A Visit to Don Otavio (9 page)

Such a man was not equipped to stand up against a restless wife or deal with Napoleon III. There was not even a place for him in the ossified bureaucracy of his brother’s reign. First he tried a hand at reforming the Austrian navy such as it was, then he tried to make a decent Viceroy of Lombardy. The administrative channels of the Habsburg monarchy were like the arteries of a very old person. Every measure of Maximilian’s that could be considered in the least new or generous was at once obstructed by the most senile chancelleries in Europe. Maximilian ate his heart out. He did not suspect that the Italians were not so much interested in having a
good
Viceroy as in having no Viceroy at all. The mistake was typical.

When the Napoleonic hour struck, Maximilian was living retired at Miramar on the Adriatic, where he led a dilettante’s existence and like Lord Byron played with the idea of emigrating to South America as a private citizen. It must have been impossible for someone of Maximilian’s character and upbringing not to have construed the offer as the bugle call of duty as well as destiny. Nevertheless, he put up some objections. Was he really wanted in Mexico? He was told that a plebiscite had been held on that question, and an overwhelming majority returned in his favour. A plebiscite among Indians, most of them illiterate, in a country, then occupied by a foreign army, which to this day has not known anything resembling a free, universal and secret ballot … Now, it seems thin. Maximilian accepted. There was much delay over escorts and allowances. Francis-Joseph exacted a renunciation of the Austrian
succession from his brother. The Pope was cool. A large painting was done of Maximilian and Charlotte’s future landing at Vera Cruz, where they all stand bare-headed in uniforms and Winterhalter dresses on a well-appointed pier, welcomed with bouquets and banners by a deputation in evening clothes. Charlotte changed her name to Carlota, and in ’64 they sailed for Mexico on an Austrian destroyer. At Gibraltar, units of the Royal Navy saluted their Mexican colours, that aggressive emblem of a snake perched upon a cactus being devoured by an eagle. The salute was interpreted as a hopeful sign of English collaboration. They were already clutching at straws in the wind.

The rest of the European part of the story is a backing out and washing of hands. Lombard Street did not recover the bonds, nor the Church her lands; no dynasty was established in Mexico, and the government became neither stable nor orderly.

None of these things have the same meaning in Mexico, and it was there that the story began for Maximilian. There was little in nineteenth-century European conceptions that could have helped to prepare him.
Que diable, allait-il chercher dans cette galère?
He never understood what went on. Mexico never understood what he was about. It was in another country. For three years he was up against the quicksand and bedrock of Mexico, then they returned him across the sea on the same destroyer in a shoddy coffin. Again there was much haggling.

The story is fascinating. For all the trappings, it is not a romantic story, but a tragedy of misunderstanding, of the abyss between man and man; pitiful, often squalid, extraordinary only in the baroque detail and the vanity of
everybody’s
wishes.

W
E HAVE TASTED the countryside: we are off. Two days only after Cuernavaca, and we are on a bus. We have front seats; the luggage has been flung on to the roof; our fellow passengers are decorous Indios with small farm animals on their laps, the coachwork rattles and the driver's dashboard is clinking with holy medals and ex-votos. Tonight, DV, we shall be in a town called Morelia. From there we shall go on to a lake. Meanwhile, we are jolted over hill and dale, through lush fields, mango groves, orchards fat with fruit, and sudden brief villages of mud hut and double-towered church where pigs squeal to safety and a baroque scroll flashes by in the sunlight – on and on, up and down, down and up, with the smells of summer streaming in through the windows, as in some improbably prolonged delicious joke.

When there seems to be no more hope or reason to stop, we stop. In a nameless village. The passengers climb down and disappear into an adobe hut with a Coca-Cola sign. I ask the driver how long we are going to stay.

‘To eat.'

‘How much time?'

‘Time to eat.'

E is plucking at my sleeve. ‘Oh, do come and make the ladies in pince-nez explain what they want.'

Two elderly women in decent black, with scrubbed youthful faces, have remained in their seats. They are trying to ask E to get them a little broth and some
tortillas.
One is already fumbling with a snap purse produced from her skirts. I take over and accept the peso note.

‘Of course. But from where?'

‘Why, the station buffet.'

We try the mud hut. Behind it we find a farmyard with trestle tables pleasantly laid for a collation. We sit down under a wistaria. From a charcoal-burner, everyone is being served, quite efficiently but without hurry, with hot chicken broth, meat stew, vegetables and fruit. Good simple food all, and we devour it with pleasure. First, though, I take two cups of consommé and a stack of
tortillas
to the women in the bus. They seem able-bodied, so it is odd. Perhaps they cannot afford a meal. We wonder, and there is a guilty sting in the enjoyment of our stop in the sun.

When the bus is about to leave, I turn in the women's cups, and give them their change. They have drunk the broth but saved the
tortillas
. As they thank me, one explains that their Order does not allow them to enter a public eating-place.

