“It means just what it says. Correa printed your story with my name on it.”
“Well, we’ll just have to tell him he’s made a mistake. We can sort it out.”
“It’s too late for that. It’s out. It’s printed. It’s in the shops, on the news-stands, in the libraries, in university common rooms.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. Look, you have to understand. You need to see the magazine. I should have brought it. Your story is the front page. Nothing else. Just your story. In fact, just my name, advertising your story. The editorial is all about your story and nothing else. They hired somebody to illustrate it. Page after page of pictures. And they gave up half the magazine to literary critique about how important your story is.”
She started to cry.
“They can’t go back on that. How can they admit they know nothing, they can’t tell the difference between you and me? If you had dared to send them that story they probably wouldn’t even have read it and now look at it—the whole magazine!”
And then she shouted at him: “That’s not the point!”
At the other end of the garden Dr. Cochrane looked up from his newspaper.
Valdez put his hand on hers: “So, tell me the point.”
“Christ, Chano, don’t act stupid. You know the point.”
“You want the credit for writing your story.”
“Obviously!”
Dr. Cochrane turned round on his bench and looked down the gravel path. If he recognized them, he made no sign.
“Caterina, you wanted people to read your story and people are reading your story, more people than you could ever have imagined, reading it and talking about it and thinking about it.”
“Thinking about your story, talking about your story.”
Dr. Cochrane turned and shaded his eyes with his hand as he peered at them, disapprovingly.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “I just can’t believe it. How could this happen? It’s just not possible for anybody to be so stupid. Nobody could have done this by accident.”
“Surely you don’t think I did it on purpose. You can’t think I stole the credit. Look, I gave you the money.”
“The money means nothing to you.”
“Oh, and it means nothing to you either. The only thing you care about is the glory.”
“Screw you, Chano. Screw you.”
“Listen to me. Listen. It doesn’t matter. You think it matters but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters less. Money matters. Of course it matters and I’ve given you the money and, I promise you, you will never have to be poor again, but taking the credit doesn’t matter. The work matters. Your story is your story. It is the same story no matter whose name is on it. It means the same, no matter what those academic idiots say.”
“You have the money and you have the glory and you tell me that nothing could matter less. All these things that everybody else has and I don’t have, none of them matter—not if you’ve got them. A house and clothes and education and money and glory, all pointless fripperies and worthless nonsense. Try living without them, Chano.”
“You have all those things. The only thing you don’t have is the glory. Not yet. Caterina, there are martyrs shot in cellars every day. They still count as martyrs. Even if nobody ever knows. Just grow up, will you?”
Caterina held up her left hand in a fist and made a spidering motion with her fingers, gathering up the paper of the check into a ball. She flung it in his face and it hit him with all the force of a dandelion, with the sting of vitriol. Their eyes locked for a second, pain and fury and fury and pain, and then she got up from the bench and hurried down the path, away from him, away from the gate where they had come in, away from the jewelers of Paseo Santa Maria and toward Dr. Cochrane. He stood up as she approached and tipped his hat. Valdez saw them talk for a moment and then they left together, Dr. Cochrane holding the gate open for her as they walked out into the square.
Mr. Valdez did not see and they did not notice that, just across the street, a shabby car with two thick aerials sticking out of the roof and a mark on the wing where a bullet hole had been filled in was parked right outside Madame Ottavio’s house. Commandante Camillo was inside it, watching.
THEY SAT THERE, Mr. Valdez on the bench under the pepper trees, Commandante Camillo in his car, neither of them knowing that the other was there.
After a time there was a clang of tools from the far side of the garden. Mr. Valdez saw the gardener, long brown legs and tiny shorts, pushing his wheelbarrow to a wooden lock-up that hid itself in the middle of a stand of dusty bushes. A little later he emerged again and came crunching down the path and out the gate. He looked like a man who had been cheated out of a fistful of notes but he remembered to shut the gate behind himself when he left. It squeaked on its hinges and a bird up in the high branches took up the note and repeated it until, after half a dozen seesaw screeches, it grew bored with the game and flew down to the ground, where it kicked about among the dead leaves under the trees.
Mr. Valdez stood up. He looked under the bench for Correa’s check, found it, picked it up and sat down again, unfolding it and smoothing it out on his thigh with the heel of his hand.
He was very annoyed. It infuriated him that he had been stung by so empty a gesture. It could hardly have been more theatrical if she had torn the check up and scattered it round the garden, but that would have been just as meaningless since the check was his, not hers.
“She knows damn well I’d just have asked for a replacement,” he said. Mr. Valdez imagined what it would be like to take the check to the banker Marrom. New editions of The Salon would be on sale soon. Everybody would be talking about it and that check—such a conspicuously large check—with the name of the magazine written right across it, well, it would be noticed. Marrom would notice it. He would probably make some remark on it, something encouraging and complimentary, and Mr. Valdez thought how nice it would be, after so long, to be noticed and complimented. Not that he had any intention of keeping the money, of course, it was Caterina’s money, but she could never use it unless it first cleared his accounts. Of course he wouldn’t keep it. He was doing her a favor. Mr. Valdez wondered if, perhaps, Maria might be at the bank, but only for a moment. It was a silly idea.
