—
But then at last Pacheco arrived. There was a noise on the other side of the door. Then it opened and he hurried into the room, pulling on a dark gray suitcoat. Pacheco’s expression was apologetic yet good-natured, as if he were sincerely happy to see us.
“I’m terribly sorry. A man on the next street was injured and I had to see to him. Clearly, this is an awful night for our dinner. Carl, it’s good to see you. And Batterby. You too, Malgiolio. How brave of you all to come.”
Pacheco hurried to each of us and embraced us. He was a tall, thin man, seemingly very muscular, with long silver hair combed back over his head. His face too was long and thin. It was an angular face with bright blue eyes and it reminded me of someone in an El Greco painting. All he needed was one of those pointy little beards. As on other occasions, I was struck by the care of his movements. Even as he hurried to us, his every motion seemed studied and precise, as if it would be impossible for him to do anything by accident or to act on impulse. He had thick, full lips and his teeth were somewhat crooked and stained with nicotine from his constant Gauloises. The first two fingers of his right hand were also stained yellow because of the way he smoked a cigarette down to its last half inch. He always dressed conservatively but with a bright tie or brightly colored handkerchief. Tonight the tip of a garishly orange handkerchief protruded from the breast pocket of his gray coat. With me, he took my hand and asked about my health, especially about my blood sugar level. It had been low recently, but I didn’t care to mention that. To tell the truth, I have always been slightly offended by the degree of intimacy doctors assume. He put his hand on my shoulder and turned back to the others.
“I’m afraid they’ve called a curfew,” he said. “But there’s plenty of room here and I’ll see that you’re made as comfortable as possible. We may make quite a small group. There’ve been cancellations. Cardone called before the phones went out and said he had to work.”
Although I had no wish to sleep at Pacheco’s, neither did I want to go out on the street if there was still trouble. “He’s covering the demonstrations?” I asked. Cardone was a reporter for my paper’s main rival and I often envied him his job.
“Yes, that’s what he said, although I gather there’s been a total news blackout. Several reporters, including some from the foreign press, have been detained.”
“Who else isn’t coming?” asked Dalakis.
Pacheco had made himself a drink, French dry vermouth with a little ice, and was refilling Malgiolio’s glass with brandy. He moved quickly, lighting a cigarette, holding up a glass to see if it was perfectly clean, assuring himself that neither I nor Dalakis was in need of a drink, glancing at his watch, slipping a small wedge of lime into his glass, and all the while he would turn to us and nod or give a slight smile. He had a way of drawing people into intimacy, of almost, by his manner, suggesting you shared a secret that set you off from all the others. He made you want to trust him, which was partly responsible for his success as a surgeon. I thought again how I knew nothing about him.
“I very much doubt that Hernandez or Serrano will come,” said Pacheco, handing Malgiolio his brandy. “Hernandez will be kept quite busy at his church, and Serrano, what with his government clients, will stay quiet until he senses the turn of the political tide. As for the others, Kress is in the military and Schwab is with the police, so I don’t expect them either.”
“I expect we can cross off Sarno as well,” said Dalakis. “His market is in a poor area and he’ll be afraid of looting.”
“So there’ll only be four of us,” said Malgiolio. He seemed pleased that the rest weren’t coming. “It will be our duty to eat for ten. It’s too bad that Batterby only picks at his food.”
“Then he’ll have to pick carefully,” said Pacheco, giving me a wink, then smiling at Malgiolio. These seemed automatic gestures, facial responses that had little to do with what was said or going on around him, existing only to soothe and reassure. “As a matter of fact, you can eat for twenty if you like. I told my cook that a large number of hungry men were expected. Unfortunately, I may have to go out again. There have been many injuries.”
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Dalakis asked. Pacheco and I had sat down on the couch, while Dalakis and Malgiolio stood by the mantel. Dalakis was leaning forward as if to hear better. His face when listening reminded me of two hands preparing to catch a ball.
