Mexican Gothic

Dinner that night is another unpleasant experience. Florence scolds Noemí for taking the car into town, smoking in her room, and insisting on talking during dinner; she caps this dressing down with the implication that Noemí’s actions imply some moral laxity.

The scolding ends after the family is summoned to Howard’s room. Howard asks Noemí to come sit with him as if it is a great mark of favor. He smells of decay, rubs his fingers over Noemí’s hands, and touches her hair as he muses over the portraits of Agnes and Alice, two English sisters who were his wives over the years. The girls were orphans when he met them. Agnes died a year after the Doyles came to El Triunfo, and Alice was the only suitable woman to marry for a Doyle. She gave him many children, but only Virgil survived.

Eager to escape Howard’s wandering hands, Noemí moves across the room to talk with Virgil. Virgil knowingly makes jokes about his father’s obsession with pretty women and eugenics. Noemí is relieved to talk with someone who knows how to banter like people in her social set on Mexico City, so the two have a pleasant conversation. During this uncomfortable visit, Howard makes Virgil agree to take Noemí to see the old greenhouse on the estate.

That night Noemí dreams that Howard enters her room and undresses her. A voice calls out to her that she must wake up. The dream shifts to a bed made of dirt, and now the man standing over her is Virgil, who roughly and abruptly has sex with her. This act of rape is overlaid with the powerful smell of rotten matter emanating from the male figure who assaults Noemí. In the dream Noemí knows that she does not want this sex, but her body responds despite the Doyles’ repulsive nature. When she wakes up, the house is quiet and she is still wearing her nightdress. She has a hard time getting back to sleep.

Dr. Camarillo visits Catalina the next day, and Noemí manages to sit in during the visit. Catalina seems fine at first but then has an episode in which she insists that there are people in the walls listening. She tasks Noemí with finding some nameless but important thing hidden in the cemetery to save Catalina from further harm. Catalina abruptly stops talking, claiming that she is too tired to talk more. Afterward, Camarillo says that Catalina probably does need a psychiatrist.

Camarillo leaves when Virgil shows up to take Noemí to see the ruined greenhouse, which was created by Alice and is also covered with the motif of the ouroboros. After some uncomfortable talk about eugenics—Virgil believes in Howard’s theories of fit and unfit races—Noemí suggests getting psychiatric care for Catalina, but Virgil is dismissive and takes care to remind Noemí that she does not set the rules at High Place. He leaves. Noemí realizes that as much as she dislikes Howard, she may well need to go to him directly to plead for help for Catalina.

Three days later Noemí has a frightening experience. She decides to explore the cemetery at High Place. Once there, she is overcome by a strange buzzing that makes it impossible to focus and a mist so thick that she cannot figure out how to get out of the garden. She is almost completely overcome when Francis, who was out picking mushrooms, comes to the rescue.

Francis is obsessed with mushrooms and makes spore prints out of any interesting specimens he discovers in the garden. He shyly asks Noemí if she would like to examine his collection of spore prints. He and Noemí bond over stories about the ones consumed by Indigenous healers like Noemí’s Mazatec kin, who ate mushrooms to induce visions and ecstasy.

Their engaging conversation goes awry after Noemí casually flirts with Francis, who takes her banter as a sexual proposition and earnestly rejects it because it would make them both unclean. This is what Florence has taught him. Noemí beats a hasty and angry retreat but relents when she realizes she hurt his feelings with her own response. When Noemí arrives back at the house, Florence scolds her for tracking mud in and tells her she has missed out on the chance to visit Catalina for the day.

On Wednesday Noemí goes to the library to look at Francis’s botanical collection. She has the chance to see photos of Ruth and question Francis about Ruth’s murder of the family. Francis’s spore prints and pressed plant collection are lovely and show that Francis is not just a naturalist—the colors and care illustrated by the prints show that there is an artistic side to Francis. During their conversation, Noemí manages to convince Francis to sneak her back into town tomorrow. Desperate to recapture some of the childhood fun she experienced growing up with Catalina, Noemí wants to buy a pack of cards to play loteria, a childhood game of chance she and Catalina used to play.

Florence interrupts this plotting. Eager to smooth things over with Florence as well, Noemí asks Florence to put her to work. Florence tasks Noemí with the tedious job of polishing the tarnished silver from the dining room. The two women talk as Noemí works. Florence tells Noemí to stop making Francis discontent with his place and opines that Catalina is so fortunate to have become a somebody by marrying into the Doyle family. The conversation ends.

Afterward, Noemí thinks over Florence’s arrogant, clueless belief that Catalina married up by becoming a Doyle. Catalina was always one for believing in fairytales and endless enchantments, but her present state implies that life as a Doyle does not live up to that dream. High Place is fantastical, but it is nightmarish because everyone who comes into its orbit seems incapable of escaping its hold.