Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (39 page)

But then he smiled a trifle; for his recollected joys now came to comfort him, most of them surely for the last time. Of course he would remember Charlotte again and again, right up to the end, but so very many images of her did he possess that few could return at all, let alone more than once. How pretty she appeared in Lombard dress! He had loved to watch her planting flowers in the Alameda; at first she had been so much happier in Mexico than at Miramar, where he preferred not to remember her. So he flew there all alone, hovering like a fly or miniature ghost over the gold and purple bindings in his library, the busts of Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe and Homer, the quill pen over the four-bezeled folio and the inlays of his writing-desk. If only he could always have been a fly! Smiling, he caressed the two silver candlesticks which Fray Soria had lent him. His guards gave him all the tapers he could burn. Once upon a time, he and
Charlotte had lit ever so many candles at Miramar. He used to deck four Christmas trees with gifts for the poor children of Trieste, and watch shyly from the window. The flickering flames reminded him of tropical butterflies. He could almost hear the twitterings of his aviary. Now he remembered how he had stood away from the Mexican deputation there on the parquet floor of Miramar; he would have sent them out and returned to the orange seedlings he was propagating in his glasshouse, had it not been for unhappy Charlotte in her snow-white crinolines, and Charlotte in her yellow silk, with the Order of San Carlos glowing on her breast, descending the ballroom stairs in Mexico, even the Liberals applauding her (Miramón still wore epaulettes and a tapering dark vest embroidered with golden ivywork); Charlotte undoing her hair at Cuernavaca—oh, yes, Cuernavaca, with his orchids and birds, and that rose-grown old house, Charlotte weeping again in Cuernavaca, among the fountains and orange trees, and the door in the garden wall through which glided the gardener's daughter Concepción, with her long blue-black hair outspread on her naked shoulders, while Charlotte signed decrees for him in Chapultepec. Smiling, Concepción pulled her shift over her head. She opened her arms. He was riding beautiful Mexican horses one after the other; he was commanding the
Novara,
with Trieste's lovely pastel edifices beneath summer rain-clouds off to starboard, coming home to Miramar, mooring between stone sphinxes at the landing, where even the Italians cheered him and Charlotte awaited, dressed in white, smiling adoringly, gazing down into the clear green sea. Soon they would be in their separate rooms, gazing down the steep mane of treetops at Miramar. He and she, Their Mexican Majesties, were riding in through the arch to accept the fruits of Mexican gratitude. Her white fingers were curling round his elbow as they descended the staircase, he appropriately overtowering her, she comprising a tiny-headed cone of many skirts. But perhaps he had never been so happy as when he had gone botanizing and insect-collecting in Brazil, wearing a white suit and a green-veiled hat. He remembered the butterflies he had captured there, and the trophy-bulbs and saplings he had collected for his gardens at Miramar. What if he had followed his inclinations then, and trekked forever deeper into the Matto Grosso? Charlotte would have been sad, of course. Besides, the oxhide slave-whips employed upon the blacks were abominable; he had prohibited those in his own Empire.
For the last time he was welcomed by his hordes of loyal Indians dressed in white, waving fern-garlands; yes, he abolished peonage throughout the Empire; once more Miramón was decorating him with a bronze medal on behalf of the Mexican Army; the Pope received him; Trieste glowed after a summer rain; Concepción opened her thighs; he became Admiral of the Austrian Navy; and in the rising sun he rode down from Chapultepec in his sombrero and grey
charro
outfit, and on the edge of the road petitioners were humbly waiting; often some young mother with a child in her arms begged him to spare a son or husband from the firing squad, and he was rarely as joyful as when he could oblige her (Bazaine got furious, of course)—but this memory likewise had some present pain attached to it; before its claws could catch him he fled to that time when he was young and voyaged through King Otto's Greece; there were slave-wenches exposed for auction in the market at Smyrna; that was the first time he had seen so many undressed females in one place, and realized the unbearable attractiveness, actually quite bearable, of sin (it provided particular pleasure to remember it here, because a well-bred Mexicana hides all but her eyes behind her reboso); then he visited Maria Amalia de Gloria, his first and truest love, who had died of consumption during their engagement; but tomorrow's rifle-barrels were staring at him, round and shining like a jaguar's eyes. Quickly he remembered the silent golden clocks with blue enamel numbers, the pretty clocks at Miramar; and again and yet again he remembered Concepción in Cuernavaca, eighteen years old, with the blue-black hair.

