They went to the meeting that was crowded with slender dark men in blue denim. At first they couldn’t get in on account of the crowd packed in the aisles and in the back of the hall, but Mac found an official he knew who gave them seats in a box. The hall was very stuffy and the band played and there was singing and the speeches were very long. Barrow said listening to a foreign language made him sleepy, and suggested that they walk around town; he’d heard that the red light district was . . . he was interested in conditions.
Outside the hall they ran across Enrique Salvador, a newspaperman that Ben knew. He had a car and a chauffeur. He shook hands and laughed and said the car belonged to the chief of police who was a friend of his and wouldn’t they like to ride out to San Angel? They went out the long avenue past Chapultepec, the Champs Elysées of Mexico, Salvador called it. Near Tacubaya Salvador pointed out the spot where Carranza’s troops had had a skirmish with the Zapatistas the week before and a corner where a rich clothing merchant had been murdered by bandits, and G. H. Barrow kept asking was it quite safe to go so far out in the country, and Salvador said, “I am a newspaperman. I am everybody’s friend.”
Out at San Angel they had some drinks and when they got back to the city they drove round the Pajaritos district. G. H. Barrow got very quiet and his eyes got a watery look when he saw the little lighted cribhouses, each one with a bed and some paperflowers and a crucifix that you could see through the open door, past a red or blue curtain, and the dark quiet Indian girls in short chemises standing outside their doors or sitting on the sill.
“You see,” said Ben Stowell, “it’s easy as rolling off a log . . . But I don’t advise you to get too careless round here . . . Salvador’ll show us a good joint after supper. He ought to know because he’s a friend of the chief of police and he runs most of them.”
But Barrow wanted to go into one of the cribs so they got out and talked to one of the girls and Salvador sent the chauffeur to get a couple of bottles of beer. The girl received them very politely and Barrow tried to get Mac to ask her questions, but Mac didn’t like asking her questions so he let Salvador do it. When G. H. Barrow put his hand on her bare shoulder and tried to pull her chemise off and asked how much did she want to let him see her all naked, the girl didn’t understand and tore herself away from him and yelled and cursed at him and Salvador wouldn’t translate what she said. “Let’s get this bastard outa here,” said Ben in a low voice to Mac, “before we have to get in a fight or somethin’.”
They had a tequila each before dinner at a little bar where nothing was sold but tequila out of varnished kegs. Salvador showed G. H. Barrow how to drink it, first putting salt on the hollow between his thumb and forefinger and then gulping the little glass of tequila, licking up the salt and swallowing some chile sauce to finish up with, but he got it down the wrong way and choked.
At supper they were pretty drunk and G. H. Barrow kept saying that Mexicans understood the art of life and that was meat for Salvador who talked about the Indian genius and the Latin genius and said that Mac and Ben were the only gringos he ever met he could get along with, and insisted on their not paying for their meal. He’d charge it to his friend the chief of police. Next they went to a cantina beside a theater where there were said to be French girls, but the French girls weren’t there. There were three old men in the cantina playing a cello, a violin and a piccolo. Salvador made them play La Adelita and everybody sang it and then La Cucaracha. There was an old man in a broadbrimmed hat with a huge shiny pistolholster on his back, who drank up his drink quickly when they came in and left the bar. Salvador whispered to Mac that he was General Gonzales and had left in order not to be seen drinking with gringos.
Ben and Barrow sat with their heads together at a table in the corner talking about the oil business. Barrow was saying that there was an investigator for certain oil interests coming down; he’d be at the Regis almost any day now and Ben was saying he wanted to meet him and Barrow put his arm around his shoulder and said he was sure Ben was just the man this investigator would want to meet to get an actual working knowledge of conditions. Meanwhile Mac and Salvador were dancing the Cuban danzon with the girls. Then Barrow got to his feet a little unsteadily and said he didn’t want to wait for the French girls but why not go to that place where they’d been and try some of the dark meat, but Salvador insisted on taking them to the house of Remedios near the American embassy. “Quelquecosa de chic,” he’d say in bad French. It was a big house with a marble stairway and crystal chandeliers and salmonbrocaded draperies and lace curtains and mirrors everywhere. “Personne que les henerales vieng aqui,” he said when he’d introduced them to the madam, who was a darkeyed grayhaired woman in black with a black shawl who looked rather like a nun. There was only one girl left unoccupied so they fixed up Barrow with her and arranged about the price and left him. “Whew, that’s a relief,” said Ben when they came out. The air was cold and the sky was all stars.
