THE LOVE AND DEATH OF CATERINA
Andrew Nicoll
New York • London
© 2011 by Andrew Nicoll
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ISBN 978-1-62365-292-0
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Also by Andrew Nicoll
The Good Mayor
For Kenny, Margaret and Angus
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Acknowledgments
ONLY A FEW weeks after it happened, Luciano Hernando Valdez was almost unable to believe that he had ever been a murderer. It was an act he had often contemplated in his novels, of course, but those had not been murders, not truly murders. Men died, women too sometimes, but because they deserved to die. Invariably it was an affair of honor over a wronged wife, a sister ruined, a husband betrayed, or because death at the point of a knife or kneeling, blindfold, in some stinking shack in the barriada was the inescapable last act in an opera of tragedy and lust and revenge and redemption. Reading the novels of Mr. Valdez, one felt the bloodied victims he left oozing life on the floor of a forgotten tango hall or dumped in a public fountain at midnight would have been disgraced forever if he had imagined some less brutal end for them or, worse yet, if he had allowed them to live out their days in solitude as shopkeepers or cinema projectionists or provincial priests. Much better for a fictional character to make his exit in a bloody flourish with his head full of holes but his honor intact.
Real people are different, as Mr. Valdez discovered.
But let’s go back a little, to before he had made that discovery.
Mr. Valdez was sitting on his usual bench beside the steps that lead down from the square to the river. The Merino was looking particularly sluggish that day as it flowed, green as sap and every bit as sticky, toward the distant sea. It seemed to Mr. Valdez that, just under the surface, it still carried with it the dark shadows of the interior, as if, somewhere upriver, the little people of the jungle had gazed into its pools with their black eyes and the blackness stuck.
Mr. Valdez had a book open beside him on the bench and a notepad of yellow, lined paper open on his knee. There was nothing written in it, which was hardly surprising, since Mr. Valdez was holding his pen between his teeth like a literary pirate preparing to board the defenseless page.
He sat staring across the river at a floating tree which had remained in exactly the same place, like an anchored liner, for over half an hour.
“It must be stuck,” said Mr. Valdez to himself. But then a pelican, which had sat with its wings folded on a branch overhanging the river, flapped gracelessly into the air and the whole tree sank at one end, rebalanced itself, bobbed and sent out a single, greasy ripple across the surface of the water.
“Remarkable,” said Mr. Valdez, inwardly, since the pen in his mouth made speech impossible.
Far away a steam whistle blew three sharp whoops and Mr. Valdez turned his head a little to the left. Halfway across the river, it seemed almost on the horizon, almost at the edge of the world, he knew they must be changing flags, running down the three bars of white and gold and red and replacing them with three stripes of white and red and gold. It hardly mattered. Either flag would do. Each would hang just as flat and limp as the other, all the way across the river and all the way back.
“Remarkable,” thought Mr. Valdez, although he had seen it happen a thousand times before on a thousand other sunny mornings.
Only a little further along the shore, two giant cranes stood ready to begin the day’s work. Shoulders hunched, legs firmly planted, their huge derricks dipped right down to the quayside, they looked like a pair of vast iron golfers ready to drive a ball across the river and into enemy territory. They gave a cough. Machinery began turning. The cranes began to lift.
Little by little the golfers turned into donkeys and then, tottering across the square, came Señor Doctor Joaquin Cochrane, the learned Dr. Cochrane whose Scottish name could not disguise the flat nose, the shovel teeth, the plum-black, flat-iron-smooth hair of his Indian ancestors.
“Mr. Valdez! Mr. Valdez!” His cane slipped a little on the mosaic pavement as he hurried forward. “Mr. Valdez. Oh, I feared you had not seen me.”
Smiling weakly, Mr. Valdez took the pen from between his teeth and folded it shut between the blank pages of his yellow notebook. “Señor Dr. Cochrane,” he said. That was all.
“May I sit down?” said the doctor, sitting down on the bench just as Mr. Valdez snatched his book away. “How inspiring it is to see you here, pen in hand, drawing inspiration of your own from the mighty Merino.” The doctor pointed his cane from horizon to horizon in case anybody had failed to notice the river in front of them. “The mighty Merino—should I not say ‘our’ Merino—the scene of so many triumphs by my courageous ancestor, the great Admiral Cochrane, in his struggle for the liberty of our people.”
Silent, as if he still held his pen between his teeth, Mr. Valdez thought: “Your ancestors sailed the Merino sitting on a log with the piranhas nibbling at their toes,” but he sm
iled and nodded and said: “Are you well, Dr. Cochrane?”
