“Ah, it’s you, André. How could you be so inconsiderate when the doctor has plainly said that I must have complete and utter rest?”
Then in a slightly gentler tone:
“Besides, what are you doing in my room?”
Despite these words, she knew perfectly well, especially at that precise moment, that there was no need for either of us to pretend. I hadn’t asked to come in, she had been the one to order that her bedroom door be opened—giving in to who knows what impulse, what inner need to know what was happening outside her room? Perhaps she knew that for hours and hours, and days and days, I had not left her door, alert to any sign of life within—a thread of light, a whiff of medicine, an echo—for the slightest sound or sight or smell was enough to make my heart beat faster with anxiety. And so I bowed my head and said nothing. I would do anything, absolutely anything, to be allowed to stay a little longer by her side. Even if she were dying, even if the breath were slowly fading from her lips, I wanted to be there, I wanted to feel that human mechanism continuing to vibrate until the final spring broke. Seeing me so silent, Nina raised herself up a little on the pillows, gave a sigh, and asked me to bring her a mirror. “I just want to fix my face,” she said. And as I was about to leave, she called me back. This time her voice sounded quite different, almost affectionate, very like the way in which she used to speak to me. I turned, and she asked me to bring not only a mirror, but also a comb, a bottle of lotion and some face powder.
She said this in an almost playful tone, but I wasn’t fooled and could sense the silent, bitter agitation beating inside her. I hurried off to find these various things and returned to her side, eager to detect in this gay façade some flicker of genuine joy. She took the mirror first and, as if to avoid a nasty shock, very gingerly turned to regard her reflection—she looked at herself for some time, then again sighed and shrugged, as if to say: “What do I care? The day is sure to come when I’ll have to resign myself to not being pretty anymore.” It was true that she was very far from what she had been, but the same mysterious attraction that had once so captivated me was still there. That simple shrug of the shoulders was proof to me that the idea of dying was further from her mind than it seemed. This impression was confirmed when, leaning slightly on my arm, she asked in a voice that struggled to be confidential, but succeeded only in expressing a certain repressed anxiety:
“Tell me, André, does he know the state I’m in, does he know I’m at death’s door? Does he know this is the end?”
She was looking at me challengingly, and her whole being, concentrated and intent, was asking: “Can’t you see that I’m suffering in vain. You can tell me the truth, I know I’m not dying, that my hour has not yet come.” I don’t know now what I said—what did “he,” my father, matter?—and I turned away, precisely because I knew her hour had come, and that she would never leave what was now her deathbed. Nina saw what I was thinking and, placing one hand on my arm, said, trying to laugh as she did so:
“Listen to me, André: I’m better, I’m well, yes, almost better, I’ve none of the symptoms I had before . . . So don’t go thinking you’re going to rid yourselves of me just yet.”
And wrapping me in her warm, sickly breath, she added:
“I can’t wait to hear what he’ll say when he sees me back on my feet . . .”
I almost believed that her astonishing energy had finally triumphed over the germs of death deposited in her flesh. Reclining against the pillows—she was always demanding fresh ones, stuffed with light, cool cotton—she was busy smoothing her tangled hair, while I held the mirror for her. A divine fire, a marvelous presence seemed once again to be stirring inside her.
“The good times will return, won’t they, André?” she said as she struggled with her hair grown dry and stiff with fever. “And everything will be just as good as it was in the beginning, you’ll see. I’ll never forget . . .”
(How I longed to be free of those “good times”! She, alas, would not continue in time at all, but I would, and who would keep me company on the long journey ahead?) When I said nothing, she turned and winked at me, as if to prove that the memory of those days was still alive, days I was trying in vain to bury. And oddly enough, despite that attempt to put on a bright, vivacious, youthful air, there was a stoniness about her face, which lent that wink a grotesque, melancholy quality.
“Yes, of course, Mother,” I stammered, again bowing my head.
