A Game for the Living (13 page)

The man had the languid, slow-witted manner that Theodore often noticed in priests. He looked as limp as his black robes. “Well—what are you going to do with him?”

“You are not a Catholic?” the priest asked, jerking his shovel-capped head back a little.

“No, I happen not to be. I ask because I'm a friend of—”

“Well—I shall comfort him. I shall do the duty of a priest,” he said matter-of-factly, and even smiled a little.

“You know he has been exonerated by the police. He is not guilty.”

The priest smiled with a superior air now. “That is no concern of mine, señor.”

“You should try to convince him that he is not guilty,” Theodore said quickly, but the priest looked uninterested.

“We are all guilty in the eyes of the Lord.”

Theodore's anger surged suddenly into his face.

The priest was climbing the stairs.

Theodore fumed inwardly, without being able to think of a single thing to call after him. In fact, only the ludicrous phrase
l'esprit d'escalier
crossed his indignant mind. He hurried on down the stairs. A worthless lot!
What
comfort would he be to Ramón? To reassure him that the fires of hell would be hotter than any he had known on earth? What Ramón needed was a psychiatrist! Dashing out of the door, Theodore overturned a pyramid of oranges on the sidewalk, sending half of them into the gutter.

“Ah, look at that! Why don't you watch where you're going with your big feet!” screamed the fat old woman, who was not stirring from her pillow seat on the sidewalk.

“I am sorry. I am very sorry.” It seemed to Theodore that the pyramid of oranges had been put there purposely for him to upset in order to make himself feel more asinine, but he repressed his anger and patiently collected the oranges and brought them back to the woman, though the average Mexican might not have bothered, Theodore thought. Theodore knew that he was obviously a
forastero
in Mexico, and for this reason he felt that his conduct had to be above reproach. He smiled and gave the old woman a five-peso note, for which he got quite a friendly smile in return and a “May God reward you in Heaven!” which lingered in his ears.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

2 March 1957

Today painted well for the first time since Lelia's death. A composition in yellows of the view from my studio window. For the first time, a pleasant tiredness after a day's work—which lasts no longer than I can keep thinking about my day's work. There is no word from Ramón, and Sauzas says no one intends to make an attempt to treat him. The police are finished with him. They have left him to the priests—who believe everything he says.

Have the feeling people on the street are watching my house, and when I look at them for a moment, realize I must be wrong. Yet Inocenza says she has never had the telephone ring and there be no voice. Gives me the feeling someone watches to know when
I
am home and even when I am going to answer the telephone, since I. answers it at least half the time.

A few American friends in town (Ernest & Judy Riemer, Paul Shipley) & Riemers asked me to dinner, but I have no heart to see them and got out of it. Have seen in the last week only R. once, Josefina once and Olga. Josefina
wants
to believe R. is guilty just as I want to believe him innocent. “If he is innocent, he is wicked to have put us through all this,” says J. with passion. My efforts to persuade her not to judge R. she laughs off, says I judge him, too, and I cannot convince her that I bear R. not the slightest ill will.

Night before last: a dream Lelia was decorating her apartment with colored streamers for a Carnaval party. Nothing happened in the dream. It left me oddly cheerful. J. with Sanchez-Schmidt (very decent man) is arranging a sale of Lelia's paintings & drawings along with the dissolution of her apartment. I am relieved that J. does not expect or need me to help her. I offered. J. gave me the silver box that L. never polished and which I adore, in which she used to keep her jewelry and trinkets—though I was given little of the last, and not my choice: gold pin with figure 8 knot and seed pearls and one odd ear-ring. This is what comes of modestly saying I did not want anything!

Theodore kept his fingers in the place and turned back. The diary was two and a half years old. He did not write in it every day. Here and there he had made a sketch, and he had made more than he realized of Ramón, who had never agreed to sit for him. It amused Theodore to draw him in front view as a Roman with a wreath on his head, and in profile as a sharp-featured Spanish
torero,
and to find one sketch as much like him as the other. There was a pen-and-ink drawing of himself hectically feeding Leo in the kitchen, setting a broiled and split lobster before the cat with one hand and with the other pouring melted butter from a pitcher, and below it their dialogue:

LEO: Where have you been, damn you! Don't you know it's after midnight?

T: I told you I'd be late coming home, and I'm sure Inocenza gave you a little something at five o'clock.

LEO: She did not.

T: Don't lie, Leo. And here's a fine broiled lobster. Smell it!

LEO: R-row! If you think this makes up for waiting six hours!

T: I promise not to do it again.

LEO: You will. You're lucky I stay around at all, because you don't deserve me.

Theodore turned back to what he had just written and added:

Kurt Zwingli (now in Zurs) wants me to illustrate in pen and ink a new short book of his. The MS came yesterday. ‘The Straightforward Lie'. A satire of modern life. A young man of the kind who never existed—like those in the exercises of old-fashioned grammar books who stay at
pensions
in London in order to learn the language, attend concerts and visit museums and exhibit
Schwärmerei
for every vital statistic—travels around the world today and finds everybody dubious about the good and value of everything, cynical and pessimistic. Our hero refuses to be dampened and misses all the cynicism. Summary cannot do it justice. I adore it.

