THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

In the small hours of the morning, the celebration began winding down. Shortly after twelve thirty, the ladies of society had begun departing - a signal for the tables to be set up and the cards produced. The musicians rested more frequently, the number of dancers steadily declined. With much bowing and exchanges of greetings, the Senator from Campeche escorted his lovely Elena back to their hotel.

Now the hired staff began to turn the tide against the remnants of the evening; the glasses smudged and broken, scraps of sandwiches and crumbs from sweetmeats across the floor. The bubbles in half-filled bottles of champagne faded, the remaining cakes grew hard and a thin film began to spread across the surface of the soup tureens. The guests still seated at a half-dozen tables were intent on their cards. Occasionally, a most ungentlemanly curse erupted from a table when the hoped-for card did not turn up. The waiters were smoking and talking with the musicians.

José had walked the remaining blocks to his father's home without incident... if some passers-by took note of the bloody shirt beneath the shining skull-mask, they certainly presumed it only a part of a costume, the better to make an impression of danger and daring upon one certain señorita, or a bevy of them.

He leaned against the Macias gate and slapped his forehead beneath the mask... as if to insult his head into memory. Had he taken a life… the life of a prostitute... or a priest? Remembrance eluded him still. He looked behind him and to either side, but no clue manifested... taking a deep breath, he sauntered past his father's watchmen (who either knew José by his profile, or were too surprised by his disguise... or too drunk... to give a challenge at so late an hour). But don Antonio himself directed his son to halt and... casting a glance this way, then that, to be sure that the bespattered youth had attracted no undue attention... motioned him to proceed directly to the library. Ever inquisitive, Rigoberto attempted to follow the patron, but was stopped with one chilling glimpse.

"Well," said the patron, locking the door behind them, "what do you have to say to explain yourself. Why, you're still covered with gore... I had no idea that anyone of that wretched family contained so much blood! If it is of any concern to you, don Raul and his son have been removed by my own caloche to the physicians. Who knows what this shall cost... not only in money, but in reputation? Is there no cease to your depravities?"

The hacendado surveyed his ruined athenaeum... only slightly less desolate than Alexandria's after the fire... from which the bloodstains, the feathers and false pearls had not yet been swept up. He picked a blood-spattered volume off the floor, snorted, and riffled through its pages.

"This marks the second time that Mr. Poe's tales, verse and commentaries have been visited by sanguinary happenings. Do you recollect... it was in this very room, over this very book that your grandfather's blood was spilled in his despair? Answer! has your tongue dried in rotted behind that skull of yours as if you truly were a corpse, like poor Fortunato behind his wall? Believe this - you will be dead to all society in Merida once this new episode gets out. Not to mention Campeche...

"Am I to expect further such outbreaks... perhaps over a span of years?" don Antonio added.

"The Caballeros have dishonored me," asserted the brazen young man, "by their own standards; now it remains for me to win, by mine."

Antonio sat uneasily in the great chair of Belize mahogany, which was his comfort in the afternoon when Merida's setting sun cast a strong light through the window on his favorites - the Greek and Roman poets, Cervantes or that modern fellow, Balzac.

"What a futile thing this Guard is," José added, his face reddening with angry pride. "Chocolateros!" he added disdainfully... the ultimate expression of contempt that Yucatecans reserved for their numerous beribboned and bemounted officers who manifested on parade-days but were otherwise not seen.

"What's become of adventure? What of glory? True, perhaps that the republic is at peace beyond its borders, but there still is a place for bravery. The pacification of the east, as the Governor has said, the struggle to bring civilization to the heathen jungle... that's work for a man! And with a new General arriving, that's where I belong." He dared a glance at don Antonio. "As in the wars of 1847... a crusade on behalf of the new century against all that is dark, corrupt and superstitious. And, perhaps, an accounting..."

His father sighed. "You may be right," he said, "although my recollection of that era is of running faster than I ever believed, sleeping in barns and in ditches. Little glory in that... but I survived and others did not."

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