The Listening Walls

by Margaret Millar

  “Eleven-twenty-five Garden Street,” he told Amy. “You probably never heard of it. It’s over on the east side of town. Or it was. They may have torn the whole district down by now and put up hotels or department stores. Are the cable cars still running?”

  “Some of them,” Amy said.

  “It makes me homesick just thinking about them.”

  “Does it?” She wondered what place he was really homesick for; a farm in Minnesota, perhaps, or a little desert town in Arizona. She knew she would never find out. She couldn’t ask and he wouldn’t tell. “Is there any­thing to stop you from going home, Mr. O’Donnell?”

  “Just a small matter of money. I’ve had some bad luck at the track.”

  “Oh.”

  His smile widened until it seemed almost genuine. “Yes. I’m a naughty boy, Mrs. Kellogg. I gamble. I have to.”

  “Oh?”

  “There’s no other way of making money. I can’t apply for any job without working papers and so far I haven’t been able to get any working papers. Say, this is begin­ning to sound like Be-Sorry-For-Joe O’Donnell night. Let’s can it. Let’s talk about you. What have you two ladies been doing for amusement in Mexico City?”

  “Amusement?” Wilma lifted her brows. “I hardly know the meaning of the word anymore.”

  “We’ll have to change that. How long will you be here?”

  “We leave tomorrow,” Amy said. “For Cuernavaca.”

  “That’s too bad. I was hoping to show you. . .”

  “Cuerna—who?” Wilma said loudly to Amy.

  “Cuernavaca.”

  “And we leave tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you out of your mind? We just got here. Why in God’s name should we take off for a place I never even heard of, Cuern—whatever it is?”

  “Cuernavaca,” said Amy patiently.

  “Stop repeating it. It sounds like a disease of the spine.”

  “It’s supposed to be very beautiful and. . .”

  “I don’t care if it’s the original Garden of Eden,” Wilma said. “I’m not going. What put such a crazy idea in your head anyway?”

  “The doctor suggested it, for the sake of your health.”

  “My health is fine, thank you. You look after your own.”

  The drinks came and O’Donnell sat without embar­rassment while Wilma paid for them. A year ago, or two years, he might have been a little embarrassed. Now he was merely tired. The two ladies were, as he’d feared, becoming a burden. He wished they would go to Cuerna­vaca right away, tonight.

  He said firmly, “No visitor to Mexico should miss Cuernavaca. Cortés’ palace is there, and the cathedral, just about the oldest cathedral in the republic. And birds, thousands of singing birds. If you like birds.”

  “I hate birds,” Wilma said.

  He went on to describe the climate, the tropical foli­age, the beautiful plazas, until he realized that neither of the two women was paying the slightest attention to him. They had begun to argue again, about a man called Gill, and what Gill would think if he walked in right now, or if he ever found out.

  O’Donnell got up and left.

  Consuela quit work at eight o’clock and went down to the service entrance where her boyfriend was supposed to meet her. He wasn’t there, and one of the kitchen help told her he’d gone to the jai alai games.

  Consuela cursed his pig eyes and his black heart and returned to her broom closet, determined on revenge. It wasn’t much of a revenge but it was all she could think of, to stay in the closet all night and let him worry about her and wonder why she didn’t come home and where she was.

  She made herself as comfortable as possible on a bed of towels. There was no ventilation in the closet but Con­suela didn’t mind this. The night air was bad anyway. It caused consumption, and if you had consumption you couldn’t get into the United States. The immigration authorities wouldn’t give you any papers.

  She dozed off and dreamed that she was on a bus going to Hollywood. Suddenly the bus stopped and a bearded man who looked a little like Jesus opened the door and said, “Consuela Juanita Magdalena Dolores Gonzales, you have consumption. You must get off the bus immedi­ately.” Consuela flung herself at his feet, weeping and pleading. He turned away from her sternly, and she began to scream.

  When she first woke up she could hear herself scream­ing, but a moment later, sitting up, fully awake now, she realized it was not herself she’d heard screaming. It was one of the ladies in 404.

  In spite of the lateness of the hour there were a dozen eyewitnesses who’d been passing on the avenida below the balcony of 404, each of them eager to give his version of what had happened.

  The American lady paused at the railing and looked down before she jumped.

  She did not look down. She knelt and prayed.

  She didn’t hesitate a moment, just ran across the bal­cony and dived over.

  She screamed as she fell.

  She didn’t make a sound.

  She carried in her arms a silver box.

  Her arms were empty, flung wide to the heavens in supplication.

  She turned over and over in the air.

  She fell straight down and head first, like an arrow.

  The eyewitnesses all agreed on one point: when she struck the pavement she died instantly.

  In the hotel manager’s office Dr. Lopez gave a brief statement to the police. “I treated Mrs. Wyatt last night for a case of turista. An unhappy woman. Very nervous, very high-strung.”

  “Very drunk,” said the bartender.

  “Very rich,” Consuela said with a nervous giggle. “What a pity to die when one is rich.”

