The Underdogs (13 page)

The waiter falls, knocked down by a loud slap across his face.

“That is how I am, General Macías. Notice how I do not have a single hair left on my face? Want to know why? Well, it is because of my fiery temper. When I do not have anyone to let it out on, I pull out my hairs until my anger dies down. I swear, my General, that if I did not do this, I would die from the pent-up rage!”

“It's very bad to swallow your own rage,” affirms very seriously a man wearing a straw sombrero as if it were the roof of a hut. “I killed a woman in Torreón
⁴
'cause she didn't want to sell me a plate of enchiladas. There was a big ol' argument about 'em. I didn't get to eat what I wanted, but at least I calmed down.”

“I killed a shopkeeper in Parral
⁵
'cause he slipped two bills from Huerta
⁶
in with the change,” said another man with a small star, his blackened, calloused fingers glittering with jewels.

“I killed a guy in Chihuahua
⁷
'cause I always ran into 'im at the same table at the same time whenever I'd go in to eat lunch ... He really annoyed me! What do ya want?”

"H'm! I killed ...”

The theme is inexhaustible.

Near dawn, when the restaurant is full of joy and spittle— when the dark, ashen-faced women from the north mix with the young girls from the suburbs wearing garish makeup— Demetrio takes out his stone-encrusted gold pocket watch and asks Anastasio Montañés to tell him the time.

Anastasio stares at the face of the watch, then sticks his head out a window and, looking up at the starry sky, says:

“The Seven Sisters
⁸
are hangin' way down, compadre. Dawn's not far off now.”

Outside the restaurant, the drunken yelling and the loud laughter and singing are ceaseless. Soldiers on horseback ride wildly by, cracking their whips on the sidewalks. Rifle and pistol shots can be heard throughout the city.

Demetrio and War Paint stagger down the middle of the street, arm in arm, toward the hotel.

II

“What a bunch of animals!” War Paint exclaimed, laughing loudly. “Where d'ya say ya was from? The days when soldiers stay in inns are over. Where're ya from? As soon as ya get anywhere all ya have to do is choose the house that best suits ya and ya go and take it, ya don't ask no one. If not, who the hell was the revolution for? For city dandies? No, we're gonna be the dandies now, don't ya know? Let's see, Pancracio, hand me your machete for a minute . . . Damn these rich folk! They keep everythin' under lock and key . . .”

She dug the tip of the steel blade into the slit between a drawer and its desktop. Then, using the handle to get leverage, she broke the lock and yanked the splintered top off the desk.

Anastasio Montañés, Pancracio, and War Paint sank their hands into the pile of letters, stamps, photographs, and other papers scattered all over the rug.

Pancracio expressed his anger at not finding anything to his liking by kicking into the air, with the point of his leather sandal, a framed portrait, the glass covering of which shattered in the middle of the room.

Cursing, they withdrew their empty hands from among all the papers.

But the tireless War Paint continued breaking the locks off drawer after drawer, leaving no corner unexamined.

They did not notice when a small box, covered in gray velvet, rolled silently away, ending up at the feet of Luis Cervantes.

At this point, Luis Cervantes—who had been looking on with an air of deep indifference, while Demetrio seemed to sleep, spread out on the rug—pulled the small box in with the tip of his shoe without saying anything. Then he bent over, scratched his ankle, and deftly picked it up.

He was astonished: it contained two diamonds, of very pure glint, set in a filigree mount. He quickly hid it in his pocket.

When Demetrio awoke, Luis Cervantes said to him:

“General, look at this mess the boys have made. Would it not be preferable to avoid all this?”

“No,
curro
. Poor fellows! It's the only pleasure they have left after stickin' their necks out in combat.”

“Yes, General, but at least not here. Look at all this, this kind of action ruins our good name and, what is even worse, it ruins the reputation of our cause . . .”

Demetrio fixed his eaglet eyes on Luis Cervantes. He tapped his teeth with his fingernails, and said: “Don't get all worked up now . . . Listen, don't come tellin' me about all that! We all know that what's yours is yours, and what's mine's mine. You got that little box, okay then. I got the pocket watch, and tha's that.”

