Love and Other Poisons Read online

  “Say, do you know what the fuss is all about? This place is packed like a can of sardines and I can’t find a car to drive me to El Monte.”

  Eloisa frowns. “Don’t you know? Tonight is the feast of San Rafael.”

  “Is that a big deal?”

  “They take the statue of the saint on a procession around town, then sit him down in front of the church. There’s fireworks and music.”

  And dancing. Most of all there is dancing. Eloisa has not been allowed to participate in the festivities. But this year is different. Her cousins are coming to visit and mother says they can all go together to see the fireworks.

  “It sounds delightfully pagan to me. What’s your name?”

  For some reason she has a childish impulse to lie, to deny herself. Why? What does a name matter? “Eloisa.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have an automobile, would you Eloisa?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad,” he says. “Hey, would you know of a place I can stay? If I can’t get an automobile I’ll need a room.”

  There’s an empty room in her mother’s pension. She normally rooms men who work at the glass factory, but one of the boys has gone off and married, leaving his room behind just two weeks ago. However, she knows exactly how it’ll look if she returns home with a man — a devil, perhaps — in tow, after mother instructed her not to speak to any strangers. Mother, who is even angry when she reads poetry — father’s old books, the skeletal remains of his collection. Harmless words which deserve a beating. Why won’t Eloisa do something useful rather than sit on the front step of the house, daydreaming?

  “You won’t find a room, not with the festival tonight. Everyone has come for the festival,” she says.

  He smiles, as though he can tell she is lying and Eloisa feels a shiver go through her body, as if she’s just jumped into a pond.

  “Well, then, I must find a mule or a cart or some way to El Monte. Take care, miss.”

  With that he grabs the small suitcase he had set on the ground and the cane, limping merrily away.

  Eloisa and her cousins, mother in tow, go to the town square. Eloisa is not allowed to wear ribbons in her hair, she is not even allowed to wear a nice dress. Grey are her colours and mother is always in black, though father passed away nearly seven years ago. But it doesn’t matter for there are purple, yellow and white papers adorning the buildings around the square and plenty of colour in the jackets and the skirts of the attendants.

  Mother plops herself on a chair by some older ladies and refuses to dance, but she agrees that Eloisa may walk around the square — even dance — as long as she partners with one of her cousins. For a little while it is this way, she walks with a cousin on each side and they chatter and laugh. But eventually a couple of girls catch the boys’ fancy and even though they are not supposed to, they scatter away to dance with them while Eloisa steps back, standing under the arches that frame the town square.

  “You were right. There is no way out of town. Not a blasted automobile for miles around and apparently mules are also scarce.”

  The man in the blue overcoat is just a few paces from her, under the arches.

  “It’s the festival,” she says. “Tomorrow you can ask one of the townsfolk to lend you a horse.”

  “I’ll be damned if I can ride it. I’m a city boy, I ride the trams.”

  She chuckles for it’s an odd thing to discover that the devil does not ride horses, after all.

  “You find my predicament amusing?” he asks, smiling.

  “No. So you have a place to stay for tonight?”

  “Something of the sort.”

  She nods. He checks his pocket watch and she wonders if the rule is true and he must leave by the time the cock crows. Because that’s how it goes. The devil rides into town, he asks a vain girl to dance and she dances — ignoring the warnings, never bothering to look at his feet — and when the cock crows he vanishes and she is singed. Hair burnt off, body smelling like sulphur.

  Girls like that always end insane or dead.

  She stares at him. He cocks his head a bit.

  “What?”

  “They say the devil comes into town on dance nights.”

  “Does he? How do you know?”

  “You recognize him by his hoofs.”

  “It’s a good thing I’m not dancing, then,” he says, lifting his cane.

  “Were you a soldier?”

  “No. I’m the devil, remember?”

  He’s making fun of her and she likes it. The lightness of his words and how he smiles.

  She spots her mother coming across the square, fury in her eyes. She’s seen her. She knows Eloisa is not in the company of her cousins.

  She grabs the man’s hand and pulls him with her.

  “Come,” she says.

  They rush through the narrow alleys. He moves fast for a man with a limp and his steps seem to draw no echoes. Her own footsteps are as loud as drums. When she stops to catch her breath he is laughing and the crackling of the fireworks echoes through the town.

  “That was my mother,” she explains. “She wouldn’t want us talking.”

  “Is she some evil stepmother who has you locked in a tower?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Here, want to see a castle?” he asks and it is his turn to grab her by the hand.

  They arrive at the doors of a large house and Eloisa frowns.

  “That’s Mr. Carrasco’s house. He’s off in Mexico City until winter time.”

  The man looks like he already knows this and he opens the door, walking into the house. Eloisa pauses at the threshold. Is this magic? Or is she in the company of a common thief who picked a lock and made himself a bed for the night?

  Eloisa steps inside. She can’t see a thing, but he grabs her firmly and guides her through the rooms as though he can see in the dark. He stops and lets go for a moment. A light blooms and he sets a lantern on a table. The furniture around them is covered with white sheets. The man pulls a sheet and reveals a couch. They sit there while the dim noise of the fireworks seeps in through the cracks.

