woman. One must be kind to her. She was married à
l’espagnole
, always shut up. Her husband did not let her go anywhere. It is unusual. He died two years ago and now that she is out of mourning she can do as she likes. She is trying to divert herself a little, it is natural. That is why she is keeping the
mariachis
with her all day. She needs gaiety after all these sad years and she is very musical. People at Guadalajara don’t like it. It is true that Doña Anna is an original woman. She was a very great beauty. Now of course she is old.’

‘And now tell us all about the autocrat in the garden. Has he always lived at Jocotepec?’

‘Mr Middleton came here to retire. He was an engineer. I think he spent most of his life in Africa. He made the garden all himself. It is a very wonderful garden, is it not?’

‘A very wonderful garden.’

‘He plants everything in the spring. It is the hot dry season when everything dies. Mr Middleton says it is laziness. He very kindly lets me have some of his cuttings, but Jesús says they are things that cannot grow here. Mr Middleton does not like that. He says Jesús’ flowers are too large.’

‘Do you like Mr Middleton, Don Otavio?’

‘Mr Middleton is a very distinguished English gentleman. And very clever.’

‘He asked us to lunch with him tomorrow.’

‘I shall see that the boat is ready. Mr Middleton does not like to be kept waiting.’

‘He said something about a quarter past one, but he can’t mean that. What time do they have luncheon?’

‘At a quarter past one. And dinner at a quarter to eight. Mr Middleton keeps his own hours.’

‘That cannot be so easy here.’

‘It is inconvenient. The butcher does not kill before noon, and the fish only comes in at three. The servants are unhappy about it.’

‘What if they are asked out?’

‘Mr Middleton does not like to eat in other people’s houses and Mrs Middleton does not go out. She is afraid of the Indios, poor woman. It is a sad life for her. If only the road were mended, she could go for a drive. Now, I must not leave Doña Anna, con su permiso?’

When we came down, we found dinner laid on the terrace outside the main drawing-room with the
mariachis
, all brasses ablow, sitting on the balustrade. Mexican establishments, like those of Tzarist Russia, do not have an apartment especially assigned to the purpose of eating. Table and appurtenances are moved about and meals laid
où le coeur vous en dise
according to the season, the menu, the company and the mood: luncheon in the east-room today, Buttermere, the honeysuckle is blooming by the
window. It is a genial arrangement and, provided one is neither short of space nor service, one that gives much scope to food and wine – omelet, ham and melon in the shade out-of-doors at noon; strawberries on the lawn; beef-stew in the kitchen; madrilene and salmon on a nocturnal terrace; saddle of lamb and walnuts in the dining-room; hock under the stars, port in the north-room, claret in the library, the iced magnum by the fire …

We found Doña Anna a woman, in her late forties perhaps, in full beauty and a cream of pearls. She wore crêpe de chine pyjamas of the cut of those worn some decades ago in the South of France by the first women who wore trousers. By her side sat a sulky youth; handsome too, but brutish and as little civil as the customs of his class and country permitted. Doña Anna met us with the kind of zest that produces the same instant animation as the first tumbler of neat vodka, and that later, if kept up, palls, flattens and oppresses. Her voice was lovely, her Spanish rapid like a conjuring trick. Anecdote and comment flowed, as did alas the sweet Sauterne, ever a weakness of Don Otavio’s table. The lake, people on the lake. The chief witch of Sahuayo and her gradual domination of Doña Anna’s household. Doña Anna’s unmasking of the witch. The Sunday murders at San Juan Cosalá, the new funds for the road, last winter’s bullfighting season – none of the new lot can hold a candle to the great
matadores
, do you remember Lallanda? do you remember Carnicerito? The Old Times. Doña Anna’s wedding trip to Granada – never saw a thing. The Court at Madrid – very dull. The Queen, poor woman … Otavio’s Mama – how she spoilt you, ¡
niño
!
Dances at Mexico –
seguro, before
I was married … Doña Anna did not mince her words. She was witty in a robust way that was both good-natured and contained a touch of worldly brutality. She ate with a good appetite.

Domingo and Andreas and Don Otavio’s own Juan trotted round the table hissing with excitement and stress. The sequence of a length of courses always baffled them. When the suckling pig had been cleared, they came running with the fish.
‘¡Niños!’
said Don Otavio, ringing his hands,
‘por caridad.’
Doña Anna gave them a smile and helped herself to
a small piece. Her manners were very polished and without Don Otavio’s tinge of Latin Cranford. The tale of her haremed life seemed hardly credible, of the two she appeared the woman of the world and Don Otavio the provincial recluse. The youth sat by her side like a lump, yawning and scowling into his plate.

‘He’s had a tiring day, poor boy,’ said Doña Anna, ‘out with the motor boat since breakfast.’

The band had been playing into our ears from the soup. Mexican folk music has to be endured to be believed. It strives to be at once virile and melancholy, and succeeds in sounding military and yearning. Tambourines throb, brasses blare, strings quiver; the rhythm is mechanical and obtrusive, and it is always played very loud.

