Her Last Flight(49)

In October he took me to the opera. I wish I could remember which one. I didn’t understand a word, though the music stirred me. Sometime near the end, as the soprano lay dying yet miraculously sonorous, Velázquez snatched my fingers with one hand and wiped his eyes with the other. Afterward he apologized for this weakness and told me about his childhood in Spain, how his parents owned a great estate that was lost during the war, and how they used to take him to the opera in Madrid when he was a boy. He first saw this particular opera we had just witnessed when he was twelve, and it affected him deeply, so that he could not help but respond with emotion tonight because of all he had lost since then. He hoped this had not distressed me.

All this he explained as we sprawled in bed in the tiny room in the Hotel Scribe to which I had been assigned. We had started to make love inside the elevator, because the mechanism was so slow and this was wartime, and finished hard against the headboard an hour later; Velázquez was a disciplined man and always made sure I came at least twice (sometimes more, if he had gone to confession recently) before he finished off. He used to say it was the man’s duty to give the woman satisfaction, because a woman who was not sexually satisfied was liable to cause trouble. I saw no reason to argue with him about this.

A few days after the opera I was sent away on some assignment for a week or two, and it was only when we reunited that I realized that matters had gone too far. We devoured each other like a pair of desperate animals, driven by some lust out of all proportion to the length of our abstinence, and after Velázquez rose to dispose of the condom, he settled himself back on the bed and lit a cigarette, which we passed back and forth. An air of quiet despair settled between us. Finally he turned on his side to face me. “You will not like what I’m about to say, but I will say it regardless. I think I am in love with you.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“No, I’m afraid it’s true. Listen to me. I had word today that I am to be reassigned back to my old squadron, to conduct some reconnaissance over Germany.”

“But I thought you were finished with combat missions. Haven’t you flown enough already?”

“Well, it seems they have run short of experienced pilots. It is careless of them, of course, but that’s the English for you. I will not ask you to be faithful. That is like asking a cat not to catch mice. But I believe we are going to win this war, we are going to beat the Fascists at last, and when it’s over I would like to marry you.”

I was so shocked, I nearly tumbled off the bed.

“Me? You’re nuts. You should marry some girl from home. You know we won’t suit. You’d want me to give up my freedom, and I’d never obey you, which would make you miserable, because you love to be obeyed.”

He picked up my hand and held it to his lips. “The girl I was going to marry is dead now. I have no home left to me. For many years I said I would never marry at all, that the world was too terrible a place to bring children into it, and I was too poor in any case. But now there is hope. There is some possibility of a future. And though I am too gruff for you, and autocratic, and ugly—”

“You aren’t ugly at all.”

“But you are beautiful, and I have no right to you. Still, I promise I will make you a good husband. I will do my best to make you happy. All I ask is that you consider what I say. Then when the war’s over, the day Hitler surrenders, I will come back to you and ask again and again until you relent and become my wife. What do you think of this idea?”

“I think it’s nuts. You’ll want a dozen kids, for one thing.”

“That’s not true. Three or four would suffice.”

“What about your mistress in London?”

“I will keep her, of course,” he said gravely. “Every man needs a little variety.”

That was the night I took that photograph of him, while he was trying to pin me down, as it were. I then put down the camera and performed an act on him that made him howl, made him curse all my ancestors, made him collapse at last on the sheets and swear the most exquisite vengeance on me, to which I replied that it was a woman’s duty to give her lover satisfaction, because he was otherwise liable to cause trouble. Then I laid my head on his thick, furry chest and listened to the thud of his heartbeat through his bone and skin until we both fell asleep.

But I’m afraid I didn’t promise to marry him, or even to consider his proposal. We met only twice more before he transferred to his old squadron, flying reconnaissance out of some air base in The Netherlands, and I never saw him again after that, because he was shot down over Cologne in January. When I heard he was dead, I wept with rage, because I thought now I would never find out what had happened to Mallory. I wept and raged and wept until there was nothing left of me.



Though I’m supposed to be looking after this cat, it seems to have the opposite idea. It settles on the counter, about a yard away from my coffee cup, and stares at me. Its movements are stiff, and its eyes are rheumy, and its fur seems to be missing a patch or two, but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, you’d never guess it’s nearly two decades old. I mean it can still leap from floor to stool, and from stool to counter, and I don’t for a minute imagine I could do that.

“So you were Mallory’s cat first,” I observe.

The cat makes some adjustment of its forelegs that might be a shrug.