The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (18 page)

—

Pacheco reached over for the box of matches next to my wine glass, struck one, and held it to his cigarette. Exhaling a small cloud of smoke, he waved his hand to disperse it.

Dalakis had been fussing with his napkin, fussing with his glass. He was obviously unhappy and when he spoke it was as if the words burst from him unwillingly. “Why couldn't you have left her alone?” he demanded.

“I wanted her. I've already told you, right and wrong didn't enter into it. I simply wanted her.”

It struck me as interesting in the scene that Pacheco had described how his desire was its own justification for action; that if he wanted something, then it was as if that thing were owed to him. Normally I believe he was a very moral man, whatever that means, but he'd always been someone who helped the poor and unfortunate, who spoke of himself as a liberal, even a socialist, with a strong sense of responsibility for his fellow creatures.

“But you didn't love her,” said Dalakis. “You had no feeling but this hunger.”

“That's not quite true,” said Pacheco. “Clearly, my passion was what motivated me, but I also admired the way she refused me. You see, so few women did. It's almost amusing. I had no respect for my own behavior and neither did she, which led me to admire and desire her even more. Beyond that, I liked how she was her own creature. Most women take their identity from what they imagine men want them to be. That's not very interesting. You scratch the silver surface and find lead. But Antonia was entirely honest. She would never act in any way contrary to her nature, and, of course, that is what I was asking her to do, which again was one of the reasons I desired her.”

“So you decided to ruin her life?” asked Dalakis. “You had this desire and the consequences meant nothing? She was no more than a snippet of food?”

Dalakis leaned toward Pacheco and kept jostling me with his shoulder. I was surprised at the degree of his anger. As for Pacheco, he seemed to regret it, almost to feel embarrassed by it, but he didn't retreat.

“I wanted her,” he repeated.

“In the same way you wanted my wife?” asked Dalakis. “You hungered and so you took her?”

Pacheco didn't answer right away. Since Pacheco and Dalakis's wife had been involved some years before Dalakis appeared on the scene, it seemed inappropriate that he should be so upset. After all, how many men marry virgins? Looking up, I saw Malgiolio's moon-shaped face pulled into a grin.

“Your wife I wanted only once,” said Pacheco. “That wasn't a hunger, it was an itch.”

Dalakis threw his napkin down on the table. Even though he is the most nonviolent person I've ever known, he is still a large man, much larger than Pacheco, and I had no wish to see them fight. But my fear was wrongly placed. After this gesture of frustration, Dalakis returned to his point.

“Still, you took her.”

“It's not as simple as that,” said Pacheco in a softer voice. “She too had her hunger, her desire. One doesn't simply rape people.”

“There are different degrees of rape.”

But Pacheco had grown tired of the discussion. Removing the orange handkerchief from his breast pocket, he shook it several times and replaced it so that one point flopped over the top like a dog's ear. Dalakis remained angry, huffing and puffing beside me. Thinking again of the afflicted Bottom on the vase of flowers, it occurred to me that perhaps Dalakis was the one with the donkey's head. Malgiolio watched him with a little smile as if waiting for him to make a greater fool of himself. From the hall came the sounds of the dying cook. I was surprised how I seemed to be getting used to it, even though her breathing had grown more choked and ragged. Pacheco, however, continued to listen carefully and after a particularly loud gasp he got to his feet. “Perhaps I should take a look at her,” he said.

He pushed back his chair and as he walked to the door, Señora Puccini entered wheeling the cart. They passed without glancing at each other.

Dalakis watched Señora Puccini put the plates on a tray and fill our glasses with the last of the Burgundy. Then he got to his feet and reached out a hand so that she stopped. “You've been listening, haven't you,” he said. It wasn't a question. Señora Puccini looked at him, not angrily or harshly. It seemed even a glance of some understanding. “Why have you stayed with him? Why did you come in the first place?”

She shook her head, then put the cheese and bowls of peaches on the cart, moving almost mechanically.

