“Bird, bird!” Ramón whispered, and made a little noise with his lips to encourage the bird to come to him. “Pájaro, pájaro!—Pájaro!”
Theodore and Arturo watched. Ramón moved very slowly forward on his knees. The bird eyed him suspiciously and hopped farther away on the sofa back.
“You can’t expect him to come to you if you’ve never practiced with him, Ramón,” Theodore said.
Ramón sank back defeatedly on his heels.
Theodore patted his shoulder. “You need sleep, Ramón. You’re very welcome to stay here tonight.” He saw Arturo nod in hearty agreement.
Ramón plunged forward, his head in the seat of the sofa, weeping in silent but gasping sobs.
“He is very bad tonight,” Arturo whispered. “Every night he is like this—almost—but usually it’s not so bad as this. Every night he asks me if I can forgive him. He begs forgiveness in the church.” Arturo’s face was turned up, bewildered, to Theodore. “I have asked him to stay in my house. We could make room for him, but he will not come. Teodoro!” Arturo touched his arm and whispered quickly: “Don’t tell him something is for his own good. Don’t tell him something will help him. Do you understand?”
Theodore was already nodding. He understood.
“He takes it the wrong way always!” Arturo added.
Theodore took a deep breath. Then he walked towards Ramón and forcibly lifted him and sat him on the sofa. He began to unbutton Ramón’s jacket and shirt, then he loosened his tie. “You’re going to stay here tonight, Ramón,” Theodore said in a kindly tone. “Come on, we’ll go upstairs.”
Arturo helped him. Ramón came with apparent willingness, but he seemed to have little strength in his body and would have fallen on the stairs if the two men had not supported him. Theodore looked up and saw Inocenza peering down the stair-well. She came down from the third floor, dressed but with her long hair only tied back.
“Don Ramón!” she said in greeting, and stopped at the sight of his limp figure.
“He is very tired, and he is going to spend the night with us,” Theodore said to her. “Could you turn the bed down in the guest-room, Inocenza? And get a pair of pyjamas from my room.”
“Sí, señor!” she said, flying into the guest-room ahead of them.
Theodore abandoned the idea of a bath for him. He left Arturo to help him into the pajamas and went into his own bathroom, got a nembutal, and poured a glass of water from the carafe by his bed. Then he went back into the guest-room, which was next door to his. Ramón was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked to the waist, his powerful shoulders drooping like a resting boxer’s. Arturo was helping him off with his shoes. Ramón did lift a foot finally and removed his own sock.
“Take this, Ramón,” Theodore said, holding out his palm with the orange pill on it. “Something to make you sleep.”
Ramón took the pill and drank some water. When he lay down in the white pajamas between the pale blue sheets, however, he looked up at the ceiling, and his face grew strained again as if he had begun to look fixedly at something that was always in front of him.
“He’s bound to feel better in the morning,” Theodore said.
“Ah, I should think. In such a ni-ice pretty room as this.” Arturo looked around him, smiling.
That was what Theodore thought, too, and he started to open the curtains so that the cheerful morning sun would be the first thing Ramón saw in the morning, then decided it might shorten his hours of sleep if he did. He tipped the lamp shade on the bed table so that the light was away from Ramón’s face. Inocenza was standing in the background, looking at Ramón. Theodore beckoned to her to come into the hall.
“Ramón may stay with me for a few days,” he said in a low voice. “Be very nice to him. He is very depressed. We must try to make him feel more cheerful.”
“Sí, señor,” Inocenza said, nodding.
“The bird is loose downstairs. See if you can get him back in the cage, and then let Leo out of the study.”
At that moment the telephone rang.
“No, don’t answer it, Inocenza,” Theodore said quickly. “Thank you.”
Inocenza looked surprised for an instant, then frightened.
The telephone went on—br-ring-br-ring—br-ring-br-ring.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Josefina Martinez’s maid Juana opened the door for Theodore, and Theodore greeted her with a smile, a handshake, and the cheerful word that he always had for her, as if nothing had happened since he had seen her last. But Juana was not quite the same. She had been with the family thirty-three years. Lelia had been like her blood kin.