I see rather dense but fine penwork which would combine the static stiffness one sees in grammar-book illustrations (ill-fitting clothes, sexless bodies, everyone with two left feet) plus nightmarish darkness, the darkness of pessimism and resignation. If I get myself into the proper frame of mind, I'll attempt it. Must be done by Sept. To get in proper state of mind, something must happen. Sauzas is apparently making no progress.

Looked at Rouault. The solace of looking at other people's paintings.

About midnight, when Theodore was in the living-room reading, his telephone rang. He felt suddenly sure that it would be his silent caller, and the things he had thought of before to say went through his mind in a frightened flash. His hand was already perspiring as he rested it on the telephone. He yanked the telephone up.

“
Bueno?
”

He heard a confusion of voices at some distance from the telephone, then: “
Bueno?
Don Teodoro?”

Theodore relaxed a little. “
Si,
Arturo.”

“If you will pardon the hour, Don Teodoro, Ramón would like to see his bird,” Arturo said distractedly.

“Oh. Does he want me to bring it?”

“No, he will come. Or is it too late?”

“Not at all.”

“In a few minutes, then. Is that all right, Don Teodoro?”

“
Seguro que sí!
”

Arturo hung up.

Theodore turned on another light in the living-room, then climbed the stairs to the second floor, saw that Inocenza's light was out, and knocked gently at her door.

“
Sí!
” Inocenza said in a frightened voice as if she had awakened from sleep at the same instant.

“Inocenza, it's I. I would like to get Ramón's bird. I'm very sorry to disturb you.”

“
Sí,
señor.” He heard a bustling about, then Inocenza opened the door in her robe, barefoot, and turned and took the bird cage down from the hook.

“He telephoned. Ramón's dropping over for a moment, but there's no need for you to disturb yourself.”

Inocenza smiled. Her glossy hair hung loose, and it was very beautiful falling behind her shoulders. “I would be glad to come down, if you need me, señor.”

“No, no, I don't think we will. Thank you, Inocenza.” The bird was silent as he carried it down the stairs, and he wondered if it was still asleep under its cloth, or if it was awake and waiting in a state of terrified suspense for what might be going to happen to it.

Theodore put a jacket on over his shirt and sweater. The house was chilly. There was kindling and some heavier wood in a leather hod beside the fireplace, and Theodore wadded some newspaper between the fire-dogs, laid kindling on it, and struck a match. A fire would be cheerful for Ramón, he thought. He put on wood as fast as the fire could take it. Then he undraped the bird cage. The bird looked at him intelligently with its head on one side, then hopped closer to the cage door and studied it as if it were contemplating a new means of attack.

Leonidas jumped silently down from a chair and approached the cage with the stealthy swagger of a lion sure of victory.

“Oh, no you don't, Leo,” Theodore said, picking the cat up. He carried him to his study off the living-room, turned on a small light, and set the cat down on a couch. “Stay here and be quiet.”

Theodore heard a car stop in front of the door and went immediately out to open the iron gates. Arturo was paying the
libre
driver.

“I won't be staying long, Don Teodoro,” Arturo said after greeting Theodore courteously. “I just wanted to be sure that Ramón got here safely.”

They crossed the patio and entered the house.

Ramón sat down on the rug beside the bird's cage. In the better light, Theodore saw that Ramón's eyes were swollen as if he had been weeping. Arturo wore his anxious smile, and looked at Theodore and shook his head as if to say he had done his best and without much success.

“Inocenza has taken good care of the bird, I think,” Theodore said to Ramón. “She keeps him in her room because it gets sun and the cat never goes up there to annoy him.”

Ramón might not have heard him.

Theodore looked with embarrassment at Arturo, then beckoned to him, and they walked to a corner of the room. “Did anything happen tonight?” Theodore whispered.

“No, señor. Nothing unusual. He went to church—”

Ramón was half-reclining beside the cage, opening the door. The bird looked at the open space for a moment, then hopped out and fluttered from the rug to the seat of the sofa. Ramón smiled at it and wiped his eyes. He looked at Theodore. “Forgive me, Teo. Forgive me.”

“Of course I forgive you!” Theodore said, not knowing exactly what he meant. Theodore felt a reassuring or warning pat on the arm from Arturo.

Ramón sat up on his heels. “Forgive me,” he said wearily, and held his head in both hands.

Theodore came closer to him. “Come and sit down.” But Ramón did not respond to his tug at his shoulder. “Is there anything you'd like, Ramón?”

“No.” Ramón took his hands down from his head and looked at his bird again.

“You've never let him out of the cage before, have you?”

“No.”

Ramón had always said, the times that Theodore or Lelia had asked him to let the bird out in his apartment, that he was afraid the bird would fly up to the light fixture on the ceiling and not come down again. Theodore thought Ramón did not want to be bothered getting the bird back in the cage and, perhaps more important, did not want to give the bird that bit of pleasure. There was a curious cruelty in Ramón's attitude towards the little prisoner whom he gave no joy to and took none from, and it combined both sadism and masochism, Theodore thought, because he felt that in the bird Ramón saw himself.

Now Ramón was crawling on his knees towards the sofa, holding out his finger with a look of pathetic affection. The bird hopped along the back of the sofa, a tiny, exquisite, sky-blue thing against the terra-cotta-colored sofa. Theodore felt that Ramón was trying to prove something by the fact that the bird would or would not come to him.

“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.”