The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini

by Stephen Dobyns

  “Get my bag and some sheets,” Pacheco told Señora Puccini.

  Although I was astonished at the blood, the furor, the nervous soldiers, Pacheco seemed entirely calm. He knelt by the injured man, discovering the degree of his wounds and talking to him quietly. Three soldiers stood at the open door with their weapons pointed out at the street, which was now nearly dark. Other soldiers, perhaps seven or eight, stood around the hall watching their wounded comrade but, even more, staring at the grandeur of the hall itself, gawking at the bawdy tapestry and the Roman busts, gaping up at the chandelier. As before, I was struck by their youth. They looked like teenagers just out of school, and very briefly I had the impression that these were the comrades we’d been expecting for dinner, yet cast back to that time when we were all classmates and just beginning our explorations of the world. But then they stood aside and I saw the boy on the floor. He was dark and black-haired and his mouth formed a perfect “0” as he continued his astonished protest. Although his body was still as he lay on his back, his head swung violently from side to side as if he were scanning the room for the source of his pain. Indeed, at one moment his eyes fastened on mine and I thought he would speak, but then he again jerked his head and I stepped back out of his vision.

  Dalakis and I stood by the library door. I suppose he was as amazed as I was. In his clumsy and bearlike way, he kept jostling me as he peered at the wounded man through his thick glasses with a mixture of repulsion and grief. Looking back into the room, I saw Malgiolio smoking a cigarette by the fireplace. He seemed still to be studying the photograph. I didn’t realize at the time that he was frightened as well.

  Señora Puccini reentered the hall from a door on the right, carrying a battered-looking black leather bag and several white sheets. Even in the midst of this clamor she appeared cold and distant. She made her way between the soldiers without even glancing at them. As I looked at her, I couldn’t help but see the beautiful face of the girl in the photograph imposed over hers. But what had been confident and even brazen in the photograph now appeared hard, as if she aspired to the condition of stone. After giving Pacheco the bag, she didn’t linger but left the hall to return to the kitchen. A sergeant began tearing the sheets into strips. Pacheco took a syringe from his bag and gave a shot to the wounded soldier, who was still screaming, but more faintly, almost mechanically. Then Pacheco began to investigate the man’s wounds, which were apparently in his leg and shoulder.

  “Can’t you get an ambulance?” Pacheco asked the lieutenant.

  The officer seemed embarrassed by the wounded man, as if the presence of so much pain were distasteful. “I sent someone to locate one, then a policeman said that you lived nearby. The medics should be here shortly.” The officer was also very young, no more than twenty-one or -two. “I couldn’t leave him on the street,” he added apologetically. “He would have been murdered.”

  Pacheco glanced around the hall, then caught my eye. “Batterby, go to the kitchen and ask the Señora to bring me several pans of water. Tell her to make it as hot as possible.”

  “What do you plan to do?” asked the lieutenant. With his good looks and detached manner, he appeared more suited for parades than violent action.

  “There is a bullet in his thigh and there are some bone fragments,” said Pacheco. “I’ll do no more than I can.”

  Crossing the hall, I opened the door to the back part of the house, happy to be of use. Like many older houses, Pacheco’s formed a square with the rear three sides being only one story and surrounding a large garden. On the left of the corridor were a series of small rooms and on the right was a courtyard with a great bougainvillaea, its purple flowers rising to the roof. Hung along the inside wall were about twenty nineteenth-century prints of the sort found in old newspapers. All showed the various activities of Reynard the Fox, preening his whiskers, fleeing the hounds, and luring chickens from the safety of their coops. The tiles on the floor were covered with a woven mat and my feet made no sound as I hurried forward on my errand.