She shot me a glance in which there was still a remnant of her old anger:
“Mother! You’ve never called me ‘Mother’ before, so why start now?”
And I was so stunned that the mirror trembled in my hands:
“Of course, Nina, of course the old times will return.”
She continued struggling to untangle the knots in her hair, which formed a kind of halo around her head and seemed to be the one thing still alive: through its resurrected waves, a new spring, mysterious and transfigured, was beginning to flow through her veins.
“You need never be angry with me again, André, and you need never again spend hours sitting on the bench in the garden waiting for me.” And suddenly, as if giving in to the memory of that scene, her voice took on a velvety tone, tinged with a childish, feminine melancholy, in which I, deeply touched, felt all the pulsating force of her loving soul. “I’ll never again hide as I did that time, do you remember? And I’ll never pack my bags to go traveling alone.”
Tears, landscapes, lost emotions—what did any of that matter now? In my eyes, she seemed to be dissolving like a being made of foam. It wasn’t treachery or lies or even forgetting that was causing her to drown (and with me unable to save her), it was, instead, the impetus of what had once been and that she had so cruelly summoned up.
“Oh, dear God, please don’t!” I cried.
Then, still vibrant with emotion, still with the comb in her hand, she looked at me as if she had just woken up. And a great darkness filled her eyes.
“You don’t understand, do you, you’re too stupid!” she said.
And her hands—what proof did she need, what forgotten testimony, what lost memory?—reached greedily across the bedspread in search of mine. She leaned forward and I glimpsed her thin breasts beneath her nightdress. Intercepting that glance, she quickly adjusted her clothes, not that she was ashamed to reveal herself naked to me, but ashamed, rather, of her present ugliness. I turned away to hide the tears filling my eyes. And she, poor thing, had been so beautiful, her breasts so full and firm. Driven by some diabolical impulse, she suddenly, brutally, undid her nightdress and shook me hard, saying:
“Fool, why shouldn’t the good times come back? Do you really think it’s going to end like this? That’s just not possible. I’m not as ugly as all that, they haven’t taken everything from me, look . . .” and she tugged at my arm, while I kept my gaze firmly averted. “You see, it’s not all over yet. Perhaps we can move to some big city where no one will know about us.” (Did she really believe what she was saying? Her grip on my arm relaxed, her voice quavered.) “Ah, André, how quickly everything passes.”
She fell silent, and I could see that she was breathing hard. The entirely fictitious color in her cheeks fled, and her head lolled back. It wasn’t those wasted words that seemed to dispirit her most, but the vision of that false paradise she had been evoking. I tried to cheer her, saying:
“No, Nina, you’re right. We could move to Rio perhaps, where no one will know us.”
And I thought to myself: I could never hate her, it’s beyond my capabilities. Irrespective of what god or devil had conceived me, my passion was above all earthly contingencies. I knew only the feeling of that body breathing hard in my arms, and in the hour of her death, for she breathed exactly as she had in those moments of passion. In my innermost thoughts, I was sure nothing could save her, and that the pieces we held in our hands were of no use to us now. Love, travel, what did those words mean? On the empty board, fate had finally made its move. The solution no longer d
epended on our will alone, nor on what we did, regardless of whether our actions were good or bad—the peace for which we had so longed, would, from now on, be a time of resignation and mourning.
