The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(9)
“I’d say that is impossible,” Laughton replied.
“Not if you were able to somehow look at the gemmules of two organisms and mix them.”
“You mean you’d take a characteristic of a salamander and blend it somehow with that of a man? That sounds even more impossible, Dr. Moreau. If I were to inject the blood of a salamander into your veins you’d die, even the most obtuse naturalist will tell you that.”
“Not the blood, but the essence which hides in the blood,” her father said. “I’ve done this. My daughter is proof of it.”
Laughton now turned to look at Mr. Lizalde as if silently asking if they were meant to take this seriously, and then he looked at her, frowning.
“I was once married, a long time ago. My wife and daughter died. It was disease that carried them away, and there was nothing I could do despite my medical training. But the tragedy did spur my interest in certain biological studies. Years later Carlota was born of a second union. But just like the first time, my life seemed poised for sorrow. My daughter had a rare condition of the blood.”
Her father moved toward the glass cabinet and threw it open as he spoke. Inside he kept numerous bottles and receptacles. She knew them all. Out came the wooden box with its velvet lining and the brass syringe, as well as the porcelain container with the cotton, the bottle of rubbing alcohol.
“To save Carlota I pushed my studies forward as much as I could until I found a solution, a way to combine certain unique elements found in the jaguar with the essential gemmules of my child. With this medication I keep my daughter alive. Time for your injection, Carlota.”
Her father motioned for her to step forward. “What do you intend to do with that?” Laughton asked, sounding concerned.
“He does not lie. I am ill, sir,” she replied, calmly glancing at the man. Then she went to her father and held up her arm.
The pinprick of the needle was hardly noticeable. A red flower bloomed on her skin, and then she gently pressed the piece of cotton her father handed her against her arm.
“Now a tiny tablet that aids in my daughter’s digestion; nervous girl that she can be, sometimes she gets stomachaches and the injections make this worse,” her father said, uncorking a bottle and handing a tablet to Carlota, who placed it in her mouth. “There and done. An injection once a week, that’s all there is to it.”
On seeing that no harm had befallen her, Laughton’s frown relaxed once again into doubtful scorn, and he even let out a low laugh.
“You are amused, sir?” she asked. “Do I make you laugh?”
“I’m not laughing at you, young miss, it is only that this proves nothing,” he said, and he looked at her father and shook his head. “Dr. Moreau, it is an interesting tale, but I do not believe you have given the strength of a jaguar to a girl with an injection.”
“I have found a way to keep her healthy and whole by relying on the strength of animals, which is not exactly the same. But this does bring me to the main point of my investigations and the sort of research I am conducting for Mr. Lizalde.”
“Perhaps you mean to gift men gills so they can breathe under the sea?”
“The opposite: I mean to fashion animals into something different, to carve them into new shapes. To make the pig walk upright or the dog speak a variety of words.”
“Well. Only that!”
“It is possible to transplant tissue from one part of an animal to another, to alter its method of growth or to modify its limbs. Why couldn’t we change it in its most intimate structure? Come now, follow me.”
Her father motioned for her to open the door that led into the laboratory, and they walked in. Little was visible at first in the darkness. The windows were again tall but the lower half had been bricked, and she went around opening shutters, this time with the aid of a long stick with a hook at one end. The sunlight came in great streaks, neatly illuminating the many shelves, bottles, tools, funnels, tubes for stirring, scales, and beakers that constituted her father’s arsenal. There were vessels for heat and porcelain plates for evaporation. There were cabinets with labeled drawers and all manner of apparatus that he’d had custom made with copper, steel, and glass. A table in the center of the room was littered with papers, jars, and even a few stuffed animal specimens. The lab also housed a furnace and an oven. A row of hooks had been placed above them, and from there hung small shovels, tongs, and pincers.
One could easily discern how chaos was taking hold of the lab. Melquíades had helped keep it all tidier. It wasn’t that her father was sloppy, but his moods fluctuated. At times he would enter into periods of frenzied activity, then languish in a listless state. When lethargy and melancholy attacked him, he spent his waking hours sprawled in the great chair in the library, gazing out the window, or in bed, staring at the oval portrait of his wife.
At such times, Carlota, despite loving her father beyond all words, felt her heart twist with bitterness because the way he gazed at the portrait and that other way his eyes seemed to skim over her told her clearly in his heart his dead wife and child reigned supreme.
She was a poor substitute.
But her father’s lingering melancholia had given way that month, perhaps in anticipation of this visit or for some other reason. He was, at any rate, almost giddy as they stood in the laboratory and he spread his arms out, pointing out several pieces of equipment and then motioning for them to go toward a red velvet curtain that had been set at the other end of the room.