She wanted to talk to someone else about this because otherwise she was going to wear the soles of her shoes off walking back and forth in her room. Noemí slid the paper into her sweater’s pocket, grabbed her oil lamp, and went to find Francis. He had been avoiding her for the past couple of days—she assumed Florence had also given him the speech about chores and duties—but she didn’t think he’d slam the door in her face if she went to him, and, anyway, it wasn’t as if she was going to ask him for a favor this time. She simply wished to chat. Emboldened, she sought him out.
He opened his door, and before he could properly greet her she spoke. “May I come in? I need to talk to you.”
“Now?”
“Five minutes. Please?”
He blinked, unsure; cleared his throat for good measure. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
The walls in his room were covered with colorful drawings and prints of botanical specimens. She counted a dozen butterflies carefully pinned under glass and five lovingly painted watercolors of mushrooms, their names in tiny print beneath them. There were two bookcases laden with leather-bound volumes and books stacked on the floor in tidy piles. The smell of weathered pages and ink permeated the room, like the perfume from an exotic bouquet.
Virgil’s room had a sitting area, but Francis’s did not. She could see the narrow bed with a dark green coverlet and a richly carved headboard festooned with leaves, the pervasive motif of the snake eating its tail at the center. There was a matching desk, covered with more books. On a corner of the desk, an empty cup and a plate. That is where he must have his meals. He didn’t utilize the table in the middle of the room.
As she walked next to it, she realized why: the table was covered with papers and drawing instruments. She looked at the sharpened pencils, the bottles of india ink, and the nibs of pens. A box with watercolors, the brushes sitting inside a cup. There were many charcoal drawings, but others were inked. Botanical sketches, the lot of them.
“You’re an artist,” she said, touching the edge of a drawing showing a dandelion while she held the oil lamp with her other hand.
“I draw,” he said, sounding abashed. “I’m afraid I have nothing to offer you. I’ve finished my tea.”
“I despise the tea they brew here. It’s terrible,” she said, looking at another drawing, this one of a dahlia. “I tried my hand at painting once. I thought it made sense, you know? My father being in the dye and paint business, after all. But I was no good. Plus, I like photos better. They capture the thing in the moment.”
“But painting is the repeated exposure to a thing. It captures the essence of the object.”
“You’re poetic too.”
He looked embarrassed. “Let’s sit,” he said, taking the lantern from her hand and setting it down on the desk where he had already placed a few candles. Another oil lamp, very much like her own, larger, rested on his night table. The glass on it was tinted yellow, and it varnished the room in warm amber tones.
He pointed her to a large chair covered with an antimacassar showcasing a pattern of rose garlands and quickly shoved off a couple of books that he’d left there. He grabbed his desk chair, sitting before her and lacing his hands together, leaning forward a little.
“Do you get to see much of your family’s business?” he asked.
“When I was a kid I’d go to my father’s office and pretend to type reports and write memos. But I’m not so interested in that anymore.”
“You don’t want to be involved with it?”
“My brother loves it. But I don’t see why if my family has a paint company I should be in paint. Or worse: marry the heir of another paint company so we can have a larger company. Maybe I want to do something else. Maybe I have an amazing secret talent which must be exploited. You could be talking to a top-notch anthropologist here, you know.”
“Not a concert pianist, then.”
“Why not both?” she asked with a shrug.
“Of course.”
The chair was comfortable, and she liked his room. Noemí turned her head, looking at the watercolors of the mushrooms. “Are those yours too?”
“Yes. I did them a few years ago. They’re not very good.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“If you say so,” he replied, sounding dignified and smiling.
He had a plain face, mismatched even. She had liked Hugo Duarte because he was a pretty boy, and she appreciated a fellow with a certain slickness, who could dress well and play the game of charm. But she liked this man’s quirks and imperfections, the lack of playboy smarts coupled with a quiet intelligence.
Francis was wearing his corduroy jacket again, but in the privacy of his room he walked around barefoot and had donned a rumpled old shirt. There was something lovely and intimate when he looked like this.
Noemí was struck with the desire to lean forward and kiss him, a feeling like wishing to light a match, a burning, bright, and eager feeling. Yet she hesitated. It was easy to kiss someone when it didn’t matter; it was more difficult when it might be meaningful.
She didn’t want to make a further mess of things. She didn’t want to play with him.
“You haven’t come to compliment my drawings,” he said, as if he could sense her hesitation.
She hadn’t. Not at all. Noemí cleared her throat and shook her head. “Have you ever thought your home might be haunted?”
Francis gave her a weak smile. “That’s an odd thing to say.”
“I’m sure it is. But I have a good reason for asking. So, have you?”
There was silence. He slowly slid his hands into his pockets and looked down at the rug under their feet. He frowned.
“I won’t laugh at you if you tell me you’ve observed ghosts,” Noemí added.
“There’re no such thing as ghosts.”
“But what if there were? Have you ever wondered about that? I don’t mean ghosts under bedsheets, dragging chains behind them. I read a book about Tibet once. It was written by this woman called Alexandra David-Neel, who said people there were able to create ghosts. They willed them into existence. What did she call them? Tulpa.”
