The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx (3 page)

The letter had been sent from somewhere called Cór-dova. As November progressed, stories about the brewing troubles in Mexico began appearing in the
New York Times
.

Bella called to invite Paul up to New York for Thanksgiving, saying she missed her eldest boy and wanted to hear how he was doing. He ended the short conversation without uttering a single word about Millie, knowing that nothing would bring his mother greater pleasure than hearing of the girl’s reckless voyage.

Opening the
New York Times
on November 20, Paul saw the headline:
TROUBLES IN MEXICO! CALL TO ARMS!
While still a fugitive from the law, Madero had announced from Texas that it was time for the people of Mexico to revolt against the tyrant who was holding their country hostage. Paul feared this would end with widespread bloodshed.

During the early train ride the next day for Thanksgiving, Paul felt on edge. When he finally arrived in New York City, he briskly walked the fifteen or so blocks from Penn Station to the family brownstone on 46th Street, near Fifth Avenue.

Upon greeting the maid Maria, he learned that his mother had been in a foul mood all day. Paul took a stiff belt of Scotch and listened as Bella bossed the help around. He couldn’t stop wondering if the federales garrisoned in the small Mexican village of Córdova had noticed the young students arriving from abroad.

He retreated into the study and located some paper and a fountain pen. He started writing Millie a passionate letter about his constant fears and boundless love for her. Before he got very far, however, he was interrupted by joyous shrieks. Mr. Robert had just arrived home from Yale. His mother squealed in delight, and showered her son with kisses. Paul could hear Robert giggling boyishly in response. Though Bella had been told the story numerous times, she made Robert once again relay the heroic events in which, despite his having to resign, he raised an unprecedented amount of money for the Yale swimming team.

When Paul’s sister Edna arrived, Bella’s mood shifted. She started bellowing about how her favorite charity, the Madison House in Lower Manhattan, was misusing her funds.

“You should’ve donated the money to Lillian Wald instead,” Edna said.

“Paul, come on down and say hi to your brother,” Bella called out, ignoring her daughter’s comment. Paul quit trying to write and joined them.

When their father showed up late, Bella berated him for making them all wait while the dinner grew cold. Emanuel didn’t sound contrite enough, so his wife went on about how he was a lazy ne’er-do-well, spending his days just laying about the house.

“You were the one who forced him to retire,” Paul muttered softly to himself.

Robert sat with a frozen smile on his face, waiting for his mother’s tantrum to pass.

Bella looked angrily around the room and, seeing Paul glaring at her, she said, “Please tell me you broke up with that mustached shiksa.” Robert snickered.

“First of all, she’s Jewish. Secondly, save your rancor for those who are afraid to defend themselves.”

“Hey, Princeton boy,” she replied, “don’t forget who pays for you to learn how to recite French poetry!”

“Well, you can keep your damned tuition,” he lashed back. “Cause I’m done with that … that finishing school for robber barrons!”

“I’ll believe that when I see it!”

As Paul furiously headed for the front door, he heard Robert saying to his mother, “Let him just simmer down.”

True to his word, when Paul got back to Princeton, he waited until Monday, then went to see the dean of Student Affairs and applied for a multisemester leave of absence that wouldn’t affect his grades. Next he returned to his dorm room and packed his bags. He was about to call Bella, but instead dialed Robert. The phone rang until someone in the hallway of his brother’s dormitory answered and said Robert wasn’t around.

Paul kept calling over the next four hours until he finally got ahold of Robert. As soon as his brother said hello, Paul explained that he had just withdrawn from classes.

“Please say you’re joshing.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Mother was just having some fun, but this is downright spiteful.”

“I didn’t do it out of spite.”

“The semester’s almost over, and then you only have one more year to go!”

“Robert, I have no choice. Millicent’s down in Mexico and I’m sure she’s in distress.”

“Oh my,” Robert said. “So what are you hoping to do, go down and rescue her?”

“I suppose.” It sounded melodramatic even to Paul.

“But you’re not seriously planning on fighting the government of Mexico, are you?”

“No, of course not, I just want to protect Millie.”

