A Game for the Living (17 page)

Ramón turned from the bar trolley, where he was getting ice water. “You think it's been stolen?” he asked in an alarmed voice.

Theodore went to the sideboard and pulled out a drawer. His silver had not been touched. His Degas statuette stood on the console table. “Pardon, I want to look upstairs,” Theodore said, and ran up the stairs two at a time.

His room door was open, and he saw that a couple of drawers were pulled out of his desk. He ran up the next flight, flung open Inocenza's room door and groped frantically for the light switch on the wall by the door. The light went on, and he looked at the bed. It was empty, its cover smooth. The room did not look at all disturbed. He turned out the light and went down the stairs.

“Is it a robbery, Theodore?” Elissa asked in the hall.

Ramón was behind her.

Theodore looked into the room in which he painted. The window was open about two feet. His paintings were all right, but the East Indian knife which always lay in its wooden sheath on the bookshelf was missing. “Yes,” Theodore said, “and I think through the window. Perhaps from the Velasquez house. You see?” he said to Ramón, gesturing to the ivy-covered bridge above the iron gates which connected his house with the Velasquez house. “Their window's open, too,” he added.

“Shouldn't we call the police?” Elissa asked. “You think it's someone at the Velasquez party?”

“He wouldn't be there now,” Theodore said. “Not with a big clock. We shouldn't touch anything in the house. There may be a fingerprint.” But he did not think there would be. He imagined a costumed figure, perhaps one of the people whose costumes covered their hands in mitten form, crashing the Velasquez party in all probability, crawling across the ivied bridge, and letting himself out with his loot by the door. Really a small mishap of a Carnaval evening, Theodore thought as he walked into his bedroom. It was only the fact that it might have a connection with the murder that disturbed him. His fountain-pen had been on his desk before he went out, he thought. But the notebooks and drawing-pads in the two opened drawers looked untouched. “Elissa, who knew I was going to be at the Velasquez party?”

“Well—” She looked embarrassed and faintly insulted. “I'm a slight friend of Señor Velasquez. That is, I know someone who knows him and—”

“Who?”

“Emily O'Hara. He's her lawyer, and once in a while—I mean, Emily told me the Velasquezes were having a party tonight and she went, I think. Anyway, she told me you were invited. You see, I wasn't
sure
you were there.”

Theodore saw. It was another of the vague and unsatisfying answers. He went to the telephone, dialed a number, and asked without hope for Sauzas. Sauzas was not there. Theodore reported the robbery, and the police officer said that he would send someone to his house at once.

“I'm sorry this has happened, Elissa,” Theodore said. “Please don't feel you have to stay. It's very late, and you must be tired.”

“But I'm interested, Theodore. Perhaps there're other things missing. Did you look at your clothes?”

Theodore shook his head.

“Could you fix me another short one, Theodore? Just on the rocks?”

Theodore fixed it. Ramón had gone over to the Velasquezes to get Inocenza. Theodore had told him not to tell Inocenza what had happened, because he did not want the news spread at the party. Ramón came in with her a moment later.

“I wanted to speak to you, because there has been a robbery in the house,” Theodore said. “It is not serious, but there has been one.”

“A robbery!” Inocenza gasped.

“Yes. And I think the robber may have come across the bridge from the Velasquez house. Did you come back here at all this evening?”

“No, señor.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“No, señor.”

The police arrived, two ordinary policemen in uniform, and in a somewhat bored manner went over the house and listed the items Theodore said were missing and their value. Theodore knew he would never see them again. One almost never saw stolen things again in Mexico, and the
policía
accepted robberies—little house robberies like this—with a resigned shrug. It was no doubt their conviction that people with so much money ought to be robbed now and then, that it did them no harm and did the poor possibly some good. And Theodore, too, felt rather the same way.

“You're not going to try to get any fingerprints?” he asked a policeman.

“Ah, señor, if we get your stolen goods back, they'll have changed hands a couple of times. We have to go next door now.”

