The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini

by Stephen Dobyns

  “At that instant we both heard a motorcycle and she turned with that expression of anticipation and pleasure with which she had first greeted me. It was her young man. He drew up beside us on a large black Bultaco and she climbed on the back. He was a friendly fellow and nodded to me pleasantly. Then he kissed her and I remember thinking how that was my kiss, how that kiss belonged to me. Then they roared off. Neither, of course looked back.”

  I tried to remember what Pacheco had been like at twenty-eight—tall, thin, handsome, almost feminine with long eyelashes and catlike eyes, thick black hair combed straight back over his head just as he combed it now, although now it was gray. While Pacheco was still in medical school, a few of us young men would go to dances together. Usually, they were dances where we knew no one and where we went to meet girls. Pacheco and Schwab had a sort of game they played for money. Schwab would choose a woman, then he and Pacheco would bet on how long it would take Pacheco to convince her to leave with him. Certainly many times Pacheco lost but mostly he didn’t and once he convinced a stunningly beautiful blond girl to leave in under two minutes. Later Schwab would try his own luck with these girls but almost always without success. The rest of us, needless to say, would burn with envy. We were normal, run-of-the-mill young men, with two left feet, a stuttering approach, and no confidence. To us it seemed these dances were held entirely for Pacheco’s benefit, just to enable him to make a selection. Indeed, often he would come back and leave minutes later with a second girl, while those of us still building our nerve to ask someone to dance would stare at his first conquest and observe her rumpled gown, mussed hair, smudged lipstick, and we would burn.

  We might have felt better about these evenings if Pacheco had discussed his conquests, but he rarely spoke of them. The rest of us boasted of our successes, if we were lucky enough to have any, and I remember a complicated system of hand signals we used in school to signify that we had touched a thigh, a breast, or even a vagina the night before. In particular I remember one Friday evening at a downtown café with Schwab parading among us waving two fingers, ordering us to sniff them and didn’t they smell like “cherry juice,” although who among us could have recognized the smell? But I remember another night when Schwab was poking fun at Pacheco, saying he certainly hadn’t had his way with some young lady whom Schwab knew to be steadfastly virtuous. Pacheco made no answer, but continued to smile as Schwab’s joking grew more extreme and at last turned to mockery, as if Pacheco had done no more than guide the young woman to the ladies’ room, then waited timorously outside. We felt certain that Pacheco would grow angry at such taunting, but instead he reached into his pocket, drew forth a pair of very small red silk panties, and tossed them to Schwab. “Since you know the girl so well,” he said, “perhaps you’ll return these to her.” Several of us swore they didn’t belong to the girl, but how could we prove it? Schwab, if not convinced, was silenced, and none of us had the courage to go to the girl and confront her with the panties. I never did learn what happened to them.

  —

  As we waited for Pacheco to continue his story, the cook’s grandson, Juan, reentered the room, hurried to Pacheco, and whispered something. With us, the boy was nervous and shy, but with Pacheco he was like a pup, unable to stand still and grinning and jerking his hands. I didn’t hear what he said. Malgiolio leaned across the tablecloth to listen as well. Dalakis had discovered the cat hairs on his brown suit and was picking them off, making a little gray pile next to his plate.

  Pacheco knitted his brow as he bent toward the boy. After a moment he pushed back his chair and stood up. “Perhaps you’d like to see what our city looks like before we have the next course.” He didn’t allow us a chance to answer but took one of the candelabra and walked from the room. We followed with much scraping of our chairs and a clattering of feet across the marble floor.

  Pacheco led us through the great hall, then up the staircase. The soldiers were gone and we were again alone in the house. The candles sent our shadows skittering over the walls as if there really were sixteen of us, or the ghosts of sixteen. Our footsteps on the marble floor seemed hasty and imprecise. Dalakis’s shoes squeaked. Reaching the second floor, we turned right down a long corridor. On the walls were pieces of armor and medieval weapons; helmets, breastplates, shields, lances and halberds, axes and broadswords. I hadn’t known that Pacheco had such interests. The armor was highly polished and sparkled as we passed.

