A Visit to Don Otavio (30 page)

‘So the workmen will
not
start in the day after Soledad’s wedding?’

‘There will be no wedding. They took Domingo.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The Military. When the police went for poor Bill, they arrested Domingo too. It is usual. They let him go, but they found out that he had not done his service – he would have been called up last year but Enriquez got him off, only it does not count outside the Province. So they sent him straight into barracks at Uxpan.’

‘For how long?’

‘A few years. It depends.’

‘Poor Domingo.’

‘No, no. Domingo always said he wanted to be a soldier. He was so
disappointed last year. Enriquez didn’t know, he naturally arranges exemption for our servants – something with a list in the War Office – and then it was too late.’

‘And what does Soledad say?’

‘Soledad is pleased. She says she would like to stay on as she is. She did not want to get married to anyone very much. Domingo pressed her so. That reminds me I must tell Guadalupe to take those turkeys off milk.’

A few days later Don Otavio said, ‘Now poor Domingo will not have his wedding present. He did want a bicycle so. Perhaps I could send it to him just the same. Where he is now, he will even be able to use it. They have a road.’

‘Otavio,’ said I, ‘do you mind very much?’

‘About the hotel? It would have been nice to get rich and have charming people to stay all the time. But Enriquez says they would not always be charming and we might get poorer. Perhaps it would have been a little difficult. We had so many disgusts over it already. Who knows, perhaps Enriquez is right and I might not have been very good at business. Now there will be more room for my nieces and nephews, and E can have my father’s suite whenever she comes. Perhaps it is better so?’

Our tickets arrived. We were flying to New York straight from Guadalajara.

‘You know I shall rather mind leaving here,’ said E. ‘I seem to feel no elation at the thought of returning to my native country. I am afraid Otavio will be right: we shall be quite uncomfortable and not at all happy.’

Three days later we all went to Chapala for the Blessing of the Animals. Every beast from round the lake, in festive garb, had been taken to receive this annual benediction. I still felt uneasy in large gatherings, and the crush, the noise, the smells, were overwhelming. A crowd of mules and bullocks in garlands and fine hats was pressing in the square outside the church. The smaller animals had a difficult time of it. There were newborn
calves carried on donkey’s backs, pigs clasped to bosoms, chickens clutched by clumsy children, canaries in cages, a huge, angry parrot on a stick, guinea-pigs in apron pockets, ducks in baskets, cats immune on roofs, mongrel puppies led by strings, Don Otavio’s Maltese terrier and Doña Anna’s griffon carried in the arms of chauffeurs, and smelly rabbits carried by their ears; between them wandered straying geese, shuddering horses and a superb white angora goat who was made way for by the bullocks. The church bells went like mad, the priest held up the sacrament, outlined a blessing, people knelt in the dust raising their screeching beasts towards the holy monstrance –
Mamacita del cielo, Madrecita María, Virgen,
howling, braying, yelping, cackling, squeaking …

‘Such a kind letter from Luís,’ said Don Otavio in the evening. ‘He does not seem to mind the trouble we gave him at all. He likes Bill. He says he is very nice and useful and if he can manage to arrange poor Bill’s papers so that he can stay, he will make him his secretary. Luís says Bill is just what he always wanted, and Bill likes to be at Mexico. He would have been wasted at San Pedro.’

The next day the Enriquez’ and the Jaime’s came down for the Fiesta of Tlayacán. Doña Concepción looked ravishing; Doña Victoria was in a good mood.

‘You may as well keep Mama’s silver,
chiquito
,’ she said to Don Otavio. ‘It belongs to San Pedro.’

We sat over a long
comida
, and only started for Tlayacán in time for the bull-baiting. As we entered the pleasure grounds, the grandstand, a scaffolding of sticks and strings, collapsed and two hundred people in gay clothes, very drunk, slowly, slowly fell into the trees below.

‘I think I shall go now,’ I said. ‘I don’t think the fiesta can do any better than this.’

‘I will go too,’ said Doña Concepción; ‘I still feel the heat rather.’