Now we understand. They are nuns, travelling in plain clothes according to the law. Not so much as a dog-collar is permitted on the streets. Tonight no doubt within some cloistered wall, these women will resume their habits. Again we feel a little sorry for them in their false position, their meagre refreshment.

As soon as we are off, the smaller nun pulls a wicker basket from under a seat, lays a snowy linen napkin over their laps and produces a tin which my practised eye recognises as game pâté. They open it, spread some on their
tortillas
, and slowly, neatly, genteelly, proceed to eat. When the tin is empty, a dish with a whole roast chicken appears and this, too, they eat deliberately, gently cleaning every bone. The hills of the Sierra Madre rise and fall, barrancas deepen, corn changes to pine and pine to cactus, we crossed the Lerma and we crossed the Tuxpán before they cut the cake and open a jar of peaches. Next come bananas, nuts and dates. The well-mannered company takes no notice, only E and I like dogs in the dining-room watch their every morsel. They finish everything. In between they take long swigs of bottled orangeade. Afterwards, there is a Thermos of coffee and an extra in the shape of a box of chocolate mints which does not come out of the hamper but the skirts of the larger nun, who offers the box to the smaller nun with formality. The smaller nun retaliates with a
paper bag of sweet biscuits. These, too, they empty reflectively, offering box and bag to each other anew between every helping. They do not utter one word. When the last crumb is delicately licked off a finger, they pull out their rosaries, fold their hands, and close their eyes.

‘The Church can sleep and feed at once,' says E who is beginning to feel the journey.

Night had fallen some time ago, and, again improbably, we stopped. It was raining and we were in the outskirts of a town. A large closed motor car came up to meet the nuns and bore them into the darkness. The passengers melted away, the driver had disappeared, we were left in a mob of unwavering hands and agitated arms.

‘!Un quinto! ¡Señora! ¿Un quinto?'

‘¿Quieren un cargador?'

‘¡Señoras! Señoras …'

‘¡Una caridad por amor de la Madre de Dios!'

‘Un quinto …'

‘¿Cargador?'

‘¡Señora!'

‘El cargador soy yo.

‘Una caridad…. ¡Señoras!'

‘Para mí.'

‘¡Para mí!'

‘¡Para mí!'

It has stopped raining. The air is autumnal, almost sharp. Leaves are dripping, and there is a smell of wood smoke. Out of grey, colonnaded streets, I walk into a lighted hall and say,
‘¿Tienen habitaciones? Quiero dos cuartos con una cama cada,'
and I am seized by a sense of déjà-vu so powerful that I stand absorbed and passive trying not to pluck at what strands may rise now from the past. Then the mist of imminence is lifted, and a memory, irrelevant and intact, lies clear.

Avila. There were four of us then, a novelist who was adored by my generation whom he had dazzled and seduced by treading out for them
with elegance and erudition a path of disillusionment; his wife who was adored by their friends; and a young woman, an American, with a lovely, secret Etruscan face, whose expression was one of remote broodings and whose thoughts were much concerned with clean milk. We all lived in Provence then, and that autumn, it was the year before the Spanish Civil War, we went to Madrid because we wanted to see the pictures in the Prado and some of us had workmen in the house. It was a time in which one was already uneasy, though not yet frightened. Political concerns were dominant, but by choice rather than for self-preservation. Or at least we thought so. It was also a time in Europe when one could still travel in comfort and have a part of good things without being rich or ruined. Not the good old times before the other war, of fabled hearsay, when one dined off omelet, claret and a roast bird at a French inn for a shilling, and paid one's way across the Continent with sovereigns in the pocket and no passport. But a time when hotels and restaurant meals and a second-class ticket to Florence were still within the means of everyone of moderate means; and a young man who'd got hold of a couple of hundred pounds might have his year in Paris. Well, we left our houses in the morning, lunched in the sun in the port of Marseilles, drove out to the aerodrome and had a fit when we saw the swastika marked on the plane. We refused to go by Luft Hansa. Our tickets said Air France, but there was no Air France service that day. So they put us on a Spanish plane to Barcelona. Something went very wrong indeed. We dropped to about twenty-five feet, and for half an hour hugged the Costa Brava, the cliffiest, craggiest coast in the Mediterranean, while we each in our way composed or failed to compose ourselves for death. Then we landed and were helped out by German airmen in Luft Hansa caps smiling ironic smiles. That night we had dinner upstairs at the Café on the Plaza de Cataluña. Someone had just thrown a bomb. A tram was overturned, people injured who were not meant to be, and there was a police cordon.

‘Human inability to learn from experience is really too extraordinary,' said the novelist in bell-like tones. ‘Everyone knows perfectly well that home-made bombs have never been the slightest bit of use. And they
will
go on throwing them.'

‘It's a gesture.'

‘My dear. Gestures are so adolescent.'

‘Well, they are certainly trying to grow up here,' said the young American. ‘They're sending children to school, and the women are going to vote next month.'

‘Which surely will mean more pro-clerical returns.'

‘Why should it? Why do you suppose Spanish women don't know what's good for them?'

‘Is it? Do they? Does anybody?'