  At the end of the corridor we went up another flight of stairs to what were probably the servants’ quarters: a narrow hall with a low ceiling and a series of doorways, all closed. Halfway along the hall a small ladder had been pulled down from a trap door in the roof. Pacheco stopped, set the candelabrum on the floor, then ascended the ladder. Looking up into the dark, I could see stars. Malgiolio went up second, then Dalakis. As I waited my turn, I glanced around the hall. There was nothing on the white walls, no decoration, nothing to relieve the blankness. Under one of the doors I saw a light and assumed this was where Señora Puccini had her rooms, here at the top of the house. Then I followed Dalakis up the ladder.

  When I reached the roof, Pacheco and the others were on the far side looking west over the city. We were higher than the surrounding houses and staring out I could see a number of fires, their flames leaping into the dark. Up here the sounds of gunfire, sirens, even explosions were louder and more immediate. Several fires, probably three or four buildings, blazed over by the university. We stood at the low wall at the roof’s edge, trying to see across that distance and understand what was happening there. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky, picking out great plumes of smoke like black flowers blossoming in the night. We were in the midst of great change, yet how our lives might be affected we had no idea. I almost envied Malgiolio for seeing it so simplistically, that whatever happened it would mean more jobs and opportunities. Dalakis, on the other hand, as a civil servant, could be out on the street, while Pacheco as a surgeon would have more work than he could handle. As for me, a book reviewer, I could only hope that people would continue to read and take part in their culture. But the change could be far more radical than just changing our jobs. The whole complexion of our city might change, the whole idea of tolerance, forgiveness, and responsibility might be forever altered.

  “It’s awful,” said Dalakis. His voice was choked and I realized he was crying. “They’re destroying each other.”

  I don’t know who “they” were, but Dalakis’s emotion didn’t surprise me as much as Malgiolio’s. “I have a cousin who lives over there,” he said, “right by that big fire by the university. That could be his house.” Then he pointed at a fire in another direction. “And there too, I know people who live there as well! They might be dead! And us, how long will we be safe?”

  Apart from an uncle in another country, I have no one who is still living. Otherwise I might have been upset as well. Of course I was troubled, even nervous, but the question of who was battling whom was not as important to me as that the quotidian operation of the city be returned to normal as soon as possible. As a matter of fact, looking out from Pacheco’s roof, I didn’t feel as if this were my city at all, as if I were just a visitor here. But perhaps that is what I often feel and it is the curse of the observer, as if I were no more than a tourist in my own life.

  We stood for some more minutes without speaking. Below us the tops of the plane trees blew back and forth in a wind that bore the smell of smoke. The houses mostly had their shutters closed but I could see candles in some of the backyards. The streets were empty and the city itself, except for the fires, was dark—a few headlights from the highway, army trucks and jeeps; several more searchlights downtown by the government center. From somewhere I heard the whop-whop of a helicopter.

  After another moment, Pacheco turned around and leaned back against the wall. I thought he would say something about what was happening in the city, but when he spoke it was again about Señora Puccini.

/>   “Sometimes you pursue a woman,” he said, “make love to a woman, just to find yourself again, to be reborn within your own mind, so that it’s like making love to yourself. I’m not talking of masturbation but rather of how a whole complex sense of yourself, long forgotten, can rise up within you.”

  Malgiolio made a snorting noise. He was still staring out at the city. “You’d have trouble selling that to the sex magazines,” he said.