Again he stared miserably at the ivory crucifix, longing to slow down or reverse time, or, if that were impossible, for everything to be over. Whatever agony awaited him in the morning would not, he hoped, last long—although he had heard of cases when the first or second volley failed to kill.

Mejía had informed him that Juárez would renounce the Jecker bonds. This staggered him. If Juárez could do it, why had
he
failed to do the same? (The answer: Marshal Bazaine.) Freed of debt-weight, he might have been able to spend a decent fraction of his revenues on the people, and what if they had then come to love him?

The fear in his belly, which would most likely receive some of their bullets, he defeated with the certainty that however cruel the faces of the firing squad might be, he would regard them as if he were staring into a dark mirror. So he calmed himself. Then, upon the well-bred tranquillity of his courage, there grew a stain, not unlike the image of Christ's exhausted, bloody face which appeared on Saint Veronica's veil. It too was a face, but stone, wide-eyed and cruel. He could not say where he had met it before. Presently this apparition likewise faded, allowing him liberty to reconsider the cramp in his belly, which had spread to his chest. He smiled, understanding and accepting that until June nineteenth these feelings would come and go, in much the same way that in the mornings the longtailed crows descend on the
zócalo
of Veracruz, vanish in the afternoon and come swooping back at evening.

He would have liked to stroll in the cloister once more. It lay immediately outside, and they sometimes led him there for exercise. Whenever he entered its garden of orange and lemon trees, he remembered Cuernavaca. At any rate, he preferred to ask nothing of these people.

The general must have gone to the latrine; his pistol made a special noise whenever he laid it on the table. Two of the colonels were chuckling over something. It must be very dark outside. He wished he could have seen the sunset. At this time of year in Trieste there comes a certain quarter-hour when a long stripe of setting sun reddens the middle of a row of cypresses whose crowns are golden and whose lower trunks silhouette themselves. Not far below, Miramar overlooks the sea. The Emperor remembered this.

He remembered an orange-slice floating on the silver sparkling water in one of those fluted glasses the servants used to bring at Miramar. Italian oranges were delicious but Mexican ones were better. Keeping their taste and fragrance in his mind, he set out sincerely to yearn for death, to sink into the fragrance of the flowery death.

So a kind of grace came to him. He felt
the sweetness of time,
which customarily smudges, corrodes, effaces our joys bit by bit; in Maximilian's case the moments themselves could scarcely harm him, death being near and known: practically speaking, he would age no more, nor meet
disappointment; the pulse in his wrist was satisfyingly eternal; he loved his memories, and even his cell, which was ten paces long, three paces wide, with its two tiny tables and five chairs, one of which was an armchair; mostly he sat on the camp bed. There was even a cupboard where he kept his clothes. Well, well; he would need but one suit more. The most dislikeable feature of the cell was its window, which allowed anyone standing in the corridor to look in on him; it showed some consideration on the part of the general and three colonels that they sat at a low table out of view. He did not care to peer out the window like a caged creature; nor did he like to sit with his back to them, so that they could spy on him without his knowing; hence he gave them his profile, living out his moments there on the camp bed. He remembered Cuernavaca, and lime-green Brazilian insects. His life grew as lovely and white as Trieste overseen from the karst foothills. Without a doubt he was far better off than the wives of Mejía and Miramón kneeling by Fray Soria in the chapel, both women clinging to the railing while they prayed and wept, with gaudy retablos all around them on the wall.

Presently the cigarillo girl who supplied his jailers came quietly upstairs. He recognized her step.

The general and all three colonels smoked like devils, the way Mexicans so often do. He had never overcome his distaste for the habit, although he hid it as poor Charlotte never could. This girl made a brisk trade with the jailers every day; her face had grown familiar to him.

She knocked gently on his door.

Enter, please, he called out.

The general, who had been muttering to one of the colonels, fell silent.