He folded the check along its original creases and put it away in his wallet. He waited for Caterina to see sense and come back. The little black bird down among the dead leaves screeched its rusty-gate note again and flew off. Two streets away the traffic throbbed with the sound of a distant beach, softened, grew fainter, quieted. Mr. Valdez began to wonder what to do.
Out on the street, at the other side of the garden, Commandante Camillo was sitting in his car, watching Dr. Cochrane and Caterina. It was her sudden quick movement that drew his eye, like a bird rising from cover, a signal of alarm and fright that made him turn to her. She came hurrying along the path and straight at the old man Cochrane. Commandante Camillo was disgusted. Why pick a public garden for a meeting? It was amateurish.
Cochrane stood up and tipped his hat—he even kissed her hand, the old goat. But, if a bit of old-fashioned charm was the way into those pretty knickers, it was worth it.
Camillo turned the handle that wound down the car window and a sprinkle of bird song came in, like bright beads falling from a broken necklace.
The girl was upset. Guilty conscience, probably. God, how often had he seen that moment when they got to the very edge and one more push was enough? Just the gentle reassurance that they would feel so much better if only they told the truth and then the tears would come and all the rest with it. Camillo could read it in her face. She was ready to crack. She knew they wouldn’t get away with it.
Cochrane opened the gate and stood aside with a little bow. Quite the caballero. Still, good luck to him if it got results.
Outside the garden Cochrane offered her his arm and they walked together on the other side of the narrow street, back toward the university.
&
nbsp; Camillo read his newspaper, not holding it up like a mask—that would be idiotic, a flag waved to draw attention to himself—but folded, the way a man folds his newspaper when he’s waiting. Commandante Camillo knew there is nothing more interesting than somebody who is interested, nothing more noticeable than somebody noticing. When the girl and the old man came down the street, he ignored them. When they walked past his car, he was bored by them. They didn’t even see him.
Camillo looked at his paper. For three slow, shuffling, limping steps, Cochrane passed the open window. He said: “After so long” and he said “revolution” and a lot of other words that were just noise. He was being soothing and reassuring. It didn’t take much to fill in the gaps. “After so long we’ve got away with it. After so long these stupid cops are never going to track us down.”
It made Camillo long for the old days. Back then that would have been enough. Back then, taking the piss like that could have got you shot right there on the street. And why not? He fired his pistol-folded fingers at their backs. Pop, pop. Pop, pop. Simple. Two each. One to knock them down, one in the head. Quick and easy and then all it took was a phone call to the clean-up squad. Nothing to see, nothing to worry about. But not now. Things had changed. Now there was “due process” and “international standards” and all that crap.
No, it was still the same. Nothing had changed. There were weak and stupid people who thought they didn’t need any rules, who thought they could decide for themselves and drag the whole country to Hell with them, and there were strong people, ready to show them how wrong they were. Camillo was one of those and he was glad of it and there were plenty of others who should be glad too—glad and grateful that they could sleep in their beds at night because of men like him. But they were not grateful and that was why he hated them.
Dr. Cochrane was one of the weak ones, one of the foolish ones who thought they could manage alone, without a strong leader to show them the way, who thought that singing songs could change things, fragile people who, if they lacked the strength to smash the system, had the courage to stand in front of it and let it crush them. But he was not a bomber. Dr. Cochrane had too much love for that, so when he saw Caterina hurrying toward him and obviously in distress, his only instinct was to help.
At first, when she disturbed him, he had been resentful. But then, when she came down the little gravel path, sniffing, crying, making a great show of her dignity, when he recognized her and knew her for one of his own, he put that aside and went to her with kindness, lifting his hat before he spoke to her because that was what one did.
“Caterina. My dear, can I help you?”
She was embarrassed. She had seen him there almost as soon as she fled from Valdez but there was no avoiding him without turning back the way she had come and the thought of that was unbearable. She said: “Hello, Dr. Cochrane. Thank you. I’m fine.” But, when he looked at her with those sad old eyes, something broke in her and the tears came and, in a few moments the whole story came with them.
“Let’s walk,” he said. He opened the iron gate that led out to the street and stood aside to let her pass, offering her his arm. Caterina noticed the handsome young gardener working in the flower beds. He glared at her as he gathered his long black hair into a pony tail and fixed it with a rubber band.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” she said. “We were going to announce it later.”
“Everybody knows.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everybody knows. Everybody at the university.”
“They know we are to be married?”
He looked at her in surprise and noticed for the first time that she was actually a little taller than he was. “Married? No, nobody knew that. But everybody knows that you and he are,” he hesitated, “together.”
“Oh,” she said. “Together. Everybody knows that.”
“Don’t let it worry you, my dear. Nobody takes any notice of that sort of thing these days.”
Caterina said nothing. She did not say that she took “that sort of thing” very seriously indeed. “I threw myself at him,” she said. “Almost as soon as we met I begged him to take me to bed and he refused. He was a perfect gentleman. You mustn’t blame him.”
“And now you are to be married.”