And the two, very much in harmony now, showed each other their “advance.”

Meanwhile, War Paint and her companions were searching through the rest of the house.

Quail walked into a room where he found a twelve-year-old girl, her forehead and arms already marked with copper-colored stains. Astounded, both remained still as they contemplated the piles of books on the carpet, tables, and chairs, the broken mirrors pulled off the walls, and the furniture and knickknacks in pieces. Quail sucked in his breath and stared at his prey with avid eyes.

Outside, in a corner of the patio, amid the suffocating smoke, Lard was roasting small ears of corn, feeding the fire with books and papers that went up in bright flames.

“Ah!” Quail suddenly shouted, “look at what I found me! Perfect saddle blankets for my mare!”

And with one swift motion he yanked down a plush curtain, which came crashing down, with curtain rod and everything, and landed on the finely carved headpiece of a large chair.

“Look at this . . . look at all these bare, naked women!” exclaimed Quail's young girl, amused and entertained by the pages of a deluxe volume of the
Divine Comedy
. “I like this one, this one I'm takin' for myself.” And she began to tear out the engravings that most drew her attention.

Demetrio got up and took a seat next to Luis Cervantes. He ordered a beer, handed a bottle to his secretary, and drank his down in one long gulp. Then, drowsy again, he half-closed his eyes and fell back asleep.

“Listen,” a man in the doorway said to Pancracio. “At what time could I speak to the general?”

“You can't talk to 'im at any time. He woke up with a hangover,” Pancracio answered. “What do ya want?”

“I want to buy one of those books that they're burnin' over there.”

“I can sell those to ya myself.”

“How much you want for them?”

A perplexed Pancracio knitted his eyebrows: “Well, let's see. The ones with pictures in 'em, those are five cents each. The others . . . I'll give ya the whole lot of 'em for free if ya buy all the books with pictures.”

The man came back for the books with a bushel basket.

“Demetrio, ol' man, Demetrio, wake up already,” War Paint yelled. “Stop sleepin' like a fat pig! Look who's here! It's Towhead Margarito! Don't ya know what kind of man this towhead is?”

“General Macías, I have come to tell you that I have the greatest admiration for you, that I have a very strong will, and that I like your manner of doing things very much. Therefore, if you are not opposed to it, I would like to transfer into your brigade.”

“What's your rank?” Demetrio asked.

“First captain, General.”

“Come on, then. Come with me and I'll make you a major.”

Towhead Margarito was a short, chubby man, with handlebar mustaches and very evil blue eyes that disappeared between his cheeks and his forehead when he laughed. Formerly a waiter in the Delmónico restaurant in Chihuahua, he now proudly wore three brass bars, the insignia of his rank in the northern division.

Towhead Margarito poured praise upon Demetrio and his men, and this was all it took for a box of beer to be emptied in a flash.

All of a sudden War Paint appeared in the middle of the room, parading about in a splendid silk gown with very fine lace.

“The only thing missing are the stockings!” Towhead Margarito exclaimed, splitting his sides with laughter.

Quail's girl also burst out laughing loudly.

But War Paint remained unperturbed. She shrugged off the comments, plopped down on the rug, and kicked off her white satin slippers, waving with evident pleasure her previously entombed bare toes in the air. Then she said: “Hey, you, Pancracio! Go get me a pair of blue stockings from my ‘advances.'”

The room was getting more and more crowded with new friends and old battle comrades. Becoming lively again, Demetrio was starting to recount in minute detail some of his most notable feats of arms.

“Hey, what's that noise?” he asked all of a sudden, surprised by the tuning of strings and brass instruments in the patio of the house.

“General Demetrio Macías,” Luis Cervantes said solemnly. “It is a banquet that your old friends and comrades offer you in celebration of the feat of arms of Zacatecas and your well-deserved promotion to general.”

