A Game for the Living

  For the first time since he had come home, Theodore was able to unpack his canvases, six of them rolled in a waterproof cloth, and spread them on the couch and the floor of the room in which he painted. One canvas was not absolutely dry, but it had not smeared. He avoided looking at them now, because they seemed to bring Lelia very close. He called the Mercedes-Benz garage and asked for his car to be delivered as soon as possible.

  At six o’clock he went out for a walk and came back at seven. Inocenza had the table set for one, and a plate of almonds on the liquor trolley for his aperitif. Theodore poured a small glass of Fernet-Branca. Then Inocenza’s questions began again, thick and fast, because she knew he liked to talk while he took his aperitif and preferred to read during his meals.

  “Ah, you will be very lonely now,” she said over and over, shaking her head. “And poor Don Ramón, too. Aren’t you going to see him?”

  “I think he needs to rest now.”

  “And so do you. You have circles under your eyes. You must also eat. I made a chicken soup—tomorrow we’ll have the chicken—and a lamb chop and salad.” She smiled a little, awaiting a sign that he was pleased.

  “That’s very fine, Inocenza. And where is the counterpane? I haven’t seen it yet.”

  Inocenza ran to get it from the sofa in the living-room. Theodore had gone by it without seeing it. It was in a bright pink-and-green package.

  The counterpane was made of little sewn-together squares of crochet work, a vast display of patient labor.

  “It’s magnificent,” Theodore said, feeling it between his fingers. “You must put it on my bed at once. I’ll write your Aunt Maria and thank her. It’s very kind of her to do all this work for me.”

  “She would do anything for you!”

  Maria was the aunt whose two children Theodore was putting through the University of Durango.

  Theodore sat down at his solitary place. A new copy of Time lay beside his plate, and he opened it without interest. Next week, he supposed, they would report the Ballesteros case with a photograph of Lelia’s body, perhaps, and get as much fun as they could out of the fact that she had been the mistress of two men who were friends. Theodore had no appetite. He could not even begin on the lamb chop.

  That evening he received a telephone call from an official of the policia, who told him that Lelia’s body had been taken to the agencia funereal he had asked that it be sent to, and that the autopsy revealed the stabs had been made by a knife at least five inches long and probably longer, and the widest of the stabs was an inch and a half wide. Many of the stabs had been four inches deep.

  Theodore then called Josefina and got her consent to fix the funeral for the following afternoon.

  “Would you mind telling Ramón about the funeral, Josefina?” Theodore asked. “I don’t think he wants to talk to me just now.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The funeral was at three o’clock the next afternoon at a cemetery some twenty miles from the city. A safari of some thirty cars crept along the ugly, bus-congested Avenida Guatemala eastward, jogged and crept eastward again on the highway that eventually led to Puebla and to Veracruz, where Lelia had been born. Huge, impatient Pemex petrol and Carta Blanca beer trucks pulled into the oncoming lane and tried to get beyond the front of the safari, always failed and had to creep back between two of the funeral cars. Theodore had hired twelve cars to take Lelia’s friends and neighbours and several of her relatives who had come from Veracruz and gathered at Josefina’s house. Theodore himself drove his grey Mercedes-Benz with Carlos and Isabel Hidalgo in the back seat and Olga Velasquez—who had asked Theodore that morning if she might come—in the front seat beside him. In front of him for most of the way was Josefina’s family’s car with her husband Aristeo, their daughter Ignacia and her fiancé Rodolfo, and two other people Theodore did not know. The cemetery was a dry, flat field surrounded by a wall of white-painted brick, behind which grew cypresses of varying heights. On either side of the gates was written in fading black paint:

  POSTRAOS! AQUI LA ETERNIDAD EMPIEZA

  Y ES POLVO AQUI LA MUNDANAL GRANDEZA!

  a legend on nearly every Mexican cemetery that still sent a shiver of awe through Theodore—even though he did not believe in an afterworld. There was no doubt, at any rate, that here worldly grandeur was dust.