Salvador had made the three old men with their instruments get into the back of the car and said he felt romantic and wanted to serenade his novia and they went out towards Guadalupe speeding like mad along the broad causeway. Mac and the chauffeur and Ben and Salvador and the three old men singing La Adelita and the instruments chirping all off key. In Guadalupe they stopped under some buttonball trees against the wall of a house with big grated windows and sang Cielito lindo and La Adelita and Cuatro milpas, and Ben and Mac sang just to keep her from the foggy foggy dew and were just starting Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie when a girl came to the window and talked a long time in low Spanish to Salvador.
Salvador said, “Ella dit que nous make escandalo and must go away. Très chic."
By that time a patrol of soldiers had come up and were about to arrest them all when the officer arrived and recognized the car and Salvador and took them to have a drink with him at his billet. When they all got home to Mac’s place they were very drunk. Concha, whose face was drawn from waiting up, made up a mattress for Ben in the diningroom and as they were all going to turn in Ben said, “By heavens, Concha, you’re a swell girl. When I make my pile I’ll buy you the handsomest pair of diamond earrings in the Federal District.” The last they saw of Salvador he was standing up in the front seat of the car as it went round the corner on two wheels conducting the three old men in La Adelita with big gestures like an orchestra leader.
Before Christmas Ben Stowell came back from a trip to Tamaulipas feeling fine. Things were looking up for him. He’d made an arrangement with a local general near Tampico to run an oil well on a fifty-fifty basis. Through Salvador he’d made friends with some members of Carranza’s cabinet and was hoping to be able to turn over a deal with some of the big claimholders up in the States. He had plenty of cash and took a room at the Regis. One day he went round to the printing plant and asked Mac to step out in the alley with him for a minute.
“Look here, Mac,” he said, “I’ve got an offer for you . . . You know old Worthington’s bookstore? Well, I got drunk last night and bought him out for two thousand pesos . . . He’s pulling up stakes and going home to blighty, he says.”
“The hell you did!”
“Well, I’m just as glad to have him out of the way.”
“Why, you old whoremaster, you’re after Lisa.”
“Well, maybe she’s just as glad to have him out of the way too.”
“She’s certainly a goodlooker.”
“I got a lot a news I’ll tell you later . . . Ain’t goin’ to be so healthy round The Mexican Herald maybe . . . I’ve got a proposition for you, Mac . . . Christ knows I owe you a hellova lot . . . You know that load of office furniture you have out back Concha made you buy that time?” Mac nodded. “Well, I’ll take it off your hands and give you a half interest in that bookstore. I’m opening an office. You know the book business . . . you told me yourself you did . . . the profits for the first year are yours and after that we split two ways, see? You certainly ought to make it pay. That old fool Worthin
gton did, and kept Lisa into the bargain . . . Are you on?”
“Jez, lemme think it over, Ben . . . but I got to go back to the daily bunksheet.”
