The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(3)

“Listen to your father, who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old,” her father said, reading the Bible with great care. But he was both mother and father to her.

As for her father’s family, the Moreaus, she knew none of them, either. Her father had a brother but he lived across the sea, in distant France. It was the two of them, and that was enough for her. Why would she need anyone but her father? Why would she want Paris or her mother’s town, wherever it might be?

The one place that was real was Yaxaktun.

“If he brings candy, I won’t care if he’s nosy,” Cachito said.

“The doctor will show him the laboratory,” Lupe said. “He’s kept himself there all week, so he must have something to show them.”

“A patient?”

“Or equipment or something. I bet it’s more interesting than candy. Carlota is going into the laboratory. She’ll tell us what it is.”

“Are you really?” Cachito asked.

He had been pushing an old wooden train across the floor, but now he turned to Carlota. Lupe had stopped rocking her horse. They both waited for an answer.

“I’m not sure,” Carlota said.

Mr. Lizalde owned Yaxaktun; he paid for Dr. Moreau’s research. Carlota supposed that if he wanted to see her father’s lab, he would. And they might show it to the mayordomo, too.

“I am. I heard the doctor talking to Ramona about it. Why do you think they got you in that dress?” Lupe asked.

“He’s said I might receive our guests and walk with them, but nothing is certain.”

“I bet you get to see. You have to tell us if you do.”

Ramona, walking down the hallway, paused to look into the room. “What are you still doing here? Go wash your faces!” she yelled.

Cachito and Lupe knew when their merriment was at an end, and they both scampered away. Ramona looked at Carlota and pointed a finger at her. “Now don’t move from this spot.”

“I won’t.”

Carlota sat down on the bed and looked at her dollies, at their curly hair and long eyelashes, and she tried to smile like the dolls smiled; their tiny mouths with a cupid’s bow looked perfectly pleasant.

She grasped the ribbon in her hair, twisting it around a finger. All she knew of the world was Yaxaktun. She’d never seen anything beyond it. All the people she knew were the people there. When Mr. Lizalde chanced to appear in their home, he was, in her mind, as fantastical as those etchings of London and Madrid and Paris.

Mr. Lizalde existed and yet he didn’t exist. On the two occasions on which she’d glimpsed him he had been but a figure in the distance, walking outside the main house, talking to her father. But during this visit she would be up close to him, and not just to him, but to the would-be mayordomo. Here was an entirely new element that would soon be introduced into her world. It was like when Father spoke of foreign bodies.

To soothe herself she took a book from the shelf and sat in her reading chair. Dr. Moreau, wishing to cultivate a scientific disposition in his daughter, had gifted Carlota with numerous books about plants and animals and the wonders of biology so that, in addition to the fairy tales of Perrault, Carlota could be exposed to more didactic texts. Dr. Moreau would not tolerate a child who knew only “Cendrillon” or “Barbe Bleue.”

Carlota, always agreeable, read everything her father put in front of her. She had enjoyed The Fairy Tales of Science: A Book for Youth, but The Water Babies scared her. There was one moment in which poor Tom, who had been miniaturized, met some salmon. Even though the book assured her salmon “are all true gentlemen”—and even though they were more polite than the vicious old otter Tom had previously run into—Carlota suspected they would eat Tom at the slightest provocation. The whole book was full of such dangerous encounters. Devour or be devoured. It was an infinite chain of hunger.

Carlota had taught Lupe to read, but Cachito stumbled over his letters, jumbling them in his head, and she had to read out loud to him. But she had not read The Water Babies to Cachito.

And when her father said Mr. Lizalde would be visiting, along with a gentleman, she could not help but think of the terrible salmon in the book. And yet, rather than turn away from the image, she stared at the illustrations, at the otter and the salmon and the horrid monsters that inhabited its pages. Though they were all getting too big for children’s tales, the book still fascinated her.

Ramona returned after a while, and Carlota put the book away. She followed the woman into the sitting room. Carlota’s father was not much for fashion, so the furnishings of the house had never concerned him, and they consisted mostly of the old, heavy furniture that the previous owner of the ranch had brought, supplemented by a few choice artifacts the doctor imported through the years. Chief among these was a French clock. It struck a bell upon the hour, and its sounds never failed to delight Carlota. It amazed her that such precise machinery could be produced. She pictured the gears turning inside its delicate, painted shell.

As she stepped forward into the room she wondered if they could hear her heart beating, like the song of the clock.

Her father turned toward her and smiled. “Here is my housekeeper with my daughter. Carlota, come here,” he said. She hurried to her father’s side, and he placed a hand on her shoulder as he spoke. “Gentlemen, may I present my daughter, Carlota. This is Mr. Lizalde and this here is Mr. Laughton.”