“Thank you, yes, I am well. And your latest novel, it progresses?”
“Yes, it progresses.” Mr. Valdez folded his hands over the notebook on his knees and locked his fingers together.
“I cannot tell you enough that which you already know but which cannot be adequately expressed, I cannot say often enough what an ornament you are to the faculty of our poor university, how the presence of such a great author as yourself, the eminent Luciano Hernando Valdez, enhances its reputation as a seat of learning and,” Dr. Cochrane seemed to have forgotten his plans for the end of that sentence so he smiled and made another slow sweep of the river with his cane and smiled again.
“Yes,” he said. “And the novel progresses?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Valdez. “Yes, it goes well.”
“Good. Yes. It progresses. I am delighted. And you are here, every morning, with your notebooks, creating in ink people, lives, cities that will last longer than the pyramids. It is an immortal achievement.”
“Well, I …”
“Forgive me. I have embarrassed you. I behave like a schoolgirl but how could I pretend that I am not an aficionado? Only last night, when I was reading again for the tenth time—as if for the first time—your heroic Mad Dog of San Clemente, I realized an amazing thing.” Without waiting for encouragement, he said: “I realized that, when the landlord, Carlos, is murdered in front of the whole town and the people line the streets to watch and do nothing and he is stabbed two times at the fish stall and runs away to the hat shop where he is stabbed two times more and then he crawls to the steps of the Post Office where three more blows finish him off, then I saw.”
Mr. Valdez said nothing. In spite of himself he may have cocked an eyebrow or the brim of his hat may have overemphasized a tiny movement of his head, but it was enough for the doctor.
“Yes, I know. I see you are testing me, but I know. Seven stab wounds ending in death. They represent the seven deadly sins, do they not? I am right?”
He said it questioningly so Mr. Valdez had no choice but to say: “You are a very perceptive reader.”
Dr. Cochrane gave a little bow. “And as a reward for my devotion, may I, would it be too much to ask, might I hear a few words from your current work?”
“Oh, no! I don’t think. That is. I.”
“I understand. You need say no more. Would you, could you, say even a word about the theme?”
“Forgive me if I say only …”
“I understand. But the title. Even to know that, it would be a flavor to hold in the mouth.”
“I am superstitious, like a mother waiting to bring forth. Forgive me. I cannot. Truly.”
Dr. Cochrane looked down at the tip of his cane where it rested on the dusty pavement and sighed.
“But perhaps, you would permit me to buy you coffee, to make it up to you? Breakfast? Have you eaten?”
“That would be delightful. And we could talk more about your books.”
“Yes,” said Valdez, “but let’s stick to those already on your shelves.” He stood up easily and waited, hands crossed in front of him over the large yellow notebook, like a footballer waiting to deflect a free kick. He was a slim man, tall and fit, but Dr. Cochrane made a less graceful picture, planting two hands on the silver top of his cane and hauling himself off the bench with a groan.
Mr. Valdez cupped a steadying hand round the doctor’s elbow and they walked off together toward Café Phoenix, the shadowy cavern of mirrors and molded wood paneling where the university set liked to take its coffee.
At the corner of the square, an early workman had leaned his ladder against the green cross flashing from the wall of the chemist’s shop.
He had already unscrewed the iron sign that said: “Square of May 15” and another, stamped “Square of the September Revolution,” was waiting at the bottom of the ladder. There, on the wall, pale where it had been protected from the grime of the city, the two men saw “Square of the Black Horse” cut into the stone in a sharply chiseled Roman script.
Dr. Cochrane tutted and shook his head. “May 15. September Revolution. Black Horse. Who cares? For me this will be always the Square of January 18. The old Colonel, I liked him a lot. I knew him, did I tell you?”
“Yes,” said Valdez, “you told me.”
“Well, I think he deserves a bit of loyalty, that’s all. Don’t you think? Anyway, that’s what I think.”
“I think everybody knows what you think. I think everybody knows that you knew the old Colonel and liked him a lot. Maybe, if nobody knew, the Chair of Mathematics might have been yours by now.”
“That is a remark unworthy of the man who wrote The Killings at the Bridge of San Miguel.” Dr. Cochrane looked wounded as he shifted his cane to his left hand and leaned on the door of the Phoenix. “And, anyway, mathematics is above mere politics.”
“Not in this sad little country of ours,” said Valdez. “Here, each new revolution changes everything. They start with pi and move on from there.”
