But not here. Not in the city. Here men slept out in alleys wrapped in stinking blankets, old people stood stooped in the streets with their hands out and nobody said: “Mama, here is bread,” or “Come in and share this bit of soup with us.” They walked past. They drove past and nobody saw a thing and she was becoming like them. After two years in the city she knew her way from her flat to the university, she knew Erica and she loved Chano, but there was no one else and now she was lost.
Caterina walked down the hill to the junction and turned right but it brought her closer to the highway. She could hear the roar of it hidden behind the houses like a waterfall lost in trees. The cars scorched the sky with their lights as they passed and the lamps along the roadside towered on their concrete stalks in an endless scream of light. Caterina turned back. She wanted a river but this one was too big to cross, too fast-flowing. She went back up the hill and walked through endless side streets, looking long into the night at every junction until she spotted the bright jungle of shop signs because there, she knew, there would be a bus stop and although she was lost the bus driver would know the way.
The timetable screwed to the lamppost was nothing more than a hopeful lie, and when the bus arrived at last it couldn’t take her back to Cristobal Avenue. She had to change. It took a long time to get across the city but that didn’t matter. It gave her time to think of the things she wanted to do for Chano, the special gifts she would bring him, the things—apart from herself—that she would lay at his feet, the ways she would reach out to him and reassure him, remake him and rebuild him, the things she would do to show him that he was loved. He could be saved—damaged goods or not. What did that matter? Damaged goods? Everybody was damaged goods. Dr. Cochrane had made her admit that, even if he could not see it in himself. Chano could be saved and Caterina knew she was the one who could do it. She was right, of course. Caterina could have saved him—if he had wanted to be saved.
A long time ago the priest in that little mountain church told a story about a nasty old woman who was sent to Hell and left to starve. She wept and she prayed until, at last, God took pity and sent down a moldy carrot on a string, and the nasty old woman grabbed the carrot and held on to it as God hauled her up out of the pit. When they saw her rising, all the other poor souls down there tried to cling on but, instead of helping them, the nasty old woman struggled and kicked and fought until the string broke and they all fell back down, taking the carrot with them. Caterina had forgotten that story and she would have done well to remember it.
The bus stopped with a shudder and she got down. Even at that hour Cristobal Avenue was choked with traffic. She had to go to the next corner to cross, hurrying through a break in the traffic and walking back down the avenue to the brown little side street where she lived.
Caterina walked quietly—as quietly as the grown-up shoes she had worn to buy her engagement ring would allow—toward the flat, a little fearful of the shadows, her feet sliding on the dusty, dirty, crunching stairs. She turned the key silently in the lock, careful not to wake Erica—who, anyway was not there—moving quickly through the darkened flat to her bedside, where she picked up a fat folder and left again, back out to the night and the streets, which were frightening, and to Chano, which was far, far worse than she knew.
WHILE CATERINA WAS walking the whole length of the avenue from where she lived, down amongst the second-hand dealers and the motorbike repair shops and the angry little bars, all the way to the other end, where Chano lived, amongst the smart restaurants with their glass tables outside on the terrace and the banks and the department stores, where you could look up at night into lighted rooms and see molded ceilings and believe that you could hear the notes of a piano drifting over the traffic noise, he was locked inside his flat, pretending that he was not hiding.
While she pushed her way through the late-night crowds, that fat gray folder held across her chest like armor to deflect a sword thrust or a glance, making her way to him, brave, unstoppable, driven by love the way that the tides are driven by the moon, he was inside, being afraid and making excuses for why he could not go to her.
And when she walked down the dark curve of the ramp that led from the street down into the garage beneath his block and through the petrol-smelling parking bays and up the stairs, avoiding the front desk and the all-night porter waiting there, when she climbed up alone and kept climbing although the echoes chased her and there were shadows at every landing, when she came to his door and knocked, gently at first, and then louder, he lay in bed, holding a sword.
He still had the sword with him when he went to the door, slowly, fearfully, peering round the corner as if he had been waiting for it to disappear in a storm of splinters and bullet holes. The tip of the sword dragged over the tiled floor, singing, behind him and he said: “Who is it?” in an angry whisper.
“Chano, it’s me.”
He hurried forward and stood behind the door and looked through the spyglass. “Are you alone?”
“Of course I’m alone. What’s wrong?”
He hesitated. She was standing there in the corridor in bright light and, although she was so short, he could see it was her, he knew it was her and yet he hesitated and stood, shifting from foot to foot, turning his head, squinting with each eye, checking along the walls behind her and on the pale carpet at her feet, looking for an unfamiliar shadow that might betray a hidden watcher, flat against the wall. That was what Camillo had done to him. It only took a second or two but she noticed.
“Chano, aren’t you going to let me in?”
“Just a moment.”
The sword was ridiculous. He knew it was ridiculous. He opened the narrow cupboard in the vestibule, the place where he had hung her coat that first night, and laid it there along the floor, corner to corner so it would fit. Even that took time.
“Chano!” A worried hiss from the other side of the door.
