Days of the Dead (8 page)

“Money is all that Don Fernando understood,” replied Lupe. “Money and the whip. Señor Enero, your friend had good cause to kill that one—it was well done.”

One of the other women laughed, and made a remark in Nahuatl; Lupe laughed in her turn. “Cihu laughs,” she explained to January, “at Señor Guillenormand the chef. When they brought poor Don Fernando’s corpse here to be washed, Señor Guillenormand flung up his hands and cried that there would be no dead man brought into his kitchen. He was like a nun at an inn when there is only one bed and a party of muleteers come in wanting to share it. The harvest was done, you understand, Señor, and all the store-rooms around this courtyard are full up with corn. So we had to carry Don Fernando back into the main court, and lay him out and wash him in one of the weaving-rooms.”

And she chuckled, her black eyes sparkling with the humor of one who had seen much death. She wore not the loose
huipil
but the chemise and skirt of the
china poblana,
like the mestizo women of the capital. She had the authority of one who has earned command—headwoman of the village, January guessed. He had met her African counterpart in the quarters of a dozen plantations up and down the lower Mississippi, and recognized her at once.

“What did Fernando look like,” asked January, squatting beside the women and folding his big arms around his knees, “when they washed him? What did his features look like? And his body?”

“His face was swollen.” Lupe’s gaze unfocused momentarily, as if she looked through a window back at the past, into that lamplit store-room. Her speech was clearer than Yannamaria’s—she had more of her teeth, for one thing—but like the older woman’s, her accent was thick, a rough patois that was barely Spanish. “Swollen and gorged with blood. His mouth was open and his tongue poked out like a hanged man’s, but there was no bruise upon his throat. I know that
mariposa
valet of his, Werther, has said that his master was alive when he found him and said,
The
Norte
has poisoned me.
But his flesh was cool, like a man who has been some hours dead.”

“Did he have bruises on his back?” asked January. “On the backs of his arms and the backs of his legs?”

“You mean as men do when they lie dead on the floor?” The dark eyes sparkled mordantly into his, like those of a village child reeling off Bible verses to disconcert the patronizing visitor who calls her illiterate. January returned her small, grim smile and nodded.

One of the younger girls asked, “But why would Werther lie? He loved his master. . . .”

The woman Cihu made another remark in Nahuatl, accompanied by a gesture that spelled out exactly how dearly she thought Werther had loved Don Fernando. All the women but Yannamaria laughed; the old woman only shook her head and said, “He will be back, Don Fernando. And he will want blood.”

“
Mesdames!
Enough of this levity!” A man bustled in from the kitchen door, neat and pudgy and clothed—January couldn’t imagine how he managed it in the kitchen’s incandescent heat—in full European morning dress of longtailed coat, trousers, and stock. His mouth was small and pinched beneath a close-clipped gray mustache, and his eyes, even at halfway across the yard, had the expression of one who spends three-quarters of his day snapping
Mesdames! Enough of this levity!

January got to his feet and crossed to the kitchen door, saying as he did so in his best Parisian French, “I beg you will forgive them, sir. It is I who had some questions to ask of them.” He held out his hand. “I am Benjamin Janvier, of New Orleans—you must be M’sieu Guillenormand, the artist responsible for that truly remarkable feast last night.” The women had gone back to scraping at their
metates,
heads down in dutiful silence. January thought about the amount of corn that had to be ground daily for tortillas—for how many people, counting the servants and vaqueros?—and set himself to distracting the cook from this annoyance. Those women had labor enough.

“After five days of food at the posting inns and two weeks of shipboard messes, I can only thank you, sir, from the bottom of my heart.”

Guillenormand, who had initially regarded him with a suspicious glare, fluffed like a mating pigeon. “It was nothing, nothing—no more than one owes one’s own sense of what is right.” January half expected him to strut in a little circle and coo.