And yet even I wasn’t sure what provoked those thoughts—perhaps I was exaggerating, perhaps it was the influence of my naturally melancholic temperament. She was, after all, feeling better, she was talking and making plans, just as she used to. But something stronger than me, stronger than my own sad certainty and my clumsy interpretation of the facts, was telling me that it was precisely those words that spoke of the inevitable end, and that death had nailed to her bedhead the decree announcing eternal rest. She could make one final effort, she could laugh and insult me, or say she was leaving and abandoning Vila Velha forever, or simply devour me with hungry kisses—but I knew she was looking about her now with eyes that were no longer of this world, and I was capable of anything except lying to those eyes. What I saw rising up in them was like the sap rising up the trunk of a tree—except the branches were all dead, and no flower was about to bloom in that dying landscape. Yes, she could still kiss or caress me, but both kisses and caresses were directed at me as if I were no longer there. It wasn’t her soul, but her lips—impregnated with a thick saliva that was like the last residue of earthly passion and fleshly effort—that were trying to revive the delirium of the past. In the depths of that search, faces, situations, and landscapes bubbled away. And I said nothing, too moved to speak. In her struggle, she must have felt my silence. In her febrile state, she must have thought it was simply a remnant of ill feeling from one of our old arguments—and she perhaps blindly imagined that I could still be seduced by the future she laid out before me, a future in which I no longer believed. For I knew this was the final act, and an unstoppable sob rose in my throat and remained stuck there, preventing me from saying a word. Then, slowly, she ran her hand down my cheek to my lips.
“Ah, so that’s how it is!” she exclaimed in a voice of inexpressible sadness. “That’s how you show your gratitude to me for allowing you to come to my bedside? You’ve clearly already forgotten everything, André.”
Her fingers continued for some time to stroke my cheek and play upon my lips as if trying to cajole some laggardly word from them, and then, sitting up in bed, she again began mechanically combing her hair. Her eyes occasionally flashed like a gradually dying light, but it was the sign of a storm that was already moving off, leaving the ravaged countryside to sleep. And I could not have said what darkness it was that I sensed covering the landscape of her body, what moldering, grave-like smells already emanated from her words.
“You’re right, André,” she said at last. “You’re right. I understand now: you’ve finally found your path. All it took for you to realize you were on the wrong path was for me to step out of the way.” Her grave voice became enticing, wheedling. “But I know you, André, I know you can’t live without women. I bet you’ve already seduced one of the housemaids . . . an easy enough conquest, eh?”
Overwhelmed by grief, I cried:
“Nina!”
And when I leaned toward her, she pushed me away, almost violently.
“Don’t call me that. I forbid you to call me by my name.”
I withdrew, cowed by that voice so reminiscent of the old, authoritarian Nina. She regarded me in silence for a while, doubtless pleased with the effect of her treacherous words. Quietly, like someone gauging the impact of what she was about to say, she went on:
“I bet you’re already anticipating the hour of my death. You want to be free of me . . .”
“No!” I cried out desperately, flinging myself forward onto the bed. “How can you be so cruel, how do you even dare to say such things? You like to see me suffer, Nina, you always have . . .”
Yes, I knew this, but what did it matter now? All that mattered was being able to embrace her, cover her in kisses, and tell her one last time, before she departed, that we alone existed, and that heaven and hell and everything else were futile, childish notions. Scrabbling at the blankets, my head buried in them, I finally allowed my tears to flow freely—and I felt her body tremble beneath my touch, first withdrawing, then allowing itself to be caressed, as sensitive as a plant battered by a furious wind. Only then, when I had revealed my utter devastation, did peace seem to reign in her heart. She slowly stroked my hair.
“I’m so unhappy, André, so jealous. And yet you must stay and I must go . . .” and she sobbed quietly, as if not daring to make too much noise or to wipe away the tears streaming down her face. I looked up and dried her eyes with one corner of the sheet.
“Nina, I swear there’s no one else in my life. How could there be when I’ve known you?” Tentatively, and when she made no objection, I lay my head on her breast. What did I care if she was ill, or if the cracked, thirsty mouth of decomposition were about to burst from the very flesh my greedy lips had so often kissed?
Then she grasped my head firmly between her hands, and her hollow eyes fixed on mine:
“Swear again so that I can believe what you’re saying! You wouldn’t dare lie to a woman about to depart this world, would you?”
“Never,” I lied, and my voice sounded calm and decisive.
“Then swear, swear now!” she begged.
