“But you’re pretty now. Give me the camera.”
She handed it to him without complaint, without shifting from the spot where she sat, legs folded under her, on the short grass. “Ready?” she asked and then she nodded violently so her hair was flung forward over her face and nodded backward again so it flew around her head in living, moving billows, and she was in the middle of it, smiling, delighted, chin high, eyes defiant.
Click!
And then they ate. It was an ordinary little meal, but they enjoyed it. Sometimes that’s all there is. Not everything is important and significant and magical like pouring rum on a dead grandfather’s grave. It was just a picnic.
At the end of it, when they were quiet and sitting on the grass together, she said: “Chano, I lied. I was afraid of the graveyard. My father is in the graveyard and, when we found him, his hands were full of earth and now he’s in the earth and the earth is in his mouth and in his eyes. The earth is filling him up. I don’t want to be dead. I want to live.”
“And yet you came anyway and held my hand.”
“Yes. I came anyway.”
He stood up and went to the car and, carefully, with the tips of his fingers, he turned the knob that switched on the radio. The radio played tango. The radio always played tango, the way the pocket of his jacket always had a clean handkerchief.
“Come and dance with me,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“I’ll show you. You can learn.” He held out a hand and raised her up while she rolled her eyes and feigned reluctance.
“How come you can teach me to dance but you can’t teach me to write?”
“Because I was taught how to dance but nobody taught me how to write. Now, like this, your hand here, straighten your back, don’t look at your feet.”
“Why can’t it be happy music? Tango is always sad.”
“It’s a different kind of happy. Stop trying. You can’t dance in these shoes. We need to get you better shoes—with a heel. Press yourself on me, move with me, forget about dancing and pretend you are in bed.” He pushed his mouth into her hair, close to her ear, and whispered: “Everything.”
She folded herself into him.
“Everything.”
The music stopped and there was a moment of silence when they hung together without moving and then a flutter of applause and somebody said: “Bravo, bravo,” in a creaky voice.
They turned and saw an old woman standing at the end of the path, dressed all in black and carrying a hoe across her shoulder. “Bonito,” she said. “Bonito. So nice to see a man and his daughter dance like this. Bonito.”
Caterina laughed and, a moment later, so did Valdez.
PRODUCING AN EDITION of The Salon is an endeavor that takes months. It takes months because publishers take months to decide their schedules. They take months to tease their authors, like anglers twitching tiny feather flies over the noses of hungry trout, urging, cajoling, pleading, demanding, promising that this book on Napoleon’s cigarette cases—above any other book ever published on Napoleon’s cigarette cases by this house or any other house—is simply the greatest, the most wonderful, the most important, the most worthy book on Napoleon’s cigarette cases ever known. They take months to perfect their trembling, breathless, girlish quivering as they gush and swoon—“We’re all very, very excited about this project, darling, and thrilled and delighted that you’ve chosen to go with us!”—even if nobody can quite recall the name of the book. They take months because there are covers to be designed and then redesigned and designed again because setting the title page in sans serif type can change the whole feel of the book, you know. They take months because there are lunches to eat, tiny things to be nibbled from sticks, martinis to be sipped. They take months to tantalize wholesalers and bookshops, gently kissing and caressing like the not-quite-sexy-enough girls who never make it on screen but who still play a vital role in those special interest films they show at The Tivoli, whispering over and over about that special book until the anticipation is too much to bear. It all takes months. And, months ahead of publication, Señor Juan Ignacio Correa of The Salon must decide which books will be favored with a review, he must choose exactly the right reviewer for exactly the right book, he must commission them and he must wait. He must wait for months because the reviewing of important books is an important business. It cannot be hurried. It takes months. It takes months to let professional jealousy cool to an icy bitterness. It takes months to sharpen those little shards of envy into the perfect stiletto, to count the ribs and push. It takes months to hone the perfect phrase, a phrase that will demonstrate to the sensitive reader in just a few brief words how much better that book could have been written if only the reviewer had written it—if only he had thought of it, if only he had done the work. That instant flash of caustic insight, the brilliant, biting epigram shot across the dining table, that moment of spontaneous wit: do you think that sort of thing writes itself? It takes practice. Practice, practice, practice. Months of practice. It all takes months and, for the most part, it takes months because months are allotted to the task.
Just around the corner from the offices of The Salon are the offices of the Daily Reporter. The editors of the Daily Reporter find that they do not need months to produce a new edition. Every night the huge presses run and the building trembles and thousands upon thousands of copies are printed and folded and stacked and baled and loaded into lorries and taken to the railway station, and when it’s done it’s done. The next day the staff of the Daily Reporter come back to work and start again. They make a new paper every day simply because they have only one day to do it.
Now, instead of his usual months, Señor Juan Ignacio Correa had only ten days to make a new edition of The Salon. Everything that he had prepared in the last three weeks was worthless the moment that Miss Marta Alicia Cantaluppi opened the letter. He had to start again. Of course, it was impossible but, since there was no choice, he would do it.
