Chapter II The Lion of Durango at Home
At General Urbina’s door sat an old peon with four cartridge-belts around him, engaged in the genial occupation of filling corrugated iron bombs with gunpowder. He jerked his thumb toward the patio. The General’s house, corrals and storerooms ran around all four sides of a space as big as a city block, swarming with pigs, chickens and half-naked children. Two goats and three magnificent peacocks gazed pensively down from the roof. In and out of the sitting-room, whence came the phonographic strains of the “Dollar Princess,” stalked a train of hens. An old woman came from the kitchen and dumped a bucket of garbage on the ground; all the pigs made a squealing rush for it. In a corner of the house-wall sat the General’s baby daughter, chewing on a cartridge. A group of men stood or sprawled on the ground around a well in the center of the patio. The General himself sat in their midst, in a broken wicker arm-chair, feeding tortillas to a tame deer and a lame black sheep. Before him kneeled a peon, pouring from a canvas sack some hundreds of Mauser cartridges.
To my explanations the General returned no answer. He gave me a limp hand, immediately withdrawing it, but did not rise. A broad, medium-sized man of dark mahogany complexion, with a sparse black beard up to his cheek-bones, that didn’t hide the wide, thin, expressionless mouth, the gaping nostrils, the shiny, small, humorous, animal eyes. For a good five minutes he never took them from mine. I produced my papers.
“I don’t know how to read,” said the General suddenly, motioning to his secretary. “So you want to go with me to battle?” he shot at me in the coarsest Spanish. “Many bullets!” I said nothing. “Muy bien! But I don’t know when I shall go. Maybe in five days. Now eat!”
“Thanks, my general, I’ve already eaten.”
“Go and eat,” he repeated calmly. “Andale!”
A dirty little man they all called Doctor escorted me to the dining-room. He had once been an apothecary in Parral, but was now a Major. We were to sleep together that night, he said. But before we reached the dining-room there was a shout of “Doctor!” A wounded man had arrived, a peasant with his sombrero in his hand, and a blood-clotted handkerchief around his head. The little doctor became all efficiency. He dispatched a boy for the family scissors, another for a bucket of water from the well. He sharpened with his knife a stick he picked up from the ground. Seating the man on a box, he took off the bandage, revealing a cut about two inches long, caked with dirt and dried blood. First he cut off the hair around the wound, jabbing the points of the scissors carelessly into it. The man drew in his breath sharply, but did not move. Then the doctor slowly cut the clotted blood away from the top, whistling cheerfully to himself. “Yes,” he remarked, “it is an interesting life, the doctor’s.” He peered closely at the vomiting blood; the peasant sat like a sick stone. “And it is a life full of nobility,” continued the doctor. “Alleviating the sufferings of others.” Here he picked up the sharpened stick, thrust it deep in, and slowly worked it the entire length of the cut!
“Pah! The animal has fainted!” said the doctor. “Here, hold him up while I wash it!” With that he lifted the bucket and poured its contents over the head of the patient, the water and blood dribbling down over his clothes. “These ignorant peons,” said the doctor, binding up the wound in its original bandage, “have no courage. It is the intelligence that makes the soul, eh?”...
When the peasant came to, I asked: “Are you a soldier?” The man smiled a sweet, deprecating smile.
“No, señor, I am only a pacifico,” he said. “I live in the Canotillo, where my house is at your orders....”
Some time later—a good deal—we all sat down to supper. There was Lieutenant-Colonel Pablo Seañes, a frank, engaging youth of twenty-six, with five bullets in him to pay for the three years’ fighting. His conversation was sprinkled with soldierly curses, and his pronunciation was a little indistinct, the result of a bullet on the jaw-bone and a tongue almost cut in two by a sword. He was a demon in the field, they said, and a killer (muy matador) after it. At the first taking of Torreon, Pablo and two other officers, Major Fierro and Captain Borunda, had executed alone eighty unarmed prisoners, each man shooting them down with his revolver until his hand got tired pulling the trigger.
