The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (2015) by Stephen Dobyns

Author:Stephen Dobyns [Dobyns, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary, Mystery & Detective, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781101991800
Google: jgpfBwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2015-08-03T12:00:00+00:00

Five

As we descended the stairs from Roberto Collura’s room, I trailed behind, letting the circle of light thrown by Pacheco’s candle get about twenty feet ahead, separating me into the dark. Do you remember being caught by your parents doing something you shouldn’t? That’s how I felt when Señora Puccini had discovered us, and I wished to disassociate myself from my comrades. Not that I was less interested than they, but my interest, as well as theirs of course, felt slightly improper. It seemed unclean.

Naturally, it wasn’t, unless curiosity itself can be called unclean. But her anger and the way she had surprised us made me think I had behaved badly and so I hung back and watched my comrades descend the great candlelit staircase—Pacheco first in his gray suit, then Malgiolio short and rotund several steps behind, then Dalakis shambling and bearlike and rubbing his head. I paused at the top and once more had the sense of the layered quality of time and memory so that I wasn’t looking at my friends at just that particular moment but at many moments stretched over our boyhood. Always Pacheco was in the lead and too often we were returning from some deed that would have been better left undone. Then once more I pushed those other occasions from my mind as I watched Pacheco make his way across the hall to the cook, the noise of whose breathing still filled the house as water fills a cup. Juan sat cross-legged beside her, stroking her brow. Malgiolio paused by the fountain. I continued my descent and had just joined him and Dalakis when there was a great booming knock on the door.

The knocking was so aggressive that all three of us grew as nervous as forest creatures poised on the brink of flight. Is the comparison hyperbolic? Possibly in memory I had inflated an innocent reaction into a guilty one, although I am certain that emotionally, even irrationally, I tied the loud knocking to our expulsion from the bedroom of Roberto Collura. Let it be enough to say we were in a nervous state, which perhaps stemmed from no more than the night itself. Pacheco, who had been kneeling beside Madame Letendre, got to his feet. “Go into the dining room,” he said. “I’ll join you shortly.”

We didn’t run, but walked briskly. Why did I feel we would be called to account for our behavior? The image of the paralyzed man kept returning to me and I thought of him lying there year after year in the midst of that glittering clutter which existed not just to entertain him but to take the place of the world. We resumed our seats. My wine glass was full but I didn’t want any more. I found myself desiring sugar, chocolate, anything sweet, but surely that was the temptation of my disease, more aptly described by its German name: Zucrekrank, sugarsick.

The others turned out to be thinking about Roberto Collura as well. Dalakis leaned toward me and began to speak in a kind of urgent whisper.

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