The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (9 page)

“You must entertain often,” I said.

“Dinners for other doctors and people at the hospital, and then I'm on the board of several organizations and the ballet, of course. I expect I give just enough dinners to keep her happy.”

Señora Puccini appeared at the door. When talking to us, Pacheco seemed caring and affectionate; talking to her, he appeared to take on her coldness. “Could you tell Justine that the gentlemen are ready to pay their compliments?”

As we waited for the cook, Pacheco ate quickly, giving little attention to his food. Admittedly, it was approaching eight-thirty and he was probably hungry, but I couldn't help thinking that food didn't mean much to him, that he employed a great cook because it amused his vanity. The floor of the dining room was also marble and the outside wall was stone, so that our voices reverberated as in a well. As we waited for the cook, the room was mostly silent except for the echoing clatter of Pacheco's fork against his plate. Dalakis and Malgiolio tried to have a conversation about whom of our group they had seen in the past six months, but it turned out they had seen no one.

I occupied myself by studying the vases which held those huge bouquets of flowers. Each was perhaps two feet high and painted with brightly colored scenes. The one nearest me on my left showed a kind of wedding celebration with people in medieval dress dancing and drinking wine. But most were violent: men fighting in the street, someone sneaking into a darkened room with a dagger. It was only when I saw one with a man speaking to a human skull that I realized they were scenes from Shakespeare. More vases stood on small tables around the room and all told there must have been a dozen: the death of Caesar, Lear mad upon the heath, the murder of the children in the Tower.

After five minutes, there came a little tap on the door, which then opened and the boy entered, followed by the old woman I had seen in the kitchen. But what I had not realized before, yet what struck me now as immediately obvious, was that the woman was blind. Her eyes were solid gray. As she walked, the boy guided her by touching her elbow. She was quite stout and short with a round face and a great amount of white hair tied up in a bun on the back of her head. She wore a long black dress with a white apron. I thought she must be eighty, even though her face was relatively unlined. We were so surprised by her blindness that we stared without speaking. Pacheco introduced her as Madame Letendre and then told her our names. After each name, she gave a little bob of her head.

“Well, gentlemen,” she said, “how do you enjoy my little dinner?” She had a high clear voice, more like a child's than an old woman's, and as she spoke, she didn't face us but stood turned away to the right.

We remained silent, still struck by her blindness. Then Dalakis spoke up. “It's the best dinner I've ever eaten. You must have been working for weeks. We are greatly honored.”

Madame Letendre began to smile and her smile too was like a child's because of the way it lit up her face. “You don't think I'm too old or too clumsy?” There was a touch of the coquette in her voice.

“It is perfect,” said Malgiolio, toasting her with his glass, which, of course, she couldn't see. “I'm only sorry that I'm not in the position to lure you away from your employer.”

She began turning back and forth as if looking for something. “And what does the third guest think?” she asked. “Where is he?”

Surprised, I began to cough. “Excellent,” I said. “It's really wonderful.”

She curtsied somewhat stiffly and continued to smile, but the smile had taken on an ironic quality. “And where is Daniel?” she said to the boy. “Direct me to him.”

“Are you going to ask what I think as well?” asked Pacheco, taking her hand and stroking it. He was smoking again and he waved the smoke away from her face.

“No, you too think it the best you've ever eaten. That's what you always say. Never mind your flattery. Grant me a favor instead.”

“What is it?”

As I watched the old woman and her employer, I thought that Pacheco looked at her with more affection than I'd ever seen him show to anyone.

“I wish to go home before the dessert. Would that be possible? My dog is alone, she will be worried.”

Pacheco continued to hold Madame Letendre's hand. “I'm sorry, Justine, but that's impossible. There's a curfew.”

Justine drew her hand away. “But it is only a short distance. Who would bother an old woman? My dog has never been alone all night. What could happen in three blocks?”

“You could be killed. It's out of the question, Justine. There's plenty of room upstairs and Señora Puccini will see that you're made comfortable.”

