The Five Acts of Diego Leon Page 19

  When the director called it a wrap, they emerged out of the water, dripping, the thin fabric of their loincloths clinging to their skin. The group joined the dancing maidens, the actor playing Bacchus, the musicians, and the lighting technicians as the group made its way toward the giant studio door in one large and imposing herd. Diego followed, not fully knowing where they were headed, his eyes fixed on the one he thought was Javier.

  “Javier?” he shouted. “It’s me. Diego.”

  He was striking like that, his hair a dark mane, skin glistening and almost iridescent in the light. He turned now, just as Diego reached for him, and walked out the studio doors. Someone had left a towel draped over a chair, and Diego reached out and grabbed this. By the time he was able to tie it around his waist, he looked around for them, but they were gone. Outside, the swimmers had left wet footprints on the asphalt, and he followed these. In spots where there was no shade, though, the footprints were already evaporating, continuing again on the other side of the path shadowed by the soundstages. He ran across the drawbridge of a castle surrounded by a fake moat, turned left and collided with a procession of men in marching band attire, toting trumpets and horns and xylophones.

  “Watch it,” yelled one of them. “You nearly knocked me down.”

  “Sorry,” Diego said. “I apologize.” He ran along, down the wide driveways and through the back lots, looking for him. It was him, wasn’t it? But it couldn’t be.

  On he ran, past a jungle, past a western town, through a narrow alleyway in New York City, until the wet prints ended just outside the doors to the Frontier Pictures diner. The place was crowded with people at every table dressed in costumes and outfits, smoking cigarettes and sipping cups of hot black coffee. He looked around the room but couldn’t find any of the other swimmers. They had all simply vanished without a trace.

  Maybe the vision of Javier was a sign. An omen. Maybe the spirits of his parents were calling him back home now that he was nearly certain he could make a good life for himself in Los Angeles. But, it was looking more and more as though the United States government might make that decision for him.

  As the Depression continued into 1931 and gradually worsened, as people around the country struggled to feed their families, as jobs became more and more scarce, the good people of America looked for someone, something, to blame. The newspapers around Los Angeles reported on the “scourge of Mexicans” living in tightly packed dwellings around some of the more disagreeable areas of the city. Shacks, the reporters observed, with no electricity, no running water, where crime was rampant and so was disease—typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera. They were called animals by the press, uneducated, dirty scoundrels. The Los Angeles police department conducted mass deportations—rounding up as many as they could catch and hauling them away, back to the border, back to a country many of their children had never known—emptying out whole city blocks, whole neighborhoods. They were to blame for the economic catastrophes taking place so far away. They were to blame for taking jobs away from needy Americans. They were to blame for spreading diseases, for crimes and robberies and murders, for soiling the fabric of a great nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  Diego’s hands shook as he read the reports of thousands of Mexicans, “strains on the economy,” the paper said, being forced against their will to return. Women, children, men, teenagers, people who had escaped the revolution—the very one that had caused his father to lose himself, to return to the rancho a changed person, forever withdrawn and sullen—had no other choice but to go back. What if they came for him? He imagined it: a loud knock on the door late in the middle of the night. Two police detectives in sharp suits and fedora hats wielding steel guns and shiny badges.

  “Come with us,” they would say.

  “Where?” he would ask.

  “Mexico. You’re being repatriated.”

  That’s what the papers called it. “Repatriation.” It sounded so nice, so benevolent, Diego thought. He would be “repatriated,” reunited with his grandparents who had been waiting for his return for several years now. Every month, he sent messages, urging them to hold on, that he was working, that he was fine, that he would return soon, very soon. His grandmother, in turn, would reply each time she received his wires: “Your grandfather is drinking more and more each day”; “Please return. We need you.”