  The doctor held up his hand for silence. “Kindly allow me to finish. My rounds begin in less than five hours and even a doctor requires some sleep. As I said before, you’ll get the complete story from Mrs. Kellogg when she re­covers. How soon that will be depends on the hospital authorities. She’s suffered a bad shock. Moreover, when she fainted she struck her head on the bedpost, so she may have some degree of concussion as well. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “I, too, am very nervous and high-strung,” said Mercado, the older of the two policemen. “Still, I do not leap off balconies.”

  Dr. Lopez smiled without amusement. “You might one day, one balcony. Good morning, gentlemen.”

  “Good morning, Doctor. Now you, Consuela Gonzales. You claim you were in the broom closet and heard a woman screaming. Which woman?”

  “The small, brown-haired one.”

  “Señora Kellogg?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she just making a noise or was she screaming words?”

  “Words. Like ‘stop’ and ‘help.’ Maybe others.”

  “Just as a matter of curiosity, what were you doing in the broom closet at that hour?”

  “Sleeping. I was very tired after work. I work hard, very very hard.” She threw a glance at Escamillo, the manager of the hotel. “Señor Escamillo doesn’t realize how hard I work.”

  “That I don’t,” Escamillo said with a snort.

  “No matter, no matter, no matter,” Mercado said. “Go on, señorita. You woke up and heard screaming. You rushed into 404. And?”

  “The small one, Señora Kellogg, was lying on the car­pet beside the bed. Her head was bleeding and she was unconscious. I couldn’t see the other one anywhere. I never thought to look over the balcony. How could I think of such a thing? To take one’s own life, it is a mortal sin.” Consuela crossed herself, fearfully. “The room smelled of drinking and there was half a bottle of whiskey on the bureau. I tried to give the señora some to wake her up but it just spilled all over.”

  “So you drank the rest yourself,” said Escamillo, the manager.

>   “The merest drop. To keep my strength up.”

  “Drop. Ha! You reek of it,” said Señor Escamillo.

  “I will not be insulted by any pig of a man!”

  “So you dare to call me a pig of a man, you ladronzuela!”

  “Prove it. Prove I am a ladronzuela!”

  Mercado yawned and reminded them that it was late; that he and his colleague, Santana, were very tired; that he, Mercado, had a wife and eight children and many troubles; and would everybody, please, be friendly and cooperative? “Now, Señorita Gonzales, when you failed to rouse the señora, what did you do?”

  “I telephoned down to the room clerk and he sent for the doctor. Dr. Lopez. He has an agreement with the hotel.”

  “He has a contract,” Escamillo said. “Signed.”

  Consuela shrugged. “Does it matter what you call it? When a doctor is necessary, it is always Dr. Lopez they send for. So he came. Immediately. Or very soon anyway. That is all I know.”

  “You stayed with the señora until the doctor arrived?”

  “Yes. She did not wake up.”

  “Now, señorita, what do you know of a silver box?”

  Consuela looked blank. “Silver box?”

  “This one. See, it has blood on it and is badly dented where it struck the pavement. Have you ever seen this box before?”

  “Never. I know nothing about it.”

  “Very well. Thank you, señorita.”

  Consuela rose gracefully and crossed the room, pausing for a moment in front of Escamillo’s desk. “I do not take insults. I quit.”

  “You don’t quit. You’re fired.”

  “I quit before I was fired. So ha!”

  “I shall count every single towel,” Escamillo said. “Per­sonally.”

  “Cochino.”

  Consuela snapped her fingers and went out, slamming the door firmly and finally behind her.

  “You see?” Escamillo cried, beating the air with his fists. “How can I run a hotel with help like that? They are all the same. And now this terrible scandal. I am ruined, ruined, ruined. Policemen in my office! Reporters in my lobby! And the Embassy—Mother of Jesus, must the Embassy be brought into this, too?”

  “We must, of course, inform the Embassy in such cases,” Mercado said.

  “These crazy Americans, if they want to jump do they not have places to jump in their own country? Why must they come here and ruin an innocent man!”

  Everyone agreed that it was most unfair, most sad, but God’s will, after all. No one could argue with God’s will, which was responsible for national and domestic disasters like earthquakes, unseasonable rains, temperamental plumbing, difficulties with the telephone exchange, as well as cases of sudden death.

  It was comforting having someone to blame, and Es­camillo was beginning to feel better when another point suddenly occurred to him. “What of the suite, 404? It is empty and yet it is not empty. I must charge for it or lose money. But I cannot charge if there is no one in it. And I cannot put anyone in it while the señoras’ belongings are still there. What must I do?”

  “You must learn not to think so much of money,” Mer­cado said firmly and picked up the silver box and nodded to his colleague, Santana. “Come along. We will examine 404 once more and then lock it until the little señora re­covers.”

  The balcony doors had been left open but the suite still reeked of whiskey, from the carpet where it had spilled and from the bottle itself which Consuela had left uncorked on the bureau.

  “It would be a shame,” Mercado said, reaching for the bottle, “to let this product stand here and evaporate.”

  “But it is evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “That the señora was drunk.”

  “We already know from the bartender that she was drunk. We must not accumulate too much evidence. It would only confuse matters. The case is, after all, quite simple. The señora was drinking much tequila and be­came depressed. Tequila is not for amateurs.”

