The City of Palaces

 

 

 

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The City
of
Palaces

Michael Nava

Terrace Books

A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press

 

 

Terrace Books
A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor
Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
uwpress.wisc.edu

3 Henrietta Street
London WC2E 8LU, England
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Copyright © 2014 by Michael Nava

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nava, Michael, author.
The city of palaces: a novel / Michael Nava.
pages          cm
ISBN 978-0-299-29910-1 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-299-29913-2 (e-book)
1. Mexico—History—1867–1910—Fiction.
2. Mexico—History—Revolution, 1910–1920—Fiction.
3. Mexico City (Mexico)—Fiction.  I. Title.
PS3564.A8746C58            2014
813′.54—dc23
2013033799

This is a work of fiction. All incidents, dialogue, and characters, with the exception of historical figures, are products of the author's imagination. Where historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogue concerning them are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events. Any historical event depicted in the work is also the product of the author's imagination and is not intended to be an accurate historical representation of such event. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

 

Para mis abuelos

Ángelina Trujillo Acuña

(1902–74)

Ramón Herrera Acuña

(1905–80)

 

 

Book 1

The Palace of the Gaviláns

1897–1899

T
he first time Sarmiento saw the woman who would become his wife, he thought she was a nun. She rushed toward him across one of the fetid courtyards of Belem prison, where he had gone to find his father. She was clad in a long, dark dress he assumed was a nun's habit and her face, also like a nun's, was veiled. She called out to him urgently, “Señor, Señor, are you a doctor?” He raised his medical bag in assent as she reached him, breathless. It was then he realized her costume was not that of a religious order because, although drab, the material was rich. The dress was a shimmering silk of midnight blue, and the veil in the same shade dropped like a curtain from her bonnet and was a finely woven lace mesh that revealed only the shadowy contours of her face. Her appearance in the courtyard had attracted the attention of the inmates—dirty, barefoot men in tattered clothes, dark faces shaded by the broad brims of their high-peaked sombreros. They left off their fighting and dice to shout crude epithets at her.

“Señora,” Sarmiento said. “This is not a safe place for a lady.”

“A woman inmate is dying in childbirth,” she said. “The midwife is late. Please, come quickly.”

There was a quality in her voice that, notwithstanding her distress, was singularly soothing and the voice itself was soft, husky, musical. Through the heavy veil he detected the liquid emerald of her eyes. She must be beautiful, he thought, and that as much as the urgency of her errand persuaded him to take a detour from his search for his father.