The Vineyard

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  For my father, Pablo Dueñas Samper, who knows about mines and enjoys a good wine

  Part I

  MEXICO CITY

  1861

  CHAPTER ONE

  What goes through the mind and body of a man accustomed to triumphing over the odds when one September evening his worst fears are confirmed?

  Nothing changed in his demeanor. There was no outburst, no telltale gesture. Only a fleeting, imperceptible tremor that coursed through him from head to foot when the disaster he had already anticipated was finally confirmed. Undaunted, with one hand resting on the sturdy walnut desk, he fixed his eyes on the two women who had brought him the news, registering their lined, exhausted faces and desolate mourning attire.

  “Please enjoy your hot chocolate, ladies. Forgive me for having put you to this trouble, and thank you for your consideration in coming all this way to inform me in person.”

  The moment the interpreter had finished translating, the two North Americans did as they were told, as though obeying an order. Their country’s embassy had provided them with this intermediary so that the women, overwhelmed with fatigue, the bad news they were bringing, and their lack of Spanish, could make themselves understood and thus fulfill the purpose of their journey.

  They raised the cups to their lips with little enthusiasm, merely out of a sense of respect, in order not to offend the man. However, they left untouched the biscuits made by San Bernardino nuns, and he did not insist. While the two women were sipping the thick liquid with barely concealed discomfort, a silence that was almost palpable slithered into the room like a reptile amid the polished wooden floor, the European furniture, the paintings of landscapes and still lifes.

  The interpreter, a smooth-cheeked young man of no more than twenty, sat there rather uneasily, his clammy hands clasped awkwardly on his lap as he wondered what on earth he was doing in that place. Meanwhile, a thousand sounds floated on the air. From the courtyard came the echo of servants rinsing the tiles with laurel water, and from the street beyond the wrought-iron window bars, the thudding hoofs of mules and horses, the laments of mendicant lepers, and the cries of a street vendor hawking cream empanadas, tortillas stuffed with cheese, guava jelly, and sweet breads.

  As the clock struck half past five, the ladies dabbed their lips with the exquisite Dutch napkins. Beyond that, they had no idea what to do.

  The owner of the house put an end to the tension.

  “Permit me to offer you my hospitality for the night before you undertake your return journey.”

  “Thank you kindly, sir,” they replied, almost in unison. “We already have a room booked at an inn that the embassy recommended.”

  “Santos!” he cried out in a booming voice.

  Even though it wasn’t directed at them, both women flinched.

  “Have Laureano accompany these ladies to collect their luggage and transfer them to the Iturbide Hotel. Charge it to my account. Then go and find Andrade. Haul him out of his game of dominoes and tell him to come here at once.”

  The young bronze-skinned servant received the orders with a simple “As you wish, sir.” As if he hadn’t already had his ear to the door and learned that the world of Mauro Larrea, until that day a wealthy silver miner, had suddenly been turned upside down.

  The two women rose, their skirts rustling ominously like the wings of crows as they followed the servant out of the room and onto the cool veranda. The one who had said she was the sister went first, while the other, the widow, brought up the rear. They left behind the papers they had brought: documents confirming in black-and-white the truth of his premonition.

  The interpreter made to follow them, but the owner of the house stopped him, placing his big gnarled hand on the American’s chest with the firmness of someone who knows how to command and is certain he will be obeyed.

  “Just a moment, young man, if you please.”

  The interpreter barely had time to respond before the older man spoke again.

  “Samuelson you said your name was, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Very well, Samuelson,” said Larrea, lowering his voice. “I hardly need tell you that this conversation has been strictly confidential. One word about it to anyone and I’ll make sure that within a week you’ll not only be deported but conscripted back in your own country. Where are you from, my friend?”

  The young man’s throat felt as dry as a desert hut.

  “From Hartford, Connecticut, Señor Larrea.”

  “Better still. That way you’ll be able to help the Yankees defeat those damned Confederates once and for all.”

  As soon as Larrea calculated that the two women had reached the front entrance, he lifted the heavy drape before one of the balconies and observed them as they left the mansion and climbed into his carriage. The coachman, Laureano, geed up the mares, and they set off at a brisk pace, weaving their way past well-dressed passersby, ragged barefoot children, and Indians wrapped in serapes who in a chaotic chorus of voices were peddling tallow and mats from Puebla, salt meat, lard, avocados, flavored ices, and wax effigies of the infant Jesus. After the carriage turned into Calle de las Damas, Larrea pulled back from the balcony. Elias Andrade, his agent, would not be there for at least another half hour, and he knew exactly what to do until then.

  Protected from the gaze of others, Mauro Larrea angrily removed his jacket and proceeded to make his way through the rooms as he pulled off his necktie, undid his cuff links, and rolled the sleeves of his linen shirt up past the elbows. Upon reaching his destination, he took a deep breath and spun the billiard cue rack, which was shaped like a roulette wheel.