  Caught between there and here. Between two lives, two cultures, two identities. He was frightened all the time now and carried with him a strong feeling of anxiety that he couldn’t shake away no matter how hard he tried. It was only a matter of time, he believed, before he would be forced to return there, penniless, empty, shamed, with nothing at all to show for his sacrifices. His father had returned to San Antonio de la Fe with his mother, the beautiful and refined city girl, the daughter of a wealthy business owner. But what would Diego return with? Only disappointment. He would die a failure. The passport sat on the bed, the ink from the stamp smudged, the words and numbers slightly faded, but he could see that the visa had expired some time ago now. The only person he had confided in was Fiona. Only she knew his true beginning. To everyone else, he was the young Portuguese or Spanish man. He was whatever they wanted him to be.

  A few days later, when he and Fiona were out walking around and window-shopping, Diego was uneasy. He felt as though people were staring at him as they meandered down the street. “Mexican!” he imagined a pedestrian shouting. “Arrest him!”

  “What’s with you?” Fiona asked, sensing he was tense.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Everything’s fine, my dear.”

  They stopped at an intersection and waited for the light to turn. Fiona touched his forehead. “I think you got too much sun today.” She glanced about and pointed across the street. “We’re going into that drugstore to get you something to drink.”

  Inside, the electric fans whirred, and the air felt cool and moist. They took a seat at the very end of the counter, and Fiona removed her hat and Diego’s and asked the soda jerk behind the counter—a freckle-faced young man with bright red hair and thick eyeglasses—to tilt the fan in their direction.

  “Sure, miss,” he said. The soda jerk walked, clumsy and uncoordinated, to the fan, and fiddled with it a few times before getting it right.

  Fiona loosened Diego’s tie for him. “He’ll take a Dr. Pepper,” she said to the jerk. “I’ll have a cherry phosphate, please. Can you make it quick? He’s ill here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, pushing the glasses up the bridge of his bony nose. “Coming right up.”

  “Fi,” Diego said, as she struggled with the knot of his tie. “I’m fine. Really, darling.”

  “Hush now,” she said. “You feel warm to me. We’ll sit here for a bit and cool off then head home.”

  The soda jerk rushed over with their drinks, and while they drank, Diego looked around the drugstore. It was empty except for a handful of diners scattered here and there throughout the place. When they were nearly done with their drinks, and Diego was swishing around the bits of ice in his glass while Fiona was talking about how important it was for him to take care of himself, and that she felt real bad because maybe she was making him exercise too much, the two brown men walked in. They wore baggy trousers and shirts with wide lapels, and their black hair was long and combed back, held in place by generous amounts of hair grease that perfumed the air as they passed. They took a seat at a booth near the back, next to a service exit. Several of the other patrons eyed them, and an old lady in a frilly white hat and gloves took the child she was with by the hand, stood, and stormed out, dragging the little girl with her.

  The jerk stood behind the counter, arms crossed, glaring at the two of them. “Can you believe those people?” he said to Diego and Fiona. “The city’s overrun with their kind. Filthy greasers.”

  Fiona took a few sips of her cherry phosphate, grabbed her things, and said to Diego, “Let’s go.”

  He stood there, though, unmoving. “I’m still not
well,” he said. He pointed to his glass. “Besides, I’m drinking this.”

  She sat back down in a huff. “What’s with you?”

  The soda jerk continued to glare at the two greasers. A few times, he went around waiting on the other customers, serving sodas and malteds he carried on a silver tray. Each time, he walked by the greasers’ table, ignoring them altogether. Finally, after a few minutes, one of them rose, walked over to the counter and leaned in, between Diego and Fiona.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Service.”

  “Come on,” Fiona urged Diego. “Let’s go. Really now.”

  But Diego didn’t budge.

  “Service!” the man shouted again, this time pounding his fist against the counter.

  The soda jerk stood behind the counter, unmoving. “Get out of here before I call the police,” he said. “We don’t serve Mexicans.” He took a few steps back and grabbed a nearby telephone. “Do it now, or you’ll be sorry.”

