FERNANDO DEL PASO NEWS FROM THE EMPIRE “Qperatic and beautiful ....a Mexican War and Peace.” —Publishers Weekly, starred. reviewNEWS FROM THE EMPIRE FERNANDO DEL PASO translated by Alfonso Gonzalez & Stella T. Clark Gg] Dalkey Archive Press ‘Champaign & London THE SMITHTOWN LIBRARY Commack Branch 3 Indian Head Road Commack, NY 11725Originally published in Spanish as Noticias del Imperio by Diana literaria, 1987 Copyright © Fernando del Paso, 1987 Translation copyright © Alfonso Gonzalez. & Stella T: Clark, 2009 First English translation, 2009 All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Paso, Fernando del, 1935- [Noticias del Imperio. English] News from the Empire / Fernando del Paso ; translation by Alfonso Gonzalez and Stella T. Clark. p.cm. ISBN 978-1-56478-533-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) : 1. Paso, Fernando del, 1935---Translation into English. 1. Gonzélez, Alfonso, 1938- II. Clark, Stella 7, IIL. Title. PQ7298.26.A76N6813 2009 862°64--de22 2008048684 Partially funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; and by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign % if La presente traduccién fue realizada con apoyo del Programa de Apoyo a la Traduccién de Obras Mexicanas en Lenguas Extranjeras (PROTRAD). ‘This translation was carried out with the support of the Program to Support the Trans- lation of Mexican Works into Foreign Languages (PROTRAD). wwwrdalkeyarchive.com Cover: design by Danielle Dutton; photo of Empress Charlotte shot in 1867 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Printed on permanent/durable acid-free paper and bound in the United States of AmericaCONTENTS I BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927. 1 I MAY YOU FIND YOURSELF BETWEEN NAPOLEONS, 1861-62 1. Judrez and Mustachoo 17 2. From Last Night's Ball at the Tuileries 36 3. The King of Rome 48 1 BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927. 57 IV A MATTER FOR WOMEN, 1862-63 1. Partant pour le Méxique 72 2. The Archduke at Miramare 88 3. From the Correspondence—Incomplete—between Two Brothers 96 Vv BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927. 107 VI “A PRETTY BOY THIS ARCHDUKE TURNED OUT TO BE,” 1863 1. Brief Account of the Siege of Puebla 122 2. “That's Correct, Mr. President” 142 3. The City and Its Vendors 161 vir BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927 177 VII “MUST I LEAVE MY GOLDEN CRIB FOREVER?” 1863-64 1. Cittadella Accepts the Throne of Tours 193 2.“Camarén, Camar6n..” 217 3. From the Correspondence—Incomplete—between Two Brothers 226IX BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927. 239 x “MASSIMILIANO: NON TE FIDARE,” 1864-65 1. From Miramare to Mexico 255 2. With Your Heart Pierced by an Arrow 273 3. Scenes of Daily Life: Mexican Nothingness 284 xT BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927 308 XI “WE'LL CALL HIM THE AUSTRIAN,’ 1865 1. “He’ Like Jelly.” 324 2. “A Man of Letters” 340 3. The Emperor at Miravalle 350 XU BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927 361 AN EMPEROR WITHOUT AN EMPIRE, 1865-66 1. Court Chronicles 377 2. Seductions (1): “Not Even with a Thousand Hail Marys?” 398 3. From the Correspondence—Incomplete—between Two Brothers 410 xv BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927 423 XVI “BYE-BYE, MAMA CARLOTA?’ 1866 1. On the Road to Paradise and Oblivion 439 2. The Manatee of Florida 463 3. Un Pericolo di Vita 479XVII BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927 503 XVIII QUERETARO, 1866-67 1.Inthe Mousetrap 518 2. Cimex domesticus Queretari 538 3. Seductions (II): “Hold It, Hope...” 554 XIX BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927 562 XX LAS CAMPANAS HILL, 1867 1, The Traitorous Friend and the Princess on Her Knees 578 2. Ballad of the Coup de Grace 601 3. Saint Ursula’s Black Eyes 612 XXI BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927 631 XXII “HISTORY WILL BE OUR JUDGE,’ 1872-1927 1. “What Are We Going to Do with You, Benito?” 