She allowed Josefina and the other passengers to entertain Noé with their carryings-on, and she only took him to nurse him to sleep under her shawl now and then. But he was growing quickly and would not need her in this capacity much longer. Estela dared not think about what she had left behind, lest she change her mind and return. She did not want to go over the circumstances that had led a woman of good background and upbringing to leave her home, her family, and everything she had ever known. And she could not begin to apprehend what lay before her.
They entered the tragic and beautiful city of Querétaro, where the reign of the Emperor Maxmiliano had ended. He gave gold pieces to the execution squad, it was said, with his own image on them, so that they would shoot straight and not leave him to suffer. A little farther on was the garden with the famous statue of Herculus—said to have cost fifteen thousand dollars in Italy—surrounding a huge cotton mill known by the same name as the statue.
At a wooded rise of over nine thousand feet, past the hacienda of Arroyo Zarco, the plateau began to fall again towards the approach to the Valley of Mexico. As they crossed the causeway of San Cosmé, and before entering the city gate, they were stopped by uniformed men who, after much discussion with the driver, charged a fee to enter the city. Each passenger gave up a few pesos, and only after they were safely past the roadblock did Estela understand from the conversation that they had been robbed. Apparently this was such a common occurrence that everyone else had been expecting it.
"Welcome to Mexico City," said the rancher's wife. "If you are planning to spend any time here, you better get used to it."
"Every officer takes his bite," agreed her husband.
"But who did they work for?" asked Estela. "Were they police? Or were they army officers?"
"Who knows?" responded the rancher. "They were probably left over from the French intervention. And who knows which side they fought on at that time." This brought a round of chuckles.
"Everyone is always on the side in power)" responded someone else. "Just remember that."
As they continued on their way, the driver called out that they were passing the house built by Hernán Cortés himself on the left, but Estela was unable to see it from her seat.
It was a time of great progress in Mexico City. It was a time of railroads and matching silver tea services; first-class horses, imported wines, and French Revivalist architecture. It was a time to discuss politics, international economics, and the graces of the perfect woman. Every rail line led to Mexico City—every stage coach line, every cattle drive, and every goat track.
It was also a time of starvation, of forced marches and summary executions, Those without money had no voice and would soon have no land. To be a woman without family was to be derided, degraded, and disgraced. Born into misery, a woman brought her children into it, ate it with her tortillas, and was buried in it. Even those of good family were judged, by the law of the land, to be imbecilis sexus, imbeciles by virtue of their sex, requiring guardians for themselves and their properties— if not fathers or husbands, then lawyers or even their own sons.
The city was vast with possibilities, voracious for new blood to spill on top of old, relentless in its consumption of power and labor. People jostled for a place near the top, and those in the know stayed at the Hotel Iturbide. It was the only lodging of which Estela had ever heard, and so upon arriving, she hired a carriage and asked to be taken there.
The room was large and sumptuous, the service perfect. People came and went in the lobby escorted by their servants, dressed for morning, afternoon, or evening. They discussed their latest visits to Europe or New York or Chicago, and the more fashionable had undergone psychiatric analysis in Vienna. Estela was in awe of even the hired help at the Hotel Iturbide, dressed in matching livery, and whose language and manners far outshone her own. There was the faintest air of contempt about them for her, nothing that could be remarked on, only the pulled-down corner of a mouth upon hearing her pronunciation of the mother language. As for the society people, because they did not know her, Estela was invisible.
At the end of the first week, Estela asked to see her bill. It took all of her money to pay it, money she had thought would last several months. Estela directed Josefina to pack and asked to be taken to "a moderate boardinghouse." The driver appraised the party, then took them to a different part of the District, farther north from the Alameda. The streets grew narrower and more crowded with people on foot, the voices louder, riderless donkeys and ownerless dogs more numerous.
When the carriage pulled up in front of a large, featureless building, Josefina turned away to reach into a private part of her garments. She paid the driver in silver, who said, "Ask for la casera, Señora Gomez."
La casera turned out to be an older woman with a pinched face who wanted to see a little more plata before she would show them a room. She wore a faded dress and a large ring of keys around her wrist. Their trunk was carried in by a boy and deposited in a bare room with a single iron bed. La casera recited the house rules—no overnight guests, no drinking or loud behavior, and the outer door was locked at nine each evening, upon the ringing of the bells of San Lorenzo Martin She eyed them suspiciously, as if to drive home her points, before leaving them to unpack. Estela wanted Josefina to stay there with the baby, but Josefina insisted on accompanying her mistress on the next, pressing errand. And so the three of them went, on foot, to El Monte de Piedad.
It was a vast building in the very center of Mexico, built practically on the bleeding heart of the old temple. Across from it stood the Cathedral, bearing witness to the ascendancy of the Church in this exotic and barbarous place.
El Monte itself, built in the 1700s, had been erected by a kind soul, the Count of Regla, who saw the need of the poor to be able to obtain cash. By leaving a clock or a bracelet, a firearm or a finely wrought piece of art, the poor of Mexico—those without papers or bank accounts or properties, those without deeds or contracts or even last names—could trust their goods to a clerk in exchange for plata. With luck, they could redeem their valuables before they were sold to junk speculators and reappeared on the Street of Thieves, for all to see and handle, and perhaps for someone else to buy.
It was to this edifice, this monument to the vagaries of fortune in this life, that Estela, Josefina, and Noé repaired. Estela unrolled the length of black velvet she had concealed on her person and revealed her mother's treasure to the young clerk in gold-filled spectacles. The sudden play of light upon the faceted gems of the necklace was startling, and the clerk made as if to shield the display not from his own eyes, but from those of passersby, by encompassing it in the crook of his arm.
With a practiced motion, he flipped up his spectacles and clamped his eye around a jeweler's glass, appraising the piece for a long moment, then turning it over to read the mark of the maker on its clasp, checking for any flaws in the gems or setting.
He looked again at the two women, in sober but respectable clothing, and the little boy, and decided against calling the authorities. They had probably come by this piece honestly, he deduced, based on his already extensive experience with such things.
"But señora," he asked finally, "why do you come here with this? Surely you can obtain a loan from a bank, can pay a lower interest than we will by necessity be forced to charge."
Estela looked at him. "I know no one in this city," she said. "I have not eaten today. Will a banker give me money for a room for tonight?"
The clerk nodded thoughtfully. "Just a minute," he said, and disappeared into one of the many doorways that divided the giant building into an infinity of small spaces. He returned with another man, who again appraised the necklace, and Estela.
"We will write you a contract," said the older man. "We do not want to be responsible for separating you from such an important piece, no doubt a family heirloom?" He paused and Estela nodded. "So we will give you a long-term contract at a slightly lower rate."
"Bueno," said Estela.