The Love and Death of Caterina

by Andrew Nicoll

  Arsenio stood with his head bent and his fingers twined together, too ashamed to look up from the dirt. “Señor,” he said, “we can pay, but goats are stolen up and down the valley. In village after village it is spoken of, and always after the pedlar Miguel Ángel has passed by. He also should pay.”

  “Oh, shut up! And listen to what I have to say. It seems to me that there are just as many goats around the village as ever there were. The pedlar Miguel Ángel has stolen nothing and, who knows, when the time comes, perhaps you will find that he has left a few more little goats in your pen. He knows how to pay his way. All the little she-goats have been paid for from his pack. A bangle here and a hair comb there.”

  It was just then that the door of the fine house of Jose Pablo opened and his daughter stepped into the garden, bringing him the tray he had demanded with his coffee and his pile of ledgers.

  He pretended not to notice. “Who could have guessed that so many little she-goats could be bought so cheap? Not like this one, not like my own Dolõres, my diamond—and a diamond who knows her price. This is a proper girl. This is a girl with a pleasing, modest way about her.”

  And with a wave of his hand, as if he had been brushing the dust off his coat, he told them: “Now get out of here” and he picked up his coffee cup.

  They went away, grumbling.

  Now, when the pedlar Miguel Ángel went all the way up the valley, he walked through every village and lay where he stopped every night. When he walked north from the village of Jose Pablo it took him two weeks to reach the end of the valley and it took two weeks to come back. And then, after two weeks, when he walked south, it took him two weeks to reach the other end of the valley and it took two weeks to come back. So, every month, when the moon was at its fattest and shining like a lamp over the old stone fort, that was when they would hear the music of his flute floating down from the top of the hill.

  That first night, when Miguel Ángel came back, it was so hot that Jose Pablo decided to sleep on his roof.

  He let the flute music wash over him like moonbeams until he dozed, but he did not sleep until he heard another door bang and footsteps running lightly away. Then he was content.

  But, in the morning when his daughter, his diamond, his Dolõres, his precious niña, climbed up to the roof with his breakfast, he noticed a ribbon of golden taffeta braided through her hair that was not there before and he was disturbed.

  That day nobody came to the gate to complain of stolen goats and Jose Pablo grew worried. All day the figures in his ledgers would not add up, his coffee was bitter, the hot wind blew red dust into his eyes and Dolõres gave him a headache with her singing in the garden:

  Enough! now stop

  playing on your flute, dark lover,

  this girl’s heart is all aflutter,

  I ask you, please stop playing,

  don’t come to my lane all the time

  or, if you come,

  do more than play.

  I am warning you now:

  if you play that flute

  then you must be mine.

  Over and over. He slammed his accounts book shut and hurried out the gate to walk his fields, thinking of the rents that would be due tomorrow. Perhaps some would not be able to pay. Perhaps they would have to borrow. Perhaps he could evict them. He felt a little better.

  But late at night, he could not sleep. He had eaten too much. The food lay heavy in his belly. He tossed and turned, waiting for the sound of flute music to come from the hilltop, and when it did, it drilled into his head like toothache. And worse than the music was the waiting. He lay for hours waiting for the bang of a door, listening for the sound of running feet, but it never came and then, when the moon was hidden by the broken old fort and the street was dark, Jose Pablo got off his bed and went to the edge of the roof and looked up at the mountain top and yelled: “In the name of God, be quiet.”

  The music stopped.

  That was worst of all.

  But Jose Pablo lay down on his bed again and went to sleep.

  In the morning, when he woke to the sound of the little green parrot chattering in its cage, the landlord Rodriguez went downstairs to collect his ledgers and his ink pot so that he could sit in his garden and mark down the money he was owed.

  But, when he went to sit on his cane chair under the shade of the middle tree of his three trees, he found the gates open and his tenants waiting. They were smiling and laughing, nudging one another and talking loudly of goats, but they stopped when Jose Pablo Rodriguez came out of his door and they stood quiet.

