The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (8 page)

“He said she was,” said Dalakis. “Why should he lie?”

“But why keep her picture on the mantel?” asked Malgiolio.

“Carl, go on about the Yugoslav,” I said.

The boy reappeared carrying a tray with three bowls of a clear soup, which he set in front of us. He spilled a little on the tablecloth and for a moment we were distracted as he hurried to clean it up. Whenever he saw us watching, he blushed.

Malgiolio tasted his soup, rolled it around in his mouth, then began to eat it rather quickly. I sipped a little. It was turtle soup with some sort of sherry. I didn't recognize the kind.

Dalakis glanced at Malgiolio with friendly exasperation. “The writer,” he said, continuing his story, “had a piece of chalk, or maybe it was charcoal. The Yugoslav would tell him a word and the writer would print it on the wall. Maybe ten words a day. Neither man knew how long he would be in prison and of course each expected to be released quite soon. In the meantime, they continued this course of instruction in Serbo-Croatian. Additionally, the Yugoslav began to tell the writer about Belgrade. He described the turrets and churches, how the city was built upon three hills. He talked about the rich houses covered with delicate tile mosaics and the ancient part of the city with its narrow winding streets and high white walls. He described the parks and lakes full of little boats and the profusion of flowers and the small bands of musicians that wandered through the outdoor cafés. He described the smell of cinnamon and bread baking and flowers and the smell of some sharp spice that one found everywhere.”

I glanced at Malgiolio, but he was giving the same attention to his soup that he had given to his oysters and seemed unaware of our presence at the table. As for Dalakis, he occasionally took a spoonful of soup, spilling a little on his tie, a little on his chin, then dabbing at himself carelessly with his blue napkin.

“As months passed, the walls of the writer's cell began to fill with words, and he and the Yugoslav began to have very simple conversations in this language, this Serbo-Croatian. The writer, who was a sort of wanderer, began to develop a passion to visit Belgrade, to see these places the Yugoslav described so vividly. And he felt that in this acquisition of language and by obtaining an exact description of the city, he was creating for himself a place to live, even a homeland.

“A year went by, then a second and a third. At last the Yugoslav and the writer held all their discussions in Serbo-Croatian. Furthermore, the writer had managed to get paper and began to write poetry in this language, for you see he had made up his mind that when he left prison, he would go to Belgrade and work there and try to be happy and knit together the fragments of his life. And so he wrote and read his work to the Yugoslav, who praised it and made suggestions and would help him with some difficult idiom. And then the Yugoslav would tell more about Belgrade, about its boulevards and streets, until along with the thousands of words which covered the walls, the writer also began to draw a map of the city and would ask the Yugoslav just where this cathedral stood or the palace or the municipal gardens or the train station or the circus which was open every day of the year.”

“Did he get out of prison or didn't he?” asked Malgiolio, who had finished his soup and was lighting another of his colored cigarettes, a green one. His tone was hardly polite.

“Yes, of course he did.”

“Then what happened?”

The door opened and Pacheco appeared, walked to the table, and took his seat at the head. “I'm not quite finished but I wanted to stop in for a moment.” He rang a little bell by his plate and immediately the boy entered with a cup of soup.

“Dalakis has been telling us an endless story about a Yugoslav,” complained Malgiolio. “Do you know anything further about what's going on?”

“The lieutenant didn't know much. He wasn't certain who was firing at them. He said there was still fighting at the university and he had heard a story about the air force taking over a garrison in the southern part of the city. It was his idea that the air force had supplied weapons to the factory workers, but I'm not sure he had any real evidence of that.”

As I had noticed Dalakis's hands, so I looked at Pacheco's, which were long and narrow and very pale, almost as if he powdered them. The nails were perfect and I thought they must require a lot of attention. I found myself thinking of Baudelaire, who, at the end of his life and despite his poverty and ill-health, reassured his mother that he still spent three hours of each day on his toilette.

“And we have to spend the night?” asked Malgiolio.

