Part 13

He heard me call Dick, and asked me instantly if I were English. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to. I asked him if he had been in the war, and of course he had, been at Chateau Thierry, and in every other fray. He said he was working for an English company (which the tramcar system is), and that nearly all the superintendents and heads of the English lines were Americans. I was surprised at this, for we had good colonizers, and if we can get on with natives in India, South Africa, Australia, Nigeria, etc., why not with Mexicans. I told him so. He explained that the Mexican is quite different to work with and very difficult; that he is very sensitive and touchy, and that he will only work with good will, “as a matter of fact” he said, “I have _not_ their good will as you can see by my hip,” and he patted his revolver. “Why not?” I asked. “They’re Bolsheviks!” he explained, and unfortunately for me, at that moment, the car went back onto the rails and there was a rush for the seats. We secured our same front row, but another man came and sat next to us, who had not hitherto been there. I disliked the look of him, and before we had gone very far, it was evident he was drunk. He was not an Indian, but the world-wide white type that can be revolting and repulsive. The look on his face made me feel quite sick. I felt if I had a revolver it would have been an awfully good thing to shoot him, because nobody could have minded, and it so obviously would have been a helpful thing to do. When he bent across Louise and bought a couple of bananas off the Indian on my left, and offered them to Dick, I said firmly “_no_.” So he looked at me, a terrible look, and threw the two bananas out of the window, and the change he got back from paying for them followed the bananas. He then turned round and entertained the whole car behind us, at our expense. Though, what he said we could not understand.

Arrived finally, two hours late, at Cholula, he was walked off by four seemingly very devoted friends. I doubt not they purposed to rid him of the rest of his money instead of letting him fling it into the grass.

In the middle of the village street we stood still and looked up and down. It was one o’clock. We had brought no food with us and we knew not where to go, nor whom to ask. A fellow traveller, respectably dressed, a Mexican farmer probably and who could speak about five words of English came to our rescue: “What you want...?” he asked.

A restaurant? He shook his head! A Hotel? He came from Cholula but had never heard of such a thing. Tourists brought their food with them, he made us understand. “But I will ask” and he went into the chemist shop. Surely, there was a restaurant, down the road. We tracked it down, he came with us. The street was formed by perfectly straight barefronted houses. It might have been an Irish village, but looking through doorways there seemed to be contained in it a whole world of gardens and patios. We entered one of these, as directed, and found ourselves in a clean bare yard. We went to the first door on the yard, but it was a bedroom. The second door was the restaurant, the third combined kitchen and chicken house. An old wizened, bent woman came forward to greet us, and two pretty young Indian girls. Could she give us food? She could.

Soon?

Immediately.

What could she give us?

Some _huevos_ (eggs) and some _carne_ (meat) with _potata_. Our kind cicerone then left us, excusing himself, he had business. We seated ourselves in the primitive room, which was clean and whitewashed, and floor tiled. They laid a cloth for us which was clean and still wet. We waited hardly any time at all before they served us a hot and excellent meal, the best I have had in Mexico, and for two pesos, the three of us. But the wizened old woman was much concerned that she could not talk with us. She longed, I could see, to know where we came from, and she kept asking why our Signore had gone away, and not returned! When her two habitual customers came in for their meals, she began great discussion with them about us. We were a great diversion. The men who came in were not Indians, they were sullen Mexicans. One of them talked to the little Indian serving girl as if she were a dog, ordered his food gruffly and never said thank you.

Women have no position in Mexico--they are supposed to exist solely for the satisfaction of men.

We said good day, and “Mucho gracias” and sallied forth into the street once more. Not knowing where to go, nor where to find the famous pyramid, and Dick being far from well, I decided to go to the nearest place in reach. This happened to be a steep hill with a white church on the summit. It had been a beacon to us for miles in the plain as we travelled steadily towards it. Slowly we ascended by wide low stone steps, that went winding up among the vegetation and wild flowers. About halfway we suddenly heard a band of music, and it came nearer and nearer. Soon there came into view a procession of white clad sombrero’d Indians playing their instruments as they came down the winding hill steps. The pageant did not come our way, but passed in front of us, and cut down into a steep and narrow path, and were lost to view among the shrub. Taking our time (for Dick seemed weak, and our hearts were thumping somewhat, as they always do with the slightest exertion at this altitude--) we eventually reached the summit. It seemed utterly deserted. The stillness was uncanny. The church, which may be old but had a renovated and very newly whitewashed appearance, had tiled domes that were quite beautiful. Tall cypresses, as in Italy, grew on the terrace in front. There was a rampart with seats all round the terrace edge. The climb had satisfied my desire, which is always to get onto a height, when arriving in a new place, in order to survey the land and ‘place oneself’. From this church height one certainly surveyed the country for miles. Louise and I walked round and round, looking everywhere for anything that might be interpreted as a pyramid. But we never satisfied ourselves on that. It was not until we got back in the evening and read up the guide book, that I learnt that was a pyramid we were on. The pagan pyramid, dedicated to the god Quetzalcoatl, on the summit of which the Christians had built their church.