“There seems to be trouble within the military itself,” said Pacheco. “Not surprising, considering what we’ve heard about disagreements between the army and air force. But there’s also trouble at the university. The students took over the main campus last night and this morning the military tried to take it back.”
“You mean they’re killing the students?” asked Dalakis.
“I gather it’s a stalemate. The students seem to have destroyed a tank. You find it amusing, Luis?”
Malgiolio’s small eyes were almost twinkling with pleasure.
“Malgiolio is still looking for a job,” I said. “He feels there’ll be a lot of vacancies after today.”
Pacheco gave Malgiolio a scientific sort of look, as if he were looking at a machine about which he had no feelings. “If Luis is not careful, he will become a vacancy himself. There’s been a great deal of random shooting.”
There was a knock at the door. Pacheco got up, then stood aside as the housekeeper pushed a large cart with a tray of canapés into the library. Although I was expecting a feast, both the variety and physical beauty of the food almost made me forget Pacheco’s warning to Malgiolio. There must have been twenty varieties of canapé, some with caviar, some with smoked salmon, some with pâté. I studied them all to see what my diet would allow me to eat. Not much, I was afraid. The prettiest were the tips of four asparagus decorated with a small red X made with strips of pimiento. My favorite was made up of alternating slices of lobster and grapefruit, garnished with black olives.
“I had no idea what you might like,” said Pacheco, “so I ordered a little of everything. Put the cart by the fireplace, Señora.”
I watched the woman push the cart past Malgiolio, who reached out to take a square of toast topped with a small circle of shrimp. She didn’t look at us. Although not unattractive, she seemed so removed from the room that it was hard to think of her as more than a piece of furniture. Once the cart was in place, she began arranging the white napkins and straightening a row of little silver forks. As she bent over, a wisp of black hair fell across one eye and she paused to tuck it back.
Malgiolio finished his shrimp and reached for something with black caviar. “By the way, Pacheco,” he said, “we’ve been having a discussion while waiting for you. Perhaps you can help us.”
Pacheco stubbed out his cigarette in a green ashtray. “I’d be happy to do what I can.”
He was famous for that sort of phrase, or offers of assistance, or inquiries after your health, and I’ve never had the slightest idea if they were sincere. Of course, he does help and give advice, but his civilized manner is so flawlessly constructed that one almost wishes to see him fall apart, to tumble into hysteria or grief, just to learn what kind of animal lies behind the mask.
“It’s about that photograph on the mantel,” said Malgiolio with his mouth full. “I think it’s a picture of Cecilia Mendez. Dalakis says it’s a picture of someone named Sarah, and Batterby has some third idea which he is being coy about.”
“I thought it might be Andrea Morales,” I said. Was Malgiolio being offensive? Perhaps that’s not quite possible with someone one has known since childhood. Certainly we have changed in forty years, but, in our dealings with one another, instead of being nearly fifty, we are all those different years at the same time; we are ten and fifteen and twenty-one and thirty-five—and we each see the others in this same way, so that Pacheco was both the successful surgeon and the solitary adolescent who prowled the city at night
carrying a sword cane.
“So tell us,” said Malgiolio. “Who is correct?”
Pacheco resumed his place on the couch. In the curve of his lips there was just the slightest suggestion of disdain. “I am afraid you all are mistaken,” he said. “The picture is of my housekeeper, Señora Puccini, the woman who at this moment is offering you another cracker, Malgiolio.”
We turned and stared at the housekeeper with one movement. She stood holding out the tray to Malgiolio, who was too surprised to take anything. Her face seemed cut from stone, and I couldn’t match it to the beautiful face of the girl in the picture.
“Surely you’re not serious,” I said, unable to stop myself.
Señora Puccini looked up from the tray of food and the corners of her lips lifted into a smile that was so devoid of warmth that it was more a kind of grimace. Then she turned to us, revealing or pointing the smile at each. She seemed to be calling us fools, while also indicating that she didn’t care, that she had no interest in us whatsoever. But with her smile, I could at last see a similarity to the girl in the picture. Yet where the girl appeared soft, this woman was unrelenting. Nor was there any sign of fear or uncertainty. Like Dr. Pacheco, she seemed perfectly controlled. As for her eyes, they were like the eyes of a dead person.
