The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (49 page)

“A man in the seat behind me stood up to go to the lavatory. Just then he got airsick. I am lucky he missed my hair. But he got my dress.” Menardo was enchanted. She was talking to him as if they had always known one another.

Alegría did not like the sullen Indian chauffeur. Negroes made better drivers. She did not like the way the Indian looked at her. He seemed to know already. She decided the Indian chauffeur must be Menardo’s way of keeping in touch with his humble origins. That ass, the senior partner Mr. Portillo, had insisted on taking her for a long lunch to discuss Menardo, their prospective client. This man was “self-made,” as Mr. Portillo put it delicately, which meant here was a man of darker skin and lower class who had managed to amass a large fortune. Alegría hated the way Portillo bit into the olives skewed to the martinis he kept slinging back. Portillo was the only one of the partners who had not tried to seduce her. Portillo drooped in his chair, suddenly giving way to the weight of the martinis.

The courses of the meal seemed to wash in and out relentlessly; Alegría played with her spoon and imagined the plates and bowls were garbage washing onto a beach. When he saw Alegría did not care for the soup, he cut short his lecture on the holy man Bartolomé de Las Casas. He turned to Menardo and the mansion Alegría would be designing. It would be her first solo commission, and he naturally wanted to give her the benefit of all the knowledge his years in the profession had accumulated. Alegría did not tell him so, but Portillo would have nothing to worry about with this commission. The Señor was head over heels for her after one look. No, there would be no offenses, no ruffled feathers. If the wife wanted Gothic vaulted ceilings in the closets, Alegría was prepared to give them to her, and to concern herself only with structural stability.

That night, Alegría had had a bitter argument with Bartolomeo. She told him she had to fly to Tuxtla Gutiérrez the following week. Bartolomeo had been angry at the length of the lunch she had had with Mr. Portillo. Bartolomeo was furious at the time her firm spent with the rich, “petting their swollen little egos!” Bartolomeo had shouted at Alegría, “And then you! You they keep there to pet the swelling trousers of the rich!” Alegría did it instinctively. When Bartolomeo got upset, she groomed her fingernails. The steady motion of the nail file was soothing. Stroking on the bright-colored nail enamel somehow distanced his words. Once when she teased him about
New World
being the terminology of the exploiter, Bartolomeo had slapped her across the face. Staggering back from the blow, tears blinding her, Alegría’s hand had brushed the electric coffeemaker. But instead of recoiling from the burn she had seized the handle and slammed the coffeepot into Bartolomeo’s chest, scalding him. Alegría had found that a manicure prevented such incidents.

Alegría thought the Indian chauffeur exemplified the worst characteristics possessed by the Indian. He had listened to every word Menardo or Alegría said, from the airport to the dress shop, to the moment he opened the door of the Mercedes for them in front of the Royal Hotel. He not only made eye contact with his social superiors, this Indian alternately had mocking, then knowing, eyes. Alegría hated what he had said with his eyes as she was escorted off the wretched plane by the captain. Tacho had looked right at her as if to say, “The captain wants to reach right into your panties.” As he held the car door outside the hotel, Alegría had glanced up and to her horror saw the Indian was smiling as if he knew she was going to seduce his boss later that afternoon.

ALEGRÍA HAD BEEN IN Mexico City, quarreling with Bartolomeo over the affair she had been having with Menardo, when the shocking message had arrived. Iliana was dead. The accident could be traced back to the first afternoon Menardo ever spent with Alegría, and
their visit to the building site on the edge of suburban Tuxtla where a last hilltop of jungle trees and vegetation had persisted. The light that shone down on the site had been magical. It was the most luminous and soothing sunlight Alegría had ever seen. When she commented on it, Menardo had been quick to point out the southern climes had much to offer a person who had spent most of her life farther north. It was true. She had hated the winters in Madrid. Sometimes she thought she might die before the overcast and the wet winds passed. Sometimes she had borrowed money from another student and simply fled on the train to the sun and the ocean in the South. Alegría had nodded, still looking with wonder at the wide, flat jungle leaves and the fretwork of the innumerable vines and delicate mosses, which transformed the blinding tropical light into a light which was soft but which illuminated all crevices with a glow of pearls. The quality of the light instantly became Alegría’s focus. Whatever Iliana and Menardo said they wanted—entryways, carports, closets, whirlpool baths—Alegría scrutinized to determine how these details or items might be built without interfering with the quality of the light. It had been for this special light that the fatal marble stairway had been designed. The high wall of glass in the conservatory would supply the cascades of glowing white light.