  “Why did she become depressed?”

  “Unrequited love,” Mercado said without hesitation. “Americans make much of these things. It is in all their cinemas. Have a nip.”

  “Thank you, friend.”

  “One thing we can be sure of. It was not an accident. I thought at first, the señora, after drinking heavily, may have rushed out to the balcony to get some air, perhaps also to relieve her stomach. But this is not possible.”

  “How is this not possible?”

  “She would never, in such an emergency, stop to pick up the, silver box.” Mercado sighed. “No. She killed her­self, poor lady. It is a sad thing to think of her wandering around in hell, is it not?”

  Dawn was breaking through a gray drizzle.

  “It rains,” Santana said.

  “Good. It will wash off the sidewalk and drive the peo­ple home.”

  “There are no more people. It is all over.”

  “Amen,” Mercado said. “Still I wonder, along with Señor Escamillo, why did she jump from this particular spot with all the American places to choose from.”

  “The Empire State Building.”

  “Of course. And the Grand Canyon.”

  “The Brooklyn Bridge.”

  “Niagara Falls.”

  “And others.”

  “Many others.” Mercado closed the balcony doors and locked them. “Well, one must not argue with the will of God.”

  “Amen.”

  4.

  Rupert Kellogg’s office was on the second floor of a new concrete building that stood just on the edge of Mont­gomery Street’s ancient prestige. Here he ran a small ac­counting business with the aid of his secretary, Pat Bur­ton, a spinster addicted to changing the color of her hair, and an apprentice, a young man named Borowitz who was working his way through San Francisco State College.

  Rupert was forty, a tall, bland-faced, soft-talking man who’d been in the accounting business for nearly twenty years. He was moderately efficient, and moderately suc­cessful, in his work, but he didn’t enjoy it. He would have preferred to do something more interesting and amusing, to own a pet shop, for instance. He had a pro­found love for animals and an intuitive understanding of them. The hours he spent at Fleishhacker Zoo seemed to him to be full of the fundamental meanings of life, but he never told this to anyone, not even his wife Amy; and the only time he’d suggested the possibility of opening a pet shop there’d been such a rumpus among his in-laws that he’d given up the idea. At least he’d given up mentioning it. It was still in the back of his mind, hidden away like a deformed child from the dis­approving gaze of his brother-in-law.

  On Monday morning he arrived late at the office, a habit that was growing on him, especially since Amy had left. Miss Burton, pumpkin-haired for the beginning of the autumn season, was on the telephone looking dis­traught. This she did easily and with so little provoca­tion that Rupert paid no attention. He found Miss Bur­ton’s anxiety states more tolerable if he stayed beyond their boundaries as much as possible.

  “Hold on, operator. He’s just this minute coming in the door.” Miss Burton pressed the telephone dramati­cally to her chest. “Thank God you’ve come! A Mr. John­son in Mexico City wants to talk to you.”

  “I don’t know any Mr. Johnson in Mexico City.”

  “He’s from the American Embassy. It must be terribly important. You don’t suppose something awful has . . .”

  “Isn’t this the wrong time to suppose, Miss Burton? I’ll take the call in my office.” He closed the door behind him and picked up the phone. “Rupert Kellogg speak­ing.”

  “One moment, please, Mr. Kellogg. All right, go ahead. Here’s your party, Mr. Johnson.”

  “Mr. Kellogg? This is the American Embassy in Mex­ico City, Johnson
speaking. I have bad news to report so I might as well give it to you now and straight.”

  “My wife . . .”

  “Your wife’s going to be all right. It’s her companion, Mrs. Wyatt. She’s dead. To be quite blunt about it, she went on a drinking spree and killed herself.”

  Rupert was silent.

  “Mr. Kellogg, are you still there? Operator, I’ve been cut off. Operator! Telefonista! For the love of the Lord, couldn’t I make just one phone call without interruption? Telefonista!”

  “You haven’t been cut off,” Rupert said. “I was—this is a—shock. I—I have known Mrs. Wyatt for many years. How did it happen?”

  Johnson told him what details he knew, in a sharp, disapproving voice, as if he considered Wilma’s death a breach of international etiquette.

  “And my wife?”

  “She’s suffering from shock, naturally. They’ve taken her to the American-British-Corday hospital. Do you want that address?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Mariano Escobedo, 628. The telephone number is 11-49-00.”

  “Will she be able to talk to me if I call?”

  “Oh no. She’s under sedation. She has a head injury incurred when she fainted, nothing serious as far as I know.”

  “How long will she be in the hospital?”

  “It’s impossible to tell,” Johnson said. “Do you have any friends here who could look after her?”

  “No. I’d better come down myself.”

  “That’s a good idea. Shall I call the Windsor Hotel where she was staying and ask them to hold the suite for you?”

  “Please,” Rupert said. “I’d also appreciate it if you left a message at the hospital for her: I’ll be down there tonight.”

  “What if you can’t make it tonight?”

  “I’ll make it. There’s a flight leaving in two hours. My wife took it last week.”