by Robert Hough
— We’re here, the driver said.
He got out and opened her door. Violeta stepped out before a huge pink-stucco mansion with turrets and fountains and rose gardens and tennis courts and marble Roman columns and a swimming pool the size of a Corazón de la Fuente city block. There was also a miniature zoo stocked with dozens of Texan deer and antelope, all of which, upon hearing the closing of the car door, gawked at Violeta while vacuously chewing. The driver pushed open tall wrought-iron gates bearing the initials JRB.
— Follow me, he said, and they walked along a path leading through a topiary garden. The bushes, Violeta noticed, had all been groomed to resemble animals that Brinkley had reportedly seen in the jungles of South America: tigers, rhinoceros, various monkeys, anaconda snakes. They arrived at a pair of arched oak doors that had been stained the same light pink as the rest of the house.
The driver knocked. The door was opened by an elderly Mexican gentleman in a butler’s uniform. Everybody smiled, and the driver said he would wait in the car. He then disappeared behind a magnolia pruned to resemble a hippopotamus.
— Buenas noches, said the butler. — I am Ricardo. This way, por favor.
He led her towards a room so lofty that Violeta’s immediate reaction was to crane her neck and gaze at the distant ceiling, which had been decorated with a fresco of chubby, trumpeting angels. Ricardo gestured towards a high-backed chair and said Por favor, señorita. Violeta continued to gape; neither her eyes nor her mind was sufficiently trained to absorb the opulence before her. The chandeliers, the leaded etched windows, the gleaming floors, the antique furniture, the grand piano — all of it melded, producing a single, overwhelming impression.
The butler left and Violeta waited in the cool, cavernous room. She sat with her back straight, hands folded in her lap, wondering what sort of dinner might be served in a house like this. Probably something that came under a dome of glass, like she’d seen in movies detailing the life of México’s aristocracy.
The doctor entered, beaming.
— So there you are, he said in Spanish. — How kind of you to join me.
— You have a beautiful house, doctor.
— Oh, it’s nothing. Would you like some champagne?
— Sí, Violeta said, as though champagne were something she enjoyed most weekends.
Brinkley turned. Violeta listened to his footsteps dwindle in volume until they stopped being sounds altogether. The doctor returned with Ricardo trailing along behind. Grim-faced, the butler was carrying a silver tray bearing two shallow, wide-brimmed glasses. He lowered the tray before Violeta. She took a glass. Brinkley took the other. When he made no motion to sit down, Violeta hopped to her feet, accidentally spilling a few sticky drops on her dress.
The doctor held up his glass, looked her in the eye, and said: — To Rose Dawn, high priestess of the Sacred Order of the Maya.
They touched glasses, and Violeta let her first exposure to alcohol pass over her lips. — It’s delicious, she said.
— I’m glad you like it. Later, if it would please you, I could show you my wine cellar. I say, you must be famished.
— No, she said. — Well … I suppose I am a little hungry.
— Good! Come. I’ll show you to the dining room.
They set off, along hallways and beneath archways, passing a succession of grand rooms. Violeta peered in each one, feeling simultaneously dazed and oddly at home. The first was stocked, from floor to ceiling, with books; Violeta wished she could go in there and read them all, thinking this would then give her the knowledge and the sophistication of the doctor himself. The next room was filled with animal heads, each mounted on the wall and looking expressionless; this room unnerved Violeta, and she was glad to pass it. The third room was the strangest of all, in that it contained a huge table covered in green felt that had, around its edges, six holes the size of apples. It occurred to her, as it had in the past, that gringos were a different breed, with mores and customs that never ceased to mystify her.
They came to a chandelier-lit room housing a long, narrow table that could have sat about three dozen dinner guests. At the far end of the table, next to a bay window overlooking the estate’s zoo, were two place settings and the opened champagne bottle, submersed in a bucket of ice.
— But, doctor, there are only settings for two.
Brinkley glanced towards the end of the table, as though this news surprised him as well. He turned to her, looking so unaccountably regretful that Violeta worried she might have said something wrong.
— Ah, he said. — My wife.
He paused long enough that Violeta began to wonder whether this was the only explanation he would offer.
— Violeta, he said sheepishly. — Back home in North Carolina, we have a thing called a shotgun wedding. Might you know what that is?
— No, doctor. I’m afraid that I don’t.
— It’s when the father of a young woman decides that her relationship with her young man demands the sanctification of God. That is where the shotgun comes in. The young man, I’m afraid, has little to say in the matter.
— I think I understand.
— It was a long, long time ago. We were scarcely older than you are now, my dear. My marriage, I confess, has been a charade for some time now. She has gone to live with her dear old mother in Richmond.
— You mean … you are preparing to divorce?
— Yes, Violeta. That is the long and the short of it. But please, we have a wonderful meal to look forward to. Let’s talk no longer of unhappy subjects. Please, have some more champagne. There’s vichyssoise on the way.
