The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (11 page)

“As Paco told me this he spoke with great sympathy and concern, as if I were about do something which would cause me harm. Yet, in all that he said there were no words inserted to dissuade me from my attempt. He told me the names of Antonia's friends, what families she knew, where she was likely to be found, what sort of films and books she liked. For a full hour, Paco described her life to me. How she liked this restaurant or liked to walk along the esplanade in the evening. I listened without interrupting. At last he said, ‘For a long time I was infatuated with her. Let me tell you, I had absolutely no success. I did everything I could imagine but nothing made the least dent in her defenses. Admittedly, my ways are not yours, but if I were you I would try to put her out of my mind.'

“‘So you don't think I can succeed?' I asked.

“‘She's very much in love with her fiancé. As long as he is there, you will have trouble.'

“‘And this is why you are warning me?' I asked. ‘Because of her young man?'

“‘Not just that,' Paco answered. ‘She never gave me the slightest encouragement and I even had many other women during this period. Despite this, it took me many months to free myself of desire, to be able to push the thought of her from my mind.'

“‘Is she so special?' I asked.

“‘What do they say? There's no woman so special as the one you can't have? Maybe it's no more than that. But there's something else, a kind of fire. I feel foolish talking about it. She is like a tensed muscle and she is passionate. But how she is exactly, I do not know, since I was unsuccessful. In any case, I was miserable for a long time, and so I warn you only for that reason.'

“Naturally, even as he warned me, I had no doubt about my inevitable success, and so his warning had little effect. It was only later that I thought of it. Actually, given the way she had let me touch her, I was certain I only had to announce myself and she would give herself to me.”

As Pacheco spoke these last sentences, Señora Puccini reentered the dining room with the cook's grandson and began clearing the table. I studied her, looking for some response. Although thin, she gave the impression of being a big woman. She was at least my height, only two inches under six feet, and large-breasted, with broad shoulders and solid hips. Certainly she was imposing, both physically and perhaps even in her personality. She paid no attention to Pacheco. Could she be used to his story? And I imagined him repeating it over the years to hundreds of dinner guests. But no, I was sure that this was the first time he had told it. Most likely, had he ever mentioned it to anyone before, then I would have heard rumors already.

As Señora Puccini again began to leave the dining room, Pacheco summoned her over to his chair. She stood slightly behind him and he spoke without turning. “Are you looking out for Justine?”

“She's in the kitchen.”

“Be careful she doesn't try to leave the house.” Señora Puccini didn't answer, and after a moment Pacheco raised his head and spoke again, still without looking at her. “Do you understand me?”

“Or course,” said the woman. Then she continued out of the room.

As the boy started to follow her, Pacheco called to him. “Juan, go up to the roof and see what the city looks like. Can you do that?”

Juan seemed only too glad to get away from his other duties. Grinning broadly, he hurried to the door, skating on the marble as he turned the corner. We sat for a moment sipping our wine. I considered what Pacheco had felt for the young Antonia Puccini and it made me recall my feelings for my young wife and how vacant I had felt after she was gone.

Malgiolio was the first to speak. He had spilled some wine on the tablecloth and I wondered if he was getting a little drunk. “So what happened after you left the lawyer's office? Did the girl topple into your arms?”

Pacheco put one elbow on the arm of his chair, then rested his chin in his open hand and looked down at the tablecloth. Just when I was sure he wouldn't say anything, that he wanted to frustrate Malgiolio, he resumed his story.

“I now knew where she worked, a primary school in one of the wealthy suburbs. I drove there and sat in my car and waited. Several hours went by. The school let out, the children left, then the teachers left. I continued to watch the building. As I was just about to give up, Antonia Puccini came down the front steps. It was a warm day. She was wearing a blue dress and white jacket. She carried several books under her arm. How can I describe her? You're the writer, Batterby. You've seen her picture. Tall and beautifully proportioned, she moved with great dignity and sense of purpose, looking neither left nor right. I got out of my car and hurried after her. When she heard me behind her, she turned with an expression of expectation and pleasure. Yet when she saw who it was her face changed. Rather, it closed, because I had no idea what she was thinking. But obviously she thought I was someone else and just as obviously I knew she had recognized me from the night before.

