by James Short
“Do I not please you?” Penelope asked.
“How can you say that? You’re so pretty.”
“Ah, you think so?”
“Yes, a thousand times yes.”
“Well, Franklin has brought you here to see me as I truly am. I remember you mentioning that your favorite breakfast was corn muffins and bacon. May I serve you some cooked by me?”
“Of course,” Tomàs replied, thinking the offer of breakfast out of place. “But I didn’t expect you to go to the trouble.”
She went through a door which apparently led to a kitchen.
“Make sense of this for me?” Tomàs whispered to Franklin, who regarding him with an expression of intense curiosity, declined to reply.
Penelope returned, carrying a plate of muffins. Tomàs reached out his hand to take it as she put the plate on the table. He then looked into her eyes. She turned and went back into the kitchen, coming out again with three empty plates in one hand and a platter of bacon and sausage in the other. She put the plates and platter down on the table and sat in her chair. Tomàs waved his hand in front of her face.
“I can feel you waving, my dear friend; I have a sense of motion and light, however, I can’t see your hand. Today you are to observe how I manage. I apologize. The routine of a blind girl really isn’t very interesting. You must watch me, however, so you can observe my abilities and my failings.”
The four of them were quiet for a minute after the story. April was about to ask Philip how he could possibly know what he had just told them, but he spoke first. “April, let’s go back to the hotel.”
April shook her head and put her right hand over her wedding ring, wishing she had taken it off. The house now seemed intolerably close.
“I think I understand,” Philip replied, glancing at Aquino.
That comment made April even angrier. He didn’t understand a thing. She didn’t either. For form’s sake, she mumbled thanks to Gaspar, then said to Aquino, “Let’s go.”
Once outside, she looked around. All seemed quiet. A patch of fog was suspended above the street like a ghost taking its ease. She stared upwards. The night sky seemed to have acquired more depth since the last time she was outside. The sudden presence of limitless space now transfixed her. The longer she stared into the heavens, the more stars came into view as if they were being created for her benefit right then and there. April took a deep breath.
“Better to die like Penelope than live like Penelope,” Ravela whispered. Just a few blocks away, like the respiration of a huge beast, waves pounded the shore and were sucked back. Without being aware of the conscious decision, she began to run.
She sprinted towards the sound of the surf, discerning that at a point beyond the end of the street there was a ledge formed by a large flat rock jutting over the water and rocks.
“Faster!” Ravela shrieked in her ear. “Faster, or he’ll get you. 100 feet to go. 70 feet left. 30 more and two leaps and you’ll soar out into your sweet dream forever. Sweets for the sweet.”
April stumbled as she reached the rock and then scrambled onward on all fours. What she thought was the tip of the ledge was actually a hump. Another gravelly ten feet remained before the drop. She slipped and began to slide on her rear. Her right hand grasped a tough stalk of a thorny crevice bush.
“Let go!” Ravela insisted, laughing and screaming.
April did, but it was too late. Aquino had caught her wrist, and he easily pulled her back as if she weighed no more than a bundle of straw.
“You’ll hit the slope at forty feet, and that would more likely make you a permanent cripple than a corpse.”
“I want to die,” she sobbed. “Please, don’t stop me.”
“Do you really? A minute ago, you were holding on for dear life.”
“A reflex reaction,” April insisted.
“Allow me to test this reflex reaction.” He held her, preventing escape, and then pushed her towards the edge. She yelped and struggled frantically to get away from the drop.
“What do you want? What in the hell do you want?” April shouted at him.
“A thousand gold pieces—double eagles, eagles, half eagles, denominations of twenty, ten, and five—minted between 1840 and 1870, and worth up to five million in today’s currency, depending on the rarity of the coins. I want to lay it at Dory’s feet to astonish her, convince her of miracles, and then perhaps see what I can get for it.” Aquino loosened his grip ever so slightly. “So talk about Penelope.”
“Doreen doesn’t want me to be part of the game, remember, and Philip told you all you needed to know. Penelope was blind. How could she hide a treasure?”
“What makes your husband an expert?”
“Why do you really believe I can come up with the answer?”
“Because you already have it—you just don’t know you have it yet.”
April sighed in frustration. “I want to go back to the hotel. You said I could whenever I wanted.”
“Not now when we’re so close. Talk about Penelope. I know you have the key. Just put it into the lock and turn.”
“Why don’t you tell me about Thomas Deering’s mind? He was a thief; you’re a thief. He kidnapped a woman; you kidnapped me.”
“I only saw far enough into his mind to realize he didn’t hide the gold.”
“You’re insane.”
“Yes, I am.” Again displayed his sharpened teeth. “Which is the consequence of realizing the thinnest of membranes separates one mind from the next.”
“But I can’t be like Penelope!”
“You are like her, and like her, you’re keeping something from me.”
“Will you let me die after I help you?” April begged.
“That’s the deal we made. I always keep my word.”
“And you won’t try to save me. You won’t even say a single word to keep me from jumping.”
“I won’t even discourse on the damnation of the souls of suicides or my own damnation in allowing you to commit it.”