  “I have no interest in such magazines. I’m talking about how the idea of a woman, her face, her body, your desire for her, your imagining and fantasies about her, how all that can fill the mind like liquid can fill a glass, and how your own sense of yourself, your other interests and ambitions and desires, how even the ego can be diminished and pushed aside. It is like a sickness during which everything disappears except this huge image of the desired creature which is exhausting, irritating, even hateful, so that at last you make love to her simply to get that thing out of your head. Afterward there is a moment while you are still lying with her, still inside her, when your life and concerns come creeping back. You think about what you will do tomorrow and what you will eat and what clothes you will wear. You might think about a book you are reading or a movie or a piece of music. You address the small problems of your life and their solutions seem easy. All is new and different and you are in a sense reborn.”

  “How long does that last?” I asked. I couldn’t see Pacheco’s face. He was just a gray shape against the black sprawl of the city.

  “Perhaps two or three days, perhaps five or ten minutes. Then it begins again. But there is a point when I sometimes think I am engaged in this pursuit of lovemaking simply to recover myself, to locate myself again. Consequently, if the woman denies me and my desire continues to increase, then my sense of self, my life, my self-respect—all this disappears to be replaced by this double figure, like a pair of entwined snakes, the image of the woman coupled with my desire. And if there’s no outlet, then it all grows more desperate, more dangerous.”

  “Is this a justification?” asked Dalakis with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

  “Justification? Why should I bother? I am simply telling a story. You know, there was a General de Caulaincourt with Napoleon, he was in charge of all the horses and transport, and in his memoirs he describes how Napoleon would completely demean himself to get what he wanted. That if he wanted you to do something, he would put all his energy and attention into making it happen. And he had no shame. He would cajole, threaten, flatter, lie. The general said that Napoleon had a little gesture. He would reach up and lightly take hold of your earlobe and give it a little tug and so seduce you to his will. And once you said yes, it was as if he had been freed from a great burden and shortly he would forget you and go on with his life and his empire. I have been that way only with women. Clearly Napoleon’s ambitions were greater than mine.”

  “What about your success as a surgeon?” asked Dalakis. “That must have taken effort and desire.”

  Pacheco laughed and began to walk back across the roof to the ladder. “That has always been easy for me, mostly because I care little about it. It is where I am mechanical and have no feelings, where I behave precisely. For me it is like listening to Bach—emotion governed by mathematics. You cannot imagine what a relief it is after a night of emotional and sexual turmoil to remove someone’s gall bladder. That’s why I’m good at it. It’s what I do in order to relax.”

  He descended the ladder and we followed him. One of the doors was open in the narrow hallway and as we approached it I saw Señora Puccini framed by candlelight. Then the door closed and we continued to the stairs.

  “Is this where your housekeeper lives?” I asked.

  “No, she has several rooms on the other side of the garden. You must come back when we have electricity and I will show you the entire house.”

  I decided that Señora Puccini must have been preparing rooms for the cook and her grandson and thought no more about it. Mostly my mind was occupied by Pacheco and by whatever was happening outside in the city. As for myself, it was as if I were absent. All my concerns were with things away from my life, as in one of those dreams where you are not part of the story but a camera drifting above the story. I looked ahead at the retreating backs of Malgiolio and Dalakis and wondered briefly what they were feeling, but I had no desire to talk to them. We passed by the medieval armor, which flashed and threw back our reflections. I saw myself, bloated and distant in my dark suit, pass across the surface of a steel breastplate. Then we descended the great staircase. Candles were burning in the four niches occupied by the Roman busts. The flickering shadows made the four bald men with their bruised faces seem alive and attentive. In the dining room we discovered that at each place setting was a raspberry sorbet in a tulip-shaped glass. We took our seats. The room was cold and silent. Suddenly I felt a wave of loneliness sweep over me, although why it should happen I had no idea. I thought of women I had known, I thought of my wife. It wasn’t so much loneliness as a sense of being alone, that I would pass out of the world without even a little pop. I hadn’t grieved for my wife in nearly a dozen years but at that moment I saw her before me and even imagined her quick laugh. How much simpler the world would be if we had no need of other people.

