The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini

by Stephen Dobyns

  “And he never had any idea?” I asked. One of the candles on the mantel began to sputter and Pacheco stood up to put it out, pinching the wick with two fingers.

  “How should I know or why should I care?” he said. “I hate him and I keep him alive. We never speak. My only concern is her, and I have been obsessed by her for twenty years. But always she would do her work and go about the house as if I did not exist. I could have my way with her and perhaps arouse her and make her passionate but afterward she would return to acting like this dead thing, except with him, Roberto Collura, or with the cook, who was her friend.”

  “Twenty years?” asked Dalakis. “All that time?”

  “Does it seem so long to you?” said Pacheco. “In memory it feels like nothing. She was beautiful when she came to my house and I find her beautiful now. Changed, of course, but still beautiful. We lived in the south for eleven more years, then moved here. I had many other women and often I would bring them to the house to see if I could make her jealous. I would make love to them right in front of her. I’d order her to stand at the foot of the bed and watch as I pawed over some woman I’d found on the street, then I’d see Antonia staring with that blank dead face as if she were staring at a wall. When I was done, I’d send her away. You think this has gone on for a long time? Believe me, it seems like nothing. And still I have never broken through that dead face except in those moments of passion. And Collura is weak. He’s often sick. I’m surprised he has lasted this long. In a few years or even months, he’ll get some germ and develop flu, then pneumonia. It’s bound to be soon. He’ll die and she’ll leave me. She has been my whole life and I have never wanted her a bit less than I wanted her that first time. You know, she was a virgin. She hadn’t even given herself to that fool upstairs. So you see, I have had everything and at the same time I’ve had nothing.”

  “Perhaps that is your punishment,” said Dalakis with his back turned. He had gotten up from the couch and stood near the door as if not wanting to be too close to Pacheco.

  “Punishment? For what?” Pacheco stood by the mantel with his hands in his pockets, jingling his keys. His suitcoat was unbuttoned and I noticed that his dark gray tie was held in place by a silver clip in the shape of a running fox. “This is your little song, Carl, a world made up of punishment and reward, virtue and vice. Twenty years ago I went to a summer concert and a young woman came with her aunt and her fiancé. They happened to sit a little behind me and my hand happened to brush the young woman’s ankle. And from that time on she has been like a bright light in my brain, a light which pushed me out, drove me to the very corners of myself, which obliterated my ego with desire for her until I had to fuck her just to save my life and find myself again, just to think my own thoughts, to recover myself, to be quiet by myself, to have some peace. Look at it as murder. She killed me. She filled my mind with her own image and drove me out. I had to possess her in order to resurrect myself again. I had to defeat her in order to save my own life.”

  “And did you really defeat her?” I asked.

  Pacheco looked at me. Have I said how the blueness of his eyes reminded me of those Alaskan sled dogs one sometimes sees? Not their pale color so much as their lack of feeling. Or perhaps they could be called scientific eyes, as if I were a smidgin of tissue under a microscope.

  “No, Batterby, you’ve had my answers. I’ve tried to give you an idea of my last twenty years but do you have any sense of the pain? You think I wouldn’t have wanted a wife and family, a more conventional life? My life has been a rush, a great race. For you this is just a bit of gossip, something to think about in terms of that perennial book you talk about writing. How can you understand my pain if you have no heart of your own?”

  “So you think I have no heart?” I asked.

  “Why did you desert your wife?”

  “Because she was your mistress.”

  “But that was over. She told you it was over and apparently you chose not to believe her.”

  I had no wish to tell Pacheco that I had driven her out because she had preferred him as a lover. As for the passage of time meaning little, he was right about that, for although I’d seen him with my wife just twenty years ago, I hated him at this moment as I had hated him then. The room felt hot and airless, even though the door was partly open. I imagined Señora Puccini standing behind it, listening, listening.

  “Do you know you have a son?” asked Pacheco.

  “That’s a lie. Yes, I knew she bore a son but he’s no son of mine. Claim him as your own bastard.”

