Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 633 & 634, October 1994

The Telephone by Augusto Mario Delfino

© 1984 by International Cultural Exchange

To celebrate the upcoming Halloween holiday, we offer a tale that skirts the edges of the supernatural. The story also adds to our pantheon of international figures, for it comes from a native of Uruguay and is translated by Donald Yates, an authority on South American literature who has translated eight EQMM stories...

On the low table in the hallway the telephone has been silent since four in the afternoon. Hebe glances at it and says to Berta, her younger sister, “No one has called.”

Berta gives a little shrug and, glancing in turn at the telephone, notices the wilted roses in the crystal vase on the table. They have been there since Hebe brought them the day before. Berta recalls the details of that moment. It was eight-thirty in the evening and Hebe had been out. She returned with the roses wrapped in waxed tissue. Before kissing her mother, who was reading the paper in the living room, and without saying a word to Berta, she got the vase, went to the kitchen to fill it with water, came back, and began arranging the flowers. It was then that the telephone rang. Hebe answered it. Berta heard her say:

“Yes, Papa. Enjoy your dinner. Have a good time.”

Berta approached her sister.

“Did he say he wouldn’t be coming home to eat?”

“A couple of friends have invited him out. Let Mama know.”

At nine-thirty they sat down at the dinner table, just the three of them. They turned on the radio; they rambled on about vague, trivial matters. It was ten o’clock when their brother Alberto arrived. Displaying his characteristic moodiness, which fluctuated between intensity and indifference, he overrode the maid’s annoyance, saying:

“Amelia, serve me everything all together and don’t bother heating anything up. I don’t have much time because this is going to be the most important night of my life.”

His mother regarded him reproachfully, as if to say: “When will you stop behaving like a child?” But she said nothing, knowing that Hebe and Berta enjoyed indulging his extravagances.

They had just finished their coffee when the telephone rang. Amelia answered it.

“It’s for you,” she said to Alberto.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he exclaimed boastfully. And he strode from the dining room as if the actual physical presence of one of his girlfriends were awaiting him. The four women heard him utter, “But it’s not possible!” Then they could hear nothing more because he lowered his voice. He reappeared, his face looking drawn and tense.

“Alberto!” his mother demanded. “What’s wrong?”

“A friend, Mama. Maybe my best friend. He’s just had a stroke.”

“Who is it?” asked Berta.

“You don’t know him.”

Hebe said nothing. She rose and went to her room, shutting herself away, while her mother, her sister, the maid, and the cook — women joined together, disturbed over Alberto’s secret somewhere out there in the night and the city — guessed at the identity of the victim, speculated on the degree of seriousness, in somber, fearful tones.

It was after eleven when the telephone rang. Berta went to answer. Hebe, who had been lying on her bed, sat up and listened. Her sister’s voice confirmed her suspicions. When she came out of her room, Berta was saying:

“No, Alberto. You’re hiding something from me.”

“What’s he saying? What’s he saying?” her mother called out as Amelia, wakened by the ringing of the telephone, appeared, wrapped in her bathrobe decorated with large red flowers.

Berta hung up the receiver. She turned her eyes away from her mother and met Hebe’s gaze.

“Papa is the sick person.”

“I knew it,” said Hebe.

Afterwards, there was nothing to do but wait. The mother accepted whatever Amelia said in her effort to cheer her up and allay her fears. She herself sought the consolation of describing a night thirty years earlier. Hebe was then an infant. Her husband had gone out, the first time he had done so at night in seven months. She had fallen asleep in a chair next to the child’s cradle. The telephone awakened her. It was a friend calling to tell her not to be worried, that Juan had suffered a dizzy spell and had been taken to a hospital, and that he would be coming home as soon as the spell passed. When the friend hung up, she cried, cried out loud to the point of alarming the neighbors, who knocked in vain on her door. When Juan came home a short while later, he found her unconscious on the floor with scarcely a pulse. Berta, who had heard the story countless times, listened without paying attention. She was tensely waiting for the telephone to ring. Hebe, who had taken refuge in the bathroom, ran water in the sink to cover the sound of her sobbing.

At daybreak Alberto arrived. He was with two friends. He said nothing. He held out his arms to his mother and wept. Afterwards — Berta remembers this as she watches Hebe pick up the vase and the fallen rose petals from the table — everything was effortless and strange. The morning brought on a feeling of great weariness. And sleepiness, an overpowering sleepiness that she had to struggle against. Amelia arrived with the newspaper, took out the milk bottles, served coffee, raised the blinds. Alberto had gone out. When he returned, he asked about their mother. Hebe said:

“She’s asleep. She had to have another shot.”

Alberto asked the women to stay in their rooms until the wake could be prepared in the living room. An hour — perhaps two — later he said:

“It’s all right now.”

