The Love and Death of Caterina

by Andrew Nicoll

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” A stupid childish thing to say, and it only annoyed him and confirmed all the things he had already decided.

  “Caterina, I asked what you are doing.”

  “You are very rude to me, sometimes, Chano.”

  “There was nothing rude about it. I asked you perfectly politely what you were doing and, for some reason you refuse to tell me. I think you’re the one who is being rude. You are being rude to me now just as you were yesterday when you accused me of stealing your story.”

  “I apologized for that already, didn’t I? Chano, don’t lecture me. Don’t talk to me like I was one of your classes. Do you want me to apologize again, is that it? I will happily begin every day with another apology if that’s what it takes to make you happy. All I want is to make you happy.”

  Mr. Valdez had already decided that she would never enjoy that particular privilege. There would be no “beginning every day.” Not with Caterina. And yet he did not tell her. He hung back from throwing that in her face, in spite of the chilly pleasure it would have given him.

  Instead he said: “Spare me. Just tell me the truth. Just tell me what you were doing!” and, as he was saying it, he walked from the door to the desk, and again she made a quick, fluttering movement, but this time to move her hands away from the desk, to let him see that there was nothing to see.

  “Happy now? Nothing. I was just reading my book.”

  “Haven’t you read it already?”

  “Yes. Have you?”

  He didn’t say anything. He had read it of course and he had fallen in love with it and that was why he hated her, but he was in no mood to admit that. With the tip of his finger Mr. Valdez pushed the worn gray folder a little aside.

  “I’d better get dressed,” she said. “Kiss?”

  He kissed her quickly and suspiciously and, when he did not kiss her more, she got up from the chair and went away.

  Mr. Valdez did not go with her. It seemed to him that getting dressed together was an act of intimacy just as much as getting undressed together, and somehow the time for that had passed.

  Anyway, he was afraid. Just as afraid as he had been in the garden with Camillo. When he nudged Caterina’s folder aside he had noticed beneath it the cover of his own notebook, and he knew at once what it was that she had been hiding.

  He flicked open the cover. He read: “The scrawny yellow cat crossed the road and crept into the whorehouse where it hoped the beautiful Angela would scratch his belly,” and he remembered all the pathetic lies he had told her, how he had sat up all night writing when he had left her alone in his bed, without touching her, how it was like a dam bursting. How the words had come pouring out of him. And there they were. This was the reason he had sat alone at his desk when he could have been with her.

  He had bought her for “The scrawny yellow” and the promise of a cat to come and now, after all that time, there were just—Mr. Valdez put his finger on the page and began to count—just nineteen words more. And it was then, after he had finished counting, with his finger still on the paper, that Mr. Valdez noticed a single hair lying on the page, a long, shining thread that was definitely not his own. She had seen this. She knew.

  “Time to go,” she said. She was dressed and standing close beside him again and she saw the page open in front of him.

  Without looking up from the notebook, Mr. Valdez said: “I read your book. It was very good. Did you read mine?”

  Caterina reached out and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Did you read it?” he said again.

  She was desperately afraid. Long weeks ago Erica had said that a night with L.H. Valdez was like a night in Bluebeard’s Castle, but the point of that story wasn’t the castle—it was the secret room filled with blood. As soon as Caterina read that line, she understood everything, she knew everything. She knew there was no more. She had looked inside Chano’s secret room and she wanted to scream.

  “Yes, I read it.”

  He picked up that single hair from the page and held it, pinched between two fingers, in front of her face. “At least you did not lie,” he said.

  “I have never lied to you. And I never will and I’m telling you the truth now.” He was still holding that hair out to her like an accusation. She reached up and pushed his hand away. “This is the truth, Chano. It will get better. I’ve been stuck for weeks sometimes. This will get better. I’ll come back here tonight and we will make love again and you will write again. It will get better. I promise. It will get better if you let me love you.”

  “Just go,” he said.

  “I’ll go. But I’m coming back. I will be back tonight and I will love you.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t escort you to the door. I seem to be completely naked.”

  “That as it should be with lovers,” she said. “We should always be completely naked with one another and, anyway, it suits you.” She kissed him, just once, lightly on the chest, letting her hand rest there briefly. When he made no reply she left. “I’ll be back tonight,” she said and he heard the door click shut.