Vichyssoise turned out to be a cool potato soup that both refreshed Violeta and left her tongue feeling enlivened. She drank a little more champagne, such that by the time their salad arrived — a mixture of clover and a seedless dark purple fruit she was pretty sure didn’t grow in the northern hemisphere — she had found the courage to ask the doctor the thing that most intrigued her.
— Dr. Brinkley?
— Sí, Violeta.
— I was just wondering about your … your Compound Operation. I was just wondering if it, you know, is like Rose Dawn, or whether it actually …
The doctor chortled so exuberantly that a morsel of violet fruit emitted from his mouth, arced through the air, and landed on the surface of a medieval oil painting.
— If it really works? Ah, my dear Violeta, you really are a delight. And don’t worry … that is exactly the question that surfaces with the greatest regularity. And I must admit it is a fair question, efficacy being the concern foremost in both the mind of the public and the mind of a responsible physician. Well, I’m here to tell you, young lady, that the proof is in the pudding. I myself have had the full Compound Operation four times, and I am proud to say that I have the vigour of a man half my age. I’d also like to add that only the goats in question suffered any deleterious side effects.
Brinkley beamed in a such a pronounced manner that Violeta couldn’t help but follow suit.
— You see, Violeta, the male reproductive system and the female reproductive system are like …
He gazed out the window towards his zoo, which had turned a pale indigo under the moon.
— They are like deer and antelope. They are related, and yet completely different, animals. Without the full and able functioning of the reproductive system, the male of the species withers and dies. This is a medical fact. Without the able functioning of the prostate, the male suffers a diminishment of the secretions responsible for energy, for acute mental functioning … even the ability to experience joy. It has been scientifically proven that only the surgical implantation of a billy goat’s reproductive apparatus will remedy this. In fact, I am now indicating the Compound Operation for all men past the age of forty-five, not just the ones suffering from marital impediments. What I tell people is this: you can’t be a stallion when age has turned you into a gelding. Do you understand, Violeta?
— Sí, she said, shocked
at some of the things he had just told her. At the same time, she felt mildly thrilled. In México men did not talk of such things with women, particularly with women who were only nearing adulthood. Struggling not to blush, she already felt as though she was a long, long way from her ravaged little village on the wrong side of the Río Grande.
— Why, said Brinkley, — I have patients who are on their fifth and even sixth Compound Operation. Would they do that if their needs weren’t being satisfied?
Brinkley’s face then fell, and he looked at the surface of the table with the rueful expression of someone who had travelled a great distance and had not found what he was seeking.
— But I’ll tell you, my dear. They say that America is the land of freedom, of laissez-faire, of capitalism unbound. Well, that’s true if you’re a Rockefeller. But if you’re from a poor mining town in North Carolina, there are forces to keep you at your station. There is a structure that wants to keep you there. The hounding that I get … Just this morning I received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service in which they asked for a most unfair settlement. One that would severely compromise myself, and the foundations I support, were I to follow its recommendations to the letter. And don’t get me started on the American Medical Association, who’d rather run me out of town than acknowledge my success. Do you know why, Violeta? Because my achievements upset the apple cart. My accomplishments, they believe, take too big a slice of the pie. Am I making any sense?
— Sí, she said. — I think so.
Suddenly Brinkley’s smile returned. — But enough with that! It was dreary of me to bring it up. Please forgive me. We are here, after all, to celebrate your success. Should we have some more champagne?
The doctor had another glass while Violeta only pretended to sip at hers — she’d begun to feel a little light-headed, and she realized she would get drunk if she continued imbibing in earnest. With the tenderloin in morel jus that followed, the doctor served a red wine he referred to as claret. Though it was delicious, she took only a few prudent sips.
Meanwhile the good doctor asked her questions about herself. She told him about her schooling, about growing up in a poor Mexican town on the border, about her desires for the future. She even found herself opening up about the losses that the revolution had brought to her family, an admission that brought her to the verge of tears yet at the same time left her feeling unburdened. By the end of dessert, a jiggling white substance called blancmange, she found that she was taking notice of the doctor’s features. For some reason she had never noticed how high his cheekbones were, or how soft his skin was, or how his eyes were a mysterious shade of bluish grey; her father’s eyes, she suddenly realized, had not been dissimilar. She felt her skin flush. When she thought of all that Brinkley, a campesino from an apparently poor place called North Carolina, had accomplished, she felt as though anything was possible for her own life. This possibility made her feel emotional, and sufficiently vertiginous that she swayed a little in her chair.
Brinkley noticed this. — Is everything all right, my dear?
— Sí, she said.
— You look a little …
— No, no, doctor. I feel wonderful. It’s just that I’ve had a long day, and I think the big meal has made me a little tired.
A look of deepest sincerity passed over the doctor’s features.
— I wonder if we should call it an evening.
— Sí, she said, her regret perhaps too expressively written on her lovely features. The doctor escorted her to the door himself, and said goodnight with a handshake and yet another expression of gratitude. She was then placed in the limousine that had brought her there and returned to the home of her mother, who naturally had waited up for her daughter so as to pepper her with questions about Brinkley, his wife, and their lavish American lifestyle across the river. Violeta answered some of the questions truthfully, some of them falsely, and some in accordance with the grey area that exists between the two.