As we stood staring at the housekeeper, there came a pounding on the outside door. Señora Puccini put down the tray and left the room. We watched her go, then looked back at the doctor.
It was Dalakis who spoke first. “I don’t mean to be offensive,” he said, blinking several times, “but why do you keep a photograph of your housekeeper on the mantel?”
Pacheco lit another cigarette. There were loud voices in the hall. I assumed with some surprise that more guests had arrived, but hardly paid attention as I waited for Pacheco’s answer.
He shook out the match and tossed it into the fireplace. “To remind me of the woman I chose to destroy,” he said. Then he lifted his head and looked at us in turn. There was grief in his face and I was so startled to see it that I thought I must be mistaken.
Suddenly the door of the library was thrown open and two soldiers with automatic rifles pushed into the room. More soldiers could be seen behind them. In the hall a man began screaming.
Two
When I was a boy I had a passion for electric trains, to which I was introduced by my father on the Christmas of my seventh or eighth year. Additional Christmases and birthdays brought more steam, diesel, electric, and turbine locomotives; stockcars, hoppers, tank cars, boxcars, cabooses, passenger and lounge cars; plus railway yards, cattle crossings, water towers, stations, tunnels, bridges, small villages, artificial grass, dozens of little trees, and yards and yards of track, until by the time I was in my early teens, I had two rooms in the attic with a train system that any great nation would be proud of. I also had a wind-up Victrola and a stack of 78 RPM records with the sounds of different locomotives, conductors calling “All Aboard!,” the clack and rattle of speeding wheels, and a variety of bells, whistles, sirens, and horns, so that every day the attic rang with the noise of commerce and transportation.
It was there I spent most of my time away from school and even while reading or studying I would don my engineer’s cap, then set the trains in motion. Often, while I did my homework, half a dozen engines would be pulling as many as seventy-five passenger or freight cars along my quarter mile of track. Stuck away in a far corner of the house, surrounded by a miniature country, I had a strong, although certainly childish, sense of my own power, even divinity, as I pursued my railway strategies, taking on loads of coal, unloading shipments of lumber, lowering highway barriers, and setting the warning signals ringing. This was my world and I even had several hundred little figures to populate it and jump to my commands. My favorites were given the most prestigious positions—mayor, engineer, yard boss, police chief—the unpopular or merely ugly were the drones who swabbed out the lavatories and did other unpleasant tasks. Being an only child whose parents were often away, I found the hustle-bustle of this activity immensely comforting.
Consequently, it was to the attic that my parents or the servant would send any friends or visitors who came seeking me. And it was in the attic that the man employed by Daniel Pacheco’s father probably found me one Saturday afternoon in early summer when I was just fourteen. I say “probably” because my memory is not entirely clear, the later events of the day having wiped out whatever happened in the few hours following my return from school around noon.
But I recall for certain that this man had a written message from Pacheco asking that I join him immediately. The servant would guide me. His name was Boris and he did the chores and garden work around Pacheco’s house. He had a cadaverous face and his head was completely bald—I think he shaved it—and in one ear he wore a large gold earring. Apparently he had once been a sailor, because in the middle of his left cheek he had a tattoo of a small blue skull the size of a thumbnail. My mother found him a repulsive creature and had ordered me to tell Daniel not to send him to our house, since Boris carried all of Daniel’s messages and was more his servant than his father’s. Of course I did as my mother said, but Daniel paid no attention.
That day I went off with Boris without a thought. It wouldn’t have occurred to me not to, such was Daniel’s influence over the rest of us. Also, though I was a solitary child with elaborate and expensive diversions, I was not solitary by choice and so was eager for the chance to be with other boys. Years later I sometimes wondered why we followed Daniel so readily, and I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t so much his intelligence or courage but that he was the first among us to develop a sense of irony. It kept us from being able to trap and confine him within our boyish definitions.
