The Love and Death of Caterina

by Andrew Nicoll

  “It’s going very well. Very well indeed. You know, I feel I’ve made a real breakthrough. The words are just pouring out of my pen.”

  “So you’re almost finished?”

  “Sometimes I think I am, yes. Almost finished.” Mr. Valdez said nothing for a moment and then made a dismissive wave over his notebook and added: “But then there’s the editing. Cut and cut and cut. That’s the only way. Perhaps I will run a pencil through every single word I’ve written today.”

  “What a waste.”

  The waiter appeared and took their order and left again.

  “It’s not a waste. Not at all. The pieces the diamond cutter throws away aren’t wasted.”

  “Can I see?” she asked and pawed at the notebook. “Just a little peek.” She had her head tilted toward the table so she could look up at him through heavy lashes. It was an obvious gesture, unsubtle but stirring.

  Mr. Valdez snatched the notebook away playfully. “No, you can’t. You’ll have to wait like everybody else. And I can’t stay, I’m afraid. I have an appointment at the bank.”

  “The bank? I like banks. I like anything to do with money.”

  He stood up and dropped a few notes on the table.

  “Yes,” he said, “I know you do.”

  Mr. Valdez waited until the traffic cleared, then he stepped off the pavement, crossed the road back to the university and walked three streets south toward the river and into the bank.

  It annoyed him that the directors had decided to employ a professional greeter, a uniformed flunkey whose only job was to approach customers and ask them their business. That was a wage that could have been paid out in interest or to shareholders, and both of those would have suited Mr. Valdez very well.

  “I am here to see Mr. Ernesto Marrom,” he said. “I have an appointment.”

  “What name, sir?”

  “Valdez.”

  The man walked off, past the fat security guard leaning on the counter at the back of the banking hall with his belly hanging over his gun belt, and through a gorgeously carved door at the rear.

  The Merino and National Banking Company was nothing if not opulent, with lots of heavy carving on the walls and deep plaster work on the roof: allegorical figures of agriculture and industry, an overflowing cornucopia spilling fruit in every corner of the ceiling, and fat putti toiling under the weight of sacks bulging with coins. Mr. Valdez stood for a few moments, tracing their labored flight around the ceiling until he was summoned for his interview.

  The flunkey led him through a brief corridor, no more than the gap between two doors, into the manager’s office where Ernesto Marrom was already rising from behind his desk with his hand extended.

  “Nice to see you, Valdez. You are well, I trust?”

  “Very well, thanks. You?”

  “Oh, you know, busy.”

  “And Mrs. Marrom?”

  “Fine thanks. Fine. Now, what can I do for you?”

  Mr. Valdez reached inside his jacket and took out his wallet. “A couple of royalty checks,” he said. When he tugged them free, Caterina’s note came loose with them and fluttered down onto the desk.

  Marrom picked it up and handed it back. “I write,” he said. “A reminder, Valdez, in case you get lost?”

  Lost. Yes, it was something very like that. The sort of thing old men put in their wallets with their names and addresses in case they should be found dead at a bus station or, worse yet, find themselves far from home with no idea where they came from or how they got there.

  Valdez hated him for daring to touch that little bit of paper. He hated him for mocking it. A character in a novel by L.H. Valdez would have found an excuse for murder in that harmless action, but L.H. Valdez himself said only: “Yes, that’s the idea,” and took back the note carefully between two fingers.

  “You could simply have paid these checks in over the counter, you know,” the bank manager said.

  “Yes, I know. I hate to bother you with this but I want that money to go into the special overseas account.”

  “They will have to clear through your ordinary account here first.”

  “Will they? Is that absolutely necessary? So much paperwork.”

  “And not to mention the tax.”

  “No,” said Mr. Valdez. “Let’s not mention the tax.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  “I hate to be a bother, but can it be done today?”

  “Today?” Mr. Marrom gave a good-natured sigh. “Oh, I suppose so. Things are a bit busy, but I’ll work through lunch. I had wanted to get home early but … Oh, well. Don’t think I’d do this for everybody.”

