sketched on a piece of paper the serpent that curled above their heads. The rhythms of its scaly body, the shape of its narrowed eyes, and the terrible mouth.
“It was a violent death. We have a certain history of violence, the Doyles. But we are resistant,” he said. “And it was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”
Your sister shot her, she thought, and she could not picture it. It was such a monstrous, terrible act that she could not imagine that it truly had happened, in this house. And afterward someone had scrubbed the blood away, someone had burned the dirty linens or replaced the rugs with the ugly scarlet splotches on them, and life had gone on. But how could it have gone on? Such misery, such ugliness, surely it could not be erased.
Yet Virgil seemed unperturbed.
“My father, when he spoke to you yesterday about beauty, he must have spoken about superior and inferior types too,” Virgil said, raising his head and looking at her intently. “He must have mentioned his theories.”
“I’m not sure what theories you refer to,” she replied.
“That we have a predetermined nature.”
“That sounds rather awful, doesn’t it?” she said.
“Yet as a good Catholic you must believe in original sin.”
“Perhaps I’m a bad Catholic. How would you know?”
“Catalina prays her rosary,” he said. “She went to church each week, before she got sick. I imagine you do the same, back home.”
As a matter of fact Noemí’s eldest uncle was a priest and she was indeed expected to attend mass in a good, modest black dress, with her lace mantilla carefully pinned in place. She also had a tiny rosary—because everyone did—and a golden cross on a matching chain, but she didn’t wear the chain regularly, and she had not given much thought to original sin since the days when she was busy learning her catechism in preparation for her first communion. Now she thought vaguely about the cross and almost felt like pressing a hand against her neck, to feel the absence of it.
“Do you believe, then, that we have a predetermined nature?” she asked.
“I have seen the world, and in seeing it I’ve noticed people seem bound to their vices. Take a walk around any tenement and you’ll recognize the same sort of faces, the same sort of expressions on those faces, and the same sort of people. You can’t remove whatever taint they carry with hygiene campaigns. There are fit and unfit people.”
“It seems like nonsense to me,” she said. “That eugenicist discourse always makes my stomach turn. Fit and unfit. We are not talking about cats and dogs.”
“Why shouldn’t humans be the equivalent of cats and dogs? We are all organisms striving for survival, moved forward by the single instinct that matters: reproduction and the propagation of our kind. Don’t you like to study the nature of man? Isn’t that what an anthropologist does?”
“I hardly want to discuss this topic.”
“What do you want to discuss?” he asked with dry amusement. “I know you’re itching to say it, so say it.”
Noemí had meant to be more subtle than this, more charming, but there was no point in evasion now. He’d entwined her in conversation and pushed her to speak.
“Catalina.”
“What about her?”
Noemí leaned her back against the long table, her hands resting on its scratched surface, and looked up at him. “The doctor who came today thinks she needs a psychiatrist.”
“Yes, she very well may need one, eventually,” he agreed.
“Eventually?”
“Tuberculosis is no joke. I cannot be dragging her off somewhere else. Besides, she’d hardly be accepted in a psychiatric facility considering her illness. So, yes, eventually we might evaluate specialized psychological care for her. For now she seems to be doing well enough with Arthur.”
“Well enough?” Noemí scoffed. “She hears voices. She says there are people in the walls.”
“Yes. I’m aware.”
“You don’t seem worried.”
“You presume a great deal, little girl.”
Virgil crossed his arms and walked away from her. Noemí protested—a curse, delivered in Spanish, escaping her lips—and quickly moved behind him, her arms brushing against brittle leaves and dead ferns. He turned abruptly and stared down at her.
“She was worse before. You did not see her three or four weeks ago. Fragile, like a porcelain doll. But she’s getting better.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Arthur knows that. You can ask him,” he said calmly.
“That doctor of yours wouldn’t even let me ask two questions.”
“And that doctor of yours, Miss Taboada, as far as my wife tells me, looks like he can’t even grow