The Lost Years of Billy Battles

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3We steamed into the port of La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz on a late Wednesday evening and tied up alongside Pier Four.

A light fog was rolling in from the east, and as we came ashore, a few dull streetlamps flickered, casting pale patches of reddish-brown light on the wharf. To the west, the city’s streets and buildings were shrouded in a pale, ghostly mist.

“Not a very cheerful place,” Katharina said as we walked past the Paseo del Malecón and up Calle Benito Juarez toward the Plaza de Armas in the heart of town.

“What can you expect from the oldest city on the North American continent?” I said. “After all, the place was founded by Hernán Cortés himself and is almost four hundred years old. We’re lucky to have paved streets.”

“I guess I would have expected Mexico’s oldest and largest port to be a bit more inviting.” She put her arm through mine and shuddered. “I have a bad feeling about this place.”

I pulled her closer. “Sort of like whistlin’ past the graveyard, isn’t it?”

The fog thinned as we moved away from the harbor, but walking past the mixture of ancient Caribbean creole buildings felt like we were entering a different time.

Then, from behind us I heard the sound of hoofbeats and metal-rimmed wheels on rough cobblestone.

“Ya’ll okay?” It was Seaman Vane. He and Seaman Flores had caught up to us in a hired horse-drawn cart that contained our luggage. “You want a ride?”

“No, we’ll walk. It’s only a couple more blocks to the hotel.”

We passed campesinos leading burros laden with sacks and baskets and women with baskets of produce balanced on their heads.

They greeted us as we passed. “Buenas tardes.”

I replied in kind.

“Well, at least the people are friendly, even if the city seems gloomy,” I said.

We continued up Benito Jaurez for the next few minutes, past shops that had closed for the day, until we came to the plaza which was bathed in lights. The place was awash with music. Hundreds of people were eating their dinners from ubiquitous street stalls.

“At last . . . civilization,” Katharina observed.

We had been told to check into the Gran Hotel Diligenicias on the west side of the sprawling zócalo. The hotel was a U-shaped alabaster brick and stucco building, three stories high with a wide, multiarched terrace along its front facing the cobblestoned Calle Principal and the plaza. A two-room suite had been reserved for us by the American consulate.

Before leaving San Antonio, Funston had told us that a man named David Parker would come to our hotel two or three days after we checked in.

“He’s the military attaché at the U.S. consulate,” Funston had said. “In the meantime, just behave like tourists. Get to know the places Germans frequent, and keep your eyes and ears open.”

Our hotel room had a view of the plaza, which was ringed with royal and traveler palm trees. A Spanish fountain babbled in the plaza’s center. On one side of the square stood the city’s imposing 18th century neoclassical Cathedral de la Virgen de la Asunción, with its whitewashed façade, bell tower, and five octagonal tile-covered domes.

Directly across the plaza from the hotel stood the city hall—a two-story stucco building a block square with arched porticos.

Even though Veracruz was below the Tropic of Cancer and much further south than Florida, the temperature in the spring was a bearable eighty-five degrees most days—nothing like Saigon or Manila in March where I remember the temperatures could easily hit one hundred degrees by ten o’clock in the morning with eighty percent humidity.

We came prepared for the heat, however. Both of us brought lightweight clothing and wide-brimmed hats to protect us from the ever-present sun. As I watched Katharina unpack her clothes, I was struck by how much she was able to pack in her luggage compared to a few years before. The reason, she told me, was that women were moving away from the rigid, tailored clothes of the Edwardian era to simpler, looser, more comfortable clothing. I recall one day in Chicago when I’d come home to find Katharina discarding mounds of bulky Victorian-and Edwardian-era dresses for what she called the "new crinoline” styles of 1914.

“Finally, clothes that let a woman move freely,” she’d said as she showed me her new wardrobe. “You men have no idea how easy you have it.”

Katharina’s new dresses, walking suits, full and bell-shaped skirts were shorter, with pleats “for ease of movement,” she’d explained. “Thank God we no longer have to wear corsets and those damnable high-button boots.”

“What’s wrong with high-button boots?” I’d asked.

“Don’t be such a dunce. Shorter hemlines expose a gap between the tip of the boot and a skirt hem—”

“I hadn’t noticed.” Of course I’d noticed. What man wouldn’t? Hemlines were now a good eight inches above the ground, exposing a woman’s ankles.

“And wearing boots distracts from the appearance of these new outfits. Now, women can wear pumps instead of high-topped shoes and boots. It’s a new era, William, a new era for women.”

“If you say so,” I’d muttered.

On our second day we decided to do a walking tour of Veracruz. We arose early, hoping to beat the inevitable sticky heat. Katharina donned one of her new lightweight Gibson Girl walking suits, and I wore a cream-colored linen suit without a tie.

As we walked past the cathedral, wizened old women hunkered on the tiled piazza selling candles and prayer books. Señoritas and señoras paused at the basilica’s entrance to adjust the white Spanish lace mantillas covering their hair before entering for early morning mass.

We continued along Zamora Street past the Trigueros Market and a row of shops whose proprietors were scattering buckets of water in front of their doorways to settle the dust. The pungent smell of rawhide and pigskin enveloped us as we walked past several leather shops. In other stores, men and women pounded and prodded brass and copper, turning the metal into lamps, pots, and belt buckles.

“No one can accuse the people of Veracruz of being lethargic,” Katharina remarked. “It looks like everybody is occupied.”

That included the city’s musicians. Veracruz resounded with traditional music—what the locals called Son Jarocho—played by the city’s ubiquitous mariachis and marimba groups. Guitars, marimbas, trumpets, bass fiddles, accordions, and gourds filled with dried beans were everywhere in the zócalo. The music was a cheerful, effervescent blend of Spanish, African, and Caribbean. After a while, we came to recognize certain songs, even though we couldn’t always understand the dialect.

