Ben Soul

by Richard George

the dirt on their edges. He gathered the household seldom used them. A massive dining table, surrounded with four side chairs on each side and two captain’s chairs at the ends dominated the center of the room. An elaborate sideboard stood on the far wall.

  His eyes must have bulged with surprise, because Elke said, “Take heart, Mr. Soul, we’ll be eating in the breakfast nook. La Señora seldom uses this room.” She took him then through a door into a comfortable smaller room. “In the house’s glory days,” she said, “this room was a staging area between the kitchen and the grand dining room. Now we use it to take our meals. It’s much cozier for two or three.”

  He observed the table could easily have seated six. This table was set with delicate china patterned with bluebells and pink roses. It, too, looked old, but was very clean. The silver flatware was ornate and heavy. Intertwined roses wreathed its handles. La Señora sat at one end of the table, dressed today in lavender lace and gray cotton. Her gown was elegantly cut, and fashionable in the 1940s. It was a more modern style than Ben associated with her.

  “Welcome, Mr. Soul,” she said. “Please forgive me for not rising. My knees are not cooperating today.”

  “Certainly, Ma’am,” he said. “Knees can betray one at the most inopportune times.”

  She smiled. Little sparks of humor danced in her eyes. “I attribute my patellas’ weakness to too many hours on the prayer bench in my youth.”

  “I attribute mine to arthritic ancestors,” he said. “One of the lesser gifts of my genetics.”

  “Please, Mr. Soul, sit here, to my right. Elke, please serve the soup, now.”

  Elke went to the kitchen, returned with three soup plates filled with beef broth delicately infused with fresh marjoram, and very thin shiitake mushroom slices. They took up their spoons and fell to work. The mushrooms were just cooked enough to be tender, not mushy. The beef broth had a gentle background of garlic, carrot, and onion that aroused the piquance of the marjoram.

  La Señora made obligatory comments about the weather over the soup. As Elke brought in the salad of crisp lettuces and refreshing cucumber lightly dressed in lime vinaigrette, La Señora said to Ben, “I understand a dog has adopted you.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I call her Butter. She’s a great companion.”

  “Dogs are better than people,” Elke said as she put his salad in front of him.

  “Elke is jaundiced about her own species, Mr. Soul,” La Señora said. “She has always preferred dogs and cats to people.”

  “I like people better than scorpions,” Elke responded. The conversation had the feel of an old joke often played out between the two women. La Señora took a forkful of salad, and they said no more until they had cleared their plates.

  As Elke took away the salad plates, La Señora asked Ben, “Were you here for the great quake in ‘77?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I had just come to the city. The quake hit in May. I was terrified, and excited, all at once.”

  “I was living in the City at the time, myself. Did you lose your home?”

  “No, I was in a hotel that survived. I went downtown to help. That’s how I met Len. He organized a brigade of volunteers. I tended the fires for boiling water with broken bits of furniture, paneling, and the like. The triage clinic used the water to sterilize their instruments.”

  “Ah,” she responded. “So you, too, had a significant event happen because of the quake.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “We shall talk more of that later. I regret to say, Mr. Soul, that our luncheon is a modest one today. We have only one entrée, a medallion of pork, in a Marsala sauce, with saffron risotto and new peas. If this doesn’t suit your palate, perhaps Elke can arrange something else for you.”

  “Señora, it sounds delicious,” he said. Elke served it, and it was delicious.

  “Elke,” La Señora said when they had finished their entrees, “I think dessert in the library, with English Breakfast tea.”

  “Certainly, La Señora,” she said. “Let me help you rise.” She pulled back her chair and provided a stout arm for La Señora to use to lever herself up. Then she handed her an ornate ivory and ebony cane, fashioned like the head and neck of a llama.

  “Your arm, Mr. Soul,” La Señora said to Ben. He offered it, and they walked through the dining room to the corridor and along it to the library. La Señora smelled like roses and vanilla. He assisted her in settling into the great armchair, and then sat where he had on his interview visit. Elke brought their desserts, a light meringue baked with almond slices embedded in it, and their tea.

  “Your cook is excellent,” he said.

