by James Short
A thought suddenly struck Philip. “If I give Gaspar his coin back, do you disappear?”
“You can try. Let’s go on to Tomàs. We left him in a very precarious situation.”
“Hello,” Tomàs said, untying the handkerchief to speak more clearly.
“Who are you?” There was no tremor in her voice.
“A visitor.”
“A visitor? Well, to my knowledge, visitors must first announce themselves and are usually acquaintances of the people in the house. At least, you, sir, can start out by giving me a name. It doesn’t have to be your real name, however, if you want me to accept you as a visitor, you must make that small concession.”
He weighed the risk of staying longer. He was unsure whether he was as invisible to her as she was to him and regretted taking off his mask. Later, she might be able to identify him. He had spoken. Possibly, she could recognize his voice. “You can call me Jack,” he whispered, backing away from the window.
“I’m Penelope. What is your purpose, Jack, in invading a young lady’s room in the middle of the night?”
In Tomàs’s experience, the most effective lies were a combination of the truthful and the outrageous. “As mad as it may appear, I’ve come to declare my love. Every Sunday, I wait at Broad Street to see your carriage pass. Every night, I spend hours gazing up at your house just thinking of you. I feel that there has been a great curse… that you’re under the influence of some…”
“You’ve never seen my face?” Penelope interrupted.
Tomàs didn’t like the note of skepticism in her question. “No.”
“You’ve never heard me speak?” Her voice rose ever so slightly showing tension.
“Not until this moment have I heard your sweet…”
“Have you talked to a direct acquaintance of mine?”
Tomàs found his temper beginning to simmer. He was doing this girl who lived for all intents and purposes the life of a hermit the favor of paying her a high compliment, and she was doing him the disfavor of playing the skeptic. “My heart knows you,” he declared boldly.
“It does? How can it do that?”
“Give me a chance to prove it. Just a few minutes, and you’ll be able to see into the depths of my love. Just a few minutes…” He paused trying to gauge her reaction. “And I’ll show you…”
“I don’t know why you’re going through all this folderol to persuade me you’re in love with me. It’s unbecoming the thief you are. This is the wrong room to find items worth stealing. There may not be anything worth your while on the premises, but you could try my mother’s room. I do believe she keeps her jewelry in a small chest under her bed. She takes a pint of sherry with tincture of laudanum every night so an earthquake couldn’t rouse her. Franklin doesn’t take laudanum, but still sleeps like the dead. Yelda is afraid of the dark and won’t leave her room for love nor money. In any event, if she hears footsteps, she’ll just think I’m wandering around. I am giving you this information because I’m depending on you to harm no one here. Since you’re not strangling me at the moment, I don’t think you’re a violent man. In return, I won’t raise the alarm until you’ve gone.”
Whenever love and business had competed before in Tomàs’s life, he had always given preference to business. There were more pretty faces than fortunes in the world. He did so now. “I can see my passion is hopeless. I will leave you, but always remember me fondly.” He had rarely felt so silly, and he could have sworn that she was laughing softly when he left.
Tomàs had second thoughts when he came to the room which smelled of burnt hair and lilac. The idea of stealing the jewelry from right underneath the hag’s bed tickled his fancy, yet this might be a trap. Why should he trust the girl? With a strong suspicion he had never acted so foolishly, Tomàs turned the handle and pushed the door open.
Unlike her daughter’s room, the dim yellow moon illuminated more directly the interior, showing clearly the silhouette of Madeleine Boller laying on her back as still as a sculpted image on the top of a sarcophagus. With her wrinkles invisible in the darkness, her profile was worthy of admiration. Tomàs took three steps forward and then fell quietly to his hands and knees. He reached under the bed, felt the wooden chest and began to draw it towards him.