While thus absorbed, in the distant view, Dick disappeared. When I looked round for him he was nowhere to be seen. I went down the steep flight of steps to the half way terrace below, and called. Presently the little figure appeared from above, and followed me down. He came to me with a pious and mysterious look. “Some day” he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing.” I said, “I must know, now, at once--do tell me....” He looked shy, and then explained that he had gone _inside_ the church. “It was quite a nice church inside--there were none of those awful figures like we’ve seen,--you know--and I said a prayer ... knelt down ... right up by the steps in front of the railing. Oh! just prayed for Teta-tee[10] that she might come back to us...!” It was so unexpected. I did not know that Dick believed in God. I did not know he wanted Margaret back with us ... but there in the stillness of the great Mexican plain, high up on the hill of a little town called Cholula, Margaret had not been forgotten. It seemed almost like a wireless from her.

It must be explained that Margaret is living in England with her father’s family. She is being educated with a little cousin her same age. They share a French governess, have a villa at Cannes in the winter, riding, swimming, gymnasium and special dancing classes. A house with a garden in London, dogs, rabbits, horses and birds, Rolls Royce cars, servants to wait, party frocks, lessons in deportment, and all the things that are necessary, I am told, to the perfect bringing up of a proper little girl. Not good for her, they assure me, wild trips to Mexico, wild talk about Russia, Americanization in New York, studio environment of her mother. These things are possible (though not desirable) for a boy, but for a girl.... Well, I would be selfish if I refused for her all the things that I cannot give her. Sometimes my soul rebels, and I say to myself “Two rooms, anywhere, however humble, but both children to share my standard of life....” Since last February when she saw us off on the Aquitania we have not seen our Margaret. The trip to Russia and the work it offered, enabled me to have one child to live with me, and that was Dick, who had lived with my parents ever since he was born and I had to work.

Perhaps there existed in the bottom of my heart a vague hope that Mexico might give me back Margaret, as Russia had given me back Dick. However and wherever this is eventually achieved, there is no doubt in my mind that the only crown to my work can be the reunion of us all three. Until I can build up a home and an environment worthy of Margaret, I have achieved no success. It is an incentive to work, and in the meanwhile one must not lose heart. One must not count, at night, the months that have passed since January. One must not think of the growth, in body, mind and soul, of the child who is out of sight. One must not expect her to be just as one left her. One must not think too much about her at all, for fear it gets too hard--and above all one must never allow oneself to think on lines that critics would describe as “sob-stuff.”

We lay on our hillside which was really a pyramid side, and the sun burnt as I tried to count how many churches there were in the plain, but gave it up as too long a job. Beautiful old toned bells kept ringing around and below us from every direction. One big church would have been ample for the size of the little town, and money and labor better spent on drainage and sanitation. While thus ruminating a cassocked priest came down the winding way, saying his prayers out loud, out of a book. By him walked an attendant who held a linen umbrella over his head to shade him. So absorbed was he in his prayers that he never noticed the Indian man and woman who got up from their seat under the tree and came towards him. He had to stop on his way when they threw themselves down on their knees before him. He blessed them with the sign of the Cross, and they remained kneeling and crossing themselves until he was out of sight and sound.

When we got back to Puebla at 5 o’clock, Dick threw himself on my bed all of a heap. I took his temperature--it was 102--I undressed him and in a few minutes he was in a heavy feverish sleep.

Twice that night he waked me suddenly by loud cries. He screamed in terror. When I put the light on he looked at me with glassy eyes and did not know me. He was momentarily delirious. Never had I any experience of such a thing. I realized in a flash all that my family thought of my bringing Dick to Mexico. I thought of Margaret and of the contrast of her proper environment. I got into a panic and resolved that if it were humanly possible for him to travel, Dick should return to Mexico by the 6:30 train next morning.

At five, when we had to get up, he was tired and weak, but his fever had subsided.

AUGUST 3, 1921. _Mexico City._

I went to see Mr. Rameo Martinez, the head of the Academia, and asked him kindly to send a plaster moulder to my hotel to cast the little sketch for a possible Russian Monument. I brought it from New York to finish here. I had a perfectly excellent Mexican “boxer” model, broadshouldered and full of muscles, that Mr. Martinez produced for me, thus enabling me to finish it. I also asked him if I could visit his open air school out in the country, at Cherubosco, which he accordingly invited me to do.

