THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

CHAPTER EIGHT

Upon the arrival of the last peon at the Macias estate, don Armando gave the order for the carretera to proceed, turning south onto the Paseo Montejo at the corner of which an old woman, a renowned Protestant, shouted imprecations. "Hell will take you all!" she warned, as the people waved merrily back. The lawns of the homes of the henequeros, cañoneros, cocoleros and other leading citizens of Merida, sprinkled with the Greek statuary that was the fashion of the time, delighted their eyes and the sidewalks, teeming with the chatter of well-bred and the common alike, made a music for their ears.

"Here we are," the mayordomo called out. "Prepare yourself, the montes are in town!" Such was true only in the winter. When the summer trade winds abandoned Merida, the gentility fled to Paris, New York and New Orleans. And only one who has ever passed a grateful summer in New Orleans could understand how inhospitable the heat and the humidity of Merida becomes.

The carretera, of course, did not enter the driveway on the Paseo proper, where the carriages of the montes soon would crowd like cattle in their pens. Armando turned onto a side street leading to an alley heaped with trash and blocked by the cart of a hapless baker, engaged in furious dispute with a swarthy Syrian whose formidable moustaches seemed long enough to brush the buildings on either side of the back street.

"Oye Ruben," said the mayordomo, waving. The Syrian dismissed the baker with an oath and stalked to the carreteras to inspect their loads.

"Is this all the meat?" he stormed, twisting one ear of a dangling pig. "By the Evil One, this cargo wouldn't feed a group of forty." He kicked the carretera and the caged fowl began screaming as if in fear for their lives... a fear reasonably justified, under the circumstances. Ruben marched to the other carretera. "And these… the waiters? Scum! I'll see to it the master has you fined, Armando, what use can be made of these bumpkins? And probably they have diseases..."

He stepped back, glowering. "Well it's too late to return them to the farm. Out of your kennel, dogs? If I can't make waiters out of the half of you, he will be thrashed," and he pointed to the mayordomo. "You'd like that? Then it would be up to him to decide what to do to you. Away with you!" he said to the drivers and don Armando departed with a look of distress that broke into a smile as soon as they were out of the sight of the Syrian. The use of the cart and driver would help impress a certain attractive widow of the capital.

The novice waiters lined up in the kitchen where the cook regarded them with open disgust. To confirm his opinion, Ruben solicited the opinion of the butler, a halfbreed, known around the estate as Flaco for such reason as he was little more than a bag of bones, rather like the calaveras seen in magazines brought to the city from Mexico's capital. Flaco shook his head mournfully. An army of Korean and native women, each of a stupendous girth, had seized the luckless animals from the second carretera and their death-cries punctuated the Syrian's oaths while the blood lapped at the waiters' toes despite the efforts of the boy who strove to keep at bay with his mop.

Flaco called for the house waiters, six professional dandies in cutaway coats and a seedy dignity, who regarded the newcomers with a mixture of contempt and wary alarm at the possibility that one or two of the newcomers might be smarter than he looked... and thus might pose a competitive threat in the arena of petty pilferage, in which these men excelled and bore much anticipation. Ruben held up a sheet of a paper with many complex lines and circles and words, underlined, sometimes two or three times. "You will follow these routes only between the kitchen and salon. Collect the dirty dishes at stations A, B and C, deposit fresh plates at points D and E."

Esteban craned his neck, attempting to see around the skinny butler to the diagrams, even though the words held no meaning.

"If one of the guests should stop you with a request," Ruben marched on, "do not attempt to fulfill it on your own, but inform one of the regular waiters. Those are the regular waiters," he added, waving towards the line of smirking dandies, each nearly as thin as their superior.

"I would not enjoy the waiter's job," whispered Silvestro. "The master starves them as we starve hunting dogs."

"Most importantly," the cook declared, "I proclaim a prohibition of the pilfering of food and drink during the course of your employment. You will be given a meal before the guests arrive. But be forewarned that I am master over this establishment. I am given jurisdiction, by the hand of don Antonio, to deal with theft or laziness as I see fit. My whip is sharp, my arm without equal in Merida," he added, posing for the waiters who pretended discreet attention. This warning given, he smiled. A sudden smell of cooking filled the kitchen as the dead were bundled into ovens; the mozo continued his silent campaign against the bloody floor.

"Ana, the uniforms." A maid brought several boxes into the kitchen and departed for more. Ruben handed each to the new waiter himself. "The finest uniforms in Merida," he boasted, "except, of course, for those of our regular staff."

Esteban's fingers fumbled with the cloth. The uniforms were military jackets from the wars of 1847, badly fitting, with a smell of naphthalene about them... which almost covered another, deeper odor.

"Hay carne, señores y señoras," came an interruption, a wandering vendor singing out his wares, "carne fresca y barata... " It was an aged Indian, holding with both hands an equally ancient sombrero. Bloody joints of meat peeked over its rim.

"Away with him," called Ruben and the maids shook their knives at the butcher, as if warding off an evil spirit. "Dirty carneceiros," muttered Ruben, "plotting to make profit off our holiday." He spat at the floor at the very thought of such opportunism. Esteban's fingers wandered the fabric of his new jacket curiously. On the right side, below the ribcage, was a tiny hole; beneath the hole there was a small stain which he rubbed with his fingernail until a small brown sheen appeared thereupon.

The people's phrase for justice half done but accepted, and perhaps with some traces of fatalism, was what he repeated... "bix huale"... it will be so.

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