  Pacheco looked away as if pretending to be bored with me. “He’s not mine. The dates are wrong. I was in the south. He’s yours and you probably know he’s yours. He’s a man now, do you realize that? I even saw him. He looks like you. The same square face and sandy hair. He even has your stoop, as if weak backs ran in your family. You don’t think I want a son? You don’t think I’d claim him if I could? What will you do when you see him, for surely he’ll hunt you out? He wants to know you, wants to know why you deserted him. What will you tell him?”

  “I’ll tell him his mother’s a whore.”

  “Then he won’t believe you. You see, she has remarried, has other children. She’s lived with the same man happily for fifteen years. He’s a pharmacist, did you know that? He wears glasses. He’s bald. He’s almost painfully thin, so thin that his elbows stick out like little blades. Yet they’re very much in love. They touch and caress each other. They spend all their time together. You could have had that, Batterby. She wanted to make her life with you. She broke off with me, wanted no more of me. And instead of accepting her and forgiving her, you drove her away. You could have had children and a family. You could have had all that I’ve wanted for myself but you drove her away.”

  “Stop it!” I shouted. Standing up, I walked to the wall and stood facing a shelf of books, hardly seeing them. Although not a violent man, sometimes I think myself capable of violence.

  I heard the door open behind me. Señora Puccini entered the library. She didn’t look at us but walked directly to Pacheco. “The colonel wants you to see one of his officers,” she said. “He believes the man is dying.”

  Her voice was flat and monotonic. Stepping quickly toward her, Pacheco grabbed her arm and turned her so she faced us as he kept her pinned against him. She didn’t struggle but remained passive in his arms. It was impossible not to stare at her. High cheekbones, a straight nose, and a beautiful mouth with full lips and perfect teeth, she had a large chin for a woman, almost masculine and square. Her gray eyes were set wide apart. All of us were standing. “This was what I wanted,” he said. “This was what I wanted for my wife, the mother of my children.”

  He took her chin and lifted it, squeezing her cheeks. She kept her eyes on the rug.

  “But she didn’t want you,” said Dalakis, retreating toward me, “and instead of listening to her, you ruined her life. What did you ever get from her?”

  Pacheco grabbed the fabric of her skirt and yanked it up, exposing her white underwear. He pressed his hand against her groin. Even though he was mauling her, Señora Puccini’s expression remained blank. “This is what I got,” said Pacheco, “and I’ll take it again and again. Do you wish to see it?”

  “Leave her alone!” shouted Malgiolio, suddenly. “Leave her alone or I swear I’ll strike you.” He raised a fist and took a step toward Pacheco and the housekeeper.

  Startled, Pacheco looked back, then burst out laughing. “So our little immoralist has scruples after all.” He left Señora Puccini standing by the fireplace and took several steps toward Malgiolio, who, surprisingly, stood his ground. The photograph of the young Antonia Puccini over the older one’s shoulder made it seem that both women were in the room together.

  “Then strike me if you wish,” said Pacheco. “Do you have the blood for it? You see where judgment gets us? We live as we can and try to do as little harm as we
can, but the harm comes all the same. Even if we spent the day in a prison cell the harm would come.”

  “Can I go now?” asked the housekeeper. She stood watching us as if nothing violent had happened. I found myself wondering if she were entirely sane.

  Pacheco brushed a hand across his face as if wiping something from it. Then he turned, turning his back to us. He appeared to look at Señora Puccini for about ten seconds and I wished I could see his expression. “Yes,” he said, “tell the colonel I’ll be with him directly.”

  I watched her pass through the door. It seemed certain she was no longer carrying the pistol. The way Pacheco had grabbed her and swept up her skirt seemed to show that her pockets were empty. Pacheco glanced back at us with a kind of scorn, then followed Señora Puccini out of the room.