Madame Letendre continued to protest. It was clear she had no idea what was happening in the city except that it was something that might frighten her dog. Pacheco was gentle but firm. She would have to stay in the house. As I listened, I realized I had been wrong about what I'd seen in the kitchen. Señora Puccini could not have been showing the gun to the cook. She had been looking at it herself. It occurred to me to mention the gun but it didn't seem my place. Anyway, how do you work it into the conversation that you have seen the housekeeper with a small pistol?

After another minute of arguing, the cook reached out and touched a hand to Pacheco's cheek. “All right, Daniel, I'll do as you wish. But if my little dog is miserable, then you must comfort her. And now, gentlemen, you must excuse me. It was an honor to make your acquaintance.” We, in our various ways, spoke of our pleasure in meeting her and smiled and tried to look agreeable as she turned and let the boy guide her from the room.

Once the door was completely closed, Malgiolio asked, “How can she possibly cook if she's blind?”

Pacheco sipped his wine and studied Malgiolio over the rim of the glass. “The boy helps her, as does Señora Puccini. And of course she knows her way perfectly around the kitchen.”

“But how can she remember the recipes?” asked Dalakis, looking at each of us in turn. “It's astonishing.”

“The same way that a singer memorizes songs. And then she combines and invents and extemporizes. In some ways, the blindness makes her even more sensitive. Her sense of taste becomes an exact instrument.”

“How long has she been blind?” I asked.

“Twenty-five years. Before that she was the cook at the French embassy. When she went blind, they retired her. She had family in the south and that's where I found her, cooking simple meals for people who wouldn't care if they ate cat food. She was literally dying from having nothing to do. I hired her on the spot. The boy is her grandson. And there is another grandson who is my gardener.”

“You seem to have brought all your servants from the south,” said Malgiolio. “Is Señora Puccini from there as well?”

“Yes, but she wasn't a servant.”

“But don't you consider her your servant now?”

“That's our arrangement. In the south, however, her family was quite well known. They were small landowners. She herself had an excellent education and even, at one point, a little money.”

Dalakis made an unsettled noise, a kind of growling in his chest. “Why did you say you had ruined her?” he asked. Then he looked embarrassed, took off his glasses, and began cleaning them.

“Because that is what happened.” Pacheco said this perfectly calmly.

“Was it money?”

“You mean did I bankrupt her?”

“Yes.” Dalakis continued to fiddle with his glasses, blinking his eyes and still looking embarrassed.

Leaning forward, Pacheco stared at Dalakis. His expression seemed derisive. “When a man is accused of ruining a woman, there is only one way in which the term is meant.”

“What happened?” asked Malgiolio.

Pacheco turned his attention to Malgiolio, who had asked the question rather quickly. Instead of answering, Pacheco lit another cigarette. The smoke from the Gauloise mixed with the perfume from the flowers.

“Who was she?” asked Dalakis after a moment.

“She was the girl in the photograph, only prettier, if that is possible. A beautiful girl, eighteen years old, and I was a young surgeon, just twenty-eight.”

“And you ruined her?” asked Malgiolio, again pressing him close. His white, puffy face was slightly puckered in the way a fish must look before it snatches the hook.

Pacheco held out the bottle to pour Malgiolio more wine. He looked at my glass but it was still full. “It's not as simple as that. I didn't just pick her up and break her. It wasn't whim or common desire. There have been many women I've taken without wanting, merely out of boredom or to satisfy an itch. This situation was different. First I had to develop a hunger. She had to fill my mind. You must realize, I had seen her often, sometimes walking in the parks with her aunt or fiancé, or in the tea shops or along the esplanade, even in church. I knew that her parents were dead. I knew she was just out of school. But I had no desire. She was simply another beautiful woman.”

The door opened and Señora Puccini reentered, wheeling a cart to remove the dishes. Dalakis looked at her guiltily and perhaps I did as well. As she walked to the table, Pacheco said, “The gentlemen are curious about your life with me, Señora.”

The woman appeared not to have heard. If she was ten years younger than Pacheco, then she was about half a dozen years younger than she appeared.

“Aren't you curious what I might tell them?”

Señora Puccini paused with several of the fish-shaped plates in her hands. “I expect you will tell them the truth,” she said, not looking at him, “or what you think is the truth.”

