The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (24 page)

“She held out for ten weeks while he was in the nursing home. Then she came to me. Not to my house, of course, but to my office. I had known it was bound to happen and told my receptionist not to give her an appointment right away, to make her wait a week or two, so that when she finally came, expecting to see me, she was sent away for a further eight days, after hearing I was too busy. Of course, during those days I was constantly anxious, dreading she would change her mind. I visited Collura and indeed he seemed worse, weak and listless and with no desire to live. I know if it had been myself I would have preferred death. That's a problem, don't you think? How to commit suicide when you can't move a muscle. On the other hand, I hardly cared about Collura. He was just a tool in gaining Antonia Puccini. You can imagine that by this time I was entirely without moral sense.

“At last it was time for her to come to my office. I think of myself, for the most part, as a calm and controlled human being, yet for the whole day before her appointment I was as emotionally erratic as a schoolboy, elated and despairing by turns, snapping at people around me and constantly nervous.

“Her appointment was in the morning, ten o'clock, and she arrived exactly on time. Of course, I couldn't let her see my eagerness. I kept her waiting for a bit, then buzzed the receptionist to send her in. When Antonia entered my office, I remained at my desk, apparently occupied with papers. She stood in the middle of the room. It was again spring and the windows were open. I remember that she wore a gray cotton coat over a dark blue dress. A white scarf was tied around her neck. She cleared her throat, made a little cough, and I continued to write. Actually, I was writing just nonsense, some poem of Hugo's that I remembered from school. Then I glanced up. She was terrified.

“‘What can I do for you?' I asked.

“‘You wanted to see me,' she said, as calmly and slowly as possible, ‘you said you could help Roberto.'

“‘Help him?' I asked. ‘In what way?'

“‘To get him out of that place, to find some way I can be with him.'

“‘That was some time ago,' I said. ‘I'm not sure I can do anything now.'

“‘But you must . . .' she began, then stopped. She was literally trembling. It was so sweet. I thought of the pain she was feeling and weighed it against the pain she had caused me.

“‘You said you could help him,' she continued. ‘There must be some way. I'm ready to do anything.'

“I pretended not to be interested. I yawned and blew my nose and looked at my watch. Slowly, I pushed back my chair and got to my feet.

“‘You're a rich man,' she said. ‘You could help him if you wanted. Please, it is not easy for me to be here.'

“I walked toward her, then stopped and looked out the window toward the main hospital building on the next block. ‘I think it's too late,' I said. ‘Maybe you should go back to your cripple.'

“She was about five feet away. She hurried, almost fell toward me, and grabbed at my arm. I shook her loose, even pushed her. She collapsed on a chair and began to cry, a fierce silent crying. I watched her shoulders heaving, heard her great intakes of breath. After a few minutes I told her to get up. She remained on the chair. ‘Get up!' I ordered.

“She stood up, still crying. Her head was bowed and she dabbed at her nose with a white handkerchief.

“‘Strip off your clothes,' I told her.

“She hesitated and looked up at me. Really, she had no choice. She unknotted the scarf around her neck and dropped it to the floor. Then she unbuttoned her coat and let it slip down to the floor as well.

“‘You can put your clothes on a chair if you wish,' I said.

“She began to unbutton her dress. She was frightened yet, I think, she also had a kind of interest mixed with her fear. I, of course, was fascinated, as you can well imagine. The dress must have had thirty buttons. When she had unbuttoned them down past her waist, she pushed it from her shoulders, let it fall, and then stepped out of it. She wore a necklace of beads of blue lapis lazuli. She removed her white slip, again just dropping it to the floor. She wore a white brassiere with a little lace around the cup, white panties, rather conventional things, and a little belt to hold up her stockings. For a moment she stood like that, as if unable to make up her mind.

“‘Take off everything,' I said. Then I lit a cigarette and again looked at my watch.