The announcement of his robbery before the Velasquez guests shamed Theodore. It seemed not worth it. He apologized to Olga, who appeared pleasantly intoxicated now, though she was as animated as in the early part of the evening. They all went up to the room Olga called her music-room, which had a piano and gramophone and bookshelves, and where the casement window was wide open. The ivy-covered bridge was just three feet below and a trifle to the right of the window-sill. But no one could remember if the window had been open from the start of the evening or not. Constancia thought it had been open, because she had intended to open it to help ventilate the house. Señor Velasquez liked fresh air. Only fifteen or so guests were left, and they stood about in sudden sobriety, some still masked and some not.

“Señora, we would like a list of the guests at your party,” one of the policemen said to Olga.

“Oh!” Olga raised her hands as if this task dismayed her, but in the next moment she said: “Of course, of course! I think I have the list still on my desk!” And she ran into another room.

“That's hopeless,” Theodore said to the policeman. “Everyone was in costume tonight, and people could have come in off the street.”

The policeman laughed a little, as if to say of course it was hopeless, but he had his procedure to go through.

Olga came back with her list. But she admitted to Theodore and the police that strangers could have walked right in.

“It's not a very serious robbery,” Theodore said kindly to her. “Not even six thousand pesos' worth, I think. It could have been far worse. Now I think I should go home.”

Elissa—who had greeted the Velasquezes cordially and said a few words of regret about the robbery as if she were personally responsible—came with Theodore, and so did Ramón. The police took their cue from Theodore, as he had thought they would, having nothing else to do in the Velasquez house, and departed, too. Elissa made a speech of sympathy and climbed into her waiting car.

“Sauzas will be very interested in this,” Theodore said to Ramón as they crossed the patio. “I didn't want to tell these
policía
tonight about—anything at all. I suppose I shouldn't have had them come. If there were any fingerprints, there aren't any now.”

Ramón tossed his cat mask down tiredly on the sofa. He had removed his clown's head when Elissa had been here, and now it hung by strings at the back of his neck. “The world's full of evil, Teo.”

“No, it isn't,” Theodore said. “But I suppose it has about as much evil as good.”

They went up to their rooms. Inocenza leaned over the stair rail and asked if the
policía
had found the robber. Theodore told her no.

“Is anything missing from your room?” Theodore asked.

“No, señor.”

“Good. Then go to bed, Inocenza. Sleep as long as you like in the morning. If I get up earlier, I'll prepare the breakfast.”

“
Gracias, señor. Buenas noches
.”

Ramón came into Theodore's room a few minutes later in the shirt and trousers he had worn under his costume. Theodore had undressed and put on his dressing-gown in preparation for a bath.

“Well, Ramón,” Theodore said cheerfully. “Aren't you exhausted? What a night! All we need is a hangover tomorrow. Would you care for a last nightcap?”

“No,
gracias
.”

“I don't want any either. Just a lot of Tehuacán.” He opened a bottle of
agua natural
. Inocenza saw that there were always a couple of bottles of Tehuacán in his room, and he preferred it at room temperature. He gestured to Ramón with the bottle, but Ramón shook his head.

“I don't see why you're cheerful, Theodore.”

“Well—I'm not!” Theodore said, smiling. “But why show it?”

“People prey on you and take advantage of you. Even this disgusting woman tonight. Even me. And now they rob you to boot.”

“Everybody gets robbed now and then, Ramón. Once or twice in his life there's—”

“Yes, exactly! That's the way things are, isn't it, Teo?” Ramón waited for an answer.

“This is no hour to be grasping for life's certainties. Not for me, anyway.”

“You don't see that people prey on you?” Ramón walked towards him, taking his hands out of his pockets. “Teo, can you forgive me for what I've done to you?”

“Yes, Ramón—yes.”

“You've done nothing wrong that I know of. I'm sure you've done nothing. And yet you're victimized. You did nothing wrong with Lelia. You left her free, because she wanted to be free. I understand, Teo. And if I ever criticize you, consider that I'm wrong, that I'm out of my head.”

“All right, Ramón. Agreed,” Theodore said as seriously as he could, because he saw that Ramón was serious.

“And I've wronged you most of all.”

“You have not wronged me.” Theodore set his empty glass down and went into his bathroom. He turned the water on in the bath, not looking back at Ramón but listening, fearful of what might be coming next. He decided to go ahead with his bath, as if their conversation was over. The door was slightly ajar.