“On the contrary, sir,” said January, guessing from the man’s stance, accent, and dress that it would be impossible to lay it on too thick, “even in Paris I doubt I have encountered such a subtle hand with
marchand de vin.
”

Had he paid Don Prospero’s cook a thousand dollars for it, he couldn’t have gotten a more detailed account of the preparation, serving, and timing of the celebratory feast on young Fernando’s wedding-eve. Pigeon sausage, glacéed ham, filets of young rabbit (“Ah, M’sieu, allow me to conduct you to the hutches—true rabbits from France, not these lean beasts here that are more goat than coney!”), celery
à l’espagnole,
and spicy garlic ratatouille. One of January’s biggest joys in life was to listen to almost anybody talk about whatever brought joy to their hearts, so he was able to say things like “Can you obtain a heat even enough for a good flan from a wood fire such as they have here?” and “Where did you find butter enough to sauté the truffles for the ratatouille, if they have no dairy herds in Mexico?”

As he suspected, such questions precipitated an excruciatingly minute account of the preparations (in order to get the true French flavor of butter, Don Prospero maintained a small herd of Guernseys under constant guard by three vaqueros), which left January in less and less doubt that any portion of the feast could have been poisoned, either in the kitchen or between the kitchen and the
sala
where it was served.

“Don Prospero is a maestro where food is concerned,” effused Guillenormand. “A true connoisseur! Since I have come into this country—I, a student of the great Carème himself!—I have seen such liberties taken with cuisine that it would reduce you to tears, M’sieu, yes, tears!
Okra
in the place of good honest French aubergines!
Beans
served with
poulet à la Reine
! Chocolate in the sauces—faugh! Tortillas—even at the tables of wealthy men, M’sieu,
tortillas
in the place of bread! It would turn an honest Christian’s stomach! Don Prospero is the only man who understands! It is not ready,” the chef added as the wan and wilted Doña Filomena appeared in the kitchen doorway.

By this time January was sitting backwards on a rush-bottomed chair just inside the doorway, while Guillenormand whipped up sugared icings for breakfast pastries and checked the slow steaming of the milk heating for chocolate and
café au lait.
Though the kitchen was of the ramshackle construction of every Mexican
cucina
January had seen so far—he could see daylight between the thatch—it was scrupulously clean, the surfaces around the wide hearth and the bank of stewholes tiled and scrubbed, the pans stacked on shelves, and every utensil laid out exactly where the cook could reach them on starched, embroidered white cloths. Knife-box, spice-boxes, sugar-safe, and coffee-tin all had locks; there were at least four French-style water-filters ranged along a high shelf, their big pottery jars glazed bright blue and yellow, like flowers. The sand-box was huge; January reflected that Don Prospero must bring in sand for scrubbing pots by the ton.

Did he import that, too, from France?

Doña Filomena vanished like a startled blackbird. Guillenormand went back to stirring the cocoa, which presumably had been Valentina’s duenna’s goal.

“Do you have trouble with theft?” asked January with a glance through the kitchen door at the women. “With this many servants coming and going . . .”

“M’sieu, you do not know! I cannot tell you of my sufferings!” Which meant, of course, that the cook could and would, and January put on his most interested expression and leaned forward.

“People in and out of here all the time—Wipe your feet before you come in from the yard, you ignorant donkey!” Guillenormand whirled from the stewhole where he worked, and the unfortunate kitchen-boy shied as if he’d been shot at. “You would think it a backstreet
pulqueria
! And what
indios
want with butter, or white sugar, or white flour, I cannot imagine, but you may believe I keep a close eye on everything that comes in or goes out! Indeed, when there is a great feast, as there was last night, I will order Hinojo to walk with each course across to the
sala
to make sure that those lazy vaqueros who hang about all evening in the courtyard do not pinch the sugar, which they love like children. I am not finished, Madame, and I will send Joaquin to you when I am!”

It was Señora Lorcha in the doorway this time. She put her hands on her hips and snapped, “And how much longer is my daughter to wait for her cocoa, while you stand gossiping with this . . . this upstart
negro,
eh?” She barely threw January a glance. “You think because Don Prospero is a gourmand who fancies he’s too good to live like other people on tortillas and beans that you can dictate to the members of his household?”

“And are you, Madame, accustomed to living upon tortillas and beans?” inquired the cook haughtily, switching to the Spanish in which she had addressed him. “I had no idea.”

Señora Lorcha’s face turned bright red, as well it might, thought January. He’d watched the mother of the lovely Natividad scrupulously minding her manners at table last night and guessed by the obvious care she was taking, and by the way she watched her daughter’s every move, that her claims to gentility—and to more than one or two rather distant Spanish ancestors—were as false as the paste diamonds in her hair. “You are insolent, Señor!”

