The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (5 page)

We turned and stared at the housekeeper with one movement. She stood holding out the tray to Malgiolio, who was too surprised to take anything. Her face seemed cut from stone, and I couldn't match it to the beautiful face of the girl in the picture.

“Surely you're not serious,” I said, unable to stop myself.

Señora Puccini looked up from the tray of food and the corners of her lips lifted into a smile that was so devoid of warmth that it was more a kind of grimace. Then she turned to us, revealing or pointing the smile at each. She seemed to be calling us fools, while also indicating that she didn't care, that she had no interest in us whatsoever. But with her smile, I could at last see a similarity to the girl in the picture. Yet where the girl appeared soft, this woman was unrelenting. Nor was there any sign of fear or uncertainty. Like Dr. Pacheco, she seemed perfectly controlled. As for her eyes, they were like the eyes of a dead person.

As we stood staring at the housekeeper, there came a pounding on the outside door. Señora Puccini put down the tray and left the room. We watched her go, then looked back at the doctor.

It was Dalakis who spoke first. “I don't mean to be offensive,” he said, blinking several times, “but why do you keep a photograph of your housekeeper on the mantel?”

Pacheco lit another cigarette. There were loud voices in the hall. I assumed with some surprise that more guests had arrived, but hardly paid attention as I waited for Pacheco's answer.

He shook out the match and tossed it into the fireplace. “To remind me of the woman I chose to destroy,” he said. Then he lifted his head and looked at us in turn. There was grief in his face and I was so startled to see it that I thought I must be mistaken.

Suddenly the door of the library was thrown open and two soldiers with automatic rifles pushed into the room. More soldiers could be seen behind them. In the hall a man began screaming.

W
hen I was a boy I had a passion for electric trains, to which I was introduced by my father on the Christmas of my seventh or eighth year. Additional Christmases and birthdays brought more steam, diesel, electric, and turbine locomotives; stockcars, hoppers, tank cars, boxcars, cabooses, passenger and lounge cars; plus railway yards, cattle crossings, water towers, stations, tunnels, bridges, small villages, artificial grass, dozens of little trees, and yards and yards of track, until by the time I was in my early teens, I had two rooms in the attic with a train system that any great nation would be proud of. I also had a wind-up Victrola and a stack of 78 RPM records with the sounds of different locomotives, conductors calling “All Aboard!,” the clack and rattle of speeding wheels, and a variety of bells, whistles, sirens, and horns, so that every day the attic rang with the noise of commerce and transportation.

It was there I spent most of my time away from school and even while reading or studying I would don my engineer's cap, then set the trains in motion. Often, while I did my homework, half a dozen engines would be pulling as many as seventy-five passenger or freight cars along my quarter mile of track. Stuck away in a far corner of the house, surrounded by a miniature country, I had a strong, although certainly childish, sense of my own power, even divinity, as I pursued my railway strategies, taking on loads of coal, unloading shipments of lumber, lowering highway barriers, and setting the warning signals ringing. This was my world and I even had several hundred little figures to populate it and jump to my commands. My favorites were given the most prestigious positions—mayor, engineer, yard boss, police chief—the unpopular or merely ugly were the drones who swabbed out the lavatories and did other unpleasant tasks. Being an only child whose parents were often away, I found the hustle-bustle of this activity immensely comforting.

Consequently, it was to the attic that my parents or the servant would send any friends or visitors who came seeking me. And it was in the attic that the man employed by Daniel Pacheco's father probably found me one Saturday afternoon in early summer when I was just fourteen. I say “probably” because my memory is not entirely clear, the later events of the day having wiped out whatever happened in the few hours following my return from school around noon.

But I recall for certain that this man had a written message from Pacheco asking that I join him immediately. The servant would guide me. His name was Boris and he did the chores and garden work around Pacheco's house. He had a cadaverous face and his head was completely bald—I think he shaved it—and in one ear he wore a large gold earring. Apparently he had once been a sailor, because in the middle of his left cheek he had a tattoo of a small blue skull the size of a thumbnail. My mother found him a repulsive creature and had ordered me to tell Daniel not to send him to our house, since Boris carried all of Daniel's messages and was more his servant than his father's. Of course I did as my mother said, but Daniel paid no attention.

That day I went off with Boris without a thought. It wouldn't have occurred to me not to, such was Daniel's influence over the rest of us. Also, though I was a solitary child with elaborate and expensive diversions, I was not solitary by choice and so was eager for the chance to be with other boys. Years later I sometimes wondered why we followed Daniel so readily, and I came to the conclusion that it wasn't so much his intelligence or courage but that he was the first among us to develop a sense of irony. It kept us from being able to trap and confine him within our boyish definitions.