Edith Bonilla motored me out there. The students work in a patio. Martinez’ idea is the open air, no false lights. He has talked to me too of his ambition that his students shall be _Mexican_, not cosmopolitan, nor French in their art. The idea is right. But when one has looked around: what _is_ Mexican Art? There is Toltec, Maya, Aztec art. There is Spanish (colonial) evidenced in architecture. But one looks in vain for evidences of modern Mexican Art. At the school some perfectly mediocre studies were being done by students who, by their years, should have been far beyond what they were doing. There were mature men painting the eternal still life groups of pots and oranges. There was the eternal model, an old woman sitting holding a bowl. Only the model in this instance was brown instead of white. I realized with overwhelming weariness the futility of schools.... I went to a school once. A night school. I was paralysed. I achieved nothing, I was the most unpromising pupil there. Moreover I hated it and dreaded it, and only went out of sheer self-discipline. This is at a time when I had quite a lot of commissions to work at in my own studio. I benefited in no way from the school, and I don’t believe anyone else does. At best it succeeds in turning out a mould, a type, a “school.” Only once in a million times does _one_ arise, who would have arisen anyway, anyhow, anywhere. Mr. Martinez, who has worked in Paris (why?) who has no more “the soul of Mexico,” or the depth to realise it, will work in vain, open air or indoor, unless he instils some spirit into those students! Always these masters point to a student’s work and with pride call it “du Gauguin”; easy enough to make a bad Gauguin. I wonder on whom it reflects most discredit: Gauguin or the student. If only the teacher would say, “My God! All this is _awful_, let’s have something new....”

There was one sculptor at the Country School. His Christian name was Phidias, not his fault, and no one _could_ have foreseen. He looked white and on the verge of suicide. He said he had been working in Paris ... but that he had done nothing since. He had been back six months. He said there were no sculptors and no art appreciation in Mexico. He certainly could not, even if he would, have worked in the room into which he took me. It would be a perfectly fit room in which to hang oneself. He looked very depressed,--I fear he will starve.

I came back, and went to the reception of the Pani’s. Like last time full of cosmopolitans, diplomats, from South America, such as Uruguay, Guatemala and the like, and also Mr. Malbran and Mr. Summerlin. There were heaps of women and girls, sitting in rows, and men grouped in doorways. That is the only unconventional part of the Pani parties, that the sexes do not engage one another in conversation. Maybe it is the habit of the country.

Today they had for diversion (besides the jazz band, which did bring the sexes together for short intervals) the Indian girl who has won the beauty prize, and 10,000 pesos with it. She was in her pretty Indian dress and certainly looked very attractive, though more Roumanian than Indian. Everyone was making a fuss of her, and she was being photographed by flashlight with Madame Pani, and the highest of the land. This little peasant girl was perfectly smiling and composed, not a bit shy or awkward. Her naked feet reposed on the velvet cushions on the parquet floor, and she seemed to gain a great distinction from her surroundings. Behind her she has generations of noble Indian race. Her dignity and calm had the effect of making the other women appear rather banal. She looked as though a young Cortes should fling his fame and fortune at her feet!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 1921. _Mexico City._

I went to see Pani in his office at what they call “Relationes.” I wanted to say good-bye to him and ask his help in getting over the frontier. His office building inside looked like a converted Palace. I had to go through a large gilt room that contained beautiful tables with a life sized bust on each, presumably of former Presidents (so they do have their busts done sometimes!)

I asked him if the place were a Palace, and he said that it was not, but merely his office. I suppose the busts, the gilt and the good furniture, etc., are the proofs of Pani’s culture. I like Pani, he is not interesting, but is shrewd, and kind, and has a sense of humor. He smiles always, even on official occasions. Other Ministers smile when his name is mentioned. This because he likes old Masters, and Bourgeoisie, and is not a general, and is an opportunist; at least he might be considered so because he was in the Carranza Ministry, and has now attached himself to the Obregon, which is a rare occurrence in this country. Howbeit, Pani fits his post very well, he is a suave diplomat, and can talk a few languages. I confided to him that I am not going off to Los Angeles on Monday, having just been offered a trip to the Tampico oil fields. He agreed it was well worth doing. De la Huerta offered to facilitate my visit to Villa, but I have not time to do both so I have chosen oil.

Pani was charming to me, said that whatever I wanted of Mexico he would have done for me, and he hoped to see me in New York when “things are settled.”