Katharina grew especially fond of a song called “El Pájaro Carpintero” (“The Woodpecker”). My favorite was “La Mujer Inconforme” (“The Unhappy Woman”).

“You would like that song,” Katharina said. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Well, after all, you aren’t that happy about this little assignment of ours down here, right?”

“No, I am not.”

“There you have it. La mujer inconforme.”

“I doubt if I will be truly happy until we’re back in Chicago.”

Eventually, we found our way to El Gran Café de la Parroquia, which our hotel clerk told us was Mexico’s oldest and most famous coffee house dating to 1808. There, we ordered café con leche y pan dulce.

“I have to say, this is absolutely the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had,” Katharina said. “And this sweet bread is beyond excellent.”

As we sat drinking our coffee, which was served in glasses, not cups, we were treated to the incessant clinking of spoons on the sides of glasses.

“Is somebody about to give a speech?” Katharina asked our waiter.

“No, it is the way you order a refill,” he said.

A sign I read as we entered was inscribed with the words: “El café como debe ser.”

“Did you notice that sign over there?” I tipped my head toward the door. “It says, ‘Coffee as it should be.’”

“They’ll get no argument from me,” Katharina said.

Leaving the café, we walked through quiet neighborhoods replete with modest stucco bungalows painted blue, pink, yellow, and brown, their vibrant colors softened with age into warm pastel tints.

As we patronized the numerous businesses that bounded or were near the zócalo, it was apparent that Veracruz was one of the most international cities we had ever visited. In addition to Spanish and English, we heard French, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and some languages neither of us recognized.

“It’s like the city is speaking in tongues,” Katharina said.

“Yes, but fortunately for us, we only need to understand the German.”

“Well, so far I haven’t heard anything auf deutsch, other than Germans complaining about the food, the heat, the insects, and the beer, of course. Germans are such snobs when it comes to beer.”

Katharina was right. Espionage in the oldest European settlement on the North American mainland was proving to be a boring activity. The most exciting aspect was the eclectic variety of food we encountered.

Wandering around town exposed us to a glut of aromas, most coming from the antojitos or street stalls on just about every corner. They sold a wide array of traditional Mexican food.

Women with dark bronzed faces dished out everything from tamales to thick corn patties fried and stuffed with salsa, cheese, cooked eggs, and beans. Others sold fresh, folded tortillas stuffed with seasoned pork, mesquite-seasoned carne asada, and a variety of soups.

“I don’t think my delicate beak has ever experienced anything like this,” Katharina said. “The smells are scrumptious.”

I agreed. The scents of Veracruz were piquant and provocative and unlike anything in Chicago. There, when the wind was just right, the charnel house stench of butchered beef and pork from Chicago’s sprawling west-side stockyards sometimes drifted into fashionable Southside and Northside neighborhoods where the city’s crème de la crème dwelled.

I reminded Katharina of that distinctive Chicago aroma. “It’s the price Chicagoans pay for being, as the poet Carl Sandburg says, ‘hog butcher for the world.’”

“I wasn’t aware you knew who Carl Sandburg was,” Katharina said. “Since when do newspaper drudges have an affinity for poetry?”

“Haven’t you learned by now? We hacks are just chock-full of astonishments,” I said, putting my arm around Katharina’s waist and pulling her closer.

Finally, after almost three hours of wandering Veracruz’s meandrous streets we came to the city’s wharf area where we were greeted by the fetid stench of fish being gutted and scrubbed in fish markets.

“Okay, enough of this,” Katharina said, holding a hanky over her mouth and nose. “Let’s revisit the tamales.”

***

On the morning of the third day, Parker showed up at our hotel, and the three of us made our way to a secluded area at the back of the marble-floored lobby. Katharina and I settled onto a couch, and Parker sat across from us facing the front of the lobby. After some small talk, we ordered three cafés con leche. The coffee was good, but not as good as the ones we’d had the day before. I said as much to Parker.

“Few coffee houses are,” he said. “The Café de la Parroquia is absolutely the best in the world. Well, at least in this part of the world.”

I provided him with an account of our activities in Veracruz and the dearth of any meaningful information we had accumulated.

Parker was a short, wiry man in his early forties. He wore a gray suit and highly shined black shoes. When he talked he continually surveyed the lobby, often looking past Katharina and me.

“You expecting somebody?” I finally asked.

“What do you mean?”

“The way you’re eyeballing the lobby I thought you might be waiting for somebody else.”

“It’s a habit I’ve gotten into here,” he said. “Veracruz is a perfidious arena for several competing political factions in Mexico.” Then, leaning forward toward the coffee table that separated us, he half-whispered, “There are more foreign spies, saboteurs, and subversives per square foot in Veracruz than any place else on earth. I’m not eager to call attention to you. After all, you are just tourists, right?”

“If you say so,” Katharina said.

I handed Parker a piece of paper with a list of the places Katharina and I had visited.

Parker looked it over. “You haven’t been to Via Berlin or Casa Luna?”

“Not yet. Where are they?”

“Off the plaza a few blocks. They are the two preferred public houses for Germans.”

Katharina leaned closer to Parker and lowered her voice. “What are we supposed to do if we do overhear something? After all, we will have no idea who is talking. It could be just some drunk yattering on about the fatherland.”

“You just need to note anything you hear about ship movements, weapons, ammunition, General Huerta, the Mexican army, revolutionaries . . . things like that,” Parker said. “We will make sense out of it once you give us your notes. We have nobody in the consulate who speaks German, and the people that I know here who do speak German are not to be trusted.”

Then Parker added, “Of course, it would be extremely useful if you were to meet and get close to one or two of Germany’s agents here. That would be an invaluable source of information.”