We took a bus down to the docks, which was an area my parents had told me to avoid. I expect they thought I might be shanghaied by a Chinese ship. If possible, I would have asked Boris the nature of our destination, but he was unable to speak; whether he was born dumb or had never learned the language, I don't know. Some of the boys claimed that his tongue had been cut out or his vocal cords severed by torturers, which seemed clearly fanciful. But he was friendly enough and when he saw my nervousness about being near the docks, he smiled and patted my shoulder.

We left the bus near the customs building, then set off through the narrow streets with warehouses on one side and cafés and cheap hotels on the other. My companion walked quickly and I had to trot in order to keep up. It was mid-afternoon on a hot summer Saturday and the streets were nearly empty. After half a dozen blocks, we turned up the hill into a maze of even narrower streets shaded by four- and five-story tenements from which were strung masses of laundry, sheets mostly, hanging from clotheslines that crisscrossed above our heads. These houses have always intrigued me, since each appears to have been designed as an argument against the styles of its neighbors, so different are they in color—those blue and yellow and pink pastels—so different in the degree of filigree and decoration, complicated balconies, stonework and clapboards and stucco and brick.

We turned at last up a very narrow street, too narrow for cars, and I remember garbage and the ubiquitous smell of urine. Several scrawny dogs lay scratching in doorways, too bored and sleepy even to look up. Steeply ascending the hill, the alley made several turns, twisting to the left and right as the tenements rose high above us, making the alley almost dark in the midst of the sunny day. After a few minutes Boris stopped at a door and motioned me to enter.

“Aren't you coming?” I asked.

He shook his head, then opened the door for me. Inside was a dirty landing and a flight of narrow stairs. I had little inclination to go in by myself, but I trusted Pacheco, as well as his servant, and it wouldn't have occurred to me that I might be in danger. I looked back at Boris. The tattoo of the human skull on his cheek had a perpetual grin, almost a leer, and I found myself focusing on it. Then Boris again patted my shoulder and hurried off down the hill.

It was only as I shut the door behind me and climbed the stairs that I began to feel some anxiety. They were dark, very steep, and had a sour smell, a mixture of old food and stale bodies. At the top was another door and I knocked. There was no answer. I tried the handle and the door opened into a long narrow room with about twenty straight chairs lining the walls. It too was empty. I remember it had a floral wallpaper of huge yellow blossoms unknown in the real world. The paper was peeling and great sheets dangled toward the floor as if the flowers were intent on escape. Beneath it, the dank gray plaster appeared to be sweating. I called Daniel's name, then crossed the room to another door. There was no sound except that of my own feet on the linoleum. The second door opened onto a long hall with doors on either side. Again I called Daniel's name and this time he appeared, sticking his head from one of the doorways.

“There you are,” he said impatiently. “What kept you?”

He was dressed all in black, even his boots were black, and his dark hair was greased and slicked back like a tango dancer's. Despite his clothes, his face had the smoothness of a girl's, and he looked younger than the rest of us, maybe eleven or twelve. “I came as fast as I could,” I said. “What is this place? What are you doing here?”

“I have a gift for you,” he answered. “Come with me.”

I entered the room. The window was covered with brown paper, which made the room not so much dark as murky. On the far side was a white metal bedstead and with a shock I saw that a woman was lying on the sheets and that she was naked. I started to back out of the door, thinking that Pacheco had made a mistake. He saw my embarrassment and put his arm around my shoulder.

“That's for you, Nicky. Maria is very nice. Go to her. She'll show you what to do.”

I felt confused and hardly understood. After all, I was only fourteen, and even though I spent much of my time thinking about sex, the actual deed was a mystery. My parents had never discussed with me what were called the facts of life and all I knew of the subject came from hushed conversations with my schoolmates, who knew as little as I.

Pacheco took hold of my elbow and slowly walked me toward the bed. “You have nothing to be anxious about, Nicky.”

Despite my reluctance, I moved forward. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“It's a gift. Calm yourself.”

I had never seen a naked woman except in art books and here was one lying a few feet away. What's more, I was supposed to make love to her. Obviously, love wouldn't enter into it, but at fourteen that was how it seemed. I felt on the verge of panic.

“But who is she?” I whispered, hoping she wouldn't hear.

“A friend. Go to her. I'm telling you to do it.”

How do I describe the woman? First of all, there was nothing romantic or beautiful about her, but neither was she entirely repulsive. At the time I thought her old, but she was probably about thirty. She must have been part Indian, because she had those high cheekbones and slanted eyes and her skin was a light tawny color. She lay on her back, propped up on her elbows. She was a very large woman, not so much fat as swollen, with a great round belly. Her breasts were huge but also rather flabby so they lay on her chest and stomach like two pigskin purses. The room was hot and her skin was shiny with sweat. Even now I recall the tiny rivulets of perspiration that ran off her belly. Around her neck was a thin silver chain from which was suspended a small letter M. Her nipples in the dim light looked black. Her pubic hair had been shaved.

