constantly. How could I not? I had become hungry.â
As Pacheco said these words, the room went dark. It was as if I had been struck blind. Our chairs scraped on the marble floor and a fork or some utensil fell, making a clattering which echoed through the room.
âHow irritating,â said Malgiolio, as the spark of his cigarette moved impatiently through the air. âTheyâve blown a transformer somewhere.â
This was how the radical left often made itself felt, blowing up a generator or overhead power line. Sometimes the lights would be out a few minutes, sometimes for most of the night.
I heard a clinking noise as Pachecoâs glass touched his plate. âWeâll have light in a minute,â he said.
It could hardly have been more than that when the door opened and brilliant light poured in from the hall and moved toward us. It was Señora Puccini. She was carrying two large candelabra held out in front of her, each with at least a dozen candles. Her middle-aged face seemed brilliant and beautiful, like a star within its miniature solar system. I couldnât look at her without thinking of Pachecoâs story and it seemed I could almost hear the clarinet from the Brahms quintet swishing through the darkened room like a length of rope being swirled around and around above our heads.
Three
T he meat course was a roast saddle of veal, a great brown log of a thing, half of which rose off its silver platter on the snapped remnants of ten flimsy ribs like a severely mutated praying mantis. Malgiolio ate steadily, his small hands and teeth aspiring to the mechanical, a robot whose sole purpose was the ingestion of organic matter. Yet at the end of thirty minutes, heâd hardly bruised that spaniel-sized slab of meat. Dalakis took a slightly greater than normal amount for the average person, the excess being destined not for his belly but for his brown suit, which was soon flecked with escaped fragments of food. Pacheco ate quickly and without apparent interest. I took two or three bites just to feel myself part of the occasion. With the veal came a vegetable mixture consisting of peas, chestnuts, and something I couldnât recognize. The candlelight reflected off the silver platter making the veal sparkle like the promise of resurrection.
But while the food remained marvelous, our attention had shifted elsewhere. Certainly I didnât announce to myself that I was now more interested in this relationship between Pacheco and his housekeeper, but I was aware that some additional thing was competing for my attention and at first I wasnât sure what it was. Then I realized. Partly it was the discrepancy. On one hand was the description of Antonia Puccini as she had been twenty years before and on the other was the Señora Puccini who kept bringing us mountains of food without seeming aware that we were in the room. I felt that if I collapsed at her feet, she would step over me without once looking down.
Beyond that, the evening was too peculiar to let me concentrate on my food to the exclusion of all else, although that would have been unlikely in any case. I admired the food as a piece of theater more than as something to eat. Malgiolio, I think, would have kept eating in an earthquake. Perhaps Dalakis as well. But I am easily distracted. The lights, for instance, never came back on and soon we were surrounded by half a dozen great candelabra which threw light and shadow over our plates, the table, and our faces as if paralleling the emotions going on underneath. Then there was the trouble in the city. Occasionally we heard sirens, even gunfire, although the stone walls of the dining room almost completely excluded the outside world. Also, the fact we were so few was a constant reminder of the disequilibrium of our times, that we were only one quarter of our usual number with no sense of the future, how we would get home, or what we would find when we got there.
Additionally, we
As Pacheco said these words, the room went dark. It was as if I had been struck blind. Our chairs scraped on the marble floor and a fork or some utensil fell, making a clattering which echoed through the room.
âHow irritating,â said Malgiolio, as the spark of his cigarette moved impatiently through the air. âTheyâve blown a transformer somewhere.â
This was how the radical left often made itself felt, blowing up a generator or overhead power line. Sometimes the lights would be out a few minutes, sometimes for most of the night.
I heard a clinking noise as Pachecoâs glass touched his plate. âWeâll have light in a minute,â he said.
It could hardly have been more than that when the door opened and brilliant light poured in from the hall and moved toward us. It was Señora Puccini. She was carrying two large candelabra held out in front of her, each with at least a dozen candles. Her middle-aged face seemed brilliant and beautiful, like a star within its miniature solar system. I couldnât look at her without thinking of Pachecoâs story and it seemed I could almost hear the clarinet from the Brahms quintet swishing through the darkened room like a length of rope being swirled around and around above our heads.
Three
T he meat course was a roast saddle of veal, a great brown log of a thing, half of which rose off its silver platter on the snapped remnants of ten flimsy ribs like a severely mutated praying mantis. Malgiolio ate steadily, his small hands and teeth aspiring to the mechanical, a robot whose sole purpose was the ingestion of organic matter. Yet at the end of thirty minutes, heâd hardly bruised that spaniel-sized slab of meat. Dalakis took a slightly greater than normal amount for the average person, the excess being destined not for his belly but for his brown suit, which was soon flecked with escaped fragments of food. Pacheco ate quickly and without apparent interest. I took two or three bites just to feel myself part of the occasion. With the veal came a vegetable mixture consisting of peas, chestnuts, and something I couldnât recognize. The candlelight reflected off the silver platter making the veal sparkle like the promise of resurrection.
But while the food remained marvelous, our attention had shifted elsewhere. Certainly I didnât announce to myself that I was now more interested in this relationship between Pacheco and his housekeeper, but I was aware that some additional thing was competing for my attention and at first I wasnât sure what it was. Then I realized. Partly it was the discrepancy. On one hand was the description of Antonia Puccini as she had been twenty years before and on the other was the Señora Puccini who kept bringing us mountains of food without seeming aware that we were in the room. I felt that if I collapsed at her feet, she would step over me without once looking down.
Beyond that, the evening was too peculiar to let me concentrate on my food to the exclusion of all else, although that would have been unlikely in any case. I admired the food as a piece of theater more than as something to eat. Malgiolio, I think, would have kept eating in an earthquake. Perhaps Dalakis as well. But I am easily distracted. The lights, for instance, never came back on and soon we were surrounded by half a dozen great candelabra which threw light and shadow over our plates, the table, and our faces as if paralleling the emotions going on underneath. Then there was the trouble in the city. Occasionally we heard sirens, even gunfire, although the stone walls of the dining room almost completely excluded the outside world. Also, the fact we were so few was a constant reminder of the disequilibrium of our times, that we were only one quarter of our usual number with no sense of the future, how we would get home, or what we would find when we got there.
Additionally, we
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