“The señora is not yet ready,” Juana said. “Please sit down, Don Teodoro. She will be out in a minute.”
Theodore sat down in a dark red plush armchair and waited, letting his eyes wander over the old-fashioned, bourgeois, comfortably cluttered living-room—antimacassars, flower-stands, paintings, and photographs crowding one another on the walls, and a huge spider plant that trailed the floor adding a note of jungle-like confusion. Josefina’s apartment was like a fortress, impregnable to change. More had been added since he first came here, but nothing had been taken away. He remembered the smile he had exchanged with Lelia the first time he had come into the room and looked around.
It was nearly ten minutes before Josefina appeared. Theodore jumped to his feet and bowed over her hand. She wore a long, impeccably neat housecoat, her hair was arranged, her lipstick and mascara freshly applied.
“Sit down, dear Teo! Would you like some coffee?”
“No, thank you, Josefina.”
“Or a drink? Whisky?”
“No, thank you, really. I’m quite all right.”
“Ah,” she sighed, sitting down, resting her plump hands palms-down in her lap. “So now Ramón is staying with you.”
“Yes.”
“Tsch-tsch. It is scandalous, Teo.”
“What is scandalous?”
“Our courts of justice. Our police force and their psychiatrists.” Her large dark eyes, full of feminine wisdom and quite devoid of logic, glanced around the room impatiently. “He will only take advantage of your unbelievable charity and perhaps kill you, too!”
Theodore leaned forward. “Dear Josefina, I think we both must yield to the opinions of the psychiatrists and the police. You have not seen Ramón lately. He is the victim of his own obsession. His story makes no sense, you see. That’s why he was released. And now he—”
“No sense to the psychiatrists! But you and I know him, Teo. I myself have seen his temper.” Her voice grew shriller. “I think he should pay. He should pay for what he has done. And he confessed. I cannot understand their releasing him. I have written to the President of the country, Teo. Would you like to see a copy of my letter?”
Theodore started to demur, or at least to postpone it, but Josefina was already on her feet, on her way to the bedroom. He tried to collect his facts again, his argument. He would lose, he knew it. But he had to pay this call. Josefina had telephoned him that morning, horrified that Ramón was under his roof.
She swept into the room again with her letter. It was on two sheets of typewriter paper, and, before he began to read, Theodore found himself glancing at the type to see if the t’s were somewhat tilted and the e’s out of line, which were two of the clues Sauzas had for the typewriter which had written the postcard from Florida. Then he began to read with respectful attention. It was, of course, a biased denunciation of Ramón’s character, but, under the circumstances, Theodore had to forgive it. It was curious the way Josefina’s passion began to persuade him that Ramón was not innocent, and then he came to his senses when Josefina stated that she had always suspected that Ramón would be capable of this. That, Theodore knew, was not true, because she had used to be very fond of Ramón, fonder perhaps than of him, beca
use Ramón was one of her own countrymen. The rest of her letter was a rhetorical complaint against the inefficiency of the Mexican laws, the police and detective force, and a diatribe against “the modern medicine-men with degrees,” the psychiatrists.
“Do you agree or not?” Josefina demanded.
“I, too, felt the same way at first. Believe me, dear Josefina.”
“And how do you feel now?” Obviously she expected her letter to have convinced him that she was right.
“I repeat, I have spoken to Ramón. His story does not hold water—”
“That’s what he wants you to think!” she shrieked, pointing a finger. “He has won you over, that’s all!”
Juana, with the privilege of her years of service, was standing in the door of the bedroom, listening.
“No, Josefina, on the contrary, he wants us to think he is guilty,” Theodore said quietly. “He is wretched and depressed because no one believes him, because not even the Church will punish him, until after he is dead, he thinks.”
“You can be sure of that! God will punish him!”