  “Yes,” La Señora said. “He’s also an excellent llama herder. He could make a fortune in a City restaurant, if he were not so averse to wearing clothes.”

  “Oh?”

  “Willy Waugh, my cook and general servant, wears nothing more than a pair of briefs in all weathers. I tolerate his lack of modesty because he is so valuable with the llamas I keep.”

  “You have llamas on the mountain?”

  “Yes. They are from my mother’s side of the family. She was Peruvian, you see, and she inherited them from her father. That was all long ago, and a tale for another time. Tell me about your Len. You were together a long time?”

  “Yes. We met during the aftermath of the quake, as I said. He was a take-charge kind of guy. It wasn’t until several days later I realized he had organized the volunteer brigade with no more authority than his bearing and his voice. He was a handsome man, six foot three, and quick to find solutions for problems. I asked him once how he commanded people so well. He said he expected them to follow reasonable orders, and most people did. Especially in a crisis.”

  “Did you fall in love with him right away?”

  “Oh, no. I wasn’t sure enough of myself to love anybody when I met Len. He had to teach me to find that in myself. I didn’t see him for almost a year. I dated him more than a year after that before we became lovers.”

  “Prudent, to become acquainted first. So many men I have observed begin with lust, and do not complete the transition to commitment easily.”

  He nodded, not quite sure what to say to this. He sipped at his tea, using its astringency to rinse the meringue sweetness from his mouth.

  “Was he as commanding as a lover as he was with relief effort volunteers?”

  “No, though sometimes the commander in him came out. I’m not easy to command, and we learned to balance our personalities. He prodded me to be all I could. I’d never have gone so far in computer software without his urging. Funny thing, he never got entirely comfortable with computers, though he learned to use them in later life.”

  “He was older than you are?”

  “Yes, by twelve years. It didn’t seem like a great gap, even at the beginning. We had sufficient outlooks in common to share most opinions. We both loved Gilbert and Sullivan, and county music. It was a great shock to me when he turned old. It seemed to me he got old years before he should have. He had always been so vital. Then the heart trouble started. He grew stooped and had trouble walking and standing. It’s as if everything in his body wore out at the same time.” Ben’s cheeks were wet. He had not realized he was still so sad.

  “I have probed a painful place, Mr. Soul.”

  “It’s a familiar pain,” he said. “I just keep it wrapped up, most of the time.” He took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. He thanked himself internally for remembering to put a clean fresh handkerchief in his pocket. It was habit Len helped him form.

  “It’s good to let it out,” he went on. “Only a few people bother to listen. I think most of us are afraid of looking at suffering.”

  “Yes, we are. Old age is a painful thing, often. The pain drives out the joy and peace that reflection on a life well-lived can bring.”

  “Yes. When I wake up aching in every joint, I forget to be grateful
I’ve wakened at all.”

  La Señora chuckled, a dry, rattling sort of chuckle. “Yes, Mr. Soul. I often wait for afternoons to be happy about another day.” She poured him tea. “I think San Danson village has been good for you, Mr. Soul.”

  “It has,” he said. “Some frozen part of me is thawing. Slowly, perhaps, but thawing. Butter has a lot to do with it.”

  “Dogs are one kind of blessing.” She smiled at him. He was a little surprised her severe elegance could sport such a genuine and human smile. It lit her porcelain face with a glow like moonlight.

  “Elke has warned me about tiring you too much, Señora. Please tell me if I’m overstaying my welcome.”

  “Not yet, though you are kind to pay attention to Elke’s fussing. Do stay a little while, if you can. I’d like to tell you something.”

  “Certainly, I can. I’m at my own leisure, within the limits Butter puts on me.”

  She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. A dreaming look came over her face, again softening its severe elegance, and stripping twenty years from her features.

  “My mother was Quechua, born high in the Andes. Her father was a priest, a sort of curandéro, of a religion older than the Incas. The Spanish hierarchy in Peru, of course, proscribed the rites and beliefs of all indigenous religions. My grandfather practiced his beliefs in secret. Of my grandmother, I know nothing. Mother never spoke of her.”

  “Mother quarreled with her father over a young man she favored, a