  There was no sound but the murmur of the wind in the green leaves and the rustle of the golden ribbons that hung from every branch, the tinkle of the bangles that decorated every twig.

  Jose Pablo stood and looked for a moment. His old cane chair groaned as he slumped in it and then he looked up and said: “Friends.”

  The men in his garden looked back at him, smiling.

  “Friends. You see I have decorated my garden to welcome you because this is a day of celebration.” He gestured up at the ribbons floating from his trees. “I hope you like it.”

  The idiot Julio choked on a snigger. Nobody else said a word.

  “Today, friends, I have decided to cancel your rents for this season. This act will be of great benefit to the community and will win me great merit in Heaven.”

  They still said nothing.

  “But it is principally because of the benefit to the community that I have chosen to do this thing. There is nothing more important than community. We all depend on one another.”

  The men in the yard were squatting down now, sitting just as he was.

  “And I have become concerned about the recent spate of goat-thievery. Today there should be no work. Today we will catch the goat thief and, by the witness of the men of this village who alone have lost more than seventy prize animals these past months, we will ensure that he pays the price.”

  And that was how the pedlar Miguel Ángel was hanged from a tree not ten miles from the village of Jose Pablo Rodriguez.

  As soon as she had untied every ribbon from her father’s trees, the girl Dolõres walked to the railway station and never came back.

  That was the story she told. When she had finished reading there was a slim pile of pages lying discarded on his shoulders. He felt her fingers brush his skin as she gathered the leaves together and squared them up, tapping them on his back as if he were a classroom desk.

  She said: “Maestro?” and slid off him, lying down on the other side of the bed, her face close to his. He could smell a warm, bready scent on her breath. He sipped it, sucking in the air that, a moment before, had been part of her, deep inside her, mingling with her blood and now was part of him.

  “Say something,” she whispered.

  He didn’t say anything. He just kept looking, his head on one side, propped on the pillow, so close to her he could see himself reflected in her eyes.

  “It’s rubbish, isn’t it? God, I knew I should never have mentioned it. This was a bad mistake.”

  He only laughed, very quietly, so as not to break the hush of the tiny cathedral they had built between the pillow and the sheets. “Now, you must know it’s not rubbish. You do know that, don’t you?” He brushed a long strand of hair from her lips with a gentle finger. “You must know it’s not rubbish. You’ve read enough rubbish to know that.”

  She closed her eyes in relief: “You like it.”

  “It’s a little jewel. Is it true?”

  “I hope so.”

  “But did it really happen, up in your hills?”

  “No. Not that. But stuff like that. There was always a fat man—somebody who liked to throw his weight about, thought he was better than everybody else. Those people need to be taken down a peg. That’s what my father thought, anyway.”

  “Mine too.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I don’t know what I think. I try not to concern myself with things like that. I’ve
just never thought about it. But I don’t think stories are the way to do it. I don’t think stories can change the world.”

  “Of course stories can change the world,” she said. “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

  He laughed again, but not as he might have done before, not unkindly but because she made him happy. “You are so …” He couldn’t find the words.

  “Stupid? Naïve?”

  “You are so young! Young!”

  “I am also right. I’d rather fight with words than blow myself up like that idiot in Plaza Universidad.”

  “You are young and beautiful and wonderful and talented.”

  “And one day I’m going to write a book nearly as good as yours and people will read it and they will nod their heads and they will say: ‘She’s right. We need to fix this.’”

  Then he kissed her and then there was “Again” until long after the hour for morning coffee, when the bankers—who rise late—are sitting down slowly at their desks and fashionable ladies are greeting their friends in the street with a brush of the cheek and a soft clash of sunglasses.

  They were lying there together, Caterina and Valdez, side by side in the bed, holding hands, with their legs woven and locked together, when the doorbell buzzed.