“A moment.” He undid the chain and turned the key in the lock. She heard him and she was pushing at the door before he had a chance to open it, although he did open it but by no more than a crack, just enough to let her slip through before he shut it again, quickly, and put the chain back on and locked it again.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“I thought you might not let me in.”
“Why?”
“We quarreled. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?”
“You had every right to be upset.”
“I was rude and unkind and I accused you of things.”
“It’s all right. You were disappointed. You are so young.”
And then Caterina was satisfied. She had done what Dr. Cochrane had suggested. “Let him blame your youth and don’t disagree.”
“Kiss me,” she said.
He did.
“Still love me?”
“Of course.”
But he didn’t say it. Only “Of course,” not “Of course I still love you.”
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“Something’s wrong.”
“A bad dream, that’s all. It was just a bad dream. A nightmare. I got a fright.” That was half the truth again. He was frightened. He had suffered a nightmare. But he had not been asleep.
“Tell me. Then it won’t come back.”
“It never goes away,” he said. “It’s always been there. All my life it’s hung over me.”
Caterina brushed her hand gently over his face and—he did not imagine it—let the tip of her finger rest for a moment too long on his lip. “I can kiss it all better,” she said. “I promise.” She walked ahead of him into the sitting room where the scabbard of his grandfather’s sword lay empty and abandoned on the sofa. He found it suddenly embarrassing but Caterina seemed not to notice.
She walked to the window and looked at the lights of the avenue. “I was down there a minute ago. Way along there. You see the world differently from up here. Maybe it is different.”
“It’s just because you are further away from it. It’s the same world. It’s the height, that’s all.”
“No, Chano. This isn’t high. The mountains, they were high, but I felt like I lived in the same world then. It’s not the height that separates you from the street. It’s the money.”
“Are we going to argue about money again? I’m too tired. Come to bed.”
“No. We’re not going to argue about money—or anything else. Not ever again. If I had all the money in the world, I’d give it to you to make you happy. Everything I have, I want you to have but I don’t have anything so I want to give you this.”
He was standing there in the clothes he had lain down in, exhausted from the effort of trying to sleep and the pain of finding himself so afraid, and she was close to him, holding out her scuffed gray folder to him as if it had been all the gifts of the Magi.
“What is it?”
“It’s everything. That’s what you asked for, isn’t it? Everything. All I have in the world except for a couple of pairs of jeans and a jacket and some shoes you don’t like. It’s my book.”
“Your book?” he said.
“Yes. I’ve been writing a book and I have nothing more precious to offer you. It’s for you. I will write your name on the front in a deeply respectful dedication and with love. With all my love.”
“Your book?” He said it again, as if she had no right to write a book, as if nobody had the right except him, as if the very idea of “book” was his copyright, the sole property of L.H. Valdez, and if he chose not to exercise those rights for a time, perhaps for years, perhaps forever, then that was his business and it certainly did not mean that Caterina, this girl, was permitted to write a book. “You wrote a book.”
“Yes, Chano. I wrote a book. Now come to bed.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s just a story. Come to bed.”
“I will. Yes. You go. I’ll be there in a moment. You go.”
“All right,” she said, “but hurry. We have making up to do.”
Chano stood at the window, holding her great gift, that worn, gray folder, by his side, watching the lights of the avenue until he was sure she had gone. He took Caterina’s book to his desk and turned on the lamp but, before he sat down, Mr. L.H. Valdez crept through his own house like a thief, back to the front door on silent feet. He opened the cupboard. He picked up his grandfather’s sword. When he sat down at the desk again, he laid it across his knees. Then he opened the folder and he began to read.
He was almost sure he hated her.
BEFORE TOO MANY hours had passed, he knew. He read Caterina’s book, her great gift to him, and the fury mounted in his chest. She lay in bed, waiting or sleeping or pretending to sleep, and he sat at the desk he had already willed away as his memorial, a cone of yellow light falling on the pile of pages, hating her.
It was an ordinary little story. Ordinary enough. A tale of a young man with his eyes on his aunt’s money. But he spent it before he got it. He promised it to one of the foremost artists of the day in exchange for a painting—but not a painting on canvas. It was tattooed on his own skin, a dazzling cascade of lions and angels and orchids, wrapping him in glory. Then the aunt died and she didn’t leave him her money. Then the artist died and his widow wanted to be paid and, when the young man couldn’t pay, she auctioned off his skin.
For another 200 pages the decorated boy fled from one scalpel-wielding art-lover after another, running, hiding, falling in love, rising in value, being sold on, becoming more valuable every time.
It was ordinary. It was the sort of story a beginner would write. A silly, contrived thing, but it was beautiful and brilliant and not like anything he had ever read before, packed with people he would remember forever doing things and saying things he would remember forever in places he would remember forever. It was beauty and laughter and love, page after page of beauty and laughter and love, and he hated her for it.