“We were until a few minutes ago, at least. We were on our way to pick the ring.”
Dr. Cochrane stopped at the edge of the pavement and pointed back into the garden with a swing of his cane. “I’m sure he’s still there. I’m sure he’s simply waiting for you to come to your senses and run back to him. Go on. Run back to him and tell him what a silly, headstrong fool you’ve been. Blame your youth. Better yet, let him blame your youth and don’t disagree. You’ll have that ring on your finger within the hour.”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“There’s something you should know.” Dr. Cochrane waited but she said nothing.
“My dear, you should know he is not a nice man.”
“He is a wonderful man.”
“Yes, wonderful, but not nice. There is no ‘Cochrane’s Theorem’ but the books of L.H. Valdez will last. He will leave that much behind—more than almost anybody else—but some others less wonderful will be remembered with love. He won’t.”
“He will. I love him.”
“I believe you. Now.”
“I won’t stop. I know my own mind. I’m not a child.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I am older than I look.”
“I know,” said Dr. Cochrane. “I see it in your eyes.”
Walking with Dr. Cochrane took a long time. He went so slowly, with his limp and his cane, and now he was strolling, taking his time to make his point. The street narrowed. The pavement narrowed.
“I am afraid of his mother.”
“Sophia.”
“You know her?”
“It was many years ago. He knows nothing of it.”
“She hates me.”
“She is frightened. You have to understand how hard her life has been—and lonely. She has struggled to keep things as they are and, after so long,” they passed a shabby blue car on the other side of the street, “after so long, having you come into her life must be like a kind of revolution. My advice to you is to be kind and patient. If you are determined to go ahead with this marriage, it will never work without her. Not without Mama. Not if I know Chano. Not if I know Sophia.”
“You are wise and kind,” she said.
“I am merely old. Let me buy you dinner.”
A long time after they had walked down the street together, when the noise of the faraway traffic had grown too faint to notice and shadows thickened under the pepper trees and crept out to fill the garden, when the sky went like velvet and two stars came out, Mr. Valdez, who felt sad and angry and very lonely and a little afraid, heard a woman laughing and the sound of ice in a glass. He stood up from the bench and walked toward the square and the Ottavio House. The quickest way was straight through the garden.
WHEN MR. VALDEZ went into the Ottavio House he was a little afraid. He had not hurried from the garden. Instead he sat there, waiting for Caterina to return, until the wait itself became the reason for staying.
He waited on the bench, alone, with the check in his wallet folded over next to Caterina’s note, until he saw the first star in the sky. Mr. Valdez was no astronomer. He could barely have found The Scorpion even if the light of the city had not washed the whole sky with orange, but the Admiral had taught him enough to know that first light was Venus and not a star at all. It betrayed itself with its steady beam, reflecting back the endless light of the sun just as the moon does, while stars, real stars, gigantic burning suns made tiny by distance, would flicker and dance.
When Venus appeared Mr. Valdez decided that he had waited for long enough but, because he was afraid, he did not go. Caterina deserved one more chance to admit what a fool she had been. He could afford to be generous. He was the grown-up here. He r
esolved to stay a little longer—until the second star came out. It arrived remarkably quickly. It was the proof that Caterina would not return.
Mr. Valdez stood up and walked down the gravel path, the same gravel path she had walked down, the very same little stones underfoot, in the same direction, past the bench where Dr. Cochrane had sat, out of the same iron gate and out into the little square.
The double doors of the Ottavio House were flung open. Standing with one hand on that gate Mr. Valdez could hear the twitter of women’s conversation, laughter, soft music. He found he had developed a powerful thirst and only the bitter-green spring-sharp tang of limes would take it away. His green fairy was calling to him. He had not tasted her kisses for weeks but he was afraid to go in. She was waiting but he was too afraid to rush to her.
Mr. Valdez was afraid that Caterina had left him. He was afraid that she would not marry him. He was afraid that wounded pride and disappointment would make her withdraw her love. He was afraid that he would end his days like the old Nazi, Dr. Klement, with no one to mourn him. He was afraid he would live his life like his mother, with no one to love him for forty years, going down to death with nobody to bear his name, without even duty to give his existence some meaning, and stepping inside Madame Ottavio’s house might make those things happen.
He was afraid that they might not happen. He was afraid that his life would sink into ordinariness and nappies and conversations about Erica and curtains and color swatches and drains and domestic certainty, and stepping into Madame Ottavio’s house might make sure that those things did not happen. He was afraid. But it was only a drink and, perhaps, a chance to see some old friends in a sort of club. That was all. Nothing more.
Mr. Valdez took his hand from the iron gatepost and he allowed himself to touch his lip, finding that raised question-mark outline there, stroking it until he decided what to do.
“The scrawny yellow cat crossed the road and crept into the whorehouse,” he said. He decided what to do.
Sitting in his car in the shadows, Commandante Camillo could hardly believe his luck. He watched Valdez crossing the street, watched him step out of the shadows of the garden, into the bright light of the open doorway and inside the house. He waited for a moment, threw his newspaper down on the passenger seat and got out of the car.
The Love and Death of Caterina Page 27