“Oiga!*” Pablo said. “Where is the best institute for the study of hypnotism in the United States?... As soon as this cursed war is over I am going to study to become a hypnotist....” With that he turned and began to make passes at Lieutenant Borrega, who was called derisively “The Lion of the Sierras,” because of his prodigious boasting. The latter jerked out his revolver: “I want no business with the devil!” he screamed, amid the uproarious laughter of the others.
Then there was Captain Fernando, a grizzled giant of a man in tight trousers, who had fought twenty-one battles. He took the keenest delight in my fragmentary Spanish, and every word I spoke sent him into bellows of laughter that shook down the adobe from the ceiling. He had never been out of Durango, and declared that there was a great sea between the United States and Mexico, and that he believed all the rest of the earth to be water. Next to him sat Longinos Güereca, with a row of decayed teeth across his round, gentle face every time he smiled, and a record for simple bravery that was famous throughout the army. He was twenty-one, and already First Captain. He told me that last night his own men had tried to kill him.... Then came Patricio, the best rider of wild horses in the State, and Fidencio next to him, a pure-blooded Indian seven feet tall, who always fought standing up. And last Raphael Zalarzo, a tiny hunchback that Urbina carried in his train to amuse him, like any medieval Italian duke.
When we had burned our throats with the last enchilada, and scooped up our last frijole with a tortilla,—forks and spoons being unknown,—the gentlemen each took a mouthful of water, gargled it, and spat it on the floor. As I came out into the patio, I saw the figure of the General emerge from his bedroom door, staggering slightly. In his hand he carried a revolver. He stood for a moment in the light of another door, then suddenly went in, banging it behind him.
I was already in bed when the doctor came into the room. In the other bed reposed the Lion of the Sierras and his momentary mistress, now loudly snoring.
“Yes,” said the Doctor, “there has been some little trouble. The General has not been able to walk for two months from rheumatism.... And sometimes he is in great pain, and comforts himself with aguardiente.... To-night he tried to shoot his mother. He always tries to shoot his mother.... because he loves her very much.” The Doctor peeped at himself in the mirror, and twisted his mustache. “This Revolucion. Do not mistake. It is a fight of the poor against the rich. I was very poor before the Revolucion and now I am very rich.” He pondered a moment, and then began removing his clothes. Through his filthy undershirt the Doctor honored me with his one English sentence: “I have mooch lices,” he said, with a proud smile....
I went out at dawn and walked around Las Nieves. The town belongs to General Urbina, people, houses, animals and immortal souls. At Las Nieves he and he alone wields the high justice and the low. The town’s only store is in his house, and I bought some cigarettes from the Lion of the Sierras, who was detailed store-clerk for the day. In the patio the General was talking with his mistress, a beautiful, aristocratic-looking woman, with a voice like a hand-saw. When he noticed me he came up and shook hands, saying that he’d like to have me take some pictures of him. I said that that was my purpose in life, and asked him if he thought he would leave soon for the front. “In about ten days, I think,” he answered. I began to get uncomfortable.
“I appreciate your hospitality, my General,” I told him, “but my work demands that I be where I can see the actual advance upon Torreon. If it is convenient, I should like to go back to Chihuahua and join General Villa, who will soon go south.” Urbina’s expression didn’t change, but he shot at me: “What is it that you don’t like here? You are in your own house! Do you want cigarettes? Do you want aguardiente; or sotol, or cognac? Do you want a woman to warm your bed at night? Everything you want I can give you! Do you want a pistol? A horse? Do you want money?” He jerked a handful of silver dollars from his pocket and threw them jingling on the ground at my feet.
I said: “Nowhere in Mexico am I so happy and contented as in this house.” And I was prepared to go further.
For the next hour I took photographs of General Urbina: General Urbina on foot, with and without sword; General Urbina on three different horses; General Urbina with and without his family; General Urbina’s three children, on horseback and off; General Urbina’s mother, and his mistress; the entire family, armed with swords and revolvers, including the phonograph, produced for the purpose, one of the children holding a placard upon which was inked: “General Tomas Urbina R.”