Michener, James A. (28 page)

The Saldanas knew that the bleakest part of the journey came

at the start, for once they crossed their own river, the Medina, they left Tejas and entered upon those empty, barren plains reaching down to the Rio Grande; it was proper, they thought, that these wastes not be a part of Tejas, for they were El Desplobado, totally unoccupied, and could best be understood as the desert which constituted the northern part of Coahuila.

The Saldanas would traverse almost three hundred miles of this desert before they reached partial civilization at Monclova and real settlement at the entrancing city of Saltillo, so they wrapped damp cloths about their nostrils and lips to keep out the dust and plunged into the forbidding lands. After nineteen wearing days they reached the Rio Grande and the excellent hospitality of the missions at San Juan Bautista, where they lingered for two weeks. The friars were glad to welcome them, for they brought news of Tejas, and the Saldanas were pleased to stay because the missions had fresh vegetables.

Almost regretfully Trinidad bade the friars farewell, and now started the dangerous part of the journey, eighteen days across the desolate, exposed stretch to Monclova, for it was here that the Apache often struck, wiping out whole convoys. Eleven mounted soldiers accompanied the travelers, for the Saldanas were personages and risks could not be taken. Day after day the wagon in which Engracia de Saldana rode creaked over the forlorn pathway, this royal road, with never a house to be seen nor even a wandering shepherd. Once Don Ramon told his granddaughter: 'When they ask in the plaza at Bejar "Why aren't there more settlers here?" this is the reason,' and with a sweep of his arm he indicated that terrifying emptiness, that mix of sand and stunted trees and washed gullies down which torrents cascaded when the rains came, pinning travelers inside their tents for days at a time.

South of Monclova everything became more interesting, for now the Saldanas entered one of the most enchanting areas in all of Mexico: beautiful barren fields sweeping upward to become graceful hills, then low mountains and, finally, crests of considerable size. El Camino Real now became truly royal, providing grand vistas and magnificent enfolding mountains, so that one had the impression of piercing into the very heart of the hills. Repeatedly Don Ramon halted the troop to say: 'I remember this spot when I was a boy. Captain Alvaro, my father of blessed memory, brought me and my brothers here and we took our meal by that waterfall. How long ago it seems.' He told Trinidad that she, too, must remember this spot: 'Let's see. You were fourteen last month. If you marry at sixteen, as a girl should . . . babies. . . then the babies marry . . . and they have babies.' He stopped to count. 'You could

be traveling down this road in 1843 with your own grandchildren. And when you do, halt here and have your merienda and lift a cup to me, as I now do to my father, may God rest his soul.'

It was from such conversations that Trinidad had acquired for a child so young an unusual sense of the passing of time. She perceived that a human being was born into a certain bundle of years, and that it did not matter whether she liked those years or not; they were her years and she must live her life within them. If they turned out to be good years, fine. If they were bad, so be it, for they were the years in which she must find her husband and have her children and perhaps take her grandchildren to a merienda in the mountains like this, at spots where her grandfather and his father had enjoyed their rest stops and the tumbling waters.

When the picnic ended she ran to Don Ramon and kissed him, and he said: There will be even better moments than this, Trinidad, you mark your old grandfather's words.'

The first of them came in the gracious town of Saltillo, for here Trinidad saw her first community of any size, and she was awed by its magnificence: it is so big! There are so many shops! A person could find anything in the world here!'

For the first two eye-opening days she savored Saltillo, especially the new church, so large and so majestic, its ornate facade exquisitely adorned with intricate carving and crowned by a beautiful shell above the entrance. To the right rose a stern tower topped by three tiers of pillars, behind which hid a carillon that echoed long after the last peal was struck. It is overwhelming, like God Himself, Trinidad thought. One side of Him is all gentleness and beauty. The other is almost frightening, so big, so powerful. But the more she studied this uncompromising structure the more she accepted both halves.

Four times she returned in daylight hours, captivated by its mystery, and when Don Ramon teased her for wasting her time, she explained: Tve never seen anything so grand before. In Te-jas . . .' He went to a store and purchased pen and paper for her, and with these she sketched the church, rather effectively, Don Ramon told Engracia, and he pleased Trinidad by asking solemnly if she would sign it for him, and she did: 'Trinidad de Saldana, Dibujado en Saltillo, 16 de Mayo de 1789.'

