The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (23 page)

I went back to the dining hall and about ten minutes later Kress returned perfectly calmly as if nothing untoward had happened. He said he'd had a headache and had gone to his room for aspirin. A few minutes later the woman returned and joined her friends, three women and two men. She didn't look at Kress and he didn't look at her. You can imagine that I looked at her a great deal, not with desire but with amazement. I intended to ask Kress about his escapade and I especially wanted to know if he'd known this woman before. I also told myself that I had better keep my own young wife out of his way—not that I felt I had anything to fear, since we were very much in love and totally occupied with each other. But as it turned out I had no time to ask Kress about the woman. My wife had her fatal accident the next day and everything else was pushed from my mind.

Colonel Carrera thanked Pacheco for the wine and we walked with him to the front door. “You may start receiving these wounded men in ten minutes or so. I'm sorry about the inconvenience, but there seems no alternative. And by the way, Pacheco, I would be careful of Captain Quatrone. He's not like the rest of us. No loyalties. He only serves himself.”

“These are difficult days,” said Pacheco, opening the door, “but that's no reason to let everything go. A man like Quatrone is only happy when he holds the stick and even uses it. You showed him a bigger stick. I'm sure he'll behave.”

“I hope you're right,” said Carrera.

We watched him go, hurrying across the street to his jeep.

—

Pacheco closed the door. Turning, he seemed suddenly tired. Then, lighting a cigarette, he took hold of himself again. “Well, gentlemen, we still have some eating left. Will you join me for dessert?” His damaged cheek was livid and swollen and I found it impossible not to stare at it.

“Really, Pacheco,” said Dalakis, walking back across the hall, “I feel I have eaten enough for a dozen people, but what I am most interested in is that man upstairs. Has he actually lain in that bed for twenty years?”

Pacheco slapped Dalakis on the back and led him toward the dining room. I followed with Malgiolio. I must say I was impressed by Pacheco's insistence that we continue our dinner no matter what. The marble floor was muddied with the footprints of the soldiers and there were spots of the cook's blood, although in the dim light the bloodstains only appeared as a brighter-colored dirt.

“You shall get the rest of your story,” said Pacheco. “But you must also have dessert. The cake was my cook's great creation and it is your duty to her to taste it.” He glanced back at Malgiolio and me. Malgiolio had been dawdling along but his interest perked up at the mention of cake. He looked at me and grinned so that his whole face grew as round as a bowl.

We again took our places at the table. Pacheco rang the little silver bell and after a moment Señora Puccini appeared at the door.

“Señora,” said Pacheco, “we're ready for the cake and you might start the coffee as well. Is everything all right in the kitchen?”

“It appears to be.”

“The soldiers didn't do any damage?”

“None to speak of.”

She spoke so flatly and seemed so disassociated from Pacheco's questions that I thought something was wrong, but perhaps it was only a matter of her mind being someplace else. Actually I felt our dinner was over and was angry with Pacheco for prolonging it despite the fighting and soldiers and the death of the cook. He seemed absolutely callous. If I have so much as a remote cousin die I'm no good for anything for days.

“And did they search you, Señora?” asked Pacheco. She stood behind his chair and he had his back to her.

“Yes.”

“And did they offend you?”

“Why should I take offense? I have no rights over my body.”

Pacheco turned and observed her, then made an impatient gesture with his shoulders. I wondered how much of their life was passed in such interchanges. After a moment, Señora Puccini walked to the door and I heard her departing down the hall.

Malgiolio started to pour himself more wine, then apparently thought better of it and drank some water instead. “Well, what about the story?” he asked. “What happened to that fellow upstairs?”

Instead of answering, Pacheco asked a question in return, a peculiar one, I felt. “Have you ever been horsewhipped by a woman? Señora Puccini tried with me once, but I overcame her. What about spanking, Malgiolio?”

“Are you mocking me?”

“On the contrary, I have an endless curiosity. Sometimes I wish I could contain all of humanity's sexual experience within my person. I listen to you describe how your fat whore pisses on you and I think how disgusting, but part of me would like to experience it, to see what it would be like.”

“I can give you her address,” said Malgiolio, pouring himself some wine after all.

