The fire hadn't reached here. Neither did the news of the lost
lands, the son killed in ambush, or the boy born in the Negro shacks: the news didn't, but the premonitions did.
"Indian, bring a pitcher of water."
She waited until Baracoa left and then broke all the rules: she parted the curtains and squinted to get a glimpse of what was happening outside. She had seen that unknown boy grow up; she had spied on him from the window, from the other side of the lace. She had seen those green eyes and cackled with joy, knowing herself to be in another young body, she who had etched into her brain the memories of a century, and in the wrinkles of her face disappeared layers of air, earth, and sun. She persisted. She survived. It was difficult for her to get to the window; she practically crawled, eyes fixed on her knees, hands squeezed against her thighs. Her head, covered with patches of white hair, had sunk between her shoulders, which were sometimes higher than the top of her head. But she survived. She was still here, trying, from her unkempt bed, to replicate the gestures of the young, fair-skinned beauty who opened the doors of Cocuya to the long parade of Spanish prelates, French traders, Scots and English engineers, bond salesmen, speculators, and anti-Spanish guerrillas, who all passed through here on their way to Mexico City and the opportunities the young, anarchic nation had to offer: her baroque cathedrals, her gold and silver mines, her tezontle and carved-stone palaces, her ecclesiastical businessmen, her perpetual political carnival and her perpetually indebted government, her customs concessions easily arranged for glib foreigners. Those were glorious days for Mexico, when the Menchacas left the hacienda in the hands of their oldest son, Atanasio, so that he might become a man by dealing with workers, bandits, and Indians. They made their way to the central plateau to glitter in the fictitious court of His Most Serene Highness. How was General Santa Anna going to get along without his old pal Manchaca-now Colonel Menchaca-who knew all about fighting cocks and pits and could pass an entire night drinking and recalling the Casamata Plan, the Barradas expedition, the Alamo, San Jacinto, the War of the Cakes, even the defeats perpetrated by the invading Yankee army, to which the Generalissimo alluded with a cynical hilarity, pounding the floor with his wooden foot raising his glass, and caressing the black hair of Flor de México, the child-bride he'd brought to the nuptial bed when his wife's death rattle was still echoing in the air? There were also days of grief, when the Generalissimo was expelled from Mexico by the Liberals, and the Menchacas went back to their hacienda to defend their property: the thousands of acres heaped on them by the crippled tyrant addicted to cock fighting-acres appropriated without leave from native peasants who either had to stay on as field hands or move to the foot of the mountains; lands cultivated by the new black-and cheap-workers imported from the Caribbean islands, lands swollen by mortgages imposed on all the small landowners in the region. Tomb-like shacks for drying tobacco. Carts piled high with bananas and mangoes. Herds of goats set out to pasture on the low slopes of the Sierra Madre. And in the center of it all, the one-story mansion, with its pink belvedere and stables alive with whinnying, with boats and carriage outings. And Atanasio, the green-eyed son, dressed in white on his white horse, another gift from Santa Anna, galloping over the fertile land, his whip in his hand, always ready to impose his decisive will, to satisfy his voracious appetites with the young peasant women, to defend his property, using his band of imported Negroes, against the ever more frequent incursions of the Juárez forces. Above all, long live Mexico, long live our Nation, death to the foreign prince…And during the final days of the Empire, when old Ireneo Menchaca was informed that Santa Anna was coming back from exile to proclaim a new Republic, he boarded his black carriage and went to Veracruz, where a boat was waiting for him at the dock. From the deck of the Virginia, Santa Anna and his German pirates were signaling Fort San Juan de Ulúa, but no one answered. The port garrison was on the side of the Empire and mocked the fallen tyrant as he paced back and forth under the pennants, desperate; spouting obscenities from his fleshy lips. The sails filled again, and the two old friends played cards in the Yankee captain's cabin; they sailed over a torrid, languid sea, from which they could barely make out the coastline, which was lost behind a veil of heat. From the side of the ship in full dress, the dictator's furious eyes saw Sisal's white silhouette. And the crippled old man walked down the gangplank, followed by his old pal. He issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Yucatán and once again lived his dream of greatness. Maximilian had just been sentenced to death in Querétaro, and the Republic had a right to count on the services of its natural, its true leader, its monarch-without-a-crown. It was all told to Ludivinia: how they were captured by the commander of Sisal, how they were sent to Campeche and paraded through the streets with their hands in chains, beaten like common criminals by the guards. How they were thrown into a dungeon in the fortress. How that summer, without latrines, swollen with foul water, old Colonel Menchaca died, while newspapers in the United States reported that Santa Anna had been executed by Juárez, as was the innocent Prince of Trieste. A lie: only the cadaver of Ireneo Menchaca was buried in the cemetery opposite the bay, the end of a life of chance and spins of the wheel of fortune, like that of the nation itself. Santa Anna, wearing the permanent grin of an infectious madness, again went into exile.
Atanasio told her, recalled old Ludivinia this hot afternoon, and from that day on, she never left her room. She had them bring her finest possessions there, the dining-room chandelier, the metal-encrusted chests, the most highly varnished pictures. All to wait for a death her romantic mind judged imminent but which had taken thirty-five lost years-nothing for a woman ninety-three years old, born the year of the first revolt, when a riot of clubs and stones was raised by Father Hidalgo in his parish of Dolores and her mother gave birth to her in a house in which terror had bolted the doors. She'd lost her calendars, and this year of 1903 was for her merely a time purloined from the rapid death from grief which should have followed that of the colonel. As if the fire of 1868 never existed: the flames extinguished just as they were reaching the door of the sealed bedroom, while her sons-there was a second, not only Atanasio, but she loved only him-shouted for her to save herself and she piled chairs and tables against the door and coughed in the thick smoke pouring through the cracks. She never wanted to see anyone ever again, only the Indian woman, because she needed someone to bring her food and stitch up her black clothing. She did not want to know more, but only to remember the old times. And within these four walls, she lost track of everything, except the essentials: her widowhood, the past, and, suddenly, that boy who was always running in the distance, right on the heels of a mulatto she didn't recognize.