649 2. The Last of the Mexicans 660 3. Ceremonial for the Execution ofan Emperor 681 XXII BOUCHOUT CASTLE, 1927 692 Acknowledgments 707For my wife, Socorro For my children, Fernando Alejandro Adriana Paulina To the memory of my parents, Fernando IreneNEWS FROM THE EMPIREIn 1861 President Benito Judrez suspended payment on the foreign debt of Mexico. This suspension was the pretext that the then-Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, used to send an army of occupation to Mexico with the purpose of creating a monarchy there, at the helm of which would be a European Catho- lic monarch. An Austrian, Ferdinand Maximilian of Habsburg, was chosen. He arrived in Mexico in the middle of 1864 accompanied by his wife, Princess Charlotte of Belgium. This book is based on these historical facts, and on the story of the tragic end of this ephemeral Emperor and Empress of Mexico.I BOUCHOUT CASTLE 1927 “La imaginacién, la loca de la casa...” —attributed to Malebranche I am Marie Charlotte of Belgium, Empress of Mexico and of America. I am Marie Charlotte Amélie, cousin of the Queen of England, Grand Magister of the Cross of Saint Charles, and Vicereine of the Lombardo-Veneto Provinces, which Austria's clemency and mercy has subsumed under the two-headed ea- gle of the House of Habsburg. I am Marie Charlotte Amélie Victoria, daugh- ter of Leopold, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and King of Belgium, known as “The Nestor of Europe,” and who would take me onto his lap, caress my chestnut tresses, and call me the little sylph of the Castle of Laeken. | am Marie Char- lotte Amélie Victoria Clémentine, daughter of Louise Marie of Orléans, the saintly queen with the blue eyes and the Bourbon nose who died of consump- tion and of the sorrow caused by the exile and death of Louis Philippe, my grandfather, who, as the King of France, showered me with chestnuts and cov- ered my face with kisses in the Tuileries Gardens. I am Marie Charlotte Amé- lie Victoria Clémentine Léopoldine, niece of Prince Joinville and cousin of the Count of Paris; I am sister of the Duke of Brabant, who became King of Bel- gium and colonized the Congo, and of the Count of Flanders in whose arms I learned to dance, at the age of ten, under the shade of flowering hawthorns. Iam Charlotte Amélie, wife of Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, Archduke of Austria, Prince of Hungary and Bohemia, Count of Habsburg, Prince of Lor- raine, Emperor of Mexico and King of the World, who was born in the Impe- tial Palace of Schénbrunn, and who was the first descendant of the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella to cross the ocean and tread on American soil; who built a white palace for me with a view of the sea on the shores ofthe Adriatic; who later took me to Mexico to live in a gray castle with a view of the valley and the snowcapped volcanoes and who, on a June morning, many years ago, was executed in the city of Querétaro. Iam Charlotte Amélie, Regent of Andhuac, Queen of Nicaragua, Baroness of Matto Grosso, and Prin- cess of Chichén Itz4. I am Charlotte Amélie of Belgium, Empress of Mexico and America. I am eighty-six years old and for sixty years now I've quenched my lunatic thirst with water from Roman fountains. Today the messenger arrived with news from the Empire. He came bearing memories and dreams on a caravel whose sails were swelled by a single, lu- minous gust of wind, teeming with parrots. He brought me a handful of sand from the Isle of Sacrifices, a pair of chamois gloves, and an enormous cask made of precious woods, brimming with hot and foaming chocolate in which I shall bathe every single day for the rest of my life, until my Bourbon-princess skin, my crazed octogenarian skin, my white, Alencon-and-Brussels lace skin, my skin snowy as the magnolias in the Gardens of Miramare, Maximilian, my skin cracked by the centuries and the storms and the fall of dynasties, until my white, Memling-angel skin, my Béguinage-bride skin, disintegrates, and I grow a new skin, dark and aromatic as the chocolate from Soconusco, fragrant as vanilla from Papantla, that will cover my whole body, Maximilian, from my dark brow to the tip of my bare, perfumed, Mexican Indian toes, the toes of a dark Madonna, of an Empress of America. My dear Max, the messenger also brought me a locket with some hairs from your golden beard, your beard that flowed and fluttered like an enormous golden butterfly on your breast, with its gleaming Aztec Eagle, as you rode through the Apam plains in clouds of glory and dust, clad in your charro suit, a sterling-silver trimmed sombrero on your head. They say, Maximilian, that while your body was still warm and your plaster of paris death mask was still wet, those barbarians, those savages yanked out your