It was not until the evening of the third day that Trinidad discovered another wonder of a city, for then her elders took her to the church plaza, where she saw for the first time not the aimless wandering about of young people in a rural village like Bejar, but the formal Spanish paseo of a major town like Saltillo. She and her

family reached the plaza when the paseo was in full swing, and for some minutes she watched, open-mouthed, as handsome young men and alluring girls swung past, talking always to someone of their own sex, pretending to be indifferent to the other. Finally she brought her clasped hands up to her lips and sighed: 'Mother, this is so beautiful!'

It was, and there Trinidad stayed till the last promenaders left the plaza. She had seen something which touched on the rhythms of life, its uncertainties, its mysteries. She could not get to sleep that night, for in her mind rose the awkward towers of the church and in their timeless shadow walked the young people of Saltillo, pursuing their unstated passions in the ancient Spanish way.

It was obvious to Engracia that on the next night her daughter was going to plead for permission to join the paseo, and this posed a problem, which she took to her father-in-law: 'I'm certainly too old to parade with her holding my hand. And she knows no one| with whom she can walk.'

'Let her walk alone.'

'Never.'

'I seem to remember girls walking alone, when I was younger.'

'Not girls of good family.'

Don Ramon, recognizing that he must assume responsibility in the matter, went to the manager of the inn at which they were stopping, and said forthrightly. 'Don Ignacio, our fourteen-year-old granddaughter wants to join the paseo. Do you know a girl off impeccable family with whom she could walk?'

'1 have a granddaughter, excellent family, her mother born inl Spain.'

'Don Ignacio, I would be honored.'

'To the contrary. We've all heard of your martyred uncle, Fray;] Damian. The honor would fall upon our family.'

So it was arranged that Trinidad would make the paseo with fifteen-year-old Dorotea Galindez. When the evening bells rang, the nervous girls asked their elders how they looked, and Don Ramon replied: if I were twins, I'd fall in love with each of you.' Then, nodding very low to Dorotea, he added: if there's a cavalier out there tonight, he'll ride away with you.'

Serioras Saldana and Galindez waited about an hour before taking their daughters to the plaza, for they wished to introduce them into the parade unostentatiously, but as soon as the two girls entered the plaza the young men meeting them in the paseo grew attentive, and for the first time in her life Trinidad realized that she had more than an ordinary appearance. Her warm smile and uncalculated approach so tantalized the passing young men that

one young fellow said to the friend with whom he was walking: 'That's the kind of face you remember at midnight when you can't get to sleep.'

Dorotea, a year older, warned Trinidad that girls must never look directly at the boys, they must appear to be engrossed in each other. Dorotea played this game to perfection, finding in the country girl from Tejas a person of unlimited curiosity, and the two chattered happily as the young men passed. But Trinidad was not interested in games; she was noticing attractive young men for the first time in her life, and she was bewitched, her pretty face turned brazenly toward them, her unforgettable smile greeting them with joy.

That night Dorotea told her mother about Trinidad's forward behavior, and Senora Galindez spoke to Engracia: 'You must warn your pretty daughter against an unbecoming boldness.' So the next afternoon Trinidad's mother and grandfather explained that it was most unladylike for a young woman to demonstrate too much interest in young men. 'You are to smile, of course,' Don Ramon said, 'but only to yourself. That adds mystery.' Inviting Engracia to walk the narrow room with him, he explained: 'Your mother is Dorotea. I'm you.' And he minced along, talking with great animation to Engracia, who smiled back at him. 'This is how proper girls make the paseo,' and on he pranced.

'You look so funny!' Trinidad cried.

Don Ramon stopped, and reprimanded her: 'If a girl of good family like you smiles openly at young men, it's very forward. And if you actually encourage them, you're brazen, as Senora Galindez warned.'

'She's a busybody.'

'Without her approval you cannot walk with her daughter,' Engracia said, and when Trinidad started to reply, her mother pressed a hand against her lips. 'Child, remember that three days from now we go on to San Luis Potosi. Dorotea stays here, and if her reputation is damaged by some foolish thing you do, she suffers, not you.' She cuffed her daughter lightly on the ear and said: 'Now you behave yourself.'