“Yes, so Ramón thinks. But it is not enough for him now. As a matter of fact, Josefina, listening to Ramón, one can be almost won over to Ramón’s side—that he did it.” Theodore was leaning forward, speaking slowly and gesturing as if to convey with his hands what his words could not, he knew.
An awkward silence grew and grew. He could hear Josefina’s excited breathing. Then a clock in her bedroom said: “Coo-koo! Coo-koo! Coo-koo!”
“I suppose, Josefina,” Theodore said, a moment after the clock had stopped, “all I can say is that I do not believe Ramón is guilty. I think he is devastated by grief.”
“Tyuh!” Josefina stared across the room, out of the window.
Theodore looked at his clasped hands. “Well, I didn’t come to make you believe what I believe, Josefina. What I believe is only my opinion.” And where would his passive attitude get him, he wondered. Where was his courage? What was so wrong about convincing others of what he believed, if he thought what he believed was true? And he was ninety per cent convinced of Ramón’s innocence. . . . An oval portrait photograph in an oval wooden frame on the wall behind Josefina had been holding his eyes for several seconds. Perhaps its shape had attracted his glance because of its similarity to the oval pendant of Lelia’s necklace, and realizing this and that his staring at it would profit him nothing, he still stared at it as if its form would reveal some secret.
“Juana, por favor, a little coffee,” Josefina said, raising a hand and letting it drop in her lap again. In defiance of her doctor’s orders, Josefina drank at least a dozen little cups of very strong coffee every day. “If Ramón is not guilty, then who is guilty?” Josefina asked.
“I don’t know.” Then he reminded her of the postcard from Florida, and that anyone could have got Inés Jackson’s name and the fact that she lived in Florida from the newspapers. He reminded her that Lelia’s keys had never been found and that Ramón had been unable to tell the police what he had done or might have done with them. He told her also about the silent telephone calls, two of which had come while Ramón was either in prison or at Theodore’s house. Josefina’s eyes stretched wider as he spoke, and perhaps some element of doubt entered her mind, Theodore was not sure. He knew only that the doubt would not be enough to sway her.
When the coffee came in, Theodore gathered himself for the only statement he could make with conviction. “Josefina, Ramón and I have always been good friends. Since I am more inclined to believe he is innocent than that he is guilty, I still must be his friend.” The words were stark in his Spanish, and he felt they did not carry much weight with Josefina.
“Only inclined? Why are you not sure? Because you know in your heart that he is guilty!”
“No, I don’t. It’s not in my heart, and even if it were—”
“I know one should forgive one’s enemies—” She shrugged. “It is hard to do when the victim is one’s own flesh and blood and the crime so horrible beyond any words. Teo, you are not a stupid man, only too naïve and too generous by far. If you think he is not guilty, then you must think he is crazy for confessing. Either way he is a dangerous man for you to have under your roof.”
“I’m aware of that,” said Theodore.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The psychiatrist arrived at four-fifteen, a quarter of an hour later than he had promised. His name was Dr. Cervantes Loera, and he had been recommended by Theodore’s medical doctor for just such a service as this. Dr. Loera was an advanced thinker, “flexible and experimental,” Theodore’s doctor had said. He was plump, with a black moustache and glasses, about forty-five. He had come to talk about painting with a view to buying something of Theodore’s. He was to be introduced to Ramón as Sr. Cervantes.
Ramón was upstairs when Dr. Loera entered the living-room. He looked around and asked which pictures were Theodore’s, as if Ramón had been present.
“I’ve asked him to come down,” Theodore said. “Perhaps he will of his own accord. Inocenza, you may bring the tea now.”
When the tea and cakes were brought in and Ramón had still not come down, Theodore went upstairs to speak to him.
“I don’t care to come down, thank you, Teo,” Ramón said. He was sitting in a chair by the bookshelves in the guest-room, looking at a book in his lap.
“Very well. But I may bring him up to show him a picture or so, if you don’t mind.”
“In here?” Ramón asked, frowning.