“He got you fired from your teaching position,” continued Dalakis, “kept you from getting another job, interfered with your friends. You knew all that and still you came to him.”

She again looked at Dalakis, stopping her work and standing with a silver bowl between her hands. She didn't seem to be looking at him as much as into him, almost as if she knew him intimately. “Some of it I only learned tonight,” she said, “but still I would have come.”

“But why?” I asked.

She didn't give me the smallest glance, but kept her eyes on Dalakis. At that moment, Pacheco appeared in the doorway and stood watching his housekeeper. Apparently without seeing him Señora Puccini put the bowl on the cart and pushed it to the door. I realized the wheel was no longer squeaking; someone must have oiled it since the beginning of the meal.

“So you want to know why she came to me?” said Pacheco, after she had gone. “You think perhaps I was able to talk her into it, even make her love me. Is that right, Carl?”

“I don't know,” he answered, not looking at Pacheco. “Earlier you said you'd ruined her and apparently that's what you have done. But how or why she permitted it I have no idea.”

“You don't think she could have liked me for myself alone?” asked Pacheco. He had remained by the door and I had to turn in my chair to see him. He was so far from the candles that his face was in shadow. Even so, I thought he was smiling.

“How could she? Obviously, she was forced to come here, and obviously she hates you.” Dalakis's voice was so controlled that I wondered if he didn't hate Pacheco as well.

Pacheco was silent a moment. He was smoking a cigarette and its smell blew toward us in the draft from the door. It was uncomfortable twisting around to look at him and I wished he'd return to his seat.

“You think how we grew up,” he said at last, “well loved, well cared for, going to good schools and surrounded by people who were kind to us, always having enough money and enough to eat. If you took the thirty of us at the age of fourteen and sat us down and asked us individually whether or not we were good human beings, then I am sure we'd have said yes, while also being mystified by the question. We might have elements of greed or selfishness or envy or spite but in general, yes, we were pretty good boys. After all, we were the future middle class.

“But then let's say we were called together at twenty and asked the same question. What would have been the result? By then some of us had behaved badly. There were illegitimate children, petty theft, various forms of betrayal. But, even so, I think we would have called ourselves basically good. And if a few of us had gotten into trouble, we could point to complicated circumstances, weaknesses, errors of judgment; yet even with these lapses we would still have claimed a certain morality. We were decent, or hoped we were. But where does it change? You, Malgiolio, with your squandering of that fortune and the wreck of your family and the woman who pisses on you whenever you scrape together a little money, do you still call yourself good? Or take Schwab. I've seen quite a few people in the hospital who've just returned from being questioned by him or his men. Does Schwab call himself good? Or any of us? You, Dalakis? You, Batterby?

“It depends on what you want and how much you want it and how you place yourself in relation to the generally accepted system of morality. You know that old argument, that some people have the right to set aside conventional morality because of their superiority or whatever? Clearly, there are people who do terrible things and are able to justify their misconduct by need or superiority or by saying that they weren't responsible. But if these things continue and if you're unable to avoid self-deception, then you reach a point where you have to say, No, I am not a good person. I have behaved badly. That is the first admission. The second admission is that I will continue to behave badly.

“Until I met Antonia Puccini, I was able to convince myself I was a decent human being. Yes, I had caused trouble for many women, but I could argue that they had wanted it or that it didn't do them harm. But with Antonia I came to a point where I no longer believed in my own decency, and furthermore I had no wish to be decent. Most of the time I behaved quite well. I am not mean-spirited or envious or cowardly. But I realized when I behaved well I was doing so only because I had no good reason not to. By good reason I mean my own self-interest. Give people enough to eat, a warm place to live, and some amusement, companionship, and general safety and they are basically good human beings who eagerly claim to believe in traditional Judeo-Christian values. Take something away or make them want something they can't easily have and those values become a trifle shaky.”

“Why are you telling us this?” asked Dalakis. He too had turned in his seat to look at Pacheco. His glasses had slipped down to the tip of his nose and he roughly shoved them back.