  “I am very appreciative,” said Mr. Valdez. “Really, very appreciative.” He stood up and shook hands. “I’ll find my own way out.”

  Out in the sunshine of the street again, Mr. Valdez walked three blocks north and found Maria still at the same table, legs elegantly crossed, one expensive shoe swinging provocatively from her toes.

  “Still here, Mrs. Marrom? I’m astonished.”

  “You’re not the slightest bit astonished, you bad man.”

  “I’ve just been speaking to Ernesto.”

  Maria looked down the street as if nothing could interest her less.

  “He says …”

  “Oh, what does he say?”

  “He says he must work through lunch and won’t be home until the usual time tonight.”

  Maria brightened visibly.

  “So I was wondering.”

  “Yes?”

  “So, I was wondering if you would like to come to bed with me, Mrs. Marrom.”

  “Chano, darling, what a lovely idea!” She slipped her toes neatly back into her shoe, took his arm and hurried to the taxi rank.

  THE MERINO IS the pendulum that drives the town. When snow melts in the mountains or thunderclouds, fat as udders, burst over the jungle then, a week or two later, the Merino notices. Water hurries by the wharfs, there are waves in the river and a breeze that stirs the flag on the ferry, and naval officers on half pay with no ships will turn like weather vanes and gaze toward the far-off stolen coast.

  Then the town hurries. Then the town bustles. People go from house to house and shop to shop, looking at the sky as they walk, waiting for the first fat drops of rain to stain the pavements like blood. Then they keep their shutters flung wide so the air runs clear through their houses and their curtains bag and billow like sails. Then the people sit in cafés bright with chatter. They take a citron or a brandy. They stay late and go home to laugh a little more and sleep in crisp beds. Those are the days when the dogs trot the streets with their tails up and their noses high—and so do the women. The women sit on park benches and chat to their neighbors or parade themselves, walking slowly, lazy-hipped as Holsteins, in the gardens of the Carmelites. Men smile.

  But when the Merino is still and thick as paint, when the pelicans crowd on the piers like watching vultures, when the cormorants spread their wings and stand, gasping from yellow beaks, and the flies are too tired to move, and the air is thick and damp and the drains breathe fish-stink into the streets, then the nights are sleepless. Then every street has a baby mewling hour after hour or cats fighting on top of clattering bins.

  And in the daytime the women leave the gardens of the Carmelites and walk in the heat, thin dresses damp with sweat, along the other side of the park, slowly, so slowly, under the windows of the prison, and they listen to the howls as they pass and they smile.

  It was that sort of afternoon when Mr. Valdez sat down in the brown corridor of the math department and waited. He had already completed his patrol of the building, found the room where Dr. Cochrane was teaching, chosen a bench in the corridor that Caterina must pass on her way out from the lecture.

  He had studied and perfected his look of surprise, carefully polished the casualness of his invitation to “coffee?” and his self-deprecating little joke about how, this time, he would be delighted to serve her. And then the conversation would turn
to writing and he would show a generosity of spirit beyond her wildest imaginings, a more than polite interest, a warm and tender encouragement and slowly, gradually, she would fall in love with him.

  Mr. Valdez had decided the whole thing could be done in a week. And it would be beautiful. Mr. Valdez had decided that. He would be magnificent and she would be beautiful and young and amazed and impressed and the thing inside him that had been broken would be healed and he would write and the first thing he wrote would be about Caterina. It would be his thanks to her. It would make her immortal, a lasting monument that would endure far longer than any plaque on any park bench. She would be his Beatrice, his Laura, his Dark Lady—none of them required a park bench—and they would part with tears and without bitterness, remembering the affair as a time of loveliness.

  Beauty mattered to Mr. Valdez. He liked order and neatness but he craved beauty and feared the ugly.

  Sitting there on that brown bench in a brown corridor, waiting, he scuffed his feet on the brown linoleum without even noticing that they moved in time to the sound of a distant tango, playing on the wireless in the janitor’s office.