  Theodore looked around for Ramón and saw him standing, head down, in the third or fourth row of people who bordered the grave. Ramón did not take his eyes from the casket, and though Theodore could see his tears, his face seemed strangely relaxed. Beside him stood the short, comfortable figure of Arturo Baldin, who was holding his hat respectfully against his stomach.

  The coffin lid was fastened. Lelia’s face had of course been beyond the powers of the embalmers to repair, and Theodore—having heard earlier that she would not be exposed to view—had felt grateful to have the lid of the coffin closed. And yet when he saw the shining dark brown wooden lid with its hideously functional-ornamental fastenings, he realized that however horrible her face may have been to look at, it could not have been more painful to his eyes than this permanently closed and fastened lid. The people ranged themselves all around the grave, trampling on near-by graves, and people stood with bowed heads in three or four of the paths around the grave, too far away to see or hear anything. There were young painters, middle-aged art dealers, a few officials from the Bellas Artes, shopkeepers, Lelia’s pharmacist, a couple of cousins from Guadalajara, whom Josefina introduced to Theodore. And there were flowers everywhere—wreaths leaning three deep around her tombstone, flowers in hands, in arms, roses and lilies and chrysanthemums and gladiolas and great yard-long garlands of red and white and purple bougainvilleas carried by some families who Josefina said had come up from Cuernavaca. There was little José and his family of many brothers and sisters. A man of about sixty with walrus moustaches, grey and drooping, stood with his hat pressed over his diaphragm and resembled, Theodore thought, a composite of retired Presidents of France. The priest was an anxious-looking, spare man with yellowish hands. His face held a worldly anxiety. He pattered on about Lelia’s glorious career in the arts, cut short so cruelly and without warning. Perhaps he had known Lelia, perhaps not. Lelia had not gone to church very regularly. Josefina glanced once at Theodore and shook her head slowly, as if to say that the priest was not what he might have been, but what could they do?

  And it really didn’t matter, Theodore thought. His proximity to Lelia’s body now did not seem to matter. He merely felt quiet and solemn as he did sometimes when visiting church or when hearing sacred music. He realized that for moments he had not thought of the question that had tortured him for the past sixty hours, even when he slept: who had killed her? He let his eyes pass over all the people he could see in front of him and by turning his head a little; he tried to see if any face set off a train of thought. But none did. Theodore looked up at a cruising zopilote which was paying no heed to the dead in the cemetery but was inspecting the adjacent field, where the carrion might lie unburied.

  Theodore woke up a little at the sound of the priest’s handful of soil clattering on to the coffin top. The familiar Latin went on and on as the gravediggers sprang to work. For a moment it seemed to Theodore that the bystanders flinched at each shovelful, but this impression changed. They stood unmoving, he thought, each with his own thoughts, and perhaps not even thoughts of Lelia just now, much as they had liked and loved her. The wreaths and the flowers rained down on the fresh grave until they were higher than the tombstone, which stood nearby, awaiting its final place. A choice of Josefina, it was a flat square of nearly white stone surmounted by an angel on one knee with arms outspread. Like the priest, it also sufficed, and Theodore even liked the outspread arms, because that had been Lelia’s attitude towards life. Then the sight of the cold stone angel and its significance struck him in the heart, and his eyes filled with tears. He looked at Ramón’s
stern but composed face and listened to his own heart, that seemed to be flogging him to act before it was too late. Rape—and mutilation. He was looking now at the guilty man, Theodore thought. Ramón, whom Mexican justice had released, at best, would never punish sufficiently. All at once, Theodore yielded to the realization of Lelia’s last horrible moments of life. He exerted his imagination to grasp what she had suffered. And with a kind of relish and satisfaction, he let himself be borne up on a sea of hatred and wrath against her slayer, who now, as he looked at Ramón, seemed to him could have been no one else.

  Olga Velasquez patted his arm gently. People were stirring. The service was over.

  “Look at Ramón,” Olga said. “Don’t you want to go and speak to him?”

  Ramón had hidden his face in his hands, and Arturo was standing by, trying to comfort him.

