The City of Palaces

by Michael Nava

  “That seems rather unkind,” she ventured.

  “He did not intend unkindness,” Miguel replied. “My father is a man who loves humanity but who has small use for actual human beings. That is simply his way. I think I may be the only person in the world he loves. Certainly, he is the only person in the world who knows me fully and, knowing me, accepts me.”

  The shadow of his sadness fell between them like a cloud crossing the sun. She had not pressed him again about the source of his melancholy and he had not been any more forthcoming.

  “Come,” he said. “This reminiscing has made me hungry for the sweets of my childhood. Let me take you to the Dulcería de Celaya for their suspiros and camotes.”

  When Miguel sent word his father had died, Alicia’s first thought was, Now he is alone with his secret. She had immediately written a letter expressing her sympathy and asking if she might attend his father’s funeral service. His return note thanked her and told her his father had requested no service. Ten days had passed. He had not called on her and her discreet inquiries revealed that he had not been to see his patients either. That morning she had written a second note, the one she held, expressing her concern for his well-being, but even as she wrote it she felt a growing sense of dread. She decided to deliver it herself.

  La Niña was scandalized. “It is not customary for the woman to chase after her suitor because he fails to appear for tea.”

  “I worry that his father’s death has unsettled him.”

  “Of course it has unsettled him, but if he is like most men, he grieves in the cantinas and the brothels and neither is any place for you. Leave it, Alicia. He will return.”

  “He is not like most men,” Alicia replied.

  “Your faith in his virtue is touching,” her mother said dryly.

  “It’s not his virtue that concerns me,” she said, “but his sorrow. His father was his only family. He must feel completely alone now. I only want to assure him that he is not.”

  “Really, Alicia, you sound like a lovelorn child,” La Niña said. “Do you want to repel him? Let him be.”

  Her mother’s words gnawed at her as the dirt roads gave way to the cobblestone streets of an old middle-class enclave in the impoverished colonia. Her inexperience with the ways of courtship often left her doubtful about the nature of their relations. His visits were relaxed and they spoke comfortably of his work and her charities, but the very amicability of their meetings seemed to imply friendship only. She asked her sisters whether she should behave differently toward him now that he was her suitor.

  “Well, sister,” Nilda told her, “your face is not really suited to the virgin’s blushes is it? I suppose you could try some business with a fan, although at your age it might just look as if you were swatting at flies. I always told my own daughters to let the man do all the talking, but mother says you blabber away when he comes to visit, so it’s too late for that. Next time he comes, put on your best jewels, dear, and try to talk less.”

  Leticia suggested she take him into the garden and strike poses among the rose bushes and the lavender. “Let him imagine you as a flower,” she said. “You might want to start wearing a veil when he visits.”

  “You could play the piano for him. You do that beautifully,” Eulalia suggested. “If that fails, low lights and stronger drink than tea might inspire him.”

  She dismissed these stratagems as absurd because each required her to pretend she was someone other than she was and, more relevantly, someone other than Miguel knew her to be. In the end, she applied perhaps slightly more perfume and sat away from the harshest light. She reminded herself that friendship was also a precious form of affection and took pleasure in looking at his strong body and handsome face.

  The carriage came to a stop before a two-story building painted a faded rose. The driver, Alfredo, climbed down and helped her out. In the past, when she had come for Miguel to take him with her on her charitable rounds, he had awaited her outside. She, of course, had never entered his apartment, but Alfredo, who had delivered her first note of condolence to him, knew where he lived.

  “His habitation is on the second floor,” Alfredo said. “I will take you there.”

  She followed him through an iron door that led into a small whitewashed foyer and up a tiled staircase bordered with a wrought iron railing. On each step was a clay pot of red geraniums, which received light from an opening in the ceiling.

  They came to a door just off the staircase. The driver banged his fist on it and called, “Señor Doctor, it is Alfredo from the house of the Gaviláns. I have come with Doña Alicia. She wishes to speak to you. Please, sir, out of courtesy to the gracious lady, open the door.”