  Mr. Valdez untwined his fingers from hers and pushed himself up, untwined his legs from hers and swung his feet to the floor, sat up on the edge of the bed with a sigh, and then, hunched there with his head in his hands, he pushed his fingers through his hair and said: “Would you answer that, please?”

  She said: “What?”

  “Answer the door, please.”

  “But, Chano, I haven’t any clothes on.”

  The doorbell buzzed again.

  “The door, please.”

  There was something in his voice. She got up and wrapped the sheet around herself but, as she passed, he put out a hand and gripped it where it trailed and pulled.

  She stopped. Without turning round she said: “I will not do this.”

  He let go. The sheet sighed over the tiles as she walked away. The doorbell buzzed again and it was still ringing when Caterina opened the door. From far away he heard Maria Marrom say: “Oh.” He recognized her voice. He recognized the way she said nothing for a moment and the way she said: “I’m so very sorry to have troubled you. I must have the wrong address,” with that brittle dignity.

  A few seconds later Caterina came back. “She’s gone,” she said. She went round the room picking up her clothes and carried them into the bathroom to dress.

  The sound of Maria’s kitten heels rang through the stairwell, like the ticking of a clock, like nails hammered into a coffin.

  “We should see about getting your story published,” he said. “I could help. If you like.”

  She didn’t answer.

  AT NIGHT, WHEN it was very dark, the light above the door of Dr. Cochrane’s house came on with a surprised pop. A moment or two later, in the time it took for the lamp to collect a couple of flapping, circling, singeing moths, Dr. Cochrane appeared at the top of the outside stair. Dr. Cochrane hated the dark. He came down the stairs to the street like the old man he was, leaning forward to find the next step with his cane, pressing down heavily on the broad stone balustrade with the other hand.

  Dr. Cochrane got into his car, laid his cane on the passenger seat at his side and let out the handbrake. He rolled down the hill, gradually gathering speed, moving almost silently until, just before the bend, he turned the key, started the engine and dropped the clutch. Then he flicked the knob that lit the headlights and drove quickly—but not so quickly as to attract attention—onto the road that took him toward the highway along the side of the Merino. The streets were quiet and there was very little traffic at that time of night. Dr. Cochrane drove toward the center of the city, to the places where it was never quiet and the roar of passing cars never ceased. The road grew into huge humpback hills, rose on gigantic concrete legs. Down below, beautiful houses where merchants and sea captains once lived had run aground on tiny green islands, washed up there in an endless, uncrossable tide of traffic and abandoned until the very poorest found them and rowed out to them in desperate flotillas of supermarket trolleys to huddle inside and pick over the wreck. Down there, behind dirty, broken windows, a light showed here and there. Fires burned on concrete slabs under the throbbing, thundering shelter of highway bridges, dancing shadows leapt, dogs trotted. Men who had once been babies, washed and kissed and nestled in blankets, slept in huts made from folded cardboard boxes, lying on mats of newspaper while overhead, where the sky should be, where the stars were blotted out, the traffic drummed and susurrated with the endless rhythm of the hive.

  Dr. Cochrane drove on and on until he found himself caught up in a shoal of other cars, a lorry lumbering ahead of him, bouncing and squeaking, shedding gritty dust as it rolled, taxis honking and jostling on either side. He switched lanes, jerking the wheel suddenly to the left, ignoring the blare of horns. He tore across two lanes of traffic, the engine roaring as he surged forward, checked his mirror and swung back across the traffic again, right under the wheels of a sixteen-wheel lorry loaded down with a muddy bulldozer and blazing along its length with a galaxy of twinkling lights. Headlamps flared in his mirror. He pressed his foot to the floor and bounced up the exit ramp that loomed ahead of him, slowing for the curve, checking his mirror again, checking, checking, slowing, turning and following the signs that took him back to the highway, on the other side, back into the stream of traffic, heading the other way.

  Dr. Cochrane drove for two junctions, switching lanes, always watching in his mirror until he was sure that there was nobody following and then, without indicating, he turned down the slip road that opened in front of him.