“I don’t want to know the rest of the story. I don’t want to…” April had the sense that the story would contain the two things she had avoided most in her life: pain and love. “I’m not keeping anything from you except I don’t want to die twice tonight.”
Museum with a Keyhole into the Past
During the next leg of their journey, April became so disorientated that she had the impression Solvidado was on an island surrounded by the ocean. The route they traveled seemed half maze and half obstacle course. Not only did Aquino traverse alleys and cross into backyards with the same facility as a cat patrolling its territory, but occasionally he would walk through a house, sometimes exiting through a window, sometimes through a door, in full confidence the occupants were not at home.
April followed clumsily, collecting splinters, scrapes, and bruises on the way. Finally, they arrived at a house that predated the twentieth century. An oval embossed copper plaque on a sign planted in the lawn showed two hands joined and read, “Solvidado Historical Society Established 1952 by Friends of Solvidado.”
“It’s closed,” April wearily observed, aware that such an obvious objection wouldn’t make any difference to Aquino.
Aquino rang the doorbell and kept on ringing it until a window opened on the second story. A man with a shock of gray hair and large ears stuck his head out and yelled, “Only two people would abuse my doorbell like that at three in the morning. Which are you, Aquino or my nephew?”
“Aquino, of course.”
“Good, I’ve been wanting to have a talk with you.”
A moment later the door opened, and the curator, caretaker, janitor, resident or whatever he was, let them in saying, “Well, well, well, this is the first time you’ve brought along a friend?”
“April this is Augustus, the curator of this wonderful place. Augustus, this is April, a young woman fascinated by all things nineteenth century. April is leaving early tomorrow, and I wanted to show her your remarkable collection
of nineteenth-century furniture.”
“That’s what I like about you, Aquino, you are a bold liar even when you don’t have to be.”
Aquino bowed his head slightly as if he had just received a compliment. “Your collection is really remarkable, however, that isn’t the reason we are here. We had a historical dispute with a young man who claimed that Penelope Boller was blind. She, therefore, could not have hidden the treasure, which is my theory. Hal says you might have a photo of her that you’ve been keeping from me.”
The curator frowned. “Keeping anything from you? No one can do that. After you left last time, I noticed a lock broke on the old desk which you were interested in. And we have other things to discuss, so I need to speak to you alone.”
“I’m always available to a friend and fellow history buff. Can April wander through the museum while we have our talk?”
Gus nodded.
April stayed below while the Aquino and Augustus climbed a small stairway. She heard the curator say when they reached the top of the stairs: “By the way, are you familiar with a fellow called Father Hornsby?”
The museum consisted of three unremarkable rooms: a nineteenth-century bedroom, a nineteenth-century parlor, and an old fashion kitchen. This exhibition had seemed pointless to April when she visited with Philip two days ago. So what? She had thought. Everybody knew that the people back then had fewer possessions, fewer conveniences if any, more drudgery, less entertainment, more work, worse health. They died younger and with no anesthesia. They buried children as well as parents. They lost teeth that weren’t replaced. Disfigurements were largely not disguised. Even the furniture, the chairs, beds, and settees whose purpose was to provide rest to their worn aching bodies, had an unyielding character as if their makers had little idea of what rest and comfort really were. Her curiosity had been exhausted within five minutes.
Now, in her confusion, April barely saw what was in front of her. She did scratch the metal on the cast-iron bathtub to see if there was gold underneath. She picked up the bucket of coals, which were fake. An abacus on a small table in the corner drew her eye. April ran her fingers over the crack in the wood where it had been glued together. Suddenly, she realized that these were Penelope’s rooms. That’s why they seemed so well ordered. Penelope must have played the spinet in the corner. April opened a drawer and saw perfectly folded linen, gray with age.
She entered the bedroom. There was a trill from a very early-morning warbler on a branch just outside the window. Then, with a vividness that erased everything in front of her, April saw her grandfather. He made his living as a mortician and, tall and gaunt, looked the part. He sat in a chair by her bed, and in his kind and rather formal voice was reading to her the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel. As a child, she loved to hear him read. He could make the fairytale seem so real, not because he acted out the parts, but because of the absolute sincerity of his person. Even during her early adolescence, when she refused to get out of bed to face the mocking world, the unyielding love of his large bony hand on her shoulder brought consolation and a glimmer of understanding that life might be worth the effort. Her grandfather disappeared back into one of the cupboards of memory. She wanted to cry as the past drained from the present.
Ravela hissed, “Yes, your grandfather was the only person who loved you because his business was death!”
The curator called out from the stairway. “Come on up, lovely young lady. I’ve made coffee.”
April ascended the staircase and found herself in a room that combined kitchen, dining area, and study with a couch and a desk. The curator obviously loved to travel because a huge map of the world dotted with pushpins took up most of one wall.
Augustus placed the steaming mug on a small folding table where apparently his meals were eaten, then ensconced himself in the chair at the desk. April sat down and sipped the hot liquid. The aroma and taste of the coffee seemed to make life a slightly better bargain than a minute before. Aquino stood examining the map. April felt the tension between the two men and sensed that the distance was purposeful.
