She didn’t speak; instead she made a gurgling noise, and when she opened her mouth again blood poured from it. It spilled as freely as water; it dripped down her clothes onto the floor. Her fingertips were now stained with blood, and she was leaving a tracery of dark footprints behind her.
She shivered and little bits of glass dislodged from her skin and rained upon the floor, sparkling in the darkness, crunching beneath her feet.
He slid down, his back against the wall, raising a shaky hand to try to cover his eyes.
9
Montserrat didn’t mind the early mornings when she had to drive to Araceli’s place and take her to an appointment, but she minded the ride back after her sister had her chemo. Araceli looked so worn it was like sitting next to a ghost. But at least that morning it was a checkup, and as Montserrat listened to the radio and drummed her hands against the wheel, waiting in the parking lot, she was able to keep her thoughts away from the cancer that was gnawing at her sister’s body.
Her thoughts bounced back to Tristán, whom she’d tucked in late the previous night, remembering his offer of sex and wondering if he was awake yet. Jerk. She knew him too well to interpret his clumsy overture as anything more than stupid babble, designed to irritate her. If she’d been younger, maybe it might have made her heart stutter a little. But now she knew it had nothing to do with her, that it was only his neediness and loneliness that drove him into the arms of others.
He was constantly reaching out, while Montserrat slipped more and more inward.
She eyed her purse and the book stuck inside. She grabbed it. The House of Infinite Wisdom came with an illustration on the second page: a crude, black-and-white drawing that resembled the pendant Ewers wore in the photograph she’d seen of him. Eight interconnected lines set within a circle.
The vegvísir and the words “follow me into the night” were printed beneath the symbol along with the author’s name.
The door opened, and Araceli jumped into the passenger’s seat. Her eyes were wet with tears. Montserrat dropped the book on her lap and stared at her sister.
“What happened?” she asked.
Araceli would not reply. Montserrat extended a hand and touched Araceli’s wrist.
“It’s good,” Araceli said, nodding and cracking a smile. “The tumor’s almost vanished. The doctor couldn’t believe it. Montserrat, I’m going to be fine!”
It was Montserrat’s turn to stare at her sister before they broke into laughter.
* * *
—
Montserrat returned to her apartment late that night, carrying with her a Tupperware with two tortitas de papa that her sister had cooked for her and another plastic container with starters for making yogurt. Montserrat didn’t want to be responsible for any living organism, even if it was bacteria and even if according to Araceli the little organisms would multiply and produce yogurt automatically. Araceli was into natural foods, and Montserrat had been lucky that her sister didn’t try to also convince her to give up tortillas in favor of slices of nopal. After their meal, Arcaceli had phoned their mom, and they had taken turns on the phone. Montserrat and her mother had little in common, but the joy of knowing Araceli was doing much better loosened Montserrat’s tongue, and her mother spoke with warmth in her voice.
The day had been long, and Montserrat thought to simply turn on the TV and watch one of the movies she’d rented. She was already late returning the tapes. But when she looked at the plastic box showing two bleeding eyes and the words Terror at the Opera beneath it, she suddenly didn’t feel too eager to start an Argento film. There were other matters nagging her.
Montserrat munched on a cold potato patty, then washed her hands and sat in the living room and opened Ewers’s book.
There are four cardinal points, but a congregation is led by three, for the fourth point is the haven of the Lords of the Air who serve as a conduit for our will. Thus, let there be three. The son, who will rule the West. The mother, who is both whore and divine, Lady of the South. And upon the Eastern King, the Mighty Father. Thus three become four and four are one, united by the might of man.
Montserrat turned the page and saw a drawing of a circle, sectioned into quarters, which seemed to depict the “four” points Ewers had mentioned, and in the middle a smaller, black circle and a white dot inside the black space.
She thumbed through more pages, landing at an entry with a heading that said, “The Permutation of Water,” followed by “The Whispers of the Earth.” She stopped at the page titled “The Cipher of Fire.”
Fire, as the alchemists of old knew, is the most challenging of elements. We fear fire, yet without the sun’s fire we would perish in an endless winter. Fire cleanses as much as it destroys, removing all vapors and impurities. Water nourishes the Earth, but fire perfects it, and it is fire that brings day into night. As Valentinus said, at the end of the world, the world shall be judged by fire. After the conflagration, there shall be formed a new heaven and a new earth, and the new man will be more noble in his glorified state.
This all sounded to Montserrat like the kind of literature that would definitely appear in Enigma, with mentions of this and that alchemist, or an occultist she’d never heard of. She’d tried to understand the book but was having a hard time of it. Maybe she was going into this from the wrong direction. Maybe she needed to talk to a historian. But the one historian she knew was Regina, and Montserrat tried to stay away from her exes, even if the breakup had been relatively clean.
In this case, Montserrat’s crime had been the fact that she didn’t like hanging out with Regina’s friends, the lot of whom were professors and grad students from the UNAM. Montserrat found herself gritting her teeth at parties as someone yelled about Foucault. She couldn’t help but look at all those strangers gathered in her girlfriend’s living room and wonder at the fact that they were supposed to be members of the same species.
This wasn’t an especially novel sensation, as she’d felt the same thing when previous boyfriends or girlfriends had attempted to induct her into their social circles. On each occasion she cycled through bewilderment, then irritation, finally ending in boredom. Not that she’d dated that much. Dating was but an impulse that flared every three or four years, but she could identify a pattern. A few weeks of affection, then months of growing cold animosity, until Montserrat simply stopped returning calls.
At least she’d never made the mistake of moving in with someone, unlike Tristán. And at least her three significant relationships had not ended in spectacular drama—no yelling, no recriminations: a muffled conclusion.
Regina had not taken the breakup badly, partially because Montserrat suspected she had never been all that interested in her, which made Montserrat in turn feel better. Besides, Regina and Montserrat had lasted together a little longer than usual, certainly longer than Ismael, whom she’d ditched after a marathon of nine weeks. Her more leisurely half year with Regina had, perhaps, smoothed their finale.
One of Regina’s historian buddies would know if the stuff Abel Urueta had told her about radiesthesia and Nazis had any truth to it, or if he had made it up, but Montserrat didn’t feel quite ready to pick up the phone yet.