When he came out of his bathroom about ten minutes later, Ramón had gone. Theodore wandered to his desk and looked around again for the fountain-pen. It was then that he noticed his diary was missing. It lay always on the upper left corner of his desk, or else flat on his desk if he had closed it after writing something. But now he looked around on the floor, behind his desk, too. Who would steal a diary, and in English? And with Lelia's picture, a large portrait photograph, inside the front cover? Who but the murderer? It seemed self-evident that the robber had been the murderer.

He went to bed in a fog of shock and pain. All the story of his love for Lelia there for anybody to read. All his heart, as much of it as he could put down on paper. He imagined filthy hands turning its pages.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Theodore sat up in bed at twenty minutes past ten with a feeling of not having slept at all.

He went down quietly to the kitchen, made coffee and squeezed some oranges, drank his first cup of coffee alone, and carried a tray upstairs to Ramón's room. He knocked gently. Then he opened the door a little. Ramón's bed had been slept in apparently, but Ramón was not in it.

“Ramón?” he called to the open, empty-looking bathroom.

He had gone out, and no doubt to church. Ramón walked to the Cathedral most usually, though it was a distance of about three miles, and walked back, and the expeditions took three or four hours. Theodore poured another cup of coffee and dialed Sauzas's number. This morning he was lucky. Sauzas was in the building, and ten minutes later Sauzas called him back.

“Yes, I have heard about the robbery,” Sauzas said. “I have given the night officer a bawling out for not sending some men who could take fingerprints. And those stupid police for not knowing who you were! One would think they were illiterates! But they are not—quite!”

“Maybe it's not too late for fingerprints.”

“Maybe not. Don't touch anything. I'll come over myself. But I have about an hour's work here before I can leave.”

“One thing more, Señor Capitán. I noticed later last night that my diary is missing. It had a large photograph of Lelia in it and—it was a personal diary, very personal. Ramón is not here now. I'd rather you wouldn't tell him about the diary.”

“Ah. Hm-m. Your diary. You don't think Ramón could have taken it?”

“Absolutely not! Why do you think that?”

“I didn't
think
that. But it's not part of the usual haul of a robber, señor.”

“I know. That's exactly why it's important.”

“We'll talk about that when I see you. Until an hour, señor.”

Ramón returned a few minutes later, and Theodore told him that Sauzas was coming, a piece of news Ramón received without interest. Ramón looked refreshed, even as if he had slept well and long enough, though he probably had not slept an hour. Theodore had noticed this before when Ramón returned from church.

“Is Inocenza up?” Ramón asked.

“I don't think so. Why?”

“Because I brought her a little present.” He pulled a small dark green box out of his pocket, a box the color of Theodore's diary cover, and showed Theodore a small gold-colored pencil inside it, attached to a button by a springed chain. “She can wear it. For telephone messages,” Ramón said. “And this is for you, Teo.” He handed Theodore a longer green box. “It's from Misrachi's. A good one. Not a ball-point. I know you don't like ball-points.”

Theodore opened the box and saw a dark green fountain-pen. “That's very nice of you, Ramón. Thank you.” He tried the point on the inside of the box. “It's fine. And just what I needed,” he added with a laugh.

Ramón went out of the room. Theodore started to ask him if he wanted coffee, then didn't. Often Ramón refused coffee in the morning, though Theodore knew Ramón liked it as well as he did. It was a kind of penance Ramón seemed to be doing, especially on the mornings when he went to church—and the mornings when he didn't go, the not going seemed a kind of penance, too, in a privative sense. And there were other things. He had practically stopped smoking, though to stop entirely would probably have been easier than to limit himself to two or three cigarettes a day. He refused butter for his bread, and he never took second helpings even when Theodore knew he was very hungry. And all this without ostentation, so that it had taken Theodore some time to realize it. A fine way to expiate a murder, Theodore thought. Ramón would have to do something else, that was evident. And some part of his mind must be seeking what he should do, what good deed, what sacrifice would be enough. It was hard to be a knight, a hero, a martyr, because it was hard to find a cause that seemed worthy of one's efforts and one's life. Theodore himself knew. It was a problem that bothered him. What was the value of painting, for instance? He contributed to aesthetics and gave some people some pleasure, but wouldn't it be of more value to mankind to contribute something practical, such as ministering to the sick in Africa? He thought Ramón must be in a similar quandary—and worse, a quandary that was itself imaginary and out of control—as to justifying his existence, or seeking an atonement in proportion to his crime.

