The Black Witch of Mexico (11 page)

“Well I guess that’s why I stopped going.”

“So what do you believe in now?”

“I’m an agnostic, I guess.”

“You don’t believe in anything?”

“Do I have to?”

“But of course. My mother was a great believer--in the spirits, in art, in love. That is why she was so passionate. It was what people loved about her.”

“It sounds like you miss her very much.”

“
Como no
. Would you not miss your mother if she was not here?”

He didn’t answer her. He knew the answer, but he felt disloyal saying it aloud.

“My mother was an artist,” Jamie said. “You see these paintings on the walls? They were hers.”

He looked around the room. “She painted all these?”

She nodded.

Most were oils, tableaus from Mexican history. Their style reminded him of Rivera. But there were portraits too. She used strong colours: magenta, ochre, leaf green, sandstone.

She showed him the painting he had seen when he first came in; it faced the hallway entrance, a nude with her hands on hips. “A self-portrait. Not what you think from a minister’s wife, right?”

“She must have been a remarkable woman.”

“She came from a very wealthy family in Coyoacan, and she went to the
Preparatoria
, it’s one of the city’s most exclusive schools. Her parents of course wanted her to marry into the right family. Instead she married a poor Baptist pastor, and a
gringo
. Can you imagine what spirit she must have had?”

“A spirit like yours, I guess. Is this you?”

“She painted that when I was seven.”

“You have a ribbon in your hair.”

“I think I look very pretty. It was finished on my seventh birthday. I still remember how she made me sit still for her for hours every day while she painted it. It was torture.”

“Where did she learn to paint?”

“She taught herself. She wanted to go to the Academy of San Carlos - the same academy of Rivera - but her father said that painting was a waste of time for a woman.”

“But she went ahead and did it anyway.”

“You can never let a man tell you what to do. Men don’t know anything.”

He looked back at the painting, a small girl staring quizzically up at the artist from a low stool, with a childlike look of innocence and longing.

Then he looked around at her. She was frowning at the painting, a finger to her lips, one arm across her breast supporting the other, and for a moment he was in an art gallery in Back Bay.

She caught him watching her. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes you were. I could see it in your face.”

“I was thinking that you are least like a minister’s daughter of anyone I have ever known.”

“Have you known a lot of minister’s daughters?”

“You’re the first.”

“Well there you are, you should get out more. It is too early to eat dinner, let me show you a little more of Mexico City. There’s a house I want you to see. It has a ghost.”

Chapter 26

She showed him the carefully manicured plaza with its bushes trimmed in the shape of birds. There was a band shell at its centre. It was almost evening and the tourists were emptying out. A large Turibus tried to squeeze through the traffic in front of the church. The street vendors started packing up their Oaxacan wood-carvings and their paintings of Mexican wrestling heroes.

“Tomorrow you won’t be able to move here,” she said. “All the tourists come for the Saturday market.”

They strolled past the colonial church and along the cobblestones of San Angel under the purple flowering jacarandas. There were mansions with ancient wooden doors and tiled accents. Paint flaked from the high stone walls leaving layers of blue, grey and red that charted the pueblo’s three-hundred-year-old history like the rings on the bark of a tree.

They reached another serene little square she said was the Plaza de los Arcángeles. There were long stone benches surrounded by greenery and stone arches, a tiny shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe in the bole of a tree.

“That’s the white house,” she said pointing to a colonial hacienda with wrought iron balconies on the other side of the square. “It’s very famous around here.”

“Why?”

“The story is that a woman died of a broken heart in there waiting for her lover to return.”

“You can’t die of a broken heart.”

“Must you always make a diagnosis of everything? Of course you can die of a broken heart.”

“It’s a pump, a muscle, that’s all. It can break down in lots of ways but not because of personal relationships.”

She stared at him for a long time. “I feel sorry for you,” she said eventually and got up and kept walking.

* * *

She had set up a table and two ornate metal chairs in the cobblestone courtyard. It was a perfect night; an Aztec blood moon rose over the city. He watched her head across the patio with their drinks; she had the cool bearing of an aristocrat, he thought.

He felt as if he were cheating. Elena had turned him over for another man so why should he feel like he was betraying her? He had been single for six months, this was his chance to get over her and move on.

“So what did you think of the Sonora market?” shesaid.

“It was ... interesting.”

“A diplomatic answer. Anyway, we’ll see what you think after you’ve been in Mexico for six months. There are spirits everywhere.”

“Tequila.”

She made a face. “Have you heard the weeping woman of Mexico? She is our most famous spirit,
la Llonora
, she represents everything that was killed when the Spanish came. Some people say they’ve seen her, late at night, running under the colonnades near the Zocalo, crying for all the children she lost.”

“Some homeless woman.”

“Perhaps. Others think she’s the ghost of an old Aztec woman with a baby in her arms.”

He smiled and shook his head.

“You’re so very sure about everything, aren’t you?”

“Ghosts, spirits, it’s all so fanciful. Where do you stand on all of this?”