“She waited for me and I asked if I could walk with her. She nodded but didn't speak, then she turned and continued walking. I walked beside her. ‘Did you enjoy the music last night?' I asked. Again she nodded, turning slightly toward me but not looking at me. The sidewalk was narrow and occasionally my arm brushed against hers. I had a huge desire to put my arm around her, but I did nothing. For a moment, I didn't know what to say. All the opening gestures of inviting her for coffee or to dinner seemed inappropriate. Without speaking a word, we had gone past that part of a relationship. At last I decided to tell her what I felt. ‘I want you,' I told her, ‘I want to make love to you.' She made no response, simply kept walking, neither faster nor slower. She didn't turn, didn't seem nervous; she simply didn't react. Well, that's not entirely true; as I had felt her quiver the night before, so I sensed a similar quiver as I walked beside her. I saw and heard nothing, but there was a slight vibration as when a finger lightly touches a string. ‘Did you hear me?' I asked.

“‘I heard you,' she answered, but she neither slowed nor looked at me. ‘I want to make love with you,' I said, ‘and I know you desire it as well. I want to undress you and lie with you and touch you with my tongue.' Again she didn't respond. ‘Did you hear me?' I asked. There was a slight hesitation, then she said, ‘Yes, I heard you.'

“I took her arm, quite gently. ‘Come with me now,' I said. She pulled her arm free and kept walking. I continued beside her, but now I touched her, touched her arm, her cheek, touched her hair. ‘Do you remember how I caressed you last night?' I said, ‘I want to caress you again. I want you in my mouth. I want to be inside you.' She didn't answer and after a moment I asked, ‘Did you hear me?' ‘Yes, I heard you,' she answered. ‘Then come with me,' I said. ‘No,' she said, ‘I don't want to.' Yet even as she spoke she was letting me touch her face and hair. As we walked, I reached out and lightly touched the side of her breast, stroking it. She neither pulled away nor moved toward me, she just kept walking. ‘I want to kiss you,' I told her. Again she didn't respond and again I asked if she had heard me and she said that she had. I stepped in front of her, but walked backward so she would have to face me but wouldn't have to stop. She had large full lips, as moist as fruit. She stared into my face as one might stare at a wall. Yet I could still feel that slight vibration, like the ripples on water when you drop a pebble into a pond. Then I slowed and moved my face toward hers. For the briefest instant, she continued to come toward me, then she turned away and raised a hand between my mouth and hers.

“At that instant we both heard a motorcycle and she turned with that expression of anticipation and pleasure with which she had first greeted me. It was her young man. He drew up beside us on a large black Bultaco and she climbed on the back. He was a friendly fellow and nodded to me pleasantly. Then he kissed her and I remember thinking how that was my kiss, how that kiss belonged to me. Then they roared off. Neither, of course looked back.”

I tried to remember what Pacheco had been like at twenty-eight—tall, thin, handsome, almost feminine with long eyelashes and catlike eyes, thick black hair combed straight back over his head just as he combed it now, although now it was gray. While Pacheco was still in medical school, a few of us young men would go to dances together. Usually, they were dances where we knew no one and where we went to meet girls. Pacheco and Schwab had a sort of game they played for money. Schwab would choose a woman, then he and Pacheco would bet on how long it would take Pacheco to convince her to leave with him. Certainly many times Pacheco lost but mostly he didn't and once he convinced a stunningly beautiful blond girl to leave in under two minutes. Later Schwab would try his own luck with these girls but almost always without success. The rest of us, needless to say, would burn with envy. We were normal, run-of-the-mill young men, with two left feet, a stuttering approach, and no confidence. To us it seemed these dances were held entirely for Pacheco's benefit, just to enable him to make a selection. Indeed, often he would come back and leave minutes later with a second girl, while those of us still building our nerve to ask someone to dance would stare at his first conquest and observe her rumpled gown, mussed hair, smudged lipstick, and we would burn.

