Days of the Dead (6 page)

“I take it,” said Rose, “that matters did not work out that way.”

“No,” sighed Hannibal. “No, they didn’t. You see, the amorous Valentina . . .”

Within the
sala,
a rifle cracked. The next instant, the two gentlemen in European tailcoats burst through the door and pelted toward the stairs—January noted that one was fair and tall and the other dark and awkward-looking and taller still; both had mustaches and the fair one wore a monocle. Both ran like men who had long ago concluded that it was beneath their dignity to run and had recently changed their minds and were out of practice—they collided at the top of the stairs in a shower of notebooks, pencils, and high-crowned beaver hats, and nearly scratched each other baldheaded trying to be the first one down.

“Drs. Laveuve and Pichon,” identified Hannibal in the tone of a gamekeeper helpfully identifying various sub-species of pheasants for the uninitiated guest. “Pichon is one of the chief physicians at San Hipólito, the biggest hospital for the mad in Mexico City; Laveuve runs a private clinic for those unfortunate enough to be both wealthy and insane.”

“Piss-scryers!” howled Don Prospero, emerging from the
sala
with a rifle in his hands. “Clyster-jockeys!” In the courtyard, the fleeing medicos seized the nearest horses, scrambled awkwardly to the high-cantled saddles, and spurred through the gate, followed by the laughter and shouted advice of the vaqueros. Doña Imelda’s maids and valet, emerging from their rough little travel-coach, sprang back into it for safety, and Don Rafael looked as if he wanted to join them, but Doña Imelda only drew herself up in affront, and none of the other women—Natividad, Señora Lorcha, nor Josefa—even appeared to blink.

“I’m surprised at you, ’Stasio,” said Don Prospero mildly as Don Anastasio emerged from the
sala
door behind him and went to gather up the two Europeans’ dropped litter of notebooks and pencils. “Bringing in doctors to pick at me like a couple of
sopilotes.
You didn’t used to be so solicitous. What, you here, Antonio?” Don Prospero added as Santa Anna and his young aides came out behind Anastasio. “When did you arrive? And Conchita . . .”

“Papa.” Consuela gestured toward January, and he advanced to the group and bowed. “This is Señor Benjamino Enero, a surgeon of the United States, appointed by the British minister to look into this matter of Fernando’s death.”

The dictator’s dark, sharp glance took in January’s well-cut clothing, African features, and clean linen, and his dark brows arched in speculation. But Don Prospero merely waved and said, “No need for that, Conchita—though of course it is very kind of you, Señor Enero, and kind of Don Enrico Ward of England as well. But Fernando himself will tell us everything we need to know. Still, a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Señor.”

He turned eyes of chill Pyrenean blue, the heritage of centuries of aristocratic
criollo
inbreeding, on January. “Did you know that the surgeons of ancient Egypt were performing cataract surgery before Moses ever marched his Israelites forth from bondage? Surgery is true medicine, true healing, unlike those imbeciles. . . .” He gestured at the dust-cloud still hanging over the court, all that was left of the two mad-doctors. “My dear,” he added as the newly arrived guests emerged from the stairway—he strode past Don Rafael and Doña Imelda as if they were invisible, to clasp Natividad’s hands. Natividad sighed—to remarkable effect, her half-bared bosoms in their fluff of black lace resembling nothing so much as a blancmange set on a plate at a wake—and glanced smokily across Don Prospero’s shoulder to meet Santa Anna’s appreciative eyes.

“Hinojo!” bellowed Don Prospero, and a tall and surprisingly handsome major-domo appeared, clad in the fashion of the preceding century in knee-smalls, silk stockings, and a red satin coat. “Fetch out brandy to the
corredor,
and tell Guillenormand to prepare the
boeuf marchand de vin . . .
I believe it’s the
marchand de vin
you liked so much last time, my Eagle?” Santa Anna almost visibly fluffed his plumage at the flattering nickname. “Oh, run along, Ylario,” Don Prospero added, and made shooing gestures as the Capitán and his blue-coated men emerged from the
sala.
“No one wants you here pulling long faces and no one wants to hear about the Principles of Universal Law.”

“No,” said Ylario softly, his bitter eyes going to the President of his country. “I see that clearly, Señor.”