  Instead, he reached across, grabbed a jar of peppermint sticks, and flung them at the shelves behind the counter. The glass shattered, and the red and green peppermint sticks lay strewn across the floor among shards of broken bottles. Then the other one stood up from the table and made his way to the door. He took in the whole drugstore—its bleached walls, the checkered black-and-white floor, the bright vinyl booths that were smooth and spotless. His eyes were narrow slits, the pupils black as obsidian. He had high and defined cheekbones, a wide and low forehead, and a set of thick, hearty eyebrows. His skin was dark, darker than anything Diego had seen in some time. Diego sat completely still as Fiona clung to his arm, terrified. He gripped the door’s knob, his arm taut and lean. His large Adam’s apple quivered and rolled up and down the length of his neck as he spoke, his eyes resting squarely on Diego, his gaze bitter and unflinching.

  “Güachate, guerinche,” he said then turned around and he and his friend ran off down the street.

  “What was that?” the soda jerk asked, his voice shaky, startled. “What did he say to you? Was that Spanish?”

  “No,” Diego said, finishing his soda now. He rose and placed his hat back on. “I don’t know what language he was speaking.”

  “You know him?” the soda jerk asked. “Are you one of them?”

  The other patrons sat there, frozen, eyes unblinking. Two teen-aged girls huddled together. A woman in a red velvet coat clutched her purse and wept. The soda jerk’s face was bright and flushed, the freckles there now nearly vanished, concealed by his skin’s redness.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not. I’m not one of them.” Diego stood, grabbed his hat, and took Fiona by the hand. “Let’s go,” he hissed, and they walked out the front door.

  He would work today on a film set in “dark Africa,” he was told, where he’d play a native savage. He was wearing his costume—a short loincloth, no shoes, a necklace made of bones and shells and feathers—when he sat down in the makeup chair. Fiona had been there since six in the morning, setting out her greasepaints and brushes and creams at a nearby station. When she saw Diego, she walked over and began smearing black paint all over his arms and face.

  “Did you hear about Sancho?” she asked.

  “Sancho? What do you mean?”

  “He and a huge bunch of the others living in the same neighborhood were rounded up last night and sent back to Mexico. Can you believe it?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “One of the other extras who lives around there saw it happen and ran off before they could catch him.” Fiona continued applying the black face paint until it completely covered Diego. He stared at his reflection, the grease hardening over his skin. It was only a matter of time before they came for him, he thought.

  Sancho Gutiérrez was one of the few Frontier extras that Diego knew by name. As two of the only ethnic-looking bit players around the studio, Diego and Sancho were often assigned to the same pictures and scenes. One week they were Alaskan Inuits, the next Indian chiefs and braves, the next Chinese boatmen. In his mid-forties, Sancho was overweight and always jovial, his hair already graying around the back and sides of his head. Diego had heard him tell one of the other extras, a girl, that he was from the state of Jalisco.

  “Ja-lis-co,” he repeated, stressing each syllable when the girl couldn’t pronounce it.

  When Sancho spoke English, he did so with a heavy accent, and some of the cameramen and set builders loved teasing him about this. Sancho would laugh with them, but when he stepped away, the men would shake their heads and call him “stupid beaner” and “dirty Meskin.” In those moments, Diego was glad not to have been honest about who he was.

  He only spoke with Sancho briefly, while they sat in the makeup chairs or waited in between takes. Sancho had a daughter named Evangelina, a wife named Carmen, and a younger brother back in Jalisco who he hoped to convince to move to California.

  “I took my family out of there just after the revolution started,” he told Diego one afternoon. “It was hopeless. My brother wants to stay. Work the land that belonged to our father, but I say to him, ‘What is left there? Just a barren piece of earth. Leave it and come here where there’s plenty of work.’ ”

  Diego wanted to tell him that he knew very well what Sancho’s brother was going through, that he knew about family obligations and responsibilities, that he understood the loyalty that kept him shackled to that volatile land—he had only felt it too late, himself. Instead he remained quiet.

