A Visit to Don Otavio (27 page)

I saw the stars, jingling in Mexican riding costumes, emerge from the Mendoza Bar. A crowd of youths and women was hanging about the entrance.

‘¡Un quinto! ¡Por amor de Dios un quinto!’

The stars drew fountain-pens.

‘¡Por caridad de la Madre de Dios un QUINTO!’

The pens wavered. The outstretched hands were bare. Two sets of blank stares met.

The crowd fled. The stars looked much put out.

On the morning of the second day petrol had come in. By noon the hotel
mozo
received a communication – I never knew in what way – from our
mozo
that it was time for me to come out to move the car. This I did three times that day. By tea-time, I had got as far as the actual town. Then the garage closed.

‘Well, you can’t expect them to work late,’ said the hotel manager, ‘not after a heavy day like this. They’ve been making much money today, I shouldn’t wonder if they stayed closed now for the rest of the week.’

They did not, however, and by next evening the petrol had run out again.

The car was now well advanced into the town. It stood in the main street of Morelia, the
mozo
sitting inside hat and all, and the sight was one not easy to avoid. Whenever I saw him he was in that position; I did not go into the question of his sleeping one at all. Every morning I took him a peso, but he continued to nourish himself exclusively from a stock of
tortillas
and red pepper. Once E bought him a meat-cake. He appeared not to see it, so E left it by him on the seat and next time we went it was gone. After this we would leave fruit and sandwiches in the car. Sometimes they disappeared, sometimes not. We would bring a bag of
sweet buns, saying ‘for your dinner,’ and find them untouched two hours later. We learnt that he took food only when it was not wrapped, in small quantities and placed quite near him. It made us feel very uncomfortable.

Every night, warming over dinner, I would tell E what I was going to say to the
mozo
, how I would beg him to communicate, implore him to speak. Every morning it seemed unattemptable.

More petrol arrived and I spent an afternoon moving the car a few feet every ten minutes. At closing time, it was opposite the Virrey de Mendoza where it was much admired. The handsomest car we’ve had in the queue yet, they said.

Next morning it was moved on again towards more humble quarters. Then the garage shut for the week-end.

Don Otavio sent an anxious telegram. We re-assured him with the reason for our delay. On Monday morning we received a second:

‘Indeed,’ said the manager, ‘José María Artegas. He is well-known. At present he is working with the film artists at the Mendoza. He is their local confidence man. I shall send him to you at once.’

José María Artegas said that he had the honour of being our and Don Enriquez’ servant. He said his poor house and humble person and meagre services were at our disposal though at present it was petrol people were most after. He said that as it happened he was managing certain international stores which, though not exactly for liquidation, were in excess of computed consumption to the extent of a disposable surplus. At the door he said not to bring the car but to bring a
mozo
and a barrel.

I did. The
mozo
paid. There was no change.

‘What
I
should like to know,’ said E, ‘is whether we are instrumental in rooking Hollywood, or whether Hollywood is in with Señor José María Artegas.’

Don Otavio had had the considerate idea to save us a change of car and break of journey at Guadalajara, as well as the long boat trip from
Chapala. We were not to go by either of these places but continue west in the state of Michoacán, take the Colima road and, at the point from which we would see Lake Chapala, leave the car and proceed to a village on the south shore, named Tuscueca, from where a boat would take us across the narrow part to San Pedro in less than forty minutes. The car would be fetched and driven back again to the Guadalajara highway – a matter of a mere hundred miles – by Doña Concepción’s cousins and their chauffeur. Don Otavio wrote that this was the way his father used to travel when arriving from Mexico; nobody had tried it for some years, but Mr Middleton had said that he saw no reason why it should not work. I looked at the map and saw that he might be right.

‘My
father,’ said E, ‘told me never to trust a short-cut.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t call it that.’

We had a hard time finding Tuscueca as the lake could be seen from many points, and villages from none.

The south shore of Lake Chapala, so pleasantly divined from the other side, is reedy, bare and windy. After taking several wrong cactus fields, we got at last to Tuscueca and found it darkest mud-hut.

There was no boat.

The inhabitants lay doggo. There was nowhere to sit down. We felt somewhat conspicuous. ‘What if there is no boat?’ said E.

