TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (36 page)

But the Northern Division, with its pent-up energy and awesome power, was not to be denied. Gómez Palacio fell, and we stormed Torreón. We were approaching a hill outside the city with Candelario’s Dorados when Villa noticed six or seven long-haired Otomi Indians standing near some cottonwood trees. The men were half-naked, and one of the women clasped a baby at her breast. As the baby sucked, they watched us silently.

“For Christ’s sake . . Villa yelled to me. “Ride over there! Tell them they could be in our line of fire!”

I reined up in a spill of dust and finally found one of the Otomis who spoke some Spanish. I explained the situation.

“But, señor,” the man said humbly, “this is where we always stand to watch the battle for Torreón.”

The battle took ten days, and it was hard. This time there was no marimba band on the grass outside the Hotel Salvador, no fiesta at the casino. Blood ran darkly down the worn cobblestones as if bulls had been skinned after a
corrida.
I walked my sweating horse carefully down from La Pila to the Plaza de Armas, following the relentless course of that muddy crimson stream.

When I saw Villa in the familiar bridal suite at the Hotel Salvador, he was still covered with dust and dried sweat. Felipe Angeles was with him, bathed and shaved, but there were black shadows under his melancholy eyes. The map of Mexico was spread before him on the coffee table. Angeles wore a brown cashmere sweater with leather elbow patches, and his handsome profile, flared mustache and dark sunglasses made him look like a gentleman pirate.

But his voice vibrated with passion. “My general,” he said to Villa, “in every campaign there is a single decisive battle in which the body and spirit of the losing side is broken. If the victor presses on, resistance crumbles. Now you must push to the south with all speed.”

“And Velasco?” Villa spoke coldly and angrily.

Seven thousand Federal soldiers under General Velasco had escaped Torreón and were heading east along the railroad line. Villa didn’t argue with Angeles’ military theory, but it troubled him deeply to have a large intact enemy force in his rear. During the battle he had taken time out to telegraph our supposed ally, Carranza’s favorite general, Pablo González, asking that González cut the eastbound railroad line—the only one Villa had been unable to reach.

González for some reason had neglected to do it. Now, from the hotel, with Angeles, Villa telegraphed once again, begging González to attack.

He received his reply in a wire direct from Carranza. “I do not recall ever having ordered you to take Torreón in the first place. I congratulate you, but you are under the command of General Obregón and must clear all orders through him.”

“These bastards! Are they serious?” Villa tugged at his mustache. “How can I speed south with such people protecting my flanks? My men can barely stand up.”

So the momentum created by the decisive battle was lost. Angeles’ advice went unheeded. Villa called a halt to the advance on Mexico City.

“I must go north,” he said, when he had finished brooding. “I must meet this man, Venustiano Carranza, whom I serve but who doesn’t serve me.”

Like many events, such as the Benton killing, the meeting with Carranza was to change the course of history in Mexico—for it subtly began the change in Pancho Villa’s purpose as a revolutionist.

And anything that changed the course of the revolution changed the shape of my life as well.

Give me the place to stand, and I will move the earth,
Archimedes said, two thousand years ago. What he neglected to say is that the earth moves too. The tides sweep both ways. Men have the ability to change history and seldom can resist the beckoning of that chance. History reciprocates. The dance of life goes on—more a tug-of-war than a dance. Sometimes we are movers, sometimes we are moved. Buddha, I once read, called the process “the wheel of life.” To liberate himself from that relentless process, a man has to disengage—has to get off the wheel, stop dancing, thumb his nose at the tides. How can he do that? Long before I left Mexico, with the aid of two women, I would begin to find out. And that knowledge, that action, would color the rest of my life. It would make me the man I became, the man who could accept success and failure, wealth and poverty, misery and its cloudy opposite, with equal calm. It would make me untouchable. It would darken my soul, because I had seen and done too much.

But that spring of 1914, in Chihuahua, I was still on the wheel, still a victim of history and of myself. And of Pancho Villa.

We drove up to Chihuahua City through the rich cotton fields of La Laguna and then the flat northern desert: just Villa, Felipe Angeles and I, with one bouncing truck full of soldiers as escort. Villa slumped thoughtfully in the front seat of the Packard, munching chocolate and sucking on some lemons that the chauffeur had bought for himself.