  “What do you do in your tower, Eloisa?” he asks, leaning back and staring up at the ceiling.

  “It’s hardly a towers. It’s just a little house. A pension. I do the things everyone does.”

  “What does everyone do?”

  “Help with the household chores. Read.”

  “Anything good?”

  “Poetry.”

  “I only read the papers,” he says.

  He proceeds to ask more questions, tugging stories out of here until she has laid her whole life before him: the town, her home, her relatives. It strikes her then that he is at an advantage and has revealed nothing, only vague hints which hover like smoke for a moment, then dissipate.

  “I don’t know your name,” she says.

  “Don’t have one,” he replies, sounding earnest. “You can make one up for me.”

  “Really.”

  “Give it a try.”

  “How about ... Abelardo.”

  “Eloisa and Abelardo. Isn’t that a love story?” he asks. “I think it has a nasty ending.”

  It’s one of many tragic stories she found in her father’s books, amongst the silverfish. Great loves and great rhymes, a pressed flower — forgotten, left behind — to mark the pages. All those pages which her mother despised because father had been good for nothing, always with his head in the clouds and when he died, they had to turn the house into a pension to survive.

  One of these days, mother said, one of these days you’re going to take a wrong step and break your neck from staring at the clouds. She believes this is precisely one of those days.

  “I suppose,” she says.

  He drifts closer and without a word plants a light, chaste kiss on her mouth. He smiles at her when he draws back, then repeats the motion. Lingering this time. Nothing chaste about it. His hand brushes her cheek.

  She wonders if she should slap him.
That’s what she should do. But she also shouldn’t be here at all, shouldn’t talk to men she knows nothing about.

  Eloisa frowns.

  “Can I look at your feet?” she asks.

  “To make sure I’m not the devil in disguise?” he asks.

  She stares at him. The smirk on his face fades. His eyes, now that she looks at them carefully, gleam with the hellfire mother warned her about.

  “If I do and I’m the devil,” he says, carefully removing the right boot, fingers slow. “Then what happens next is you’ll scream. The house will mysteriously catch fire ...”

  He stands up, switches his attention to the left leg. He works on the metal brace, removing the straps that attach it to the boot.

  “... and only ashes will remain to mark the place. A memory of a folly.”

  He takes off the boot, rolls up the pants legs and reveals a hideously scarred foot. Instead of five toes there are three, with dark nails resembling claws.

  “Are you going to scream?”

  She raises a hand and begins unbuttoning the grey dress. Eloisa stares at him and he shakes his head in a vague gesture she can’t recognize. He mirrors her, removing the coat, his shirt and vest, his trousers.

  His leg is completely scarred, as is his torso. Ugly, puckered marks mar his skin, reaching the neck. Burn marks.

  She steps forward, kissing the spot where his neck meets with his shoulder.

  Ghost light intrudes through a gap in the curtains, waking her. She is on a sofa, naked, covered only by a blue overcoat. After she dresses she looks for him knowing already he’s left the house.

  She walks back to the town square, which is littered with dozens of paper flowers from the night before. The church is a few paces away. Or she could spin west, to her house.

  Eloisa thrusts her hands in her coat pockets and walks to the silent train station, sitting on one of the wooden benches and surveying the tracks. They seem to go on forever in this hazy dawn.

  The station’s clock ticks and she observes the big hand move. Black like the man’s eyes.

  And she already knows she is going to become a cautionary tale for other girls in town. They’ll say the devil rides into town on a train. They’ll say to watch out for men in blue overcoats.

  The taste of ashes coats her tongue.

  And she closes her eyes, smiling.

  And there is the loud toot of a horn, making her frown and look at the source of the noise.

  That’s Mr. Carrasco’s automobile, glossy, inky black.

  “I’m heading to El Monte and I can’t ride a horse. Can you point the way?” he asks, as casual as casual can be.

  “Did you steal that car?”

  “Well, you stole my coat. Can I have it back?”

  She crosses the tracks and tosses the overcoat into the back, then climbs in.

  I think about you, my love, late at night when the neon light filters through the curtains, tracing shadow animals upon the floor. I feel your absence like a phantom limb.

  Sometimes I pull on my jacket and walk the streets, stopping at every bridge to stare at the river. Alabaster fish swim in its green waters, along with the corpses of the suicides. Ghosts and stones whisper their stories as I lean against the railing.

  I look for you among the pale corpses. There I see a maiden in a white shift and a wrinkled man in his shabby corduroy jacket. But you are not there, my love. Oh, no.

  The river snakes and curls through the city and I follow its course. It trickles into streets and licks the foundations of tenements. It spreads under a starless sky.

  A fog sometimes covers the river, cocooning it. I cannot see the suicides, but I can hear their laments, like the splash of a stone into the water. Like the splash of blood against cold glass tiles.

  I think about you, my love, when I see an eye flash open under the river’s waters, when a scale catches the light, when a murmur floats up toward the night.

