John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

After that he said he was sorry but he had telegrams waiting for him at the Regis and Salvador took him and Miss Williams, his secretary, home in the chief of police’s automobile.

“Jez, Ben, that’s a smooth bastard,” said Mac to Ben after J. Ward Moorehouse had gone.

“Mac,” said Ben, “that baby’s got a slick cream of millions all over him. By gum, I’d like to make some of these contacts he talks about… By gorry, I may do it yet… You just watch your Uncle Dudley, Mac. I’m goin’ to associate with the big hombres after this.”

After that the party was not so refined. Ben brought out a lot more cognac and the men started taking the girls into the bedrooms and hallways and even into the pantry and kitchen. Barrow cottoned onto a blonde named Nadia who was half English and talked to her all evening about the art of life. After everybody had gone Ben found them locked up in his bedroom.

Mac got to like the life of a storekeeper. He got up when he wanted to and walked up the sunny streets past the cathedral and the façade of the national palace and up Independencia where the sidewalks had been freshly sprinkled with water and a morning wind was blowing through, sweet with the smell of flowers and roasting coffee. Concha’s little brother Antonio would have the shutters down and be sweeping out the store by the time he got there. Mac would sit in the back reading or would roam about the store chatting with people in English and Spanish. He didn’t sell many books, but he kept all the American and European papers and magazines and they sold well, especially The Police Gazette and La Vie Parisienne. He started a bank account and was planning to take on some typewriter agencies. Salvador kept telling him he’d get him a contract to supply stationery to some government department and make him a rich man.

One morning he noticed a big crowd in the square in front of the National Palace. He went into one of the cantinas under the arcade and ordered a glass of beer. The waiter told him that Carranza’s troops had lost Torreón and that Villa and Zapata were closing in on the Federal District. When he got to the bookstore news was going down the street that Carranza’s government had fled and that the revolutionists would be in the city before night. The storekeepers began to put up their shutters. Concha and her mother came in crying saying that it would be worse than the terrible week when Madero fell and that the revolutionists had sworn to burn and loot the city. Antonio ran in saying that the Zapatistas were bombarding Tacuba. Mac got a cab and went over to the Chamber of Deputies to see if he could find anybody he knew. All the doors were open to the street and there were papers littered along the corridors. There was nobody in the theater but an old Indian and his wife who were walking round hand in hand looking reverently at the gilded ceiling and the paintings and the tables covered with green plush. The old man carried his hat in his hand as if he were in church.

Mac told the cabman to drive to the paper where Salvador worked, but the janitor there told him with a wink that Salvador had gone to Vera Cruz with the chief of police. Then he went to the Embassy where he couldn’t get a word with anybody. All the anterooms were full of Americans who had come in from ranches and concessions and who were cursing out President Wilson and giving each other the horrors with stories of the revolutionists. At the consulate Mac met a Syrian who offered to buy his stock of books. “No, you don’t,” said Mac and went back down Independencia.

When he got back to the store newsboys were already running through the street crying, “Viva la revolucion revindicadora.” Concha and her mother were in a panic and said they must get on the train to Vera Cruz or they’d all be murdered. The revolutionists were sacking convents and murdering priests and nuns. The old woman dropped on her knees in the corner of the room and began chanting “Ave Marias.”

“Aw, hell!” said Mac, “let’s sell out and go back to the States. Want to go to the States, Concha?” Concha nodded vigorously and began to smile through her tears. “But what the devil can we do with your mother and Antonio?” Concha said she had a married sister in Vera Cruz. They could leave them there if they could ever get to Vera Cruz.

Mac, the sweat pouring off him, hurried back to the consulate to find the Syrian. They couldn’t decide on the price. Mac was desperate because the banks were all closed and there was no way of getting any money. The Syrian said that he was from the Lebanon and an American citizen and a Christian and that he’d lend Mac a hundred dollars if Mac would give him a sixtyday note hypothecating his share in the bookstore for two hundred dollars. He said that he was an American citizen and a Christian and was risking his life to save Mac’s wife and children. Mac was so flustered he noticed just in time that the Syrian was giving him a hundred dollars mex and that the note was made out in American dollars. The Syrian called upon God to protect them both and said it was an error and Mac went off with two hundred pesos in gold.

He found Concha all packed. She had closed up the store and was standing on the pavement outside with some bundles, the two cats in a basket, and Antonio and her mother, each wrapped in a blanket.

They found the station so packed full of people and baggage they couldn’t get in the door. Mac went round to the yards and found a man named McGrath he knew who worked for the railroad. McGrath said he could fix them up but that they must hurry. He put them into a secondclass coach out in the yards and said he’d buy their tickets but would probably have to pay double for them. Sweat was pouring from under Mac’s hatband when he finally got the two women seated and the basket of cats and the bundles and Antonio stowed away. The train was already full, although it hadn’t backed into the station yet. After several hours the train pulled out, a line of dusty soldiers fighting back the people on the platform who tried to rush the train as it left. Every seat was taken, the aisles were full of priests and nuns, there were welldressed people hanging onto the platforms.

Mac didn’t have much to say sitting next to Concha in the dense heat of the slowmoving train. Concha sighed a great deal and her mother sighed, “Ay de mi dios,” and they gnawed on chickenwings and ate almond paste. The train was often stopped by groups of soldiers patrolling the line. On sidings were many boxcars loaded with troops, but nobody seemed to know what side they were on. Mac looked out at the endless crisscross ranks of centuryplants and the crumbling churches and watched the two huge snowy volcanos, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihatl, change places on the horizon; then there was another goldenbrown cone of an extinct volcano slowly turning before the train; then it was the bluewhite peak of Orizaba in the distance growing up taller and taller into the cloudless sky.

After Huamantla they ran down through clouds. The rails rang under the merry clatter of the wheels curving down steep grades in the misty winding valley through moist forestgrowth. They began to feel easier. With every loop of the train the air became warmer and damper. They began to see orange and lemontrees. The windows were all open. At stations women came through selling beer and pulque and chicken and tortillas.

At Orizaba it was sunny again. The train stopped a long time. Mac sat drinking beer by himself in the station restaurant. The other passengers were laughing and talking but Mac felt sore.

When the bell rang he didn’t want to go back to Concha and her mother and their sighs and their greasy fingers and their chickenwings.

He got on another car. Night was coming on full of the smells of flowers and warm earth.