Madeleine Boller stirred suddenly, seeming to wrestle with an invisible assailant, and then rasped out a cough. His head was exactly level with the bed when he saw her eyes open wide and stay open. She turned her head and stared directly at him. Not ten inches separated them. It took all of his will to maintain calm, and to search the face for clues as to her state of mind. She wasn’t screaming so maybe she was dreaming. Then the half of her face illuminated by the moonlight smiled. He returned the smile and continued pulling the chest out from underneath the bed. Madeleine Boller closed her eyes again.
Feeling bold, he sprung the lid of the chest and plunged his hands through what seemed a hundred layers of silken fabric until he felt several rings, two necklaces, and a bracelet. He lifted them up to the moonlight. A meager haul, yet still profitable. Tomàs was about to stand, but then he thrust his fist clutching the jewelry back into the chest through the layers of old fabric and let go. He closed the chest with misgivings and the thought, this isn’t what I came here for.
“I am a thief,” He addressed the dark figure in the corner of the room, “however I came here to meet you, not to steal.”
She laughed, as pure a sound as chimes in a breeze. “Well, this is what I would call an interesting situation. If you aren’t going to ravish me, then I believe the best course is for us to get acquainted. I’ve been giving you some thought. I believe you must be Mr. Deering. Nobody else in our town I’m aware of practices your particular trade.”
Tomàs was momentarily deprived of his ability to speak. If a girl who to his knowledge never talked to anybody knew the secret of his vocation, then the whole town must also be in on it. Yet they couldn’t be. He was certain. Thornton would have arrested him.
“Don’t worry, I should tell, but I shan’t. Who would believe me anyway? You are Mr. Deering, aren’t you? It would be nice if you admitted you are him so we could start out on an honest footing.”
“I would like to know how you came to your conclusion,” Tomàs said stiffly.
“I won’t converse with a man who is not forthright with me. Are you Mr. Deering or not?”
“I am Mr. Deering. Who informed you that I was a thief?”
“I figured it out just now.” He could now hear a note of satisfaction in her soft voice. “Mr. Thornton has told me that whenever he has business with people from the Flats, he has to confer with Thomas Deering. He tells me that this Thomas Deering appears to be an honorable man, but he’s at a loss at how this Thomas Deering earns his living. He thinks Thomas Deering has something to hide. You have observed me going to church, so you’re from Solvidado. You are about the age of Thomas Deering. You obviously cannot advertise your occupation, so you are the Thomas Deering who has something to hide.”
“So now you have my identity. What are you going to do with it?”
“Do with it? Why, I don’t have the slightest idea.” She gave another soft peal of beautiful laughter. “Forgive me, Mr. Deering…”
“Tomàs.”
“Tomàs?”
“That is the name the people I care about call me.”
“I will call you Thomas because we don’t know each other well. Thomas, the greatest of my feminine weaknesses is my curiosity. Tell me how does one exactly become a thief? I am acquainted with the novels of Dickens. I always imagined that thieves must have had hard childhoods. Were you mistreated as a young boy? Abandoned by your parents? Did you begin to steal to put food on the table to feed your hungry brothers and sisters?”
“I had enough fun as a boy, I guess.” Tomàs was put out. He had not been obliged to justify himself since his last confession at the age of eleven.
“Then why do you make a living taking things that don’t belong to you?”<
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“It’s the family trade. The son of a farmer becomes a farmer. The son of a blacksmith becomes a blacksmith. My father…” Tomàs’s conscience nudged at him. He considered the aspersion he was about to cast on the good-natured idler whose criminal activity usually met with indifferent success. He aimed as close to the truth as he could. “My father had to steal because he was successful at nothing else, and he had a family to support.”
“Oh, but you don’t have a family to support, Thomas. Furthermore, you are respected and admired here and could succeed as a man of affairs”
“I am a businessman,” he protested.
“Your business is stealing,” she replied in a tone indicating she wasn’t about to accept such a weak rationalization.
“Not much difference between me and a tradesman who overcharges.”
“Except the tradesman does give something in return, and one isn’t forced to deal with him.”
