THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

BOOK FOUR: THE BOOK of SCIENCE

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

The throng lining the Paseo was so thick that one could not pass through it. Though large, the crowd was silent; being composed largely of indian workers brought in from their fields on a rare holiday (and, rather like cattle, displayed to show the wealth of their masters) and the townspeople of Merida, the faceless ones, some hoisting children up above their shoulders, awaiting their entertainment. The montes were seated in special boxes raised high above the sidewalk so that they could look downwards upon the riff-raff and the passing floats alike. From these boxes came shouts and squeals, applause and even small fireworks.

A line of soldiers held the entrance to the bleachers, refusing entry to all but those with printed invitations.

Don Antonio had, weeks before, accepted Andre Barzon's invitation to share his box... for whatever criticisms Barzon held against Porfirio Diaz, were not of sufficient gravity to cause him to forego this homage. More likely, don Andre looked forward to the prospect of viewing (or, even, creating) a scandal. The old man was full of vinegar - describing the Governor as sticking to Diaz like a puppy to its master, even waving to the despicable Alvarez. "Don't worry Tonino," he nudged the hacendado, "I don't intend to shoot the President, like those Americans do. Even I would not wish Ramon Corral on Mexico!"

A string of firecrackerks exploded like gunshots as a float commemorating the liberator, Juarez, passed. The float was festooned with camellias, and four pretty señoritas waved up at the boxes from the points of the compass... at the center of which the heroic impersonator sat stiffly, giving an occasional formal wave as befits one allowed a few hours' respite from the after-life. The eyes of Juarez (an actor of the gente decente from Morelos) were also turned up towards the boxes; he ignored the indians lining the street and, for their part, they seemed to ignore him too.

José, sitting at his father's right, also took no inspiration from this Liberator.

Don Andre coughed and raised a pudgy finger to direct the attention of his guests to the wall behind them. Four soldiers, two from the Army, and the others from the state militia, kept a lazy eye upon the crowd. One held his rifle towards the backs of a large contingent of indians, as if calculating the trajectory of his fire. Occasionally, those at the rear of the crowd would glance backwards. The soldiers were of more interest to them than the floats, which few of them could see anyway.

"They don't seem particularly happy," José commented.

"They're not happy because they are not at work," said Barzon. "And when they don't work, they don't get paid. But if they did work, we would not have such a crowd to honor President Diaz. Don Porfirio will see the crowd, but not the faces. He'd rather look up into the boxes." And he jabbed José in the shoulder. "Molina's sharp, just you wait. When he passes you will hear a roar... his toadies spread the word that anyone who doesn't demonstrate affection will be shot. They'll cheer the President too... but when Corral passes, well, just you wait!

"Now this," he chuckled as a float approached... driving before it small ripples of laughter as some seeds and also some diseases also are blown by the wind... "must be the Fermin entry. That old man has Rome upon the brain. I wonder who that poor fellow is... Caesar or Antony?" He tugged a handbill from his pocket.

Approaching them now, José discerned the voluminous Teodora Fermin, still unwed, lolling on a divan as Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, overshadowing completely a frail, frightened-looking youth in a Roman bedsheet and crown of leaves. She turned on one ample side and blew kisses towards the box.

Barzon consulted a yellow handbill. "Seven more before the Presidential carriage. The next should be a good one," he wheezed, pointing, "the capture and execution of Maximilian forty years ago with one of the original firing party in attendance. A Colonel Blanquet! Didn't you tell me that he was in Quintana Roo... do they send all of their elderly officers to the hot places, or did he offend someone?"

"The names of the players are on that list?" José asked, ignoring entirely the other's comment. Barzon nodded and José, only with great difficulty restrained himself from snatching the program away. "Then is there a Campechean delegation, sponsored by someone named Villareal? A Senator. Is there?"

Don Andre checked the program with some irritation. "Here it is," he said. "Arrival of the Hon. Gral. Hernan Cortes. Sponsor T. Villareal, Campeche. Players: I. Fulges, M. Cimmarón, E. Villareal. Second to last, before the dignitaries' carriages, hmm! Someone has been talking to the Governor; he had the final power over what comes here and in what order. Those Campecheños stand up for their own."

José barely heard the rest of Barzon's grumbling, for a dim but rising cry from the north foretold the coming of the President. He removed a pair of opera glasses from his pocket.

Three streets from the Barzon box was the monument to Diaz, the last of the floats... after which would come a procession of carriages which concluded with those of Molina, Vice President Corral and, finally, Porfirio Diaz in the flesh. Circling one of the great monuments in the center of the great street, around which all traffic was obliged to pass, the floats would briefly disappear from view, only on emerging, minutes later, would its inhabitants be visible. Time crept by, only the slowly lapping roar of applause indicating the progress of the procession.

Three more floats passed Don Andre's box... a fourth, dedicated to the heroes of science and industry, had already rounded the monument but stopped there, owing to a traffic dispute. Barzon requested the glasses and squinted. "It would seem that the motorcar towing the Fermin float has given out. Those things do that, and always at an inconvenient moment. They should have chosen a more slender Cleopatra."

He handed the glasses back to José. In time, the motorcar was uncoupled and pushed off to the side of the Paseo; a team of mules was guided up one of the streets, turned and hitched to the float. Within a few more minutes it had moved off and the parade resumed. Now, a wagon of great inventors passed, one of these with a false beard tipped his hat to the box.

"Who was that?" Don Antonio pointed.

"I think it was Nobel, inventor of explosives," Andre Barzon said. "Or perhaps another."