whiskers and your locks to sell in pieces for a few piastres. Who would have thought, Maximilian, that you would suffer the same fate as your father, if indeed your father was that unfortunate Duke of Reichstadt whom nothing and no one could save from an early grave—not the muriatic acid baths, not the donkey's milk, not the love of your mother, the Archduchess Sophie? Barely a few seconds after he had died in the very same Schénbrunn Palace where youd just been born, his golden ringlets were all shorn to become pious souvenirs for his people. He was spared, but you were not, Maximilian, from having his heart chopped upin little pieces and sold for a few coins. The messenger told me everything. He heard it from Tiidés, your loyal Hungarian chef, who followed you to the wall and extinguished the flames that had engulfed your waistcoat after the coup de grace. The messenger brought me a cedar chest from Prince and Princess Salm-Salm, containing a zinc box that held a rosewood box where I found, Maximilian, a piece of your heart next to the bullet that ended your life and your empire, on Las Campanas Hill. All day I clutch that box in my hands so tightly that no one will ever take it from me. My ladies-in-waiting have to spoon-feed me because I never let go of it. Countess d’Hulst feeds me milk as though she were nursing a baby, as though I were still Papa Leopold's little angel, the tiny chestnut-haired Bonapartist, because I cannot let you go. And that is the only reason, I swear to you, Maximilian, that they say I am mad. That is why they call me The Madwoman of Miramare, of Terveuren, of Bouchout. If they tell you that I was crazy when I left Mexico and that I was crazy when I crossed the ocean, locked up in my stateroom on the Impéra- trice Eugénie after ordering the captain to lower the French flag and to raise the Mexican Imperial tricolor; if they tell you that I never left my stateroom because I'd gone mad, and that I was mad not because they gave me potions in Yucatan nor because I knew that both Napoleon and the Pope would refuse to help us, would abandon us to our fate, to our miserable fate in Mexico, but that I was mad and desperate, lost because I was carrying a son who was not yours but Colonel Van der Smissen’s in my womb; if they tell you all of those things, tell them it isn't true, that you always were, and always will be, the love of my life. Tell them that, if I am mad, it is from hunger and thirst, that I have been mad since that fateful day in the Palace of Saint-Cloud when the devil himself, Napoleon III, and his wife Eugenia de Montijo, offered me a glass of cold orangeade, and I knew—everybody knew—that it was poisoned, because it wasn't enough for them to betray us, they wanted to erase us from the face of the Earth, to poison us. And it wasn't only Little Napoleon and that Montijo woman who wanted to kill us, but also our closest friends, our own servants— you won't believe it Max—even Blasio. Beware of the indelible pencil he uses to write the letters that you dictate to him on the way to Cuernavaca, of his saliva, of the sulfurous water of the Cuautla Springs, of the pulque with cham- pagne. Beware, Max, just as I've had to beware of everyone, even of Sefiora Neri del Barrio who rode along with me to the Trevi Fountain every morning in my black carriage because I made up my mind to drink only the water fromthe fountains of Rome, and only using the Murano glass that His Holiness Pius IX gave me when I paid him a surprise visit, without asking for an audi- ence, while he ate his breakfast, and he realized that I was starving and dying of thirst. Would the Empress of Mexico like some grapes? Would she care for a buttered croissant? Maybe some milk, Dofia Carlota, fresh from a nanny goat? But the only thing I wanted was to wet my fingers in that scalding and foamy liquid that I knew would burn and tan my skin, so I stuck my fingers in His Holiness’s hot chocolate. I licked them, Max. I don’t know what I would have done, if I hadn't gone to the market myself for the nuts and the oranges I would take to the Albergo di Roma. I chose them all myself; I wiped them clean with the black lace mantilla that Eugenia had given me; I scrutinized their shells and peels, I cracked them and peeled them; I devoured them with some roasted chestnuts that I bought on the Appian Way and I can’t imagine how I would have managed without Madame