Carmen Boullosa - Texas - The Great Theft

“I’m leaving for scary Mexico … I’m headed south, you assholes, see you around …”

Wayne looks up and stares right through him.

Cruz goes to the bar. He won’t let them make him feel like he has to leave.

The organ-grinder is sitting quietly at his side. Taking his time to finish his drink. He doesn’t want to set foot outside either.

Elizabeth thinks it’s fortunate the Henrys are the first to arrive at the party; both aunt and niece live in their own world. Her guests are oblivious to her last-minute adjustments. The vases aren’t where they should be, the carpets are a bit out of place, the napkins aren’t laid out properly, the spittoons are in the way, the benches are too, the musicians have set down their instruments where the ladies could trip over them. “What’s everyone thinking about?” It’s as though this is the first party she’s ever hosted, everyone’s head is somewhere else today.

The Henrys talk incessantly; one opines, the other comments, or vice versa. They talk to be heard, or more precisely, to hear themselves. They’ve never been this far south. They’ve both traveled through Europe, seen Boston and New York, but they’ve never been here. “This is Mexico?” They’ve repeated the question all along their journey, and now in Elizabeth’s salon.

“Texas is not Mexico,” Elizabeth breaks in, while she snaps her fingers at one of her slaves to move the carpet, which the laundresses returned this morning.

The other guests are beginning to arrive. Glevack shows up despite the fact they thought he wouldn’t come since he’s Sabas and Refugio’s friend. That’s why, seconds before he enters, the gossips are huddled, talking about how he and Nepomuceno went their separate ways because Glevack made a move on Lucia, the prettiest of Nepomuceno’s girlfriends. Wicked lies — Lucia disappeared from Bruneville before the Austrian arrived. What is true is that the theft other gossips pinned on Nepomuceno was actually perpetrated by Glevack: the two of them got involved in bringing stolen cattle across the river and things turned out badly, or perhaps the Austrian made them turn out badly so he’d have a reason to part ways with Nepomuceno, since he was already planning to dispossess Doña Estefanía.

On the other side of the ocean he was known as Glavecke. When he arrived in Mexico he changed the vowels in his name around, taking advantage of the illegibility of his Austrian passport: Glevack. He’ll never open his Austrian passport again; when he arrived the Mexican authorities granted him the title of “rancher” along with three head of cattle, well-suited to the region, and a plot of land which he could use as he pleased in return for paying taxes.

He’s disappointed when he sees his “land.” It’s small and bone-dry, like a block of stone. He wanted to be like the men who owned property as far as the eye could see, like the ones he read about in a Bavarian newspaper, “We rode for five days to reach land that didn’t belong to our host.” Plus, there’s nothing appealing about it: there are no trees that will shed their leaves come winter only to bud again in the spring; there’s no running water; he doesn’t like dry grass. To sum it up, for him it’s like the sea: a solid, charmless, and luckless thing that is completely oblivious to mankind.

He likes riding, but he’d prefer a wagon drawn by oxen or something faster; it’s not the animal that appeals to him, just the movement, the travel, the adventure.

Glevack’s adventure becomes interesting when, one day, he sees the Comanches passing by with twelve captives whom they will ransom or sell. He offers the Comanches water — true, there was a well, but it didn’t make any difference to him, “There might as well not be any water”—just to start a conversation with them because he was curious about their business. He made friends with them and accompanied them to meet some bandits who hunted Mexicans along the highway — stealing everything they carried, torturing them to learn what property they owned, and killing them (they were quite meticulous, according to their story: with the information they obtained they took possession of the land belonging to the women they had recently widowed, it was a booming business).

Then he met Nepomuceno.

Every time he meets someone new, they make him an offer.

Among the captives there is a young woman who speaks a little German, she begs him to pay her ransom and free her from her captors, promising that her family will pay him double and “you’ll free me from the humiliation of living with these savages another day.”

After he sees the way Glevack treats her, the head of the bandits thinks he’s got potential. Plus, Glevack claims he’s a doctor, and a doctor is worth his weight in gold.

Nepomuceno, who’s his neighbor (he’s everyone’s neighbor, because he owns so much land you could ride for three weeks without stopping and still be on his land), proposes to manage his land and the few head of cattle he received (for a percentage of the profits) so Glevack can return to Matasánchez and enjoy city life.

Of the three offers, Nepomuceno’s is most interesting, but Glevack doesn’t decline any of them. As for the captive girl, “I used her”—riding has awakened his desire for a woman. To “use her” he gives one of the savages a few coins, asks the girl to mount his horse, rides about fifty yards, asks the girl to dismount on the pretext that he has lost his pocketwatch and needs help looking for it; no sooner is she on the ground than he accosts her, pushing her up against a prickly mesquite tree, grabbing her by the shoulders and pushing her skirts up, he takes her standing up without hardly lowering his pants. He leaves her there, for the Indians to come and find her — after all, she was their property.

He tells the bandits that he’s going to give their offer some serious thought, that he likes the idea, and it’s the truth, because he senses he’d make money with them. And the idea of spending his days full of adventure, assaulting and seducing, appeals to him.

He doesn’t need to think twice about Nepomuceno’s offer. He likes the kid. He can smell the money on him, it runs in the family, and he can tell he’s enterprising. On the other hand, he could accept his offer and join the bandits too, there’s no reason not to.

The passport that Glevack will never open again said that he was a “medical student at the University of Frankfurt.” Why did he abandon his studies? It couldn’t have been financial problems. He arrived in a first class cabin, well-dressed and carrying money; sure, it wasn’t a lot, but he didn’t arrive with holes in his clothes.

But that’s neither here nor there, it’s in the past. We’re interested in the present: Glevack curries Nepomuceno’s favor. Then he gets cozy with the whole family. He marries Doña Estefanía’s favorite niece. Faking his loyalty, he pushes Doña Estefanía into her own undoing. Stealman was able to become Bruneville’s developer all thanks to Glevack, who’s a downright traitor.

Which takes us back to his escape from university. He left because of another betrayal. That story will come later, if we can sneak it in, now we don’t have time, the party at the Stealmans’ house is underway.

Snippets of the men’s conversation in Mrs. Stealman’s salon:

“I heard they’re selling a decent piece of land, it has a pond and a ravine to the north that protects it from Indian raids. Anyone interested?”

“Are they selling by the hectare?”

“Depends on who’s buying.”

“To my mind, the best time for buying land has passed.”

“It’ll still increase in value. Land is Texas’ gold.”

Minister Fear is speaking quietly with a strange-looking man, it would be impossible to guess his trade or his provenance by his looks.