Mexican Gothic(38)

“Most of this is made from silver from our mines,” Florence said.

“Do you have any idea how much silver our mine produced? God, it was dizzying! My uncle brought all the machinery, all the knowledge to dredge it from the dark. Doyle is an important name. I don’t think you realize how lucky your cousin is to be part of our family now. To be a Doyle is to be someone.”

Noemí thought of the rows of old pictures in the hallway, the dilapidated household with its dusty alcoves. And what did she mean that to be a Doyle meant to be someone? Did that make Catalina no one before she came to High Place? And was Noemí therefore confined to a faceless, luckless band of nobodies?

Florence must have noticed the skepticism in Noemí’s face, and she fixed her eyes on the young woman. “What do you talk about with my son?” the woman asked abruptly, clasping her hands again.

“Back there, in the library. What were you talking about?”

“Spore prints.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, I can’t recall it all. But now, yes, spore prints.”

“You talk about the city, perhaps.”

“Sometimes.”

If Howard reminded her of an insect, then Florence brought to mind an insectivorous plant about to swallow a fly. Noemí’s brother had once owned a Venus flytrap. It had scared her a little, as a child.

“Don’t give my son any ideas. They will bring him pain. Francis is content here. He doesn’t need to hear about parties, music, and booze, and whatever other frivolities you choose to share with him about Mexico City.”

“I’ll be sure to discuss with him the preapproved subjects you dictate. Perhaps we can erase all the cities on the terrestrial globe and pretend they don’t exist,” Noemí said, because although Florence was intimidating, she was not willing to hide in a corner, like a baby.

“You’re very cheeky,” Florence said. “And you think you have a special power simply because my uncle thinks you possess a pretty face. But that’s not power. It’s a liability.”

Florence leaned over the table, looking at a large, rectangular serving tray with a border of stylized floral wreaths. Florence’s face, reflected on the silver surface, was elongated and deformed. She ran a finger around the tray’s border, touching the flowers.

“When I was younger, I thought the world outside held such promise and wonders. I even went away for a bit and met a dashing young man. I thought he’d take me away, that he would change everything, change me,” Florence said, and her face softened for the briefest moment. “But there’s no denying our natures. I was meant to live and die in High Place. Let Francis be. He’s accepted his lot in this life. It’s easier that way.”

Florence fixed her blue eyes on Noemí. “I’ll put away the silver, no further assistance is required,” she declared, ending their conversation abruptly.

Noemí went back to her room. She thought about all the times Catalina had narrated fairy tales. Once upon a time there was a princess in a tower, once upon a time a prince saved the girl from the tower. Noemí sat on the bed and contemplated the notion of enchantments that are never broken.





11





N


oemí heard a heart beating, as loud as a drum, calling for her. It woke her up.

Carefully she ventured outside her room to find the place where it was hiding. She felt it beneath her palm, when she pressed her hand against the walls; felt the wallpaper grow slippery, like a strained muscle, and the floor beneath her was wet and soft. It was a sore. A great sore she walked upon, and the walls were sores too. The wallpaper was peeling, revealing underneath sickly organs instead of brick or wooden boards. Veins and arteries clogged with secret excesses.

She followed the beating of the heart and a thread of red on the carpet. Like a gash. A line of crimson. A line of blood. Until she stopped in the middle of the hallway and saw the woman staring back at her.

Ruth, the girl from the photograph. Ruth, in a white dressing gown, her hair like a golden halo, her face bloodless. A slim, alabaster pillar in the darkness of the house. Ruth held a rifle between her hands and she stared at Noemí.

They began walking together, side by side. Their movements were perfectly synchronized; even their breathing was identical. Ruth brushed a lock of hair away from her face and Noemí brushed her hair too.

The walls around them were glowing, a dim phosphorescence that nevertheless guided their steps, and the carpet underneath their feet was squishy. She noticed, too, markings on the walls—walls that were made of flesh. Traceries of fuzzy mold, as if the house were an overripe fruit.

The heart kept beating faster.

The heart pumped blood and groaned and shivered, and it beat so loudly Noemí thought she’d go deaf.

Ruth opened a door. Noemí grit her teeth because this was the source of the noise, the beating heart lay inside.

The door swung open, and Noemí saw a man on a bed. Only it wasn’t truly a man. It was a bloated vision of a man, as if he’d drowned and floated to the surface, his pale body lined with blue veins, tumors flowering on his legs, his hands, his belly. A pustule, not a man, a living, breathing, pustule. His chest rising and falling.

The man could not possibly be alive but he was, and when Ruth opened the door he sat up in bed and extended his arms toward her, as if demanding an embrace. Noemí remained by the doorway, but Ruth approached the bed.