Santa Anna waved a gracious dismissal, as if the sun were not sinking and the fifteen supperless miles that lay between Hacienda Mictlán and the city were not haunted by bandits. Ylario bowed, but as his constables filed down the stairs and Santa Anna’s aides settled themselves on the rough chairs of Indian work to enjoy their brandy, Ylario himself walked along the shadow-barred arcade to the corner where Hannibal and Rose sat.

January saw him stop before them, and through Don Prospero’s booming introductions as the de Bujerios ascended the stairs, he heard Ylario say to Hannibal: “Do not think that you can hide behind your patron forever, Señor. Justice will not be cheated. And you will hang.”

Under the circumstances, one could scarcely expect dinner to be a scintillant meal, and it was not. Santa Anna, the Napoleon of the West as he modestly referred to himself a number of times, monopolized the conversation with an air of gracious condescension, speaking of his own exploits and glories—and of his upcoming march to slaughter the
Norteamericano
bandits disrupting the peace of Cohuila-Texas—and making sure nobody listened to anything else. The General’s young officers were clearly torn between being a reverent audience and flirting with Don Prospero’s angel-faced daughter Valentina, who did her best to distract them. She was, January guessed, sixteen, her fair hair and blue eyes attesting to pure Spanish blood. Clothed in black, with a pair of sapphire girandole earrings sparkling in the candle-light, she was seated next to the elegant Don Rafael, who graciously explained to her—and to the young officer on her other side—exactly why it was important for Mexico that the American colonists be evicted from Texas, and how much he had paid his tailor for his suit.

“The girl will have horns on him before the dishes from their wedding-breakfast are washed,” muttered Consuela at January’s elbow. “She was flirting with the priest at her First Communion, that one.”

In New Orleans—where he had for years earned his living playing the piano at subscription dances and private balls among the Americans, the French, and the free colored—one of January’s favorite pastimes had always been watching people.
I don’t see why white folks’ business is any affair of yours,
his mother would sniff—not that his mother wasn’t one of the best-informed gossips in Orleans Parish. But January was fascinated by what went on beneath the surface of all those polite exchanges: by who spoke to whom, and who snubbed whom; by glares and crossed glances and eyelids lowered above the sandalwood filigree of a fan.

Additionally, he realized, most of these people had been present at Don Fernando’s ill-fated wedding-feast. They had seen what went on. Was it beyond the realm of possibility that one of them had found some way to slip poison into Don Fernando’s food and shift the blame onto Hannibal’s bony shoulders?

He leaned over to Consuela. “How was the table arranged on the night of Fernando’s death?” he asked her quietly. “Who sat next to him?”

“It was almost exactly as you see it,” she replied. “Except that Franz, not my father, was at the head. Like my father, Franz would rather have Santa Anna sit at his right than Doña Imelda, who should by rights be there—” Doña Imelda, ignored on the dictator’s right, glared smoulderingly at her host, furious at the snub, as she must have been at the wedding-banquet, too. “Santa Anna would much rather sit at my father’s right—or Franz’s, that night—than at Josefa’s right . . . as who wouldn’t?” She nodded toward the foot of the table, where Doña Josefa presided over her single small hunk of bread, her coarse black dress smelling of unwashed flesh and unhealed abrasions underneath, and her emaciated hands folded in prayer.

So Franz had been flanked—as Don Prospero was flanked tonight—by his fiancée, Natividad Lorcha, on his left and President Santa Anna on his right. And judging by the way Doña Imelda and Josefa were glaring at the shapely young woman, he guessed that Natividad would have found it impossible to dump poison onto her intended’s plate undetected, had she so desired.

The food was served
à la française:
turtle
en croute,
game-bird hash, glacéed venison
à la Turque,
and a dozen removes cramming the long table, from which the guests helped themselves or were helped by the servants, rather than having the food on the sideboards and a footman behind each chair. January couldn’t imagine someone at table poisoning any dish without killing at least several fellow diners as well as Fernando.

