Mexican Gothic(9)

She tested the light switch on the wall, but the light fixture in the bathroom did not work. In her room, Noemí could not locate a single lamp with a light bulb, though there was one electrical outlet. She supposed Florence had not been joking about relying on candles and oil lamps.

She opened her purse and riffled through it until she found her cigarettes. A tiny cup decorated with half-naked cupids on the night table served as an impromptu ashtray. After taking a couple of puffs, she wandered to the window, lest Florence complain about the stench. But the window would not budge.

She stood, looking outside at the mist.





3

Florence came back for her promptly at seven with an oil lamp in her hand to light the way. They went down the stairs to a dining room weighed down by a monstrous chandelier, much like the one in the hallway entrance, which remained unlit. There was a table big enough for a dozen people, with the appropriate tablecloth of white damask. Candelabra had been set on it. The long, white, tapered candles reminded Noemí of church.

The walls were lined with china cabinets crammed with lace, porcelain, and most of all with silver. Cups and plates bearing the proud initial of their owners—the triumphant, stylized D of the Doyles—serving trays and empty vases, which might have once gleamed under the glow of the candles and now looked tarnished and dull.

Florence pointed to a chair, and Noemí sat down. Francis was already seated across from her and Florence took her place at his side. A gray-haired maid walked in and placed bowls filled with a watery soup in front of them. Florence and Francis began to eat.

“Will no one else be joining us?” she asked.

“Your cousin is asleep. Uncle Howard and Cousin Virgil may come down, perhaps later,” Florence said.

Noemí arranged a napkin on her lap. She had soup, but only a little. She was not used to eating at this hour. Nights were no time for heavy meals; at home they had pastries and coffee with milk. She wondered how she’d fare with a different schedule. à l’anglaise, like their French teacher used to say. La panure à l’anglaise, repeat after me. Would they have four o’clock tea, or was it five o’clock?

The plates were taken away in silence, and in silence there came the main dish, chicken in an unappealing creamy white sauce with mushrooms. The wine they’d poured her was very dark and sweet.

She didn’t like it.

Noemí pushed the mushrooms around her plate with her fork while trying to see what lay in the gloomy cabinets across from her.

“It’s mostly silver objects in here, isn’t it?” she said. “Did all of these come from your mine?”

Francis nodded. “Yes, back in the day.”

“Why did it close?”

“There were strikes and then—” Francis began to say, but his mother immediately raised her head and stared at Noemí.

“We do not talk during dinner.”

“Not even to say ‘pass the salt’?” Noemí asked lightly, twirling her fork.

“I can see you think yourself terribly amusing. We do not talk during dinner. That is the way it is. We appreciate the silence in this house.”

“Come, Florence, surely we can make a bit of conversation. For the sake of our guest,” said a man in a dark suit as he walked into the room, leaning on Virgil.

Old would have been an inaccurate word to describe him. He was ancient, his face gouged with wrinkles, a few sparse hairs stubbornly attached to his skull. He was very pale too, like an underground creature. A slug, perhaps. His veins contrasted with his pallor, thin, spidery lines of purple and blue.

Noemí watched him shuffle toward the head of the table and sit down. Virgil sat too, by his father’s right, his chair at such an angle that he remained half enveloped in shadows.

The maid didn’t bring a plate for the old man, only a glass of dark wine. Maybe he’d already eaten and had ventured downstairs for her sake.

“Sir, I’m Noemí Taboada. It’s nice to meet you,” she said.

“And I am Howard Doyle, Virgil’s father. Although you’ve guessed that already.”

The old man wore an old-fashioned cravat, his neck hidden under a mound of fabric, a circular silver pin upon it as a decoration, a large amber ring on his index finger. He fixed his eyes on her. The rest of him was bleached of color, but the eyes were of a startling blue, unimpeded by cataracts and undimmed by age. The eyes burned coldly in that ancient face and commanded her attention, vivisecting the young woman with his gaze.

“You are much darker than your cousin, Miss Taboada,” Howard said after he had completed his examination of her.

“Pardon me?” she asked, thinking she’d heard him wrong.

He pointed at her. “Both your coloration and your hair. They are much darker than Catalina’s. I imagine they reflect your Indian heritage rather than the French. You do have some Indian in you, no? Like most of the mestizos here do.”

“Catalina’s mother was from France. My father is from Veracruz and my mother from Oaxaca. We are Mazatec on her side. What is your point?” she asked flatly.

The old man smiled. A closed smile, no teeth. She could picture his teeth, yellowed and broken.

Virgil had motioned to the maid, and a glass of wine was placed before him. The others had resumed their silent eating. This was to be, then, a conversation between two parties.