Berta wanted to forget. She wanted to erase the memory of a day and a night and half of the next day, to forget her home full of people, full of flowers, then with only a few persons who spoke in muted voices. She wanted to forget Hebe rejecting the attentions of Horacio, her fiancé, to forget how Hebe, taking her by the arm, led her into the kitchen and there, amidst cups holding the remains of coffee, astonished her by saying:

“Do you remember Enrique Arenal? You must. Of course, you were very young then — twelve or thirteen. He was that boy who lived next door on Serrano Street. I’d like him to be here now.”

What had gotten into Hebe? Was it possible that on a night like this she could be thinking of a man so removed from everything? No doubt it was she who had asked him to come. Enrique Arenal must have been the stranger at the wake who had spoken but a few words with Alberto. How changed Hebe seems! It will be better if she breaks up with Horacio. Why go on with something that would end up making them both unhappy? But it’s all too soon, she thought. Papa liked Horacio. Ending the engagement with him would be like betraying Papa.

Hebe has returned with the empty vase. Berta can wait no longer to ask her not to commit that selfish betrayal.

“Hebe—” she says.

The telephone rings. Like someone snatching a weapon from the hand of a madman, Berta grabs the receiver. Hebe takes it from her firmly, gently.

“I’ll answer it,” she says. “Hello!” She falls silent, turning pale. The words she is hearing seem to bring a throbbing to her cheeks. This accentuates her pallor. Her motionless lips, from which the blood has drained, appear pale even through the glistening red lipstick. Hebe’s gaze falls on Berta, who persists in standing there. With the expression of one who is persuaded after offering great resistance, Hebe concedes:

“Yes, this is Hebe. But of course I recognized you. Your voice is the same. But I can’t believe it. No, I just can’t... No honestly, it makes me happy but very sad at the same time. You’re all right, you say? Well, we’re doing the best we can, considering the terrible thing that has happened. A trip? You’re trying to make me feel better. A trip is different. A trip promises a return. No, I just can’t accept it. Poor Mama... She’s sleeping.”

Hebe lowers her voice. Berta turns to reassure herself that the house is immersed in silence.

“Yes, a lot of drugs to make her sleep. Before that, early in the morning, she acted as if she didn’t understand that something frightful had happened to us all. Anyone would have thought that she wasn’t suffering in the least. Closer to us, do you say? I can’t hear you very well. Yes, I know it’s not the noise. Just the opposite. Your words sound fuzzy. Hello! Hello! There, now I can hear you. How can you say that? Why wouldn’t I forgive you? No, I’m the helpless one, who can’t find the words to tell you what I want to say... But the only thing I want to know is that you are happy, content... There’s a noise now. What is it? Trains? You’re talking from a station. Are you alone? Oh dear, poor thing... Berta’s here, beside me. I’ll tell her. Yes, in those words. No, Alberto has gone out. Something he had to do. Urgent, he said. No, we’re not alone. Aunt Carmen is here, too. She’ll stay with us and spend the night. The Oddone sisters just left a moment ago. Do you remember them? They used to live around the comer on Serrano Street. Maria looks very old, but she’s still the same, the way she used to be. But you should see Elisa. A pound of makeup on her face, like a clown... But how can I be talking about these things now? On a day like this. No, I’m not crying. What makes you think I am? You think that’s funny, don’t you? You think I’m crying and looking ugly the way I did when I was a little girl. But you...”

Hebe is weeping now. The tears roll down her cheeks, forming two glistening streaks.

“I just can’t bring myself to say that word. Afraid, you say? But I always loved you. I love you now. No, what can I expect to find in Horacio? He probably doesn’t realize that he means nothing to me now. I could lean on a chair, on a wall, on anything but him. You have to go? Please don’t, not yet. Don’t leave me alone.” Alone because Hebe cannot see her sister, who is regarding her with surprise, with pity, with scorn. “I have so many things to say to you still. No, it’s not the same. It’s not the same that you already know it. I have to say them to you. Hello! Hello! Can you hear me? It’s terrible, those trains again. What do you care if that man is coming down the platform for you? Be calm. Don’t worry about that. I’m strong and I won’t. What? Not ever again?” She cries out as if she had been struck. “Never again?”

“Hebe, are you out of your mind?” Berta says to her. “Give me the phone. That’s enough!” But she withdraws her gesture when she sees that her sister is smiling, when she sees in her eyes the expression of a tenderness that she does not understand.

“That’s all? Just good night?” says Hebe. “Yes, rest. Rest peacefully.”

She replaces the telephone receiver, but without releasing it. Then her hand opens slowly in the movement of a strange and beautiful creature. Berta is standing there. Hebe sees her once more. Hebe says:

“It was Papa.”

— translated by Donald A. Yates