Chapter 2
The skies had been clear that morning, as if to honor the arrival of their new guest. Perched stubbornly on the side of a mountain, Puerco Ahogado did not have to suffer the mosquitoes that swarmed the lowlands of Veracruz.
In fact, it had been founded mainly for that reason: so that wealthier people could escape to the slopes of the mountain during the summer and avoid the danger of yellow fever.
But up the black volcanic peaks of the Sierra Madre, the weather turned fickle.
A light rain—the ever-present chipichipi—fell on most days, and the sunniest of mornings could turn into a torrential mess that rendered rural roads into mud pits.
The northern winds bore mists and fogs that often blinded Puerco Ahogado, veiling all surroundings, as if it were a blushing maiden wrapped in a demure shawl.
The warmth and moisture of the spring and fall turned the town into a gigantic greenhouse, where flowers of all colors and other plants and vines grew luxuriously.
In the winter, it was chilly, relentlessly damp, and the sky had a melancholic aspect that burdened people’s hearts.
Yet that day, Puerco Ahogado had received its new guest with a happy, smiling face.
It had shown him its best colors, flaunting the beauty of the forests with resinous snowbells, velvety pipers, and nectarous daisy trees that decorated its slopes.
The heavens held the rains at bay; the thick, humid fog did not descend and conceal the cobblestones.
But Inés knew the clear blue skies would not last for long and a drizzle would no doubt fall come the evening.
Therefore, she hurried to the kitchen for a bag that she might take to the bakery and to the grocer’s.
The kitchen was decorated with azulejos and perfumed with the scent of chilies and herbs.
Inside wicker baskets and jars there was sugar, salt, lentils, Jamaica flowers, and tamarinds.
From strings hung red and green chorizos, longaniza, and garlic.
Golden-brown piloncillo lay in a neat pile, and corn husks in another.
There were tenates to keep the tortillas warm, and wooden bateas for the lard.
On a wall the cook had pinned an image of San Martín Caballero wrapped in a red cloak, and a calendar the grocer had gifted them for Christmas kept track of the days.
Nepomuceno was opening and closing drawers when she walked in.
He looked up at her and smiled. He was dressed, even on a Sunday, in his black vest, tie, and patched-up gray jacket, his white hair neatly parted in the middle, looking the same way he’d looked when he’d taught Latin and Greek and history to recalcitrant children.
His dog, Diógenes, sat by the kitchen table and wagged its tail.
It was a mutt he’d taken in a few years ago, and although her aunt hadn’t liked the idea of a dog, Inés and Nepomuceno had managed to convince her with talk of thieves that would be frightened of a house with a canine guardian.
“Ah, my girl, I was about to make myself a coffee.”
“You know you’re not supposed to roam around the kitchen, Professor. My aunt complains that mice are not the only ones who nibble at the cheese, and she hates it when you bring the dog in here.”
Her aunt was tightfisted when it came to the running of the house, counting each bean and grain of rice served.
They provided meals six days a week, but she would not abide anyone eating even a lonely slice of bread on the seventh day.
The seventh day they all had to make do on their own.
The trouble was that Professor Nepomuceno’s pitiful pension could hardly pay for his room and board, never mind the spirits he consumed behind closed doors.
On Sundays he was broke, hungry, and thirsty.
As for the dog, the cook and the maid made sure to feed it plenty of leftovers, but on Sundays it also tended to go wanting.
“I have no intention to pilfer a plate of cold cuts,” he said solemnly. “Today, I’ll have a spartan dinner of coffee and animal crackers in my bedroom as I read Plutarch.”
Inés smiled and shook her head. She grabbed a tin of sardines and placed it in his hands. For the dog she sliced a bit of chorizo, which it ate in a couple of bites, looking happily at her.
“I’ll square myself with Estrella and Rita so they don’t tell my aunt, but don’t be doing this again, Professor. If my aunt catches you raiding the pantry, she’ll throw you out,” she warned him.
“I hardly call it raiding, my dear, but I promise to be good…although, if you wouldn’t mind, might I have something to wash down this fishy entrée? My throat is dry, and coffee wouldn’t go well with an oily bit of herring. Might there be a drop of sherry somewhere?”
She sighed and drummed her fingers against the kitchen table.
A drop of sherry, a sip of wine, a tad of whiskey.