  The kitchen stood at the very end of the corridor on the far side of the garden, but instead of just bursting in, as is my usual clumsy manner, I felt uncertain of the door and stopped to peer around the corner. Only a few feet inside were Señora Puccini and an old woman who I correctly assumed was the cook. They were facing each other and both stood in profile to me. Neither noticed me. I describe this in detail because really the first thing I saw was that Señora Puccini was holding a pistol. It lay in the palm of her hand and she stared down at it. The cook appeared to be looking at it as well. It was a shiny little thing, hardly more than four inches long and, as I watched, she slipped it into the side pocket of her skirt. Quietly, I stepped back from the door and retreated several feet. Then I coughed once or twice and again moved forward.

  I’m not certain why I did this. But I didn’t want Señora Puccini to think I was spying and I didn’t want to embarrass her. As for the pistol, I’m sure I thought little of it. There was trouble in the streets, soldiers in the house, and the weapon probably made her feel safer. Also, the fact that she had been showing it to the cook made it seem rather innocent.

  When I entered the kitchen, the cook was on the other side of the room and Señora Puccini stood facing me. It was a large and very long room, taking up the whole back part of the house. From the beams crossing the ceiling hung copper pots and bouquets of herbs. Everywhere there were signs of food being prepared and filling the room were the most wonderful smells imaginable. I looked into Señora Puccini’s face for some trace of nervousness, but there was none. It held its normal passive expression. But perhaps that is not right. Although passive, her face also showed indifference, as if nothing I could say or do would affect her. In any case, I told her that the doctor required hot water and she nodded.

  “Do you want me to help you carry it?” I asked.

  “It’s not necessary. There’s a boy.”

  On a table in the middle of the kitchen stood an invalid tray with four little legs, and on it was a bowl of steaming soup and a plate with several pieces of black bread. I wondered about it briefly, but then, eager to get back to Pacheco, I turned and hurried out of the kitchen. As I walked back along the hall I looked out at the garden, part of which had a trellis roof covered with grape vines. In the dim light, I saw there were many bird cages, several being at least ten feet tall. I stopped at a doorway to look more closely. There must have been over a hundred tropical birds, ranging from the tiniest finch to large toucans and cockatoos. Presumably because of the hour they were standing quite still. I say presumably because as I stood there I again heard gunshots in the distance and the stillness of the birds seemed to reflect my own anxiety. I was greatly impressed by the size of the collection and that Pacheco had never mentioned it before—beautiful, fragile creatures in ornate cages, motionless on their perches.

  When I returned to the hall, the situation was more settled. The wounded soldier appeared to be sleeping, while most of the other men were out on the street. Pacheco was talking with the lieutenant and both were smoking Pacheco’s awful Gauloises. Dalakis had returned to the library. I told Pacheco that the hot water would be there shortly.

  “Go to the library,” he told me. “I’ll join you in a moment.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked. The wounded soldier lay at my feet and the tips of my shoes barely touched the small pool of his blood. Although I am ashamed to say it, this excited me, reminding me of those few years when I worked as a reporter before being transferred to the book review.

  “No, no, this is a dinner party. It may be occurring under peculiar circumstances but it’s still a party. We have a duty to the others to enjoy ourselves.” Pacheco said this very seriously and the lieutenant looked at him with surprise.

  Returning to the library, I found Malgiolio and Dalakis in the midst of an argument. It appeared that Malgiolio wanted some of the soldiers to be kept i
n the house for our protection. Dalakis said it was unnecessary, arguing that the soldiers had better things to do.

  “What’s more important than seeing to our safety?” said Malgiolio. “We could be killed here.” He stood by the liquor cabinet, slapping his fist into the palm of his left hand.

  “Absolute foolishness. We’re perfectly safe as long as we stay inside.” Dalakis laughed and shook his head, as if he found something lovable about Malgiolio’s fear. “Explain it to him, Batterby. Nobody’s going to burst in here, although I expect we should close the curtains.”

  So often had I been the butt of Malgiolio’s jokes that his fear gave me a little twinge of pleasure. “Carl’s right,” I said. “What danger is there? Certainly, I’d prefer to be home, but here at least we’ll be well fed.”

  As I spoke, Dalakis crossed the room and closed the drapes, which were made of a dark blue material with pictures of birds, much like the tropical birds in the garden. “See,” he said, “now we can’t even hear the gunshots.”

