The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini

by Stephen Dobyns

  After another minute of arguing, the cook reached out and touched a hand to Pacheco’s cheek. “All right, Daniel, I’ll do as you wish. But if my little dog is miserable, then you must comfort her. And now, gentlemen, you must excuse me. It was an honor to make your acquaintance.” We, in our various ways, spoke of our pleasure in meeting her and smiled and tried to look agreeable as she turned and let the boy guide her from the room.

  Once the door was completely closed, Malgiolio asked, “How can she possibly cook if she’s blind?”

  Pacheco sipped his wine and studied Malgiolio over the rim of the glass. “The boy helps her, as does Señora Puccini. And of course she knows her way perfectly around the kitchen.”

  “But how can she remember the recipes?” asked Dalakis, looking at each of us in turn. “It’s astonishing.”

  “The same way that a singer memorizes songs. And then she combines and invents and extemporizes. In some ways, the blindness makes her even more sensitive. Her sense of taste becomes an exact instrument.”

  “How long has she been blind?” I asked.

  “Twenty-five years. Before that she was the cook at the French embassy. When she went blind, they retired her. She had family in the south and that’s where I found her, cooking simple meals for people who wouldn’t care if they ate cat food. She was literally dying from having nothing to do. I hired her on the spot. The boy is her grandson. And there is another grandson who is my gardener.”

  “You seem to have brought all your servants from the south,” said Malgiolio. “Is Señora Puccini from there as well?”

  “Yes, but she wasn’t a servant.”

  “But don’t you consider her your servant now?”

  “That’s our arrangement. In the south, however, her family was quite well known. They were small landowners. She herself had an excellent education and even, at one point, a little money.”

  Dalakis made an unsettled noise, a kind of growling in his chest. “Why did you say you had ruined her?” he asked. Then he looked embarrassed, took off his glasses, and began cleaning them.

  “Because that is what happened.” Pacheco said this perfectly calmly.

  “Was it money?”

  “You mean did I bankrupt her?”

  “Yes.” Dalakis continued to fiddle with his glasses, blinking his eyes and still looking embarrassed.

  Leaning forward, Pacheco stared at Dalakis. His expression seemed derisive. “When a man is accused of ruining a woman, there is only one way in which the term is meant.”

  “What happened?” asked Malgiolio.

  Pacheco turned his attention to Malgiolio, who had asked the question rather quickly. Instead of answering, Pacheco lit another cigarette. The smoke from the Gauloise mixed with the perfume from the flowers.

  “Who was she?” asked Dalakis after a moment.

  “She was the girl in the photograph, only prettier, if that is possible. A beautiful girl, eighteen years old, and I was a young surgeon, just twenty-eight.”

  “And you ruined her?” asked Malgiolio, again pressing him close. His white, puffy face was slightly puckered in the way a fish must look before it snatches the hook.

  Pacheco held out the bottle to pour Malgiolio more wine. He looked at my glass but it was still full. “It’s not as simple as that. I didn’t just pick her up and break her. It wasn’t whim or common desire. There have been many women I’ve taken without wanting, merely out of boredom or to satisfy an itch. This situation was different. First I had to develop a hunger. She had to fill my mind. You must realize, I had seen her often, sometimes walking in the parks with her aunt or fiancé, or in the tea shops or along the esplanade, even in church. I knew that her parents were dead. I knew she was just out of school. But I had no desire. She was simply another beautiful woman.”

  The door opened and Señora Puccini reentered, wheeling a cart to remove the dishes. Dalakis looked at her guiltily and perhaps I did as well. As she walked to the table, Pacheco said, “The gentlemen are curious about your life with me, Señora.”

  The woman appeared not to have heard. If she was ten years younger than Pacheco, then she was about half a dozen years younger than she appeared.

  “Aren’t you curious what I might tell them?”

  Señora Puccini paused with several of the fish-shaped plates in her hands. “I expect you will tell them the truth,” she said, not looking at him, “or what you think is the truth.”