  I hold my lantern high, to try to see better, to try to see you ... but you are not there. You are gone before the amber glow of the lantern can reveal your face, your body, yourself. You are gone, melting like a sigh into the green of the river.

  I walk home, dragging the lantern behind me. I climb the steps to our little apartment and lay upon the cold sheets.

  Sometimes, in the morning, there are muddy footprints outside my door and the scent of something damp and gone.

  Esperanza was oiling the snake’s new tongue when the door opened and in walked Mr. Morales with a box in his hands and a homunculus behind him. At first she didn’t know it was a homunculus. She thought he’d met a dandy at the auction and dragged him to the shop.

  He was tall, blond and blue-eyed with a face made of sharp, elegant bones. He stood still, observing the snake that rested on her work table.

  “I bought some defective dragonflies at the auction. We can repair them and sell them,” Mr. Morales said, opening the box and showing her a handful of metal insects. “And I bought a homunculus.”

  “What are we going to do with that?”

  “Sell it, what else? It’s English, top quality.”

  Their second-hand shop was not the best place for a high-ticket item. Clockwork birds and reptiles were one thing; a homunculus was quite another.

  “Where are we going to put him?” she asked.

  “In the back.”

  “There’s no space there.”

  “Go make some space then.”

  Esperanza wiped her greasy hands with a rag, then headed to the storage area. She shoved her way through boxes, crates and metal parts until she reached the room with a smelly cot and a chair. Mr. Morales’ apprentice was supposed to live in the little room with the yellow wallpaper, but the last boy had left over three months ago. Mr. Morales’ nephew, Abel, was bad-tempered and he quickly drove away the young men the guild sent them.

  It didn’t matter. Esperanza was able to handle everything without any help. Although she was supposed to only decorate the animals — the mechanical reparations and construction were strictly off limits and restricted to the automaton makers’ guild — she often dabbled in other areas.

  Esperanza grabbed a broom and swept the floor. When she was done she called Mr. Morales and the homunculus.

  The blond homunculus sat down on the cot and the springs squeaked. Quietly, the homunculus looked around the room, his knapsack still dangling from his left shoulder.

  She arrived before seven. Mr. Morales would not show his face until eleven and then it would be a short while until he dragged himself out to play dominoes with his friends, then back up the stairs to the second floor for a nap and back out for drinks at the cantina. But she had responsibilities, and without an apprentice, and Abel off in Veracruz, there was more stuff to accomplish.

  Not that she minded. Abel tended to lord her around. The apprentices were not as rude as Mr. Morales’ nephew, but she couldn’t do the work she was interested in when they were there for fear they might report her infractions. She was better off alone with old Mr. Morales.

  Esperanza sat down at her workbench and opened a mechanical duck. She removed the silver belly, leaving its gears and levers in the open. Esperanza held up a magnifying glass in one hand and her tweezers in the other.

  “Mr. Morales said you’re good at fixing automata.”

  She looked up at the blond man. He was still wearing the fancy purple frock coat, cravat and gloves he’d had on the day before, a wealthy dandy’s outfit now wildly out of place.

  “I manage,” she said.

  “Mr. Morales said I should help you while he arranges for someone to purchase me.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “Mr. Morales said —”

  “What do you know about fixing automata?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  She flipped her tweezers and went back to inspecting the duck’s insides. She felt his gaze on her and glanced up again. He was standing in the same spot, looking at her.

  “You
want to help?” she asked. “The floor needs a good scrub. All the stuff is in the back.”

  He went away. A long time later he reappeared with a bucket and a brush in his hand. His trousers were soggy.

  “You ruined your nice clothes,” she said, disapprovingly. “Why didn’t you change?”

  “I don’t have other clothes.”

  The homunculus got on his knees and continued scrubbing. The sloshing of the water and the tinkering of metal tools were the only noises in the shop. At last Esperanza put the duck’s belly cover back on and wound the animal up. It walked around the table, shaking its tail.

  The homunculus also seemed to be done, a bucket dangling from his fingers. He tilted his head and stared at the duck with that curious, far away stare he’d used on her.

  “What should I call you?”

  “They call me Theodore.”

  “I’m Esperanza,” she said, but did not offer him his hand.

  “A pleasure to meet you.”

  “Your Spanish is good.”

  “I speak six languages.”

  “You’re a translator, then?”

  “I was employed in a magician’s act, but I’ve had other chores.”

  He took his bucket and brushes and went away before she could ask him anything else.

  “He’s weird,” Esperanza said. “You sure you want him sleeping here at nights?”

  “Don’t be silly. Homunculi are well trained.”

  “I’ve heard they’re frightfully strong.”

  “They’re just pretty things.”

  Mr. Morales stood up as she flipped the sign hanging at the front door.

  “Close the shop,” he muttered, as though she were not doing exactly that.

  “Mr. Morales, he needs some new clothes,” she yelled before he disappeared up the stairs.

  Esperanza finished sorting her tools and walked home. The shop dangled at the edge of a respectable street, but Esperanza’s vecindad was further to the east, uphill. It was an ugly, squat building and the portera was a shrill woman who spied on everyone’s comings and goings, but especially distrusted Esperanza.