A Game for the Living

  And sometimes, Theodore knew, he did not come to see her for two and three weeks. But always he came back, swallowing his pride, or rather concealing with debonair good humor the defeat of his pride once more.

  A canary’s trill came through the open window. A newsboy’s “Excelsior! Novedades?” And the thunderous roar of a truck. It was another beautiful, sunny day.

  “Señor Schiebelhut, do you think he killed her?” Sauzas asked suddenly.

  “I don’t know,” Theodore said.

  “You thought so a few hours ago,” said the fat officer.

  It was true, he had. Theodore could not think what had happened to make him doubt. Perhaps nothing.

  “Who do you think killed Lelia, Ramón?” Sauzas asked him.

  “Maybe he did,” Ramón said indifferently. His dark eyes rested on Theodore. “After all, he was found here with her. He can’t explain how he got in. She let him in.”

  “Ramón!” Josefina said in an admonishing tone.

  Theodore felt only a slight start of fear, and yet his heart had begun pounding. He remembered a time when Ramón had thrown a platter of cooked duck out the kitchen window into the patio because he, Theodore, was a little late for dinner, and Ramón hadn’t liked to wait. But with such a temper—if Ramón thought he had killed Lelia, he would certainly kill him, probably throttle him with those strong hands before anybody could stop him.

  “Señor Schiebelhut did explain how he got in, Ramón. Ramón!” Sauzas said over his shoulder, “Get another wet towel, Enrique. Ramón, you have the key to this apartment. You have it with you. The lock is not automatic, so the door had to be locked from the outside—perhaps by you. The drainpipe would not bear your weight. We have tried it. The transom shows from its dust that something came through it. Now do you want us to suspect you?”

  Ramón shrugged, and the very slightness of the shrug was an insult to Sauzas.

  Everybody waited uncomfortably as the detective approached with the wet towel, put it over Ramón’s face, and wiped it with a twist as if he were wiping a baby’s nose. Ramón sprang up and threw a wild blow at the detective with his fist. Instantly the policemen were on their feet around the table. Ramón kept swinging violently, even when he slipped to his knees. A tall policeman was thrown completely down when he caught one of Ramón’s arms. Then there was a cracking sound; Ramón sprawled on the floor, and a policeman hovered over him with bared teeth, holding by the barrel the gun he had struck him with.

  “That’s fine!” said Theodore, who reproached himself now for not having joined in the fight. “That’s going to do him a lot of good! Six men, and you have to hit him with a gun-butt!”

  Josefina was kneeling by Ramón, using the wet towel on his face. Ramón made feeble movements, as if he were fighting in a dream, but he did not open his eyes. His strong mouth looked calm and childlike.

  When Ramón came to a little, Sauzas asked more questions, which Ramón scorned to answer by so much as a glance at him.

  Then the door opened smartly, and Theodore jumped a little. A policeman he had not seen before came forward and saluted Sauzas. “The flowers were bought at a stand four streets from here,” the policeman said, a little out of breath. “They were bought between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty. The man is not sure.”

  “Bought by whom?” Sauzas asked.

  “A small boy. About—this high, the man thinks. These are the only white carnations sold in the neighborhood last night to the number of two dozen, Señor Capitán.” The policeman’s face was tense and blank.

  “A small boy,” one of the men at the table echoed, and gave a low laugh.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A little before eleven, Theodore got out of a taxi and carried his suitcase and portfolio and roll of canvases to his front gate. He was accompanied by the fat police officer and one of the detectives. Ramón had been taken off to prison for further questioning by Sauzas.

  Theodore was irritated by the presence of the two men. They had stuck their noses in when he was talking with Josefina about the funeral arrangements for Lelia and had not offered the least assistance when he was searching on the street for a telephone to call an agencia funereal. All this had been most complicated, because the police were not through with the body. They wanted to measure the depth and width of the knife wounds and perform an autopsy besides.

  Theodore opened his mail-box, took out some letters, and pocketed them without looking at them. Señora Velasquez, who lived next door, had been forwarding his important mail to Oaxaca.

  He noticed that the ivy that overhung his iron gates needed water badly in the half nearest his house. Constancia, the Velasquezes’ maid, would have watered it from his first-floor window, but he had not given her a key. Theodore and the two men entered a patio paved with pinkish flagstones, at the back of which, under part of the second storey, was a garage. Theodore went on to a door at the side of the house for which he used his other key. The living-room was semi-dark, but Theodore’s eyes were everywhere, looking first at his plants—the big begonia looked as if it had died, and it was a shame—and at the furniture Inocenza had covered with sheets as he had asked her to do. He pulled a cord, and bright yellow sunlight filled the room. Then, ignoring the two men, he carried the begonia to the kitchen at the back of the house.

  He had soaked the plant before he left and stood it in a bowl of water, but it was a big semperflorens and drank half a litre of water a day. And now, as he soaked the dry pot, Theodore reproached himself for fretting like an old maid over a plant, when Lelia had been dead only twelve hours.