  Theodore set his teeth and could not move. A woman he did not know touched his arm and said something to him. Theodore moved in the direction of his car, a way that took him closer to Ramón. Olga came with him. Three or four people stopped him to clasp his hand and to say a few words of sympathy—rather as if he had been her husband, Theodore thought.

  “I shall write you a letter very soon,” said the man with the walrus moustaches, pressing Theodore’s hand, and Theodore suddenly recognized him as Sanchez-Schmidt, a wealthy art collector and honorary curator of several museums.

  Finally, Theodore stood hardly more than a yard away from Ramón. He did not want to speak to Ramón, but people expected him to speak to him. “Ramón?” Theodore said.

  Ramón looked at him dully, out of wet eyes. “I wanted to speak to her parents. Where are they?”

  Automatically, Theodore looked around, though he was not sure he could recognize them. He had seen them only once in Veracruz.

  Ramón was already moving towards the large, graying man in the black overcoat and his much shorter wife, who were surrounded by people. Theodore, after a glance back at Olga and the Hidalgos, who were waiting for him, followed Ramón and Arturo Baldin. After all, he thought, he should speak to her parents, too.

  “I did not do it,” Ramón was saying in a desperate whisper to the solemn, resigned pair. “I do not want you to think that I did do it.”

  Theodore looked at Ramón to see if he were possibly drunk, but he was not. “Señora and Señor Ballesteros,” Theodore interrupted Ramón. He shook their hands, bowing a little over each. “We are all devastated by this. I want you to consider me your friend. Your daughter was very dear to me.” He was conscious that his Spanish was not adequate for the occasion, that something as simple as this was perhaps not fitting. He saw tears in the man’s grey, brown-speckled eyes that were so embarrassingly like Lelia’s.

  “Gracias,” said the man.

  “I want you to know that I’m innocent,” Ramón pleaded.

  “Oh, Ramón,” Theodore said quickly, “I don’t think they—”

  “I have to be believed!” Ramón said, shaking off Arturo’s hand on his arm.

  “He is more upset than any of us,” Arturo said gently to the parents, and Lelia’s father nodded, obviously wanting to be gone.

  “Lelia was very fond of me,” Ramón said. “I was falsely accused. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Lelia’s father, whose friends were now pulling at him to leave.

  “We understand,” said Sra. Ballesteros dully, as if who had murdered her daughter did not matter at all, at least not at this moment, only the fact that she was dead. They had one other child, also a daughter, but she had married and gone to South America. Lelia had been their favorite.

  Ramón stared at them, unsatisfied. “May I come to see you in Veracruz?”

  With a sigh, Lelia’s mother tried to muster her good manners. “We shall always be glad to see you, Ramón.”

  “And you believe me innocent, don’t you?” Ramón asked again, clutching at Señor Ballesteros’s shoulder.

  “I’m sure they believe you, Ramón,” Theodore said, trying to end the general embarrassment, though at that moment it occurred to him that an innocent man did not protest so much and that this thought might be in the minds of the Ballesteros, too.

  “I shall come to see you in Veracruz,” Ramón said. “Goodbye. Adios.”

  “Adiós, Ramón,” said Sra. Ballesteros.

  Ramón stared at them as if he were about to dash after them again.

  The crowd had thinned out. Theodore and Arturo looked at each other.

  “You’re taking care of him?” Theodore asked him.

  “Si. As much as I can. And my wife, too. He doesn’t sleep at night.”

  “I suppose he had a bad time at the policía?”

  “Of course!” Arturo said, “Ramón does not know how to talk to the police. But they know how to talk to him!”

  Olga Velasquez and the Hidalgos were standing nearby, looking at Ramón and talking.

  “I didn’t do it, whatever you might think!” Ramón said suddenly to all of them.

  No one moved or said anything.

  “I’ll see you at the house, Teo?” Josefina asked him. She was having a gathering of Lelia’s relatives and a few friends.

  “I think not, Josefina, if you’ll possibly excuse me,” Theodore replied.