‘Doña Anna, do you have the
mariachis
all day?’ said E.

‘They usually come to my house at nine. Of course they don’t begin till I am awake.’

At the seventh rendering of a piece called, I believe, Siempre Jalisco, the musicians, to more sensitive ears than ours, appeared to be running down.

‘Play up,
niños
,’ said Doña Anna.

They seemed to do so. After a while there was another just perceptible decrease in volume. Doña Anna leapt from her chair, wrenched a trumpet from an Indio’s hand, and slapped his face.

‘If you cannot make music, go home and plough,’ she said and returned to her seat. Music and conversation were resumed.

Presently the servants were called in and performed some dances. The most appreciated one consisted in throwing a hat on the floor and delicately stepping round it. The men looked very graceful and serious doing this; the women stood and watched. Later the band played items vaguely partaking of the nature of the tango and the waltz, and we danced. Anthony with Doña Anna. The youth sat and looked daggers.

‘Anthony had better look out for a knife in his back,’ I said to Don Otavio.

‘Oh no, no. There is no harm in Don Fernando, poor boy. Naturally he does not like to see her dance. Young people are so strict. He does not
approve of her going out so much now. Of course Doña Anna insists on his going with her.’

‘She might have chosen a more amiable escort.’

‘Her brothers are dead. Doña Anna
is
an unconventional woman, her wearing trousers upsets Fernando.’

‘It seems hardly for him to mind.’

‘One can understand it. Don Fernando has been a good son.’

‘Doña Anna is his mother,’ I said smoothly.

‘Of course. Well, yes, Don Fernando might have been a nephew.’

Next waltz I said to Anthony, ‘I’ve been on thin ice.’

‘I thought you were. E, too.’

‘We have such conventional minds. Evil springs to them.’

‘I learnt better.’

‘I’m beginning to appreciate your Guadalajara training.’

At midnight Doña Anna made her farewells. Then she set off, en cortège, to the waterfront. First went two Indios with lanterns, then came six men carrying the oars, then Doña Anna on the arm of her son with Don Otavio by her side, then more boys with lanterns; behind them a straggle of retainers with cloaks and cushions, and at last the band playing full blast. They went down the alley of limes, into the garden, into the night. Slowly they vanished: lights and music and the white of Doña Anna’s crêpe de chine. All evening we had laughed, with them and apart, and now it was sad.

‘There,’ said E, ‘goes the last relic of Mexican feudalism.

O
UTSIDE THE HACIENDA GATES, a field beyond the road, rises a fat, round, dark green hill covered with mossy shrub that shields us from the wind, traps the sun and blocks the view of anything beyond. The hill is one of a chain flanking the north-shore of the lake, and the level land between the waterfront and this low range is only the breadth of a few acres, widening at certain points to accommodate a village or an estate, at others tapering to a strip of beach beside the road. Half-way up our hill is a votive chapel reached by a path constructed for horse and ladies; beyond, it would be an easy scramble to the top. To get there, walk along the ridge and see what lay below, and see it at break of day, had been for some time a project of Anthony's and mine, one of the things one always talks about and never does. That night I was woken by the rain. It was still the season, and on Lake Chapala the rain comes in the hour before dawn and ceases with the sun. Perfection could go no further. I got up and roused Anthony. We stepped over Jesús and his rifle in the hall, into a frail, glistening morning. Beads of water more than dew lay on everything like the larger jewels of this hemisphere. We walked up to the chapel much too fast and by the time we got there, the day was already warm. Inside the sanctuary a pair of goats were resting by the altar. The climb began – there seemed to be springs in the air, water became translated into bubbles of light; the sun only five-and-twenty minutes old gave us no quarter.

‘If Otavio knew, he'd send us hats,' muttered Anthony.

We reached the top. I straightened myself with caution, having a fear of heights, looked up, and there was a sparkling world – to one side hills glowing with fruit, and beyond, gold, fresh, rich, the plains of Guadalajara; to the other the lake with its nine islands and curving shores, still and opaque.

‘What a place. What a country. If only one could stay. If only one could live here.'

‘Yeah,' said Anthony.

‘You are going back in three weeks,' said I. ‘How can you bear it? Cellophane, television, the deep-freeze unit, getting and spending. The whole old bag of nothing.'

‘I see what you mean,' said Anthony.

‘And it's going to be grey. Five, six, seven months of the year. And cold. And then very hot. Never this. Never this perennial June, the light clear brightness. How we shall miss it.'

‘You talk as if you had to leave when I do.'

‘No. But in less than a year I shall be gone. And that will be the end of Mexico for me. We don't fly across oceans the way you do. I shall live in Italy, if the gods permit; and I hope to be very happy there; and I shall always regret this.'

‘You wouldn't want to live here?'