  Glancing at her, I noticed she wore no adornments of any kind, no rings, not even a watch, and her face bore no sign of makeup. Her hair was shoulder length and held back with pins. Her black dress had a black leather belt with a dull tin buckle. Her black shoes were more like a man’s than a woman’s. Black shoes, black stockings, black dress—one imagined that even her underwear was black.

  When she had left the room, Malgiolio asked, “How did your feelings change? How did you become hungry?” He tried to ask this nonchalantly, but one could hear his own hunger in his voice. You know those people who go to parties to collect anecdotes, hoping for the worst in order to amuse their friends later? Malgiolio was like that.

  Why did Pacheco decide to tell the story? It may have been the oddness of the evening, as if it weren’t really taking place within our lives. It may have been because there were so few of us and because of who we were. If more had been there, perhaps he would have kept silent. As for the three of us, we were unimportant. It didn’t matter if we knew. Also we were tied to Pacheco, not just by friendship, but by envy or admiration, maybe even hatred, though none of us would admit hatred. But also I think he would have said nothing if it hadn’t been for that brief interruption by Señora Puccini and her pretense that she was indifferent to all that happened; and I sensed that Pacheco liked to test this indifference, perhaps from amusement or anger or perhaps something else. Also, I’m sure the story was a great presence inside of him. Not that he needed to unburden himself; but rather, it formed a major part of his life and was something, I feel certain of it, that he’d never told another soul. As for us, we were eager listeners. We were hungry for his story in the same way we had been hungry for the dinner at his house. Beyond that, we all had major failures in our lives and so were curious about the strife of others. Perhaps that’s why he told us, because who cares more to hear about the battle than those who have been wounded?

  The three of us waited. Dalakis clasped and unclasped his great hands. Malgiolio plucked a red flower from the nearest vase and idly removed its petals.

  “It began at a concert,” said Pacheco, lighting another cigarette, “one of those small chamber concerts during late spring where the musicians are made up of one’s neighbors. This one was outside. They were playing Brahms’s Clarinet quintet and then something by Mozart. The musicians sat in a white gazebo affair with a lot of gingerbread decoration and a little flag on top. The audience, which was rather small, was seated on lawn chairs in a rough semicircle. It was to have been a larger event but it had rained in the afternoon and there was a threat of rain to come and many people stayed away.

  “I had a seat to the side by myself. I’m not even sure why I went. Restlessness, most likely. Just before the music began, Señora Puccini arrived with her aunt and a young man. They sat down slightly behind me and to my right—the girl, the aunt, then the young man. She wore a cream-colored dress, very low-cut. Even so, I scarcely noticed her. Of course, my mind registered a beautiful woman, but I suppose I thought her too young and too . . . well, too clean-looking, as if she weren’t a woman but a doll. Then, after the music began, I reached down and happened to brush the back of my hand against her shoe. It was quite dark among the audience. There were torches or tapers around the perimeter, but otherwise we were in shadow. At first I wasn’t sure what I had touched. I gently felt for it again and my fingers touched the heel, the sole, the narrowness of her foot.”

  “What’s her first name
?” I interrupted. “You can’t call her Señora Puccini if you are discussing a girl of eighteen.”

  Pacheco tapped the ash from his Gauloise. “Antonia,” he said, “but at that time I didn’t know her name. I knew her by sight, but we hadn’t been introduced. For that matter, we were never introduced, not properly at least.”

  “What happened with the foot?” asked Malgiolio, who with his precise sense of value had a way of keeping all conversations on track.

  “As I say, I had touched it. Actually, I had squeezed it, trying to determine what it was. Once I realized it was a foot, I moved my hand quickly away. For a few moments I listened to the music. You know the piece, how the clarinet drifts and swirls above the strings like a spirit above the earth? Do you also know the Tolstoy story about the Beethoven sonata? Well, this occasion was nothing like Tolstoy’s, yet there was passion in the music. In fact, there was a kind of passion all around us, for in the distance the lightning flickered and there was a faint rumble of thunder and the breeze felt full of distant rain. And then it occurred to me that although I had touched the foot and although she must have felt my hand, she had made no movement.”