“Perhaps I will take you up on that. The only trouble is that afterward I would probably have to beat her. But tell me about beating, Malgiolio. Have you ever had a woman whip you?”

“With her hand, yes; with a stick, yes; with a Ping-Pong paddle, yes; with a whip, no.”

“How bizarre,” said Pacheco. “What color was the Ping-Pong paddle?”

“Red, I think. I didn't see much of it,” said Malgiolio. There was an expression on his face that I could only interpret as pride, mild pride.

“And did you like it?” I asked.

“‘Like' is not really the right word,” he said. “But it was pleasurable, even gratifying.”

Dalakis pushed his chair away from the table so that the legs scraped loudly on the floor. “What a disgusting conversation. If I could leave here, I would.”

“And you, Dalakis,” said Pacheco, “have you ever had a woman mistreat you?”

Dalakis lifted his big hands to his tie and tugged at the knot. He appeared shocked. Since his wife had deserted him, I thought Dalakis knew quite a bit about being mistreated by women. But before he could reply the door opened and Señora Puccini returned wheeling the cart, on top of which was the most amazing cake I have ever seen.

First of all, what made it amazing was that it was basically a wedding cake with eight round layers of decreasing size, ranging from nearly three feet in diameter to about six inches, but instead of having white frosting, it was bright red with a rich strawberry taste, as I was soon to discover. It was the sort of cake which conventionally has a cupola on top with two little figures of the man and wife. Although this cake had little figures, they weren't at the top, nor were they man and wife. Instead there were sixteen little male figures representing the sixteen men in our group of old schoolboys. There was a soldier to represent Kress and a policeman to represent Schwab. There was a doctor with a stethoscope to represent Pacheco and a priest to represent Julio Hernandez. There was a little man in a butcher's apron for Paul Sarno, who owned a market on the other side of the city, and a man in a tuxedo who was probably meant to be Henri D'Arcy, a diplomat stationed in Rome. There was a white coated figure who was probably Leonid Shapiro, a chemist teaching in the south, and a little man in blue coveralls who I assumed was Paco Pezzone, who owned a car dealership. And then there were eight little figures in coats and ties who were meant to be the rest of us—Berruezo, Vicuna, Serrano—including a portly gray-haired man with a pipe who I thought was meant to be me. But the fact that it was a wedding cake astounded me, especially since Pacheco had delved into so many of the women that these men were attached to. Even Hernandez, the priest, had a sister whose heart Pacheco was said to have broken. Not that Hernandez was so celibate, for there were many stories about him.

Pacheco had begun to cut the cake, giving us each a large slice. Even the interior was red, with tidbits of strawberries and walnuts and a rich strawberry filling between the layers. I glanced at Dalakis and Malgiolio to see if they thought the cake in any way odd, but they seemed more impressed by it as spectacle than symbol. Between the sixteen figures, which stood on seven layers of the cake, were whole fresh strawberries. Of course such a thing was terrible for my illness, even for my ulcer, but there are times when one cannot help oneself. I have always loved cake while feeling guilty about doing so. It seems so adolescent, even pre-pubescent, as if cake were something which one should reject after puberty. What a childish pleasure to fill one's mouth with such sweet glop. There even seems something wrong about it, as if it should be eaten in private, and I thought of myself as a child up in the attic with my trains sitting in the half-dark with my fingers covered with frosting and my lips covered with crumbs.

Both Dalakis and Malgiolio were shoveling great forkfuls of cake into their mouths while Pacheco watched. I admit it may have been the best cake I have ever tasted, and even though there was enough for thirty people, I felt a twinge of pleasure that Carrera and Schwab had left before the cake was introduced. How to describe it? Light, sweet, moist with a strong strawberry flavor—the sort of cake made with dozens of egg whites and gallons of cream. I don't know what it reminded me of, sex possibly or the apotheosis of a summer day. You see how foolish these descriptions become. But in its spectacle, it seemed to be a part of Pacheco's story and so it did not seem out of place when Malgiolio began to urge Pacheco to tell us about the man upstairs. At first Pacheco suggested waiting until we had finished, but Dalakis said no, we wanted to hear it now.