“It’s a well-known fact that behind every fortune, there’s a great crime,” Tomàs repeated the words Olmstead used when he had mercilessly fleeced a well-to-do mark. “My little crimes just even out the wealth.”
“So like Robin Hood you give away much of what you steal.”
“Yes, I do,” said Tomàs, happy this statement was less dishonest coming from his lips than coming from the mouths of most other thieves.
“It would be a shame if my first admirer were a bad man,” Penelope said musing as much to herself as addressing him. “You are respected and considered an honorable man, Thomas, and only I know what you do for a living. Maybe, there is goodness hidden in you. You definitely have a problem with honesty, yet your voice, I believe, is a kind voice. Oh, well, I’ll give up trying to figure you out for now. At least, you’re a man who has a story to tell. I would so like to hear it. I have a weakness for stories, you see. Not everyone has a story. Me, for instance, there is little to tell about myself because I’ve done so little in my life.”
Tomàs flattered himself that he could match any man yarn for yarn. “Sure, I have stories. I was born for adventure. I started young. At the age of ten months, after I took my first step, my father put me on a horse. At the same tender age, I also began to teach myself…”
“Please,” Penelope interrupted. “I’m sure you’re a very accomplished man, Thomas, and I can’t claim, like some girls, to be tired of hearing men boast, but that isn’t what I’m after. I can find plenty of adventure in novels. And we don’t have much time. Franklin wakes early and my mother becomes restless for more laudanum just before dawn.”
“Nobody’s ever complained about my stories before,” Tomàs said with hurt pride.
“I’m sorry. You see, because I’m not sure you’ll come again, I don’t want the adventures anyone might experience. I want a story from your heart, so I’ll still have a real part of you when you leave.”
“You mean romance.”
“No, not romance really. I want you to talk about things that truly matter to you. Let me help. Was your mother kind or pretty?”
“I was twelve when she died. All mothers are kind, and how does a boy know whether his mother is pretty or not?”
“She must have been good if you think all mothers are kind. Did you love her?”
“What does a twelve-year-old boy know about love?”
“Tell me, what does he know?” Eagerness was evident in her voice.
“Not damn much! That’s certain,” Tomàs exclaimed. “While she was dying, I didn’t want to be around her, although she kept wanting to see me. I couldn’t stand the aunts and great aunts and cousins moaning and groaning and the uncles speaking in whispers. I wasn’t allowed to talk like a boy talks, and I had to tiptoe up to her and peck her on the cheek. I used to run into her and hug her around the middle with all my might. I couldn’t stand to be there and watch her die. But my mother wanted to see me all she could. When she passed finally, I rowed out into the bay and shot at the sun with my dad’s pistol. I knew I was crazy, but I wanted to kill it. I reloaded and shot at the waves too. When I killed a seagull, I got sick of myself and rowed back in.”
“Where was your father?”
“My father? Already gone. Tell me this, Miss Boller, since you can judge between good and bad. Who is worse: a man who steals your cattle or a man who kills a Chinaman or a darky for the fun of it? When I was about seven, my father and I came upon some toughs in San Francisco dragging a Chinaman by his pigtail. They were flicking lighted matches at him, flinging him around and around. The Chinaman’s wife and daughter were there crying and screaming. Well, my father took care of them, stepped in between the toughs and the Chinaman and flattened the toughs, each with a punch, which was good because they were armed. Now, a lot of good, decent, respectable citizens who would never steal a penny were standing around watching, and they didn’t lift a finger.”
“They were probably afraid.”
“So was my father, but he did something. I remember we had to sneak out of town quick because we upset so many people.”
“Any man who risks his life to save another is good, or mostly good. However, because you are good one way, it doesn’t mean you can steal,” she reasoned. “How about you? Are you good in part like your father?”
