The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (15 page)

I hurried back along the balcony and took my place with the group playing croquet. A little later Cora joined me. She appeared flushed and kept laughing. She wanted me to go with her out onto the dark lawns. She kept touching me and stroking me but I refused. Not long afterward I took her home. For some reason it never occurred to me not to marry her. I mean, the arrangements, the dates, the invitations, that whole process had already begun, and I didn't have the energy to stop it even if I wanted to. And then, I was very much in love. When she was killed during our honeymoon I had a kind of nervous breakdown and went away for several months. When I returned, my house was empty of all trace of her except for a few photographs. It was spring again. I resumed my work at the newspaper, became accustomed to my bachelor life, my solitary house, my neighbors, and to the old man selling his vegetables from the back of his wagon, shouting as he went up and down the street, “Onions, fresh tomatoes!” or turning to me and saying, “Wind coming, cold nights ahead.”

I find it difficult to give an accurate account of what happened that night at Pacheco's and an accurate account of what I felt. The professional reporter, of course, maintains his objectivity, but I was to some degree a participant. To crouch on Pacheco's balcony, to see the horse shot and lying dead in the street, to think of the old man and his tomatoes and the history we had shared, then to have this image, this picture leap into my mind—my fiancée lying back on the paper-littered desk, staring through the window into the night, staring in fact at me, while the expression on her face changed from utter passivity to passion. Truly, what first leapt into my mind was just this image of her face, then it was as if the camera drew back and I saw Pacheco, the room, the huge house, and me standing out on the balcony. To have this picture appear in my head was horrible and if I could have swept it away, leaving me with the equivalent of a dark smudge on the floor—the evidence of horror without the horror itself—then I would have done so without hesitation.

But perhaps that image of Cora was in fact the smudge on the floor, perhaps it concealed something even more awful. It is no great difficulty to relate most events—the tree fell, the house burned, the dog died—but the causality of human events is emotional and submerged, as subterranean as the pressure creating a volcano. “Pursued by threat of war and violence in the streets, we came to a friend's house for dinner.” What lies behind those words? What was the emotional event? And did I want to know? That is the question that the reporter must ask himself: Does he really want to know? Which returns me to my pseudo-Borges story: Even if he wants to know, is he in fact capable of knowing?

That party at the country estate occurred long before we ever decided to meet as a group. Pacheco was living in the south and rarely came to the city. Malgiolio worked near the paper and sometimes we would have lunch. He was a clerk in a hotel and felt certain he would someday become manager. In the classified ads section of the paper was a woman, a typist, whom Malgiolio was rather excited about, and I often felt he came to see me just so he could see her as well. Not that she was attractive: tall and overweight with a square, pock-marked face. I never knew what he saw in her. He would bring her flowers and write her poems. She thought him ridiculous but I believe she went out with him two or three times.

As I sat on Pacheco's balcony, I found myself thinking of Malgiolio's admission, his infatuation with this woman who would piss on him. I tried to imagine him standing outside her house staring at her windows. I realized that here was a man I'd known for forty years and really I hadn't known him at all. It's not just that he let a woman urinate on him. It was winning the lottery, quitting his job, squandering the money, and being unable to find work. It was cheating and stealing and borrowing money so he could be with this other woman. Certainly Malgiolio had felt passion, and his love, no matter how sordid, was as fierce as any of the romantic stories one finds in history books. Indeed, perhaps it was hardly different from Pacheco's feelings for Señora Puccini. Although I thought myself fortunate not to have experienced such a feeling, it made me wonder if I had any knowledge of these people. I had known them all my life, yet they were strangers.