“That sounds like a tall tale.”
“Of course. But there is this professor at Duke University, J. B. Rhine, who is studying parapsychology. Things like telepathy as a kind of extrasensory perception.”
“What are you saying, exactly?” he asked, a terrible caution lacing his words.
“I’m saying maybe my cousin is perfectly sane. Maybe there is a haunting in this house, but it can be explained logically. I don’t know quite how yet, maybe it’s got nothing to do with parapsychology, but take that old saying: mad as a hatter.”
“I don’t understand.”
“People said hatters were prone to going crazy, but it was the materials they worked with. They inhaled mercury vapors when they made felt hats. You still have to be careful with that stuff nowadays. You can mix mercury into paints to control mildew, but under the right conditions the compounds give off sufficient mercury vapor to make people sick. You could have everyone in a room going mad and it’s the paint job.”
Francis stood up suddenly and gripped her hands. “Don’t speak another word,” Francis told her, his voice low. He spoke in Spanish. They’d stuck to English since she’d arrived at the house; she didn’t recall him using one word of Spanish at High Place. She couldn’t remember him touching her either. If he had, it hadn’t been deliberate. But his hands were steady on her wrists now.
“Do you think I’m mad like those hatters?” she asked, also in Spanish.
“Dear God, no. I think you’re sane and clever. Much too clever, perhaps. Why won’t you listen to me? Really listen. Leave today. Leave right this instant. This is no place for you.”
“What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”
He stared at
her, his hands still gripping her own. “Noemí, just because there are no ghosts it doesn’t mean you can’t be haunted. Nor that you shouldn’t fear the haunting. You are too fearless. My father was the same way, and he paid dearly for it.”
“He fell down a ravine,” she said. “Or was there more to it?”
“Who told you?”
“I asked a question first.”
A cold pinprick of dread touched her heart. He shifted away from her, uneasily, and it was her turn to grip his hands. To hold him in place.
“Will you speak to me?” she insisted. “Was there more to it?”
“He was a drunk and he broke his neck, and he did fall down a ravine. Must we discuss this now?”
“Yes. Because it seems you’ll discuss nothing with me at any time.”
“That is not true. I’ve told you plenty. If you’d really listen,” he said, his hands extricating themselves from hers and resting on her shoulders in a solemn motion.
“I’m listening.”
He made a sound of protest, it was half a sigh, and she thought he might begin to talk to her, but then a loud moan echoed down the hall, and then another. Francis stepped away from her.
The acoustics in this place, they were odd. It made her wonder why sound traveled so well.
“It’s Uncle Howard. He’s in pain again,” Francis said, grimacing, so that it almost looked like he was the one in agony. “He can’t hold on much longer.”
“I’m sorry. It must be difficult for you.”
“You have no idea. If only he’d die.”
It was a terrible thing to say, and yet she imagined it must not be easy to live day after day in that creaky, musty house, walking on tiptoes so as to not upset the old man. What resentments could sprout in a young heart when all affection and love had been denied? Because she could not imagine anyone ever loving Francis. Not his uncle, nor his mother. Had Virgil and Francis been friends? Did they ever look at each other, wearily, and confess their dissatisfactions? But Virgil, though perhaps also nursing his own grievances, had gone out into the world. Francis, he was tied to this house.
“Hey,” she said, extending a hand to touch his arm.
“I remember, when I was small, how he’d beat me with that cane of his,” Francis mused, his voice a hoarse whisper. “ ‘Teaching me strength,’ that’s how we put it. And I thought, dear Lord, Ruth was right. She was right. Only she couldn’t finish him off. And there’s no point in trying, but she was right.”
He looked so absolutely wretched, and although what he’d said had been terrible, she felt more pity than horror, and she didn’t flinch, her hand steady against his arm. It was Francis who turned his head away, who shirked her.
“Uncle Howard is a monster,” Francis told her. “Don’t trust Howard, don’t trust Florence, and don’t trust Virgil. Now you should go. I wish I didn’t have to send you off so quickly, but I should.”
They were both quiet. He had his head down, his eyes lowered.
“I can stay for a bit, if you want me to,” she offered.
He looked at her and smiled faintly. “My mother will have a fit if she finds you here, and she will be here any minute. When Howard is like this she needs us nearby. Go to sleep, Noemí.”
“As if I could sleep,” she said with a sigh. “Although I could count sheep. Do you think that might help?”
She ran a finger across the cover of a book that lay at the top of a pile, by the chair she had been occupying. She had nothing more to say and was simply delaying her departure, hoping he might speak to her more, despite his reservations; that he’d get to the matter of ghosts and a haunting that she wished to explore, but it was no use.
He caught her hand, lifting it from the book, and looked down at her.
“Noemí, please,” he whispered. “I didn’t lie when I said they will come and fetch me.”
He gave her back the oil lamp and held the door open for her. Noemí stepped out.
