The Love and Death of Caterina

by Andrew Nicoll

  He spent it at Madame Ottavio’s that evening and he had never enjoyed a visit more. The thought that it was, somehow, Mama’s little treat made every moment that much sweeter.

  In spite of that, Mr. Valdez still gave her the first copy of all his books, but the fourth novel and all the other novels sat on her shelves, not with money between their pages, but with some very unusual pictures, clipped from the pages of gentleman’s magazines. She never found them—he hoped she never would—but it made him happy to know they were there.

  Mrs. Valdez poured the coffee. “Are you taking sugar these days, darling?” She hovered the tongs above the cup. “I don’t, but they’ve taken so much trouble here and it’s nice to see. Not those silly paper packets.”

  “No.”

  She laid her hand down on his and Mr. Valdez saw his skin move and ruche under the weight of her touch, loose over his flesh like the skin on a chicken. She had skin like that—old woman’s skin—and now she had given it to him. He adjusted his spoon in his saucer. It gave him an excuse to move his hand away.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said. “Were you very bored?”

  “Nonsense. It was thrilling. And you were wonderful, darling. So many goals.”

  “I think I scored twice in the whole tournament.”

  “Well, those others were very selfish. They kept you out of the game.”

  “Mama, I play at Number 3. It’s not my job to score goals.”

  “Well, you were obviously—cake, darling?—the best one in the whole team and you had the nicest horses.”

  “Ponies, Mama.”

  “Ponies are smaller, darling. Those are definitely horses.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Anyway, yours were by far the nicest and anybody could see you were best at riding and best with that hitting thing—the stick.”

  “Mallet.”

  “Yes, the mallet, so they might at least have put you in charge.”

  “They did, Mama, that’s why I’m Number 3.”

  “Then, they should have let you have more of the ball. But you were terrific, in spite of them, wonderful! Have a cake, darling.”

  With a magician’s grace she slid a modest pastry off the silver-plated cake stand and on to a plate.

  “I think I’ll have the coffee tower—you don’t mind, do you, darling? I’ve had my eye on it and I do like a coffee tower although I shouldn’t really. You could have it, Chano, darling. It wouldn’t add a feather to your weight, not with all that running about that you do. You have it, darling.”

  She lifted her pastry fork and gave the cake a little, half-hearted, sacrificial nudge toward him.

  “Don’t be silly. You must have it.”

  “Well, if you’re absolutely sure, darling.” She had done her duty. She had thought first of others. She was satisfied. “I do like a coffee tower. I always think, it’s silly I know, they are like a promise of better things to come.” She sank the edge of her fork into the choux and a tiny puff of air farted demurely through the cream like a bishop passing wind at a First Communion. “Will there be better things to come for me, Chano?”

  “Always, Mama. Rainbows and butterflies always.”

  “And grandchildren?”

  “And coffee towers, endless coffee towers, and you will never be one day older.”

  “And grandchildren?”

  “Mama, how can you always be young if you are a grandmother? You’d hate it.”

  “Don’t I deserve grandchildren?” Mrs. Valdez held a soft and delicious piece of coffee tower in her mouth and savored it. The moment or two it took to swallow meant that she did not have to say: “After all I have done.” That would have been unforgivable. Duty did not count the cost. Duty did not demand a reward. “People say that you should marry, Chano.”

  “Sadly, nobody I know thinks I should marry them, Mama.”

  “You’d only have to ask. You’re in the prime of life, successful, respected, wealthy. I’m sure I could help you find any number of nice, clever girls to choose from.”

  “Mama, stop that. That’s indecent.” And then he remembered the other night and the Ottavio House and all those other girls to choose from.

  “How do you know Camillo, the Commandante of Police?” he asked.

  “I don’t.” But there was a chilliness in the way she set about stirring her coffee—coffee that contained no sugar—which made him disbelieve her. “I know of him of course. Everybody knows who he is, but I don’t know him.”