I am trying to set down the exact progression of my thoughts. It was not Pacheco's story and the violence in the city that made me decide I wanted to write, but Malgiolio's story. At first I didn't want to write specifically about this evening but to write a story about betrayal in which these people would occur. But then I decided to write it out as it happened, to describe the evening as a long process of discovery—discoveries about what was going on in the city, in the house, with Pacheco and his housekeeper, with Malgiolio and Dalakis and even myself. Really, I had entered this evening in a state of ignorance and now my mind seemed changed. How could I ever look at Malgiolio again without thinking of that blond woman squatting over him and digging her heels into his sides? But perhaps it wasn't even Malgiolio but my own memories which were the beginning. Perhaps it was that damn horse. Because aren't we always writing about ourselves and our obsessions? I had gone through great danger to come to Pacheco's house. I had thought I had come for one set of reasons, then I saw I had come for another. And because my greatest desire was to be a writer, I decided to take paper and pencil and set those reasons down. But is any of this true? Could it not be just some great piece of papier mâché machinery designed to convince me of my own correctitude? Wouldn't Dalakis and Malgiolio write entirely different stories in which I might figure badly?

—

As these ideas gathered within me and my perturbation increased, I heard a noise at the door. Turning, I saw Dalakis stepping onto the balcony. He stood with his hands in his pockets and looked like a tourist gawking at the view. He had no sense of the danger and with more exasperation than I cared to show, I told him to crouch down and not reveal himself.

He squatted down perfectly amicably but with a slightly worried expression, like someone who has left home and is certain he has forgotten something. “So there you are. We've been searching for you all over. The cook and her grandson have disappeared. Pacheco is awfully upset.” He settled his glasses more firmly on his nose and leaned over the balcony to take another look around.

“I was just clearing my head,” I told him. “I keep sensing great waves of movement occurring throughout the city. There's fighting here, fighting there, yet it's all a mystery.”

But Dalakis wasn't listening. He was staring down at the dead horse. I have tried to show something of his natural sympathy but his expression at seeing this dead animal, which I had almost forgotten, was one of such shock and dismay that at first I thought he was looking at something else, and without thinking I reached out to touch his arm.

“That horse,” he said, “what happened?”

“Somebody shot it. It belongs to an old fellow who's sold vegetables around here for as long as I can remember.”

“I've never seen it before,” said Dalakis. He continued to stare at the horse, until I began to feel impatient. Was this his first awareness that awful things were occurring in the city? Had he no imagination? But it turned out he wasn't thinking of the events of this night but of another violence entirely.

“You know,” he said, as he leaned out over the balcony, “I once killed a horse that looked something like that—a white horse, although mine also had a white tail and mane.”

I didn't know what he was talking about. “You mean because it was old?” I asked. As a child I had sometimes watched farmers kill their old horses. They would dig a hole, often using the horse itself, then the farmer would shoot the horse so it would fall into its own grave. I assumed this was what Dalakis was referring to and was about to add that it must be difficult to kill an animal one has grown fond of.

“No,” said Dalakis. “I was walking across a field and the horse just happened to be there. It was a young horse. I walked up to it and when it started to move away I shot it, not killing it but crippling its rear legs so it fell. Then I walked around to the front and shot it in the head. I was twelve at the time. It was the only animal I've ever killed.”

“But why did you do it?” I asked. Dalakis is such a gentle person that his confession quite startled me.

“I had gone hunting with my father. As a matter of fact, we'd gone out hunting about a dozen times and I'd never killed anything. I'd taken shots but I always aimed to miss. This particular day there'd been a deer right in front of me and I had refused to shoot. My father was about ten yards behind me and watched me raise my rifle, then lower it again. He tried to get a shot but I was in the way. He asked me why I hadn't fired and I said I hadn't wanted to hurt the deer. So he cut a switch from a tree and beat me. Then we walked back through the woods and across the field toward his car. He stayed ahead of me, not wanting to have anything to do with me.