Sitting at the desk in his corner office with Marta Alicia, a notebook balanced on her primly crossed knees, Correa held his head in his hands and tried to fight off panic as he nursed a ferocious hangover. The beautiful ankles of Miss Marta Alicia Cantaluppi, glimpsed through the cage of his fingers, comforted him in his hour of distress, but nothing encouraged him so much as the furious, impotent misery of his rivals. Poor Fernanda Maria. Poor Salvade. They had been so unhappy and, when they stalked off and left all that brandy, well it seemed silly not to drink it. He took another sip of coffee and steeled himself.
“Marta Alicia, remember I told you not to tell anybody about this?”
“Of course, Señor Correa. I haven’t told a soul. Not even my mother. I will not breathe a word.”
“Yes, but all that’s changed. Now we want people to know.”
“I see. Well, won’t Señor Salvade and Señora Espinosa talk about it?”
“Not a chance. Those two? You should’ve seen their faces. Like a pair of nuns at a farting contest. No, they’re going to keep this quiet. Who’s going to buy their magazines after this? They wouldn’t sell a line of advertising and we’re going to sell lots and lots of lovely advertising.”
Correa picked up from his desk the dummies of the next edition of The Salon. They were lovely things, the best he had ever come up with. Every month he just got better and better. Last night’s brandy was still rattling through his veins and the pages knocked together as he held them. He gripped the paper tightly and tore it in half.
“Right! Let’s get on. So now we’ve got a front page with one word on it and four pages of copy. We need to spin it out. Take notes. Are you writing this down?”
“I’m writing it all down, Mr. Correa.”
“Thank God, because when I’m being creative you don’t want to miss a thing.”
Marta Alicia looked deep into her notebook. It was very empty. After a moment she made the dreadful mistake of tapping on the blank page with the little pink rubber on the end of her penci
l.
“Stop that,” he said.
She was very quiet. So was he.
Marta Alicia tried to be encouraging. “I liked what you said about spinning it out.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s what we have to do.”
“That’s very wise.”
“The point is, my dear, we’ve got a little gem here and I’m the jeweler. So Valdez has been down in his mine, hacking away with his pick. So what? Big deal! He’s given us a diamond but it’s a muddy, waxy little thing. It’s up to me to polish it and show it off with a suitably elegant setting. These—” Señor Correa felt suddenly sick and he had to choke down a mouthful of bile that burned in the back of his throat and then, almost without stopping, in the hopes that Marta Alicia had not noticed, he went on. “These writers, they think they are the artists. We’re the artists. Us. We tell people what’s good. We tell people what to like and they like it and they all agree that it’s good.”
Señor Correa was looking down at his desk again as if his batteries had suddenly run out.
Miss Cantaluppi found her rubber-tipped pencil almost unbearably attractive. “I mean, obviously,” she said, “illustrations are going to take up a lot of space.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Full-page illustrations.”
“That could double the size of the story.”
“Exactly. That’s exactly what I was thinking of.”
“I’m making notes,” she said. “This is brilliant stuff.”
Nothing much happened.
Miss Marta Alicia Cantaluppi, as well as being extremely efficient, was very kind and, as well as having very pretty legs and a rear view as striking as anything you could see from a vaporetto departing from the Grand Canal of Venice, she could make excellent coffee. So she offered to make coffee, which was a way of combining kindness and efficiency and her striking rear view all in one.
“Would you like another coffee?” she said.
“That’s a good idea,” he said.
She brought coffee and she said: “I’ll leave you to your work. Call me if you need me,” and then, while he worked, Marta Alicia got on with the business of the day.
She looked at the back of the diary on her desk and dug out the number of Dr. Alberto Saumarez at the Universidad Real. She rang it and he answered.
Miss Cantaluppi said: “Dr. Saumarez?” with a question mark on the end, as if she had no idea that was his number, as if she had dialed a number at random and she was just as likely to be talking to that little hairdresser she wasn’t supposed to know anything about.
“Dr. Saumarez? This is Marta Alicia Cantaluppi from the office of Señor Correa at The Salon.”
He said something. She laughed a short laugh that ended with a sound like the stem of a champagne glass snapping and said: “Yeeeeeees.” And then she explained that, since Dr. Saumarez was recognized as the foremost critical authority on the works of L.H. Valdez, he was her first choice—Señor Correa’s absolutely first choice—to provide the vital critical assessment of a new short story, due to be published in the next issue.
She explained that, naturally, this was a matter of the utmost commercial sensitivity and that, for that reason, Dr. Saumarez would have to leave the university and read the story in the offices of The Salon and that, since the story was only four pages long, and due to reasons of space, he could have no more than twenty pages for his thoughts.
Yes, Miss Cantaluppi agreed, that was an insult and an outrage, but there was worse to come and, due to pressures of time, Dr. Saumarez would have to produce his very valuable reflections within the next week at the latest.
She agreed that it was an impossible deadline and yes, she did know who he was, and she apologized for wasting his time and of course he was right and only a hack could churn something out in that time so perhaps it would be best if, after all, they just forgot all about it and she called Dr. Salgado.
“Yes,” she said, “that Dr. Salgado. Dr. Celestina Salgado of the Universidad Catolica.”
