The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (16 page)

“You didn't seem very eager to risk your neck,” I said to Malgiolio.

“And neither did you.” He was crouched down with his eyes barely above the top of the wall.

“We book reviewers lead sedentary lives,” I said. I don't know why I decided to bait him. Probably I kept thinking of his female friend and wondering why he didn't take a stick to her.

“What'd you think of the housekeeper showing her tits?” asked Malgiolio.

“I thought you'd been wrong to assume he'd never touched her.”

“Oh, I knew he'd touched her all right. I just wanted to see what would happen. I'd hate to live with someone like that, someone who I knew despised me.”

“And did you want to maul her breasts as well?” I said.

“Of course. D'you know, Pacheco would probably have given her to us if we'd asked.”

“You mean let us make love to her?” I was rather shocked.

Malgiolio laughed at my discomfort. “Pacheco has so much anger it would probably amuse him. But she seems dead, no life, no feeling, although there was a moment she stared at me when he was touching her breasts . . .”

I waited for him to continue but he remained silent. Briefly, I thought of mentioning how I had seen Señora Puccini with a pistol and how I was certain I had seen it again outlined against the fabric of her skirt. But just as I decided to tell him, Malgiolio pointed up the street.

“Here they come!”

I heard the rumble of the wheelbarrow, then I saw the boy dashing toward the house. Behind him came Dalakis and Pacheco pushing the barrow, rushing with it along the sidewalk. The old woman lay sprawled with her slippered feet sticking out in front, bouncing up and down as the barrow passed over the cracks and faults in the concrete. Every few yards Pacheco would reach out a hand to steady her. The woman's white hair had come loose from its bun and trailed over the back of the wheelbarrow. As the boy reached the house, Malgiolio and I turned and hurried back through the bathroom and down the stairs. They were just easing the wheelbarrow through the front door when we got to the hall. The boy slammed the door fast and shot the bolts. Very carefully Dalakis and Pacheco lifted the old woman out of the wheelbarrow and laid her on the floor. Señora Puccini hurried toward us from the dining room.

“Batterby,” said Pacheco, “go out to the garden and get the mattress from the chaise longue.”

As I ran across the hall, I heard Pacheco telling Señora Puccini to get sheets and pillows. The door to the garden was to my right off the corridor leading to the kitchen. Candles had been lit there as well, and the front part by the patio was filled with the wicker bird cages I had seen earlier, some quite small and others a dozen feet high. The birds were awake and seemed frantic, chirping and twittering and rushing about their cages. Perhaps it was the candlelight that disturbed them. A yellow finch kept fluttering against its bars, flying against them as if it might break them. In another cage, a black crow rapidly paced back and forth along its perch like a sentry on duty. The chaise longue was right beneath it. The crow watched me but didn't pause in its hurried perambulation. The disturbance of the birds was quite unnerving, as if they knew of some awfulness that hadn't yet occurred to the rest of us. I grabbed the mattress off the chaise longue and ran back into the house.

Madame Letendre was alive, but she had been shot several times and her black dress was soaked with blood. We got her onto the mattress. She lay on her back groaning with her face turned toward us. Her blind eyes seemed to take us in, almost to focus on us although there was no pupil or iris, just a flat gray surface like the surface of an egg. Really, she made the most horrible noise, a great stertorous breathing somewhere between a gasp and a shout. Pacheco had unbuttoned and cut away part of her dress to inspect her wounds. He had a pail of water and one of the blue linen napkins with which he kept wiping away the blood, then dipping the napkin in the water and wringing it out. Apparently, one bullet had passed through her lung, another had struck her shoulder, and a third was somewhere in her abdomen. Señora Puccini brought Pacheco his bag and he prepared a shot of something. In the candlelight the blood was dark, almost black. Although the sight horrified me, it was impossible not to look.

“Why did you leave the house?” Pacheco asked the boy, who stood behind him holding one of the candelabra.

Juan was staring at his grandmother with a kind of breathless surprise. “She thought we could get home.”

“But I said it was dangerous.” Pacheco turned to Señora Puccini. “Weren't you watching them?”