  Decisive footsteps crossed the floor within and then Miguel stood before her in a collarless shirt and dark trousers. She smelled alcohol on his breath, but his green eyes were clear and alert. He was freshly shaved and his thick chestnut hair was perfectly groomed except for a stray lock that fell on his forehead. He had never looked so handsome, she thought. But he was also very pale and beneath his eyes were the dark circles of sleeplessness.

  “Alicia,” he said thickly. “What are you doing here?”

  Her heart sank—her mother had been right. He had merely been grieving in the solitary way of men. She felt like a fool.

  “I was concerned for you,” she said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” She touched Alfredo’s arm. “We will go now.”

  “No,” Sarmiento said. “Please. Won’t you come in?”

  The driver tried to enter before her, but she placed her hand on his shoulder and said, “Wait in the carriage.”

  Alfredo, aghast, said, “Doña Alicia, you are an unmarried woman. You cannot be alone with this gentleman in his habitation.”

  “The gentleman is my friend,” she answered, “and he has suffered the loss of his father. What we have to say to each other must be said privately.”

  “But La Niña, what will she say?”

  “I will deal with my mother,” Alicia replied.

  “Sir?” the driver beseeched Sarmiento.

  “I will leave the door partly open and you can wait here. If you hear anything that seems even slightly amiss, you have my permission to enter.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Miguel stepped aside. “Doña, my humble house is your house and I am at your service.”

  She entered. The apartment was a single room divided by an arch. In the front was a sofa and matching chair upholstered in horsehair; between the couch and chair was a lacquered black Chinese trunk inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Along one wall was a long table covered with carefully arranged stacks of books, journals, notebooks, medical apparatus, and a brass microscope. The walls were hung with anatomical charts of parts of the body. Through the arch she saw a narrow bed, a large plain pine armoire, and a stand with a brass basin and pitcher set. Everything in the apartment was immaculately clean and orderly. It was like looking into his mind, she thought, and then, on the Chinese trunk, she noticed a bottle of brandy, a glass, and a revolver.

  “Would you like some tea?” he asked. “Or a glass of Jerez? There is a bottle somewhere.”

  “No, thank you,” she said, removing her hat. “May I sit?”

  “Of course,” he said, leading her to the couch. He remained standing, looking uncertain. “I apologize for my dwelling. I live plainly, a habit from my student days.”

  “Your rooms are charming,” she said. Indicating the brandy and the revolver, she added, “I feel that I have interrupted you.”

  He sat beside her and picked up the revolver. “This was my father’s gun. He carried it with him when he accompanied Don Benito Juárez in the war against the French invaders. I found it beneath his pillow when I discovered his … his body. An old soldier’s habit, I suppose, although he was no soldier, really. He was a scientist, a healer, a democrat.” He paused to collect himself. “In every way, thoroughly admirable. I will never be even half the man he was.” Without as
king her permission, he poured brandy into the glass and drank it.

  “You told me once he was the only person who knew you fully and that you were the only person he loved.”

  Miguel sighed. “Yes. It is strange to feel orphaned at my age, and yet I do. No one will ever know me as my father did.”

  “We are all known completely to the one who created us, Miguel,” she said. “I am often comforted by the words of the psalm that say, ‘Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as day, for darkness is as light with you.’”

  “I am an atheist, Alicia, as you know. My darkness is not illuminated by a supernatural light.” He swallowed some brandy. “That is why I have decided.” He faltered, then drew a deep breath. “I have decided I can never marry. I cannot bring my darkness into your life.”

  “Is that why you have not been to see me?” she asked softly. “Because you wish to break things off between us?”

  “I do not wish it,” he said. “I have no choice.”

  They sat for a moment and then she placed her hand on his. “I will accede to your decision, but not without knowing why. This darkness of yours, tell me its cause and let me understand so we can part as friends.”

  He finished the brandy. He sighed convulsively, as if he were about to sob, grasped her hand, and said, “When I finish, you will not wish even to be my friend. Nonetheless, I will tell you so that you will know you are blameless.”