  Mr. Valdez sat at his desk for a few moments, looking down at Caterina’s novel and at his own, listening to the sound of his empty flat and the noise of the dust falling every day for the next forty years.

  When he was certain that she was gone, he got up to check. Mr. Valdez walked to the door and found it locked. He checked behind the coats hanging in the dark, he looked in every room, opened every cupboard to prove to himself that the house was empty, and then he came back to his desk and picked up the telephone and dialed.

  After a time he said: “Hello? Commandante Camillo? This is Valdez. That girl you told me about yesterday.”

  Camillo said: “The girl you said you would never give up.”

  Valdez said: “She was here last night.”

  “Don’t lie to me. She was with Cochrane.”

  “Maybe she was with Cochrane first, I don’t know, but she came here after that. Your spies might not be as good as you think.”

  “I’ll look into that. Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because she confessed everything. She told me about the bomb plot.”

  “And Cochrane too?”

  Mr. Valdez hesitated. “Yes, Dr. Cochrane too. It’s all exactly as you said. I felt it my duty to report it. I am a patriot.”

  “Oh, we never doubted that.”

  “So, will you arrest her?”

  Camillo hung up.

  Mr. Valdez went to his wardrobe to select a suit. He had a large check to pay in at the bank.

  MR. VALDEZ WAS not a monster. When Caterina did not return that evening, although he sat in his chrome and leather sofa until after midnight waiting for her, he felt it sorely. He went to his desk and switched on the lamp. There, at the back, amongst the pigeon holes stuffed with stamps and bills and fan mail from stupid school girls and still stupider professors, he found her photograph—the one he took of her that day at the graveyard, with her wild hair flying and her chin stuck out proudly and that look in her eyes that said: “I see you. I know you. We understand each other, you and I.” She was alone in the picture, but Mr. Valdez knew he was in it too, with her. He had taken the photograph. He was holding the camera. He was part of the scene. Perhaps, if he looked closely, he might see himself reflected in those eyes, like the artist who paints himself reflected in a mirror, right at the center of the picture. “See? You think this is your picture, a picture about you. No. It’s my picture.” He read again from her novel. That comforted him. It made him feel that she was still close. It was an admission that she would not come back. He cried himself to sleep.

  And when Dr. Cochrane failed to appear for his lectures, when he was absent from the common room, when his chair stood empty in the Phoenix and Father Gonzalez nearly went mad with grief, everyone could see that Valdez was as badly affected as any of them.

  Something dark and cold had reached into their little circle an
d snatched one of them away in the night. It was an affront to them all as men. They knew they should hit back. If they knew where to land the blow. If they dared. Instead they raged and feared and wondered who might be next and whether it might be themselves and they knew that nobody would help.

  Father Gonzalez tried. He went to the police station and reported Cochrane missing. Nobody paid any attention. He went back every day for a week and filled out forms. He prayed constantly. He offered masses and, at last, he went back to the police and accused them. He hired a lawyer and asked the others to help with the bill. Valdez was more than generous.

  Little by little Mr. Valdez recovered from his loss until, at last, he felt strong enough to pay a visit to the Ottavio House.

  It was a wonderful evening. Even then, six weeks on, people were still talking about his fantastic story in The Salon. “Thank you,” he said, sipping on a second, bright gimlet. “Actually, I’ve just finished a novel. It’s with my publishers now. If I say so myself, it’s quite an original idea—but I won’t say more. I don’t want to spoil it for you.”

  He was happy. The evening was warm. The stars hung in the sky like a contessa’s necklace and even when that dark-skinned girl with the lisp hung around his neck and said: “I have written something I’d like to show you,” it did not dent his mood.

  He gave her ass a squeeze and said: “Oh, you have no idea how much I want you to show me. Put it under your pillow, my love. Show me later.”

  He was happy. And then the lamps around the garden flickered in the breeze and Camillo sat down in the chair at his side.

  “It’s been a while,” the policeman said and he tilted his glass. “I wanted to thank you for all your help with that unpleasant matter. I have to tell you that people in the capital are very grateful. Your patriotic assistance has been noted. Are you well?”

  “Very well,” said Valdez.