  The tango was everywhere. That last afternoon, when he was done with Maria Marrom, there had been an accordion playing tango, very slow. It dripped into his flat from the open door of the bar in the next street and he danced, alone, naked, gliding across the tiles of his kitchen floor.

  Mr. Valdez held an imaginary woman in his arms. He was unsure who she was. He had not bothered to imagine a face for her but he knew she was not Caterina. Tango takes years and experience and pain. Children cannot dance tango. Whores dance it very well.

  Mr. Valdez danced back into his bedroom and stopped. Maria. Mrs. Maria Marrom, facedown in a tangle of wet sheets, her face in the pillow, breathing in long sighs. The bed.

  A mess. A glass broken on the tiles and a wine bottle on its side. He let his arms fall, let the woman pressed against his body melt away. So much more convenient than a Maria, he thought, so much easier. Mr. Valdez cursed himself. If only they had gone back to the banker’s house. He could have waited for a decent interval, the kind of politely appreciative moment that the girls of Madame Ottavio’s house did not demand, and left with no fuss. She might even have hurried him out with kisses, tremulous, fearful lest he should delay too long and provoke a scene. But now she was there, in his bed, sticky-skinned and tousled and replete, dozing like an aunt at Christmas, immovable and embarrassing.

  Mr. Valdez opened the door into his bathroom and turned the shower on.

  He made as much noise as he could short of singing and emerged, a few minutes later, with a fresh white towel wrapped almost twice round his waist. He slid open a drawer, took out a white shirt and bashed the drawer shut again.

  “Chano, you’re not getting dressed?”

  “Of course.” He jangled coat-hangers in his wardrobe and took out a pair of black Chinese trousers, loose and baggy.

  “Chano, you can’t get dressed.”

  “The afternoon is almost gone.”

  “Chano.” She was soft and wheedling.

  “Poor Ernesto will be home from the bank soon. Have you no shame?”

  “None at all. Not a drop.” She looked at him with that same under-the-lashes look she had used in the café. An hour ago, when she was on her knees in front of him, he had found it exciting and conspiratorial. Now it was played out.

  Maria pushed the hair back from her face. “Chano?”

  He said nothing.

  “Chano?”

  “What?”

  “Do it again.”

  “What?”

  “Do it again.”

  “Do what again?”

  “Chano, you know.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you do. That thing you do.”

  “No.”

  “Please, Chano, do it again.” She was lying on her back now, peeling back the damp sheets, making herself naked again and writhing on the mattress like a long brown cat in the sunshine.

  “Chano …”

  “No.”

  Now she was touching herself, brushing the tips of her fingers over her body.

  “No.”

  “I’ll do it myself then.”

  “Look at the time. Stop that. Think of Ernesto. He’ll be suspicious.”

  “He knows.” Now her hands were moving in wide swoops across her body, stroking, pinching.

  “He knows?”

  “I’m almost sure.” Maria’s eyes were closed, her tongue peeked from the corner of her mouth. She raised her knees. “Are you watching, Chano? You are. I can feel your eyes on me.” Her head tilted back.

  “He knows?”

  “Shh, darling. Any man would be proud to have L.H. Valdez as his wife’s lover. It’s an,” she gave a little hiccuping gasp of pleasure, “an honor.”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  Maria said nothing.

  He heard her breathing, a little rasp in the back of her throat, some bit of thick spittle clinging in her windpipe.

  “Stop that. It’s disgusting.”

  “It’s. Not. It’s. Lovely. Come and. Help. Me.” She was squirming on the bed now, dancing her own tango, displaying herself like fruit from some luscious still life, hands fluttering like birds in a cage when a cat passes.

  “Ernesto knows nothing,” said Mr. Valdez. “In fact he probably has a mistress of his own. He does. A mistress. I’ve seen them.”

  On the bed Maria was biting her lip and moaning softly.

  “I’ve seen them. Ernesto and a young girl. A beautiful young girl from the university. A goddess. Made for just one thing. Made for a man to have. I’ve seen them.”

  Maria’s eyes flickered. Her body tensed.