She didn't answer but knelt down on the other side of the cook and began stroking her forehead and whispering to her. Pacheco stared at her furiously. I wondered if she had encouraged the cook to leave, perhaps in order to hurt Pacheco. But that may have been mistaken because certainly Señora Puccini appeared fond of the cook. The boy, however, seemed confused, and I felt his puzzlement came from being advised to do the wrong thing by someone he trusted. Again, I thought how closely he resembled the boy in the orphanage to whom I read the Brothers Grimm each Sunday. Both had the same black, wondering eyes. In any case, Pacheco asked no more questions but continued to tend the cook's wounds. She grew calmer as the shot took effect, although her breathing was still that dreadful rasping which echoed throughout the hall. Dalakis stood next to me; Malgiolio stood over by the fountain.

“Did you see anyone out there?” I asked Dalakis.

“No one. She was lying half in the street. There was no one else around.”

Pacheco stood up. “There's nothing more I can do,” he said.

“Will she be all right?” asked the boy.

Glancing at him, Pacheco took the candelabrum and held it over the cook. “She's going to die,” he said, “but at least she's in no more pain.”

“Can't you do anything else?” asked Señora Puccini. I was struck by the emotion in her voice.

“You don't think I'd save her if I could?”

“I don't know,” said Señora Puccini.

“Why weren't you watching her?” Pacheco asked again. He looked at the housekeeper but she was staring down at Madame Letendre. “She'll be all right here,” said Pacheco. “To move her would only make it worse.” Apart from the rasp of her breathing, the cook lay quietly. The only other noise came from the boy, who had begun to sob, as if the cook's injuries hadn't become real until Pacheco had spoken of them. Pacheco turned to us and took my arm. “Let's return to the dining room,” he said.

We followed him across the hall. Along with the candles in the niches containing the Roman busts, about twenty more candlesticks had been placed on the stairs and on the balcony above. The hall was drafty and the flames kept flickering, which made the large hall quiver with shadow and sparkles of light as if the air itself were in turmoil. The boy and Señora Puccini remained behind with the cook.

—

In the dining room, the remains of the salad had been removed and in its place were several bowls of ripe peaches, a Camembert cheese, and two bottles of sparkling Burgundy. We look our seats. Pacheco had closed the door, but even so I could hear the rising and falling gasp of the cook's breathing. I thought how she had designed this meal and how there was even more food to come. Not that I would take another bite. How could I eat under that canopy of groaning? Dalakis and I looked at the cheese. I sipped my wine. Malgiolio was peeling a peach. Pacheco was slouched down in his chair with his arms crossed and his chin on his chest. He was smoking and his mind seemed a thousand miles away.

“So tell us,” said Malgiolio, cutting a slice of peach, then eating it off the blade of his knife, “what made her change her mind? You've shown us that you were finally able to have your way with this woman. How did it happen?”

Even though I have been long aware of Malgiolio's dogged sense of the inappropriate, I was surprised that he could so casually sweep aside what had happened in order to urge Pacheco to return to his story. I'd noticed that on the other side of the vase showing the wedding celebration was a scene depicting a man stumbling along with a donkey's head on his shoulders, the afflicted Bottom from
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
so the wedding must have been that of Theseus and Hippolyta. But I couldn't see the man with the donkey's head without thinking of Malgiolio, so foolish did he sometimes seem in my eyes.

“You mean you aren't satisfied?” said Pacheco. “I can make her strip in front of you and you still aren't satisfied?” He looked at Malgiolio in such a way that I felt he hated him. And really it seemed particularly insensitive of Malgiolio to act as if the brutal assault on the cook meant nothing, that we could just continue as before. But I had observed his fear and I wondered if Malgiolio wasn't insisting on the story partly because it made the violence outside the house seem more distant.

“I'm simply curious,” said Malgiolio, cutting another slice of peach. “What did you have to do to get her? How low did you have to go?”

Pacheco started to speak, but then the door opened and Señora Puccini entered. The sound of the cook's breathing grew louder, then quieter as she opened and closed the door.