  “You never met?”

  “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “Only he asked me to pass on his regards.”

  Mrs. Valdez put down her pastry fork and wiped carefully at the corners of her mouth, so carefully that, though her napkin came away with tiny dabs of octoroon-colored cream on it, there was no trace of lipstick.

  “What did he say? Exactly. Tell me exactly what he said.”

  “I don’t know, Mama. Just something about asking to be remembered to you. It was only a politeness, I’m sure.”

  “That man is incapable of politeness.”

  “You said you didn’t know him.”

  “I don’t know him. But he was horrible. He is horrible. He was horrible forty years ago and he is horrible now. He stood outside our house every day for weeks. He never spoke a word. Never said ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good evening,’ he just stood there, looking, the way a cat sits looking at a garden pond, watching the goldfish going round and round. Papa knew there was no way out, just like the goldfish know. Stay away from that man, Chano. He is the Devil.”

  Mrs. Valdez was tearful and upset. Mrs. Valdez was never tearful and upset. He pretended not to notice.

  “That man killed your Papa, Chano.”

  On the other side of the room the man with the brown shoes was looking at her again.

  “Now, you can’t know that,” said Mr. Valdez, although he believed it to be true.

  “I know it and if you don’t think I deserve grandchildren, then ask yourself if your poor Papa does. Ask yourself that. God alone knows what that poor man suffered. Do you want his name to disappear with him?”

  Mr. Valdez found himself thinking of Caterina. She was young enough. She could bear him a son—perhaps many sons—and pretty daughters too. But she was not the sort of woman to take home to Mama. Not the sort of woman who could sit here, in the Merino Club, and eat cakes and drink coffee with Mama. Who was she? Who were her people? What did they do? Who did they know? Who were their relatives? How could she be the mother of his child, she who was herself a mere child? No, she was just a child. And he did not love her. He wanted her but he did not love her. He had always imagined that he would love his wife, at least for a little. But wives were so untrustworthy, and who knew that better than L.H. Valdez? What if he loved a wife and she turned out to be like Maria Marrom? What if she turned out to be like his mother? He did not want a wife.

  And yet, knowing all that, fearing all that, when Mama demanded a grandchild, as she had so often done before, his mind flew to Caterina. Nothing like that had ever happened before.

  “Could I be falling in love?” Mr. Valdez wondered. He was aghast. He was afraid. He put his hand out, flat on the table, inviting his mother to take it, pretending it was so he might comfort her.

  “Why did you never marry again, Mama?”

  He tried to imagine her, for forty years, in an empty bed, without a man’s heat. For forty years!

  “Oh, Chano,” she said. “I am already married.”

  WHEN MR. L.H. Valdez got out of bed the next morning he felt a little stiff and sore. There was an ache in his shoulders and a creaking in the long muscles of his thighs where he had gripped the saddle the day before. It surprised him. It made him think. Sometimes now he ached all over after a polo match, every joint complaining and quietly screaming. Sometimes a night of brandy would leave him with a head like angry cotton wool. Sometimes, at Madame Ottavio’s, once was enough. Perhaps Mama had been right. Perhaps time was
running out, even for him.

  He stepped out of the shower, toweled himself, chose a soft shirt in dusty sky blue and put on a clean, caramel-colored suit with the faintest, finest dog-tooth pattern just barely discernible in the silky weave.

  His big blue notebook was still lying where he left it, dumped on his desk like a corpse in an alley. He picked it up and opened it. The first five pages were ruined. He ripped them out, folded them, tore them in half and dropped them in the rattan basket that sat beside his chair. There was a clean page in front of him. Mr. Valdez smoothed it down with the edge of his hand—not that it was rough or crumpled but he simply wanted to stretch the paper, line it up, make it straight and smart and neat like a parade ground where his words could stand in proud rows, ready for inspection.

  Mr. Valdez took the top off his pen and, halfway down the page, he wrote: “The scrawny yellow cat crossed the road and crept into the whorehouse.”

