A phonograph was playing, the needle running across the worn surface of a record. She’d never seen a real vinyl record before and stood mesmerized, watching the disc spin and spin.
“It’s called ‘Stardust,’” Bernardino said. “Most music is like nails on chalkboard to my ears, it drives me mad. This isn’t like most music, though.”
He was sitting on a couch upholstered in brocade, a tabby on his lap. His clothes, just like the couch, were from another era. It was as if he were keeping the current century at bay.
“It’s nice,” she said.
Bernardino nodded, his hands resting against his cane. His fingers were long, his eyebrows joined in the middle, and he was terribly pale, his skin reminding her of a deep sea–dwelling creature. She’d never had a chance to meet one of his kind. Not that she’d wanted to.
“How did your mother die?” he asked.
“Decapitated. The Necros did it. Godoy, he killed her.”
“Your sister, she is also dead?”
Atl nodded.
“I imagined as much.”
“I think everyone else is dead too,” she muttered.
“Probably not. Your lot is hardy.”
He gently put the cat on the floor and stood up, shuffling to her side. There were stacks of records by the table and he grabbed one, switching it. The singer was a woman this time, talking about a man she loved.
“How is the arm feeling?” he asked.
“Fine, I suppose.”
“Let me see.”
Atl raised her arm and he removed the bandage, running his fingers along the stump. Atl glanced away. She didn’t want to look at it.
“It heals well and fast,” he said, slowly placing the bandage back in its place.
“Not fast enough for me. I need my hand.”
“There’s nothing I can do about that.”
She didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so she gave him a small smile. “Thank you, by the way. For helping us.”
He returned the smile with a stiff nod and hunched over his records, as if looking for something else, though he made no effort to go through them.
“My mother said you were a surgeon,” she said. She really had no idea why she had said that, since she did not want to start much of a conversation with him. Bernardino had helped them, but he still scared her.
“For a while. When I was younger.” His mouth moved slowly, the words were sluggish.
Bernardino stared at the phonograph, lost in thought. She didn’t think he’d say anything else, but he spoke again, his voice more animated.
“It was interesting work.”
In the late nineteenth century, during the Porfiriato. That was as much as she knew. Mother liked to talk about the past, but not her own past. The family’s past, the clan’s. Everything was narrated in a collective manner.
“Did your mother tell you how we met?” he asked.
“No.”
“It was during the Revolution. She was just a few years older than you, I’d think. The city was going mad. It was when the soldiers rose in arms and Madero was killed. The city was ringing with the sound of bullets; corpses were burned in the middle of the streets. I was afraid I’d be killed, and had gone into hiding.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“I was found out and managed to run away, though they were catching up with me. I can’t recall who they were by now,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “I ran into a street, thinking they’d catch me and burn me. And then there came a rider on a galloping horse. ‘Come, come on,’ she yelled. She gave me her hand, and I jumped behind her, though for a good full minute I didn’t realize she was a girl, with that hat upon her head and the gun at her hip.
“When we were safe, she introduced herself. At first I was suspicious, thinking maybe she’d saved my life only to rob me and toss me on the side of the road, but she had not. Like I said, she was young, she was na?ve, she thought it was important to do the right thing, even if that meant saving a vampire she owed no allegiance to.”
Atl had a hard time picturing her mother as young or na?ve. She’d been the leader of their clan for nearly three decades. A determined, stern woman, but not one she could see socializing with this man, or spending any time in this cold house. Her mother loved the desert, its warm days and the nights when they could count the stars.
“The last time I saw her it was 1979. Yes. She’d come to Mexico City for a visit, but the country was changing. The vampires were leaving. It was not good for us anymore. She came here, to see me, and told me I ought to head north, where things were much better. Of course I told her I’d never leave my house. It’s been my house for a very long time, I said. She told me I’d get myself killed, like I almost did during the Revolution, but I wasn’t afraid.
“I knew I’d probably never see her again, so I gave her a gift. She liked to collect Aztec artifacts, your mother, didn’t she?”
Atl remembered the house back north with its ancient pots and figurines, her mother’s fascination with archeological digs, the talk of the old clans, the old ways. It was gone now. Shattered, burned, destroyed.