  Holy Mother of God, he muttered to himself.

  There was no apparent reason why he chose the cue he did. Others were newer, more sophisticated and valuable, acquired over the years as tangible proof of his spectacular rise. And yet, on the evening that blew his life asunder, as the light quickly faded and his servants lit oil lamps and candles in every corner of the big house, while the streets were still pulsating with energy and Mexico as a whole remained stubbornly ungovernable due to seemingly endless squabbles, Larrea rejected the obvious choice. Opting instead for the rough old cue that connected him to his past, he set about furiously combating his private demons at the billiard table.

  As the minutes ticked by, he played his shots with ruthless efficiency, one after the other, with the only sound that of the balls rebounding off the cushions and the sharp smack of ivory on ivory. He remained in control, calculating and decisive as always. Or almost always. Until he heard a voice from the doorway behind him.

  “Seeing you grasping that cue makes me suspect bad news.”

  Larrea kept on playing as if he had heard nothing: flicking his wrist for an unerring shot, raising his fingers in a solid bridge for the hundredth time, revealing the stumps of two fingers on his left hand, and the dark scar rising from the base of his thumb. War wounds, he used to say ironically. The consequences of his passage through the bowels of the earth.

  Of course he had heard the well-modulated voice of his agent, a tall man of exquisitely outmoded elegance, his skull as smooth as a river stone and his brain both shrewd
and vibrant. In addition to looking after his finances and his interests, Elias Andrade was his closest friend: the elder brother he had never had, the voice of his conscience when the uproar of tumultuous days robbed him of the serenity required to make wise choices.

  Leaning athletically over the green baize, Mauro Larrea struck the last ball firmly, bringing his solitary game to a close. Replacing the cue in its rack, he turned unhurriedly toward the newcomer.

  They looked each other in the eye, as they had done so many times before. For good or ill, that was how it had always been between them. Face-to-face. Without mincing words.

  “I’m ruined, my friend.”

  His trusted friend shut his eyes briefly but made no comment. He simply took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow, for he had begun to sweat.

  While awaiting a reply, the miner raised the lid of a humidor and took out two cigars. They lit them from a silver brazier and the air filled with smoke; only then did the agent respond to the dreadful news he had just heard.

  “Farewell to Las Tres Lunas.”

  “Farewell to everything. It’s all gone to hell.”

  Having lived between two worlds, whenever he spoke Larrea mixed expressions, at times sounding like a peninsular Spaniard, at others more Mexican than Chapultepec Castle. Two and a half decades had passed since his arrival in Mexico, by then already a fledgling republic after a lengthy and painful struggle for independence. He had brought with him a broken heart, two unavoidable responsibilities, and the urgent need to survive. Nothing could have predicted his path would cross that of Elias Andrade, last descendant of an ancient Creole family as aristocratic as it was poor following the collapse of Spain’s colony in Mexico. But, as so often happens in cases where the vagaries of chance intercede, the two men first met at a notorious bar in a mining camp at Real de Catorce when Larrea’s business affairs (he was twelve years younger) were just starting to prosper, and Andrade’s dreams had hit rock bottom. From then on, despite the thousand reversals that both men encountered, despite all the disasters and triumphs, the joys and disappointments, that fortune held in store for them, they had never parted ways.

  “Did the gringo cheat you?”

  “Worse. He’s dead.”

  Andrade’s eyebrow arched into a question mark.

  “Killed by Confederates at the battle of Bull Run. His wife and sister came all the way from Philadelphia to bring me the news. That was his dying wish.”

  “What about the machinery?”

  “Requisitioned by his associates for their Lackawanna Valley coal mines.”

  “And we paid for the whole lot . . .” his agent whispered in amazement.

  “Down to the last screw; we had no choice. But not a single machine was loaded on board ship.”

  Without a word, the agent went over to one of the balconies and opened the shutters wide, perhaps in the vain hope that a breeze might blow away what he had just learned. But only the usual voices and noises rose from the street: the never-ending bustle of what until only a few years earlier had been the biggest metropolis in the Americas. The richest and most powerful city, the old Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán.

  “I warned you,” Andrade growled, gazing abstractedly at the hubbub below.

  Mauro Larrea’s only reaction was to draw deeply on his cigar.

  “I told you that opening that mine again was too precarious: that you shouldn’t take on the concession or invest so much money in foreign machinery, that you should look for shareholders to mitigate the danger. That you should get that wild idea out of your head.”

  A firecracker went off close to the cathedral; they could hear two coachmen quarreling nearby and a horse neighing loudly. Larrea’s only reply was to blow out smoke.

  “I told you a hundred times there was no need to risk so much,” Andrade insisted in an increasingly angry voice. “And yet, against my advice, and against simple common sense, you insisted on risking everything you owned. Mortgaging the Tacubaya estate. Selling your land in Coyoacán, the ranches at San Antonio Coapa, the stores on Calle Sepulcro, the farms at Chapingo, the cattle pens by Santa Catarina Virgen y Martir church.”

