Mexican Gothic

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  As she crossed her arms and tapped her foot she felt, for once, like one of Catalina’s characters in their childhood tales. The maiden gazing out the tower, waiting for the knight to ride to the rescue and vanquish the dragon. Surely the doctor would conjure a diagnosis and a solution.

  She felt it necessary to be positive, to hope, for High Place was a place of hopelessness. Its shabby grimness made her want to push forward.

  The doctor was punctual and parked his car near a tree, stepping out, doffing his hat and staring up at the house. There wasn’t much mist that day, as if the Earth and sky had cleared up in advance of this visitor, though it served to make the house look more forlorn, unshrouded and bare. Noemí imagined Julio’s house was nothing like this, that it was one of the shabby yet colorful little houses down the main street, with a tiny balcony and wooden shutters and a kitchen with old azulejos.

  “Well, this is the famous High Place,” Dr. Camarillo said. “About time I saw it, I suppose.”

  “You haven’t been here before?” she asked.

  “No reason for me to come. I’ve been past where the mining camp used to be. Or what’s left of it, at any rate, when I’ve gone hunting. There’s plenty of deer around, up here. Mountain lions too. You have to be careful on this mountain.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she said. She recalled how Florence had admonished her. Could she have been worried about mountain lions? Or was she more worried about her precious car?

  The doctor grabbed his bag and they went inside. Noemí had been afraid Florence might come running down the stairs, ready to glare at both Dr. Camarillo and Noemí, but the staircase was empty, and when they reached Catalina’s room they found the woman alone.

  Catalina seemed in good enough spirits, sitting in the sunlight, dressed in a simple but becoming blue dress. She greeted the doctor with a smile.

  “Good day, I’m Catalina.”

  “And I’m Dr. Camarillo. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  Catalina extended her hand. “Why, he looks so young, Noemí! He must be hardly older than you!”

  “You are hardly older than me,” Noemí said.

  “What are you talking about? You’re a little girl.”

  This sounded so like the happy Catalina of days past, bantering with them, that Noemí began to feel foolish for bringing the doctor to the house. But then, as the minutes ticked by, Catalina’s ebullience began to fade and turn into a simmering agitation. And Noemí couldn’t help but think that even though nothing was exactly wrong, something was definitely not right.

  “Tell me, how are you sleeping? Any chills at night?”

  “No. I feel much better already. Really, there’s no need for you to be here, it’s such a fuss over nothing. Over nothing, truly,” Catalina said. Her vehemence when she spoke had a forced cheerfulness to it. She repeatedly rubbed a finger across her wedding band.

  Julio merely nodded. He talked in a steady, measured tone while he took notes. “Have you been given streptomycin and para-aminosalicylic acid?”

  “I think so,” Catalina said, but she responded in such haste Noemí didn’t think she’d even listened to the question.

  “Marta Duval, did she also send a remedy for you? A tea or herb?”

  Catalina’s eyes darted across the room. “What? Why would you ask that?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what all your medications are. I’m assuming you saw her for a remedy of some sort?”

  “There’s no remedy,” she muttered.

  She said something else, but it wasn’t a real word. She babbled, like a small child, and then Catalina suddenly clutched her neck, as if she’d choke herself, but her grip was lax. No, it was not choking, but a defensive gesture, a woman guarding herself, holding her hands up in defense. The movement startled them both. Julio almost dropped his pencil. Catalina resembled one of the deer in the mountains, ready to dart to safety, and neither knew what to say.

  “What is it?” Julio asked, after a minute had gone by.

  “It’s the noise,” Catalina said, and she slowly slid her hands up her neck and pressed them against her mouth.

  Julio looked up at Noemí, who was sitting next to him.

  “What noise?” Noemí asked.

  “I don’t want you here. I’m very tired,” Catalina said, and she gripped her hands together and placed them on her lap, closing her eyes, as if to shut her visitors away. “I really don’t know why you must be here bothering me when I should be sleeping!”

  “If you will—” the doctor began.

  “I can’t talk anymore, I’m exhausted,” Catalina said, her hands trembling as she attempted to clutch them together. “It’s really quite exhausting being ill and it’s even worse when people say you shouldn’t do anything. Isn’t that odd? Really…it’s…I’m tired. Tired!”

  She paused, as if catching her breath. All of a sudden Catalina opened her eyes very wide and her face had a terrifying intensity to it. It was the visage of a woman possessed.

  “There’re people in the walls,” Catalina said. “There’re people and there’re voices. I see them sometimes, the people in the walls. They’re dead.”

  She extended her hands, and Noemí gripped them, helplessly, trying to comfort her, as Catalina shook her head and let out a half sob. “It lives in the cemetery, in the cemetery, Noemí. You must look in the cemetery.”

  Then just as suddenly Catalina stood up and went to the window, clutching a drape with her right hand and looking outside. Her face softened. It was as if a tornado had struck and spun away. Noemí didn’t know what to do, and the doctor appeared equally baffled.

  “I’m sorry,” Catalina said evenly. “I don’t know what I say, I’m sorry.”

