Сильвия Морено-Гарсия: Mexican Gothic

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.

“Merely an observation. Now tell me, Miss Taboada, do you believe as Mr. Vasconcelos does that it is the obligation, no, the destiny, of the people of Mexico to forge a new race that encompasses all races? A ‘cosmic’ race? A bronze race? This despite the research of Davenport and Steggerda?”

“You mean their work in Jamaica?”

“Splendid, Catalina was correct. You do have an interest in anthropology.”

“Yes,” she said. She did not wish to share more than that single word.

“What are your thoughts on the intermingling of superior and inferior types?” he asked, ignoring her discomfort.

Noemí felt the eyes of all the family members on her. Her presence was a novelty and an alteration to their patterns. An organism introduced into a sterile environment. They waited to hear what she revealed and to analyze her words. Well, let them see that she could keep her cool.

She had experience dealing with irritating men. They did not fluster her. She had learned, by navigating cocktail parties and meals at restaurants, that showing any kind of reaction to their crude remarks emboldened them.

“I once read a paper by Gamio in which he said that harsh natural selection has allowed the indigenous people of this continent to survive, and Europeans would benefit from intermingling with them,” she said, touching her fork and feeling the cold metal under her fingertips. “It turns the whole superior and inferior idea around, doesn’t it?” she asked, the question sounding innocent and yet a little bit mordant.

The elder Doyle seemed pleased with this answer, his face growing animated. “Do not be upset with me, Miss Taboada. I do not mean to insult you. Your countryman, Vasconcelos, he speaks of the mysteries of ‘aesthetic taste’ which will help shape this bronze race, and I think you are a good example of that sort.”

“Of what sort?”

He smiled again, this time his teeth visible, the lips drawn. The teeth were not yellow as she’d imagined, but porcelain-white and whole. But the gums, which she could see clearly, were a noxious shade of purple.

“Of a new beauty, Miss Taboada. Mr. Vasoncelos makes it very clear that the unattractive will not procreate. Beauty attracts beauty and begets beauty. It is a means of selection. You see, I am offering you a compliment.”

“That is a very strange compliment,” she managed to say, swallowing her disgust.

“You should take it, Miss Taboada. I don’t hand them out lightly. Now, I am tired. I will retire, but do not doubt this has been an invigorating conversation. Francis, help me up.”

The younger man assisted the waxwork and they left the room. Florence drank from her wine, the slim stem carefully lifted and pressed against her lips. The oppressive silence had settled upon them again. Noemí thought that if she paid attention, she would be able to hear everyone’s hearts beating.

She wondered how Catalina could bear living in this place. Catalina had always been so sweet, always the nurturer watching over the younger ones, a smile on her lips. Did they really make her sit at this table in utter silence, the curtains drawn, the candles offering their meager light? Did that old man try to engage her in obnoxious conversations? Had Catalina ever been reduced to tears? At their dining room table in Mexico City her father liked to tell riddles and offer prizes to the child who piped up with the correct answer.

The maid came by to take away the dishes. Virgil, who had not properly acknowledged Noemí, finally looked at her, their eyes meeting. “I imagine you have questions for me.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Let’s go to the sitting room.”

He grabbed one of the silver candelabra on the table and walked her down a hallway and into a large chamber with an equally enormous fireplace and a black walnut mantel carved with the shapes of flowers. Above the fireplace hung a still life of fruits, roses, and delicate vines. A couple of kerosene lamps atop twin ebony tables provided further illumination.