Kuchacsevich and the cat, who tasted all my food before I ate it, or my chambermaid, Mathilde Doblinger, who procured a coal stove and brought me some chickens to the imperial suite so that I could eat only those eggs that I had seen lain with my own eyes. In those days, Maximilian, when I was the little angel, the sylph of Laeken, who slid down the wooden banister of the palace stairs and played at keeping quiet forever in the gardens while my brother, the Count of Flanders, stood on his head and made faces at me to make me laugh, and my other brother, the Duke of Brabant, made up imaginary cities and told me about famous shipwrecks; in those days, when my father took me out to dinner, just the two of us, and when he crowned me with roses and showered me with presents, L used to visit my grandmother Marie Amélie every year, who lived in Clare- mont. Do you remember Max, that she told us not to go to Mexico because we would be murdered there? I met my cousins Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in Windsor Castle on one of those trips. In those days, my dear Max, when I was a chestnut-haired child and my bed was a white, warm, downy nest of snow in which my mother Louise Marie would moisten her lips, my cousin Victoria, who marveled that I could recite the name of every English king from Harold to her uncle William IV, rewarded my studiousness with a doll- house. When it arrived in Brussels, my father Leopich, as I used to call him, summoned me to see it, seated me on his lap, caressed my forehead, and, as he had once done with his niece Victoria, Queen of England, urged me to keep my conscience as immaculate as I would keep my doll house, every night ofevery day, From that time forward, Maximilian, not a night goes by that I don’t put my house and my conscience in order. | air out the livery of my miniature footmen and I forgive you for having cried in Madeira over the death of a girl- friend whom you loved more than me. I wash the thousand minuscule dishes of Sévres china in a basin, and I forgive you for leaving me alone in my impe- rial bed in Puebla, under its tulle and brocade canopy, while you would lie on a field cot masturbating as you dreamed about the little Countess von Linden. I polish the miniature silver platters, I clean my Lilliputian guards’ halberds, I wash the tiny clusters of tiny crystal grapes and I forgive you for making love to a gardener’s wife in the shade of a bougainvillea in Borda Gardens. Later, I use a broom, small as a thumb, to sweep castle rugs the size of handkerchiefs. I dust the paintings and I empty a spittoon like a thimble, and the miniature ashtrays, and as I forgive all that you did, I forgive all of our enemies and I forgive Mexico. How can I not forgive Mexico, Maximilian, when every single day I dust your crown, I polish the insignia of the Order of Guadalupe with ashes, I rub milk on my Biedemeyer piano keys, on which I play the Mexican Imperial Anthem every afternoon? Every day I go down the castle staircase and kneel at the banks of the moat to launder the Mexican Imperial Flag in its waters. I rinse it, I wring it out, and I hang it out to dry from the highest castle tower, and I iron it, Maximilian, I caress it, I fold it and put it away, vowing to take it out again on the morrow so that it may wave before all of Europe, from Ostend to the Carpathians, from Tyrol to Transylvania. And only after that’s done, af- ter my house and my conscience are in order, do I undress and put on my mi- nuscule nightdress, say my tiny prayers, and retire to my grand miniature bed. Only then do I put your heart under a pillow the size of a pincushion embroi- dered with thistles, and listen to its beating, as I hear the roar of the cannons from the Citadel in Trieste and from the Rock of Gibraltar when they salute the Novara, and as I listen to the clackety-clack of the train from Veracruz to Loma Alta, and I hear the music of the Domine Salvum fac Imperatorem. Again, as I hear the gunshots from Querétaro, and I dream, I would like to dream, Maximilian, that we never left Miramare and Lacroma, that we never went to Mexico, that we stayed here, where we grew old, and raised many children and grandchildren, that you stayed here in your blue office decorated with anchors and astrolabes, writing poems about your future journeys on the yacht Ondina through the Greek Islands and along the coast of Turkey and