Iliana and Alegría got along surprisingly well. They had agreed on nearly every detail—from built-in appliances in the kitchen to the size of the storage closets on the second floor. Alegría won over Iliana completely when she presented the drawings for the wall of glass display cases for Iliana’s collections. Alegría made the journey from Mexico City twice each month during construction. Menardo could not reveal to Iliana and certainly not to Alegría that the cost overruns were beyond his wildest fears. It was during this time that Menardo began to notice burning sensations in his stomach, no matter what he ate for lunch. The doctor gave Menardo big bottles of liquid chalk to drink when he felt the burning. Dr. Gris asked if Menardo was under any unusual stress. Was anything going haywire at home or with the business? Dr. Gris had protruding eyes magnified many times behind thick glasses. When he asked these questions, he leaned close to Menardo’s face, smiling all the while, as if he knew everything. Menardo could smell the doctor’s sour breath, and the face seemed more frog than human. The froggy sounds their skin and bodies made in the sweat still embarrassed Menardo. Alegría was part of a different generation; the
slap slap
and
suck suck
sounds paralyzed him with embarrassment, but excited her to new heights. Menardo did not tell Dr. Gris about any of this, but the huge,
bugging eyes seemed to miss no detail. At one time Menardo had been much closer to Dr. Gris. They had often golfed together with the former ambassador and the police chief. But after Menardo’s young secretary had needed the sudden confidential attention of Dr. Gris, they no longer saw each other socially. Menardo had felt betrayed. He had always given Dr. Gris a wholesale price on the night security patrol that kept the doctor’s estate secure from trespassers. The doctor’s bill had been itemized. Besides the initial test and consultation, and the “surgery,” Dr. Gris had added nearly ten thousand more for “confidentiality”—an item Menardo had assumed was part of the deal, after all the golf they’d played together. When Menardo had expressed shock at the bill, Dr. Gris had only smiled. His eyes protruded in proportion to the width of his smile. Gris told Menardo saving face in a town the size of Tuxtla Gutiérrez was expensive indeed. A little later, after Menardo had thought about it, he sent a statement to Dr. Gris indicating the price of security against burglars and trespassers had risen due to the revaluation of the peso. Dr. Gris had paid without question, and although Iliana still saw Dr. Gris, and Menardo had brought his nervous stomach to him, their golf games were no more.

Alegría and Iliana had ganged up on Menardo. Alegría saw the jungle as a distinctive feature the house should not deny. At first Iliana had wanted high walls to shut out the jungle. She had not even wanted windows facing east where the clearing gave way to thick vines trailing down from the limbs of giant jungle trees. But Alegría had worked patiently, explaining the glass and steel of the conservatory walls would be as secure as any wall, which of course was not true, but was the kind of reassurance that Iliana needed before she could move on. Alegría argued that in order for the marble stairs to create the effect of a cascade of light, a waterfall of jungle light down the polished marble, the entire east wall would have to be glass. The marble staircase branched from the midway landing up to the second-floor level where one could stand and gaze down into the masses of orchids and bromelaids Iliana collected for her conservatory. One could then turn to survey the great
sala,
which held four long dining tables for winter dinners and had electrical hookups in one corner for dance-band amplifiers. But as Alegría told them both in her breathless enthusiasm, no visitor would ever enter this house without immediately turning to the staircase and to the wall of glass and the lush green jungle vegetation outside the conservatory. Iliana had wanted something grand for her mansion, and the cascade of white marble stairs had been exactly what Iliana wanted. Guests would be
forced to notice the conservatory, filled with her latest collecting interest, rare jungle orchids.