We went back to San Pedro, accompanied by Andreas. At the gates we sent him back to the fiesta. The other servants had gone, the house was
still. ‘Let us sit on the west loggia,’ said Doña Concepción, ‘I like it at this hour.’

Presently she said, ‘You are leaving tomorrow, are you not? For long?’

I did not answer.

‘How lonely it will be for Tavio. You heard our news? The Enriquez’ are going to live at Mexico. Enriquez says Guadalajara has had it; and my husband will have to go quite often. So the children and I shall spend more time at San Pedro. Jaime wants the new baby to be brought up in the country. He says it is time for us to learn to live again like gentlemen.’

‘That will be nice for Otavio,’ said I.

‘Yes, I think it will. I was so sorry for him at first about the hotel. Now, I am not sure. They all turned on him and said it was his fault, and what with Enriquez having these new ideas and Aunt Isabella-María being so put out at having lost all that money and saying she was tired with dealing with confessors and managers and people like that, it was very sad for poor Otavio. But now Aunt Isabella-María has had such a charming letter from Monsignore saying that, privately speaking, everybody in Rome liked the idea of Aunt Isabella-María’s grotto so much, and that the miracles sounded splendid, but perhaps just at present it was not wise to develop another grotto, having so many on their hands, one had to be so careful these days when there are communists to think of as well as protestants. After all, if the grotto was what they all hoped it was, it was sure to triumph in the end, and Aunt Isabella-María was too faithful a daughter not to understand that it did not matter in the least whether it remained unrecognised for another hundred years or two. Aunt Isabella-María was to think of the lives of the Saints, and perhaps something could be arranged for buying back some of the candles. Meanwhile if there was any little personal favour she would like to ask, Monsignore was almost certain to be able to assure her that someone who had laboured so devotedly and so long in the Good Field would not find an unsympathetic ear.

‘So now, you see, Aunt Isabella-María and Monsignore are going to make poor Tavio into a kind of titular lay
abbé
. I do not quite know what that is; Monsignore is working at it. There was Tavio still wondering
about his vocation, and not being able to be a priest because he hasn’t studied for the examinations, and not wanting to go away and be a monk somewhere. And now he is going to be made into an honorary
abbé
and live at San Pedro. He will be here
and
in the Church, and it will be so nice for him to have ecclesiastical status. No one can tease him any more for not being married. He can have us to stay with him, and all his friends. Aunt Isabella-María will leave him money to stay at San Pedro just as he is. She always said she was going to leave her money to the Church but did not like the idea of leaving it away from the family, but now of course Tavio will be in the Church in a way, so it would be leaving the money to the Church and keeping it in the family too, would it not? Perhaps it is a good thing after all about the hotel, because San Pedro will be Tavio’s retreat, and Monsignore could not have made him into that kind of an
abbé
if Tavio were running an hotel. Perhaps it was not meant to be. Perhaps Tavio can find out now whether he really has a vocation. Or perhaps this is his vocation? Belonging to the Church, living at San Pedro? Who knows, Doña Sibilla, it may be all for the best?’

‘It all is for the best,’ said I.

Sybille Bedford was born in Germany before the First World War, of a German father and English mother of mixed, partly Jewish, extraction. She was brought up in Italy, England and France.

A Visit to Don Otavio
was her first published book. Originally entitled
The Sudden View: A Mexican Journey,
it came out in 1953 and was soon acknowledged as a classic of travel writing. Her first novel,
A
Legacy
, appeared in 1956, followed by
A Favourite of the Gods
(1963),
A
Compass Error
(1968) and
Jigsaw
(1989), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Sybille’s volume of memoirs,
Quicksands
, was published in 2005 when she was ninety four.

Sybille Bedford also witnessed and wrote about some of the most important criminal trials of the century – including the Auschwitz trials – and wrote extensively about the law at work. Her two-volume life of Aldous Huxley, who had been a great friend, was published in 1973.
The Spectator
recently hailed it as ‘one of the great classic English biographies’. She was awarded an OBE in 1980, was a vice-president of English PEN and was elected a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1994. She died in 2006.

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