  “I’d feel safer if I was armed,” said Malgiolio.

  I started to make some light remark about Señora Puccini’s pistol but decided against it. Most likely it would upset Malgiolio even more. The door opened and Pacheco entered.

  “I’ve come to escort you to the dining room. Everything is a little disturbed, as you can imagine. I’m afraid you’ll have to start your soup without me. I must do a bit more work on that fellow’s leg.”

  We passed through the hall in single file. Several soldiers looked at us sullenly. Here they were risking their lives while we were about to sit down to dinner. They’d probably had little to eat all day. The wounded man remained unconscious, his face so white that he appeared dead. We entered the dining room, which was next to the library. I was expecting it to be elaborate and so was not surprised, but behind me I could hear Dalakis catch his breath.

  It was a long room with a crystal chandelier suspended over the table. But what was particularly striking was that the table was set for the entire group—not only for us but for the six who hadn’t come and the other six who hadn’t even been expected. It was set for sixteen: a seat on either end and seven on each side. And there were flowers everywhere. The long table had four different vases with complicated arrangements of at least a dozen different flowers. Unfortunately, I have never been an admirer of cut flowers and yet the extravagance of color as well as the palpable weight of their scent took one’s breath simply as spectacle. A second door at the far end of the room opened onto the corridor that ran along the edge of the garden, and through a window I could see the cages of the tropical birds.

  “As you can see, you have a wide choice of seats,” said Pacheco. “Sit where you wish. I’ll return as soon as possible.”

  We watched him leave, then looked back at the table, which was covered with a thick white cloth. Each place setting included four separate wine glasses and eight pieces of silver. Malgiolio picked up a knife, felt its weight, then returned it to the table. The napkins were dark blue linen.

  “Shall we all sit at one end?” said Malgiolio, and immediately took his place at the far end opposite the open door giving a view of the garden. I sat down across from him and Dalakis sat on my left. The place at the head of the table we reserved for Pacheco. It was odd to look past Dalakis at that vast expanse of table with those flowers and elaborate place settings and think no one would be sitting there.

  As soon as we were seated, a young man entered through the open door with a tray of oysters. Really he was a boy, hardly more than fifteen, and he seemed extremely nervous. Faint patches of black whiskers spotted his face like dark islands on a pink sea. He was quite thin and awkward and wore a black suit that was too small for him. His large pink hands extended from the sleeves like skinned rabbits. He looked very much like one of the boys at my orphanage, a boy who has faithfully listened to me read every Sunday for at least eight years. They had the same thin face and narrow brow, the same unruly shock of black hair. After serving us each a dozen oysters, the boy took a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket and looked at it doubtfully. Removing the wire, he began to twist off the cork as if twisting a screw top.

  “Not so fast,” said Dalakis, “You’ll get it all over yourself.”

  The boy thrust the bottle away from him and at that moment the cork exploded with a loud pop and ricocheted across the room. Champagne began spewing out of the bottle onto the floor. Malgiolio reached forward with a glass and then another as the boy stood looking confused. Abruptly, the door to the hall opened quickly and the lieutenant glanced into the room. Seeing our little party, he retreated.

  Dalakis burst out laughing. “He thought it was a gunshot.” He had a low laugh like someone banging on the bottom of a metal drum. The boy was also grinning. But the speed with which the lieutenant came to the door impressed me, and a few minutes later, when they decided they needed another bottle, I opened it myself and the cork made no noise at all.

  Dalakis was a very hearty eater. Watching him made me remember those films showing bears scooping grubs from a dead stump or tearing into a honeycomb. In no time, his smiling mouth was shiny with lemon juice and horseradish and juice from the oysters. As he ate, he made small contented noises, sighs that were close cousins to the grunt. Glancing at him, I saw there were gray cat hairs on the jacket of his brown suit.

