The City of Palaces

by Michael Nava

  She shook her head. “Not at all, Miguel! The wonders of the body you have shown me only deepen my belief because who could have made these ingenious things but God?”

  A little boy of four or five in a calico shirt and droopy drawers ran up to Alicia and said, “Feita, the doctor wants you.”

  “Luis!” Reina scolded. “You must call her Doña Alicia.”

  “It’s all right, Reina,” she said. “He only repeats in innocence what others say about me.”

  “I have never called you la fea,” Reina said. “To me you are beautiful.”

  Alicia smiled and patted the girl’s head as she rose to go to her husband. She knew the people in the parish called her la fea carinosa—the kind but ugly woman—just as they called Miguel el guapo doctor—the handsome doctor. But while his nickname was simply descriptive, hers, she understood, was affectionate and, softened by the diminutive feita, intended as an endearment, and she held it as such.

  Miguel had carefully chosen the room he used as his clinic from all the other empty rooms that lined the garden and had been storerooms and priestly cells when the church was in its prime. This room, he explained to her, was sheltered from the wind and dust and had the largest window to let in the light. He had personally supervised its cleaning and even now the room smelled of carbolic acid, which, he had told Alicia, killed the tiny microbes that were invisible to the eye and the carriers of all disease. Try as she might, she could not help but picture these microbes as diabolitos—tiny demons—but she refrained from mentioning this to Miguel.

  He was with a young girl—fifteen or sixteen, like Reina—who held in her arms a lace-wrapped bundle.

  “Miguel, you wanted me?” she asked.

  “The girl only speaks Nahuatl. Will you ask her about the baby?”

  Alicia turned to the girl and asked, “What happened to your child, dear?” and then translated her answer. “She says her baby stopped crying two days ago. She doesn’t know what’s wrong. She begs for your help.”

  “Let me see the child,” he said, and she translated his response.

  She watched as the girl carefully unwrapped the lace coverings—which she realized were baptismal garments—to reveal the wizened, lifeless features of an infant. The girl fell to her knees and lifted the child above her head, presented Miguel with a tiny corpse—the skin of its fingers gray beneath delicate fingernails—and murmured, “Give my baby breath.”

  Alicia caught her gasp before it could escape her lips and glanced at Miguel, whose face showed as much distress as he allowed himself with a patient.

  “Please tell her to stand up,” he said.

  Alicia addressed the girl gently and she rose from her knees. Miguel lowered his head and put his ear to the infant’s face and then took its pulse.

  “It’s dead,” he replied. “Tell her to bury it.”

  Alicia translated his response with soft words of sorrow and sympathy. Silently, the girl rewrapped the corpse in lace and slipped out of the room.

  “I was harsh. I’m sorry,” he said when she had left.

  “It was shocking.”

  “Shock is a luxury of laymen,” he said. “Doctors are not permitted to be shocked, but it was because it was an infant and it called to mind …” He looked at her. “Well, you know what it called to my mind.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know. I will go into the church and pray for her and her baby. Won’t you come and sit with me and rest?”

  He shook his head. “I have to find Cáceres. There’s been an outbreak of smallpox in La Bolsa, and we are going out to try to persuade the local people to be vaccinated against the disease. It hasn’t been easy. Their witchdoctors have been telling them that I want to infect them with poison.”

  She knew that what he called witchdoctors were the local curanderos who doctored with herbs and magic and who resented his presence because he charged nothing for his services.

  “I could come,” she said. “I could talk to the people.”

  “No, the priest and I have our little show where I inject him with saline to show that no harm will come from the vaccine. Poor Cáceres is beginning to look like a pincushion.” He added abruptly, as if startled by the thought, “You could have been vaccinated. Why weren’t you?”

  “Oh, my parents would never have allowed Don Ignacio to take the liberty of injecting anything into my body,” she said. “It was not the custom.”

  “Custom is the enemy of progress,” he said. “Especially in our poor benighted México. When you pray for that child, pray also for an end to the ignorance that keeps our people enslaved to custom.”