“Yes, unless you want to be shot. Those are the lieutenant's orders. But don't worry, you'll be well taken care of. Now, if you'll excuse me another moment. . . .” Pacheco got to his feet, patted his mouth with his napkin, and left the room, his rubber-soled shoes making slight squeaking noises on the marble floor.

I expect we felt ready to complain but, really, who was there to complain to? The three of us had been quite eager to visit Pacheco's and had driven through danger to get here. Others of our group had seemingly refused to go out on such a night. But we three had an additional hunger. Malgiolio had his envy and spite, Dalakis had his loneliness, and I my curiosity. I suppose we had other reasons as well, reasons not immediately clear, for certainly we had risked our lives, and who is foolish enough to do that just for curiosity or loneliness or envy?

“So finish your story,” I said to Dalakis. “What happened to the writer?”

But Dalakis's feelings had been mildly bruised. “Why should I talk just so Malgiolio can make fun of me?”

“Oh, you know what he's like,” I said. Malgiolio wrinkled his nose, then took his butter knife and mockingly sawed it back and forth across his neck. I pretended not to notice. “Did the writer go to Belgrade?” I asked.

“Well, yes, but he was in prison for over eight years, then he still had trouble with the police and had to settle his affairs, but at last he obtained a visa and eventually he got to Belgrade. But it was all wrong. Nothing was as he expected.”

“What do you mean?” asked Malgiolio, who was picking at his thumbnail with the tines of his fork.

“You see, he had gone there with his poems written in Serbo-Croatian and when he got to Belgrade it turned out not to be Serbo-Croatian after all.”

“You mean, he didn't know Serbo-Croatian?” I asked.

“That's right. He would speak to people and even write down the words but no one could understand him.”

“What language was he speaking?” asked Malgiolio.

“None, apparently. The Yugoslav had invented the whole thing. He must have been writing words on the wall just like the writer and when the writer asked the word for ‘cat' the Yugoslav would say something like ‘lork' and the writer would dutifully write it down.”

“What about the city,” I asked, “was that made up too?”

“You mean there's not a Belgrade?” asked Malgiolio.

“Of course there's a Belgrade,” answered Dalakis, “but it was entirely different from what the writer expected. The Yugoslav had probably never been to Belgrade. The whole city was an invention. In fact, he probably wasn't even a Yugoslav. God knows what he was. But even worse was that the writer had all these poems written in fake Serbo-Croatian, which nobody could understand except the fake Yugoslav himself. Later, the writer tried to translate them into his own language, but it was no good. He fell that in this false language he had written some of his best work and now it was lost. The translations were pale shadows. What was beautiful in one language was ugly in the other.”

“It's impossible,” said Malgiolio crossly. “Nobody could invent a language like that.”

“Did he leave?” I asked. “What happened?”

“He stayed in Belgrade. He'd left everything else behind and even though this Belgrade was far different from what he had hoped for, it was still the only place he had. So he stayed and earned his money by teaching language classes and tried to translate his poems. Eventually, he even learned Serbo-Croatian, but it was nothing like the language he had learned in prison.”

“Carl, is that a true story?” I asked.

“I was told it was true.”

“Why didn't he search out that Yugoslav and shoot him?” said Malgiolio, becoming increasingly irritated. “Think of the time he'd wasted, year after year, writing stuff that had no value.”

“But it was the best work of his career,” said Dalakis.

“So what?” answered Malgiolio. “Nobody could read it. Bah, it's a stupid story.”

Dalakis seemed both apologetic and annoyed. “I thought Batterby would be interested. I mean about the writing.”

“Why Yugoslavia, why Belgrade?” asked Malgiolio scornfully. “Why not here if you've got to make up a story?”

“But I didn't make it up,” said Dalakis, getting angry.

It struck me that Belgrade was more romantic but obviously it could have been any city. I found myself trying to remember that joke about the twentieth-century condition: the marooned sailor sees the bottle bobbing through the waves. Inside the bottle is a sheet of paper. Is there a message? No, the paper is blank. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at telling jokes and anyway no one was in the mood for further stories. But why did Dalakis think I'd be interested? Certainly I didn't believe him any more than did Malgiolio.