III

“General Macías, allow me to present to you my future wife,” Luis Cervantes announced emphatically, leading a girl of unusual beauty into the dining room.

Everyone turned toward her, and she opened her large blue eyes, bewildered.

She was perhaps fourteen years of age. Her skin was ruddy and smooth as a rose petal, her hair was blond, and her eyes had a trace of malignant curiosity and much vague childish fear in them.

Luis Cervantes noticed that Demetrio fixed his bird-of-prey eyes on her, and felt satisfied.

They made room for her to sit between Towhead Margarito and Luis Cervantes, facing Demetrio.

There were numerous bottles of tequila among the fine glasses, porcelain, and flower vases.

The Indian came in, sweating and cursing, carrying a box of beers on his shoulder.

“You all don't know what this towhead is all about yet,” War Paint said, noticing that the man she was referring to did not once take his eyes from Luis Cervantes's fiancée. “He's real smart, all right, and I never seen a quicker man in the whole wide world.”

She shot him an insinuating glance, then added:

“Tha's why I can't stand to look at 'im, any which way!”

The orchestra broke into a splendid bullfighting march.

The soldiers bellowed with joy.

“This menudo
¹
is wonderful, General! I swear I have never had one prepared as well as this in my entire life,” Towhead Margarito said, as he reminisced about the Delmónico in Chihuahua.

“You really like it, Towhead?” Demetrio replied. “In that case, have 'em keep servin' it until ya're all full.”

“Tha's exactly how I like it,” Anastasio Montañés agreed. “Tha's how it's good. I like a good stew until . . . until . . . I'm so stuffed I'm burpin' it out.”

Sounds of slurping and big swigs followed. Everyone drank copiously.

At the end, Luis Cervantes lifted a glass of champagne and stood up:

“My esteemed General . . .”

“H'm!” War Paint interrupted. “Here comes the speech, and that always really bores me. I'm off to the corral instead, since there's no more to eat anyhow.”

Luis Cervantes presented Demetrio Macías a black cloth escutcheon with a small brass eagle. And he accompanied it with a toast that no one understood but which everyone applauded vigorously.

Demetrio grabbed the insignia representing his new rank. Then, with his face very flushed, his eyes sparkling, and his teeth gleaming, he said, full of ingenuousness: “And what am I supposed to do with this buzzard?”

Anastasio Montañés stood up and said, trembling, “My dear compadre, I don't need to tell ya . . .”

Entire minutes passed by, but the damned words would not come to compadre Anastasio. His face turned red, making the beads of sweat on his dirt-encrusted forehead glow like pearls.

“Well . . . I don't need to tell ya . . . that you know that I'm your compadre . . .”

And as everyone had applauded Luis Cervantes when he had finished, Anastasio gave the sign for everyone to applaud him as well, by clapping very seriously himself.

But it turned out just fine, for his awkwardness served as an incentive to the others, and Lard and Quail also made toasts.

It was about to be the Indian's turn when War Paint appeared, shouting out in jubilation. Clicking her tongue, she was trying to lead a beautiful jet-black mare into the dining room.

“My ‘advance'! My ‘advance'!” she exclaimed, patting the fiery animal's arched neck.

The mare resisted coming through the door, but a pull on its halter and a whip snapped on its croup made it enter, spiritedly and clamorously.

The enthralled soldiers stared at the rich catch with ill-concealed envy.

“I don't know how this damned War Paint does it, but she always beats us to the best ‘advances'!” Towhead Margarito exclaimed. “That is how it has been with her since she joined us in Tierra Blanca.”
²

“Hey, you, Pancracio, go fetch me a bundle of alfalfa for my mare,” War Paint ordered curtly.

Then she handed the rope off to a soldier.

Once again all the cups and glasses were filled. Some of the men were beginning to tilt back, close their eyes, and nod off, while most still yelled loudly and joyfully.

In the middle of it all, Luis Cervantes's girl, who had spilled all her wine on a handkerchief, looked around everywhere with her big blue eyes full of astonishment.