  He stood up and paced the floor as he spoke. “My youth was not a credit to my family. I was heedless and self-indulgent, a disappointment to my father in my studies and in my deportment. I was expelled from the medical school for drinking and gambling, but even that disgrace was not enough to change my ways. I persisted in dishonoring my father’s name.” He paused for a moment and when he continued, his voice was filled with shame. “There was a girl, Paquita, employed as a maid in my father’s house. I led her to believe that I was in love with her to lure her into my bed. After I had taken her virginity, I turned my back on her. A sordid story,” he said, glancing at her, “but not an uncommon one for men of my class. In this case, however, she became pregnant with my child. When she told me, I panicked. I persuaded her it was best for both of us that the child not be born. I believed that my medical training would be sufficient to—” He stopped in his tracks. He looked at her. “I have never told this to anyone. Only my father knew.”

  Unsteadily, she said, “Please, continue.”

  “I promised her if she let me abort the child I would marry her. I took her to a room at a filthy inn to perform the procedure. But I had vastly overestimated my ability. She began … to bleed. She bled and bled. I could not stop the hemorrhaging.”

  “Oh, the poor child!”

  “I ran through the streets covered with her blood to my father’s house. I told him everything and begged him to come and save her life. He came, but too late. She and the child—I could see it would have been a boy—were dead.”

  He crumpled into a chair and picked up the brandy, drinking from the bottle. “My father sent me away that very night to Veracruz to await his instructions.”

  “That is why you left the country?”

  He nodded. “My father told Paquita’s parents the truth. He also told them he had sent me away and promised I would never return to México. He told me he would give me one final chance to make a man of myself before he cut me off completely. I went to Heidelberg, where I entered the medical school. After Heidelberg, I went to Paris to continue my studies. I lived like a monk, trying to atone for my crime. Trying to forget. But every morning I woke up in a foreign city, I remembered. I begged my father to let me return home, but as long as Paquita’s parents were alive, he felt obliged to keep his promise to them. It was only after they were both gone that he wrote me and told me to come home.” He glanced at her and then away. “I have discovered, however, there is no home for me. Like Cain, I am marked with guilt and I carry it everywhere I go, now and until the end of my life. As long as my father was alive, there was someone to shoulder part of my burden, but now that he is gone its weight crushes me.” He looked at her. “I am a murderer, Alicia. I killed that girl and our child. There is no way to atone but with my own life.”

  A chill passed through her for, in that moment, she understood what she had interrupted. “You cannot atone for one murder by committing another.”

  “Not murder, execution.”

  “Your despair is selfish!” she exclaimed. “If you wish to atone, atone with your life, not your death. You have seen how this city overflows with the suffering of the poor, like the girl you betrayed. Sacrifice yourself to their need. Forget yourself by serving them.”

  “Like you, Alicia? Is that what you do?”

  She breathed deeply, then exhaled. “I once sat before the mirror and pitied myself, lamenting the husband I would never have, the children I would never give birth to. I took to heart the cruel barbs that were directed at me and the expressions of disgust and let them hurt me. Doing so changed nothing, not my face, not my life. So I chose to step away from the mirror and to pretend not to hear or see the contempt. It brought me relief, but it was not until I lost myself in the work of aiding others that I felt peace. I am not the little plaster saint I am made out to be by the women in my circle who pity me for being a disfigured old maid. I am merely trying, like everyone else, to find some happiness in this world. The path that most women take was closed to me, so I had to find another. The first object of my charity has always been myself.”

  “I have never met anyone like you,” he said. “No one so kind, so filled with love. You’re right, Alicia, you’re not a plaster saint. You’re—”

  “Stop, Miguel, please.” She looked away. “We are speaking of you. What you did to Paquita was monstrous. Your guilt is justified. But you are not unforgiveable. God forgives you, forgives you even your disbelief. I forgive you, Miguel. It does not matter if we never see each other again. Know that in my heart you are and will always be cherished.”

