“For the bird that arises new and refreshed from its ashes,” I said.
“Yes. But the locals were stubborn—or else the new name was too much a reminder of old disasters. Within a few months, no one was calling it anything but the Montezuma Hotel.”
“And that name persists today,” I said.
“Though people tend to refer to it as Montezuma’s Castle,” Domingo said, “because compared to local architecture it rather looks like one, and because, after all, it is no longer a hotel.”
We’d reached the top of the stair by now, and I stopped to admire the Castle up close—and to catch my breath. Now that we were even with the building, I found the place more overwhelming. Distance had obscured its size. Gingerbread and trim such as adorned the House would have looked foolish here, like a boy putting on his sister’s prom dress as a prank. Idly, I recalled that while “casa” is feminine, “hotel” is masculine.
“What happened with this last hotel?” I asked. “Was it a success?”
“It didn’t burn, if that’s what you mean,” Domingo said. “However, the resort did not thrive. The Grand Canyon was becoming the tourist spot of choice. The Phoenix Hotel opened in 1886 to much fanfare and publicity. It closed in 1893 after losing money for several years in a row. Some estimates say it was losing as much as forty thousand dollars a year—and that was the value of the 1890s dollar.”
“But the hotel wasn’t wrecked,” I said, “and no vandals burned it—so it must not have stood empty all that time.”
“No,” Domingo agreed, “it did not. Since it was closed as a hotel, the building has been a sanitorium, a YMCA, a Baptist College, a social club, a summer resort, a film-company headquarters, and a Catholic seminary. It even served as a training camp for a famous boxer in the early nineteen hundreds. In between, it often stood empty. I remember coming up here and sneaking in through a broken window to explore. My friends did this more often than I did, and several of them even lived here as members of a ‘Chicano power’ group when they were students at Highlands University.”
“But you didn’t?” I asked.
“No.” Domingo shook his head. “The Castle interests me, I will not deny that, but I could not live here.”
There was something in the way he said “could not” that rang warning bells, reminding me of how he had spoken of his worry that the House might not like him learning conservation techniques by working here. It occurred to me that the way Domingo spoke of Phineas House was how someone might speak of a demanding parent—or lover.
I felt obscurely jealous.
“Shall we walk around the outside, then go in, Mira?” Domingo asked.
“Sounds good,” I said, and fibbing valiantly. “I can’t wait to see what’s inside.”
If from the outside, the Montezuma Castle was overwhelming in its size and stony solidity, once on the inside, it overwhelmed the senses with not only the present beauty but a sense of past hopes and dreams.
In the entry foyer, now the King Hussein Welcome Hall, the registration desk had been preserved, along with the hundreds of tiny cubbyholes that once held room keys. The shining painted door to the hotel safe remained, though the safe was no longer in use. The enormous terra-cotta brick fireplace balanced against the honey-glow of polished woodwork everywhere.
The dining hall, though converted to the needs of a functional college, still was framed by elaborate stained glass windows, their jewel tones in vibrant argument with the two lime-green and yellow, six hundred pound, handmade glass fixtures hanging from the ceiling in the room’s center. The intricacies of the modern glass sculpture fascinated me, but even as I admired them, they reminded me of Medusa on a particularly bad bad-hair day.
Although I had originally looked forward to this tour, I found I wasn’t eager to probe the building’s secrets. The Castle tingled against my senses as bright colors normally did, teasing me with an added intensity that shouldn’t have been there given the structure’s muted hues. I resisted an urge to flee, reminding myself over and over again that I had been the one to ask Domingo for this tour.
Domingo’s tour was idiosyncratic to say the least. He told me how the new elevator shaft had been drilled and how the old one was now used as a cable conduit. He told me about ceilings lowered just a few inches to permit wires to be run without being visible, and about the challenges involved in putting in sprinkler systems without ruining the elaborate ornamental patterns that adorned the ceilings of some rooms.
“And, of course, given the history of fires in this building’s various incarnations,” I said, “no one was going to skimp on fireproofing—even if it did mean drilling through ornamental work.”
“Better a small hole,” Domingo said, “than a large fire.”
The Castle possessed a liberal scattering of stained-glass windows, many meticulously restored with glass that perfectly matched those panes that had survived vandalism and ill use. Even amid my tension, their colors made my heart sing. I soothed myself with the way they took the clear brilliance of the New Mexico sunshine and transformed it into almost solid color.
Like a kaleidoscope
, I thought, and wished I’d thought to bring one of the teleidoscopes along. It would be fun to see the detail here replicated into shifting mandalas.
Domingo explained that parts of the Castle were still sealed off, awaiting need, and, quite honestly, reducing the cost of the tremendously expensive restoration. Millions had already been spent—ironic, considering the original hotel had cost something like $750,000.
“All that could be done to restore the structure and preserve it from further decay was done,” Domingo said, as if he were reassuring me, “but the expense of cosmetic work in areas that were not needed for classrooms or offices was a necessary savings.”
“What parts did you work on?” I asked.
“Bits of everything,” he said, “but perhaps I am proudest of the work done on window frames and doors. Wherever possible, the original wood was restored and reused. However, the doors had not held up as well, and replicas were made. We took great care that the replicas match the originals. There are no cheap hollow-core doors here, no aluminum window sashes.”
Again, I had the sense that he was telling me something important. I tried to find out more.
“I suppose that the need for wood was because it will shrink and expand with the changes in the weather, not like metal.”
“That is so,” Domingo said. “Metal is fine in many types of construction, but not always against wood. A wooden house with wooden fixtures swells and contracts with the weather—almost as if it is breathing.”