  —

  I looked at my two companions. I’m sure we all felt embarrassed in each other’s presence. The evening had told us too much about ourselves without forgiving or absolving us. Here we’d been looking forward to our little reunion and now we felt too uncomfortable to speak to each other. For even though we could condemn Pacheco, were we much better? And even though Pacheco had taken what he wanted, hadn’t he also been punished for it? I had no wish to discuss my wife, yet I found myself wondering about her son and whether I had sacrificed our lives to some principle more connected to pride than virtue. All this had been buried deep within me and I owed Pacheco the gratitude of unloosing it. But was I the father? I had been sure it was Pacheco. But was that true or was it only what I wished to be true? To believe the boy was mine made all my actions doubly foolish. And so perhaps I refused to think the boy was mine just because I didn’t want the responsibility of rejecting my own son.

  I swear none of this was conscious. I swear I hadn’t thought of my wife and her son for years. I had convinced myself she was dead and that the son didn’t exist. Does that seem psychotic? Rather it had become an easy habit. In fact, I hardly ever analyze the actions of people around me. I watch them and find them curious, but I never wonder why they do one thing rather than another. Does that make sense? For me Pacheco had always been a romantic figure, someone mysterious and dashing, a character out of Dumas. And of course I had envied him all those women. But look at him, creeping around his own house, trying for twenty years to coax a smile out of his housekeeper. Wouldn’t it be better to pity him? Yet he had corrupted the woman whom I had married and with whom I was passionately in love. He had wrecked my life, hurt Dalakis, and ruined the poor girl who had become his housekeeper. And the man in the upstairs bedroom, Roberto Collura, what of him?

  Really, it seems I become as much a character as the others at Pacheco’s dinner. I describe what they do, yet I don’t know why they do it. I describe what I do but I hardly have any sense of my own motivation. Perhaps that is why I was never successful as a writer—I had no sense of myself, almost refused to be conscious of myself, since to be conscious would make my failures too obvious and, worse, make me responsible for my failures. Better not to think of it or I’d wind up feeling guilty for the killing in the streets.

  Dalakis had gone into the hall. Malgiolio was lighting another of his colored cigarettes. What a foolish affectation! I felt extremely claustrophobic, partly because of the curfew, partly because of my own thoughts, which kept pressing against my brain with their questions and accusations. I hurried out of the library and into the hall. Pacheco and Dalakis were with some soldiers under the tapestry of the rutting centaurs. How ironic that tapestry seemed now. I quickly crossed the hall and climbed the stairs. My first thought was to go onto the balcony off the bathroom, then I decided it would be safer on the roof. We could still hear shouting and gunshots from the street and it seemed dangerous to expose myself. My mind felt confused. Instead of thinking, I seemed to be pushing my thoughts away, to be keeping my mind intentionally blank. Of course deep within my brain my thoughts were in a turmoil but they were, in a manner of speaking, too distant to reach. Taking a candle from the stairs, I hurried along the hall and up to the third floor. I moved quietly, almost stealthily, as if afraid someone might hear me. The hot wax dripped onto my hand and I had to hold my other hand before the flame to keep it from being blown out. The dark shadow of my hand was thrown forward onto the walls and floor, preceding me like a troubled spirit.

  When I reached the ladder to the roof, I grabbed the rope which pulled the whole contraption down from the ceiling, then I paused. To my right was the door to Roberto Collura’s room. Had I come to the third floor not to climb to the roof, but to see him instead? I imagined him thin and emaciated, having lain on that bed ever since Pacheco had moved to this house nine years earlier. I walked to his door and put my hand on the knob. The door was unlocked. With much trepidation, I pushed it open.

  At first I thought Collura was asleep, he lay so still. But then of course he couldn’t move; he was paralyzed. It was an odd sensation to know I had complete power over him. Most of the candles had been taken away but there was still one on the nightstand by his bed and another on the dresser against the wall. Avoiding the mobiles and other paraphernalia which hung from the ceiling, I walked to the bed and looked down. To my shock I saw that Collura was staring up at me. He had a face like a monkey, very thin and lined, and his eyes seemed gray or light blue, like the color of water. Covered only with a sheet, his body resembled a stick. For some reason, I remembered Pacheco’s description of Collura riding on horseback, galloping across the fields. We looked into each other’s eyes and I tried to imagine his thoughts.