“You're continuing with your dinner?” she asked, as if startled.

Pacheco turned in his chair. I'm absolutely certain that her surprise pleased him. I also feel that Pacheco's decision to continue with both the dinner and his tale stemmed to some degree from a desire to manipulate her surprise and further affect it. “I see no great evidence of hunger but, yes, we'll proceed with the meal. After all, this is Madame's very last dinner. She wouldn't want us to interrupt it for her death.” Glancing at Señora Puccini, he took a peach from the bowl, tossed it into the air, and caught it. Then he bit into the peach so the juice ran down his chin. “Besides, my friends remain interested in your story. Would you like to tell it?”

She didn't look at us. “The past is nothing to me. We had a bargain and I have fulfilled my part.”

“And have I?” asked Pacheco.

“You've done many things but you have at least done what I asked you to do.” With that rather mysterious statement she passed through the door to the hall.

We watched her go. She seemed changed from the rather dowdy woman who had admitted me over four hours earlier, as if she were younger and more beautiful. But perhaps it was an effect of the candlelight. I noticed she had not completely shut the door and I wondered if she left it open so that she might listen.

“And so finish,” said Malgiolio, “what is the rest of your story?”

Pacheco looked at Malgiolio as if considering his scraps of hair, his pale face and little hands, his old but well-brushed blue suit. Then, picking up a silver fruit knife, Pacheco idly tapped the tip against the stem of his wine glass and began again. “Over the next year I continued to pursue Señora Puccini, but let me describe just three occasions. The first was a few days after that party in the country. I realized of course that my behavior had become excessive, but I still hoped that if I simply talked to Antonia I might in some way sway her mind.

“The very first of the week I went to the school where she was teaching. I knew people on the school board and was even acquainted with the principal. After all, I was a doctor, a surgeon, one of the very few in that city. It was as if people were obliged to think well of me. I saw the principal and told her it was important that I talk to Antonia Puccini, giving the impression it was some medical matter. I said I would wait in an empty classroom. I asked her not to tell Antonia who her visitor was but that she should come right away. As I say, I knew this woman. She was attractive and middle-aged and I am sure she knew that my interest had little to do with medicine. Even so, she didn't hesitate but immediately led me to an empty room, then went off to fetch Antonia.

“You may imagine I was in a state of extreme nervousness and anxiety, yet I knew I had to behave with perfect calm. I happened to have my briefcase with me and I sat down at the teacher's desk, took out a sheaf of papers, and pretended to read through them. Moments later Antonia hurried into the room. When she saw me, she stopped. The principal was behind her. ‘I'll see that the two of you aren't bothered,' she said. Then she shut the door, leaving us together. I glanced up, asked Antonia to take a seat, and went back to the papers for a few seconds, after which I took a pen and signed my name at the bottom of what was probably a laundry bill. Then I put the papers back in my briefcase and looked up. Antonia was sitting at one of the desks in the front row. The desks were meant for children and it was much too small for her.

“I told her I wanted to apologize for the other day, that I had wanted a chance to talk and things had gotten out of hand. She stood up. I remember she was wearing a blue dress with thin white stripes and I kept being aware of her body beneath it. ‘We have nothing to talk about,' she said. ‘You've behaved brutally every time I've seen you and you tricked me into coming here.' Then she told me that if I didn't leave her alone, she'd file a complaint.

“I asked her to hear me out, then said that I wanted her to come live with me. ‘I'll marry you,' I told her. ‘I'll do what you wish, give you as much money as you require or want.'”

Pacheco's admission amazed me. I leaned forward, nearly upsetting my wine glass. “How could you imagine that she'd marry you?” I interrupted. Even Malgiolio seemed startled.

“Of course it was absurd,” Pacheco continued, “but I knew that I couldn't appear hesitant. In any case, she looked at me with what might be called an uncomprehending stare. ‘You're insane,' she said. ‘I don't like you, I don't find you attractive, I have no interest in you. Besides, I'm in love with another man, whom I intend to marry and make a life with.'