  Pacheco paused to sip his wine.

  “And what did that mean?” asked Dalakis.

  “Perhaps nothing, but it roused my curiosity.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I touched her foot again, very lightly with the back of my hand, then I let my hand brush against her ankle. My chair was such that I could sit in that position quite easily. And her chair was such that her foot and my hand were concealed by the folds of her skirt. In any case, I hardly made any further movement, just shifted my hand slightly so I could touch her ankle. She was wearing stockings, of course.”

  “Did she move?” asked Malgiolio.

  “Not a whisker.”

  “Ha,” said Malgiolio with a little explosion of breath, then he lit another of his colored cigarettes.

  “I sat like that for some minutes, not turning or giving any sign that I knew she was there. The music played. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the young man whom I had seen with her before. He was her fiancé—dark-haired and handsome and quite athletic. As I watched him, still without shifting my head, I slowly turned my hand and grasped the girl’s calf just above her ankle. It was then that I became aware of her breathing. Absurd, don’t you think? A young surgeon taking advantage of a girl at an outdoor concert?

  “But there was an intensity both within me and, or so I guessed from her breathing, within her as well. I massaged her calf, took my hand away, then massaged it again. She didn’t move, didn’t move forward, didn’t move back. From the gardens, the wind blew the smell of lilac. I slipped my hand upward to the underside of her knee and thigh. Did her breathing grow louder? Perhaps not, but I could sense her behind me, almost feel her quivering. As I describe it, I realize that it seems that just a few minutes went by, but actually it was fifteen or twenty. But it was like nothing, so intent was I on the touching of her leg in its silk stocking. I was scarcely even aware of the music, just of a swirl of notes, and the rich smell of the blossoms which the wind blew to my face. As I touched the underside of her thigh, I massaged the muscle, squeezing and releasing it, while slowly I continued to thrust my hand further along her leg. She didn’t move although I could feel the constant shiver of her muscles. The farther I reached, the more contorted became my arm behind me. I wasn’t worried about anyone seeing. There was no one on the other side, and in that darkness I doubt anything would have been visible. At last I stretched my arm as far as I could and with the tips of my fingers I touched the silk of her underwear between her legs, but just barely, just a slight flickering of my fingers.”

  He fell silent. I glanced at Dalakis, who was making deep lines on the tablecloth with his thumbnail.

  “And she didn’t move?” insisted Malgiolio.

  “Neither forward nor back. My arm by this time was quite uncomfortable. I tried to move it farther without actually tipping in my chair, but another inch and I would have landed in her lap. I had also begun to worry that someone might notice her breathing, which seemed to mix with the strings and clarinet as if it were part of the music itself. And I was struck that she refused to move forward to let me increase her pleasure, that I could only thrum my fingers on the silk above her vagina.”

  Dalakis sat back in his chair so hard that it creaked dangerously. “Didn’t it strike you that she was a child?”

  “She had stopped being a child many years before. I could feel her, feel the heat and her wetness.”

  “What happened next?” asked Malgiolio. There was something repulsive about his eagerness. One imagined his erection.

  “Nothing. The music came to an end. I moved my hand and more lanterns were lit. The girl, her aunt, and the young man left during the interval.”

  “Did she make any sign to you?” I asked.

  “None. Perhaps she was a little red in the face. Clearly, she was embarrassed and never once turned in my direction. I, of course, stared at her constantly. How could I not? I had become hungry.”

  As Pacheco said these words, the room went dark. It was as if I had been struck blind. Our chairs scraped on the marble floor and a fork or some utensil fell, making a clattering which echoed through the room.

  “How irritating,” said Malgiolio, as the spark of his cigarette moved impatiently through the air. “They’ve blown a transformer somewhere.”

  This was how the radical left often made itself felt, blowing up a generator or overhead power line. Sometimes the lights would be out a few minutes, sometimes for most of the night.

  I heard a clinking noise as Pacheco’s glass touched his plate. “We’ll have light in a minute,” he said.