The following week, when she accepted another invitation to dine with the doctor in his mansion — The place is so big and lonely, Violeta, and I find you to be such wonderful company — Violeta told her mother that the doctor was now hosting dinner parties every Saturday night for the staff of XER. At the end of that evening she was again delivered back into the arms of her mother, only to return to the doctor’s mansion the following week.
That evening, having acquired a fondness for the taste of champagne, she imbibed far more than a single glass, only to discover that the beverage had a magical quality: it somehow conjured feelings of elation along with a bemused acceptance of the world and its foibles. At the end of the night Violeta found herself discussing art with the doctor, something she would never, ever have attempted with the loutish, ignorant males of Corazón de la Fuente (even Francisco, though undeniably clever, wouldn’t know a da Vinci from a Raphael).
— To see Diego Rivera’s mural in the National Preparatory School! she told him. — What I would give!
The doctor smiled and leaned across the candlelit table. — Would you like to know something?
— Sí, claro.
— I own a Rivera. It’s a minor work, I admit, painted when he was unknown and his art wasn’t so burdened with revolutionary themes. Nonetheless I could show it to you.
— Oh, Dr. Brinkley, I would love to see it.
— It is upstairs, Violeta. In one of the chambers. Would you like to follow me?
She peered at him, heat rushing to her cheeks. On the one hand she was conscious of the dictates regarding the propriety of women and the thousand and one lectures that her mother had given her regarding the satyr-like desires of men. On the other hand was the unaccountable fact that the empty, mournful feeling that assailed her at all times mysteriously lessened when she was in the presence of this courtly foreign, and significantly older, doctor. She closed her eyes and listened to the peacefulness of her heart; in this way she prolonged the tortured delight that was this moment.
Finally she opened her eyes. Just as she had suspected, the doctor was still there. Beneath the table, she pinched the fleshy part of her right leg. When she failed to awaken, she smiled bashfully and said: — Ay sí, doctor. Of course.
{ 20 }
TWO NIGHTS LATER, FOLLOWING A DINNER OF PORK stew with rice, Francisco Ramirez went out. He headed towards Violeta’s, a task that involved navigating around entire dirt-smudged families that seemed to be camped out in every space sufficiently large to host a flattened cardboard box. Francisco, with graver matters on his mind, was more or less oblivious. Over the past week or so he had sensed a change in his relationship with Violeta, a slight cooling that could very well be a product of his imagination. Her face did not brighten upon seeing him the way it used to. More often than not she looked a little sheepish, an already gnawed fingernail travelling to her mouth, her eyes flitting from left to right. She now seemed impatient with his invitations to have a euphemistic walk in the desert, and the last time she had assented, her kisses seemed as though they were coming from someplace other than her broiling latina soul.
Yet as he approached Violeta’s door — an approach accompanied by the howling of feral dogs — he also knew that Violeta’s reticence could all be a conjuring of his imagination. Having had a boyhood that coincided with a decade of revolution, it was true that he sensed darkness hiding around every corner. He knocked on the door, and suffered an eternity of waiting. Malfil Cruz answered.
— Ay, Francisco! she exclaimed. — How are you?
— I am fine, Señora Cruz.
— And is it me you’re here to see, or is it my lovely daughter? Francisco grinned and looked at his boot tips.
— I might have known, Malfil jibed. — No time for an old woman? Wait here. I’ll fetch her.
Malfil stepped back into the gloom of the house. Francisco listened to her footfalls grow fainter and then cease altogether. These sound effects were followed by a pair of deliberately lowered voices. Malfil returned.
— I hate to tell you this, Francisco, but Violeta has a big test tomorrow.
— She does?
— I’m afraid so. She needs to study. She’s so busy these days, the poor thing barely has time for her schoolwork.
— She wouldn’t be free for a minute?
— She doesn’t want to lose her train of thought … Don’t worry, Francisco, just come by this time tomorrow.
Francisco left, his disappointment flavoured with an emotion that he didn’t understand at first, but that he came to realize was a disorienting fearfulness: it felt as though the packed-earth street might not be there to catch his next step, or that the sky above were losing patience with the sun and on the verge of telling it to go warm some other planet. With a shake of his head he dismissed this sensation, attributing it to an excitability that seemed to be the primary side effect of infatuation. The following night, at the exact time prescribed by Malfil Cruz, he arrived at Violeta’s door. Again Malfil answered, and again she retreated into the lye-scented shadows in order to summon Violeta. This time he heard her having a low, impatient conversation with her daughter, a discussion that terminated with Malfil spitting Está bien, Violeta! Then, just as he heard Malfil begin her return to the entranceway, Francisco noticed something of a disturbing nature resting on their dinner table. Hurriedly — for Malfil was a woman who bolted, as if forever late for a train — Francisco focused his eyes so as to pierce the low light, and realized he was looking at a bouquet of scarlet roses that must have numbered in the dozens.