“Paul, you’re handsome, rich, and young. You don’t have to get yourself shot in another country to save some wetback mistress. Hell, you can sleep with Maria—I know you fancy her.”

“Damn you, Robert!”

“I’m sorry, Paul, but this is just crazy.”

“Look, it’s one of those things that if I don’t do, I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting.”

“And how about if you get yourself killed? Do you have any idea how angry Mom would be if that happened?”

Paul smiled, but then realized that Robert was serious.

Robert wasn’t afraid of his older brother’s death, only concerned about upsetting their mother. Paul replied that he simply had no choice.

“So you’re really going through with it?”

“I am, and I hope you’ll learn from this.”

“What exactly am I supposed to learn, Paul?”

“That you shouldn’t be afraid to fight for something you believe in.”

Paul heard a sound that could’ve been a snort or a chuckle. He wasn’t sure if Robert was indignant or amused.

“Good luck,” Robert finally remarked.

Paul hung up the earpiece on the cradle of the candlestick phone. Trying to stand, he found that his left leg and right arm had fallen asleep—like he had pinched a nerve. After several minutes of nervously shaking his body, his circulation returned to normal.

He gave away many of his possessions and put the rest in storage, then packed a single rucksack of necessities. He headed straight to the train station and mapped out as direct a route as he could to the tiny Mexican village of Cór-dova. The trip was six days of continuous travel with four connecting trains. The food was awful, but Paul enjoyed watching as the passengers, climate, and landscapes slowly changed while they moved southwest. He also became friendly with most of the Negro Pullman workers on the trains. It was the first time he had traveled out west. The wide-open ranges and the soaring mountains stretched his imagination, but the endless rolling desert filled him with an inexplicable déjà vu.

As Paul’s train eventually approached the Mexican border, he changed into a new suit to extinguish any suspicion that he was aligned with the revolutionaries. He didn’t have a passport, but when the two federal soldiers marched slowly down the aisle, Paul handed over his Princeton University ID. One of them looked it over and handed it back to him.

The train stopped three more times, and each time a different pair of menacing soldiers walked down the aisles of his train, carefully checking the identity of foreigners and asking what business they had in Mexico.

“Just vacationing,” he always replied with a tight smile.

When Paul eventually descended from his final train in Mexico, he felt a painful crick in his neck; it seemed as if an invisible force was pinning his head in place. He assumed it had something to do with the pinched nerve he had suffered earlier, so he simply trudged along in discomfort.

6

F
ollowing a full day of travel on a mule-drawn carriage, Paul finally arrived at the small village of Córdova in the state of Sonora. Millicent’s last mailing address turned out to be a home full of peasants.

“Are any students from America staying here?” he asked one of the men in his passable Spanish.

Paul was directed to Victor Gonzalez, one of the original committee members, who said that Millie was running the canteen attached to a small brigade roughly fifty miles to the east. It was headed by Colonel Ceasar Octavio-Noriega, a short man with a bushy white mustache.

Paul was able to catch a ride there the next day. As rebel soldiers stopped the wagon upon his arrival, Millie came racing up with her arms spread wide.

“Paul!”

He kissed her hard on the mouth and squeezed her tightly.

That night, over soggy corn-flour burritos with rice and beans that tasted like they had been refried one too many times, she filled him in: Things had not been going well. When Madero escaped his captors and made his formal call to arms, he expected to find a trained army of sympathizers waiting to assist him when he crossed the Rio Grande. A small crowd was gathered there, but the ragtag group hardly constituted an army. Madero was forced to retreat back up to Texas. In Mexico, there were some minor skirmishes, but the expected uprising fizzled. Nonetheless, word spread and various insurgent leaders started joining together. Peasants began to grasp the significance of the fight and joined the insurrection. In the state of Chihuahua, Madero supporter Pascual Orozco took over the town of Guerrero. At the end of the November, Francisco “Pancho” Villa captured San Andrés. Back in Sonora, another revolutionary, José María Maytorena, organized a series of small bands which soon infested the north. From the southern state of Morelos, the great Emiliano Zapata sent a delegate to Madero to discuss cooperation in fighting the Díaz regime.

“I can’t believe you came all the way down here,” Millie said excitedly to Paul.