José gestured for the glasses back. Behind the tribute to dynamite appeared the float of the unfortunate Maximilian, destined to collapse again and again at the commands of Colonel Blanquet, whose dark, finely chiseled features were recognizable to José even without optical enhancement. It was the float behind, just now emerging from the shadow of the monument to President Diaz, that caused him to press the glasses tightly against his eyes, as if he could force them into his skull. Upon the imitation of a beach, with sand brought all the way from Progreso and wood and paper palms, the profile of Cortes dominated. His long black beard and gleaming armor shimmered in the sun. Behind him and slightly to the left stood a gunbearer holding an ancient musket and in front, on her knees in supplication, José recognized Elena Villareal. After almost two years, Elena! Elena, as...

As Malinche!

Malinche, the indian temptress. She who had deserted her race for the hand of the conqueror; whose sons by him were first to be called Mexicans.

A blonde-tressed Aztec princess... presumptuously rewriting history to Europe's greater glory.

Cortes drew Elena to her feet, placed both arms around her shoulders and their lips drew together.

Jealousy, sharp as a barrage of Cruzob bullets, stung José Macias.

He kept the glasses to his eyes... even over the protestations of Andre Barzon... all the while, as the float approached, until it stood directly beneath the box. There was no way, of course, for Elena to recognize him; the Captain was only a face in the crowd. At the last moment, José had decided against wearing his uniform and had put on a simple, light colored suit and a straw hat. Sinking to her knees again, Elena turned to wave at the sullen indians, but her face remained mysterious. Who was this Cortes to her? From the handbill, either Cimarrón or Fulges. He had never heard of either man.

"If you don't care to see the President, let a couple of old men have that privilege," Barzon interrupted him, and he handed the glasses over without taking his eyes off of Malinche.

"What's so important about the President to you?" Don Antonio spoke up. "You don't like the man, never have, at least for twenty years."

"I want to see how long he has to live," Barzon cackled. "Yes there... I think, his hand twitched! That's a certain sign of palsy."

The float of discovery had passed now and José saw the other profile of Cortes but only the back of Elena's head as she rose again, succumbing to the powerful embrace of the Conqueror. There was a clockwork quality to the participants on all the floats; further south, Blanquet ordained and Maximilian fell again... directly below their box, a veritable city in miniature whirred, revolved and hummed and the people upon it did, too, in homage to Mexico under Diaz. Only when the Elena and the two unknown men had receded and shrank to the size of dolls did he turn to watch the coming of the dignitaries.

A seeming sixth sense rippled through the crowd, warning of movement. The soldiers massed along the sidewalk and, barring the way to the boxes, removed their cigarettes and stopped their stories. Their rifles rose towards the crowd. Indians whispered to one another in their Mayan dialects, shopkeepers, butchers, ox-drivers and all the tradesmen of Merida with their wives and children buzzed excitedly in Spanish. José's attention was drawn to a small, but self-important looking man, walking furiously, almost at a run, wearing a dark blue suit and a black hat. Soldiers surrounded him like a precious jewel.

At the front of the contingent was a small military delegation, headed by a carriage in which Ignacio Bravo rode with the commanders of Campeche and Yucatan... the latter being that sorrowful General who had kept his promise by coming to the Macias function, accepting a cup of tea (for he was active in a temperance society, and bestowing his regrets on José) before departing hastily. "Society is not a necessary thing," this man had said, "and it can be very wasteful. Perhaps if you have learned something, this painful evening will not be without value."

Behind their carriage marched several hundred of the best of the State Militia and Army, then a military band. Now-tiring mules, their mouths pointing backwards, somewhat ominously, at the dignitaries following, dragged six long artillery pieces. José heard Barzon lean towards Don Antonio to say something about some sort of accident, but he had dropped his voice for some of the soldiers had taken notice of the box.

Now passed the Warden of the Penitenceria, the Chief of Police, the Mayor, the Archbishop and other leading citizens of Merida. José looked down and saw the little man windmilling his hands; the soldiers began to gesture with their rifles and the crowd began applauding.

Governor Molina, his wife and some of his sons passed... waving, drinking in the adulation of their supporters.

The cheers reached their apex as Molina passed and were only somewhat diminished as a carriage containing Justo Sierra Mendez and the President of the University followed. The excited man had continued south, but another, a taller fellow with a long thin jaw followed, also directing the soldiers. Now the mood darkened. A few whistles came, then more, then a veritable downpour. Cries of "sifilismo!" and "pendejo!" rose briefly.

Ramon Corral, the Vice President... the man who had forced himself into Diaz's favor, by elbowing aside both Molina and Bernardo Reyes... was passing in a closed carriage well distanced from those either in front of or behind them. Corral, in a blue suit and accompanied by his wife, was a handsome, but dispirited man staring bleakly out of the tinted window; he did not wave and a number of soldiers circled his carriage, weapons bristling. The whistling continued. Somewhere below José a dead cat came soaring out of the throng, bouncing against the flanks of one of the two horses. Corral's carriage veered sharply towards the other side of the street, the driver struggled for control and the whistles changed over into laughter.

"There will be snow on the ground of Merida before Corral comes to this place again," Barzon chuckled. "But now comes Don Perfidio!"

Again the crowd waved and cheered for Porfirio Diaz. Unlike the miserable Corral, the President rode in an open carriage, already littered with roses that had been hurled his way. Perhaps alone, José turned his gaze and the glasses south where the float honoring Cortes was turning off the Paseo, its occupants mere specks. He put the glasses down, applauding Diaz with his father and Barzon.

"What are you doing Andre?" Don Antonio said cheerfully. "There are no soldiers behind us up here."

"Of course not," said the old conservative, "but sometimes those weapons most dangerous are those unseen."

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