  Catalina pressed her hands against her mouth again and began coughing. Florence and Mary, the oldest maid, walked in, carrying a tray with a teapot and a cup. Both of the women eyed Noemí and Dr. Camarillo with disapproval.

  “Will you be long?” Florence asked. “She’s supposed to be resting.”

  “I was just leaving,” Dr. Camarillo said, collecting his hat and his notepad, clearly knowing himself an unwelcome intruder with these few words and Florence’s lofty tilt of the head. Florence always knew how to cut you down with the succinct efficiency of a telegram. “It was nice meeting you, Catalina.”

  They stepped out of the room. For a couple of minutes neither one spoke, both weary and a little rattled.

  “So, what’s your opinion?” she finally asked as they began walking down the stairs.

  “On the matter of tuberculosis I would have to take an X-ray of her lungs to get a better idea of her condition, and I really am no expert in tuberculosis in the first place,” he said. “And on the other matter, I warned you, I’m not a psychiatrist. I shouldn’t be speculating—”

  “Come on, out with it,” Noemí said in exasperation, “you must tell me something.”

  They stopped at the foot of the stairs. Julio sighed. “I believe you are correct and she needs psychiatric attention. This behavior is not usual with any tuberculosis patient I’ve met. Perhaps you might find a specialist in Pachuca who could treat her? If you can’t make the trek to Mexico City.”

  Noemí didn’t think they’d be making the trek anywhere. Maybe if she spoke to Howard and tried to explain her concerns? He was the head of the household, after all. But she didn’t like the old man, he rubbed her the wrong way, and Virgil might think she was trying to overreach. Florence certainly would be of no help to her, but what about Francis?

  “I’m afraid I’ve left you with a worse conundrum than before, haven’t I?” Julio said.

  “No,” Noemí lied. “No, I’m very thankful.”

  She was dispirited and felt silly for having expected more of him. He was no knight in shining armor nor a wizard who might revive her cousin with a magic potion. She oug
ht to have known better.

  He hesitated, seeking perhaps to provide her with more reassurance. “Well, you know where to find me if you need anything else,” he concluded. “Do seek me out if it’s necessary.”

  Noemí nodded, watched him as he got into his car and drove away. She recalled, rather grimly, that certain fairy tales end in blood. In Cinderella, the sisters cut off their feet, and Sleeping Beauty’s stepmother was pushed into a barrel full of snakes. That particular illustration on the last page of one of the books Catalina used to read to them suddenly came back to her, in all its vivid colors. Green and yellow serpents, the tails poking out of a barrel as the stepmother was stuffed into it.

  Noemí leaned against a tree, standing there with her arms crossed for a while. She walked back inside the house to find Virgil standing on the staircase, his hand on the banister.

  “There was a man to see you.”

  “It was the doctor from the public health clinic. You did say he could visit.”

  “I’m not admonishing you,” he told her as he finished climbing down the stairs and stood in front of her. He appeared a little curious, and she guessed he wanted to know what the doctor had said, but she also guessed he would not ask yet, and Noemí didn’t want to blurt it all out either.

  “Do you think you’d have time to show me the greenhouse now?” she asked diplomatically.

  “Gladly.”

  It was very small, the greenhouse—almost like the postscript at the end of an awkward letter. Neglect had flourished, and there were dirty glass panels and broken glass aplenty. In the rainy season the water seeped in with ease. Mold caked the planters. But a few flowers were still in bloom, and when Noemí looked up she was greeted by the striking vision of colored glass: a glass roof decorated with a twining serpent. The snake’s body was green, the eyes were yellow. The sight of it quite surprised her. It was perfectly designed, almost leaping off the glass, its fangs open.

  “Oh,” she said, pressing the tips of her fingers against her lips.

  “Something the matter?” Virgil asked, moving to stand next to her.

  “Nothing, really. I’ve seen that snake around the house,” she said.

  “The ouroboros.”

  “Is it a heraldic symbol?”

  “It’s our symbol, but we don’t have a shield. My father had a seal made with it, though.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “The snake eats its tail. The infinite, above us, and below.”

  “Well, yes, but why did your family pick that as your seal? It’s everywhere too.”

  “Really?” he said nonchalantly and shrugged.

  Noemí tilted her head, trying to get a better look at the snake’s head. “I haven’t seen glass like that in a greenhouse,” she admitted. “You’d expect transparent glass.”

  “My mother designed it.”

  “Chromic oxide. I’d bet that’s what gives it that green coloration. But there must also be some uranium oxide used here, because, see? Right there, it almost seems to glow,” she said, pointing at the snake’s head, the cruel eyes. “Was it manufactured here or shipped piece by piece from England?”

  “I know little of how it was built.”

  “Would Florence know?”

  “You’re an inquisitive creature.”

  She wasn’t sure whether he meant it as a compliment or a defect. “The greenhouse, hmm?” he went on. “I know it’s old. I know my mother loved it more than any other part of the house.”

  Virgil moved toward a long table that ran along the center length of the greenhouse, crammed with yellowed potted plants, and to the back, to a bed box that held a few pristine pink roses. He carefully brushed his knuckles against the petals.