Theodore stood up, impatient with himself. Where did he ever get with his thinking? He had once aspired to be a man of action, of decision, and he had become a ludicrous opposite. He kept his fingers on his own pulse simply because he had more time to do that than most people. The only thing he could say for himself was that he did not consider selfishness among his vices. He loved his friends, and love, he thought, being in most of its forms a neurotic emotion, could nourish itself on giving alone, if it was unable to take anything, or if nothing was offered. Or as Kierkegaard put it on the religious plane: “Faith has taken all chances into account
.
.
.
if you are willing to understand that you
must
love, then is your love eternally secure.”

Another thought crossed his mind: Ramón had decided, irrevocably. He had decided on the side of hell, but at least it was a decision. It put Ramón in a position as strong as his own. Since good and bad existed only in the mind, their respective efforts, his and Ramón's, became simply a contest of wills.

Theodore went out and knocked on Ramón's closed door.

“Come in.”

Ramón was seated on his bed with a straight chair upturned in his lap. It was one of Theodore's early nineteenth-century Spanish chairs. “Very well constructed,” Ramón said, and set the chair upright on the floor.

Theodore nodded. “What do you say we take a trip somewhere, Ramón?”

“All right. Where?”

“It doesn't matter to me at all. Where would you like?”

“I would like to see the mummies in Guanajuato,” Ramón said.

Theodore had feared that. “But you've seen the mummies, Ramón. What about something new?”

“I've seen them years ago. I'd like to see them again.” Ramón's face was serious and reposeful.

“All right. And then what?”

“I think I ought to find some work, go back to Arturo if he'll have me, or take any kind of job. It's all very well for you to take a long vacation, Teo. You have money, and you can do your work anywhere.” Ramón stared at the Spanish chair.

Theodore tried to think of an argument. Arturo's shop was depressing and disorderly. It was impossible for Ramón to take an interest in the cheap furniture that came in to have a leg or an arm put on it for twenty and thirty pesos. He would continue doing his penance there, and finally lose all contact with the world. Theodore wanted him to look at beautiful scenery, to wake up in clean, cheerful rooms in the morning, to eat good food and live like a human being. His house in Cuernavaca? Jalapa? Jalapa was a pretty town, and full of flowers. A cruise somewhere? But Theodore suddenly saw Ramón jumping over a ship's rail into the sea. “Well,” Theodore said, “we'll go to Guanajuato. I'll speak to Sauzas.”

“Sauzas?”

“Naturally, he'll want to know where we are.”

Ramón smiled a little. “Yes, we must keep the police department busy, along with all the other thieves and murderers.”

Theodore did not know what to reply. The Catholic Church, he supposed, was Ramón's police force. And it did nothing to punish him, at least nothing tangible. Would Padre Bernardo say: “Repent of your sin and it shall be forgiven”? or would he try to fortify Ramón to stand an eternity of hellfire? “Have you seen Padre Bernardo?”

Ramón looked at him. “How do you know Padre Bernardo?”

“I ran into him on your stairs one day. He asked what apartment you lived in—and I told him.”

“And you asked him who he was?”

“He introduced himself.” Theodore watched Ramón's face, his resentment struggling with embarrassment at having his privacy invaded. “Do you see him often?” Theodore asked.

“I see many priests. Not just one.” And what business is it of yours, his eyes seemed to ask Theodore.

“You find them comforting?”

“Yes—No. I don't know.”

“What do they tell you, Ramón?”

“They tell me I am doomed to purgatory—perhaps hell.”

“Unless what?”

“Unless I repent—confess.”

“And haven't you done that?”

“There isn't time to do enough. I have many sins, Theodore. This is something you don't understand, because you think there isn't such a thing as sin.”

“That's not true, Ramón.”