Tomàs indulged in a bitter laugh. “I have a better reputation than him. Everybody knew he was a thief. Only you seemed to have figured that out about me. Oh, in many ways I don’t think I hold a candle to him…”
They spoke until an hour before dawn. With all of Penelope’s questions and the tangential conversations about everything from the smell of the early morning air to the best prayer for a child to say at night to the nature of courage, Tomàs didn’t get much beyond his childhood. When Penelope told him it was time for him to go, he realized he had gotten nothing of what he came there for.
“You haven’t said a thing about yourself.” He felt a little ashamed that the conversation had been mostly about him.
“There’s so little to say,” Penelope replied in a guarded tone.
“Why are you kept here like a prisoner?”
“Did you find my door locked?”
“I would like to see your face.” Tomàs was surprised at the intensity he felt on making this request.
“Not yet.”
“Why do you always wear a veil? Is there something wrong with your face?”
“Leave now. You only have a few minutes.” Penelope drew in a deep breath. “But come back tomorrow night, Tom, please, and tell me more of your story.”
As he walked away, he believed he heard her repeat, “Tom, Tom, Tom,” as if trying out his name.
Tomàs visited Penelope every night for a month. As soon as the occupants of the house were sound asleep, Penelope would signal with the brief flicker of a match in the window. He entered the mansion through the rear door, glided up the servant’s staircase and down the back corridor where nobody slept. He always found Penelope in the dark corner of the room. He took the chair opposite her and stared at the swimming shadows that never quite dissipated.
And they talked. At times, they seemed to be two ends of a loom between which the golden and silvery threads of conversation were woven. He respected the distance. Most nights, afraid the reality of deformed flesh would break the spell, Tomàs frankly wished never to see her face. The companionship of the voice was enough—sweet and light—it had the same ability a melody has to suddenly, by a change of octave or quickening of pace, intensify what had come before. She laughed easily, although always softly to avoid waking the others.
Yet, on certain nights, his curiosity to see her face nearly overwhelmed him. Tomàs would lean forward and glare at the dark cloud that enveloped her. He could have just as easily thrown the chair through the window as engage in the useless pitter-patter which seemed so much beside the point. He pleaded with her: “You could never be ugly to me now that I know you.” “If you have a good side, just let me see that for just a moment.” He constructed airtight arguments: “You demand hones
ty from me, yet isn’t hiding your face a form of dishonesty?” “If you’re so afraid of losing me after I look at you, isn’t it better to get it over with sooner rather than later?”
Penelope remained obdurately invisible. She always made the same reply: “There will be a time for that, but not yet. Let’s keep these moments where nothing distracts from what our hearts say as they are, not alter a thing.”
“And if I insist now or never?”
“Then I will tell you never,” she replied with firmness.
All Tomàs had to do was strike a match and tear off the veil. The violation would take a second. Twice, he came very near to doing it. He made his excuses to leave early, and the moment he was out of the dark close room and was walking into the thrilling coolness of the early morning, he remembered the voice he loved and was glad he had restrained himself.
Through the act of telling the stories of his heart, Tomàs began to view himself differently. Before, he had seen life as a table laid out with only half as much food and drink for the guests present, and his role had then been to make sure he and his friends got a share. Tomàs was now glimpsing a deeper purpose which had led him to the woman behind the veil. But purpose, he was learning, presupposed belief.
Jacinto suddenly interrupted his account and stopped. “Hear that.”
“What?” Philip smelled ash. He saw a man with a garden hose putting out a fire in a trash can.
“Don’t run or they’ll chase you.”
Sixty people turned the corner at the end of the street. They approached, attacking cars with bats and bricks and throwing over trash cans. Three squad cars with sirens blazing suddenly pulled up blocking their way. The mob retreated, and if it could be said that a group of people could snarl, they did. Jacinto continued:
The Morning before the Moment of Truth
“You want to know what original sin is?” Olmstead asked Tomàs once after cheating a parson of his congregation’s charitable donations destined for an Indian orphanage. “Original sin is thinking you can have it better when you already got it good.”