  “Miguel, what was wrong with the man with the lump on his throat?”

  “It’s a problem with his thyroid,” he replied. “It’s a butterfly-shaped organ at the base of your throat. It makes a secretion, a kind of fluid called a hormone that helps control the body’s metabolism, the rate that we burn the calories we extract from our food, like coal for a furnace. Sometimes the thyroid becomes diseased and makes too much of the hormone or not enough and so there is too much heat or not enough. I do not know from which this man suffers, but the goiter is interfering with his sleep and breathing and ability to swallow. I will have to cut it out.”

  “Is that dangerous?”

  “No, I think I can perform the surgery here. But I may need your help.”

  She paled at the thought of it. She had helped him when he had had to extract a rotten tooth even though the sight of blood made her dizzy and the patient’s pain was hard to bear, but then she observed how much better the patient felt afterward. Cutting into the flesh was something different, though.

  “Will there be much blood?”

  He grinned at her. “Not if I do it correctly. I must go. Cáceres and I will be on foot so you take the carriage home. Leave before dusk. These streets are not safe for you after the sun sets.” He kissed her cheek. “Good-bye, my dear.”

  The interior of the church of San Francisco Tlalco was suffused with the mellow glow of Argand lamps and votive candles and scented with copal, the ancient incense of the Aztecs. She never entered it without being aware, more than in any other church, that its form was that of a ship, the nave like a keel surrounded by thick walls and a vaulted roof. For here, she felt, was a refuge from the roiling waves of the city that lay just beyond the church’s heavy wooden doors. Padre Cáceres had told her the church was founded by Franciscans when the parish was still a village outside the city limits. Over the centuries, the church had ministered to the descendants of those first converts and they had cared for it lovingly. Generations of neighborhood artisans had kept fresh the floral pattern of intertwining roses and marigolds painted on the humble plaster walls—the roses for Mary and the marigolds for Tonatzin, the mother goddess of the Aztecs. When Padre Cáceres had explained this to her, she asked whether it was not heretical to permit the symbols of the pagan religion to persist in a Christian church. He replied, “Tonatzin was a gentle goddess who did not demand human sacrifice but loved the humble common people. Mary has taken many forms, daughter, and who is to say that she did not come to the Indians in the form of Tonatzin even before her son arrived on these shores?”

  Above the altar was a gilded retablo with five niches that held plaster statues of the patrons of the church. In the center was Jesus, not agonized on the cross but attired in simple linen robes with his arms outstretched to embrace his people. Above him, in the niches to the right and the left were two representations of his mother: Mary as La Dolorosa, the Mother of Sorrows, and Mary as the Virgin of Guadalupe. In the two niches beneath Jesus were Saint Francis and Saint Clare.

  Alicia loved that three of the five figures were female. It seemed to her that their femininity permeated the manner of worship in the church. The harsh emphasis on sinfulness that she heard elsewhere in the city’s churches was absent in Padre Cáceres’s homilies. Instead, he spoke of fallibility and forgiveness and the passionate, unchanging and ever-present love of Jesus for hi
s people whatever they did and in whatever circumstances they found themselves. At the end of each Mass, before the final blessing, he always reminded them that while Moses had given the Hebrews ten commandments, Jesus had promulgated only two: “Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Children, that is the whole of the Gospel.”

  As she had predicted to Miguel, Alicia’s sisters were horrified that she had chosen to marry in a church in the slums of the city. Her mother, surprisingly, accepted her decision with equanimity. “San Francisco Tlalco is a venerable church,” La Niña said, overriding Nilda’s fierce protests. “Your ancestors undoubtedly contributed money toward its construction. Of course your sister should marry there if she likes.”

  “Well, I for one will not risk being robbed in the streets or infested with lice in the church,” Nilda said. “I will not come.”

  La Niña fixed her with a basilisk look and said coldly, “You will come. You will all come.”