  He reeled off the list of properties as if he was spitting out bile.

  “But that wasn’t all: you cashed in all your stocks, sold off your government bonds and securities, drowned yourself up to your ears in debt. I don’t see how you think we can confront what’s about to hit us.”

  Larrea finally spoke up.

  “We still have something left.”

  He spread his hands as if to indicate the room they were in, and by extension the entire mansion and its contents.

  “Don’t even consider such a thing!” howled the agent, burying his head in his hands.

  “We need capital to pay off the most urgent debts first, and then for me to get going again.”

  Andrade’s face turned suddenly alarmed.

  “Get going where?”

  “I don’t know yet, all I know is that I have to leave. There’s no other way, brother. I’m done for here; I’ll never be able to rebuild anything.”

  “Wait,” insisted Andrade, trying to inject some calm into his friend. “For heaven’s sake, wait. First we need to weigh up everything: we may find a way to pull the wool over people’s eyes for a time while I go around putting out fires and negotiating with creditors.”

  “You know as well as I do that will get us nowhere. At the end of your accounting, all you’ll find is despair.”

  “Stay composed, Mauro, restrain yourself. Don’t meet trouble head-on and, above all, avoid putting this house in jeopardy. It’s the last thing you own outright, and the only thing that could help you keep up appearances.”

  Formerly a baroque palace, the imposing colonial mansion on Calle San Felipe Neri had been purchased by Larrea from the descendants of the Count of Regla, once the wealthiest miner in the viceroyalty. The property had confirmed Larrea’s social status in the most sought-after area of the city. It was the only possession he had not mortgaged to obtain the monstrous amount of hard cash needed to reopen Las Tres Lunas mine; the only thing remaining of the wealth he had accumulated over the years. Above and beyond its monetary worth, both men knew the true value of his residence: as the only means whereby Larrea could prop up, however precariously, his public reputation. In holding on to it, he would avoid ridicule and humiliation. Losing it would broadcast his failure to the entire Mexican capital.

  An intense silence fell over them again. These two men who had once been so blessed by good fortune, so admired and respected, now gazed at each other like two souls cast without warning into a treacherous sea.

  “You were a damned fool,” Andrade declared eventually, as if by restating his opinion he could somehow lessen the impact of the disaster.

  “You accused me of the same thing when I told you how I planned to get started with the La Elvira mine. And when I invested in La Santa Clara. And then La Abundancia and La Prosperidad. I ended up striking it lucky in all of those mines, pulling out silver by the ton.”

  “But back then you weren’t even thirty, just a young savage on the far side of the world with nothing to lose, you idiot! Now that you’re three years shy of fifty, do you really think you’ll be capable of starting again from nothing?”

  The miner allowed his agent to go on venting his frustration.

  “You’ve been asked to join the boards of some of Mexico’s foremost companies! Liberals and Conservatives alike have wooed you—you could lead either party if you showed the slightest interest! There’s no salon where your presence isn’t coveted, and the most prominent people in the nation have dined at your table. And now you’re throwing it all to hell through sheer obstinacy. Your reputation is about to go up in smoke, you have a son who without your money is no more than a fool, and a daughter whose social position you’re on the verge of destroyi
ng!”

  Having finished his rant, Andrade crushed the half-smoked cigar in a quartz ashtray and headed for the door. At that very moment, the silhouette of Santos Huesos, the indigenous servant, appeared at the threshold. He was carrying two cut crystal glasses on a tray, along with a large bottle of Catalan brandy and another of whiskey smuggled from Louisiana.

  Andrade did not even let him set the tray down on the table. Stepping in front of him, he brusquely poured himself a glass, drained it in one gulp, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Let me go over the accounts tonight, to see if there’s anything we can salvage. But, for God’s sake, don’t even think about getting rid of this house. It’s all you have left if you want anyone to have faith in you again. It’s your lifeline. Your shield.”

  Mauro Larrea pretended he was listening, and even thrust out his chin in agreement, but by now his mind was already racing ahead in a completely different direction.

  He was convinced he would have to start all over again.

  And for that he would need hard cash and some time to think.

  CHAPTER TWO

  After Andrade had departed through the veranda’s majestic archway muttering curses, Larrea found he had no appetite for food. Instead, he decided to take a bath and reflect without his agent’s voice pricking his conscience.

  As he soaked in the tub, Mariana was the first image to flash through his mind. As always, his daughter would be the only one to hear straight from his lips what had happened. Despite the fact that she no longer lived under his roof, the two saw a great deal of each other, and scarcely a day went by when she didn’t call at her old house or take a stroll with him down Paseo de Bucareli. The servants were overjoyed whenever she crossed the threshold, especially in her present condition; they would tell her how beautiful she looked and urge her to stay awhile, offering her meringues, brioches, and other sweets.