“Of what sort?”
He smiled again, this time his teeth visible, the lips drawn. The teeth were not yellow as she’d imagined, but porcelain-white and whole. But the gums, which she could see clearly, were a noxious shade of purple.
“Of a new beauty, Miss Taboada. Mr. Vasoncelos makes it very clear that the unattractive will not procreate. Beauty attracts beauty and begets beauty. It is a means of selection. You see, I am offering you a compliment.”
“That is a very strange compliment,” she managed to say, swallowing her disgust.
“You should take it, Miss Taboada. I don’t hand them out lightly. Now, I am tired. I will retire, but do not doubt this has been an invigorating conversation. Francis, help me up.”
The younger man assisted the waxwork and they left the room. Florence drank from her wine, the slim stem carefully lifted and pressed against her lips. The oppressive silence had settled upon them again. Noemí thought that if she paid attention, she would be able to hear everyone’s hearts beating.
She wondered how Catalina could bear living in this place. Catalina had always been so sweet, always the nurturer watching over the younger ones, a smile on her lips. Did they really make her sit at this table in utter silence, the curtains drawn, the candles offering their meager light? Did that old man try to engage her in obnoxious conversations? Had Catalina ever been reduced to tears? At their dining room table in Mexico City her father liked to tell riddles and offer prizes to the child who piped up with the correct answer.
The maid came by to take away the dishes. Virgil, who had not properly acknowledged Noemí, finally looked at her, their eyes meeting. “I imagine you have questions for me.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Let’s go to the sitting room.”
He grabbed one of the silver candelabra on the table and walked her down a hallway and into a large chamber with an equally enormous fireplace and a black walnut mantel carved with the shapes of flowers. Above the fireplace hung a still life of fruits, roses, and delicate vines. A couple of kerosene lamps atop twin ebony tables provided further illumination.
Two matching faded green velour settees were arranged at one end of the room, and next to them there were three chairs covered with antimacassars. White vases collected dust, indicating that this space had once been used to receive visitors and supply merriment.
Virgil opened the doors of a sideboard with silver hinges and a marble serving surface. He took out a decanter with a curious stopper shaped like a flower and filled two glasses, handing her one. Then he sat on one of the stately, stiff, gold brocade armchairs set by the fireplace. She followed suit.
Since this room was well illuminated, she was presented with a better picture of the man. They had met during Catalina’s wedding, but it had all been very quick and a year had passed. She had not been able to recall what he looked like. He was fair-haired, blue-eyed like his father, and his coolly sculpted face was burnished with imperiousness. His double-breasted lounge suit was sleek, charcoal gray with a herringbone pattern, very proper, though he’d eschewed a tie, and the top button of his shirt was undone as if he were trying to imitate a casualness it was impossible for him to possess.
She was not sure how she should address him. Boys her age were easy to flatter. But he was older than she was. She must be more serious, temper her natural flirtatiousness lest he think her silly. He had the stamp of authority here, but she also had authority. She was an envoy.
The Kublai Khan sent messengers across his realm who carried a stone with his seal, and whoever mistreated a messenger would be put to death. Catalina had told her this story, narrating fables and history for Noemí.
Let Virgil understand, then, that Noemí had an invisible stone in her pocket.
“It was good of you to come on such short notice,” Virgil said, though his tone was flat. Courtesy, but no warmth.
“I had to.”
“Did you really?”
“My father was concerned,” she said. There was her stone, even as his own badge was all around him, in this house and its things. Noemí was a Taboada, sent by Leocadio Taboada himself.
“As I tried to tell him, there is no need for alarm.”
“Catalina said she had tuberculosis. But I don’t think that quite explains her letter.”
“Did you see the letter? What did it say exactly?” he asked, leaning forward. His tone was still flat, but he looked alert.
“I did not consign it to memory. Enough that he asked me to visit you.”
“I see.”
He turned his glass between his hands, the fire making it glint and sparkle. He leaned back against the chair. He was handsome. Like a sculpture. His face, rather than skin and bone, might have been a death mask.
“Catalina was not well. She ran a very high fever. She sent that letter in the midst of her sickness.”
“Who is treating her?”
“Pardon me?” he replied.
“Someone must be treating her. Florence, is she your cousin?”
“Yes.”
“Well, your cousin Florence gives her medicine. There must be a doctor.”
He stood up and grabbed a fireplace poker, stirring the burning logs. A spark flew through the air and landed on a tile dirty with age, a crack running down its middle.
“There is a doctor. His name is Arthur Cummins. He has been our physician for many years. We completely trust Dr. Cummins.”
“Doesn’t he think her behavior has been unusual, even with tuberculosis?”
Virgil smirked. “Unusual. You have medical knowledge?”
“No. But my father did not send me here because he thought everything was as usual.”
“No, your father wrote about psychiatrists at the first possible opportunity. It’s the thing he writes about, over and over again,” Virgil said scornfully. It irritated her to hear him speaking in such a way about her father, as though he were terrible and unfair.