“I am also busy.” Guillenormand set his spoon down in the cocoa-pot. “But I am at your service, Madame, for however long you wish to prolong this conversation instead of permitting me to finish your precious daughter’s refreshment.”

Señora Lorcha hissed, “Poisoner!” and turned on her heel—January’s eyes cut sideways, fast, to the cook’s face, in time to see it blanch and freeze. The next second Guillenormand forced a manufactured chuckle and a rather stiff gesture of scorn, and January asked,
“Ponzoñero?”
He deliberately mispronounced the Spanish word, as if it were unfamiliar to him.

“Oh.” Guillenormand cleared his throat and chuckled again. “Merely a spiteful word the lower classes have for Frenchmen, M’sieu.”

“What was that all about?”

“The lovely Natividad’s breakfast cocoa.” He resumed stirring, and January wondered whether the man’s self-consequence would run to leaving a piece of skin on the top of the cocoa when it was finally sent in, or whether his pride in perfection would not permit such a lapse even to vex his enemy. “A hag,” the cook added, shaking his head. “A veritable
entremetteuse—
you saw the girl at dinner last night! It would have served the old cow right if her daughter had married Franz—pardon,
Don Fernando. . . .
” He put an ironic twist on the Spanish name. “He would have sent her packing in quick order, back to the slums from which they both come.”

“But would he actually have married the . . . the young lady?” January asked. “Somehow she does not seem to me . . . but then, I know nothing of the family, nothing of the custom of the country. . . .”

“M’sieu,” said Guillenormand solemnly, raising his ladle, “I swear by the Blessed Name of Liberty—the only true Deity of the Universe—that I have never seen such a household as this one. But as for young Franz, once his elder brother was dead and he understood that the inheritance of lands wider than many German principalities lay within his grasp, he would have wed anyone his father ordered him to wed in spite of all the glares and puffing and comments of that pretty valet of his. Santa Anna’s generals are all borrowing money—some of them at forty-eight percent!—to outfit their men for the march to Texas. Don Fernando would not have been the first man in history,” he added, “to marry a midden that he might have the muck.”

“You must have been very shocked at his death.”

“M’sieu, after eighteen years in this household, nothing can shock me. Name of God,” he exclaimed as yet another form darkened the kitchen door, “what must a man do to . . . ? Ah.” His voice softened as he saw, along with the somberly-liveried servant who clearly appeared to be somebody’s valet, a boy of about eight, dressed in a neat black jacket and breeches with a spreading collar of white lace. “Maître Casimiro. Maître Casimiro Fuentes, may I present to you M’sieu Benjamin Janvier, a physician of the city of New Orleans.”

January rose and shook the boy’s hand. The child seemed a little nonplussed, but greeted him in good French and used the polite “vous” rather than the “tu” by which even children in New Orleans addressed slaves. As the son of Señora Josefa, the only blacks the child would have encountered in Vera Cruz would have been servants, or the former slaves on the sugar plantations of the lowlands.

The cook went on. “I’ll have your uncle’s tisane in moments, Maître Casimiro. . . .” As he spoke, he went to the hearth, and with a long rod tilted the kettle at the back of the fire, to pour steaming water into a small pot. This he carried to the table, where half a dozen trays were ranged, each bearing a fine-china chocolate-pot and cup, and a plate of iced pastries. “Joaquin!” he roared, and the rangy kitchen-boy previously addressed as “ignorant donkey” jostled past the child and the valet in the doorway. “Continue to stir that milk—gently!” The cook had switched back to Spanish from the French in which he’d addressed Casimiro. Apparently Don Prospero adhered to the French and English mode of making chocolate with milk rather than the Mexican preference for spices and water.

“And if I find so much as one shred of skin upon it, I will make sure that no shred of skin remains upon your worthless back! Don Anastasio—and Madame Isabella—when she is well enough to accompany him here—prefer tisane in the morning,” he added to January in French. “Quite sensibly, as Don Anastasio knows. It is best for the health. Did your uncle ask for anything specific, Maître Casimiro?”