We took a bus down to the docks, which was an area my parents had told me to avoid. I expect they thought I might be shanghaied by a Chinese ship. If possible, I would have asked Boris the nature of our destination, but he was unable to speak; whether he was born dumb or had never learned the language, I don’t know. Some of the boys claimed that his tongue had been cut out or his vocal cords severed by torturers, which seemed clearly fanciful. But he was friendly enough and when he saw my nervousness about being near the docks, he smiled and patted my shoulder.
We left the bus near the customs building, then set off through the narrow streets with warehouses on one side and cafés and cheap hotels on the other. My companion walked quickly and I had to trot in order to keep up. It was mid-afternoon on a hot summer Saturday and the streets were nearly empty. After half a dozen blocks, we turned up the hill into a maze of even narrower streets shaded by four- and five-story tenements from which were strung masses of laundry, sheets mostly, hanging from clotheslines that crisscrossed above our heads. These houses have always intrigued me, since each appears to have been designed as an argument against the styles of its neighbors, so different are they in color—those blue and yellow and pink pastels—so different in the degree of filigree and decoration, complicated balconies, stonework and clapboards and stucco and brick.
We turned at last up a very narrow street, too narrow for cars, and I remember garbage and the ubiquitous smell of urine. Several scrawny dogs lay scratching in doorways, too bored and sleepy even to look up. Steeply ascending the hill, the alley made several turns, twisting to the left and right as the tenements rose high above us, making the alley almost dark in the midst of the sunny day. After a few minutes Boris stopped at a door and motioned me to enter.
“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.
He shook his head, then opened the door for me. Inside was a dirty landing and a flight of narrow stairs. I had little inclination to go in by myself, but I trusted Pacheco, as well as his servant, and it wouldn’t have occurred to me that I might be in danger. I looked back at Boris. The tattoo of the human skull on his cheek had a perpetual grin, almost a leer, and I found myself focusing on it. Then Boris again patted my shoulder and h
urried off down the hill.
It was only as I shut the door behind me and climbed the stairs that I began to feel some anxiety. They were dark, very steep, and had a sour smell, a mixture of old food and stale bodies. At the top was another door and I knocked. There was no answer. I tried the handle and the door opened into a long narrow room with about twenty straight chairs lining the walls. It too was empty. I remember it had a floral wallpaper of huge yellow blossoms unknown in the real world. The paper was peeling and great sheets dangled toward the floor as if the flowers were intent on escape. Beneath it, the dank gray plaster appeared to be sweating. I called Daniel’s name, then crossed the room to another door. There was no sound except that of my own feet on the linoleum. The second door opened onto a long hall with doors on either side. Again I called Daniel’s name and this time he appeared, sticking his head from one of the doorways.
“There you are,” he said impatiently. “What kept you?”
He was dressed all in black, even his boots were black, and his dark hair was greased and slicked back like a tango dancer’s. Despite his clothes, his face had the smoothness of a girl’s, and he looked younger than the rest of us, maybe eleven or twelve. “I came as fast as I could,” I said. “What is this place? What are you doing here?”
“I have a gift for you,” he answered. “Come with me.”
I entered the room. The window was covered with brown paper, which made the room not so much dark as murky. On the far side was a white metal bedstead and with a shock I saw that a woman was lying on the sheets and that she was naked. I started to back out of the door, thinking that Pacheco had made a mistake. He saw my embarrassment and put his arm around my shoulder.
“That’s for you, Nicky. Maria is very nice. Go to her. She’ll show you what to do.”
I felt confused and hardly understood. After all, I was only fourteen, and even though I spent much of my time thinking about sex, the actual deed was a mystery. My parents had never discussed with me what were called the facts of life and all I knew of the subject came from hushed conversations with my schoolmates, who knew as little as I.
The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini Page 4