The House of the Scorpion: Chapter 23 Summary & Analysis

Matt lies strapped to a hospital bed, surrounded by guards. He is terrified because he knows what happened to MacGregor’s clone will soon happen to him. He wishes he had escaped to the mountains. Matt struggles against his straps as the doctor comes in and runs tests on him. Matt tries to run when they untie him to go to the bathroom, but the guards stop him. The doctors wonder over Matt’s strange test results but decide to go ahead with the transplants anyway.

Matt wonders where María is. He assumes the family must have drugged her and will continue to drug her until she marries Tom. He knows he cannot help María now, but he hopes Esperanza, being the headstrong woman who wrote A History of Opium, might be able to save her daughter.

Bodyguards untie Matt and take him to the next room, which is lavishly decorated. Celia and a pack of bodyguards are gathered there. El Patrón lies in a hospital bed in the room. He calls Matt “mi vida” and offers him cookies. Matt refuses to speak to him. El Patrón says his clones always behave like this at the end of their lives, because they forget the years of good treatment he has given them. He says that he gave Matt the childhood he never had in his impoverished village. He recounts the entire story of his childhood again to Matt. Off in the distance, Matt hears a dove calling, sounding like “no hope.”

El Patrón, deviating from his usual story, argues that since all his siblings died young, he is owed their lifetimes. Celia speaks up and says El Patrón has already taken thousands of lives, in the eejits out in the field. El Patrón says the eejits are the same as cattle, and he caught them running both toward and away from the United States. Celia says El Viejo was the only decent member of the family because he died at the natural time. El Patrón calls El Viejo a fool.

The doctor comes in and announces that the operation is ready to begin. El Patrón tells Matt that he made Matt just like God made Adam. According to El Patrón, Matt owes him because without the old man, Matt would have never enjoyed nature or music. Celia says that Matt doesn’t owe him anything and he won’t be donating his organs. Celia says she’s been feeding Matt poison. She explains that she has been sneaking arsenic to Matt, just enough to make him unfit to donate organs without killing him.

El Patrón screams at Celia. He becomes so worked up the doctors rush him to the operating room. Bodyguards take Celia away, leaving Matt alone in the room with a guard outside the door. The day passes as he waits. He wonders how deadly the arsenic within him is, if he has the power to kill something with it. Instead, he decides to think about María and what she told him about getting in trouble for sunbathing naked on the roof of her convent.

Tam Lin and Mr. Alacrán enter the room. Matt thinks about the time he first entered the Big House and Mr. Alacrán threw him out onto the lawn. Now, Mr. Alacrán tells Matt the family no longer needs him. Matt knows this means El Patrón is dead. Despite himself, he starts to cry. Mr. Alacrán orders Tam Lin to euthanize Matt. Matt argues, saying El Patrón educated him so that he could help govern Opium. Tam Lin tells him El Patrón had seven other clones who were also educated.

Matt becomes enraged that his friend, Tam Lin, is betraying him. Tam Lin hits him and then says that he now works for Mr. Alacrán as a mercenary. He tells Matt that Celia has been turned into an eejit. Matt realizes Tam Lin has led both Matt and Celia into a trap. Mr. Alacrán tells Tam Lin to get rid of Matt and that he will see him later at the wake.