  On the evening of the wedding, the small church was filled with la gente de sangre, the bluebloods, who knelt in their French silks and English wools on the worn tiles that usually received the scabby knees of the poor. Outside, a line of police officers formed a cordon between the gleaming carriages of the guests and gawkers from the barrio who had never seen such a display of polished wood and beribboned horses. Inside, waiting for the ceremony to begin, Alicia agonized over her decision to wear white. Her mother had insisted, rejecting her scruples.

  “Mother, how can I appear before the altar of the Lord in the white of virginity when he knows I am not a virgin?”

  La Niña fanned herself with a mother-of-pearl fan she had inherited from her mother and replied, “Phew! God is a gentleman. He will keep your secret.”

  “But Miguel also knows.”

  “Miguel is even more of a gentleman than God. Of course you will be wed in white. We will not have a scandal.” She snapped shut the fan. “Besides, Daughter, do you really believe you are the first lady to miraculously recover her virginity on her wedding day? At least there won’t be men in the church laughing into their hands as you walk down the aisle.”

  The gown she had chosen as her wedding dress was ivory silk damask with narrow sleeves and a high neck. The hem and sleeves were trimmed in lace that matched the lace jabot. She planned to wear a bustle but not a train. Her mantilla was to be fixed to her hair with a crown of white roses from the palace’s garden.

  Her mother and her sisters Eulalia and Leticia went with her to her fitting. When Eulalia saw the dress, she laughed. “Alicia, dearest, are you marrying Jesus? It’s so modest. You have a lovely neck and shoulders and breasts. Why do you hide them under all this fabric?”

  “They are for my husband to see, not the world.”

  Leticia said, “The dress is lovely, but what jewels will you wear with it?”

  “None,” Alicia replied. “It isn’t proper to make a show of wealth in that humble church.”

  “Nonsense,” said La Niña. “You will wear the diamond necklace and bracelets, and must you wear a crown of flowers when we have perfectly good tiaras gathering dust in the vaults of Saturino’s bank?”

  “Mother’s right,” Leticia said. “You are no ordinary woman, Alicia. Why pretend to be?”

  “Because I want to be,” she said. “An ordinary woman with a husband and children.”

  “Well, darling,” Eulalia said, “on the stroke of midnight after your wedding you can become La Cenicienta again, but until then you must be the princess in the glass slippers. Your wicked sisters insist.”

  Alicia laughed. “Very well, wicked sisters, I give up. You may dress me as if I were a doll, but I draw the line at glass slippers.”

  Eulalia’s French dressmaker replaced the long sleeves with short puffed ones, and dropped the neckline, which she bordered with white rosettes adorned with pearls. She replaced Alicia’s short lace mantilla with a floor-length one made of silk tulle. It was in this gown and veil, ablaze with diamonds and a pearl-encrusted tiara of yellow gold that had belonged to her great-grandmother, that she married Miguel. At the dinner afterward at the Casino Español, he murmured, “You look like a queen, Alicia. I feel completely unworthy of you.”

  “This was my sisters’ and my mother’s doing,” she said. “At midnight I revert to La Cenicienta.”

  “You have never been La Cenicienta,” he replied and kissed her.

  It was at that point, she remembered, that his cousin Jorge Luis had risen drunkenly from his seat at the table, knocking over his chair, and insisted on declaiming a poem he had written for the bride and groom. She recalled it was filled with images of swans and figures from Greek mythology, rambling and pointless, and that at the end he compared himself—the poet—to Narcissus who fell in love with his own image and wasted away waiting for his love to be reciprocated. He began to sob. Miguel excused himself and led him away. When he returned, she asked, “Is your cousin going to be all right?”

  “He’s drunk. I put him to sleep in the library. He’ll be fine. I apologize for this disruption. He fancies himself a poet, but, as you heard, his aspirations are perhaps greater than his ability.”

  “I’m sure he meant well,” she said.

  At the end of the night, they returned to the palace, to their apartment, which was now also furnished with Miguel’s few possessions. A maid undressed her and she put on the chiffon negligee that was part of her trousseau. She went into the bedroom, where the servants had lit lamps and candles and filled vases with roses. Miguel was already in the big four-poster canopy bed. He reposed on a pile of pillows. The lamp-light shone on his naked chest.

