“Almost all these porcelain pieces are Royal Doulton,” she said. “They’re worth a fortune. Look, this one is one of a kind. It will be worth almost seven thousand dollars when it is sold for Violeta.”
Under lock and key, behind glass, she had another half dozen Capodimonte pieces, and she asked Rose if he knew what they were worth, if he could tell they were originals, with seals of authenticity and everything, and in perfect condition.
“Look, with just this one here, Bolivia’s sick daughter has enough to live on for the rest of her life. I’ll show you,” Socorro said.
Rose examined it. It was a good-sized piece, made up of two figures on a sort of cloud, a man and a woman, the woman with an imperial air, a Marie Antoinette or Madame de Pompadour, wearing a tulle flounce dress and leaning down over a beggar at her feet. The beggar, or character down on his luck, gazed with an almost mystical rapture at the sumptuous cleavage of the lady. It could be said that he was gorging on that pair of porcelain breasts with his eyes, and Rose was annoyed with him, that beggar, because there was something base about him.
“Pretty piece,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“Since Marcus and I don’t have kids,” Socorro explained with a hint of frustration, “Violeta will be the sole heir of all these treasures. It’s a debt I owe to Bolivia, my dear Bolivia, because I didn’t always do right by her, didn’t always do right. Perhaps because I was jealous, or envious, and no one is perfect, we know, certainly not me. And neither was Bolivia; she was no pot of honey, my friend Bolivia, you can be sure of that.”
Although Socorro had not admitted it, Rose had come to the conclusion that this woman had not been able to stand the way her husband looked at Bolivia, that Bolivia was fertile and she wasn’t, and that it was painful to compare her sickly lean figure with the brimming roundness and spectacular smile of her rival. No doubt Bolivia had noticed, sensed something was wrong, that the tension as the months passed had become way too evident, almost tangible, as Socorro had mentioned.
Socorro told him that one night, when she and her husband returned from a party, they noticed that Bolivia had packed up her suitcase and gone, leaving a note that said, “Love you, thank you very much for everything, thank you and see you soon and may God give you many years of wedded happiness.” From then on, Socorro only saw her once in a while, and of her life and adventures only learned fragments. “She was a survivor, that’s what Bolivia was, a survivor,” Socorro repeated various times to Rose, and he remembered reading the same phrase in María Paz’s manuscript, and asked himself what it meant exactly, and if perhaps it had to do with the seventeen pages that were missing from the manuscript.
“There’s seventeen pages missing?”
Socorro pretended she didn’t know, but she turned red and drops of sweat moistened the bleached fuzz under her nose.
“Do you know by any chance what happened to those seventeen pages?”
“Sometimes things get lost, you know…”
“Mrs. Salmon, I’d appreciate it if you told me the truth.”
“You have to understand, Mr. Rose, those pages were the most compromising part of the story. I was afraid that… in the end… Look, the truth is I burned them, Mr. Rose.”
“You burned them.”
“Yes. I admit it. There were revelations about things that were too personal and serious and that affect me directly. Painful things for me. And others that I don’t remember. Things that would damage the memory of my best friend, you know what I mean. Let’s drop this topic, please, Mr. Rose.”
“Of course, we’ll leave it there. Just one more question before I say good-bye. What made you decide to finally send off the manuscript?”
“That’s an easy question. I did it because María Paz asked me to, and I didn’t feel I could deny her request.”
“But it took you a few weeks to mail it.”
“I suppose remorse, which bites like a dog, got the best of me, and I had no choice but to look for your address, Mr. Rose. Odile, my neighbor who reads a lot and knows her way around, helped me with that. She has a computer and found you on that goggle thing, is that what it’s called? And then I sent off the manuscript right away. Better late than never, right?”
“Do you think you did it because you were afraid that María Paz may have found out if you hadn’t?”
“What makes you think that? It has been a while since I’ve seen her. Haven’t seen her since the last time I visited her in prison. You do favors. If you can, you do favors. I once gave María Paz a mink coat so she could keep warm in the winter, or so that she could sell it if she needed the money. Doesn’t that count? I’m not going to say that the mink was in the best of shape. But in any case it was a nice gesture on my part. Like I said, we do what we can. And do you know who got Bolivia her first job in the United States after she got here without papers? Yes sir, it was me. It was a humble job, but a job still, cleaning the apartment of an old woman who lived on West Fifty-Fifth Street. But I’m boring you, or do you want me to keep going?”
“As long as you don’t lose your way, Mrs. Salmon.”
“The woman’s name was Hannah and she was Jewish. And it took Bolivia a while to realize that when she got to the apartment everything was clean and organized. Bolivia asked her one day, ‘Ma’am, how do you expect me to do my job if you do it for me beforehand?’ The old woman responded that she could not stand the thought of someone coming into her home and finding it dirty. So Bolivia came to understand that her boss was just looking for company, because there’s nothing worse than loneliness, as you know, Mr. Rose. So Bolivia never asked again and learned how to quickly clean what had already been cleaned and organize what had already been organized. Afterward, they went for a stroll in Central Park, always talking about trees or the color of the leaves according to the season.
“‘I’d say that is a poplar leaf and it is viridian in color,’ Hannah ventured.
“‘I don’t know what viridian is, I’d say it’s emerald green,’ Bolivia countered.
“‘Same thing, Bolivia, viridian and emerald are the same green. And this leaf from a weeping willow — isn’t it chrome green?’