  It looked very fine. It was a good start.

  Mr. Valdez picked up his notebook, patted his pockets for the reassuring jingle of his keys and left the flat. The lift was slow and clanking. On the way down it stopped at the second floor, where Mrs. Nero, the wife of the dentist, and her daughter got in. They nodded politely but that was all. Mr. Valdez was surprised by the girl—what was her name? Was it Rosa? Was that really Rosa. Did she have a baby sister? He was nearly sure it was Rosa, but she had changed. She was obviously a little girl when, just a few days before, she had been on the verge of blossoming into womanhood and Mr. Valdez had been planning wonderful things for her in only a year or two. A year or two? No, more like eight or ten, surely. She would be twenty and he would be, well, older. Much older. The wrong side of fifty. Much the wrong side of fifty and sliding downhill toward sixty. Mr. Valdez was disgusted with himself. It was out of the question. And in ten years’ time, would he still be drinking gimlets in the gardens of the Ottavio House like Camillo? Or spending his afternoons with Maria Marrom? No, that was impossible. She would be an old woman. Maria had two or three summers left. He couldn’t possibly. Not with an old woman—a woman in her sixties, a woman like Mama!

  Perhaps with a woman he loved. Perhaps with a wife—a wife of his own. Perhaps with a much younger wife who adored him it might be possible still.

  The lift came to a halt with a shudder at the ground floor and Rosalita and her mother got out. Mr. Valdez pressed the button again and went on, down to the basement where it was dusty and greasy, where it smelled of hot oil and rubber and petrol fumes, where his car was waiting.

  Mr. Valdez drove an extravagant, imported, American automobile. In a life lived with quiet good taste where nothing was designed to attract attention, where everything was understated, where a peacock-blue handkerchief was his greatest flamboyance, the car stood out.

  It was a classic, just as much as Don Quixote or the Odyssey. It came from a time when cars were heroic, when they offered promissory notes to a world of adventure. It was designed for commuting in the way that the galley of Odysseus was designed for commuting and it spoke with a whisky-flavored tickle in its throat, like a beautiful nightclub singer who has known better days, like a leopard, content to gambol on a chain held by a beautiful woman but always ready to turn and devour her. It had vanes, swooping and arcing like fish tails, like the coachwork of Neptune’s chariot, like the spread of an eagle’s wing. Its tires were white, its seats were leather and it gleamed in metallic Agua de la Nilo green.

  Mr. Valdez knew exactly how quickly he could drive up the ramp from the garage and out on to Cristobal Avenue, fast enough to make the tires squeal impressively on that last turn but not quite fast enough to make the twin exhausts scrape as he crossed the pavement and slipped out into the traffic. Normally Mr. Valdez liked to walk to work. He liked the city. He liked being seen but, on that particular day, he had an errand well beyond the university on the other side of town and he could not walk there and back and still arrive in time for his first lecture of the day.

  He drove through town with the top down, slowly, very slowly, creeping along Cristobal Avenue in a long line of traffic, enjoying the sunshine until he arrived almost at the junction of University Avenue, where it curves down to meet the Merino. Ahead of him there were four cars, two trucks and a bus and he knew the lights would change before he reached them. A few moments later, the car in front of his slipped across the junction as the lights flashed to red, just as he knew they would.

  Mr. Valdez looked at the little black clock ticking on the dashboard. It was a shortly after nine and safe to turn on the radio with no fear of one of those dreadful news broadcasts and their hourly updates on the thoughts and deeds of the Colonel Presidente. How he loved that moment: gripping the ivorene knob with its brass cap and those deep ridges, once black with forgotten dirt but which he had lovingly cleaned with spirit and a cocktail stick, the pressure, the resistance, the solid, dependable “click” that spoke of quality and craftsmanship like the cover shutting securely on his grandfather’s watch.