All the women Iliana lunched with at the club buzzed with excitement and envy. The judge’s wife wrinkled her brow slightly and said that the whole house plan and even the size of the swimming pool seemed “so very modern.” To which Iliana had smoothed the bodice of her linen dress and laughed. Of course the judge’s wife would not appreciate such a staircase. She weighed close to three hundred pounds and it would have been an ordeal for her. Certainly the judge’s wife had no use for the swimming pool—no bathing suit would fit her.

Iliana had been taught by her mother to pretend ignorance of those things that cannot be changed. She had picked up the telephone before and had made trouble for married women sleeping with Menardo. But she had “not recognized” those women and those situations over which she had no control. If Iliana had suspected anything initially, when Menardo kept flying to the Federal District to review drawings and floor plans, once she began working with Alegría, she chose to ignore her suspicions and mistrust. Alegría often took her side against Menardo. Both women were of the opinion that as long as they were going to the trouble of building a house, it should be exactly the way Iliana wanted it. When Mr. Portillo had discussed the commission with Alegría, he had reminded her such opportunities to design a private home of these dimensions came seldom to young architects. Fewer and fewer could afford such luxury.

Iliana had wanted a house the size of Maximilian and Charlotte’s palace. But with patience Alegría convinced Iliana that to have a house which was so “out of scale” would be a crime against good taste. The discussions of “scale” had not meant much to Menardo except it might save him millions of pesos. He was a little surprised at how quickly the two women had warmed up to one another after he and Alegría had sex together. Menardo had expected the love affair might affect Alegría in a negative way. Menardo certainly had no desire for Iliana, but he had recovered his old fondness for her in the heat of his passion for Alegría. It pleased Menardo to see the two of them together intently studying blueprints and to understand the various terms used by architects and builders.

Iliana began to miss the club luncheons, and when she did attend, the other wives noticed she no longer complained about the female architect. Instead, Iliana had begun to talk about scale and proportion and clever ways to conceal storage space behind wall panels. Finally,
the judge’s wife, as the senior woman in the luncheon group, took Iliana aside and warned her she had been absent far too often. Actually the others were angry because Iliana was talking about things they did not understand. Iliana had not been surprised the envy of the other members of the luncheon club had manifested itself in this manner. She had rather expected it and had maybe even hoped for some little confrontation that would set her apart from them. Of course she knew that one did not let such things get too far out of hand.

Menardo spent afternoons with Alegría in her hotel room. Alegría had made it known to all that under no circumstance was she to be disturbed. The afternoons were her time to rework the design plans.

When he came to Alegría’s room, he carried a cardboard tube of blueprints. Menardo had long ago learned never to be caught without an explanation or excuse for himself.

ALEGRÍA HAD NEVER AGAIN received him as she had the first time, the afternoon of her harrowing plane flight from Mexico City. Menardo had insisted she buy the most expensive dress that fit her, noting proudly the dress shop had few dresses in her size. The wealthy women of Tuxtla Gutiérrez were too fond of their luncheons and rich snacks at their canasta games. Actually, Alegría chose a white pantsuit of raw silk. She pretended to be shy about spending her client’s money. She was aware Iliana shopped there also and did not want to give the saleswomen of the store any extra details for their inevitable gossip. She had come only for the day, to survey the building site. Of course, she had not brought a change of clothes. The disgusting old man on the plane had vomited all over her white linen skirt and matching blazer. This was what Menardo had argued to Iliana after Alegría had returned to Mexico City, and word had reached her that Menardo had bought clothes and a hotel room for their female architect.