The Lord of Opium

28

SOR ARTEMESIA

Matt and Listen waited at the Ajo holoport to greet his friends. He saw the black craft grow from a distant speck to a sleek ship with a bulging, transparent top. As it settled down, he saw that the pilot was not one of the new pilots he’d hired, but Cienfuegos. Fidelito was bouncing up and down, trying to touch the ceiling, and the jefe pushed him into a seat.

“Are those crots?” asked Listen.

“They’re Real Children. Don’t use that word,” Matt said. “It’s extremely insulting.”

“If they’re crots, they won’t be smart enough to care,” the little girl said reasonably.

“Just stop swearing. It’s a bad habit.”

The hovercraft set down, and the antigravity recharger snaked up and fastened onto the nose cone. The door opened. Fidelito attempted to jump out and was yanked back inside. “You turkey,” said Ton-Ton. “L-ladies go first.”

Cienfuegos helped Sor Artemesia step down, and she looked around until she found Matt. “Please forgive me, mi patrón. Doña Esperanza sent me away because she says I’m a bad influence on María. I didn’t know where else to go.”

“You are most welcome here,” said the boy, and he meant it. The more he saw of the nun, the better he liked her. “María must be unhappy, though.”

“She is. Doña Esperanza hardly ever pays attention to her.”

By now Fidelito had wriggled free, and he ran straight to Matt. “You’re really here. You’re not a picture. Wow! What a great place! Is it all yours?”

“Of c-course it is,” said Ton-Ton, catching up to him. “He’s the king.”

Chacho came behind, somewhat hesitantly. His face was thinner, and he had dark circles under his eyes. “You really are a king. I bet movie stars don’t have as much as this.”

“I was just lucky,” said Matt, embarrassed. “I’m the same kid you knew at the plankton factory.” But he could see that wealth made a difference. Both Ton-Ton and Chacho looked amazed by the huge gardens, the hacienda, the many other buildings, and in the distance, the swimming pool winking in the desert light.

“Mi abuelita says that if you have food, water, and a roof over your head, you’re rich,” Fidelito said, quoting his beloved grandmother. “You don’t need a lot of stuff. After all, you can’t eat a hundred hamburgers or sleep in a hundred beds.”

“That’s crap,” said Listen. “You can save the hamburgers for another day.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Listen, not that it’s any of your business.”

Fidelito reached out and she slapped him. Hard. “Don’t touch me.”

“Okay,” said the little boy, rubbing his face. He seemed hypnotized by her.

“¡Que barbaridad! He was only trying to be friendly,” Sor Artemesia said.

“Don’t want friends,” Listen said.

“Whether you want them or not, there’s no excuse for being unkind.”

Listen made a rude noise. “You aren’t the boss of me. I’m going to grow up to be beautiful and marry a drug lord.”

“You’re already pretty,” said Fidelito. Ton-Ton and Chacho rolled their eyes.

“Crot you!” swore Listen. That was too much for Sor Artemesia. She picked up the little girl in an expert hold and strode off.

Cienfuegos laughed. “Sister Artemesia knows her way around here. I’ll bet she’s on her way to the kitchen to find a bar of soap. I’d better calm things down before they go too far.”

He left, and the boys went up the marble steps of the hacienda. The trunks of orange trees on either side were painted white, and the dark-green leaves above were starred with creamy blossoms. An eejit was spraying them with water. More eejits dusted and polished furniture in the great entry hall. Like the field workers, they were dressed in drab brown uniforms, but they needed no hats because they worked indoors. “You sure have a lot of servants,” remarked Chacho. Matt realized that he hadn’t noticed the deadness in the workers’ eyes or the mechanical way they went about their chores.

“El Patrón liked a lot of servants,” Matt said uneasily. The boys knew about eejits, of course. TV shows portrayed them as crazed zombies that lurched around and ate brains. Nothing could have been further from the dreary reality.