“She took off her stockings, unhooked her bra, and let it drop onto the pile of clothes. After a slight hesitation, she removed her underwear and stood naked except for the necklace. At first she had her arms folded across her breasts, then slowly she let them drop to her sides. She stood with her legs slightly apart and stared down at the floor. Then she looked up at me. She was very frightened, as well as embarrassed and humiliated. I stared at her, almost clinically. She held herself rigid and had sucked in her breath so her belly was flat. Actually, I was surprised at how hairy she was. Not like a man, of course, but thick black pubic hair with a little peak pointing up toward her navel. I walked around her, very leisurely, stopping every so often to touch a breast or her buttocks but lightly, just with one finger or a stroke of the palm.

“As I circled Antonia, continuing my inspection, the receptionist opened the door, then began to close it again. ‘Wait,' I said, ‘come in here a moment.' The receptionist entered, trying not to appear embarrassed. She was a woman of about forty-five who was married to a custodian at the hospital. ‘What do you think of this girl?' I asked her.

“The woman glanced at Antonia, then looked away. ‘She looks very healthy,' she said.

“‘Anything else?' I asked.

“She looked at her again, almost furtively, a quick little glance, and then looked away again. ‘No, she seems all right. Is there something I should see?'

“All this time Antonia had been staring at the floor. ‘Don't you find her beautiful?' I asked.

“‘Yes, certainly,' said the woman, even more embarrassed. ‘She's very beautiful.'

“‘Was there anything else you wanted?' I asked.

“She had some errand having to do, I think, with finding several X-rays, and after she had gotten them, she returned to the waiting room. All this time Antonia stood motionless.

“When the door was again shut, I approached Antonia and stopped a little more than a foot in front of her. ‘Look at me,' I said. She lifted her head. I saw she was shivering, although the room was warm. Very gently I reached out and touched her cunt with the backs of two fingers. She jerked away, startled. ‘Look at me,' I said again.

“She looked into my eyes as I gently stroked her cunt, first the outside, then the very lips of the vagina, using just the backs of two fingers. A minute went by, then another. I watched her emotion overcome her, watched her change from being cold and frightened to being obsessed by the same passion that had driven me for so long. There was nothing I couldn't do to her, nothing I couldn't make her do.”

Pacheco paused and took a small bite of cake, then crumbled the rest between his fingers. He seemed lethargic suddenly, while we three guests were entirely caught up in his story. The side of his face where Quatrone had hit him looked on fire.

“Wouldn't any woman react like that?” asked Dalakis.

Pacheco started to speak, then touched his fingers very lightly to his bruised cheek. When he looked again at Dalakis, it appeared to be with dislike. “Not at all. Some would be angry, some would feel nothing, some would laugh. That's what is so attractive about women, Carl, that out of a thousand women all would make love differently, like hearing a thousand string quartets or reading a thousand books. When I touched Antonia, she was swept away much in the same manner that she had been at that summer concert almost two years before.”

“Isn't your description excessive?” I asked. Why did I feel angry with Pacheco? I had been caught up by his story, even excited by it, and those feelings made me almost ashamed.

“Swept away? Well, she was overwhelmed by her own passion. Call it what you want, but as I stood there gently stroking her cunt her hatred for me and her love for her fiancé were pushed aside and all that remained was desire. Can't I call that being swept away? All reason and moral sense were obliterated. That's very rare. It had been my original sense of that which had helped create my hunger.”

“And so what happened?” asked Malgiolio. “Did you make love to her right there in your office?”

Pacheco looked at Malgiolio, and again I had a sense of Pacheco's dislike, really, that he disliked us all. It seemed that Pacheco was telling this story not for us but for Antonia Puccini. Very likely he cared nothing for us, nothing even for the world outside his front door. All his life was caught up with her.