Glancing at her, I noticed she wore no adornments of any kind, no rings, not even a watch, and her face bore no sign of makeup. Her hair was shoulder length and held back with pins. Her black dress had a black leather belt with a dull tin buckle. Her black shoes were more like a man's than a woman's. Black shoes, black stockings, black dress—one imagined that even her underwear was black.

When she had left the room, Malgiolio asked, “How did your feelings change? How did you become hungry?” He tried to ask this nonchalantly, but one could hear his own hunger in his voice. You know those people who go to parties to collect anecdotes, hoping for the worst in order to amuse their friends later? Malgiolio was like that.

Why did Pacheco decide to tell the story? It may have been the oddness of the evening, as if it weren't really taking place within our lives. It may have been because there were so few of us and because of who we were. If more had been there, perhaps he would have kept silent. As for the three of us, we were unimportant. It didn't matter if we knew. Also we were tied to Pacheco, not just by friendship, but by envy or admiration, maybe even hatred, though none of us would admit hatred. But also I think he would have said nothing if it hadn't been for that brief interruption by Señora Puccini and her pretense that she was indifferent to all that happened; and I sensed that Pacheco liked to test this indifference, perhaps from amusement or anger or perhaps something else. Also, I'm sure the story was a great presence inside of him. Not that he needed to unburden himself; but rather, it formed a major part of his life and was something, I feel certain of it, that he'd never told another soul. As for us, we were eager listeners. We were hungry for his story in the same way we had been hungry for the dinner at his house. Beyond that, we all had major failures in our lives and so were curious about the strife of others. Perhaps that's why he told us, because who cares more to hear about the battle than those who have been wounded?

The three of us waited. Dalakis clasped and unclasped his great hands. Malgiolio plucked a red flower from the nearest vase and idly removed its petals.

“It began at a concert,” said Pacheco, lighting another cigarette, “one of those small chamber concerts during late spring where the musicians are made up of one's neighbors. This one was outside. They were playing Brahms's Clarinet quintet and then something by Mozart. The musicians sat in a white gazebo affair with a lot of gingerbread decoration and a little flag on top. The audience, which was rather small, was seated on lawn chairs in a rough semicircle. It was to have been a larger event but it had rained in the afternoon and there was a threat of rain to come and many people stayed away.

“I had a seat to the side by myself. I'm not even sure why I went. Restlessness, most likely. Just before the music began, Señora Puccini arrived with her aunt and a young man. They sat down slightly behind me and to my right—the girl, the aunt, then the young man. She wore a cream-colored dress, very low-cut. Even so, I scarcely noticed her. Of course, my mind registered a beautiful woman, but I suppose I thought her too young and too . . . well, too clean-looking, as if she weren't a woman but a doll. Then, after the music began, I reached down and happened to brush the back of my hand against her shoe. It was quite dark among the audience. There were torches or tapers around the perimeter, but otherwise we were in shadow. At first I wasn't sure what I had touched. I gently felt for it again and my fingers touched the heel, the sole, the narrowness of her foot.”

“What's her first name?” I interrupted. “You can't call her Señora Puccini if you are discussing a girl of eighteen.”

Pacheco tapped the ash from his Gauloise. “Antonia,” he said, “but at that time I didn't know her name. I knew her by sight, but we hadn't been introduced. For that matter, we were never introduced, not properly at least.”

“What happened with the foot?” asked Malgiolio, who with his precise sense of value had a way of keeping all conversations on track.

“As I say, I had touched it. Actually, I had squeezed it, trying to determine what it was. Once I realized it was a foot, I moved my hand quickly away. For a few moments I listened to the music. You know the piece, how the clarinet drifts and swirls above the strings like a spirit above the earth? Do you also know the Tolstoy story about the Beethoven sonata? Well, this occasion was nothing like Tolstoy's, yet there was passion in the music. In fact, there was a kind of passion all around us, for in the distance the lightning flickered and there was a faint rumble of thunder and the breeze felt full of distant rain. And then it occurred to me that although I had touched the foot and although she must have felt my hand, she had made no movement.”