A peacock, sitting in a window, gave a loud cry as the boys passed. “Ohhh,” Fidelito said, sighing. “What a beautiful bird!” And so Matt was saved from discussing eejits. They passed a side garden with a blue tile fountain, and Chacho halted.

He went up to the fountain and put his hands into the spray. “Water,” he said reverently. He stood there, letting it fill his palms and pour over the sides. “So much water,” he murmured. Several peacocks posed like works of art on a velvety green lawn. At the top of a tree, a mockingbird sang. Chacho listened with his mouth open, as it trilled one song after another until it flew away.

Matt heard, in the silence that followed, the sound of an eejit clipping the lawn with scissors. “Let’s go,” he said. He hurried them on to El Patrón’s private wing, where one of the rooms had been cleared for the boys. Matt made a mental note to have another one prepared for Sor Artemesia.

Ton-Ton, Chacho, and Fidelito eased their way past a clutter of ancient Egyptian statues and Roman glassware that had, through the centuries, taken on the rainbow color of soap bubbles. The plunder of a long lifetime crowded the halls. Ton-Ton reached for a rooster made of pure gold and hesitated. “It’s okay. You can pick it up,” said Matt.

“I m-might leave fingerprints on it. My hands are, uh, dirty.”

“You can roll it in the mud for all I care. Relax, compadre. There aren’t any Keepers here,” Matt said, referring to the men who had enslaved them at the plankton factory.

“It’s too p-pretty.” Ton-Ton looked longingly at the golden rooster. “Where did you get it?”

“It belonged to El Patrón. He collected tons of stuff.” Matt saw that he would have to do something to put his friend at ease. “You should see his music boxes. Remember the gentleman and lady doing the Mexican Hat Dance? There are dozens more.”

Ton-Ton brightened. Machines were something he understood. They went on, past paintings of men and women in somber black clothes. The effect was chilling, as though they were being watched by a throng of disapproving ghosts. “There’s a nice one,” cried Fidelito. In one alcove was the portrait of the woman in a white dress that had impressed Matt. “Is that María?”

“It can’t be,” said Matt, smiling because he, too, thought it looked like María. “These paintings are hundreds of years old.” The woman smiled as though she had a secret she was dying to tell someone. He thought she was like a ray of light in the dim hallway.

“There’s a label,” Chacho said. He brushed away a plume of dust from a brass plate below the picture. “It says ‘Goya.’ What’s a Goya?”

“I think it was the artist’s name,” said Matt.

They gathered in front of the portrait, admiring the skill with which it was drawn. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to paint like that,” said Chacho.

“You can study art here,” offered Matt. “I can hire teachers.” Chacho gave him a sad smile that meant, Oh, sure. Poor boys like me don’t get such chances. But Matt meant it. Why shouldn’t the boys stay here forever? They had no homes to return to. Why shouldn’t he, with his limitless wealth, give them everything they wanted? Chacho could paint; Ton-Ton could build machines. It was too soon to know what Fidelito was good at, but something would turn up.

They spent an hour playing with music boxes. Ton-Ton took one apart and showed everyone how the gears moved and how a metal hammer hit notes on a tiny marimba. More gears moved the dancers’ feet or caused them to twirl around. It was complicated, but the older boy knew exactly how everything fit together. It was the way Ton-Ton thought.

The most interesting box had three people on it—a cowboy playing a guitar, a woman in an old-fashioned dress, and another man dressed in black. They danced around one another, with the man in black always coming between them. Having three dancers meant the mechanism was far more complex than the other boxes, said Ton-Ton. Even he wasn’t sure how it was done.

“You’ll never know, dear,/how much I love you,” the cowboy sang in a tinny voice, “please don’t take my sunshine away.” But the man in black was dedicated to taking the sunshine away, and the lovers never got together.

Celia appeared at the door and announced that dinner was served. Salad bowls had been placed at every setting, and Cienfuegos, Sor Artemesia, and Listen were already seated. Listen treated the nun with something close to respect. Matt wondered what had happened.