“Yes, Ramón. I’d like him to see these two pictures.” Theodore went downstairs again.
“Then we’ll go up,” Dr. Loera said when Theodore had reported his conversation with Ramón.
They climbed the stairs, with their teacups, and went into Theodore’s studio, where the psychiatrist passed a few minutes looking at Theodore’s paintings and at the work in progress on his easel. The doctor’s large, restless eyes took in everything. Theodore fretted with impatience for him to see Ramón.
“Let’s just go in,” Dr. Loera said.
Theodore led the way to the guest-room, whose door was open. Ramón looked up from his book with surprise.
“Señor Cervantes,” Theodore said, “my friend Ramón Otero. Ramón, this is the gentleman who is interested in my paintings.”
Ramón nodded and murmured something, and got up from his chair with the book.
“Are you a painter, too?” Dr. Loera asked, which Theodore thought was probably the wrong thing to say, since the newspapers had made Ramón’s name quite familiar to the public.
“No, I am not,” Ramón replied.
Dr. Loera strolled to a wall on which hung one of Theodore’s rare but pleasant paintings of a vase with flowers. “A cheerful room, isn’t it?”
Ramón nodded. He was watching the doctor and moving so that he faced him at all times. Then Ramón tossed the book down on the bed and walked out of the room and down the stairs.
Theodore looked at Dr. Loera, who shrugged. Theodore was quite tired of shrugs. “Well—”
“Well, we follow him,” said Dr. Loera with a wide smile.
They went downstairs and with the utmost casualness walked to the cocktail-table, on which their tea-things stood. Ramón was at the far end of the room which served as the dining area.
“I am more interested in your abstract,” the psychiatrist said. “That yellow, for instance. Are you selling that?”
“I’m not sure. It’s one of my latest paintings.”
“You had very good notices in a show last autumn,” Dr. Loera said pleasantly. “I remember them. I also saw the show. That was the one Dosamantes was in, too, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Theodore. Lelia had chosen the three paintings he had in the show.
“Dosamantes,” Ramón murmured to himself, touching the edge
of a round wooden board on which stood the remains of a huge cake.
Dr. Loera walked slowly towards Ramón, who stepped a little to one side, around the edge of the table. He pretended to look at a picture, which happened to be an old engraving, on the wall above the sideboard. Then he looked down at the wide arc of white icing on the wooden board and said: “That must have been quite a cake! A wedding cake?”
Theodore braced himself for a reaction from Ramón and said: “A baker acquaintance of ours—Alejandro Nuñez—brought it. He baked it in memory of our friend who died—Lelia Ballesteros.”
Ramón stared at Theodore as if he had not heard of the cake before. The cake had had a figure of Lelia on its top in pink and white icing, and a sentimental verse written around its layers in blue icing.
“You didn’t eat any of it, Teo? It was a well-meant gift, wasn’t it?” Ramón asked.
“Of course, and I did eat some. But it’s two weeks old now. I told you about Alejandro’s bringing it, Ramón.”
Ramón looked at the cake with a puzzled expression. Was he wondering where the powdered-sugar figure of Lelia had gone? Theodore had removed it one day when no one was in the house, unable to look any longer at its silly red mouth and its streaming dark blue hair that was supposed to represent Lelia’s black hair.
“Señor—Teo, excuse me,” Ramón said abruptly, and went to the stairs.
Dr. Loera picked up the remains of his cool cup of tea, drank it and refused a second cup.
Theodore was eager to go out where they might talk without being overheard. He walked out with the doctor and continued walking with him on the sidewalk while the doctor seemed to be arranging what he had to say.
“Now you are waiting to hear words of wisdom that I can’t give you,” Dr. Loera said.
“I am waiting to hear anything at all.”
“I might have risked saying that I heard about the tragedy—the death of your mutual friend. But I thought if he became suspicious, it might turn him against you, señor. A most suspicious nature, certainly. Paranoid, perhaps. Not easy to deal with.”