“I will speak to Catalina’s doctor,” Noemí replied, perhaps more forcefully than she should have, for at once he returned the poker to its stand with a quick and harsh movement of his arm.
“Demanding, are we?”
“I wouldn’t say demanding, exactly. Concerned, more like it,” she replied, taking care to smile, to show him this was really a small matter that might be easily resolved, and it must have worked, for he nodded.
“Arthur comes by every week. He’ll stop by Thursday to see Catalina and my father.”
“Your father is also ill?”
“My father is old. He has the aches that time bestows on all men. If you can wait until then, you may speak to Arthur.”
“I have no intention of leaving yet.”
“Tell me, how long do you expect to remain with us?”
“Not too long, I hope. Enough to figure out if Catalina needs me. I’m sure I could find lodging in town if I’m too much of a nuisance.”
“It’s a very small town. There’s no hotel, not even a guesthouse. No, you can remain here. I’m not trying to run you out. I wish you’d come for another reason, I suppose.”
She had not thought there would be a hotel, although she would have been glad to discover one. The house was dreary, and so was everyone in it. She could believe a woman could sicken quickly in a place like this.
She sipped her wine. It was the same dark vintage she’d had in the dining room, sweet and strong.
“Is your room satisfactory?” Virgil asked, his tone warming, turning a bit more cordial. She was, perhaps, not his enemy.
“It’s fine. Having no electricity is odd, but I don’t think anyone has died from a lack of light bulbs yet.”
“Catalina thinks the candlelight is romantic.”
Noemí supposed she would. It was the kind of thing she could imagine impressing her cousin: an old hou
se atop a hill, with mist and moonlight, like an etching out of a Gothic novel. Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, those were Catalina’s sort of books. Moors and spiderwebs. Castles too, and wicked stepmothers who force princesses to eat poisoned apples, dark fairies cursing maidens and wizards who turn handsome lords into beasts. Noemí preferred to jump from party to party on a weekend and drive a convertible.
So maybe, in the end, this house suited Catalina fine. Could it be it had been a bit of a fever? Noemí held her glass between her hands, running her thumb down its side.
“Let me pour you another glass,” Virgil said, playing the role of the attentive host.
It could grow on you, this drink. Already it had lulled her into a half sleep, and she blinked when he spoke. His hand brushed hers as he made a gesture to refill her glass, but she shook her head. She knew her limits, traced them firmly.
“No, thanks,” she said, setting the glass aside and rising from the chair, which had proven more comfortable than she might have guessed.
“I shall insist.”
She shook her head prettily, defusing the denial with that tried and proven trick. “Heavens, no. I will decline and wrap myself in a blanket and go to bed.”
His face was still remote, yet now seemed infused with more vitality as he surveyed her very carefully. There was a spark in his eye. He’d found an item of interest; one of her gestures or words struck him as novel. She thought it was her refusal that amused him. He was, likely, not used to being refused. But then, many men were the same.
“I can walk you to your room,” he offered, smooth and gallant.
They went up the stairs, him holding an oil lamp hand-painted with patterns of vines, which made the light emanating from it turn emerald and infused the walls with a strange hue: it painted the velvet curtains green. In one or other of her stories Catalina had told her the Kublai Khan executed his enemies by smothering them with velvet pillows so there would be no blood. She thought this house, with all its fabrics and rugs and tassels, could smother a whole army.
4
Breakfast was brought to her on a tray. Thank goodness she did not have to sit down to eat with the whole family that morning, although who knew what dinner might bring. The chance for solitude made the porridge, toast, and jam she had been served a bit more appetizing. The drink available was tea, which she disliked. She was a coffee drinker, preferred it black, and this tea had a definite, faint, fruity scent to it.
After a shower, Noemí applied lipstick and lined her eyes with a little black pencil. She knew her large, dark eyes and her generous lips were her greatest assets, and she used them to excellent effect. She took her time going through her clothes and picked a purple acetate taffeta dress with a full, pleated skirt. It was too fine to be worn as a day dress—she had rung in 1950 in a similar outfit eight months before—but then she tended toward opulence. Besides, she wanted to defy the gloom around her. She decided that this way her exploration of the house would be more entertaining.
There certainly was a lot of gloom. Daylight did not improve High Place. When she walked the ground floor and opened a couple of creaky doors she was inevitably greeted by the ghostly sight of furniture covered with white sheets and draperies shut tight. Wherever the odd ray of sun slipped into a room, one could see dust motes dancing in the air. In the hallways, for every electrified sconce with a bulb there were three that were bare. It was obvious most of the house was not in use.
She had assumed the Doyles would have a piano, even if it was out of tune, but there was none, and neither could she find a radio or even an old gramophone. And how she loved music. Anything from Lara to Ravel. Dancing too. What a pity that she’d be left without music.
She wandered into a library. A narrow wooden frieze with a repeating pattern of acanthus leaves, divided by pilasters, encircled the room, which was lined with tall, built-in bookcases stuffed with leather-bound volumes. She reached out for a book at random and opened it to see it had been ravaged by mold and was perfumed with the sweet scent of rot. She clapped the book shut and returned it to its place.