Long purple shadows flowed out of the west. The tall windows were open, and the smell of freshly cut grass wafted in. Ton-Ton, Chacho, and Fidelito sat up very straight, not touching their salads. Matt guessed that Sor Artemesia had drilled them on table manners since they’d arrived from the plankton factory. In the old days they would have fallen on the food like starving wolves.

“Always use the outermost fork first,” the nun instructed them. “That is for salad. As the courses appear, you move to the next fork and the next. The same applies to knives and spoons.” It was no wonder the boys were cowed. Even Matt wasn’t sure how to navigate through twelve utensils. She must have asked for the place settings in order to teach them.

Mirasol filled everyone’s goblets with fruit juice, except for Cienfuegos, who had his usual pulque.

“I’ve heard of this banquet hall,” said Sor Artemesia. “Long ago, before María’s parents broke up, they used to come here to meet with El Patrón and his fellow criminals. I, of course, was left with the girls. Which reminds me, Matt, how did the Alacráns take your being the heir? I imagine Emilia’s nose was put out of joint when she discovered she wasn’t going to be the Lady of Opium.”

Matt dropped his fork on the floor, and Mirasol quickly replaced it with another. The boys were already eating, glancing at Sor Artemesia to be sure she approved. Listen was picking mushrooms, which she disliked, out of her salad. Matt met Cienfuegos’s eyes. How were they going to get out of this one?

“By the way, where are Emilia and her father?” asked the nun. “I thought they’d be here, if only to hear about María. What’s the matter? Have I said something wrong?”

Cienfuegos nodded at Matt. “You have to tell her.”

“Esperanza should have done it,” said the boy.

“But she didn’t. She tossed the ball to you.”

“I don’t want the damn ball!”

By now everyone had stopped eating, and Sor Artemesia looked worried. “Is something wrong?” she said.

“You bet there is,” said Listen. “They’re both dead.”

Sister Artemesia gasped and automatically crossed herself. “Was there an accident?”

“Nope. El Patrón killed them. Everyone who went to his funeral drank poisoned wine and fell down dee-diddly-dead.”

“Shut up, you fool!” shouted Matt. Sor Artemesia put her head down as though she were about to faint. He jumped up to catch her, and Ton-Ton put his hands out.

But the nun raised her head again, and although she was pale, she seemed in control. “I shouldn’t have been surprised,” she said. “Time and again I warned them. ‘Don’t build your house at the foot of a volcano.’ But they didn’t listen. The money was too good.” She sipped the fruit juice absently. “When Doña Esperanza left, I went with her, and when Senator Mendoza sent the girls to boarding school, I made sure to be one of the teachers.”

“What was Esperanza doing for her daughters?” asked Matt. “María thought her mother had abandoned her.”

Sor Artemesia sighed deeply. “Some women are not meant to be mothers. Doña Esperanza loved power, and her daughters were merely an annoyance. Which is worse? Someone who is there and resents your existence, or someone who is gone? I did my best for the girls, but Emilia was difficult. She had the worst traits of both her parents, and now it has brought her to this. If you would excuse me, mi patrón, I would like to go to the chapel and pray for their souls.”

Matt thought briefly of the shrine to Jesús Malverde. That would never do. The church Celia had gone to was several miles away through the opium fields. Its priest had died at the funeral along with the rest. Matt didn’t know whether a church was usable without a priest.

“I’ll take you,” Cienfuegos said. “We’ll have to drive, but I’m sure Daft Donald wouldn’t mind taking out the car. I’ll wait outside the church, you understand. We wouldn’t want God to strike it with lightning.”

He gently helped the nun to her feet. They walked together, neither looking at each other nor speaking. In the fading light of sunset, they seemed more like figures from the paintings than living beings. No one said a word until their footsteps had faded away and Mirasol had lit the chandeliers.