“When I saw the horse and got up close to it I just raised my rifle and shot. It collapsed but it wasn't dead. It was making the most awful noise. My father came running back. When he'd almost reached me, I shot the horse in the head. My father couldn't believe it. ‘Why'd you kill that horse?' he shouted. But I didn't know why I'd shot it. I'd just done it, that's all. ‘Why'd you kill the horse?' he shouted again. And I told him I'd done it because he'd wanted me to kill something and so there it was and he should feel proud. So he beat me again, not with a switch but with his hands. Then he tried to get out of the field but the farmer came riding up, and my father had to explain what had happened, that his son had accidently shot the horse, mistaking it for a deer. Shot it twice. I don't know if the farmer believed him but he made my father pay for the horse and of course he had to pay far more than the horse was worth. Then we went home and he beat me again. But that was the last time I had to go hunting and I've never fired a gun since.”

As Dalakis talked he sat back against the wall with his legs crossed Indian-style and his hands in his lap. His shoulders were hunched forward so that his whole body resembled a great sloppy ball. I remembered his father as a big gruff man who always wanted Carl to do well in sports. But Carl had been terrible at sports, falling over his feet and getting in everyone's way. In fact, Carl wasn't good at much of anything, except at not being cruel and caring for things no one else could be expected to care about. I recall once being surprised that he had given a relatively large amount of money to protect some bird from extinction. Or maybe it was a rodent or lizard. The plan was to improve its natural habitat, grow the sort of little weeds it liked to eat. Carl took the project quite seriously and we all laughed at him for it. But later I thought if it weren't for people like Carl, who knew how many little creatures, how many of the useless, the weak, and unfashionable would slip away into oblivion. He was the enemy of evolution. And if there were a fund for the preservation of the tonsils or the appendix, Carl would surely contribute.

As I was thinking about Carl and the quirks of his character, he had turned to look again at the horse. All of a sudden he stood up and pointed.

“There's Juan!”

I looked over the balcony and off to my right I saw the cook's grandson running along the sidewalk, crouched down and trying to stay close to the house fronts. The boy had heard Carl's voice because he looked up and called, “Get the doctor, quick, open the door!”

I hurried through the bathroom. It was pitch black but then I saw the candlelight from the great staircase. Dalakis came stumbling after me. I ran down the stairs and as I reached the hall, Pacheco and Malgiolio came out of the dining room. “It's Juan!” I called as I ran to the door. Pulling back the bolts, I yanked the door open. Juan half fell into the hall and I caught his arm. He was sobbing and seemed unable to catch his breath.

“Madame Letendre, she's been shot. I can't carry her. I left her around the corner. You must come. She's still alive.”

I found myself thinking of the figure who had killed the horse. I had no doubt that he or she, or even the soldiers, would shoot me just as readily if I ventured outside. Pacheco, however, didn't pause. He told the boy to get the wheelbarrow from the garden. As the boy disappeared, Señora Puccini hurried into the hall. Her mouth was half open in alarm and she held up a hand to cover it. She ran to the door.

“No,” said Pacheco, grabbing her arm. “I'll get her and one of my guests will help.”

I happened to be looking at Malgiolio as Pacheco spoke, and saw how he stepped back and seemed to fold into himself. But Dalakis volunteered even before Pacheco could make a specific request. The boy returned through the hall, wheeling the barrow, which made a great racket on the marble floor. Pacheco opened the door, looked out for a moment, then motioned to the others to follow. It was clear he was risking his life but he didn't hesitate and neither, it should be said, did Dalakis. I glanced at Señora Puccini but her face was again without expression.

“Come upstairs,” I told Malgiolio. “We can watch from the balcony.”

“Is it all right?” he asked uneasily.

“It's certainly safer than the street. No one can see us if we keep our heads down.”

I led the way upstairs and through the bathroom. Malgiolio followed nervously as if expecting to be hit over the head. Once on the balcony I again felt the great disparity between the apparent calm of the doctor's house and the city where large and mysterious events were happening. Beneath us we saw the boy, then Pacheco, then Dalakis carrying the wheelbarrow, presumably to keep it from making any noise. They stayed close to the house fronts and paused only to glance at the dead horse. Dalakis said something and Pacheco looked up at the balcony from where we were watching. Turning, he again ran up the street and we lost them at the corner.