Miss Cantaluppi had to admit that she did not know Dr. Salgado personally and she might very well be a bitch, but she was willing to write the article and—before she could say more, Dr. Saumarez agreed. In fact he insisted. In fact he demanded to write a critique of the new story and he promised to be in the office within the hour.
After that Miss Cantaluppi picked up the internal phone, called the advertising department and told them to cancel every line of space they had sold in next month’s issue and sell it again—but this time for 25 percent more. She called production and told them to add another sixteen pages and then she called advertising again and told them to sell sixteen full-page ads. She told them to call Mont Blanc pens and Louis Vuitton luggage and the Hotel Imperial, anybody and everybody who sold ordinary things like pens and handbags and hotel rooms at unbelievable prices, and offer them an ordinary full-page ad for an unbelievable price.
Miss Cantaluppi was firm in her instructions: “Tell them we are running a special edition with a new work by L.H. Valdez. Tell them they have until close of business to sign and, above all, tell them it is all in complete confidence and total secrecy. Señor Correa is explicit about that. Tell them all and tell them it’s a secret. Got it? Get going.”
She looked to her right. Inside his glass office Correa was staring down at a blank page on his desk, a desk he held on to at either side to stop it from spinning round. Miss Cantaluppi could not have known, but he was considering whether it would be safe to let go of the desk with one hand for just long enough to reach for the metal wastebasket by his feet, in case he needed somewhere to be sick. He looked up at her mournfully and she hurried to his room.
She stood on one leg, swinging into the office with her hand on the doorknob. Nothing could have said: “In a rush. Not stopping,” more clearly.
“I was thinking,” she said, “all the reviews at the back, they’re sort of time-limited, you know. I mean, those books will still be coming out, Valdez or no Valdez.”
“Yes,” he said.
“So we’re keeping those?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.” She gathered the torn pages from his desk. “I’ll get these redone. And I’ll see about those illustrations you suggested. In-house, or is there somebody special you want to ask?”
He looked at her like a lost spaniel who’s had his ten days in the dog pound and must now go, unclaimed, toward the electric box and he said nothing.
“In-house. That’s what I thought. And that critical analysis piece you asked for—to go with the story …”
“Analysis.”
“Yes. You do still want it; don’t you? I can cancel it if you like.”
“No, of course not. I’ve made up my mind. It’s absolutely essential. It’s like I said about setting the diamond. It’s essential. We can’t just throw this thing at them. We’ve got to tell them they’re getting it, give it to them and then tell them they’ve had it.”
“Exactly. So that’s it. All finished. You’ve done it again, Señor Correa. I’ll get the stuff on your desk for the close of business and all it needs is your editorial. Better make it a killer.”
“It’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’m going home. It must be something I ate. The Grill is not what it was, you know.”
Señor Correa gathered his jacket from the coat stand in the corner of his office and walked to the lift but decided on the stairs instead. They were steadier.
By 2:20 that afternoon, Miss Cantaluppi was taking calls asking if it was true that The Salon had a new Valdez and she referred them all to the editor, who was in a meeting. By 2:40 advertising had called to say that all the extra space was sold and it was then that Miss Marta Alicia Cantaluppi knew for sure that, one day, not too far from now, she would be editor of The Salon.
Her chance came just six months later when Señor Juan Ignacio Correa passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, seated in the back room of a hairdresser’s salon, with his trousers down, his teenage girlfriend kneelin
g in front of him and his wife standing behind him with a pistol. After a graceful period of mourning the proprietor of The Salon gave the job to his nephew.
DRIVING BACK TO town from the lost cemetery, Caterina said: “It will be summer soon.”
“It’s summer now,” he said.
“But in summer the university breaks up.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to go home.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Home? You mean to the farm?”
“Yes. Home to the farm.”
“Home to the mountains?”
“Yes, Chano, home to the farm in the mountains.”
The empty rum bottle rolled on the back seat. The burned caramel scent of it rose up, warm and sharp until it was mixed and mingled in the petrol fumes of passing cars and lost, like rain in the sea.
“Do you have to go?”
“They expect me. My brother. He needs the help.”
“And your mother.”
“Yes. She likes to see me. I like to see her too.”
“But you don’t have to go.”
“I do, Chano.”
“You don’t.”
“Chano, listen to me. I do. I have to go home.”
Mr. Valdez said nothing. He had just worked up the courage to speak when they dipped into the section of highway leading into the tunnel that would take them back to Avenue Cristobal and the roar of the traffic made talking impossible.
Bright, square lights shone from the roof. He looked at her in quick sideways glances, watching the shape of the lights moving, glinting, along the bonnet of the car, flashing on the windscreen, lighting her face, disappearing, as regular as the signals of a lighthouse. She was staring straight ahead, deliberately turning her face from his, and then they were out of the tunnel and sunlight flooded her, so for a moment she vanished in glory.
“Listen,” he said.
“Chano, would you please watch the road?”
“This is important.”
“I have to go.” She reached across to the steering wheel and touched his hand, brushing her fingers over his knuckles as she did before. “I’ll come back. I will come back.” She said it like she would say it to a dog chained to a lamppost or a child abandoned at school for the first time.
The Love and Death of Caterina Page 22