Aquino approached the desk and directed a measured stare at the curator. “Now where is the photo of Penelope Boller?”
Augustus wrinkled his forehead. “I’m not so sure I have any. Most letters and photos were probably destroyed in the fire that burned half of the Boller mansion in 1901. Solvidado almost disappeared from the map a few years after the fire. Only my great-grandfather and Jacinto and a few others remained…” The curator’s voice trailed off, and he seemed to take a great interest in the nail of his right thumb.
Aquino turned his attention to the map. “How was your vacation, Hal?”
“Fair. I visited my daughter in Kansas.”
“You have a new pushpin in Bolivia.”
“Very observant, Aquino. Yes, I visited interesting Incan ruins in the Andes also.”
“Gus gets two months of vacation a year,” Aquino explained. “Spring and fall. When he’s not on vacation, he is the director, manager and janitor of this museum which is open to the public six days a week between eleven and four.”
The director, manager, and janitor of the museum smiled, unashamed of his sinecure. “You forgot the free rent in addition to my stipend. The advantage of coming from Solvidado’s old stock is the connections for a cushy job. I’ve chosen an easy life over an ambitious life. By the way, Aquino, you accused me of an overactive imagination. Is my overactive imagination at work when I say you are acquainted with a young lady by the name of Doreen Corber?”
April gave a start. Gus glanced at her.
“I do not know anybody of that name,” Aquino replied, perfectly composed. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, no reason.” There was a pause, and then Gus continued, “I’ve decided that you are lying to me. You must be Hornsby, and Father Perkins who visits Doreen, and Ignacio from Sonora. In other words, you are the thief my nephew, R. T. Middleton, told me about.”
“I’ve already explained to you that I'm only one person. I’ve met Father Hornsby. He is fat and nearsighted and too clumsy to be a thief.”
“How would you know what it takes to be a thief?”
“I doubt expertise is required to know that fat men don’t make good burglars.” Aquino smiled. “Let’s get back to the photo of Penelope. Where would you have put it?”
“Why do you assume it exists? My memory isn’t that faulty, and I’ve seen all the artifacts and read all the papers with the exception of what possibly could be in an old bank safe because I don’t have the combination.”
“I’d like to see the safe. Since you believe I’m a thief, you might give me the opportunity to crack it.”
“Careful, telling the truth might become a habit.”
Augustus led them into his bedroom and then to a small door that looked like it might open onto a water heater. He passed through the door, switched on the light, revealing a large storage room filled with clutter. With the curator leading the way, they followed a meandering path past farm machinery, old saddles, chests of drawers, spineless chairs, andirons, shelves with hymn books, churns, cracked mirrors, wigs on broom handles, lamps without glass, a pulpit, buckets without bottoms, and pieces of wood that had obviously been shaped for some use but had lost their place and purpose. They came upon the safe about two-thirds of the way into the storage area, standing soberly amidst the chaos.
Aquino kneeled down to examine it, heaved a long sigh, touched the dial then withdrew his hand as if the gray steel case were hot metal. He made a face, pinched the dial between thumb and forefinger and began to fiddle. After a minute, he stood, shrugged his shoulders and asked, “You don’t happen to have a small plug of dynamite?”
“If you’re afraid of showing off your skill in front of me, I might be able to locate a box of vintage dynamite around here somewhere.”
“Don’t bother, I recognize the safe now. It must be a recent donation to the museum from the estate of George Wallensky, who used to be a bank manager.
I looked inside a few years ago. There were only a couple of old newspapers and a marriage license with the name of a woman who wasn’t George Wallensky’s wife.”
“Aquino, you’re the only person I know whose lies might be less interesting than the truth.”
“I’ll take the time to correct your opinion of me another day. Right now, I’d like your opinion whether you believe Penelope was blind?”
“To tell the truth, I find that unlikely because I think there would have been some mention of the fact in the letters and diaries.” Augustus reached down and lifted up an ugly rusty object. “Yet there are unanswered questions like why was this in the Boller mansion?”
April didn’t need Aquino to tell her what curator held and the use it had been put to. This time she heard her grandfather continue Penelope’s story, and she could not doubt him.
Despite raising the lamp so the light could cast a wide arc, Franklin didn’t see Penny at first. The odor was now so overpowering that his stomach turned, and he was certain that whatever the room contained was decomposing. Then he heard a barely audible pant from the corner.
Franklin strained his eyes. The shadows seemed to push back the light. He approached, accidentally kicking a piece of wood which rolled—perhaps a leg from a chair. A faint thin wail pierced the air. He could now see wallpaper hanging off the walls in great strips except near the corner where the noise came from. There it seemed to have been completely scraped away. The window appeared boarded—Franklin would later discover that the shutters were nailed to the sill. The cool night seeped in around the edges of the shutters. In a cold house, this was the coldest room.
“Penny,” he whispered, directing his voice to the corner where an odd spidery thing moved. His brain rebelled against making sense out of what he saw. Franklin got down on his hands and knees. He heard a cry and a rattle of chains. Tasting salt on his lips, he crawled through the filth towards the huddled figure. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,” Franklin tried to make his trembling voice as gentle as possible.