  “Can you speak?” I asked. Collura made no response. “Can you blink your eyes?” Collura didn’t blink. “Can you hear me?” Still he did not respond, although I was certain he heard me. Indeed, his eyes followed me whenever I changed position. Perhaps he’s crazy, I thought. Certainly, if I’d been paralyzed for twenty years, I’d be absolutely mad. I turned to look around the room—the pictures, toys, books, mobiles, mirrors all shimmered in the light of the two candles. The bird cages were covered. The fish hung stationary in their tank. The stuffed mongoose and cobra remained locked in their deathly embrace. I walked to the bookshelf. There were complete sets of Dumas, Hugo, Blasco Ibáñez, H. G. Wells. If he could be read to, then he wasn’t deaf. I went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. There were t-shirts and hospital gowns. In the next drawer were towels, in the next were sheets. Even with my back to Roberto Collura, I knew he was watching me. I wondered if Señora Puccini had sex with him, if there was anything she could do to arouse him. I looked through a desk which was full of letters from friends in the south. I glanced at one which appeared to be from an old teacher. It was dated three years previously and began, “It was good to receive your letter.” The teacher suggested books that Collura might like—Turgenev, Jane Austen—and went on to say, “Yes, I agree about Lawrence, there is a supreme silliness to the emotional lives of his characters. You remember in Women in Love where what’s-his-name holds his horse right at the track as the train roars by?”

  I returned the letter to the desk and walked back to the bed. “Presumably you can talk,” I said. “Will you talk to me?”

  I’m not sure what I wanted, but I think I desired to know more about Pacheco and Señora Puccini from another point of view. I stared down at Collura and he stared back at me. Occasionally he would blink but otherwise his face was expressionless. I found myself growing angry at him. In retrospect that seems foolish but I had so joined my own story to that of Pacheco’s that Collura’s silence seemed to deprive me willfully of knowledge about myself. To him of course I was an absolute stranger but he had seen me earlier with Pacheco, and presumably Señora Puccini had mentioned we were dinner guests and even old friends. But then if he thought I was a friend of Pacheco’s, perhaps that was reason enough to be silent.

  “Can you talk to me?” I asked. “Can you tell me about Pacheco? You think I’m his friend? Believe me, he ruined me as much as he ruined you.”

&nbs
p; I was hardly responsible for myself. Despairing of the young man who Pacheco claimed was my son and still grieving for my wife, unbalanced by all the talk of the evening, the violence in the city, and the very turmoil of our lives, I seemed to act not by design but by impulse.

  “Do you know about Pacheco and Antonia Puccini?” I asked. “Do you know they are lovers?” Collura continued to look at me. You have seen how monkeys can have a wise expression, or at least an expression that suggests wisdom? Collura’s face suggested that. So, although he made no response, I knew he knew what I was talking about. He even seemed to pity me for being so upset and foolish. It made me angry with him.

  “You know he fucks her all over the house?” I said. My voice had become high, almost squeaky. I couldn’t control it. “He fucks her in the hallway, right outside your door. He fucks her and she loves it and wants him to do it again, while you are stuck here helpless and impotent. Doesn’t that make you want to kill him?”

  But then I caught myself. What was I saying, why was I torturing a helpless human being? His face was still blank and again I wondered if he could hear. But no, of course he could hear. I suddenly felt ashamed and backed away from the bed. Again his eyes followed me. Covering his feet at the bottom of the bed was a folded blanket. I lifted it. Collura’s feet were white and bony yet looked very soft. White useless things. How had he gotten this way? Was it possible that his crash on the motorcycle had been an accident? I again covered his feet. I began to be afraid that Señora Puccini would enter the room and find me. How could I explain myself? When I entered, I had blown out my candle. Now I lit it again from the candle on the bedstand. My candle was red and about a foot long. As I paused to look down again at Roberto Collura, I saw that hot wax from my candle was dripping onto his arm. He blinked but made no other response. I jumped back, then tried to brush the wax away, but it was stuck fast to his skin. Frightened, I turned and left the room.