  He turned round and found the two men staring at him from the doorway of the kitchen. “Well, this is my house. You see that I have one.”

  “Why did you go to Oaxaca, señor?” asked the fat officer slyly.

  “I went to paint, señor.”

  “You must have left very suddenly, not to be able to take care of your plants.”

  “I do things when I want to.”

  “You are a very careful man,” the officer continued, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t have left your house without preparation unless you had been in a hurry.”

  “You have Ramón Otero in prison. Why don’t you go and question him?” With his begonia pot, he advanced towards the door, and the two men stepped back to make way for him. Then they followed him through the dining area and into the living-room, where they gaped for the second time at the stairway that curved up out of sight with no visible means of support.

  “Would you like to see the first floor?” Theodore asked ungraciously.

  The detective, bending towards a small nude of Lelia that Theodore had painted, did not answer. The fat officer yawned, exposing several gold teeth. They tramped up the carpeted stairs to Theodore’s bedroom, his bathroom, the guest-room and its bathroom, the little front corner room where he painted, and finally even Inocenza’s room and bathroom, which were the only rooms on the second floor.

  “Lots of bathrooms,” commented the police officer.

  The tiny red bulb was still burning beneath the effigy of the Virgin made of sea-shells and pink and white coral that a friend of Inocenza had sent her from Acapulco. A reproduction of a bad painting of the Last Supper advertised as well Bayer’s Cafiaspirina, bore a calendar of the year with all the saints’ name days on it, and wished to all Prosperidad y Bienestar para el Año 1957. They went downstairs.

  “You are not to leave the house,” said the fat officer, “without notifying us.”

  “I have no intention of leaving the house,” Theodore replied.

  They copied his telephone number from the telephone in the living-room, then drifted out of the door, taking time to bend and inspect one of the blossoming cacti that bordered the patio. Theodore made sure the iron gates had latched after them, then closed his house door.

  He carried his
suitcase up to his bedroom, interrupted his unpacking to take a bath, but the water was cool because the heater was not turned up. He went down to the kitchen, turned it up, collected his other plants and stood them in the kitchen sink and its wash-basin, then went up and resumed his unpacking. There was a little horse of glazed black Oaxaca clay that he had bought for Lelia, and a mermaid of grey unglazed clay, strumming a guitar, for Ramón. Besides this, he had bought Lelia an antique bracelet of silver set with garnets, and for Ramón half a dozen hand-woven ties. He tossed the presents on his bed and felt that the better part of his existence had been torn from him and destroyed. He bathed before the water was quite hot enough, but he was so eager to be clean he did not mind. Then he shaved and put on clean linen, a blue and red striped tie, and a freshly pressed grey suit.

  He walked out of the room, down the stairs, snatched up his keys from the cocktail table and went out. He pressed the bell of the house next door.

  Constancia, fat and brown and in a pink uniform, opened the door. “Ah, Señor Schie-bale-hoo!” she cried shrilly. “Pase Usted! Benvenido! Com’ está Usted?”

  He could see from her tentative smile that she had heard the news. “All right, Constancia. And you?”

  “Well, thank you!” she said mechanically.

  “And Señora Velasquez?”

  “She is well, too, and so is the cat. Wait till you see him! Leo! Leo!” She preceded him through the grape-arboured patio, calling to the cat on either side, assuming in spite of the murder of his friend that he would be extremely interested in seeing his cat. “We do not let him out on the street. His girl friends have missed him,” Constancia said, smiling.

  The door of the house was open, and Olga Velasquez rushed across the foyer to greet him. She was about forty, small and small-boned and very chic with her short blonde-tinted hair and her tiny high-heeled sandals. “Theodore!” She reached up for his shoulders and made a gesture of kissing both cheeks, though she came only to the middle of his tie. “I have just seen the paper! How dreadful! Is it true?”

  “Yes, it is true.”

  “You’ve been with the police?”

  “All night. I’ve been home only an hour.” The sight of Leo stepping forth from behind a hollowed log full of blossoming orchids sent a shock through Theodore, like the shock of seeing a close friend after a long time. For an instant, Theodore took pleasure in the colors of the picture: the orange of the orchids, Leo’s blending brown and tan and his clear, bright blue eyes. Theodore stooped and caressed the cat’s brown cheek and ear. “Leo—and how have you been?” The cat, miffed at Theodore’s desertion of him for a month, pretended interest in something in another direction. Then as Olga Velasquez began to speak, Leo looked at Theodore and opened his mouth in a monotone wail, holding the note like an operatic soprano at the climax of an aria, augmenting it even to drown out Olga, who, however, paid no attention.

  “Doesn’t he look fine? He has caught at least six lizards and one snake! Imagine! A snake this long in our patio!”

  “He is angry because I went away and left him,” Theodore said, feeling suddenly weak enough to drop on the floor.