  “Do you ever want to go back there?” Diego finally said to him.

  Sancho chuckled and shook his head. “No. Never. My daughter, she was born here. She’s an American now. This is her home. I want her to grow up in America. Marry. Raise a family. In Mexico, that would not be possible. Mexico’s not a place for people like me.” Here he stopped and pointed at Diego. “People like us.”

  “Like us?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Sancho stood and started making his way back inside the soundstage. “Us. People not part of the elite.”

  “No. My grandfather was rich. He owned—” Diego started to say, but Sancho was already inside and unable to hear him.

  He thought about Sancho as Fiona finished applying his makeup. An assistant to the director came over to him and clapped her hands loudly. “Don’t you look amazing, darling,” she told Diego and the other extras who stood in line, waiting for further instructions. “Like real African savages.”

  The set had been designed to resemble the Serengeti. There was tall grass, a foam tree and rocks, and a shallow pool of water where they were to gather and dance as another member of the tribe beat a ceremonial drum. The painted backdrop featured herds of wildebeests and a flat plain dotted with more trees.

  The director was in a good mood, and he surveyed the set and shook the hand of each of the tribesmen. “Excellent, gentlemen,” he said as they took their places. “It’s time!”

  The director yelled “action” and the drumbeats sounded, and he and the others danced around, flailing their limbs and shuffling their feet. He fed off the rhythm, and that energy that flowed through everything and through him. Diego was a part of it, and he felt that this giant machine had now taken him in and claimed him as one of its own. As he danced with the other men, he remembered the first time he performed with the other boys when he lived in San Antonio. He remembered the sound of Gonzalo’s flute, and he heard Elva’s claps again. He felt a camaraderie, a kinship that was ancient and sacred, and he told himself that this was where he belonged. This was his tribe. This was his land. These were his people.

  Diego was still wiping away traces of black body paint from his arms while he stood near the studio’s front gate waiting for Fiona. He was growing hungry and irritable. Why was she taking so long? He smoked and paced as he waited. He realized he hadn’t thought about William Cage for days when he saw him suddenly emerge from the revolving glass doors of the executive building across the street. A jacket and fedora were cradled in his arm and he held a leather briefcase. He fumb
led through his pockets for his keys, which he handed to a sweaty-faced valet who darted off to fetch the car. Diego took several deep breaths as he approached. He tapped him on the shoulder and Cage swung around, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. When Cage saw Diego, the briefcase fell from his hand and hit the floor with a soft thump.

  “You startled me!” he said, bending down to grab it.

  “I’m sorry,” Diego said. “Please forgive me, Mister Cage.”

  “It’s quite all right.” He searched through his pockets for something to light his cigarette with. “Do I know you?”

  Diego reached into his own jacket and found a box of matches, struck one, and lit the cigarette for him. “We met once.”

  “Oh?” He furrowed his eyebrows. “Did we?”

  “Yes,” Diego said, pointing to Cage’s lip. He was disappointed that Bill hadn’t remembered him. The cut had left a scar that was faint, but he could still see it. It gave his otherwise flawless face an air of imperfection that Diego found endearing, dangerous, and very enticing.

  Cage’s frown softened now. “Yes,” he said. “I remember now. I remember.” Cage frowned again. “But what are you doing here? You’re not some reporter, are you? Looking to bribe me? I’ll have you know that many people in the business frequent those types of places. They’re bohemian. There’s nothing indecent—”

  “I work for Frontier. As an extra,” Diego interjected. “I mentioned it that night, but you were rather drunk.”

  Cage puffed on his cigarette. “I see. So, you’re not a reporter?” Here he leaned in.

  “No,” Diego said, smiling. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  Cage winked at him. “Good. A good man, you are.” The valet came speeding around the corner with his car. “Well, I’m off then,” he said, flinging his coat, hat, and briefcase in the car and getting in. He was about to close the door when Diego grabbed it and held it. “Excuse me,” Cage said as he tried shutting it.

  Diego held on.