Mexican Gothic(29)

“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.”