The food was very much
à la française
as well: soufflés,
vols-au-vent, boeuf marchand de vin,
followed by Camembert cheeses and tartlets of pears and apples. Having dined marvelously at Consuela’s the night before upon an amazing variety of
moles
of chocolate and chilis, tamales sweet and savory,
ropa vieja,
and exquisitely stewed
axolotl
from the lakes, January could only shake his head over his host’s apparent contempt for anything that smacked of the food of the countryside. Even the penitential Doña Josefa ate white bread—albeit stale—not tortillas.

After supper the Indian servants kindled lamps on the
corredor,
and lit smudges of lemongrass and gunpowder in iron cressets to discourage the mosquitoes that rose up off the lake. The women repaired to the
corredor
immediately, while the men remained around the table, smoking cigars and listening to Santa Anna on the subject of the perfidies of the American chargé d’affaires—“Spymaster, rather! Hounding me with petitions and protests about what is none of his business—for every one of those so-called Americans in Texas became a citizen of Mexico before he took up land! Harboring dissidents within his household and doing all he can to stir up trouble behind my back . . .”

Hannibal, January noticed, had departed when the women did, and a few moments later he heard the sweet drift of violin music from the
corredor
outside, mingling with the voices of the vaqueros around their fire at the other side of the great central court, with the deeper notes of their guitars and Natividad’s light, empty-headed laughter.

When the men rose to join the women, Don Prospero caught January’s arm. “You are but lately come to Mexico, Enero? I could not but note your admiration for my splendid Coatlique.”

January had in fact not given the hideous image more than a glance. The breeze through the open door of the
sala
made the candle-flame waver over the image’s surface, giving the impression of uneasy movement to the snakes that made up her skirt.

“I dug her up among the pyramids that lie behind this house,” the old
hacendado
continued, his eyes, with their queer intensity, locked upon January’s face. “They’re a study of mine, you know. You must ride out with me tomorrow to look at the pyramids—they were infinitely wise, those ancients, and infinitely powerful. The priests used to wear masks made of the detached facial bones of former victims, exquisitely set with crystal and turquoise. Quite remarkable.”

“I should very much like to see them,” said January, and the old man smiled, a baring of teeth, like an animal about to bite.

“Ignorant folk seem to think the priests cut through the victim’s breastbone vertically to tear out the heart,” Don Prospero said. “But in fact they slit the thorax in a horizontal curve just beneath the curve of the rib cage and reached up under the sternum, something that can be accomplished in a few seconds.”

Past the Don’s shoulder, January saw Don Anastasio, on his way out the door, pause and look back. Concern and something like fear flickered in his dark eyes.

Out in the
corredor,
January had to smile at the way the women had divided themselves up, like liquids in one of Rose’s chemical experiments stratifying immediately and automatically, literally unable to combine. Rose sat beside Consuela, talking of stage machinery and how to make fire effects without burning the theater down. Natividad, January guessed, would probably have joined them had her mother permitted her to even acknowledge the presence of a woman of color in the long, furnished arcade, much less exchange words with her: not that Señora Lorcha was much less than three-quarters Indian herself, and her daughter close to that. But as Señora Lorcha snubbed Rose, Doña Imelda snubbed her, forming the nucleus of the
criollo
Spanish group of Josefa, Valentina, and Valla’s duenna. All puffed on their cigarettos with little golden clips and ignored the existence of the other women as they would have ignored flies upon the wall.

At the sight of Santa Anna’s aides—handsome young men in uniforms as gorgeous as their chief’s—Valentina rose, smiling. Doña Imelda was immediately at her side. “See, Vallacita, here is Rafael, your
novia,
” she said in a voice that carried a command to Rafael in no uncertain terms. Torn from his approach to Natividad, Don Rafael came over obediently to join his mother and Valentina on the leather-covered bench and launched into an informative account of the re-upholstering of his carriage. Valentina turned her face coldly away.

Down in the darkness of the courtyard, one of the vaqueros around their fire played a sharp quickstep
baille.
Hannibal’s violin caught the melody and turned it, weaving the air into a lilting barcarole and tossing it back into the shadows. The guitar replied, quicker now and challenging; the violin answered lightly, quadrupling each note into cascades of riffles. January heard the vaqueros around the fire laugh at the guitarist’s expression, and as the two instruments merged into a lively duet, he realized General Santa Anna had quietly joined him.