‘There will be a boat.’

‘What if they mixed up the day? What if they didn’t get our telegram? S, I had a bad feeling the moment I heard that Mr Middleton was in on this.’

‘I think I can see a sail.’

‘I am not
going to stand here like Madame Butterfly.’

‘We could go back to the car,
if
we can find it. We could sleep in the car. Like the
mozo
. You know, I believe he did all the time.’

It was not a sail.

‘Oh, for an honest train,’ said E. ‘This teaches us for trying to travel like nineteenth-century satraps.’

Then there was the sound of an engine. Don Enriquez’ launch slid through the waters. In the prow stood Domingo and Andreas holding blankets, shouting, waving.

‘¡Adiós
, Adiós!
Doña E, Doña Sibilla,
Adiós
!’

And in the stern, gleaming, stood a large tea-basket.

E and I looked at each other: ‘It is not possible. It cannot be. All as before?’

‘All as before.’

H
OW DESCRIBE that slow winter, so leisured in unfolding, so brief in passage, that was a radiant summer? How record the long lull, the safe sequence, the seamless span of equal days …

We were then each working on a book and had reached midstream, that prosperous passage between the struggle of the beginning and the obsession of the end, when the book moves with its own existence and has not yet absorbed one’s own, and the daily quarrying is an anchor rather than a burden, a secret discipline at once attaching and detaching, muffling and heightening the rest of living. Within these shafts we strayed at will between two dreams, the life of our books, and the life of the Hacienda.

Every day we wore linen clothes, every day we bathed. We had never been so free. Letters were lost or late, everything else in abeyance among those birds and fruit and flowers – anxiety, money, love; the vicissitudes of friends, the miseries of politics, ourselves perhaps.

Christmas was celebrated with barbarity and opulence.

At midnight on Christmas Eve, a harassed wanderer was reported at the gates, requesting the loan of a mule, a
mozo
and a lantern. Don Otavio went out to see.

It was Mr Waldheim. ‘He was much upset, poor man. He would not come in.’

‘What is he doing with your mule and lantern at this time of night?’

‘He said he was going to Ajijíc to spend Christmas with the witch from Germany. I hope there is nothing wrong.’

‘I hope not.’

Next morning early, Mrs Waldheim rode over and had a talk with Don Otavio. Diana Rawlston was supposed to have been madly in love with Don Otavio fifteen years ago, with the mothers all against it; though Mr Middleton said that there was never anything in it, and one’s own impression was that she adored her dachshund husband. Mrs Rawlston, it appeared, had turned him out of the house last night for singing a German song. Just as Karl was sitting down at the piano, with the tree lit up too … Karl had cried.

‘Diana is miserable, and Mrs Rawlston won’t have him back,’ said Don Otavio. ‘Diana says it will break his heart if he has to spend Christmas without her and the children. We must try to do something.’

‘What
was
the German song?’ said E.

‘A Christmas song.
Holy Night.’

‘Oh dear,’ said E, ‘those Germans.’

‘Would it do any good if
you
talked to Mrs Rawlston?’ said Don Otavio.

‘No,’ said E.

‘Otavio, what if you asked them all to your
tertulia tonight
?’ said I. ‘Mrs Rawlston could scarcely … though of course she could. Perhaps it isn’t such a good idea.’

‘What if Mr Waldheim feels like singing
Stille Nacht
here?’ said E.

‘It is not a good idea at all. Mr Middleton is coming. Do you not remember, or had you left when Mrs Rawlston called Mr Middleton a
nigger-lover? He has been very angry ever since. He says he will see anyone he pleases in his house. Poor Blanche says that now he wants to ask a Negro friend to stay, only Mr Middleton does not know any Negroes and he does not like anyone to stay with him.’

‘He might draw Mrs Rawlston’s thunder tonight. Mr Middleton is made of sterner stuff than poor Waldheim seems to be.’

‘I
cannot
ask Mrs Rawlston having asked Mr Middleton first and knowing how he feels about her,’ said Don Otavio. ‘It is unthinkable.’

