The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (29 page)

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When I entered the library I had the impression that my friends had been talking about me. Pacheco and Dalakis were sitting on the leather couch. Malgiolio was standing by the mantel. I imagined Malgiolio and Dalakis, especially Malgiolio, telling our various acquaintances how I had persisted in my foolish lie about my wife, how she was living in Europe and had a son which I refused to believe was my own. But perhaps after this trouble, this violence in the streets, all would be different. Perhaps Malgiolio was right about there being new opportunities. Perhaps we would have new lives, clean slates to get dirty again. At least Schwab wouldn't return to mock me. Still, I hated the fact that these men had been talking about me and now felt they had to remain silent.

“What have you been up to now, Batterby?” asked Malgiolio, and he looked at Pacheco and winked. They were all smoking cigars, even Dalakis. The air was blue with smoke. It was now past one in the morning.

“I was in the kitchen,” I said. “I've been talking to Señora Puccini.”

“And what did she tell you?” asked Pacheco.

I poured myself some mineral water, then added just the smallest drop of Scotch whiskey. “She suggested I ask you about your son,” I said.

Pacheco didn't respond right away. Certainly I had their attention. Malgiolio blew a small cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. Dalakis coughed, then pushed his glasses back up his nose.

“What about my son?” asked Pacheco.

But I wasn't ready to say more. I moved forward until I could feel a breeze from the overhead fan. My clothes against my skin felt clammy with sweat.

“You know, Pacheco,” I said at last, “you've been telling us this long story and I'm not sure why. I can't believe it's for our amusement. But Señora Puccini has heard some of it and I believe you want her to hear it. Why do you humiliate her? I asked her if she didn't want revenge and she said to ask you about your son. Now I'm asking you.”

Nobody made a noise. The shouting in the street came to us as an angry muttering. Relighting his cigar, Pacheco leaned back on the couch and crossed his legs. “It's not what you could truly call a son,” he said. “It was a male fetus. She told me I was the father and I suppose I must have been.”

“Did she miscarry?” asked Dalakis, ready as always with his sympathy.

“No, I performed an abortion. She lay on the kitchen table and I ripped my son out of her. It was, as Batterby says, her revenge. I had humiliated her in some way in front of some guests. At first she hid from me the fact she was pregnant. Then she pretended she would have the baby. But you recall our agreement, that she would never bear my children? At last she demanded an abortion. She didn't want Collura to know she was pregnant. I refused. She was more than four months along and . . . well, I wanted a child. She took sleeping pills and the cook found her unconscious. Then she tried to perform the abortion on herself by taking some sort of poison. I watched her. I even tied her up. As you may have imagined, she has a tremendous will. I knew that if she refused to have the child, there was no way to make her. I tried to persuade her. I offered her all sorts of things. She said she would only accept if I allowed her to move away with Collura with sufficient money to take care of him. But no matter how much I wanted the child, I wanted her more. So I performed the abortion.”

“How long ago was this?” I asked.

“It was right after we moved to this house. She was thirty. As I say, I did it on the kitchen table. We were alone at the time. I had to induce delivery. She wanted something for the pain but I refused. After all, I wanted it to hurt her so she wouldn't forget. But once she realized I wasn't going to give her anything, she didn't make a sound. I knew I was hurting her dreadfully but she didn't make a sound. When it was over, I stood with my son in my hands. He was just five months, a perfectly formed male.”

“Was he alive?” asked Dalakis.

“He was at first but there was no way to save him. He lay in my hands breathing very rapidly. I looked at her. She had a kind of smile. I realized I had made her evil in some way. Not only had I ruined her, I had made her evil.”

“And all you had wanted,” I said, lifting her picture from the mantel, “was to make her love you.”

“Don't mock me, Batterby.”

“How long did the child live?” asked Dalakis. He stood up and threw his cigar into the fireplace almost in agitation. We three stood in a semicircle around Pacheco. He didn't look at us.

