Mexican Gothic(30)

“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. Besides, 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.

“Well, then I insist, no, I demand, that you take her back to Mexico City,” she said. Her attempt at diplomacy was a failure and they both knew it, so she might as well speak openly. “This silly, creaky old house is no good for her. Must I—”

“You are not going to change my mind,” he said, interrupting her, “and in the end she’s my wife.”

“She’s my cousin.”

Her hand was still on his arm. Carefully, he took hold of her fingers and pried them loose of his jacket’s sleeve, pausing for a second to look down at her hands, as if examining the length of her fingers or the shape of her nails.

“I know. I also know you don’t like it here, and if you are itching to get back to your home and away from this ‘creaky’ house, you’re welcome to it.”

“Are you throwing me out now?”

“No. But you don’t give the orders around here. We’ll be fine as long as you remember this,” he said.

“You’re rude.”

“I doubt it.”

“I should go right away.”

Throughout this whole conversation his voice had remained level, which she found very infuriating, just as she despised the smirk that marked his face. He was civil and yet disdainful.

“Maybe. But I don’t think you will. I think it’s in your nature to stay. It’s the dutiful pull of blood, of family. I can respect that.”

“Maybe it’s in my nature not to back down.”

“I believe you are correct. Don’t bear me a grudge, Noemí. You’ll see this is the best course.”

“I thought we had a truce,” she told him.

“That would imply we’ve been at war. Would you say that?”

“No.”

“Then everything is fine,” he concluded and walked out of the greenhouse.

He had a way of parrying her words that was maddening. She could finally understand why her father had been so irritated by Virgil’s correspondence. She could imagine the letters he wrote, filled with sentences that feinted and amounted to an irritating nothing.