‘I don’t see,’ said E, ‘why Mrs Waldheim and the Waldheim children cannot all have a nice Christmas with the homoeopathic lady from Magdeburg, which I understand is the place she originally came from?’

‘That would not be respectful to Diana’s mother,’ said Don Otavio, ‘the way Mrs Rawlston feels about the Germans, poor people.’

‘It did not prevent her from marrying one.’

‘I suppose in the circumstances Mr Middleton would be delighted to have the Waldheims to Christmas dinner,’ said I.

‘Diana would not wish to leave her mother all alone,’ said Don Otavio.

‘Mrs Rawlston can hardly be sharing her son-in-law’s sentiments about that festival,’ said E.

‘Besides we could ask her here,’ said I.

‘You
forget
Mr Middleton,’ said Don Otavio.

‘Mr Middleton is having the Waldheims at
his
house.’

‘He cannot,’ said Don Otavio. ‘He is dining with me. That is a previous engagement.’

‘You would be relieved.’

‘That is not the point,’ said Don Otavio.

‘Well, what are we to do? The Waldheims cannot be separated; Mr Waldheim and Mrs Rawlston, and Mrs Rawlston and Mr Middleton
must
be separated; Mr Waldheim is not allowed in Mrs Rawlston’s house, Mrs Waldheim may not go to the German witch’s, Mr Middleton may not ask anyone to his and Mrs Rawlston cannot be asked here. We need more houses.’

‘There is Peter Saunders and his sister at San Antonio,’ said Don
Otavio. ‘They keep more to themselves, but Peter is a great friend of Diana’s and Mrs Rawlston likes Peter. You must take the boat and call at their place now and explain it all to them. You did meet them once, did you not?’

‘It is unthinkable,’
said I.

‘Impasse,’ said E. ‘I’ve never seen such a lot of people with so many different susceptibilities. I will go after all and
speak
to my countrywoman, these Southerners needn’t think they own the world.’

But it was no good. Mr Waldheim would have to spend the evening at the witch’s harmonium, drinking herb tea; and Mrs Waldheim would sit with her mother under the blazing new electric light, trying to make it nice for the children, pulling crackers …

Don Otavio’s housekeeping was at high pitch that day. In the afternoon I went for a long walk. It was warm and such Indios as I passed were carried by their donkeys. In a mango grove I met another figure evidently abroad for exercise. It was an old friend. The last time I saw him was in Paris in the spring of 1939, he was studying I think, with Lhôte; the last I heard of him was from Singapore in ’42.

‘Jack,’ I said, ‘this isn’t possible.’

‘I’ve been doing portraits of the Provincial Governor’s wife and sisters, and their jewels. Now I’m staying with a friend of mine down the lake.’

‘I always thought you wouldn’t stick to painting.’

‘Come back to Peter’s place with me and have some tea. It’s only a mile or so. You know Peter Saunders and his sister, don’t you?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘They are charming.’

He was right. In the next months we saw the Saunders constantly; we became great friends; we still are. Peter’s sister lives in England and if Peter ever leaves Mexico, he and I have an engagement to motor in the French Pyrenees. Yet during all that time, they never touched a card in my presence or mentioned that afternoon at Mrs Rawlston’s house. I often wanted to, but never brought myself to the point.

That Christmas Day, Jack D and I walked into their patio.

‘How do you do,’ they said.

‘How do you do,’ said I.

Later Peter showed me over the house he had slowly built with, and sometimes against, the advice offered by Mr Middleton. ‘The worst of it is,’ he said, ‘that the old boy is generally right.’

Presently Peter said, ‘what is all this about Diana’s husband being turned out in the middle of the night? Do you know anything about it? Do tell us.’

‘Oh, it is too bad. Mrs Rawlston is naughty. Poor Diana. We must try to do something.’

So Mrs Rawlston dined with the Saunders’ at San Antonio, and the Waldheims came to Don Otavio’s party at San Pedro. They brought the wild boar, half cooked, and Domingo and Andreas handed it round, hair and all, after the ninth
posada
just before the nesselrode pudding and the marzipan camel. Mr Middleton enjoyed himself like one o’clock with Doña Anna; Doña Anna’s band never ceased the
mañanitas
and Mr Waldheim sat good and quiet with his wife and children.