So Mac found himself running a bookstore on the Calle Independencia with a line of stationery and a few typewriters. It felt good to be his own boss for the first time in his life. Concha, who was a storekeeper’s daughter, was delighted. She kept the books and talked to the customers so that Mac didn’t have much to do but sit in the back and read and talk to his friends. That Christmas Ben and Lisa, who was a tall Spanish girl said to have been a dancer in Malaga, with a white skin like a camellia and ebony hair, gave all sorts of parties in an apartment with Americanstyle bath and kitchen that Ben rented out in the new quarter towards Chapultepec. The day the Asociacion de Publicistas had its annual banquet, Ben stopped into the bookstore feeling fine and told Mac he wanted him and Concha to come up after supper and wouldn’t Concha bring a couple of friends, nice wellbehaved girls not too choosy, like she knew. He was giving a party for G. H. Barrow who was back from Vera Cruz and a big contact man from New York who was wangling something, Ben didn’t know just what. He’d seen Carranza yesterday and at the banquet everybody’d kowtowed to him.
“Jez, Mac, you oughta been at that banquet; they took one of the streetcars and had a table the whole length of it and an orchestra and rode us out to San Angel and back and then all round town.”
“I saw ’em starting out,” said Mac, “looked too much like a funeral to me.”
“Jez, it was swell though. Salvador an’ everybody was there and this guy Moorehouse, the big hombre from New York, jez, he looked like he didn’t know if he was comin’ or goin’. Looked like he expected a bomb to go off under the seat any minute . . . hellova good thing for Mexico if one had, when you come to think of it. All the worst crooks in town were there."
The party at Ben’s didn’t come off so well. J. Ward Moorehouse didn’t make up to the girls as Ben had hoped. He brought his secretary, a tired blond girl, and they both looked scared to death. They had a dinner Mexican style and champagne and a great deal of cognac and a victrola played records by Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin and a little itinerant band attracted by the crowd played Mexican airs on the street outside. After dinner things were getting a little noisy inside so Ben and Moorehouse took chairs out on the balcony and had a long talk about the oil situation over their cigars. J. Ward Moorehouse explained that he had come down in a purely unofficial capacity you understand to make contacts, to find out what the situation was and just what there was behind Carranza’s stubborn opposition to American investors and that the big businessmen he was in touch with in the States desired only fair play and that he felt that if their point of view could be thoroughly understood through some information bureau or the friendly coöperation of Mexican newspapermen.
Ben went back in the diningroom and brought out Enrique Salvador and Mac. They all talked over the situation and J. Ward Moorehouse said that speaking as an old newspaperman himself he thoroughly understood the situation of the press, probably not so different in Mexico City from that in Chicago or Pittsburgh and that all the newspaperman wanted was to give each fresh angle of the situation its proper significance in a spirit of fair play and friendly coöperation, but that he felt that the Mexican papers had been misinformed about the aims of American business in Mexico just as the American press was misinformed about the aims of Mexican politics. If Mr. Enrique would call by the Regis he’d be delighted to talk to him more fully, or to any one of you gentlemen and if he wasn’t in, due to the great press of appointments and the very few days he had to spend in the Mexican capital, his secretary, Miss Williams, would be only too willing to give them any information they wanted and a few specially prepared strictly confidential notes on the attitude of the big American corporations with which he was purely informally in touch.
After that he said he was sorry but he had telegrams waiting for him at the Regis and Salvador took him and Miss Williams, his secretary, home in the chief of police’s automobile.
“Jez, Ben, that’s a smooth bastard,” said Mac to Ben after J. Ward Moorehouse had gone.
“Mac,” said Ben, “that baby’s got a slick cream of millions all over him. By gum, I’d like to make some of these contacts he talks about . . . By gorry, I may do it yet . . . You just watch your Uncle Dudley, Mac. I’m goin’ to associate with the big hombres after this.”
After that the party was not so refined. Ben brought out a lot more cognac and the men started taking the girls into the bedrooms and hallways and even into the pantry and kitchen. Barrow cottoned onto a blonde named Nadia who was half English and talked to her all evening about the art of life. After everybody had gone Ben found them locked up in his bedroom.