Hadn’t he offered her everything? Hadn’t he taken this little girl from the country and offered her his bed and his name and access to a world she had never imagined, clothes and cars, good food and good wine and the chance to be the mother of his sons? And all she had to do in exchange—all she had to do—was love him and unlock the thing he had lost.
But she had failed, and far from opening the way for him to write, she had decided to write something of her own. And, worse than that, something new and fresh and original and young, everything that he was not, rubbing his face in his own failure, throwing salt in the wounds, laughing at him, feasting on what was his and making it her own like a vampire. It was vile and unforgivable and he hated her for it.
Dawn was still two hours away when Mr. Valdez closed the folder and switched out the light. He left the sword propped against his chair and went to bed and to Caterina. He hated Caterina and that was why he wanted her. He didn’t want to make love to her, he didn’t even want to have sex with her, he wanted to inflict himself on her, like a fire, like a terrible earthquake that sweeps away mountainsides and forests and pastures and leaves nothing but bare rock, barren for generations.
She cheated him of even that. She should have been lying there bathed in moonlight like the milk-skinned heroine of some grand, Romantic oil painting, high artistic pornography masquerading as mythology, like Danae or Leda, like Andromeda chained to a rock and writhing at the monster’s approach. Instead she lay on her side like a little girl, open-mouthed, her hair falling about her in wanton mounds, every part of her a gorgeous ogee curve and a sprinkling of fairy lights coming up from the street in orange and red and white and green falling on her like angel kisses and that mouth, those lips, her amazing, impossible breasts, her candy-pink nipples and, over it all, that same pale, electric glow of beauty hovering over every inch of her, coiling like a Leyden jar full of cobras.
Seeing her, he changed his mind. Mr. Valdez slid into his bed, trying not to wake her, but she stirred and reached out to him.
“Where have you been? I waited. I must have fallen asleep. What time is it?”
“It’s the middle of the night. Go back to sleep.” He lay down on his side with his back to her but she folded her body to his and reached over him, touching him, planting little kisses on his neck and his ears, dragging her fingertips over his chest, murmuring to him, touching him, urging him.
But he ignored her, clutching the sheets to his chin like a virgin, lying there cold as a marble figure on a tomb, stiff, but not everywhere.
“Good night, Chano,” she said. “I love you very, very much.” She gave up and rolled away from him.
Mr. Valdez lay for a long time, listening to the sound of the avenue, the wave-sighs of the traffic, an occasional siren drawing closer, passing, moving further away, and he knew that Caterina was beside him, feigning sleep, making up stories about where the siren was going, about corrupt policemen or heroic policemen, about young girls dying in the back of an ambulance, their last drop of blood pooling on the floor, about their gangster lovers, about the people they would leave behind, filling in all the dark gaps, spinning stories out on a long thread, knitting them together. He tried to do that. He lay in the dark, chasing stories the way the insomniac chases sleep, and none came. She had taken them all away. His stories were all gone and now the sex was gone too. The two things he could do really well and she had destroyed them both. He had swallowed her whole, thinking that she was medicine, and she had been poison all along.
So many realizations piled up in front of him. All the ways she had led him on, from the day she said: “Wouldn’t you rather …?” Dear God, how could he have been so stupid? How could he have fallen for that? Throwing herself at him and then dancing backward. The way she had let him cheat her into his bed for the price of a line in his notebook. The way she had forced him into demanding that she married him. The way she had made him make her do it. All that innocent reluctance.
Before he went to sleep Mr. Valdez decided that he would be done with her.
In the morning he would tell her it was over—not in the kind-as-possible, matter-of-fact way he had told his other women to go. There could be no question of taking the blame on himself, no “Darling, it’s not you, it’s me” excuses. No, this would have to be short and brutal and he would make it clear that it was, undoubtedly, her fault. He would lay out for her all the ways that he had seen through her. He would tell her that there was no way back after her display in the garden. He would not be accused like that. It was an insufferable insult from a mere child and it was not to be borne. No, Mama had been right with the very first words she said: “You know she only wants you for your money.” Mama was right. Mama was always right, damn it, and yet he had defended her, spoken up for her. Obvious. Stupid.
In the morning, he would be done with her. In fact, it should be now. He sat up and turned to her, but the bed was empty and the room was full of light.
CATERINA WAS SITTING at his desk with that sword at her side like an allegorical figure when Mr. Valdez arrived in the room. It made a strange picture, both of them naked and straight from bed, Mr. Valdez unshaven and sticky-mouthed and Caterina sitting in that chair, spilling sumptuously over the seat, just a little, her hair pulled back and tied with a rubber band she had stolen from the desk, and a cutlass resting, just so, by the leg of her chair. She would not have looked out of place if she had been cast in bronze and left on the lawns of the Academia Maritimo—which was still accepting students, despite the lack of a coast—as the embodiment of naval education.
She didn’t hear him come in. She thought he was asleep.
“What are you doing?” he said.
Caterina made a quick motion of her hand and he saw her shoulders tense. “Chano, you frightened me.” She turned round to him with a forced smile.
The Love and Death of Caterina Page 30