And so we talked about the Spanish Republic, about Germany, about re-armament. We talked idly, as people who know each other well are apt to do on intense subjects, skirting the fuller impacts. That we all abhorred violence and coercion went without saying, and we did not say it. How to deal with them though? The American, if pressed, might have admitted that she believed in employing them at a reluctant pinch to attain desired ends. I should have called myself, as I would now, a liberal. But a liberal is naturally anti-totalitarian, which puts him at once before a dilemma hard to face, so I was sometimes quite illiberal and often in despair. The novelist saw further than the rest of us but was more aloof like an extremely intelligent person who has read widely of folly, which in fact he was.

That night there was a new note. Benevolent rationalism seemed a little worn: there was a hint that it had had its day, and certainly its bounds, that man was helpless indeed and therefore could be helped and help himself. It was not in any thing definitely said, and I cannot remember words; only when the American at one point said rather exasperatedly, ‘Well, if that's no good either, what
would
you do?' and his wife added, ‘Yes, darling, what? do tell us,' the answer was disturbing by an undercurrent of thoughts yet unformed, a sense of tendrils on the move towards the unseen end of the stick, by something we were too shocked to recognise as hope.

For we bristled at once, and sat mute and wary as though we had found ourselves lured to a revivalist meeting. Then the
paella
we had ordered arrived and there was no immediate pursuit. We ate into the mound of saffron rice, drank Manzanilla and talked of this and that, but
again and again that evening the conversation led to, hovered, and not quite stopped short at some disquieting threshold. Once or twice, always in that graceful, courteous voice, a short word was dropped from the upsetting vocabulary of the tract. The Self, the All, the One … In a good
paella
the rice is quite dry, and grainy; and every single of the many ingredients is fried, steamed or grilled to its exact appropriate texture. That
paella
was perfect. Fat mussels glistened in their barely opened polished shells; a whiff of charcoal clung to strips of yellow and red pimento. As one ate, one came upon chunks of lean fried pork sweet as hazel-nut, prawns tender inside crunchy shells, small stiff green beans almost raw, and sudden explosive crumbs of hot chorrizo sausage. Most of it grew cold on plates. I gave myself as much to the food as I could, first in enjoyment, then tenaciously. This too, it was hinted, would shut one out from that which was not mentioned, as surely as political passion.

‘You don't really believe in all this?' the American said, and once more the answer was an intimation. We barged in with Voltaire. In our grievance against a shift from a trusted intellectual position, we quoted from the novelist's own works. We were baffled, and quite cross. Later we walked it out in the Ramblas, and the next morning we flew to Madrid by Air France.

No more cobwebs there. Madrid was lively with the graspable bustle of a capital of provincial size. It was pleasant but we lived apart. The hotel was opposite the Prado and every morning, early, we stepped across into those overwhelming corridors. I was most wrapped up with the Grecos, it was my first visit and I was very young, so I clutched the volume of Meier- Graefe and was duly swept off my feet. I saw that the Velasquez' were sumptuous, I could not see that they were subtle. The others were discovering the astonishing range of Goya, who could sometimes paint like Reynolds and sometimes like Watteau and sometimes like Daumier, who had in turn portrayed the gaieties, the personages and the horrors of the eighteenth century and lived long enough into the nineteenth to outlive Jane Austen eleven years and Beethoven one. We would return to the hotel at three, excited, ready to talk and a little wild with eye-strain – for the days were grey and the light at the Prado bad – and have a long,
good, Spanish lunch in the dining-room where in the fourth year of the Republic we were still the only respectable women present; then retire to write letters, read Buckle's admirable chapter on Spain in a pocket edition, and the massage advertisements –
gran reacción
guaranteed – in the Madrid papers. Later, at the hour of animation we strolled the evening streets. At ten we went to the theatre. The plays seemed all the same, a murky drawing-room, superb acting, a tenuous plot one was never able to follow and an immense amount of talk. We drove to the Escurial and picnicked in the Guadarrama, but our minds were always on next morning and our sleep uneasy with Don Baltazar, lonely in the riding school, garlanded girls tossing harlequin in a hammock, and wafts of flame-like saints in sulphur and emerald, rising towards the ceiling of the Hotel Colón.

Three weeks of it. When it turned November, we spent some days at Toledo and Segovia, still Castillian towns full of melancholy and vigour where we saw imperishable marvels and much rubbish; and one wet evening we arrived at Avila. At the inn, the American had a good look at the beds and discovered that the sheets had been slept in. Horror. The novelist's wife took it up rather and as no bells were answered persuaded her husband to go downstairs to remonstrate. We trooped after him. At the desk he turned and said in his clear voice, ‘My dears, how shall I put it?' And that took the wind out of those sails. The American was curled up rigid with the shock of what she had seen, and of no use. So I went out into the town in search of something cleaner. It had stopped raining and there was a smell of wood smoke. Out of walled, nun-grey streets I walked into a lighted hall and said,
‘¿Tienen habitaciones? Quiero dos cuartos con dos camas cada.'