“No, we simply struck a deal,” said Pacheco. “I wanted her to marry me but she refused. Nor would she agree to bear my children. She was very adamant about that. The agreement was she should come and live with me as my housekeeper and that I should bring her fiancé Roberto Collura into my house and take care of him. As for our sexual relationship, I could have her at any time. At first she wanted some sort of schedule, but I would have none of it. I actually told her to put on her clothes and get out. Can you imagine a schedule? Forever looking at your watch or counting days on the calendar? Any time, any place, that was the final agreement. But you see, in a way I was very foolish or perhaps I was just deceived by my own conceit, because I still thought I could make her love me, that if she lived with me and had sex with me, then she would inevitably come to love me as well. As for me, I hardly knew her and hardly liked her, but I loved her passionately, have always loved her passionately. That, unfortunately, has been my great weakness. Without that love and desire, I could have come to like her more.”

Pacheco tossed his napkin onto his plate and stood up. “I've asked Señora Puccini to give us coffee in the library. Perhaps we can go in there.”

Again I glanced at the door leading to the kitchen. It was open and someone could easily have been standing there in the dark. “And do you still hunger for this woman?” I asked, getting to my feet.

Pacheco gave a kind of humorless smile. “Perhaps not hunger, but there is still great desire. Believe me, I see many women, but she continues to be the one I want most.”

“She must be about forty,” said Malgiolio.

Walking to the door, Pacheco paused and looked back over his shoulder at Malgiolio. “In matters of desire, age makes little difference. Yes, it is wonderful to make love to a woman who is young and beautiful, but sometimes I think that desire has less to do with the body and more with a quality of the eye, a certain expression, a suggestion of interest. I know many men who can only make love to one sort of woman, but that's like restricting yourself to one sort of food, in which case it's not exactly the eating that one likes.”

Pacheco continued out of the room and we followed him through the hall. Just as we were about to enter the library there was a knocking at the front door. Pacheco went to open it, setting the candles all flickering in the draft. A lieutenant entered, then several medics bearing stretchers, then three more men, who appeared to be wounded. The soldiers looked around them at the great staircase, the Roman busts and tapestry. Pacheco rejoined us, then said, “Go in and help yourself to coffee and brandy. There are cigars as well. I'll be with you shortly.”

I followed Dalakis into the library. Malgiolio was already pouring himself something to drink. In truth, I felt rather bloated and I went to the window for a breath of air. There were soldiers in the street talking quietly. In the distance I again heard the rattle of gunfire. A sergeant saw me at the window and angrily motioned me away. I let the drapes fall back into place. It would be just my luck to get shot.

Malgiolio and Dalakis were talking by the fireplace and I joined them. I realized both were quite worked up, as if Pacheco's story had physically excited them. That didn't surprise me about Malgiolio, but I thought Dalakis would have more control.

“But why should he get it out of his mind?” Dalakis was saying. “For at least a dozen years I thought of my wife twenty times a day, and maybe now, if I'm lucky, I only think of her once or twice a day. I don't like her, I feel I was betrayed by her, but it's as if her memory has burned a hole in my brain. All this was chance, that I should meet her, that I should fall in love with her. We met at a party to which I nearly didn't go. She too had decided to attend only at the last minute. If she had been standing on another side of the room, if the host hadn't introduced us, my whole life could have been different. I once knew a man who was crippled when a bit of masonry fell on him from a building—a piece of bad luck falling out of the sky. My experience with my wife was the same. So how can I judge Pacheco? Certainly he has behaved abominably, but his obsession with this woman, that is no more than bad luck, a freak of chance which sent him to the concert that night.”

Malgiolio had lit a cigar and was tapping the ash into the fireplace. “We become the toys of our obsessions,” he said rather ponderously. “You think I don't hate myself for my relationship with my blond woman? Sometimes it astonishes me. I'll be walking down the street in the middle of the day, looking at all the people, and I'll think that I'm actually involved with a woman who stands astride me and pisses on me. I tell you it disgusts me. Yet that doesn't matter. No matter how much I hate it I have no wish for it to stop. Wherever I am, I'll think of her thick shape squatting over me and, well, as Pacheco said, I feel swept away.”

“And you pay her for this?” I asked, hardly believing it possible. I had poured myself some mineral water and was sitting on the couch.

“Yes, of course, otherwise she wouldn't permit me to visit.”