  “She took care to cut out the weak and useless shoots, to look after each flower. But when she died, nobody much cared for the plants, and this is what’s left of it all.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  His eyes were steadfast on the roses, pulling a blighted petal. “It doesn’t matter. I do not remember her. I was a baby when she died.”

  Alice Doyle, who shared her initials with that other sister. Alice Doyle, blond and pale, who had been flesh once, who had been more than a portrait on a wall, who must have sketched on a piece of paper the serpent that curled above their heads. The rhythms of its scaly body, the shape of its narrowed eyes, and the terrible mouth.

  “It was a violent death. We have a certain history of violence, the Doyles. But we are resistant,” he said. “And it was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”

  Your sister shot her, she thought, and she could not picture it. It was such a monstrous, terrible act that she could not imagine that it truly had happened, in this house. And afterward someone had scrubbed the blood away, someone had burned the dirty linens or replaced the rugs with the ugly scarlet splotches on them, and life had gone on. But how could it have gone on? Such misery, such ugliness, surely it could not be erased.

  Yet Virgil seemed unperturbed.

  “My father, when he spoke to you yesterday about beauty, he must have spoken about superior and inferior types too,” Virgil said, raising his head and looking at her intently. “He must have mentioned his theories.”

  “I’m not sure what theories you refer to,” she replied.

  “That we have a predetermined nature.”

  “That sounds rather awful, doesn’t it?” she said.

  “Yet as a good Catholic you must believe in original sin.”

  “Perhaps I’m a bad Catholic. How would you know?”

  “Catalina prays her rosary,” he said. “She went to church each week, before she got sick. I imagine you do the same, back home.”

  As a matter of fact Noemí’s eldest uncle was a priest and she was indeed expected to attend mass in a good, modest black dress, with her lace mantilla carefully pinned in place. She also had a tiny rosary—because everyone did—and a golden cross on a matching chain, but she didn’t wear the chain regularly, and she had not given much thought to original sin since the days when she was busy learning her catechism in preparation for her first communion. Now she thought vaguely about the cross and almost felt like pressing a hand against her neck, to feel the absence of it.

  “Do you believe, then, that we have a predetermined nature?” she asked.

  “I have seen the world, and in seeing it I’ve noticed people seem bound to their vices. Take a walk around any tenement and you’ll recognize the same sort of faces, the same sort of expressions on those faces, and the same sort of people. You can’t remove whatever taint they carry with hygiene campaigns. There are fit and unfit people.”

  “It seems like nonsense to me,” she said. “That eugenicist discourse always makes my stomach turn. Fit and unfit. We are not talking about cats and dogs.”

  “Why shouldn’t humans be the equivalent of cats and dogs? We are all organisms striving for survival, moved forward by the single instinct that matters: reproduction and the propagation of our kind. Don’t you like to study the nature of man? Isn’t that what an anthropologist does?”

  “I hardly want to discuss this topic.”

  “What do you want to discuss?” he asked with dry amusement. “I know you’re itching to say it, so say it.”

  Noemí had meant to be more subtle than this, more charming, but there was no point in evasion now. He’d entwined her in conversation and pushed her to speak.

  “Catalina.”

  “What about her?”

  Noemí leaned her back against the long table, her hands resting on its scratched surface, and looked up at him. “The doctor who came today thinks she needs a psychiatrist.”

  “Yes, she very well may need one, eventually,” he agreed.

  “Eventually?”

  “Tuberculosis is no joke. I cannot be dragging her off somewhere else. B
esides, she’d hardly be accepted in a psychiatric facility considering her illness. So, yes, eventually we might evaluate specialized psychological care for her. For now she seems to be doing well enough with Arthur.”

  “Well enough?” Noemí scoffed. “She hears voices. She says there are people in the walls.”

  “Yes. I’m aware.”

  “You don’t seem worried.”

  “You presume a great deal, little girl.”

  Virgil crossed his arms and walked away from her. Noemí protested—a curse, delivered in Spanish, escaping her lips—and quickly moved behind him, her arms brushing against brittle leaves and dead ferns. He turned abruptly and stared down at her.

  “She was worse before. You did not see her three or four weeks ago. Fragile, like a porcelain doll. But she’s getting better.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Arthur knows that. You can ask him,” he said calmly.

  “That doctor of yours wouldn’t even let me ask two questions.”

  “And that doctor of yours, Miss Taboada, as far as my wife tells me, looks like he can’t even grow a beard.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “I went to see her. That’s how I knew you had a guest.”

  He was correct on the point of the doctor’s youth, but she shook her head. “What does his age have to do with anything?” she replied.

  “I’m not about to listen to a boy who graduated from medical school a few months ago.”

  “Then why did you tell me to bring him here?”

  He looked her up and down. “I did not. You insisted. Just as you are insisting on having this extremely dull conversation.”

  He made to leave, but this time she caught his arm, forcing him to turn and face her again. His eyes were very cold, very blue, but a stray beam of light hit them. Gold, they looked for a flickering second, before he inclined his head and the effect passed.