She looked over her shoulder before turning a corner. He seemed a bit ghostly, still standing by the doorway, with the glow of the lanterns and candles in his room lighting his blond hair like an unearthly flame. They said, in dusty little towns around the country, that witches could turn into balls of fire and fly through the air. That’s how they explained will-o’-the-wisps. And she thought of that, and of the dream she’d had about a golden woman.
17
Noemí hadn’t been lying about counting sheep. She was too energized by all the thoughts of hauntings, of answers to puzzles, to be lulled into an easy slumber. And that moment when she’d thought to lean forward and plant a kiss on Francis’s lips was still bright in her mind, electric.
Noemí decided that the best thing she could do was take a bath.
The bathroom was old, several of the tiles were cracked, but under the light of the oil lamp the tub appeared intact and decidedly clean, even if the ceiling was defaced by unsightly traces of mold.
Noemí set the oil lamp on a chair and her bathrobe on the back of it, and opened the faucet. Florence had told her mild baths were what everyone ought to take, but Noemí didn’t intend to soak in a cold pool of water, and whatever issues the boiler might have, she was able to draw a hot bath for herself, the steam quickly filling the room.
Back home she would have sprinkled sweet-smelling oils or bath salts into the water, but there were none to be had. Noemí slipped into the bathtub anyway and rested her head back.
High Place wasn’t exactly a dump, but there were so many small things wrong with it. Neglect. Yes, that was the right word. There was a great amount of neglect. Noemí wondered if Catalina might have turned things around, had the circumstances been slightly different. She doubted it. Rot had set in in this place.
The thought was unpleasant. She closed her eyes.
The faucet dripped a little. She sank deeper under the water until her head was completely underwater and she held her breath. When was the last time she’d gone swimming? She’d have to make a point to visit Veracruz soon. Better yet, Acapulco. She couldn’t think of a place that would be more different than High Place. Sun, beaches, cocktails. She could telephone Hugo Duarte and see if he was available.
When she emerged, Noemí brushed the hair away from her eyes almost angrily. Hugo Duarte. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t thinking about him these days. That arrow of yearning that had struck her in Francis’s room was worrisome. It felt different from her other excursions into desire. Though a young woman of her social standing was not supposed to know anything about desire, Noemí had had the chance to experience kisses, embraces, and certain caresses. That she did not sleep with any of the men she dated had less to do with a fear of sin than with the concern that they’d tattle about it to their friends, or worse, entrap her. There was always this smidgen of fear in her heart, fear of so many things, but with Francis she forgot to fear.
You’re turning mawkish, she told herself. He’s not even handsome.
She slid a hand up and down her breastbone and contemplated the mold on the ceiling before sighing and turning her head away.
That’s when she saw it. The figure by the doorway. Noemí blinked, thinking for a moment it was an optical illusion. She’d brought the oil lamp into the bathroom and it provided enough light, but it wasn’t the stark illumination of a light bulb.
The figure stepped forward, and she realized that it was Virgil, in a navy pinstripe suit and a tie, looking nonchalant, as if he’d walked into his bathroom instead of her own.
“There you are, you pretty little thing,” he said. “No need to speak, no need to move.”
Shame and surprise and anger shot through her body. What the hell did he think he was doing? She was going to yell at him. She was going to yell at him and cover herself, and not only yell. She’d slap him. She’d slap him once she was in her bathrobe.
But
she didn’t move at all. No sound escaped Noemí’s lips.
Virgil stepped forward, a thin smile on his face.
They can make you think things, a voice whispered. She’d heard that voice before, somewhere in this house. They make you do things.
Her left hand was resting on the edge of the tub, and she managed, with considerable effort, to curl it tighter. She was able to open her mouth a little, but not to speak. She wanted to tell him to get out and couldn’t, and it made her tremble with fright.
“You’ll be a good girl, won’t you?” Virgil said.
He had reached the bathtub and knelt down to look at her, smiling. It was a cunning, crooked smile set in a perfectly sculpted face, and he was so close to her that she could see there were flecks of gold in his eyes.
He tugged at the tie around his neck and took it off, then he unbuttoned his shirt.
She was petrified, like the unwary character in an old myth. She was the victim of the gorgon.
“Such a good girl, I know it. Be good to me.”
Open your eyes, the voice said.
But her eyes were wide open, and he had woven his fingers into her hair, making her lift her head up. A rough gesture, devoid of any of the kindness he was asking of her. She wanted to shove him away, but she still couldn’t move, and his hand clenched in her hair and he was leaning down to kiss her.
Noemí tasted sweetness on his lips. The trace of wine, perhaps. It was pleasant and it made her relax her tense body. She let go of the edge of the bathtub, and the voice that had been whispering to her was gone now. There was the steam from the bath and the man’s mouth atop her own, the hands snaking around her body. He kissed down her long neck, pausing to bite at the top of her breast, which drew a gasp from her. His stubble was rough against her skin.
Her neck arched backward. It seemed she could, in fact, move.
She raised her hands to touch his face, to draw him toward her. He wasn’t an intruder. He wasn’t an enemy. There was no reason to yell or to slap him, while there was every reason to keep touching him.
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