  Overwhelmed by sentiment, she rushed from the room before he could reply. In the carriage, she pulled the curtains closed and wept, for the girl and the child Miguel had killed, for Miguel himself, and lastly for her own loss. She could not imagine, having told her his secret, he would want to see her again. She could only hope it was enough for his peace of mind that he had been able to tell her.

  The following evening while she sat with her mother at tea, a maid entered with a calling card. It was Miguel’s.

  “The gentleman asks if he may enter,” the maid said.

  “Yes,” Alicia said. “We are happy to receive him.”

  After Alicia left his rooms, Sarmiento had gone up to the roof of his building and stood there, revolver in his hand, smoking a cigarette. The sun set on the city’s roofscape, the parapets, domes, bell towers, terraces and balconies, water tanks, clotheslines, and commercial signs, and the shadows of night seeped softly through the ancient streets. The last cries of the street vendors were silenced by the explosion of bells from the city’s churches tolling the hour. He crushed the cigarette stub beneath his heel and made his decision. He emptied the revolver of its single round. Before Alicia had arrived, he had spun the loaded chamber twice, held it to his head and pulled the trigger. He had gone up to the roof uncertain of what he would do, but as he watched night coming on over his native city, he knew he had not come home, after so many years in exile, to kill himself. He considered what Alicia had told him. In her world of faith there was sin, forgiveness, and redemption overseen by a great, white-bearded monarch in the sky. In his world the sky was empty, the dead were without the power to forgive, and the living were lacerated by guilt for their offenses. He did not believe in atonement. But, he did believe, as his father had told him, that life needed purpose, not to store up treasures in heaven, but simply to justify the air he breathed. He would find his purpose. He would stay alive.

  In the days that followed, Sarmiento considered his strengths, sk
ills, and temperament and sought to match them to a project to which he could devote himself. One of the city’s newspapers put on its front page a long story about the various public health plagues that beset the burgeoning city—an inadequate sewage system, the ever-present threat of flooding, contamination of food and water, the abject slums of the pelados that were incubators of disease, public drunkenness, malnutrition. The article reminded him of the suffering he had seen as he had accompanied Alicia on her visits to her godchildren. He kept in mind her words to him to sacrifice himself to the poor, to those, like Paquita, dwelling in misery, exploited, or forgotten. He could not save her life, but perhaps he could save the lives of others.

  He knew he could not do this work as Alicia did, engaging the poor as a friend and confidant. His was not a warm and generous nature. Like his father, he was a scientist and a rationalist, detached, intellectually curious, and methodical. He must find a position that would allow him to apply those talents. Through the offices of his senator uncle, Jorge Luis’s father, he secured a letter of introduction to the director of the Board of Public Health from Don Porfirio himself.

  The director’s offices were located in the municipal palace on the west side of the Zócalo. Sarmiento entered a small anteroom where a male secretary took Díaz’s letter and disappeared into an office behind a door engraved with the words “Doctor Eduardo Liceaga, Director of Public Health.”

  A few minutes later, the secretary came out and said, “The director wishes to know to what address your pay should be sent.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Sarmiento said. “What about my duties?”

  The secretary frowned, excused himself, and retreated to the director’s office. When he returned, he said, “Doctor Liceaga wishes to speak to you. Please go in.”

  Liceaga’s office was both spacious and cluttered. There were glass-faced cabinets filled with specimen jars, bookshelves crammed with books and journals, tables laden with official-looking documents bearing the board’s insignia. Covering an entire wall were engineering drawings and photographs of the massive project currently under construction to drain the city of excess water and waste through a system of canals, dams, and tunnels. On another wall was a schemata of the city’s sewer system and a map of the city divided into eight numbered sectors. On the wall behind the director’s desk was a chromolithograph of Louis Pasteur and a framed copy of the first page of his 1876 address to the French Academy announcing his discovery of microbes as the source of contagious disease. A large window looked out upon the red-and-brown city and, rising serenely beyond it in the blue distance, Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl—the tragic lovers who in Aztec myth had metamorphosed into volcanoes. Rows of mounted butterfly specimens hung on either side of the window, and there was a collection of butterfly nets in a corner.