The woman came in. She was small, dirty and dark, with tobacco-stained hands. He thought her about twenty-five—nearly Charlotte's age. Perceiving her pitying gaze, he turned away.

He did not rise; after all, until tomorrow he was still the Emperor. Nor did she appear to expect it. In a low shy voice she murmured: Cigarillos
,
sir? The general said you were to have as many as you wanted.

No, thank you, said Maximilian.

He expected her then to curtsey and depart. Instead, she drew nearer,
and even leaned forward. On her bosom she wore a tarnished little mirror on a chain, and in it he now saw his own exhausted marble face and sunken eyes, his beard and moustache awry. This shocked him, but he smiled steadily, so that she would not suppose him to be distressed about anything. Suddenly his heart began to race, and he believed that one of his friends had sent her here to save him from death. From Fray Soria he had heard more than enough of the Holy Child of Atocha. Sometimes, as the retablos testified, locks opened at His touch. Why then shouldn't the Empire be saved? Of course he would not consent to escape unless Mejía and Miramón could both accompany him.

The woman must have read the hope in his eyes, for she flushed, which made her very ugly, and quickly murmured: Sir, I have something if you wish to sleep. For dreams. In the morning your mind will be clear.

His heart fell, but he succeeded in keeping his tin face. From her sack of tobacco she withdrew a dark green pill, evidently rolled out of some plant material. With her dirty fingers she picked away tobacco shreds, then offered it to him, meaning to be kind.

Although she smelled a trifle stale, at least she was a woman, perhaps the last with whom he would ever have occasion to flirt, not that it should go any further with those four soldiers in the corridor, doubtless listening; and so, a trifle mechanically, he touched her hand, and smiled up into her brown eyes, which were surprisingly pretty, only to discover that she was in silent distress, evidently on his account. Of course he would rather not be comforting still another person just now, but there it was.— Pleasantly he said: What's your name, girl?

Dominga.

Don't weep. God wishes this. How old are you?

Fourteen.

You're quite goodhearted. Set it on the table. Now here's a present for you.

His feeble desire for her departed; he rose, and presented her with a gold ounce engraved with his profile. There was plenty left over for the firing squad. At first she grew as round-eyed as Tlaloc, their cruel god of rain. Then she burst into tears in earnest, and refused to take it, so he smilingly wrapped her fingers around the coin and said: Thank you, Dominga. I'd better sleep now.

Goodnight, sir. I'll pray for you, both tonight and tomorrow.

Goodnight, my girl.

He had never felt so tired. The instant she departed, he took the pill in his hands, sniffed it (it smelled fresh and resinous) and swallowed it down. What did he care if it were poison?

It was a quarter past nine-o'-clock. Next door, Mejía and Fray Soria were praying to the Holy Child for comfort in bondage. He could hear Fray Soria's deep voice. By nine-thirty he had begun to feel refreshed by a warm lassitude. The guards were arguing in the corridor. He read a few pages more of Cantù's
History of Italy.
Miramón had lent him his own favorite volume, the
Imitation of Christ,
which he found too fervent, like his smallheaded, wide-skirted bride. He preferred history.

At ten-o'-clock, deliciously drowsy, he blew out both candles. At midnight General Escobedo came to say goodbye to him. During the two hours in between he slept deeply. And this is what he dreamed.

He seemed to see the double doors of a casket fly open—and his own corpse, popeyed and powdered horribly white, stared straight up at him, with buttons shining from the throat and down most of the abdomen. His head had grown astonishingly round and the collar of his suit was buttoned so tight under the chin that he seemed to lack any neck. Perhaps a bullet had mutilated him there, or, as might be, the embalmer had needed to draw something out through his throat. Shiny black boots rose all the way up to his torso. No part of him appeared real, except for his chalk-white hands. His bifurcated moustache, greatly impoverished from its living state, could have been painted on in two long ink-strokes. As for that round white head of his, it was the crudest effigy of clay or plaster (perhaps the embalmer had unfleshed his skull), while the rest of him lay preposterously long and shapeless. From the thing's very confinement, meagerness, hardness and rigidity he somehow knew it to be himself. This was what he had come to, in death as in life.