Mac got to like the life of a storekeeper. He got up when he wanted to and walked up the sunny streets past the cathedral and the façade of the national palace and up Independencia where the sidewalks had been freshly sprinkled with water and a morning wind was blowing through, sweet with the smell of flowers and roasting coffee. Concha’s little brother Antonio would have the shutters down and be sweeping out the store by the time he got there. Mac would sit in the back reading or would roam about the store chatting with people in English and Spanish. He didn’t sell many books, but he kept all the American and European papers and magazines and they sold well, especially The Police Gazette and La Vie Parisienne. He started a bank account and was planning to take on some typewriter agencies. Salvador kept telling him he’d get him a contract to supply stationery to some government department and make him a rich man.
One morning he noticed a big crowd in the square in front of the National Palace. He went into one of the cantinas under the arcade and ordered a glass of beer. The waiter told him that Carranza’s troops had lost Torreón and that Villa and Zapata were closing in on the Federal District. When he got to the bookstore news was going down the street that Carranza’s government had fled and that the revolutionists would be in the city before night. The storekeepers began to put up their shutters. Concha and her mother came in crying saying that it would be worse than the terrible week when Madero fell and that the revolutionists had sworn to burn and loot the city. Antonio ran in saying that the Zapatistas were bombarding Tacuba. Mac got a cab and went over to the Chamber of Deputies to see if he could find anybody he knew. All the doors were open to the street and there were papers littered along the corridors. There was nobody in the theater but an old Indian and his wife who were walking round hand in hand looking reverently at the gilded ceiling and the paintings and the tables covered with green plush. The old man carried his hat in his hand as if he were in church.
Mac told the cabman to drive to the paper where Salvador worked, but the janitor there told him with a wink that Salvador had gone to Vera Cruz with the chief of police. Then he went to the Embassy where he couldn’t get a word with anybody. All the anterooms were full of Americans who had come in from ranches and concessions and who were cursing out President Wilson and giving each other the horrors with stories of the revolutionists. At the consulate Mac met a Syrian who offered to buy his stock of books. “No, you don’t,” said Mac and went back down Independencia.
When he got back to the store newsboys were already running through the street crying, “Viva la revolucion revindicadora.” Concha and her mother were in a panic and said they must get on the train to Vera Cruz or they’d all be murdered. The revolutionists were sacking convents and murdering priests and nuns. The old woman dropped on her knees in the corner of the room and began chanting “Ave Marias.”
“Aw, hell!” said Mac, “let’s sell out and go back to the States. Want to go to the States, Concha?” Concha nodded vigorously and began to smile through her tears. “But what the devil can we do with your mother and Antonio?” Concha said she had a married sister in Vera Cruz. They could leave them there if they could ever get to Vera Cruz.
Mac, the sweat pouring off him, hurried back to the consulate
to find the Syrian. They couldn’t decide on the price. Mac was desperate because the banks were all closed and there was no way of getting any money. The Syrian said that he was from the Lebanon and an American citizen and a Christian and that he’d lend Mac a hundred dollars if Mac would give him a sixtyday note hypothecating his share in the bookstore for two hundred dollars. He said that he was an American citizen and a Christian and was risking his life to save Mac’s wife and children. Mac was so flustered he noticed just in time that the Syrian was giving him a hundred dollars mex and that the note was made out in American dollars. The Syrian called upon God to protect them both and said it was an error and Mac went off with two hundred pesos in gold.
He found Concha all packed. She had closed up the store and was standing on the pavement outside with some bundles, the two cats in a basket, and Antonio and her mother, each wrapped in a blanket.
They found the station so packed full of people and baggage they couldn’t get in the door. Mac went round to the yards and found a man named McGrath he knew who worked for the railroad. McGrath said he could fix them up but that they must hurry. He put them into a secondclass coach out in the yards and said he’d buy their tickets but would probably have to pay double for them. Sweat was pouring from under Mac’s hatband when he finally got the two women seated and the basket of cats and the bundles and Antonio stowed away. The train was already full, although it hadn’t backed into the station yet. After several hours the train pulled out, a line of dusty soldiers fighting back the people on the platform who tried to rush the train as it left. Every seat was taken, the aisles were full of priests and nuns, there were welldressed people hanging onto the platforms.