“I haven’t eaten meat for ten days,” he announced. “Except once or twice, when I forgot. I’m going to be gentle as a rabbit. You’ll see.”

The reception for us was at the governor’s palace, where Venustiano Carranza sat on a throne whose arms were carved in the shape of lion’s paws. I looked forward to meeting him almost as much as Villa did; after all, he was our leader, and in some ways the future of the revolution lay in his hands.

The First Chief was a tall, imposing man in his late fifties and, so seated on the throne, he might have been an emperor except that he lacked a uniform, and his air of serene rectitude, his flowing white mustache and thick white beard, made him look more like God. He had a habit, when he was listening idly to anyone, of combing his beard with the pointed fingernails of his left hand, so that the beard became parted in the middle. He wore a well-cut dark blue pinstriped suit which disguised his portliness, and dark-blue-tinted spectacles which made it difficult to read his expression. I knew that he had trouble with his eyes, that they rarely stopped watering and were sensitive to bright light. He seldom went outdoors.

When they were introduced, Villa stepped forward and gave Carranza a hearty hug. But the old man seemed to shy away from it, as if he hated to be touched.

Afterwards we all drove to Carranza’s new house, a splendid porticoed mansion on the edge of town, with a lovely flower garden and bubbling Moorish fountain. It had recently been proclaimed as Constitutionalist headquarters. But then we entered an uncomfortable sitting room dimmed into chilly darkness by the closed shutters. Carranza didn’t take off his glasses except to wipe his dripping eyes with a cream-colored silk handkerchief.

The room smelled dank and sour. About six of Carranza’s advisers and secretaries sat behind him on carved French chairs. Villa sprawled in an easy chair in front of him, flanked by myself and Felipe Angeles on hard wooden benches.

I had been introduced as the chief’s secretary, but that apparently didn’t rate a shake of the First Chief’s hand.

“And now, General Villa,” Carranza said benignly, when we had settled ourselves, “tell me why you’ve come to Chihuahua. I’m at your service, as always, to answer questions and enlighten you in any way possible.”

Villa took him at his word. Why, he wanted to know, hadn’t General González cut the railroad line and advanced on Velasco from the rear?

“Ah, General Villa, you ask me a military question. I am a statesman, a lawyer, a former senator and governor of the state of Coahuila under President Madero. You, who correctly concern yourself with matters that you know best, such as fighting, should know the answer to your question far better than I.”

“But I don’t, señor,” Villa said. “If I did, for Christ’s sake, I wouldn’t ask.”

The First Chief dabbed at his eyes with the silk handkerchief. “There must have been some circumstances that did not permit it. I have the utmost faith and trust in General González. He is a man utterly loyal to the Constitutionalist aims, an educated man who understands the need for obedience.”

Carranza sighed softly, as a teacher might with a backward pupil.

Villa scratched his head; the dust flew.

“And now,” he inquired, “why is this obedient General González marching in a lateral direction toward the port of Tampico, when our objective is supposed to be Mexico City?”

Carranza in turn inquired of Villa if it wasn’t true that in the area of La Laguna the Northern Division had captured more than a hundred thousand bales of cotton.

The chief looked puzzled. “Yes, that’s so, but I asked you why—”

“And I answered you, although perhaps more subtly than you’re used to. We must have a port from which to ship that cotton abroad. Tampico, toward which González marches—at
my
orders—is that port.”

“Señor!” Villa laughed. “We can send the cotton by train to the United States!”

“I am not pleased with the attitude of the United States,” Don Venus proclaimed. “Are you not aware of what is happening at Veracruz?”

We all knew something of it—rumors, anyway—and Carranza explained the rest. The first of the German ships dispatched from Hamburg,
Ypiranga,
was due to dock at Veracruz with a cargo of fifteen million cartridges and two hundred machine guns for Huerta’s army. A German cruiser hovered off the port, as did various American gunboats and three Yankee battleships. An incident had already occurred; one of the American gunboats had run out of fuel, and a German supplier on the Tampico canal had unaccountably offered to sell them what they needed. A party had been sent ashore.

The Federals, nervously awaiting an attack from González to the north, promptly arrested the Yankee sailors, held them a few hours, then received orders to release them. But the American Admiral Mayo had demanded a formal apology in the way of a twenty-one-gun salute, which he promised to return.