Pacheco leaned back in his chair. Joining his hands in front of his face, he made a tent out of his fingers and appeared to study it, or perhaps it was more of a cage than a tent. I should say that he had taken quite a small piece of cake and barely nibbled it. When he had held it to his lips, I noticed that the strawberries and the bruise on his cheek were exactly the same shade of red.

“It was quite simple, really,” he began, “yet also astonishing. You know I told you that this Collura fellow, Antonia's fiancé, kept making these trips down from the capital on his motorcycle. Quite a long way, nearly four hundred miles. Perhaps he did it twice a month, rushing down on a Friday after work and getting in quite late. Well, one Friday night or early Saturday morning in early autumn he was brought into the hospital. I wasn't there at the time but I came in a few hours later. He'd had an accident and was unconscious. His neck was broken. It seemed certain he would die.

“Many doctors worked on him and I worked on him too. Someone had notified Antonia Puccini and she arrived at the hospital in a panic around three in the morning, then waited in the hall while Collura was in surgery. She asked the other doctors how he was and if he would live but she didn't speak to me. By mid-morning it was clear he would survive, but it wasn't for several days that we realized he would be totally paralyzed. We tried several other operations but they were useless. Again Antonia would ask the other doctors about his progress but she never said anything to me, even though I was often in his room while she was there.

“He had been unconscious when they brought him in and two weeks later he was still unconscious. Apart from the broken neck, he had a head injury, two broken legs, and some internal injuries. At last he came out of the coma and, although he could speak, it was only with great effort. He remembered nothing of his accident. He lay with his two legs in traction and his head bandaged. The legs were particularly pathetic. It hardly mattered how they mended, since he would never walk again. He lay on his back and Antonia would sit beside him. Often she read to him, novels like Blasco Ibáñez or Dickens. Or they would just talk quietly. If I was on duty, I would see how he was doing. As the weeks went by, his other injuries healed, but nothing could be done for the paralysis. Originally he had a double room, but then he was moved into one of the wards. He had no money and no family. It became clear he would have to go to some sort of charitable nursing home, one of those places run by the church.

“One day I happened to meet Antonia as she was leaving the ward. She pretended she didn't see me but I stepped in front of her. ‘Just a moment,' I told her. ‘If you come to live with me, I'll see that your friend Collura is taken care of.' You understand, I still thought that if I had the chance to talk to her, even make love with her, or perhaps just be with her for an extended amount of time, then she would choose to be with me—choose without pressure, choose because that was what she would want. She glanced at me, then glanced away and pushed past me down the hall. Need I tell you that I also hated her, that I wished to knock her down and kick at her body?

“Yet I was not without hope. I knew the sort of place that Collura would wind up in. I knew that Antonia had little money and little or no chance of earning more. Many times she would go out to search for a better job, perhaps in an office or working for the city government or perhaps for a lawyer or doctor. But wherever I could I intruded myself. I told stories against her, used my influence to see that she was passed over. After Collura had been in the hospital for six weeks, he was transferred to a nursing home attached to a convent just outside the city. It was clean but very crowded and poor. It was far from where Antonia lived and she had to ride out on her bike, which took nearly an hour. The young man himself was, of course, miserable and despairing. The noise kept him awake. There was nothing he could do. The nuns had no time for him. He was a vegetable and all he wanted was to die.

“Antonia moved so she could be nearer the nursing home, but then she was often late for work and was in danger of losing her job as a clerk in the fabric store. Do I have to tell you that I had gotten to know the woman who employed her? In any case, she soon had to let Antonia go. It wasn't just my doing. Antonia had been late many times. For several weeks Antonia looked for another job and again I made this difficult. At last she was forced to work as a waitress in a tavern, working in the evening from six until past two. Of course it was far from the nursing home and she could only see Collura during the day outside of visiting hours, which the nuns disliked and complained about. As for Collura, he was truly wasting away. I visited him now and then to see how he was doing. Actually, it was he who begged me to help him get out of there. I brushed aside his request and suggested he talk to Antonia. By now clearly my hatred was equal to my passion. As more time went by, I knew he was begging her to do something. She, poor thing, was nearly a wreck, working all night and then with him during the day. One hardly knew why she continued.