A Game for the Living by Patricia Highsmith Read Free Book Online Page A

tiredly.
    â€œThen what did you do?”
    â€œI travelled—mostly around South America—for three or four years. I lived here and there. Does all this matter?”
    â€œYes. Why did you decide to come to Mexico?”
    â€œBecause I like it best. Since I have an income, it doesn’t matter where I live.”
    Theodore’s source of income was discussed for perhaps fifteen minutes, though it was quite simple: he derived it from property that his family owned in Germany and from stocks which had become active and valuable when Germany had begun to recover after the war. All in all, he received about twenty-five thousand pesos per month. On which, of course, he paid the required Mexican income tax. He could prove that, if anyone cared to examine his papers. The subject bored him and made him feel sleepier than ever. It seemed to him that the police were deliberately keeping him and Ramón awake in a kind of slow version of American police grilling. There were no swinging lights or rubber cudgels; but in the long run the method was the same: extract a confession through exhaustion, through a collapse of sanity. His tiredness made him fretful, and he was particularly irritated by the stupid curiosity with which the police and detectives looked at him when they heard that he had an income of twenty-five thousand pesos per month. How did a man spend all that? What did he do with it? The more he cut short and evaded, the more closely they pressed him. When he said he owned a house in Cuernavaca as well as one in Mexico, D.F., they stared at him with the pleased, dazed expressions of people watching a Hollywood movie.
    â€œI can only say that it is quite possible to spend twenty-five thousand pesos in Mexico, if one has a house, a maid, a car, repairs on the house—if one buys books and music—” Theodore had the feeling he was talking in his sleep, arguing with irrational characters in a dream.
    â€œAnd a mistress?” the gum-chewing detective sitting next to Theodore asked him with a nudge in his ribs.
    Theodore edged away from him, but the nauseating mint-staleness of his breath had made Theodore’s stomach constrict. He took a swallow of his execrable coffee, which was mouse-grey and mostly boiled milk. The rim of the paper cup was disintegrating. “Excuse me,” Theodore said, getting up. He went to Lelia’s bathroom off the hall. He could not throw up after all. There was nothing in his stomach. But he stood nauseated for several minutes over the toilet, holding his tie out of the way with his big, gentle hand against his chest. He washed his hands and face. His skin felt numb. Then he took some of Lelia’s Colgate toothpaste and rinsed his mouth. He stood for a moment, staring at the array of perfumes and toilet waters on the little shelf on the wall. He looked down at the unlevel white tile floor and the oval blue bath-mat. He could see his own naked feet on it. How many happy days and nights— Perhaps it was all not true what had happened, Lelia dead, raped, and with her nose cut off. His ears began to ring and the tiles grew unclear. Theodore bent over as low as he could, until his head was below his knees. A ridiculous position. He cursed his body.
    â€œSeñor Schiebelhut!”
    He waited with eyes shut, feeling his heavy blood gravitating to his head.
    â€œSeñor Schiebelhut!” Steps approached.
    â€œComing!” Theodore called, straightening. He brushed his hand across his hair and opened the door.
    They were questioning Ramón about his work and his income. Ramón replied in sullen, monosyllabic answers, Ramón worked in a furniture repair shop behind the Cathedral, only five or six streets away. He was a partner in the shop with Arturo Baldin, and they had two assistants. Ramón’s income varied. He said from three hundred to six hundred pesos weekly, but Theodore knew that many weeks Ramón made only a hundred pesos or