We might have felt better about these evenings if Pacheco had discussed his conquests, but he rarely spoke of them. The rest of us boasted of our successes, if we were lucky enough to have any, and I remember a complicated system of hand signals we used in school to signify that we had touched a thigh, a breast, or even a vagina the night before. In particular I remember one Friday evening at a downtown café with Schwab parading among us waving two fingers, ordering us to sniff them and didn't they smell like “cherry juice,” although who among us could have recognized the smell? But I remember another night when Schwab was poking fun at Pacheco, saying he certainly hadn't had his way with some young lady whom Schwab knew to be steadfastly virtuous. Pacheco made no answer, but continued to smile as Schwab's joking grew more extreme and at last turned to mockery, as if Pacheco had done no more than guide the young woman to the ladies' room, then waited timorously outside. We felt certain that Pacheco would grow angry at such taunting, but instead he reached into his pocket, drew forth a pair of very small red silk panties, and tossed them to Schwab. “Since you know the girl so well,” he said, “perhaps you'll return these to her.” Several of us swore they didn't belong to the girl, but how could we prove it? Schwab, if not convinced, was silenced, and none of us had the courage to go to the girl and confront her with the panties. I never did learn what happened to them.

—

As we waited for Pacheco to continue his story, the cook's grandson, Juan, reentered the room, hurried to Pacheco, and whispered something. With us, the boy was nervous and shy, but with Pacheco he was like a pup, unable to stand still and grinning and jerking his hands. I didn't hear what he said. Malgiolio leaned across the tablecloth to listen as well. Dalakis had discovered the cat hairs on his brown suit and was picking them off, making a little gray pile next to his plate.

Pacheco knitted his brow as he bent toward the boy. After a moment he pushed back his chair and stood up. “Perhaps you'd like to see what our city looks like before we have the next course.” He didn't allow us a chance to answer but took one of the candelabra and walked from the room. We followed with much scraping of our chairs and a clattering of feet across the marble floor.

Pacheco led us through the great hall, then up the staircase. The soldiers were gone and we were again alone in the house. The candles sent our shadows skittering over the walls as if there really were sixteen of us, or the ghosts of sixteen. Our footsteps on the marble floor seemed hasty and imprecise. Dalakis's shoes squeaked. Reaching the second floor, we turned right down a long corridor. On the walls were pieces of armor and medieval weapons; helmets, breastplates, shields, lances and halberds, axes and broadswords. I hadn't known that Pacheco had such interests. The armor was highly polished and sparkled as we passed.

At the end of the corridor we went up another flight of stairs to what were probably the servants' quarters: a narrow hall with a low ceiling and a series of doorways, all closed. Halfway along the hall a small ladder had been pulled down from a trap door in the roof. Pacheco stopped, set the candelabrum on the floor, then ascended the ladder. Looking up into the dark, I could see stars. Malgiolio went up second, then Dalakis. As I waited my turn, I glanced around the hall. There was nothing on the white walls, no decoration, nothing to relieve the blankness. Under one of the doors I saw a light and assumed this was where Señora Puccini had her rooms, here at the top of the house. Then I followed Dalakis up the ladder.

When I reached the roof, Pacheco and the others were on the far side looking west over the city. We were higher than the surrounding houses and staring out I could see a number of fires, their flames leaping into the dark. Up here the sounds of gunfire, sirens, even explosions were louder and more immediate. Several fires, probably three or four buildings, blazed over by the university. We stood at the low wall at the roof's edge, trying to see across that distance and understand what was happening there. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky, picking out great plumes of smoke like black flowers blossoming in the night. We were in the midst of great change, yet how our lives might be affected we had no idea. I almost envied Malgiolio for seeing it so simplistically, that whatever happened it would mean more jobs and opportunities. Dalakis, on the other hand, as a civil servant, could be out on the street, while Pacheco as a surgeon would have more work than he could handle. As for me, a book reviewer, I could only hope that people would continue to read and take part in their culture. But the change could be far more radical than just changing our jobs. The whole complexion of our city might change, the whole idea of tolerance, forgiveness, and responsibility might be forever altered.