“I’m like you, I think the world is probably dull and predictable. But unlike you, I hope I’m wrong.”

“Dull and predictable?”

“Now you are offended again.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. You always pout when you think I’m criticizing you. Here, drink your
mojito.
It’s very good, I grow the mint myself.”

“So you believe in ghosts?”

“You know, even good Christians believe in ghosts. If they didn’t, why would they go to places like Lourdes to pray to the spirit of a young girl for miracles? What is the difference?”

“You believe in miracles as well?”

“You don’t?”

“I’ve been an ER doctor for five years and I’ve seen plenty of miracles but none that would defy rational belief. Cutting someone’s chest open and massaging a heart back to life, that’s miracle enough for me.”

“I’ve had this argument with my father. He doesn’t believe in witches either. So, I say to him, what’s the difference between Bernadette - who he’s named after, by the way - and one of the witches in the Sonora market? You can believe in a dead witch but not a live one?”

“And what does he say?”

“He says I’m too clever for my own good.”

Adam laughed. “Or as my father would have said: ‘you have well reasoned arguments.”

“But I cannot change his mind, like I cannot change yours.”

He smiled. “No.”

“That is because westerners use logic not to build an argument but to support a prejudice.”

“You should have been a lawyer.”

“God no, I’m far too honest.”

“So you believe in witches, but you would never go to a witch yourself?”

She made a face and shook her head.

“Because they’re all con men and tricksters?”

“Because some of them aren’t.”

“Explain.”

“Did you ever read the story of
Faust
? He got what he wanted but because of the way he got it, he didn’t want it any more. I wouldn’t go to a witch because the Devil plays tricks, because you can wish for something you’re not meant to have and even if you get it, it just goes bad. So when it comes to the heart, you have to let other people choose even if you think they are going to choose wrong.”

“Did your husband choose wrong when he left you?”

“What do you think?”

“I think it was a mistake of titanic proportions.”

She smiled and stared at him over the top of her glass. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Just stating an obvious fact.”

She looked pleased with that. He noticed there was a bougainvillea blossom caught in her hair. He reached across the table and gently removed it. Her eyes opened a little wider at this intimate gesture.

“I should fetch dinner,” she said.

* * *

She brought out guacamole and
chile rellenos
. The main course was a Rabalo fillet cooked in
hoja santa
. There was blackberry mousse for desserts. He could not remember the last time he had eaten so well.

“That was unbelievable,” he said.

“Make the most of it,
gringo
. They don’t eat like that in the real Mexico. Corn and beans from now on.”

He sipped his wine, stared at the silver turquoise coral hung strategically between her breasts. Her eyes were bright. The wine was having its effect.

Bougainvillea cascaded from the wrought iron balcony, the sound of crickets rose and fell. “You expect me to seduce you,” she said.

“No, of course not.”

“Of course you do. Handsome, single doctor it must happen to you all the time.”

“You don’t have an edit function, do you?”

“I say whatever’s on my mind, don’t you?”

“It would get me into too much trouble. To be honest, I didn’t even think you liked me.”

“Because I challenge you?”

“Because ever since I got here you’ve treated me like...” He shrugged.

“You see, I’m going through a messy divorce. I don’t want anything casual anymore, especially with a guy who’s not over his ex.”

“I understand. It was a beautiful dinner, I really wasn’t expecting anything else.”

“Go on, say it.”

“Say what?”

“I
’m lonely, you’re lonely, what would it hurt?”

“I didn’t even think that.”

“Of course you did.”

He was surprised by this turn in this conversation. He had thought she might throw herself at him, then kick him out; and something casual was all that he could probably handle.

She acted tough but there was something vulnerable there. Instinct told him to be careful.

“There’s something I want to show you,” she said.

She led him back inside the house, to the study that led off the living room. She opened the door and turned on the light. There was an easel set up in a corner of the room, near the window, and on it was a half finished painting, a portrait of a woman. Brushes and paints were laid out on a small table to the side.

A photograph had been pinned to a corner of the canvas, a black and white studio portrait of Jamie herself. The photographer had captured that same rapt expression she had when she was looking at the study of herself when she was a child.

The self-portrait was only half completed; the pencilled outline was still partly visible, just half of the face was finished, the strokes tentative. “What do you think?”

“Well,” Adam said, ‘you are full of surprises.”

“I’m not very good. I don’t have my mother’s talent. But I don’t get much time to practice, I’m so busy at work.” She ran a finger across the photograph on the corner of the easel. “They say a photograph captures the soul. I like to think a painting does it better. I wonder if I can capture mine?”

She put a hand on his arm.

“It’s very good. Who else has seen this?”

“You’re the first person I’ve ever shown. I keep the door locked.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to be compared to her. That’s what I’m frightened of, that people will look at my work and then look at hers, and they will compare. They will say: ‘you’re not as good as your mother.” I suppose that’s my greatest fear, being compared to her and not being quite as good.”