This is where the halfbreed Marta sat and did her accounts for the tailor Pendel. Over there in the shelves you see the books on sociology and history that Marta used to read in her spare time in an effort to raise herself in society and fulfil the dreams of her dead father the carpenter. As a self-educated man the tailor Pendel was concerned that all his staff but particularly the halfbreed Marta develop themselves to their maximum potential. This is the kitchen area where Marta made her famous sandwiches, all the prominent men of Panama would speak in bated breath of Marta’s sandwiches, including Mickie Abraxas the famous suicidal spy, tuna was her speciality but in her heart she wished she could poison the whole pack of them except for Mickie and her employer Pendel. And over there in the corner behind the desk we have the very spot where in 1989 the tailor Pendel, having first closed the door, was sufficiently overcome to take Marta in his arms and protest his undying love for her. The tailor Pendel proposed they visit a pushbutton but Marta preferred to take him to her own apartment, and it was on the drive there that Marta incurred the facial injuries that left her permanently scarred, and it was the fellow student Abraxas who suborned the cowardly doctor into leaving his indelible imprint upon her – that doctor was so terrified of losing his rich practice that he couldn’t keep his hands still. The same doctor afterwards had the wisdom to inform on Abraxas, an act that led effectively to his destruction.
Closing the door on her dead self, Marta continued down the corridor to Pendel’s cutting room. I’ll leave the money in his top left drawer. The door was ajar. Lights were burning inside the room. Marta was not surprised. Not long ago, her Harry had been a man of unearthly discipline but in recent weeks the stitching of his too-many lives had been too much for him. She pushed the door. Now we are in the tailor Pendel’s cutting room, known to customers and employees alike as the Holy of Holies. Nobody was permitted to enter without knocking, or during his absence – except apparently for his wife Louisa, who was seated at her husband’s desk with her spectacles on and a pile of his old notebooks at her elbow, and a lot of pencils and an order book, and a tin of fly spray in front of her, opened at the base while she played with the ornate cigarette lighter that Harry said a rich Arab had given him though P&B had no rich Arabs on its books.
She was dressed in a thin red cotton housecoat and apparently nothing else, because as she leaned forward she revealed her breasts in their entirety. She was clicking the lighter on and off and smiling at Marta through the flame.
‘Where’s my husband?’ Louisa asked.
Click.
‘He’s gone to Guararé,’ Marta replied. ‘Mickie Abraxas killed himself at the fireworks.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I. So is your husband.’
‘However it was not unexpected. We have had about five years’ warning of the event,’ Louisa pointed out quite reasonably.
Click.
‘He was appalled,’ Marta said.
‘Mickie?’
‘Your husband,’ Marta said.
‘Why does my husband keep a special invoice book for Mr Osnard’s suits?’
Click.
‘I don’t know. It puzzles me too,’ Marta said.
‘Are you his mistress?’
‘No.’
‘Does he have one?’
Click.
‘No.’
‘Is that his money you’re holding in your hand?’
‘Yes,’
‘Why?’
Click.
‘He gave it me,’ Marta said.
‘For fucking?’
‘For safekeeping. It was in his pocket when he heard the news,’
‘Where does it come from?’
Click, and a flame that lit Louisa’s left eye so close that Marta wondered why her eyebrow didn’t catch fire and the flimsy red housecoat with it.
‘I don’t know,’ Marta replied. ‘Some customers pay cash. He doesn’t always know what to do with it. He loves you. He loves his family more than anything on earth. He loved Mickie too.’
‘Does he love anybody else?’
‘Yes,’
‘Who?’
‘Me.’
She was examining a piece of paper. ‘Is this Mr Osnard’s correct home address? Torre del Mar? Punta Paitilla?’