The shelves also contained issues of old magazines, including Eugenics: A Journal of Race Betterment and the American Journal of Eugenics.
How appropriate, she thought, remembering Howard Doyle’s inane questions. She wondered if he kept a pair of calipers to measure his guests’ skulls.
There was a terrestrial globe with countries’ names out of date in a lonesome corner and a marble bust of Shakespeare by a window. A large, circular rug had been placed in the middle of the room, and when she looked down at it she realized it showed the image of a black serpent biting its tail against a crimson background, with tiny flowers and vines all around it.
This was probably one of the best maintained rooms in the house—certainly one of the most used, judging by the lack of dust—and still it seemed a tad frayed, its curtains faded into an ugly green, more than a few books blighted by mildew.
A door at the other end of the library connected with a large office. Inside it, the heads of three stags had been mounted on a wall. An empty rifle cabinet with cut-glass doors was set in a corner. Somebody had hunted and given it up. Atop a desk of black walnut she found more journals of eugenics research. A page was marked in one of them. She read it.
The idea that the half-breed mestizo of Mexico inherits the worst traits of their progenitors is incorrect. If the stamp of an inferior race afflicts them, it is due to a lack of proper social models. Their impulsive temperament requires early restraint. Nevertheless, the mestizo possess many inherent splendid attributes, including a robustness of body…
She no longer wondered if Howard Doyle had a pair of calipers; now she wondered how many he kept. Maybe they were in one of the tall cabinets behind her, along with the family’s pedigree chart. There was a trash can next to the desk, and Noemí slid the journal she had been reading into the can.
Noemí went in search of the kitchen, having been informed of its location by Florence the previous day. The kitchen was ill lit, its windows narrow, the paint on its walls peeling. Two people sat on a long bench, a wrinkled woman and a man who, though noticeably younger, still sported gray in his hair. He was fifty-something, surely, and she probably closer to seventy. They were using a round brush to clean the dirt off mushrooms. When Noemí walked in, they raised their heads but did not greet her.
“Good morning,” she said. “We weren’t introduced properly yesterday. I’m Noemí.”
Both of them stared at her mutely. A door opened and a woman, also gray-haired, walked into the kitchen carrying a bucket. She recognized her as the maid who had served them during dinner, and she was of an age with the man. The maid did not speak to Noemí either, nodding instead, and then the couple who were seated on the bench nodded too before placing their attention back on their work. Did everyone follow this policy of silence in High Place?
“I’m—”
“We’re working,” the man said.
The three servants then looked down, their wan faces indifferent to the presence of the colorful socialite. Perhaps Virgil or Florence had informed them Noemí was someone of no importance and that they should not trouble themselves with her.
Noemí bit her lip and stepped outside the house using the back door the maid had opened. There was mist, like the previous day, and a chill to the air. Now she regretted not wearing a more comfortable outfit, a dress with pockets where she could carry her cigarettes and her lighter. Noemí adjusted the red rebozo around her shoulders.
“Did you have a good breakfast?” Francis asked, and she turned around to look at him. He’d also come out through the kitchen door, wrapped in a snug sweater.
“Yes, it was fine. How’s your day going?”
“It’s all right.”
“What is that?” she asked, pointing at a nearby wooden structure, made hazy by the mist.
&n
bsp; “That’s the shed where we keep the generator and the fuel. Behind it is the coach house. Do you want to take a look at it? Maybe also go to the cemetery?”
“Sure.”
The coach house seemed like a place that might have a hearse and two black horses inside, but instead there were two cars. One was the luxurious older vehicle that Francis had driven; the other was a newer but much more modest-looking car. A path snaked around the coach house, and they followed it through the trees and the mist until they reached a pair of iron gates decorated with the motif of a serpent eating its tail like the one she’d seen in the library.
They walked down a shady path, the trees so close together only a smattering of light made it through the branches. She could picture this same graveyard once upon a time in a tidier state, with carefully tended shrubs and flower beds, but now it was a realm of weeds and tall grasses, the vegetation threatening to swallow the place whole. The tombstones were blanketed with moss, and mushrooms sprouted by the graves. It was a picture of melancholy. Even the trees seemed lugubrious, though Noemí could not say why. Trees were trees.
It was the sum of it, she thought, and not the individual parts that made the English cemetery so sad. Neglect was one thing, but neglect and the shadows cast by the trees and the weeds clustered by the tombstones, the chill in the air, served to turn what would have been an ordinary collection of vegetation and tombstones into a fiercely displeasing picture.
She felt sorry for every single person buried there, just as she felt sorry for everyone living at High Place. Noemí bent down to look at a headstone, then another, and frowned.
“Why are all these from 1888?” she asked.
“The nearby mine was managed by Spaniards until Mexico’s independence and left alone for many decades because nobody believed much silver could be extracted. But my great uncle Howard thought differently,” Francis explained. “He brought modern English machines and a large English crew to do the work. He was successful, but a couple of years after reopening the mine there was an epidemic. It killed most of the English workers, and they were buried here.”
Mexican Gothic Page 4