  Malgiolio, on the other hand, ate almost furtively, positioning himself with his elbows on either side of his plate, both to protect it and to make no unnecessary movements. He was also very methodical and moved his hands with such speed that all I could think of was a conveyor belt. Although Dalakis made several remarks on the quality of the champagne and the oysters, Malgiolio hardly spoke until his plate was empty.

  As for myself, my diabetes and occasional ulcers have caused me to so regulate my diet that I have become no friend to food. I rarely eat out or eat in the company of other people. Indeed, I find something almost disgusting in watching my fellow creatures insert soft globs of animal tissue and vegetable matter into their open mouths, then chewing and smacking their lips as they make a sound closely resembling that of a boot being extracted from thick mud. Another phrase of Diogenes came to mind: “If only I could free myself from hunger as easily as from desire.” Sometimes I have thought that our sole purpose on earth was to produce excrement for a perverse god who uses it as fertilizer for his beloved garden. But I do not mean to be antisocial. I enjoy the company of my friends and even ate several oysters before letting Dalakis and Malgiolio divide my remaining nine or ten between them.

  When he had finished, Dalakis leaned back and glanced around the room as if he might try nibbling it as well. In the bright light of the chandelier, I happened to notice his hands. Even though his wife deserted him many years before, he still wears his wedding ring, which has grown into his finger much in the way a wire can be embedded into the tree it surrounds. Turning to me, Dalakis put his right hand on my shoulder. “You know, Batterby, I heard a story recently about a writer that might interest you.”

  “Oh?” I said somewhat pessimistically, afraid that I’d hear about someone who had experienced great good fortune with little effort.

  “Yes, this man was in prison, a political prisoner somewhere. I don’t know the country. It turned out that the next cell was occupied by a Yugoslav, at least he said he was a Yugoslav. The two men couldn’t see each other but they could whisper back and forth. After a few days, the writer asked the Yugoslav to teach him a little Serbo-Croatian. You see, he was so bored, nothing to do, nothing to read. The Yugoslav refused but the writer kept asking him and after several more days the Yugoslav agreed. . . .”

  “Is this going to be a long story?” asked Malgiolio.

  “Not particularly. I just thought Batterby might be interested.”

  The oysters finished, we were sitting back drinking the champagne. Malgiolio chewed on a bit of lemon. “I was wonde
ring if you knew where Pacheco got those oysters.” Malgiolio has very small teeth, almost like the teeth of a child.

  “Why don’t you ask Pacheco when he returns?” I suggested.

  “I expect I will, since you can’t tell me. But what I mostly want to know about is the picture of the woman on the mantel. Do you think she’s his housekeeper?”

  “He said she was,” said Dalakis. “Why should he lie?”

  “But why keep her picture on the mantel?” asked Malgiolio.

  “Carl, go on about the Yugoslav,” I said.

  The boy reappeared carrying a tray with three bowls of a clear soup, which he set in front of us. He spilled a little on the tablecloth and for a moment we were distracted as he hurried to clean it up. Whenever he saw us watching, he blushed.

  Malgiolio tasted his soup, rolled it around in his mouth, then began to eat it rather quickly. I sipped a little. It was turtle soup with some sort of sherry. I didn’t recognize the kind.

  Dalakis glanced at Malgiolio with friendly exasperation. “The writer,” he said, continuing his story, “had a piece of chalk, or maybe it was charcoal. The Yugoslav would tell him a word and the writer would print it on the wall. Maybe ten words a day. Neither man knew how long he would be in prison and of course each expected to be released quite soon. In the meantime, they continued this course of instruction in Serbo-Croatian. Additionally, the Yugoslav began to tell the writer about Belgrade. He described the turrets and churches, how the city was built upon three hills. He talked about the rich houses covered with delicate tile mosaics and the ancient part of the city with its narrow winding streets and high white walls. He described the parks and lakes full of little boats and the profusion of flowers and the small bands of musicians that wandered through the outdoor cafés. He described the smell of cinnamon and bread baking and flowers and the smell of some sharp spice that one found everywhere.”