“Nearly an hour. He was very strong. Of course, I could have given him an injection but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I brought him in here. It was winter and cold and there was a fire in the fireplace. I laid him on this very table on several towels. Then I watched him. He moved a little but made no sound. I just watched him. He was in no pain. I mean, he was my son. Every so often I reached out to touch the sole of his foot. It was so tiny. Then after a while he died. I buried him in the garden, planted a flowering shrub over his body. Antonia remained in bed for several days, then returned to her duties as housekeeper. She felt successful in her revenge, but it didn't stop me from trying to humiliate her. I still had my passion, but I also hated her. When she recovered I had a little party and made her wait on us naked. There were four other men, all doctors. She refused and came in fully dressed. I was so angry that I tore at her clothes. She removed the rest and did her work as if nothing were out of the ordinary. You see, we jab at each other, each trying to find the weakness of the other. It has become the major occupation of our lives.”

“But you love her,” said Malgiolio, almost tenderly.

“That has become irrelevant. She fills my mind. It's like having a pail under a leak in the ceiling. The pail fills, then has to be emptied. When I take her or abuse her or have my way with her, that's like emptying the pail. It's only by having my way with her, by making love to her, that I can retrieve myself from the limbo of sexual obsession. Then I have a few days as the pail fills again.”

“You ruined not only her life, but your own,” I said.

“But I did it by choice,” said Pacheco, looking up at me. “There was, as they say, a ruling passion. There may have been a point when I could have turned aside, but I chose not to. Maybe it was that day I walked beside her on the street, when I reached out and touched her breast. However, by the time that I climbed through her window several weeks later, by then I had given up any choice. But you, Batterby, you ruined your life for no reason at all, for reasons of vanity and pride. I watched my son die, watched him pant and gasp himself to death right here in this room. You had a perfectly good son and you threw him away. You know, your wife loved you. Even though we'd had our little affair she still loved you. But you couldn't stand the fact that we'd been together.”

“It continued after we were married,” I said. I hated him for dragging the discussion back to my failed marriage, but I kept my face from showing my feelings.

“So what? It had begun long before you ever met her. We were just saying goodbye, a little poke in the dark. It meant nothing.”

“But she was my wife,” I said. Dalakis and Malgiolio still stood on either side of me. I didn't see how Pacheco could sit so calmly with the three of us standing over him.

“You're a sentimentalist,” said Pacheco. “You see this as betrayal and desertion. You flail at the world with your little moral standard. I'm not trying to justify myself. I'm not interested in doing so. Your wife and I had our time together, then it was over. She loved you and wanted to make her life with you. You drove her away. She told you she was pregnant and you ignored her. She told you about the birth of your son, she came to your house, she showed you the baby, she begged your forgiveness, and you drove her away.”

“It was your son,” I said.

Pacheco reached out one of his small black shoes and poked me in the shin. He was smiling. “No, you see I had a blood test done. It was your son. If it had been mine, I would have found it a cause for great celebration. But it wasn't mine. So you pushed her away and began to put out the story that she was dead. Soon you were saying she'd actually died on your honeymoon. Do you know how your friends pitied you for this nonsense, for such a ridiculous fabrication? And all this time your wife was still waiting for your forgiveness. How foolish of her. At last she gave up and a few years later she met this skinny fellow with whom she's lived faithfully for fifteen years. And she bore him three children. But her oldest is yours. Even his name is yours, Nicolas Batterby. Perhaps he will come back here some day. Your embarrassment should be amusing to watch. Perhaps he will ask why you deserted him and you can tell him it was for reasons of vanity and pride.”

I was too angry to answer. From his seat on the couch, Pacheco stared up at me with what appeared to be a pleasant smile. But I could feel his mockery and disdain. Dalakis seemed to be studying his hands, rubbing them together and staring at his palms. Malgiolio was pouring himself more brandy. The candles flickered from a draft and I glanced at the door, which was open a few inches. It occurred to me that even these words were meant for Señora Puccini, as if all his words, all he ever said, was part of their great conversation.

