-
Chapter 1
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
3 o 1 The first time Sar miento saw the woman who would be come his wife, he thought she was a nun. She rushed to ward him across one of the fetid court yards of Belem prison, where he had gone to find his father. She was clad in a long, dark dress he as sumed was a nun’s habit and her face, also like a nun’s, was veiled. She called out to him ur gently, “Señor, Señor, are you a doc tor?” He raised his med i cal bag in as sent as she reached him, breath less. It was then he re al ized her cos tume was not that of a re li gious order be cause, al though drab, the ma te rial was rich. The dress was a shim mer ing silk of mid night blue, and the veil in the same shade dropped like a cur tain from her bon net and was a finely woven lace mesh that re vealed only the shad owy con tours of her face. Her ap pear ance in the court yard had at tracted the at ten tion of the in mates— dirty, bare foot men in tat tered clothes, dark faces shaded by the broad brims of their high-peaked som bre ros. They left off their fight ing and dice to shout crude epi thets at her. “Señora,” Sar miento said. “This is not a safe place for a lady.” “A woman in mate is dying in child birth,” she said. “The mid wife is late. Please, come quickly.” There was a qual ity in her voice that, not with stand ing her dis tress, was sin gu larly sooth ing and the voice it self was soft, husky, mu si cal. Through the heavy veil he de tected the liq uid eme rald of her eyes. She must be beau ti ful, he thought, and that as much as the ur gency of her er rand per suaded him to take a de tour from his search for his father. “Take me to her,” he said. He fol lowed her through a se ries of squalid court yards. Open priv ies spilled their reek and a few mangy dogs lapped brack ish water from foun tains where nuns had dipped their pails when Belem had been a 4 The Palace of the Gaviláns wealthy con vent in the seven teenth cen tury. Ciu dad de Méx ico was then the crown jewel of New Spain. So regal were the edi fices the Span ish had built on the ruins of the Aztec cap i tal, Tenochtitlán, that a vis i tor had chris tened it the City of Pal aces. Now, as the nine teenth cen tury drew to a close, the an cient pal aces had been aban doned, con verted to mer can tile uses or, like Belem, were in near ruins. In their place were the gar ish new pub lic works of the govern ment of the dic ta tor, Por fi rio Díaz, all shiny brass and Car rara mar ble. They came to a small court yard less filthy than the oth ers. On ei ther side were the tiny cells that had housed the convent’s ser vants. The veiled woman led Sar miento into one of them where, on a straw mat, a naked woman screamed in agony while two other women held her down. The smell of blood and or dure drove him back a step, but the veiled woman plunged for ward into the dimly lit room and said to him, “Please, Doc tor, come.” Sar miento had am pu tated limbs and cut holes into the throats of diph the ria pa tients so they could breathe, but, out of pref er ence, he had rarely de livered chil dren. Even the sight of preg nant women stirred pain ful mem o ries of the girl he had killed and now, as he en tered the room, raw im ages of Paquita’s death ag o nies made his fin gers trem ble and his heart race. He hes i tated and looked wildly around the room as if for an es cape hatch. The veiled woman ex tended a gloved hand to him and said, in her calm, sooth ing voice, “Doc tor, two lives hang in the bal ance.” “Claro,” he...