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?