  The radio played. It played tango, always tango, and Mr. Valdez found himself softly mouthing the words of “La Soledad,” so simple, so heartbreaking, so perfect.

  You came to me, as poetry arrives in song,

  You showed to me

  A world to which I don’t belong,

  A world of love

  Without condition—right or wrong.

  The lights changed. Mr. Valdez slipped the car into gear and dropped the clutch.

  I was a fool. I hid my heart.

  And now I can’t believe you’re gone.

  Afraid to love, my heart was eaten up by fear.

  You came to me

  But I was scared to love you, dear.

  The sun has gone

  And, darling, how I want you near.

  The night has come and we’re apart,

  My song of loneliness is here.

  Mr. Valdez turned right, into the broad highway along the bank of the Merino, changed gear and accelerated away. Before he reached the big bend in the road, the bomb went off on the steps of the university, but the engine roar was so loud that he didn’t even notice.

  COMMANDANTE CAMILLO KNEW a great deal about asking questions. He knew there were times when it was important not to ask a question unless he already knew the answer. He knew there were times when it was important not to ask a question unless he really, really wanted to know the answer. He knew there were times to ask questions when no answer mattered, when the point was not to ask a question but just to have an excuse to hurt somebody—whatever answer they gave. He knew there were times when any answer would do because all he wanted was that moment of defeat and concession and admission and not the information it contained. But Commandante Camillo also knew that, if he wanted to find something out, then the best questions to ask were the shortest ones.

  Before he went down to the university, Commandante Camillo closed the door of his office, sat down at his desk and placed a call to the capital. It took a long time to make the connection and, while he waited, ambulances and fire engines tore past his window in a storm of sirens.

  Then the line gave a click and Commandante Camillo asked for an extension. Far away, on another desk in another police station, another telephone rang. The man who answered did not give his name, so the Commandante said: “This is Camillo. We’ve had an explosion. Yes, it’s a bomb. So what I want to know is; is it one of ours? Yes, I’ll wait.”

  Commandante Camillo heard the man put the faraway telephone down. He was not certain that he heard the sound of footsteps walking away but he was sure of a heavy metal file drawer opening. A few seconds later he said: “Absolutely nothing to do with us? Right.”

  He put on his jacket. This would make life a little more difficult. If the government had planted the bomb, there would have to be an investigation to prove that they had not planted it, to prove that the nation and its leaders, the guardians of the citizens’ hard-won liberty, were under attack. Such proof would be necessary to ju
stify, however reluctantly, however unwillingly, another assault on the liberties of the citizens. Arrest without charge, perhaps for weeks at a time. Unpleasant but necessary. The times demanded it. Restrictions on assembly. A ban on the right to strike. All bitter pills which must be swallowed for the greater good, for the nation, for the economy, for the security of the whole community. There would have to be arrests, interrogations and severe punishments.

  But, if the government had not planted the bomb, that made things harder. Commandante Camillo would still have to make arrests. There would still be beatings and interrogations and somebody would have to pay, only this way he would have to try to limit that to the people who were actually to blame. That would mean evidence. That would mean detective work—days and nights of it and raids and arrests and everything that went with that. Commandante Camillo was feeling his age and there were still two years left before he could retire.

  The glass in the door rattled as it banged behind him. From the smoke of the Detectives’ Hall he walked out into the arched grandeur of the Palace of Justice with its gilded columns standing in groups of four and its meaningless mosaic frieze; women in nightgowns looking far away as they handed pieces of paper to grateful, cowering peasants all at arm’s length, at full stretch like relay runners. From the very first day he entered the building, Commandante Camillo had looked at those pictures and raged. He saw those grateful peasants and he wanted to shout: “Get off your knees!” He wanted to take out his pistol and fire into the ceiling and order them: “Take it. Whatever it is that she’s got, if you want it, take it. You are strong. You have worked all day in the fields. You have sickles, you have mattocks and she is weak and soft. Take it!”