The City of Palaces by Michael Nava Page B

and scented with attar of roses. Her neck was long, lovely, and to his surprise unscarred. He glanced at her hands and they, too, bore no scars. Only her face appeared to have been affected: a medical anomaly that, under different circumstances, would have excited his professional interest. But he could not imagine asking her to submit to an examination or to the intrusive questions of a clinician.
    â€œI hope you are not too repulsed by my appearance,” she said quietly when the servants had left.
    â€œDoña Alicia, I am trained as a doctor to see past physical afflictions to the person who bears them.”
    There was sadness in her eyes when she glanced at him, but she only said, “Will you take coffee or tea?”
    â€œCoffee, thank you,” he said.
    She poured him a cup of coffee and added milk and sugar. Their fingers touched as she handed him the cup. “I rarely have visitors here,” she said. “Because I would feel I must spare them the shock of my appearance with veils or cosmetics, but in my own home I wish to be free of those disguises and to be myself.”
    â€œI am honored that you have received me,” he said.
    â€œAll of us need a place where we are free of our burdens,” she continued. “A refuge where we are accepted as we are. This is my place. And yours, doctor? Where is the place where you lay down your cross?”
    The words of confession formed in his mind, but he could still not bring himself to say them, so he temporized. “What weight do you think I carry on my back?”
    â€œI think you carry the weight of a child,” she said. “And a woman.”
    He was shocked. Only his father knew Sarmiento’s secret. How could she have guessed? He shot her a look. She raised her cup to her lips calmly and sipped her tea, waiting for him to reply, but he could not. Not yet.
    â€œWho lives here with you?” he asked abruptly.
    â€œOnly my mother,” she replied, concealing with perfect manners any surprise at his clumsy deflection of the conversation.
    â€œWhere is the marquesa ?”
    â€œOn Tuesday afternoons she goes to Chapultepec Castle to attend a luncheon of the Daughters of Jerusalem, a charitable group founded by the president’s wife.”
    â€œYou do not attend?”
    â€œNot today,” she said. “I thought on this occasion you might wish to speak to me alone.” When he failed to reply, she said, “Doctor, I see I have been too forward. My sincerest apology.”
    â€œNo,” he replied hesitantly. “You need not apologize. You have offered me the opportunity to confide in you and for that I am most grateful, but if I did, Doña Alicia, you would regret your generosity. You see, there’s a difference between your burden and mine. Yours was visited on you through no fault of your own. Mine is of my own making.”
    She glanced at him. He grasped the cup in his hands so tightly she worried it would shatter. Her hand began to move impulsively toward his, but she stopped herself. Whatever troubled him would not be soothed by a friendly hand on his or a few kind words, no matter how sincerely meant. She sensed that his wounds were as deep, pervasive, and complex as the scars that disfigured her face. She chided herself for her clumsy approach because it had cornered him and left him no graceful way to retreat from the conversation. She must give him a way out.
    â€œI understand from my friends who are your patients that you only recently returned to México,” she said. “Where were you?”
    His fingers relaxed their grip on the cup. “I spent the last decade in Europe, studying at the medical faculties in Paris and Heidelberg.”
    â€œYou did not study at our own school of medicine?” she prompted.
    â€œI began my studies here,” he replied, “and I would have continued, but …” He paused uncomfortably. “My father felt it would be