—

The door opened and the boy and Señora Puccini entered. Really, it was impossible to see her without thinking of Pacheco's words. I stared at her pocket to see if she was still carrying the pistol, but her black skirt was so voluminous that I couldn't tell.

Malgiolio tried to get her attention. “The soup was superb,” he said. He spoke almost flirtatiously, showing his little teeth as he smiled.

Señora Puccini nodded but made no comment as she and the boy gathered our dishes. After a moment she went out, then returned shortly wheeling a cart containing the fish course: a large cold salmon with crayfish, asparagus tips, artichoke hearts, and what seemed to be deviled eggs. The crayfish were riding piggyback on the salmon, while the deviled eggs, artichoke hearts, and asparagus formed a decorative border. There was more wine, a fine Corton-Charlemagne. The middle portion of the salmon had been skinned and its head and the length of its body were outlined with mayonnaise. The thought of eating this gastronomic phantasm seemed absurd, but after Señora Puccini had given us a chance to admire it she plunged a sharp knife into its body without hesitation.

As we were being served, Malgiolio said rather offhandedly, “By the way, Batterby, Schwab told me you were getting married. Is that true?”

For forty years Eric Schwab has been given to making excessive statements. He is something high up in the police and this evening, I guessed, he was off banging heads, or worse. I couldn't imagine why he should have said such a thing.

“I have no intention of getting married,” I said, as I watched Señora Puccini scoop servings of salmon onto three green plates, which were themselves in the shapes of fish. “It wouldn't occur to me.”

“He said he saw you with a tall, dark-haired woman at a restaurant downtown.”

“That's true enough but I don't plan to marry her. I see many women.” I suppose I don't see “many,” but there are two or three I go out with occasionally.

“I wouldn't mind being in your shoes,” said Malgiolio, “able to chase after anyone. That's the hard part of living with one's mother and being supported by one's wife. There must be many attractive women at the newspaper.”

“A few, but they don't necessarily find me attractive.”

“And how long's your wife been dead?”

It is typical of Malgiolio that he should find this an appropriate exchange of conversation to be indulged in while waiting for one's food, specifically fish. Besides, he asks me this question every six months, but the difficulty with tonight and there only being four of us was that everything became magnified. In any case, I told him what I had told him before. “Twenty years.”

I took a small bite of cold salmon. How impossible it is to describe the taste of food. It's so ephemeral. Once I had a glass of Grand Marnier which had been bottled in the year of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. With it I had a glass of more or less contemporary Grand Marnier. Although the older stuff was incomparably superior, I could find no way to describe it. Smokier somehow, and thicker, and multi-layered with lots of little tastes. Well, I tasted it and it was gone. The salmon was like that, more like a color than a taste, a pale yellow, a light green, except that I am not allowed to eat eggs or mayonnaise and crayfish upset my stomach.

“How did your wife die again?” asked Malgiolio.

“It was a skiing accident. We were in Switzerland.”

“Did you see it happen?”

“No, I was below. They brought her down on a sled. She was still alive but she died very shortly after. Her neck was broken. If she'd lived, she would have been paralyzed for life.”

“You must have missed her terribly,” said Dalakis, pausing with his fork raised halfway to his mouth.

“It's over now, fortunately.”

As we were talking, Pacheco came into the room behind me. I hadn't heard him. He took his seat at the head of the table and looked at me. At first I thought he was going to speak but instead he poured himself a glass of wine and sipped it slowly.

“The soldiers are gone,” he said at last. “The house is ours, at least for a while. How is the salmon?”

“Malgiolio can hardly get enough of it,” I said. Then I realized I was upset with Malgiolio.

“It would please my cook,” said Pacheco, “to know how you appreciate her hard work. May I ring for her?”

“By all means,” said Dalakis. “She must be a wonderful woman.”

Pacheco rang the little bell by his plate. “She's been with me for nearly twenty years.”