  Olga Velasquez’s face took on an expression of distress. “You must be exhausted, Don Teodoro! Sit down. Would you like some coffee? I was just about to have some. Imagine, I had to get up at eight o’clock this morning to go to a traffic court about a ticket I got for speeding on the autopista to Cuernavaca. Imagine that one could speed on a speedway! That’s why I didn’t see the papers until just now when I got back. I couldn’t believe it was true! You do take sugar, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Olga.” He accepted the cup of coffee. It was in a little cup of transparent blue glass with a spiral design. The cool, beautiful blue made him think of diving head-first into some refreshing sea. He half listened to Señora Velasquez’s voice, that went on and on about Lelia. Was it true, was it true? Was it true that he had just walked in and found her?

  “And do you think it could have been Ramón?” she asked in a breathless whisper.

  Constancia, who had not left the living-room after bringing the extra cup and saucer, stood a few feet away, listening agape.

  “I don’t know. I suppose it is better not to say anything until we know. He is being questioned by the police.”

  “Do you have any idea who else could have done it?”

  “No.”

  “I never thought Ramón was quite right in the head.”

  “He is moody, he has a temper—but I don’t consider him insane,” Theodore said, looking at her.

  Olga tossed her head a little as if to say, well, he might not consider him insane. “Such a beautiful girl! Such a sweet girl, Lelia! I liked her very much, you know, Teo.”

  But she had seen Lelia very few times, Theodore thought. She knew that Lelia was his mistress, but she probably did not think that he was really in love with her. Olga would have behaved with the same concern if Lelia Ballesteros had been merely a friend. Theodore and Olga were good neighbors, but they kept a certain distance. Señor Velasquez, though ostensibly a lawyer, dabbled unethically in several businesses, Theodore knew, but he never asked questions of Olga or of anyone else about him, and had no curiosity to find out anything about his business practices.

  “How is your husband?” Theodore asked, as he always did.

  “Oh, as fine as ever. But tell me, you mean they have no suspects except Ramón?” She leaned towards him on the sofa, pressing her soft, well-groomed hands together.

  “Dear Olga, I am a suspect.”

  “You?”

  “Because I was there, too. I’m not supposed to leave my house.”

  “Oh, they don’t really suspect you, or you’d be in jail!” she said carelessly. “And Inocenza is not back?”

  “No. I must phone her.”

  “I shall make Constancia go home with you and take care of everything you need today—marketing, cleaning, everything! You must take a rest after this terrible experience!”

  “Thank you, Olga. And I can’t thank you enough for taking care of my mail.”

  “Ah! I’m glad you reminded me. There’s lots of mail here still. I sent you only the most important, you know?" She jumped up. “But we can get that later,” she said, sitting down again. “Ramón was very fond of her, too, wasn’t he?” she asked.

  “Oh yes.” Theodore stroked Leo’s back. The cat was in his lap, turning round and round on the unsure footing of Theodore’s thighs, unable to make up his mind whether to show enough affection to lie down or to express his annoyance with Theodore by leaving.

  “And you’re very fond of Ramón, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. I considered him my best friend—at least until this happened.”

  “Then you do think he did it!” she cried.

  “I don’t know. But I have to suspect him. The facts—”

  “That’s what I mean, Don Teodoro.”

  She prepared more instant coffee for him, taking three generous demitasse spoonfuls from the glass jar imprisoned in its hand-wrought silver filigree case which stood always on her coffee-table. The coffee was quite good, being much stronger than American instant coffee, but it still seemed odd to Theodore that a country which exported quantities of coffee beans drank instant coffee almost to a man, preferred it even, and, moreover, thought so much of it that silversmiths made beautiful cases around ordinary instant coffee-jars of varying sizes to take their place among the family valuables.

  Theodore stayed about a quarter of an hour, during which time he phoned Durango at Sra. Velasquez’s insistence, and left a message with Inocenza’s sister—Inocenza was at a neighbour’s house, the sister said—that he was home and he would like her to come back at once by plane. He was grateful that the sister did not say anything about Lelia. They had probably not yet seen the papers. Theodore went with Consta
ncia back to his house, he carrying the cat, and Constancia a pair of baked squabs, a litre of milk, and a casserole of eggplant and cheese, freshly made, which Olga Velasquez insisted he take. There was no need for Constancia to come back until four o’clock, when she had to prepare for a small cocktail party. Theodore was invited to the party, but he had declined.

  After showing Constancia what had to be done in the house, Theodore changed into pajamas and dressing-gown, made himself a pot of tea, and carried it to his room. He felt weak and half sick, hungry yet averse to anything he could think of to eat. He gave Constancia ten pesos and told her to go out and buy some rolls and fruit and the newspapers, but not to bother him with them when she came back as he might be asleep. She had not yet gone out, and downstairs, as she worked, she was singing a popular song.

  . . . my heart . . . which is so heavy . . . cries for your heart . . . how can you leave me alone . . . my heart . . . when I bring you my heart . . . my heart . . . in my hands . . .