  The road swung down to a junction where there was a signpost that he could not read because the light above it was broken and hanging loose. Dr. Cochrane knew the way. He made another right turn into a little square filled with street lamps. There were stalls selling fried food, shops with newspapers hanging down the front of them like lines of washing where they sold cigarettes and sweets and pulp novels, desperate, envious magazines filled with endlessly repeated images of the telenovela stars and Loteria booths scattered round like lifeboats come to offer rescue.

  Dr. Cochrane found a place to park down a side street, locked his car and walked back to the square, measuring his way with his cane. He knew the way to the bus stop where the No. 73 would leave from, and when the bus came he threw down his few centavos and sat on the bench seat at the back.

  The darkened windows looked back at him blankly. There was nothing to show him where he was, no landmark to guide his journey. He simply sat quietly, saying nothing to anybody, his hands resting on his cane, turning now and then to glance out the big back window and watch for lights following. There were none.

  After two stops, nobody else got on. After five stops people started to get off. The bus lurched and stuttered and roared, the gearbox ground. There was a hot smell of diesel oil and Dr. Cochrane’s seasickness returned horribly. After eleven stops there was no one else left on board except for a tall, thin man in a dirty blue jacket sitting halfway down the bus on the right-hand side. Dr. Cochrane had watched him carefully since he joined the bus, when it was crowded and he had been forced to fold himself into a narrow seat over the wheel arch. Now the bus was empty but he had not moved. He sat there with his knees jammed against the polished brass handrail of the seat in front, his head rolling against the window.

  Dr. Cochrane slid quietly across his bench seat. It changed the angle between him and the tall man and let him use the dark window as a mirror. He could see the tall man’s face in the reflection. His eyes were shut and Dr. Cochrane did not recognize him.

  The bus gave a lurch as it turned a corner and the tall man woke up. He hurried to the front of the bus, swinging from pole to pole.

  “I’ve missed my stop!” he yelled at the driver. “Let me off here.”

  �
�I can’t. I’m not allowed.”

  “Chrissake, man. Just open the door at the junction. I’m not going to tell anybody. Up there, look, at the street corner.”

  “I’m not allowed. I can’t let you off anywhere except at a proper stop. And you are not allowed to talk to me when I’m driving. Stand behind the line.”

  “Stand behind the line, pajero! Stand behind the line? Don’t talk to you?” The tall man made a theatrical leap to the front of the bus. “See? I’m crossing the line and this is me talking to you. I’m talking to you right now. So what are you gonna do? You gonna put me off the bus?”

  The driver hauled on the wheel as if he were at the helm of a three-master rounding the Horn and stood on the brakes so the whole bus sat down on its springs. The door opened with a wheeze and he said: “Off!”

  The tall man flicked a finger and jumped into the street and the driver leaned out the window yelling after him. “Cabeza de mierda!” He sat down, growling, and looked in the mirror, right along the length of the bus, at Dr. Cochrane. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Sorry. Do you want off here?”

  Dr. Cochrane folded his hands on top of his cane, rested his hands there and tipped his head forward, hiding behind his still-new hat. “I’m going right to the end,” he said.

  “OK.” The driver pressed the lever to close the door and the bus started again with a jolt.

  The argument with the tall man was annoying and unsettling. Bus journeys are supposed to be without incident. A bus driver is an automaton who turns the corner at the same place, changes gear at the same place, opens the door at the same place, brakes at the same place, along the same route at the same time over and over and over every day. He sees the same roads, the same buildings, the same traffic, the same people. There are no bus journeys, there is only one bus journey, indistinguishable from all the other bus journeys, so if a policemen were to come along and flash his badge and push his mirrored sunglasses a little further up his nose and stand on the step of the bus with his hip stuck out and his hand resting on his pistol and ask: “Have you seen this man?” the driver could only shrug and laugh at his own stupidity and hand the picture back and look at his feet. But not now. Not this time.