She looked at me with a sleepy grin and motioned me over with one finger. Pacheco gave me a little push and I approached the bed, so terrified that I could barely stand. Slowly, the woman reached out and took hold of my belt; then, with her eyes still on mine, she unfastened the buckle and the snap. She had short black hair that surrounded her head like a bowl and very round cheeks, like a chipmunk with its mouth full of seeds.

Giving my pants a yank, she pulled them down so they fell about my ankles. Then she took my cock in her hand. I was in such a daze that I didn't seem to be doing something so much as watching from outside my body. Slowly, she pulled me to her, forcing me gently onto the bed as if my cock were a little leash. Had I been older and more experienced, I'm sure my anxiety would have kept me from having an erection, but at that age I knew no better. I was too confused to think and my body did the only thinking necessary.

As I lay on top of her, she slipped my cock inside her, then wrapped her legs around mine, pinning me to her. I've said she was big but she was also very tall, because my head barely reached her shoulder. She smelled of oil, the warm olive oil that my mother sometimes used to clean the wax out of my ears when I was a child. I lay with my head pressed against her breast. She felt very soft and her skin was wet and rubbery. It was like lying on top of a warm and greasy inflatable mattress. I tried not to touch her flesh with my hands, partly for fear of offending her nakedness; but, given my anxiety about falling to the floor, I was afraid not to hold on and my fingers fluttered nervously about her ribs. But then she wrapped her arms around me and I lay pinned to her breast like a little brooch as she manipulated her hips. I came right away, a small explosion of light. Afterward she let me lie a little longer so I could catch my breath and get over my surprise. Then she gave me a slight shove and I slid off her body and onto the floor.

“You boys,” she said in a rather masculine voice, “it's like eating too much white cake.” She patted my hand, then turned over on her side and appeared to go to sleep. Although the sheet was white, she was lying with her hips on a bright red towel. I stood for a moment, not knowing what to do. Pacheco put his hand on my shoulder.

“Well done, Nicky. There's a bathroom over there if you want. Then go down through the door on the other side and you'll find the others.”

I washed myself carefully, not that I felt she was dirty but to wash from my skin the strong smell of her oil, which I was afraid my mother would notice and even recognize. Then I went through the second door and down a flight of stairs. Certainly I was too astonished to think much about what was happening. At the bottom, through another door, I found ten of my schoolmates in a long room like the dining room at school. There were even tables. They sat and studied me seriously as I walked slowly across the bare wooden floor.

“Did you do it?” asked Eric Schwab.

I felt immediately guilty, as if I was the only one who had given in to the woman, while they had abstained. I nodded my head.

With that they all leapt up, clapped, hammered on my back, and filled the room with their laughter. Some were still in their school uniforms from that morning—white shirt, blue pants and jacket with the school shield over the heart. “We too,” said Schwab. “We all had a turn. Pacheco's letting the whole class fuck her. Of course, I've had women before.”

He said this and the other boys laughed or groaned or called him a liar. One boy had found a broken chair leg and let it dangle from the button fly of his pants in mockery of Schwab's sexual prowess. We were all extremely excited, even hysterical. The hugeness of Pacheco's prank made our hearts race.

“I could have another go at her,” said Schwab. “I like those big ones.”

Of all of us, Schwab probably looked the most mature. Even then, he must have been six feet tall and had hair on his upper lip. He was muscular and blue-eyed and something of a bully. He pretended to be afraid of nothing but once we had seen him taunt Pacheco and be so badly beaten that he had missed several days of school. Now, if Pacheco had told him to jump through a flaming hoop, Schwab would have jumped.

I doubt that any of us had been with a woman before, not even Schwab, and our talk, which in memory strikes me as silly, was full of nervous hilarity as we compared our different yet similar experiences. Schwab swore he had made her moan with pleasure and that he had held himself back for thirty minutes. Some said it was great, some weren't sure. Two boys wept. Another was angry, another full of guilt. Throughout the afternoon, more boys came clown the stairs and were astonished to find us. Some laughed, some felt embarrassed, most did both. Of the twenty-five Boris had found out of a class of thirty, only two had refused to climb into the whore's bed. One was Carl Dalakis. Another two admitted they hadn't been able to have erections. I expect there were others who had been unable to perform, but they kept their mouths shut. Those who admitted failure were badly teased. Schwab said that he would bring them back and show them how to do it.