  “I’ve seen them touching. I’ve watched them. I’ve seen it all. When he does vile things to her, things you couldn’t pay for, she takes it all and begs for more because she wants it. Everything. She wants it all.”

  Maria’s back arched. She roared. She growled. The breath rushed from her body and she collapsed with a sob and curled her body in a ball, purring. “Oh, Chano! Chano! What a storyteller you are.”

  Disgusting. Waiting there in the brown corridor, he felt the sting of Maria’s disbelief still and the irony of her dismissal clung in his throat. But Mr. Valdez felt more puzzled than ashamed. He could not explain why he had invented a mistress for the banker Marrom and, still less, why he had made her Caterina. The ugliness of the notion turned his stomach, as much as it had to stand there watching Maria, drinking her in, wallowing in her pleasure, urging her on. As much as he disgusted himself knowing that, one day soon, on some lonely afternoon of boredom, he would find her again or he would come downstairs to unlock the brass letterbox in the lobby of his building and find there a postcard with nothing on it but “2:30?” and he would go. What a storyteller you are. No, not now. He had been, but not now. Now he was merely a nervous man waiting in a corridor for a beautiful girl.

  There was a big paper bag beside him on the bench, folded over at the top and sealed with a strip of tape. He opened it and took out a large notebook of pale blue paper. Mr. Valdez had decided it was time for a change of stationery. It was obvious, really. Nobody could be expected to write about a yellow cat on yellow paper.

  Mr. Valdez reached inside his jacket, took out his pen and began to write.

  The scrawny yellow cat crossed the road.

  It looked very well there on the pale blue paper, in his coal-black, broad-nibbed, swirling hand. He waited for a moment, looking at the wall on the other side of the corridor, thinking. He looked again. The ink had dried. It had lost its gloss. It looked dusty now and the words seemed cramped against the top of the page. Mr. Valdez decided that a novel, a great novel, well, any novel, should begin halfway down the page. It left room for a shoulder-heaving intake of breath, like the overture of an opera. He tore out the page, and halfway down the next he wrote: “The scrawny yellow cat crossed the road.” He looked again at the wall and si
ghed and then an electric bell clanged just above his head and he started and then doors flung themselves back all along the corridor and students carrying bags and books and dressed like guerrillas began jostling toward the fresh air.

  Mr. Valdez stood up, the backs of his knees pressed awkwardly against the bench by the crowd. He looked up and down the corridor. He could not see Caterina. And then he spotted her walking away from him, against the tide of the traffic. He began to follow, just as she ducked down a side passage at the end of the corridor.

  “Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me,” he said. They ignored him. He dodged and elbowed his way upstream through the crowd and then, as quickly as they had arrived, the students were gone.

  Mr. Valdez turned left into the passage. There were two doors at the other end, each of them glazed with ground glass, a light shining from each room behind and, clearly marked in thick black paint: “Ladies” and “Gents.”

  He was unsure how to proceed. If he returned to his seat in the corridor she might pass the wrong way and he would be left to call after her, pursue her. No. That would lack the beauty of an accidental meeting. If he waited in the passage, she would come out of the lavatory and find him lurking. There could be no poetry in loitering outside a ladies’ toilet. He decided to hide, wait and ambush her.

  Mr. Valdez hurried into the gents and closed the door quietly, careful to turn the doorknob and, slowly, fit the latch back in place. He stepped backward into the center of the room so there would be no sign of his shadow falling on the ground glass of the door. A dripping tap had left a brass-green streak in one of the sinks and the faulty washer fizzed above it, but apart from that it was quiet in there and cool. Mr. Valdez held his breath and listened. There was nothing. And then the scrape and squeak of heels on the hard floor in the room next door, the sound of water flushing, another moment of silence, the bang of a door, another set of hard, metallic clicks, a tap running, squealing, complaining pipes. Mr. Valdez watched her as if through a glass wall, washing her hands, stopping now for a moment to look in the mirror above the sink, curling back her lip, wiping away something that clung to a tooth, a final finger-flick of the hair.