‘I didn't tell you about the man we saw thrown off a moving bus. I shall not forget that either. Some of the stories last night were like that. Not that the West isn't terrifying enough, as we know. Only here, we are not engaged.'

‘I should like to live here,' said Anthony. ‘Very much. If you could, but you can't. It's your friends, they think too much of you and, if you know what I mean, not enough. I mean they respect you a hell of a lot and they don't respect you at all. I don't want to be always looked at as this oddity. It wouldn't matter to them if you did wrong. They wouldn't know. Nor if you did right either. You might get to feel kind of lost about things.'

‘Don Otavio's and Doña Anna's, and Andreas' and Domingo's impact on our consciences is slight, and so is ours on theirs. That is what is called living without the pressure of an accepted social pattern. I suppose
everybody needs their equals and betters. But, my dear, isn't that chopping the world into very small pieces? There are other standards, values we share. See how nicely we all speak to each other, that is a shared value. And what about the essential brotherhood of men? We're all Christians here. No of course we are not. There is nothing to share and you are right and it is true that we can only take in this country. We've nothing they want, unless we give what Mr Middleton gives – he told us he doctored the natives. That would be called service, but it is also self-service. So you are right again. And now you must help me to get off this mountain.'

‘Do I hear the authentic voices of Old Virginia?' said E ‘I have not heard it since Nancy Astor and I never hoped to hear it again.'

Below in the garden a very old woman wearing the rags that only a few dare wear, was talking to Don Otavio. ‘Now don't you give me any of that Tavio. You tell your
mozos
to leave my goats alone. If they want to lie in your chapel to get out of the sun, poor beasts, it's only human and none of your business. They won't do that chapel any harm. Better they than those dirty children slithering on their knees.

‘Don't you talk to me about desecration. Those goats were feeding on that hill when you were in your smocks, Tavio, and your mother had your hair in curl papers. Yes, she had, and you remember it. And nobody was having any chapels in the middle of the countryside. Never understood what your aunt put up that chapel for. Thought you Catholics had to have a miracle before they let you do that. Haven't you got yer own chapel on the Hacienda? It's not as if I ever see
you
climbing up that hill. You just tell those
mozos
now to leave me goats alone. Oh, there they are. Come along, dears. We go home now.' Absently, but firmly, she took hold of a rope at whose ends two long-haired goats were straining. Both, the brutes and the old lady seemed impervious to the pulling. ‘And that reminds me, any of your new friends play bridge? Don't you know? Well, find out. Send one of them over to me this afternoon. The Saunders are coming; we need a fourth.'

‘Well,' I said, ‘that lets me out of Mr Middleton.'

‘Why you?' said Anthony.

‘Because E doesn't play and will have to protect us at Jocotepec, and Don Otavio thinks she needs an escort. And because it is not true that we rather bear the ills we know than fly to others that we know not of. I shall enjoy myself this afternoon.'

‘Are we to be at the beck and call of every eccentric on this Mexican lake?' said E.

‘It is a very fine lake; it is larger than Lake Geneva. And this is the tone you must take at Jocotepec. Don Otavio – we heard everything. And now you must tell your new friends about your old friend.'

‘Mrs Rawlston is a very wonderful old lady.'

‘We do not doubt it. Has she also got a wonderful garden?'

‘She has a most
beautiful
garden. It is famous in the Republic. Mrs Rawlston came when she was a girl. She came to be a governess. Her family were ruined in a war. I think it was the war about the Negroes. She married one of her countrymen here. He had mines, but she and the children always lived on the lake. They built a house half-way between Tlayacán and San Juan Cosalá. It must be sixty-five years ago. Mrs Rawlston's husband was shot during the Zapata rising. The servants left to join bands, the children were at school abroad, Mrs Rawlston stayed through the whole Revolutions all alone in that big house. She slept in the garden with a gun, she said she did not want to be murdered in her bed. Of course they were quite ruined. Now the children are both married, one at Mexico and one at Monterrey. Mrs Rawlston does not like her son- and daughter-in-law. It is a lonely life for her, poor woman, but she is a very important person on the lake.'

‘As important as Mr Middleton?'

Don Otavio realised that he was confronted with that unfamiliar thing, a joke. He took it with a smile. ‘More important. But Mr Middleton does not know.'

‘Do they get on?'

‘Their houses are not in the same place. They have esteem for each other. Perhaps we need not tell Mr Middleton that you are going to Mrs Rawlston's today.'

‘We will tell him that I caught a touch of the sun on that hill.'

‘No, not sun. It would not be wise. It is one of the three things Mr Middleton cures. Sunstroke, dysentry and malaria.'

‘Does Mrs Rawlston cure also?'

‘No. Mrs Rawlston goes to law. She makes the Indios sue the Government when she thinks they ought to. She goes to court herself, and pleads and does everything. She does not like lawyers.'

‘Her Spanish must be very good?'

‘One understands everything she says, and she says much.'