  “Oh, I am sorry. I was going to ask Ramón, of course, but he seems in no state of mind for such a thing. So I shall let it go,” she said with a faint smile, and only someone who knew her as well as Theodore could have heard the coolness in her tone. “Adiós, Teo.”

  Theodore bent over her hand, then walked on with Olga and the Hidalgos.

  “If he didn’t do it, why does he think everybody thinks he did?” Carlos Hidalgo asked with blunt disgust. “It might be better for him to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Carlos—” Isabel said admonishingly.

  “Well—didn’t you say so yourself?” Carlos retorted, gesturing with a trembling hand, which he at once put back in his overcoat pocket. “Until he’s finally driven to confess and makes a good confession—” Carlos gave a snort. “He annoys everybody! Just wait! He’ll think of a few little facts that’ll clinch it—sooner or later. He’ll be driven to it. I don’t know what he’s waiting for.”

  “And if he’s innocent?” Olga asked, somewhat indignantly.

  “He does not act innocent. He loved her. They quarreled. It’s quite understandable what happened,” Carlos said.

  It was not understandable, Theodore thought, and such a murder did not go with love. Theodore listened as he drove, and said nothing. Ramón’s behavior did look suspicious, unless one knew Ramón well and knew his frightful awareness of sin and guilt. Theodore wanted to be fair. Ramón’s behavior under normal circumstances was self-flagellating and odd enough from the ordinary person’s point of view. Ramón had resisted many temptations in his youth—and to Ramón temptation itself was a sin. He had had a job as bellhop when he was about sixteen, and he had told Theodore once, jokingly, of some of the women who had made advances to him. He was more serious and more honest than most young men so attractive would have been, and it was another thing that Theodore admired in Ramón that he took his handsomeness for granted and never tried to exploit it in the least. Then at twenty-six he had fallen in love for the first time, with a woman who did not want to marry. There was a problem, a big one, for Ramón. He had developed a pattern of ‘sin’ and ‘atonement’ in the years with Lelia, a pattern of self-torture. Most young men would have transferred their affections to a woman who would marry them. Or he might have gone to Buenos Aires, where an uncle had promised him a job in his firm. “That’s where he talks of going when he says he won’t see me anymore,” Lelia had said. “But when I suggested it last night, he became furious. Sometimes I’m afraid of him, Teo. . . .” Lelia had had bruises on her arm when she had said th
at, Theodore remembered, and he could not forget it.

  The Hidalgos got out in the Avenida Madero—Carlos seemed to be in need of a drink—and Theodore drove on with Olga towards his house. She asked him to come in and have tea with her, but Theodore declined.

  “You are not going to try to see Ramón?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do believe he is innocent, don’t you, Teodoro?”

  “I really don’t know, Doña Olga. Sometimes yes—sometimes no.”

  “I understand, Teo.” She looked at him thoughtfully through her little black veil. Even at a funeral, she could look chic. “Come to see me, if you are lonely, Teo.”

  Theodore let himself into his house with his keys. The house was silent. Inocenza had gone out for something, or was visiting Constancia. She had not wanted to go to the funeral because she thought they brought bad luck, and she had pleaded with Theodore to forgive her.

  The telephone rang and roused Theodore from a daydream on the living-room sofa.

  “Bueno, Teo. Ramón. Can I see you?” Ramón asked in a tense, desperate voice.

  “Yes, of course. Now?”

  “I have some people to see first. It’ll take me quite a while.”

  “How long is that?”

  “That depends. Two or three hours.”

  “All right. I’ll be here.”

  Ramón hung up.

  Theodore wondered if Ramón would care to have dinner with him, then decided not to worry about it. There was no telling at what hour Ramón would appear.

  Inocenza came in with the afternoon papers. In both of them there was more than half a page of black-bordered death notices of Lelia.

  LELIA EUGENIA BALLESTEROS 1927–1957. Pray that her soul abide in eternal peace.

  The death of LELIA EUGENIA BALLESTEROS leaves a void in the hearts of her many friends that can never be filled on earth.