  “And your mother?”

  “She thrives. We see each other almost every day.”

  “You are a good son. You know, I don’t mind admitting I had my concerns about you, but I was misguided. You come from good stock.”

  And then the policeman began to tell a story. He told how two of his closest and most trusted colleagues had gone to see old Dr. Cochrane early in the morning. How the old man was drunk and argumentative and reeking of brandy. How he tried to start a fight. They had to arrest him. They had no choice. And the girl, but then, sadly, they had both attempted to escape from the facility where they were being questioned and, well, these things only end up one way. Nobody escapes. Nobody ever escapes.

  “Did they talk?”

  “No, they didn’t talk. And, forgive me, but we asked them about you. They had nothing to say. They didn’t talk. Strange that she should confess everything to you but not to us.”

  “It’s not so strange,” Valdez said. “She unburdened her conscience to me. The stakes were rather higher with you.” He was pleased to see that his gift for making up stories had returned.

  “Maybe so. But they didn’t talk. And then, at the end, on the night they escaped, she said a strange thing.”

  Mr. Valdez made no comment. He remembered sitting in the square by the Merino, wishing more than anything that Dr. Cochrane would not speak, trying so hard not to give the slightest sign of interest, but still the words came.

  “On the night they,” Camillo paused to sip from his glass, “escaped she said to him that she was glad he was there. She said it made her brave. She was crazy for him. You did well to get away from that one. She was carrying his child, you know.”

  Valdez said: “How do you know that?” with a squeak in his voice. But he already knew the answer and he did not want to hear it.

  “Oh, interrogation. Sometimes it can get,” another sip, “a little vigorous.”

  That was a terrible moment. Mr. Valdez found it preyed on his mind for weeks and there were nightmares. Night after night he was awakened by the sound of a baby crying. When he switched on the light there was no baby there. His son was not there. The grandchild he had promised was not there. He ordered a new bed and a new mattress and he covered it with new sheets, straight from the packet so there could be nothing of Caterina there, no scent of her, not a single hair, no flake of skin, but that night the baby still screamed.

  He switched on the light. The crying stopped. He switched on the light by the door and the one in the hall and in the sitting room. He lit the lamp on his desk and he found again the picture of Caterina. Mr. Valdez took the picture in two hands so his thumbs met in the middle, ready to grip and twist and rip. But he hesitated. She looked exactly the same. There was no sign to show that she was dead. Nothing had changed. She was the same. She would stay like that, always.

  Mr. Valdez found his grandfather’s sword and took it from the scabbard and then, so gently, so carefully, he stood close to the wall and pressed the point of the blade down against the top of the skirting board. The edge of the wallpaper parted. The wood began to move. It bowed out from the wall by the thickness of a sword blade. Mr. Valdez knelt down and dropped Caterina’s picture into the gap. He went to the table in the dining room and picked up three petals which had fallen from the vase there. He put them with the picture. He put the sword in its scabbard and pushed the skirting board back into place. After that, life got a little better.

  Gradually things went back to normal. The baby stopped crying. Mr. Valdez slept through the night in his new bed. Perhaps once a week and then sometimes twice a week, there was space in his diary for a visit from Maria Marrom.

  One day, not long after his meeting with Camillo, Mr. Valdez got up and went to the bathroom and decided, after looking in the mirror, that it was time to grow a mustache. Maria liked it very much.

  His new novel was published and the critics went wild. Everybody agreed that The Hidden Landscapes of Alfonso Borrero was unlike anything he had ever written before, so new, so fresh, so vital—almost a new direction completely.

  In fact that book was such a success that Mrs. Sophia Antonia de la Santísima Trinidad y Torre Blanco Valdez felt she should read it for herself, and she enjoyed it so much that she decided to read all the others on her shelves, starting with the very first.

  Just about the time that she sat down with The Mad Dog of San Clemente, an old man was walking unsteadily down the gangplank of the Merino ferry, carrying a birthday cake. He had come to look for his friend.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks are due to my cousin, Jane Holligan, for her invaluable assistance with Latin American customs and vocabulary.

  The lyrics of La Soledad are by Carlos Gardel and those of Tango De Le Muerte are by José Agustín Ferreyra. The (rather free) translations are my own.