IT WAS AT the Phoenix that Mr. L.H. Valdez, acclaimed literary figure, teacher, polo enthusiast, dandy, lover, cynic, author of over a dozen novels that were not only best sellers but also “important” works of fiction, first met the young woman he would murder just a short time later.
Coming in from the street, his eyes took a little time to become accustomed to the cool shadow of the café. He hesitated, but Dr. Cochrane, in spite of his cane, forged ahead between the tables. “Jungle eyes,” thought Valdez. “Undoubtedly the eyes of an Indian.” They made their way to the back of the room where Costa from Classics and De Silva, who taught law, were hunched over a tiny chessboard with Gonzalez the Jesuit, uncomfortably close to their elbows, snooping like a poker cheat.
“Good morning, colleagues and friends,” said Dr. Cochrane. “Move up now, make a little room. Valdez has offered me breakfast and—yet more nourishing—his conversation.”
The little group shuffled along the brown benches on polished trousers.
“Now you have to move your bishop. You have to!” said De Silva.
“I don’t ‘have to’ do anything of the sort.”
“Costa, you touched it. You have to.”
“I did not touch it.”
“Don’t be stupid, you touched it.”
“Stupid? Nice. That’s nice. A nice game of chess and now it’s ‘stupid’ is it? I moved the board so that Cochrane could sit down, that’s all.”
“And are you denying that you touched the bishop?”
“Don’t talk to me as if you’re addressing a class on contract law.”
“Costa, you touched the bishop!”
“By accident!”
“The rules are simple and clear; clear so anyone can understand them, simple for the avoidance of doubt.”
On a normal day, Valdez would have enjoyed that little quarrel. He would have watched it carefully, observed the jabs of fingers, traced the trajectories of tiny bullets of rainbow spit, made lengthy mental notes of every silly, angry word just in case, please God, there might come a day when he could write them down again in a story. Even now, when hope was almost dead, when he struggled day after day with a clean page and left it, sometimes hours later, with no mark on the paper, like an impotent lover, limp and embarrassed, he might still have paid attention. But there was the girl.
She was a waitress, but the only thing that gave her away was a pad of flimsy paper with a slip of carbon under the top leaf. No crisp white shirt, no smart black skirt, nothing to mark her out from the bunch of laughing students—the sons and daughters of dentists and accountants and colonels, all trying to look like Che—she was serving at a table in the opposite corner. She wore jeans.
Mr. Valdez disapproved of jeans, but all the students wore them and she wore hers indecently low so a tempting blush of shadow or curve or imagination, hinting at something wonderful, appeared, briefly, at the waistband.
“On a plumber, that wou
ld be disgusting,” thought Mr. Valdez as he traced the shape of her with his eyes, faded blue cotton taut over the curve of her ass and a line of pale flesh that slid in an elegant parabola to an improbably tiny waist and a narrow back.
“She’s a child,” Valdez told himself. “An infant.” But then she turned round and, in spite of himself, Mr. Valdez gasped for, although she was slim and dainty, the girl had amazing, beautiful, impossible breasts—the sort of breasts he had imagined existed only in the pages of those magazines he purchased at that little shop behind the church on his monthly visits to Punto del Rey, astounding, miraculous breasts, like peaked cannonballs hung in bags of ivory silk.
“The face of an angel and the body of Lilith!” Mr. Valdez looked quickly at the floor, at his shoes, over at the angry chess game. He discovered a sudden fascination with the polished head of Dr. Cochrane’s cane and fixed his gaze on that as if his head had been held in a vice and he looked and he looked and he looked at that until she stood at his shoulder. And then she said: “May I take your order?”
At the other end of the table the squabbling stopped and the priest let the air blow out between his teeth like a man who sees the gates of Heaven across an uncrossable gap. Mr. Valdez did not look up. He dared not look up. He could not. He was afraid to move his gaze from Dr. Cochrane’s cane.
“Coffee,” said Costa.
“Coffee,” said De Silva.
“Black,” said the priest.
“Yes, yes,” Dr. Cochrane said enthusiastically.
“Three coffees for my friends and another for me and some rolls—soft rolls—and ham and two boiled eggs.”
And then there was a moment of silence, a drip or two of embarrassment before she said: “And anything for you, Mr. Valdez?”
She said his name. She said his name and that meant she knew his name, she knew who he was and she said his name because she wanted him to know that she knew.
“Coffee,” he said and looked up. “Coffee.”
The girl repeated the order, made a tick on the notepad and smiled and walked away.
“Just tell me again. Just try to explain. Tell me what it’s like,” said the priest.
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