“Believe me, I didn’t want to,” he replied, putting his bag down.

With a wide smile and a beautiful tan, Millie looked like someone else. She led him around the camp proudly showing him off to her various friends and colleagues.

“Who is this?” Colonel Octavio-Noriega asked suspiciously.

“My fiancé,” Millie replied.

“Good, then he’ll stay in your tent.”

That night, Paul and Millie made love for the very first time. Over the following weeks, as the band rode east and then south, Millicent introduced him to a variety of zealous young comrades, many of whom had come from abroad to help with this struggle. All seemed to believe that a worldwide revolution was imminent. Paul sat quietly at night around the campfires.

“Civilization comes to the point,” one Italian volunteer named Carlo struggled to say one evening, “where iz no longer need for the leaders who divide and exploit the work man.”

Listening to them, Paul found a renewed faith in the American system of government. To Millie’s displeasure, he told her that he had decided to stay out of all combat in Mexico. His sole task would be protecting her.

“Can’t you see how bad it is here?” she appealed. He replied that he did, but that he just didn’t think these people were ready; the poor seemed to accept their fate and the rich clearly felt entitled to theirs. His noninvolvement soon became an ongoing argument between the two of them.

It all changed by accident one day, when a young Russian anarchist who was an expert sapper arrived under orders from Pancho Villa. Vladimir Ustinov, who wasn’t much older than Paul, had ample experience with bombs from his time in czarist Russia. He had been sent out to teach various militias, some of whom were filled with foreign fighters, how to build homemade bombs to be used against the local garrisons.

In the turbulent state of Chihuahua, almost none of the peasant fighters spoke anything besides Spanish. Other than Russian, Vladimir only knew French. It often took him three hours to give a twenty-minute lesson, but that day he was pressed for time. Getting a full demonstration with all the equipment, Paul, who had studied French at Princeton, spent an hour learning from the Russian before the man had to gallop off to his next mission.

“So should I teach your soldiers?” Paul asked the colonel after the Russian departed.

“Teach them what?”

“What Señor Ustinov taught me—how to use the explosives.”

“You’re our official sapper,” the commander said to him in Spanish. “Just instruct them as you need.”

“But I’m not a volunteer,” Paul explained. “I’m just here to protect my fiancée.”

“Congratulations, you’ve officially been conscripted,” the commander replied.

“Look, I’ll teach your men what Vladimir taught me, but I refuse to kill people in a war that I don’t believe in.”

The commander pulled an old pistol from his cracked leather holster and pointed it at Paul’s forehead. The young American stared angrily at the older man, refusing to believe that the bastard would pull the trigger.

“I’ll teach and oversee your men, but I simply can’t kill anyone. If you really are going to execute me, so be it.”

The commander put the gun down and told him to wait outside the tent. Five minutes later, the man sent for Millicent, who he greatly respected. The two spoke alone for five minutes, then Paul was summoned.

“Okay, I’ve agreed to your terms. You can instruct Millie here.”

“Millie?”

“Yes, she’ll be your hands. Your first mission is tonight.”

“I’m not going on any mission,” he replied.

“Fine, then she’ll do it alone. Instruct her as best as you can. She’s going out in a few hours.”

“What’s the mission?”

“There’s a supply train passing two hours from here. She’s going out with a detachment of the European volunteers to blow up the track.”

“Millie can’t do it.”

Before Paul could opine that most of the European volunteers were criminals who’d sooner rape her than follow her, she spoke up: “I’ve done missions before.”

Paul finally relented and agreed to be the militia’s official sapper instead of Millie.

Along with a dozen men, most of them Italian volunteers, they rode out on horseback. From a distance, Paul could see a large regiment of federal soldiers patrolling both sides of the tracks. He had his men tie up their horses at a safe distance, then waited until night. He brought three men with him, proceeding forward on foot. They were almost caught when a passing patrol found their tracks in the moonlight, but they cautiously advanced from tree to tree and rock to rock and reached the target undetected. Paul and Carlo hastily wedged three dynamite sticks under each of the tracks, while the others kept watch. Paul lit a slow-burning fuse and they ran like hell.