I felt I was close to something there, but I couldn’t quite grasp it—and I was afraid to ask more. There was an unwritten rule here—I knew that much. Domingo might hint, but he could not tell me what he knew or suspected.
Or perhaps I was reading too much into his words. Maybe they were nothing more than what any devoted conservationist might say when faced with the damage modern construction techniques can cause in an old house. Hadn’t Domingo explained to me how the steel trusses put up in the late thirties to support the vast expanse of the dining room floor had ended up damaging the very structure they were meant to hold? Hadn’t I myself seen how a metal screw or nail used to mend a piece of antique furniture would eventually split and ruin the wood?
“I’m amazed at how well the Castle adapted to use as a school building—and the care that was taken to do the work,” I said. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to wreck the place and start over?”
“Easier … maybe,” Domingo said, “but remember, the Castle is not just a beloved local landmark. It was named one of ‘America’s Treasures’ by the White House Millennium Council in 1998. It was the first property west of the Mississippi to be so honored. More than local protest would have been raised if it had been destroyed.”
“And,” I said, thinking out loud, “preservation of such a building is right in keeping with the mission statement of the United World College. I don’t mean they’re dedicated to architecture, but they are to preservation—of cultures, of peaceful interaction. Saving a lovely old building and showing that old ways can blend with new needs is almost a metaphor for what they’re doing.”
“I think they would like that you see this, Mira,” Domingo said. “I think some of the administrators may have taken criticism for spending so much money on a building when there are so many other problems in the world that need to be solved. It is not spoken of, of course, but whenever a vast sum is expended on one thing, there are always those who think it should have been spent on another.”
“Like the story in the Bible,” I said, “about Mary Magdalene and Judas arguing over how she should have sold the ointment she rubbed on Jesus’s feet to raise money for the poor. Sometimes we need beauty and grandeur to inspire us to be the best we can be—to remind us of what humans are capable of when they turn their minds to something beyond the purely practical. We have the capacity for art, for beauty. I think we should use it.”
Domingo reached out and squeezed my hand, a brief touch, quickly retracted, hardly different from what Hannah might do, but I felt his warmth against my skin when he dropped his hand away.
“Mira, you must have been an inspiration to all those children in Ohio. I hope that you will not stop teaching—wherever you choose to stay.”
He coughed then, and turned to lead the way up a wonderfully curving staircase that went into one of the towers. I followed, light footed and with a fluttering heart, feeling ridiculously pleased.
Careful, Mira. Spanish people touch a lot more than Anglos do. He may not have meant anything more than what he said. Don’t start having a midlife crisis now, and getting all goofy over a man just because you’re newly orphaned and out of place.
But my sensible self couldn’t convince my heart. I was getting far too fond of Domingo Navidad to pretend his words—and the hint that he cared whether I stayed or went—didn’t matter.
We did a lot more touring that long weekend. After I swore I could handle more walking, Domingo took me to the Hermit’s Cave, where, in the latter eighteen hundreds, resided an Italian mystic who the locals claimed could heal at a touch. I liked the story, which seemed to belong to the misty reaches of the Middle Ages in Europe, rather than to almost modem times, but I liked it even better when Domingo told me how the Hermit always denied doing anything magical, saying that all he did was use medical techniques he had learned in his travels.
Eventually, the Hermit left the Las Vegas area—maybe because of the strain of being regarded as a living saint. Sadly, soon after he took up his new residence, he was murdered. The killer was never found.
We went to the campus of Highlands University and walked among the fine solidity of its building. Highlands began as a branch of something called the “Normal” University system. Domingo admitted he had no idea what this meant, but that old books frequently referred to the Normal University as one of the highlights of Las Vegas. Domingo proudly told me that today Highlands is increasingly important to education in northern New Mexico.
As contrast to the Normal, we drove by and looked at the exterior of the State Hospital. There Domingo told me both about how the early insane asylum had developed from the charity of a single Spanish don, and about the doctor who stripped down to their skeletons the corpses of those indigent patients who died without family or friends to care about what happened to their bodies.
I found myself wondering if Colette had really been a resident of that formidable institution, and was happy that it was a holiday, so I wasn’t tempted to go in and ask.
From Domingo’s tales I realized anew how violent this region had been. Today it is rather thrilling to read about the presence of outlaws and vigilantes, but for the farmers and shopkeepers who were their victims they were rarely heroes.
Although we were gone for long spans each day, I doubt Phineas House felt neglected. After a few restaurant meals, Domingo and I found ourselves drifting back to that property where we dwelt both together and apart. One day I cooked chicken on the grill. Another Domingo made some of the best burritos I’d ever had. It was very companionable, but for that one handclasp and those enigmatic roses, Domingo behaved with perfect friendliness, and I reluctantly decided he probably wasn’t interested in me at all. It was Evelina, his sister, who called and invited me to join them at the family cookout on Labor Day itself.
Maybe he’s gay,
I thought.
He’s never been married. Maybe
his heart was irrevocably broken by someone. I wish I knew Evelina better and could ask a few questions. I’d hate to make a fool of myself though.
And Evelina, busy with coordinating a cookout for what seemed like at least half her neighborhood, was hardly available for intimate chats. I tried to take comfort in the fact that Domingo didn’t seem interested in any of the many attractive women who chatted with him over the course of the afternoon, but then he didn’t treat me any differently either.
I tossed sticks for Blanco, played catch with Enrico, and made small talk with the other guests. It would have been a good party, but for my nagging sense that I was missing at least one subtext to the weekend—and my sensible self telling me that in this, at least, I was simply fooling myself.