When I got back to the Hotel, a man walked into the patio, with a bunch of flowers. It was a bunch that could hardly get in at the door, and the flowers were of every color and variety. There were exclamations of admiration from the people sitting around, as from me also, and then I was told it was for me, the sender was Don Adolfo de la Huerta. It was so big and so beautiful, I laid it on a table in the middle of my sitting room, and felt that I was at my own funeral, but at least enjoying it. A Mexican bunch is a wonderful thing, a great work of art. The flowers are wired and tied. Some on long sticks according to the design--It produces a wonderful effect, but they cannot be kept alive unless the whole construction is picked to pieces, and then oftentimes it is discovered the stems are too short to put in water. My flowers were roses, dahlias, choisias, magnolia, tuberose and violets, the two latter rescued and put in water. Then I sat down and wrote to de la Huerta, and told him exactly what I thought of him, straight from my heart.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1921. _Mexico City._

I was lent a car, which called at the Hotel at 6:00 A.M. We did not start till seven, and it was cold, ever so cold, but the road was beautiful. I repeated the expedition to El Desirto and having started early got there before the rains. El Desirto is the ruin of a Carmelite Convent. It is a huge rambling place “in the desert” quite isolated on the mountainside amid the woods. It is very beautiful, but I thought dismal and damp. A Mexican man and boy, armed us with candles, led us down through underground passages and cells that were very extensive and dripping from the vaulted roofs ... Dick loved it, but I was glad to be back in the sunlight. It must be a curious sensation to be a nun or a monk, to live secluded from the world, in peace and calm, and to have no further anxiety (unless it be about one’s soul--) and to be content with the daily round, the menial work. I suppose it requires great belief and no imagination. We came back down the mountain, stopping to pick wild flowers, and at a village we found a house that gave us hot milk, for which we were thankful. Then we pursued our way along a road whence came the endless procession of men, women and boys, carrying their abnormal loads into town for sale. It led us through a valley some miles further in among the hills, and we paused on a hillside in the sun, to eat our combined breakfast and lunch. From our selected spot we viewed about a mile of road, and it made a curious impression upon one (as de la Huerta would have wished). This never ceasing steady stream of human beasts of burden! It suggested the evacuation of a town by refugees, carrying all they could take away.

Dick, gathering bunches of wild penstimon was joined by two little Indian girls. One could not have been more than three years old. She wore a single garment of coarse linen. It reached nearly to her little barefeet, was sleeveless and cut in a big square decolleté. She had the loveliest little face, huge eyes and regular features ... and as she crushed a big bunch of long stemmed penstimon in her arms, as if it might have been a baby, she made a picture that one longed to preserve. But a sadness overwhelmed me at the thought that these little young things on the flowery hillside were surveying their destiny, as it passed along the road below them. They had been born into a world where early in life, they would be bent double, by the burden back and front, of merchandise and baby, and there would seem to be no escape. “Why do they submit?” was the question that kept rising in my heart. Why does man, woman or child submit; and then I imagined myself in their place, and I got the answer: If my father had always done it, and my mother whilst she bore me, and my father’s father and mother, and my mother’s, and my brother already accompanied them, and the neighbors went too, and they talked pantingly as they started off together, or rested at the wayside places, then I who was young enough to be left behind, (and not so young as to be a burden that must be carried with them), I would know that my life would not always be one of watching, or of gathering flowers. When everyone is doing it, and it is in your tradition and in your environment, there is a submission to conditions that no one would dream of breaking.

We went for a walk along a stream, out of view of the saddening road, and our path was a mosaic of flowers, and the shrubs and trees grew in such a way that it might have been a carefully planted and tended English rock garden.

At seven o’clock Mr. Rubio came to see me. Sent by de la Huerta. He was accompanied by a well known writer called Velazquez, who is also a poet. Rubio delivered into my hands a photograph from the Minister; it was inscribed in a way that only the Spanish language lends itself to. Apparently he was pleased by my letter. I had said that I appreciated his personality and his aims, that a few more people of his calibre in the world, and there would be less of suffering for the masses. Rubio says that everything was arranged for General Calles to come and see me last Thursday at seven, but that at five, they telephoned he had been taken suddenly ill, in his office. He has been ill ever since. I had already heard the rumor that he had been poisoned. Rubio asked why I was leaving so quickly. I explained Dick was not well. I did not explain that I had finished my work. To all appearance I have not had any!

A letter has just come from the President’s Secretary, inviting Dick and me to Chapultepec at five on Monday.

MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 1921. _Mexico City._

Our last day in Mexico City, we ended up our riding school lessons (which we have had nearly every day since we’ve been here) by starting out across country at 10 o’clock A.M. I never enjoyed anything so much. We went through Chapultepec Park then out across the fields and galloped. Jumping a ditch Dick came off, but he was not a bit frightened and with good presence of mind clung to the reins and landed on his feet. Had he fallen, he might have been kicked by the horses scrambling up the bank. I was very pleased with him. Most of the rest of the day was spent packing, writing little notes of thanks and farewell and dropping them.

At five o’clock, Dick and I drove to Chapultepec Castle in the face of a blinding rain and thunder storm, which followed after a dust storm. And oh! it was cold.