Except it was hardly ever a drop. In the past couple of years his hands had grown too shaky, his face too sunken, for anyone to ignore the desperate fixation that consumed him.
But there was no solution. She knew that.
No amount of cajoling, of threatening, of begging.
Alcohol was his mistress, his one true love, and she’d never leave him.
Inés could remember the times when Nepomuceno’s hair was more black than gray, when his fingers had clutched a book firmly, when he’d recited with a powerful voice a line from Ovid.
But now his spine was bending, his footsteps were slower, and his voice had grown painfully raspy.
Her education had been haphazard, and she’d learned secrets of the kitchen, of roots and herbs, the handling of scissors and thread, with more zeal than any letters or arithmetic.
But when she was ten and Nepomuceno moved into their guesthouse, he’d brought a chest full of books.
And when he’d admiringly pointed to the bookcases that had belonged to her grandfather, and she’d said she hardly ever read anything, he’d proceeded to shake his head in dismay and tell her about the siege of Troy.
She loved him for that, for his long-winded speeches, the way he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and the ink stains on the cuffs of his shirts. She’d never had a true father, and her grandfather Osorio was Cronus: more likely to devour than coddle his children.
Inés reached into a drawer and grabbed a set of keys, then she opened a locked cabinet that contained jars and bottles and supplies. She took out a bottle of sherry, poured a couple of fingers into a glass, and handed it to him.
“You must stop making me complicit in your crimes, Professor,” she said.
His eyes were sad, but he smiled at her. “Thank you, Inés. You’re the most beauteous daughter of Aphrodite,” he said.
“Last week I was a fierce Artemis, and before that as clever as Athena.”
He raised his glass as if toasting her. “You’re that too.”
She clapped his shoulder, and he rested his papery hand against her own for a second. She grabbed the bag she’d come for and exited through the door to the back patio. The dog tried to follow her, wishing to play or go for a walk, but she shooed it away and continued her march.
The patio was a long rectangle with an overabundance of flowerpots of all sizes and carefully cultivated beds of earth in which grew onions, garlic, mint, chamomile, and epazote, all of which the cook used in her dishes.
Inés knew these plants and their uses, and those of many other plants that did not grow there but which could be had in town or in neighboring villages, like hierba santa, which cleansed a woman after she gave birth; barbasco, whose boiled root prevented pregnancies; and the haba de San Ignacio, whose seeds in modest doses could cure a fever and in greater quantities were poisonous.
She brushed a hand against the purple bougainvillea creeping along the wall and pushed open the iron door that led to the alleyway.
It was a short, brisk walk to the grocer’s and then to the bakery, where she grabbed a tray and a pair of tongs and picked up teleras and conchas.
She handed the tray to Marisol, who was behind the cash register in her yellow apron with the words Panadería La Ejemplar embroidered on the front, her hair messily pinned back.
“Was I wanting to see you! My sister said your new guest arrived today and he looks like Tyrone Power,” Marisol said, putting aside a magazine she’d been reading, resting her elbows on the counter, and leaning forward, practically jumping up and down, giddy with excitement.
“Your sister thinks everyone looks like Tyrone Power. It’s Mr. Power this and Mr. Power that. Besides, she never wears her glasses and can’t see a thing without them. If I stand far enough, she’ll think I’m Tyrone Power and Clark Gable too.”
“You’re terrible! He’s not good-looking, then?” Marisol asked.
“He’s good-looking enough,” Inés said, shrugging.
“Fucker!” the baker yelled in the back. His fights with his assistant had gotten worse of late.
The assistant had a brother who was completing high school correspondence courses that mentioned workers’ rights and the philosophy of Karl Marx, and had taken to calling the baker a bourgeois.
The baker replied by calling him a fucker, fucking pig, or fucking idiot.
Inés and Marisol ignored the yelling, not the least bit bothered by the racket. It was only when the baker began to slam a rolling pin that one must worry.
“What does he look like? How tall is he? What’s his eye color?” Marisol asked.
“I didn’t have my tape measure with me when I met him.”
“But you did look into his eyes, didn’t you? Are they blue, like a clear sky? Or black as night? Does he have a mustache? Every gentleman must have a mustache. And his name? Do you know his name?”
“Mr. Linares.”
“Magnificent! What do you think he does?”
“I have no idea. He’s a new lodger,” Inés said.