It took me a moment to compose myself, but then I was able to speak calmly, even ironically. I wanted to hurt him and I believed I knew how to do it. “I'm glad my story offers you such amusement. I drove my wife away because she betrayed me. You call that no more than vanity and pride? Certainly, you exhibit an entirely different set of values. Well, let's look at those values. What have you done to Antonia Puccini? And that poor wreck of a man that you keep upstairs, what did you do to him? You forget, Daniel, we've known you for forty years and I think you're leaving out part of the story.”

“What do you mean?” asked Pacheco. He still wore a little smile, as if to show that nothing I could say would disturb him.

“When you were so caught up in your infatuation, I can't believe you would have waited and done nothing. Then, fortunately for you, this young man had his motorcycle accident. You knew his schedule. You knew when he was making his trips south, late at night on an empty road.” I stopped, almost frightened of saying so much.

All three of them stared at me, then Dalakis angrily grabbed my arm. “Are you suggesting that Pacheco caused the accident?”

“You don't think him capable?” I asked, shaking Dalakis loose. Pacheco still had his little smile. Malgiolio was looking at me almost with admiration, as if, for the first time in my life, I'd impressed him.

“Look at the strength of his obsession,” I continued. “He'd broken into her house. He'd fought with Collura and would have killed him if Antonia Puccini hadn't stopped him. You think he couldn't have run down Collura on a dark road? How simple to drive up from behind, pull out to pass, then make a little jerk to the side, and there goes the motorcycle plummeting off the road at seventy miles an hour. He probably wanted Collura dead but it worked out better like this. It gave him something to bargain with. You think he didn't do it? Ask him.”

Pacheco had turned and was tapping the ash of his cigar into a brass ashtray. Then he looked back at me with that same awful smile, made even more awful by his torn cheek. “Very clever, Batterby. You should try writing thrillers.” Pacheco stood up and took a step toward me. I moved back to the mantel.

“Yes, I ran him down,” Pacheco continued. “He stood in my way. We both wanted the same thing and he was going to get it. As you say, I knew when he made his trips from the capital. It was a simple plan but it took weeks before I could do it. Several times I went out and just watched him come roaring by. Another night I followed him all the way to Antonia's house, completely unable to act. That happened two or three times. I would follow him and curse myself for being a coward. The date of their marriage was approaching. It seemed I had either to rid the world of Roberto Collura or rid it of myself. So I went out again, I went a long way, more than a hundred miles from the city. When he came roaring by, I went after him. Still, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I remember watching his red taillight, the one light on the road. I followed him for nearly an hour, cursing and shouting at myself. I had an old Peugeot, what I thought of as a doctor's car, but strong and fast. He was doing a solid seventy-five. There was no other traffic.

“At last I slammed my foot to the floor and came up behind him, then pulled out into the left lane. I stayed beside him, a little behind him for several minutes. He turned his head but couldn't see much, just my bright lights. Still, I couldn't do it. I decided to give it up. I pressed down on the gas, meaning to pass him and go home. I hadn't thought he might be frightened. It was early fall, my windows were open, and my car was full of the sound of his motorcycle. When I drew up beside him, he turned. Either he recognized my car or he saw me. He was terrified. He screamed my name, Pacheco! He tried to accelerate. When I heard him shout my name something changed inside me. I felt no more hesitation. I gave the wheel a quick yank to the right, clipping his rear fender and sending him off the road. In my rearview mirror, I could see his motorcycle flipping over and over. Touching his fender had made only a slight click, just a little bump that didn't even leave a mark. I heard him scream, then this flying headlight in my mirror, then darkness. I drove back to the city and went to bed. Of course I couldn't sleep. I stared up at the ceiling and saw his face as I had seen it when he screamed my name, then that crazy headlight jerking and leaping across the landscape.

“Naturally I was astonished when they brought him in. A truck driver had found him. I felt fear and knew I should kill him but I couldn't bring myself to do it. When he came out of his coma, he had no memory of the accident. I stayed close to him, often going into his room to check on his condition. When he first saw me, his expression didn't change—blank suffering, monotonous despair. I think if he'd remembered anything I would have put him away for good. . . .”