The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(21)
That day she’d risen late. Sometimes she had chores to complete in the lab, either helping her father or practicing taxidermy, which was Montgomery’s art. He knew many tricks that astounded her. For example, mounting a feline specimen required great skill, especially when it came to the mouth. One had to fill the inside of the lips with clay until they were fixed in the desired position and one had to be careful that the skin didn’t shrink when drying. The inside of the mouth was stuffed with papier-maché; clay would have been too difficult to remove.
Her father fostered such botanical and zoological interests, though he also demanded that she apply herself to the piano. It was wildly out of tune, but Carlota obeyed and always did as her father said, reading the books he put in front of her and saying her prayers at night. Domestic activities occupied her evenings, when she embroidered or darned her father’s socks. Her life was pleasant. Whenever something was amiss, when her perfect world tilted a little, she retreated to the perfect solitude of the cenote.
After feeding the birds that morning, she went into the kitchen. Ramona was busy by the stove, while Lupe was drying dishes with a rag.
“My father’s leg is paining him. I’m thinking we might brew him that jasmine tea he likes instead of the usual chamomile.”
“If we had any. We’re all out,” Ramona said.
“Truly?”
“Mr. Laughton should head to the city soon. You can add it to his shopping list.”
“Bad idea, that. He’s back on the bottle,” Lupe said, taking her dishes and placing them in the trastero. “If he gets anywhere near Mérida, he’ll gamble his wages away.”
Carlota hated when Montgomery was in such a state, though she supposed it was about time. Montgomery cycled in and out of sobriety. Her father didn’t seem to mind, saying Montgomery’s productivity didn’t diminish during his drinking bouts, but Carlota disliked the way he looked, with his hair in his eyes and smelling sour.
She’d asked her father to put an end to it, to order that Montgomery keep a dry house but her father had laughed her off. Men need their crutches, he said, and those that are unfit for human kindred need them most, leaning on their vices.
But then, she’d said, the hybrids were not men, and he let them drink, too. And he’d said she was right, they weren’t, but still they needed that crutch. It was a form of compassion, her father assured Carlota.
“Poor Montgomery,” she muttered.
“It’s not your fault he’s a fool. But I should go to the city. I’d do a fine job instead of him, and I wouldn’t come back sniffling about all the money I’ve misplaced in games of chance,” Lupe said cheekily.
“As if you could.”
“Why not? It’s not that hard to put in a few orders and count coins.”
“You know why. Don’t be silly. What if someone saw you? And you’ve never been in the city before, so you wouldn’t know anything.”
“You’re not the only one who can read a paper and know what’s what,” Lupe replied and she showed Carlota her fangs, her mouth twisting into an acrid smile. “Maybe I’ll go one day, with or without telling you.”
“Don’t start with that again. You’ll give me a headache.”
“No, we wouldn’t want to give the little miss a headache.”
“You’re impossible,” Carlota muttered, and she whirled out of the room, not wishing to prolong their verbal sparring. Lupe was dreadful these days. Now she’d have to contend with Montgomery being stinking drunk and Lupe being a nuisance, a combination that was more annoying than a mosquito buzzing in an ear late at night.
She fled toward the cenote, intent on staying there for the rest of the day. The path she followed was being slowly swallowed by the jungle. Soon Montgomery and his crew would have to clear it again, while also tending to that other path that led to the lagoon and the third path that connected to the main road, which snaked west from them, the road that led to the rest of the world.
The path to the cenote was like the lines of a rhyme, recited by heart, known in the marrow of one’s body. She could walk the path with her eyes closed and still find her way to the cenote. In fact, she knew the jungle more by sound than sight. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the beauty one could see, but sound struck her as the most powerful of the senses. Ramona had explained the jungle was full of spirits and Carlota listened carefully for them, tried to feel them in stone and earth. When she lay on the ground she paid homage to the symphony of the jungle: the growls of the monkeys, the squawks of lime-green parrots, the whistle of the quail, the quiet murmur of the water, and the even quieter whisper of the blind fish of the cenote’s depths. She imagined herself as that fish, that quail, that monkey. She imagined herself as the vines and creepers climbing upon the trees, as the ceiba with its branches extending high with a quivering butterfly brushing against its flowers. And sometimes she imagined herself stretched out, under the rays of the sun, in the shape of a jaguar, the taste of meat thick on her tongue.
She loved the rhythm of the Yucatán, the ferocious rainy season and the calm of the dry months. She basked in the humid heat that still made her father mutter under his breath and hide inside his room, trying to cool down. She chased the rays of sun and ran her hands down the bark of the trees.
Sometimes she felt she could lie by the cenote for years and years, patient and quiet, while other times she whirled around, a feeling she didn’t understand making her tap her fingers and stare at the clouds.