“I've heard it from your own lips! So what can you understand of me? Oh, I know you're kind, Teo, you pretend to be respectful—”

“I don't pretend. I am respectful. Some things I don't understand, such as there not being enough time for something that's beyond the realm of time. If we've argued sometimes in the past, Ramón, it's because we each have our own ideas. A man is made by his thoughts, and if he—”

“Exactly! That's why you and I have nothing in common.”

“But I like you, Ramón. I like you as a friend, and we've been friends for years—haven't we?”

“Yes, I know. But I don't understand why you are my friend,” Ramón said. “I think it's a holy word to you—‘friend'. Either you're crazy or a liar. Or you've got something up your sleeve.”

“Is it inconceivable to you that—”

“You won't give it up!” Ramón interrupted him. “It's your religion, Teo!”

“Well—I don't think I'd continue being a friend of someone unworthy, Ramón. As for its being a religion, a man's kindness to his fellows is the basis of morality, isn't it?” It wasn't what he had wanted to say. It even sounded pompous. “You're trying to find reasons yourself why you like me—intellectual reasons now. Justifications. Why don't you let our friendship prove what they are? You don't have to come with me on a trip, Ramón. You're free to do as you wish. I asked you because I'd enjoy your company. I am lonely, too—without Lelia.”

“But I killed her—I killed her, Teo, over such an unimportant argument. The argument didn't seem unimportant to me at the time.” His voice choked off. He shut his eyes tightly, covered them with his hands and rested his elbows on his knees.

“What was the argument?”

“I wanted her to marry me. I was miserable, I thought—”

“And then what happened?”

“And then I went into the kitchen and got the knife,” Ramón said, looking at Theodore. “I said I'd give her one last chance. But she thought I was joking, you see. Then after I'd begun, I didn't stop. I kept on stabbing her,” he said in a soft, quick voice. “But she was saying something to me all the time and maybe she'd changed her mind, Teo.”

“And then you raped her?”

“I don't remember. I think I must have just lost my mind while I was stabbing her, and I don't remember anything after that. I don't remember going home—and yet I was home.”

“And then you went out and bought flowers?”

“I don't remember that either. Maybe I fainted. But I don't think so, Teo. I only remember starting to stab her. And I don't remember
stopping
.” Ramón looked at him with a dazed intensity, as if a demon had him in a trance and were working him like a puppet. “I remember cutting her nose off, Teo. Imagine!”

Theodore felt for a cigarette, but he had none in his pockets.

“Imagine thinking of that every night, Teo,” Ramón said into his hands. “Then you'll know why I'm insane!”

“You're not insane, Ramón,” Theodore said automatically.

Ramón looked up at him. “The only ones who believe me are the priests. The priests you used to call stupid.”

“I never called them stupid,” Theodore said, though he probably had. Their organization kept them from being too stupid. And as a sense of sin constituted their firmest hold, they must have been quite pleased that one of their fold had presented himself to them with a ready-made sin and such a big one, enough to imprison and terrorize him for life. Then suddenly a shame of his bitterness and a desire to feel what Ramón was feeling erased his whole train of thought. “Everyone has committed sins, Ramón, crimes and sins. It's only a matter of degree.”

Ramón was shaking his head. “It's not the same. It's not the same if you don't believe. You don't believe in sin.”

“Of course I believe that sin can exist. I don't believe in Original Sin in the sense that you do. I think the story of the Fall is symbolic, a way of saying that with knowledge of the world comes corruption—a fall from grace. Well, we have to live in the world. I don't believe Original Sin should be a mournful handicap all one's life. Above all, I don't believe a sense of sin makes one any better. On the contrary, it makes one worse.” Theodore spoke vehemently, but he did not think his words had penetrated Ramón's brain at all. Ramón stared in front of him, and his body swayed very slightly from side to side.

“I'll never hurt another thing, Teo,” Ramón said quietly. “I'll never kill anything, not the smallest thing.”

“And I think your thoughts will change.”

“What do you mean?”

Theodore kept his hands in his pockets, because he could feel them trembling. “I mean I don't think you will keep reliving that scene over and over.”

“I don't believe you,” Ramón said.

The doorbell rang.

“That's Sauzas. I'll let him in,” Theodore said, and went out of the room.

Inocenza was hurrying down the stairs. Theodore told her he was expecting Sauzas.