Certain Dark Things(22)
It was a place for sophisticated older people and hip young ones, with magnificent trees and faded mansions, a taco stand here and there to remind you it was not quite the Belle époque and you were still in Mexico City. It was not a place for Domingo, who preferred the downtown crowds, the pressure of people in the subway, the underpasses and alleys. There were too many private security guards walking around the Roma, who were eager to stop a young man in a cheap yellow jacket. They stared as he walked by, but if Domingo had learned a lesson in his short life it was to keep walking and stare straight ahead. The private security guards couldn’t arrest him, anyway. They could beat him if they didn’t like the look of him, but that was about it.
Domingo kept his head down and walked with his hands in his pockets as he checked the address again. It took him a while to find the house because the number was half-hidden behind a layer of graffiti. It was one of those old colonial houses that seemed like it would stand forever, braving earthquakes and pollution. The gate—an iron double-door—was rusty with age. The place looked abandoned. This was not entirely unusual. Yes, the area was now fashionable and gentrified, but there were houses here and there that had gone to hell in the ’80s and never recuperated, some of them occupied by upper-class squatters—university students and artists with proletarian leanings—and others by the regular, run-of-the-mill squatters who had never read Marx and did not give a f*ck about globalization talk.
He wondered if he was at the wrong address. Domingo gave the gate an experimental push. It swung on its hinges, groaning a welcome. He closed the gate behind him and walked down a small inner courtyard, past a fountain decked with chipped blue tiles and to the door of the house itself.
The door seemed terribly heavy, like the door of a castle. Well, what he imagined a castle door might be like. The closest he’d ever gotten to a castle was the Castle of Chapultepec, and he was pretty sure that didn’t count because it was a museum.
He’d never seen a door knocker except in horror movies, but there was one, a heavy iron ring, which he slammed against the wood. He waited, staring at the fountain, which was filled with dirty, murky water and an abundance of leaves. Several pots overflowing with wilted plants sat by the fountain. A couple of them were cracked and earth had oozed out.
An old woman opened the door, her white hair pulled back in a bun. She squinted at Domingo.
“I’m looking for Bernardino,” he said, reaching into his pocket and showing the woman the jade bead Atl had given him. “Atl, Daughter of Centehua, sends me.”
The woman nodded and let him in.
Domingo had spent nights sleeping in old, abandoned houses or in tenements that had stood for more than a century. Many of these places were humid, dark, and unpleasant. However, as he followed the old woman in, toward a staircase, he thought he had never been in a place this cold.
Not only was it chilly, it was dirty too. Yet in the dirt, he noticed things that looked like the genuine article. Antiques. Pricey shit. Cool-looking furniture. Tea sets in a glass case. But there was also a lot of garbage: hundreds of newspaper pages with solved crossword puzzles, plastic toys that came free with fast-food meals, books covered with mold, broken watches, a very large TV set from another era with a crack running down its screen.
A dozen dolls sat on a wall, lined up in their white dresses, wearing matching lace hats. Their blue and green and brown eyes seemed to follow him as he climbed the steps.
There was, once more, the faint smell of mold and the stronger smell of cat piss.
When they reached the second floor, the darkness of the hallway hit him like a wave. He slowed down, afraid to run into a piece of furniture. The old lady did not say anything. She did not offer to turn on the lights, but merely waited a few paces ahead of him.
Domingo continued walking, careful to keep a hand on the wall just in case he should trip. They reached a door and she opened it. It was very dark inside. A darkness thicker than in the hallway.
Domingo swallowed. He clutched the jade bead, then slipped inside the room.
He saw nothing.
“Who sends you?” asked a voice in the darkness. It was a wonderful voice, rich, strong, like the voice of a radio announcer. A very fine voice that enunciated each word with a slight accent.
There was the kiss of a match being struck and then light bloomed. He saw an oil lamp next to the dim figure of a man sitting on a couch. The man rose and began walking around the room. He lit another oil lamp, lit candles. The darkness began to recede, and Domingo saw more bits and pieces: a rug, two cats—no, three. No, four. A lot of cats in the room. Faded paintings decorated the walls and thick velvet curtains hid the windows.
“Atl,” Domingo said. “Daughter of Centehua. She sends me.”
“I do not know Atl.”
“She gave me something for you.”
The man lit two more candles. Domingo saw him properly now. The man was wrapped in a frayed crimson robe, leaning against a cane. He had a great lump on his back. A hunchback. His skin seemed … thin, almost translucent. His eyes, when he glanced at Domingo, were a dim, sickly yellow. He looked old, rather ugly.
“Show me.”
Domingo stepped forward and opened his hand, the jade bead resting upon his palm. The man stretched out his thin, bony fingers and picked up the bead, holding it up.
“The Iztac clan. Tlāhuihpochtin,” the man said. “The first vampires in Mexico, did you know that?”