  Malgiolio made short work of his sorbet, then ate mine as well when he saw I wasn’t tempted. After he was done, he belched under his napkin and pushed away his glass. He looked very pleased with himself and took out another of his colored cigarettes, a red one this time. “So, Pacheco, what happened? Did you wait for this girl every day after school? Did you offer to carry her books? I’m not sure I believe this business about her letting you touch her breast but I’ll accept it for the time being. What did you do next?”

  But Pacheco wasn’t ready to continue. His mood had changed. He seemed impatient, not just with Malgiolio but with us all. “What do you do for women, Malgiolio? Find servant girls, splurge on the occasional whore? I once had a poor friend whose wife had gone blind, and bit by bit he traded her pretty dresses for the favors of a woman down the street. Then he traded his own clothes, until finally he and his wife were down to one dress and one suit, which the man cleaned and brushed and mended. Then he traded his tables and chairs, pots and pans, until finally he was down to a bed, one straight chair, one table, one bowl, one spoon, and his dreams. His wife knew what he was up to and begged him not to sell the bed. He said he wouldn’t but after a while, he sold that too. Every now and then I’d drop by his little apartment. There in the corner would be the piles of newspaper that did duty as their conjugal couch.”

  “What happened to him?” asked Dalakis, concerned.

  “Oh, he died like everyone else and his wife went to live with a niece. By now she’s probably dead as well. But answer me, Malgiolio, what do you do for fun? Who are the ladies who console you?”

  Malgiolio drank his wine and refused to answer. I was surprised at Pacheco for needling him, especially since he mostly appeared indifferent to what any of us thought, as if none of us could touch him with our words. And while we might all have scorn for Malgiolio, Pacheco had never shown it, had always treated him with courtesy and deference. When Malgiolio was rich and throwing around money, he had bragged about his expensive women, but presumably they had disappeared when the money ran out. As an adolescent he had been like the rest of us, clumsy and yearning. I guessed he had a mistress somewhere, if only because he needed one to maintain his self-respect.

  “Yes, I went back to the school the next day,” said Pacheco, “but the young man with the motorcycle was waiting as well. We didn’t speak but he watched me. It was clear she had told him something. Not that he was worried or felt that I posed any threat. He was too sure of her for that. Then I went to the girl’s house, but she refused to see me. The following Sunday I followed her to church, sat behind her, breathed over her shoulder, even touched her once. She didn’t appear to recognize me. So
I began to haunt her. Whenever she was in town shopping or going to a café, I would be there. I even spoke to her a few times. I would tell her how I desired her, what I wanted to do to her body, how I wanted to kiss her breasts. She would listen and I could just barely sense her breath beginning to quicken; then she would walk away or the young man would reappear.

  “The aunt’s house where Antonia lived was a large white house set off by itself on a hill. Very soon I knew which room was Antonia’s, and late in the evening I would stand out on the street, watching her window and waiting for a light. It was a second-floor room in the front, right above the porch. Of course I hated myself for behaving in such a manner, but that hatred did nothing but strengthen my resolve. Each evening the young man with the motorcycle would come to her house. Sometimes he and Antonia would go out, sometimes they would stay home. Often I would see them walking in the garden. He would have his arm around her waist and they would stop and kiss. Once they lay down on the grass together. She had a large brindle-colored mastiff that she called Caleb, and whenever she and the young man walked through the garden Caleb would follow. After several hours the young man would leave and a little later the light would go on in Antonia’s bedroom. I would stand and watch and even when the light went out again I would remain in the street. Then, maybe around two or three, I would walk home.

  “Caleb was also the guard dog and would roam loose on the grounds at night. Often as I walked along the iron fence, he would walk along the other side, not barking or growling, but just following me. At first I thought I’d have to kill Caleb and even imagined cutting off his head and sticking it on one of the many spearlike poles which made up the fence. As it was, I turned Caleb into my own little pet, bringing him scraps of meat and talking to him softly, until at last whenever Caleb heard me approach, he would trot down to the fence, wagging his tail.