Huerta stamped his foot in Mexico City, saying that his men had even helped the sailors load their damned fuel—and in any case why should he salute the ship of a gringo government that didn’t recognize his authority and was openly supplying his enemies?

“But this is the best thing that could happen,” Villa said warmly to Don Venus. “If Huerta doesn’t apologize, the gringos may take some action. That’ll put a firecracker up the ass of that bullet-headed drunk!”

Carranza smiled. “Such a salute would violate our national sovereignty, General Villa, just as much as if I had allowed the Americans to inspect the grave of Mr. Benton, whose death caused us so much embarrassment. If you’ll study the history of our country, you’ll realize that for four hundred years Mexico has been the victim of foreign imperialism—the Spaniards, who took our whole country; the Americans, who stole half of it; and the French, who gave us the puppet emperor Maximilian. And now the Americans wish to interfere once again. History cannot be allowed to repeat itself. If they arrive and are made welcome, who knows that they’ll ever go? In this matter, I place the soul of Mexico before the revolution.”

Villa squirmed in his seat. “Señor, nothing comes before the revolution. How do you explain the soul of Mexico to a peasant who hasn’t enough corn to feed his children?”

“In time,” Carranza replied affably, “peasants will be taught such things. That is the purpose of our proposed Constitutionalist government.”

He fended off any further comment by turning toward a bottle of chilled French rosé wine that stood in a silver bucket on the table. The blue-tinted spectacles still hid his eyes. He poured a small glass of wine for himself, then offered one to Pancho Villa.

“Will you drink with me to the noble aims of my Plan of Guadalupe, General Villa?”

“I don’t drink, señor. But if you have some hot coffee, I wouldn’t mind a cup. It’s cold as a witch’s tit in here.”

Don Venus said, “I admire your abstinence, General. I deplore the effect of strong drink on the Mexican nation. It is my aim, during the short period that I will be interim chief of our country, to forbid the distillation of pulque, which I consider a curse on our national family life and productivity. I will encourage the people to replace the swilling of pulque with the moderate imbibing of chilled light wine.”

Villa chuckled. “While you’re at it, you could also ask God to replace corn with caviar. And pray for snow in summer, so there’s ice to chill the wine.”

The First Chief didn’t comment, just rubbed his hands together nervously. Then he picked at the skin of one thumb. Shortly after that, the interview ended with a limp handshake.

Once we were in the Packard and on the road south, Villa threw his hands in the air. “Son of a whore!” He shook those hands as if he were throttling an invisible demon. “I didn’t understand half of what that man said! The words, yes … but the meaning?
Válgame Dios!
Before I met him, despite everything, I swear to you—I respected him. But when I hugged him at the palace, the feel of his body made my blood run cold. Shall I tell you what he is? A sluggish old man who lives in a dark, damp room and detests the light. Is this a statesman? No, it’s a half blind court clerk. Wine instead of pulque! Did you hear him? I’ll have to tell that one to Urbina. He may go over to fight for Huerta.”

On the hot winding road to Torreón he sank into a lethargy. But then, after a while, he spoke again.

“Felipe, I’m a peasant. But you’re an educated man, at least as much as he. You understand all his words. Tell me truthfully—do I do him an injustice?”

I know Carranza well,” Angeles said. “He believes in intrigues. He surrounds himself with toadies and parasites and jackals. They have only to agree with all his pronouncements. That’s why he tolerates this oaf, General González, who failed to cut the railroad line. He despises you. That’s obvious. Have you never wondered why?”

Villa nodded, apparently undisturbed; the question had already been answered. But his brows knitted. “Did you smell something in that room? Didn’t you sniff it?”

“Just the dampness,” Angeles said. “The perfume on his handkerchief. The wine.”

“There was more. Listen to me. I trust my nose. It’s saved my skin more than once. I smelled an odor in that beautiful house, in that fancy room. Even more, I smelled it in his manner, and he can’t hide it even behind his dark glasses, not from a peasant and a former bandit. What I smelled was the odor of ambition. A secret greed. Despite his repeating endlessly that he’s only ‘interim chief’ until we’re victorious, this man dreams to become President of Mexico … and more.” He grunted deep in his throat, like a hog. “He doesn’t see me as the general of an army that will help him win the revolution. Don Venus hopes to be another Porfirio Diaz, to rule alone and forever. And he sees me as the chief obstacle to that demonic dream.”