“You were asking Señora Puccini why she'd come to live with me, why she'd given herself to me. I'm just making a few prefatory remarks before I show you something.”

“What're you saying?” asked Dalakis. “What justification can you possibly have?”

Pacheco grew suddenly angry. “Not justification! Why should I care to justify myself to you or anybody? I wanted something and I wanted it badly enough that I took it. Only those who still believe in their own decency attempt to justify. I simply describe. Now, if you gentlemen would be good enough to come with me, I will show you the nature of my final argument. Ready, Dalakis? Malgiolio, Batterby?”

Pacheco took a candle and passed into the great hall. We followed with more haste than was perhaps decorous and jostled each other at the door. I kept trying to imagine what Pacheco intended to show us but my mind ran on as fruitlessly as a squirrel on a wheel. Pacheco walked directly to the stairs. I looked over at the cook lying on her back on the small mattress. Her grandson sat on the floor beside her, wiping her forehead with a cloth. Her harsh breathing echoed so against the stone walls that again I had the sense of listening to the house itself. But I didn't want to think of her then, didn't want her dying image to intrude on whatever Pacheco intended to show us, and I hurried up the left bracket of the staircase. Malgiolio and Dalakis were right behind me. None of us spoke.

Pacheco turned right down the hall and we again passed the medieval armor, the battle axes and swords. I wondered whose job it was to polish it all so carefully. A helmet with the visor down seemed to watch us from its shelf. I had an impulse to pick up a particularly vicious-looking mace with four sharp spikes, just to hold it and feel its weight. Pacheco didn't turn to see if we were following. I looked at his narrow back, his well-groomed gray hair. I thought of all the escapades I had followed him on as a youngster, even as a young man, how many back alleys I had gone down with him only a few feet ahead. I remember once when we were both eighteen he led me up a fire escape and across one rooftop after another, steep, slate-covered roofs, until we reached the dormer window of a girl who cheerfully made love to us both. Her name was Katrina and she had crossed eyes. She had been locked up by a father who would have killed us had he known we were there. I could hear him banging around downstairs drunkenly breaking the furniture and shouting at his wife.

We climbed the smaller staircase to the third floor and for a moment I thought we were again going up to the roof, but then Pacheco paused by the door to the room from which I had seen Señora Puccini emerge about two hours earlier.

“Ready, gentlemen?” he asked. “At least do me the favor of remaining silent.”

He opened the door and entered a room that seemed lit by a hundred candles. I felt immensely curious and almost pushed around Pacheco to see what was there. Against the far wall was a bed with its foot pointing toward the door. But before I even describe it or what lay upon it, I should say that every square inch of the walls was covered with bright colors, not only orange and red and yellow paint but colorful posters and pictures, that even the woodwork was painted in bright colors, that even the ceiling was covered with pictures and reproductions of famous paintings—Breughel and van Gogh and Monet—and that hanging from the ceiling were various mobiles and little airplanes and tiny figures on trapezes and colorful stuffed birds, so that one had to be careful not to get tangled up in something. And even the surfaces, the tables and bureau, were covered with ships in bottles and oriental carvings done in ivory and jade, and interesting shells and even more pictures. There were also bird cages and a large tank of tropical fish, while on one table a stuffed snake, a cobra, was half coiled around and poised above a stuffed mongoose that reared up on its hind legs, baring its teeth and ready to fend off attack.

We crowded into the room, ducking away from the mobiles, trying not to bump into the table. The room was very hot and there was only one small window, which was closed. There was a smell of lavender and sweat. I looked over the footboard. On the bed lay a man covered with a white sheet. His age was hard to calculate. Perhaps he was seventy, perhaps only thirty. He was extremely thin and his face was sunken and gray, although relatively unlined. The sheet was pulled up right to his neck and his body was a narrow ridge beneath it. His eyes were open and he stared at us. They were very blue, a light blue like water in a blue basin. His hair was dark but streaked with gray. The thinness of his face and his sunken cheeks made his eyes seem huge.