  “Are you nervous?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, approaching him. “For many reasons.”

  He kissed her hand. “I think I know all of them and I assure you, my dear, I will not fail to treasure you in every way. Come to bed.”

  She went around the room, extinguishing lights, until the darkness was impermeable. She slipped off her gown and into bed, where the shock of his body—naked, muscled, hairy, burning—made her gasp. His hands stroked her body, and she was glad that the disease that had pitted her face had concentrated its venom there. He leaned in to kiss her breasts, touch her nipples with the tip of his tongue as his fingers delicately opened her.

  “Your body is lovely,” he murmured.

  Encouraged, she touched him, running her hand across the plated muscle of his chest and stomach with its ridges and contours, down through the rough hairs until she held his rod in her hand, hard and heavy and hot.

  “Ah,” he said. “Ah. Yes, take it in your hand and stroke it, up and down, like this.”

  He folded his big hand around hers and he moved it up and down. She felt a drop of fluid drip from the head of his rod.

  “And now you,” he said. He maneuvered them so that his head was between her legs and she could feel his breath as his tongue touched the tip of her opening and then plunged inside. Her body trilled with pleasure.

  “What … what is that?” she managed to murmur.

  “I love this taste,” he said. “This taste of woman. Does it please you, Alicia?”

  “Oh, yes, Miguel.”

  After a few minutes of his tongue moving inside of her, she felt herself flooded with sensations that were like an amalgamation of every good thing she had ever touched, tasted, or smelled, but more intense because its source was not outside of her, but within. And in the midst of it, suffused with bliss, she saw Anselmo’s face above hers, his features tightened with the joy of release. But it was Miguel’s body she felt pressing against her, the hair of his chest wiry against her breasts.

  He entered her where she was still damp with his saliva and her own wetness. He pushed harder until he was completely encased in her flesh and he groaned with pleasure. His mouth grazed her nipples until they were hard buds that leaked a physical delight that coursed through her body, blunting the
pain she felt from his penetrations. As he began to move, the pain subsided. His strokes became deeper and faster; she felt the sweat pour from his chest, and then he reared up and with a shudder he thrust one final time, pressed his lips together, and released his seed with an explosive breath.

  And then it was over. He tumbled to her side, his breath hard and rapid.

  She lay on her side and he pressed against her. “Thank you,” he murmured.

  Afterward, long after he was asleep, she lay awake. She could not deny her body’s responsiveness to his touch, but this was different than it had been with Anselmo. Theirs had been a playful, mutual exploration of each other’s body: sweet, funny kisses; licks and nibbles; and only then the shattering pleasure of release. By contrast, Miguel had performed upon her, as if she were a passive instrument for his need. He had not been unkind or inattentive. Indeed, he had been more attentive than she, with her scarred face, had a right to expect. But it had felt as if it were—she searched for the word—a duty, an obligation on his part. He had not once kissed her face during the act, nor even touched it. Was this, then, the only way he could bear the intimacy of the marriage bed? Tears streamed from her eyes, and she felt an old pang of self-pity for her condition that she thought she had rid herself of long ago. This once, she thought, she would let the tears flow, the sorrow well in her heart, but never again. For she was married, and to a good man, and if his revulsion was the price she must pay for her good fortune, she must humble herself and pay it.

  A few nights later, she was awakened by the porter Andres tapping at the door and calling her name. She rose in the darkness, dressed in her robe, and greeted him at the door. The porter stood with a lamp in his hand and a worried expression on his face.

  “Doña, the doctor’s cousin is here and he demands to see him.”

  “Jorge Luis?” she said. “Where is he?”

  “In the sala,” he said.

  “Take me to him.”

  She followed the porter into the sitting room, where she found Jorge Luis, disheveled and soaked with sweat, pacing the Persian carpet, his cigarette dropping ash and embers into it. He stopped short when he saw her, but his body trembled.