  It could hardly have been more than that when the door opened and brilliant light poured in from the hall and moved toward us. It was Señora Puccini. She was carrying two large candelabra held out in front of her, each with at least a dozen candles. Her middle-aged face seemed brilliant and beautiful, like a star within its miniature solar system. I couldn’t look at her without thinking of Pacheco’s story and it seemed I could almost hear the clarinet from the Brahms quintet swishing through the darkened room like a length of rope being swirled around and around above our heads.

  Three

  The meat course was a roast saddle of veal, a great brown log of a thing, half of which rose off its silver platter on the snapped remnants of ten flimsy ribs like a severely mutated praying mantis. Malgiolio ate steadily, his small hands and teeth aspiring to the mechanical, a robot whose sole purpose was the ingestion of organic matter. Yet at the end of thirty minutes, he’d hardly bruised that spaniel-sized slab of meat. Dalakis took a slightly greater than normal amount for the average person, the excess being destined not for his belly but for his brown suit, which was soon flecked with escaped fragments of food. Pacheco ate quickly and without apparent interest. I took two or three bites just to feel myself part of the occasion. With the veal came a vegetable mixture consisting of peas, chestnuts, and something I couldn’t recognize. The candlelight reflected off the silver platter making the veal sparkle like the promise of resurrection.

  But while the food remained marvelous, our attention had shifted elsewhere. Certainly I didn’t announce to myself that I was now more interested in this relationship between Pacheco and his housekeeper, but I was aware that some additional thing was competing for my attention and at first I wasn’t sure what it was. Then I realized. Partly it was the discrepancy. On one hand was the description of Antonia Puccini as she had been twenty years before and on the other was the Señora Puccini who kept bringing us mountains of food without seeming aware that we were in the room. I felt that if I collapsed at her feet, she would step over me without once looking down.

  Beyond that, the evening was too peculiar to let me concentrate on my food to the exclusion of all else, al
though that would have been unlikely in any case. I admired the food as a piece of theater more than as something to eat. Malgiolio, I think, would have kept eating in an earthquake. Perhaps Dalakis as well. But I am easily distracted. The lights, for instance, never came back on and soon we were surrounded by half a dozen great candelabra which threw light and shadow over our plates, the table, and our faces as if paralleling the emotions going on underneath. Then there was the trouble in the city. Occasionally we heard sirens, even gunfire, although the stone walls of the dining room almost completely excluded the outside world. Also, the fact we were so few was a constant reminder of the disequilibrium of our times, that we were only one quarter of our usual number with no sense of the future, how we would get home, or what we would find when we got there.

  Additionally, we were curious. Pacheco said how he had developed a hunger for this girl and, as he talked about that evening at the concert, we developed a hunger as well. All of us responded differently. Dalakis, for instance, was quite disapproving. Yet he knew well enough what Pacheco was like. His own wife, the woman from whom he had been separated for seventeen years, had once been Pacheco’s lover and presumably she had told him stories. At least Pacheco never tried to appear better than he was. If he wanted something, he pursued it. Dalakis’s wife had been only sixteen when she had taken up with Pacheco, who was perhaps eighteen at the time. Her parents tried to stop them from meeting but after a month or so Pacheco and the girl just ran away. Three months later she returned home without Pacheco or any explanation. Of course, the parents wanted no part of her. She went to live with an aunt or older cousin, I forget which, and about two years after that she married Dalakis. It was doomed from the start, one might say.

  Malgiolio, on the other hand, was eager for the story, and throughout the meat course he kept pressing Pacheco to say more. Pacheco would smile and change the subject but I didn’t have the sense he was refusing to tell, just that he was teasing Malgiolio. Indeed, I thought he wanted to tell his story just as much as Malgiolio wanted to hear it. Malgiolio’s interest was partly prurient and partly because he likes to collect bad marks against people. He is a man who has thrown away his life, who is manifestly imperfect, and whose main ambition in middle age is to seek out imperfections in others. Of course he thinks everyone reaches for the biggest piece of cake and would steal from the church poorbox if they could be sure not to be caught. For him to believe that men are not motivated by selfishness, greed, and spite would, I think, make his personal failure more difficult to bear.