Trinidad did behave herself for the first half of that night's paseo, but as the girls rounded a corner by the church steps Dorotea gasped 'Oh!' and Trinidad looked forward. Then she, too, gasped.

Joining the men's circle in an easy, indifferent manner came the most engaging young man either girl had ever seen. He would have been spectacular even had his face not been so pleasing, for he was an outstanding blond among all the dark-haired Saltillo youths,

and so graceful that he seemed to move without his feet actually touching the ground. He was one of those fortunate men who would always be slim, and he would retain that air of youthful excitement, that devastating smile, those bright eyes filled with wonder. Age would not wither him nor years increase his girth. He was now nineteen, a mere five feet five inches tall, weighing no more than a hundred and forty pounds, and so he would remain.

When the young man came abreast, Trinidad threw caution away and smiled directly at him. To her dismay, she realized that he was smiling at Dorotea, and she at him.

Although Senorita Dorotea Galindez had been a very proper young lady when none of the passing men interested her particularly, she became a very skilled young temptress when someone as intriguing as this newcomer came her way. She now lost all interest in Trinidad, and since she would encounter the stranger twice in each complete turn of the circle, as soon as she completed one pass she began preparing for the next, so that although the young man would be meeting many girls in his round, he would meet none more obviously affected or more eager to make his acquaintance than Dorotea. She saw to that.

So the enchanted evening progressed, one of the most compelling and confusing that Trinidad would ever know: the beauty of Saltillo, the grandeur of the new church, moonlight filling the plaza, the smell of flowers, this handsome stranger, but most of all, watching a determined young woman of fifteen planning her moves to entrap a devastating young man of nineteen who was making his own plans to entrap her. Trinidad was by no means watching this as one detached, she wished desperately that the young fellow had saved his smiles for her, and the more often she saw him the more she liked him, but she was sensible enough to know that Dorotea had stepped in before her, so she contented herself with watching Dorotea's skill.

Bells sounded in the dark tower. Annoyed pigeons flew over the plaza briefly and returned to their roost above the bells. A watchman started his rounds, nodding to the citizens as they made their way home. The flowers of Saltillo dozed and Trinidad de Saldana, agitated as never before, clasped her grandfather's hand with unwonted emotion and whispered as he led her back to the inn: 'Saltillo is so wonderful, Grandfather, and Tejas seems so bleak.'

Dorotea, up betimes and asking a thousand questions, had much to report when the Saldanas came down for eleven o'clock chocolate: 'He's French. He comes from New Orleans. His family owns large vineyards in France, but his father manufactures mining things and ships them to Vera Cruz for the capital.'

'What's he doing in Saltillo?' Don Ramon asked, and Dorotea said brightly: 'Oh, he's looking to see if we have any mines in places like Bejar and Monclova.' Then she winked at Trinidad: 'And he's going to San Luis Potosi to see if he can sell a marvelous new machine to the people there. His name is Rene-Claude d'Ambreuze. He speaks fine Spanish, and he's stopping at the other inn.'

'So he's in business?' Don Ramon said huffily, but Engracia, gazing in wonder at the self-satisfied girl, asked: 'How did you learn where he's staying?'

'I know people. I asked the porters in the plaza.'

'When is he going to Potosi?' Don Ramon asked, and Trinidad's heart almost stopped, for she immediately visualized this godlike young man joining their party for the three hundred miles to the mining capital, and before anyone could speak further she saw herself and Rene-Claude—what a heavenly name!—cantering across the high plains of Mexico, she in the lead, he avidly in pursuit.

'He'll be here soon/ she heard Dorotea say, at which Engracia asked sternly: 'You didn't speak to him? Without an introduction?'

'No,' Dorotea said pertly, arranging her dress. 'I told his innkeeper to suggest that he stop by.'

'My dear child,' Engracia protested, 'that was indeed forward. It was even brazen.'

'Look!' And down the narrow street that joined the two inns came the young Frenchman, threading his way through the rubble that had collected overnight, sunlight on his pale hair, that smile on his lips.