But swear what, dear God, swear that there was no other woman in my life, swear that she wasn’t at death’s door? And yet, with my face pressed to her bosom, I did swear and, if her peace of mind had depended on it, I would have sworn whatever she wanted me to and committed all kinds of perjury. When I looked up, she was gazing into my eyes, and in her eyes I saw the frightened, disoriented expression you see in the eyes of certain animals. It was as if she were staring beyond me and beyond my words into a world she could no longer understand. She let out a sigh, pushed me away, and went back to combing her hair. She must have exhausted all her strength, though, because the comb fell from her hands and she turned deathly pale, crying:
“André!”
I took her in my arms and gently repositioned her so that she was once more leaning against the pillows. She was breathing hard. Silence fell, and in that silence, all the objects one usually associates with illness—medicine bottles, rolls of cotton wool, pills, the whole accumulation of things that, for a moment, I had managed to ignore—suddenly reasserted themselves, as if tearing their way through a mist that had, until then, been omnipresent. I stood looking at her, and an unfamiliar machine, weaving who knew what dark, mortal web, began to function again inside her. I couldn’t say how long we stayed like that, until finally she came to and said:
“What happened? What’s wrong?”
I tried to calm her, saying that she was still weak and had probably talked more than she should have. She shook her head and answered in a strangely serene voice:
“No. That moment was a warning. There’s no doubt about it, André, the end is coming.”
She again took my hand in hers and lay very still. Someone, not that far away, gestured to me in the darkness. I had to leave. But I could feel time flowing through my whole being and fixing me to that spot as if I had put down roots. The doctor came over to me, touched my shoulder—he was a shy young man, who had only arrived from Rio a few days earlier—and indicated the door as if to say there was no point in my insisting. The world regained possession of my dream. Before leaving, however, I looked back one last time: Nina was sleeping, but nothing in her face bore any resemblance to that of a living person.
(That night, I walked endlessly about the garden, prowling up and down beneath the lit window of the room in which she lay. The doctor’s shadow came and went against the white backdrop of the wall. At one point, I saw my father bending over her; he looked even wearier than usual. What would he be feeling, what emotions would he be hiding in his heart, what sense of sad and entirely inappropriate pride? I even considered speaking to him, and in my mind there stirred something like an impulse to console, but my lips refused to utter a word and, when I met him on the steps, as he
, like me, came down into the garden in search of solitude, I let him pass, my face a blank.)
. . . When I placed the flowers on her lap, she opened her eyes, and I saw then that she appeared already to have left this world. She could still repeat the same gestures as the living and even say similar words—but the vital force was leaving her body and she was standing on that impenetrable frontier from which the dead gaze back indifferently at the land inhabited by the living. And yet, out of some kind of survival instinct, or maybe it was mere habit, she took the violets in her hand and raised them slowly to her nose, just as she used to do in times past, except that she no longer breathed in the perfume with the same eagerness, and her face was now soft and expressionless. Her arm fell, and the violets scattered over the bed.
“I can’t,” she said.
Her voice was no longer recognizable either, it was a cold, mechanical thing, a sound uttered with great difficulty, still audible, but soft and insubstantial as cotton wool. I didn’t have the courage to say anything and simply stood by her side, asking God, with lips that lacked the flame of faith, to give me a little of her suffering. Roused perhaps by the flicker of consciousness that allows the dying briefly to distinguish some tiny detail in the surrounding heap of agglutinative shapes, she suddenly looked at me. Then, in a flash of recognition, she tried to conceal what was happening to her and turned away. And there we were, so near, so far, separated by that powerful presence. I had promised myself I would be sensible and would force the grief in my heart to keep silent, not because I cared what others might think, but purely in order to avoid creating the tense atmosphere of farewell that surrounds the dying. However, seeing her already half-immersed in night, and as far from me as if her presence were a mere memory, I felt beating in my breast a pulse of despair, of irrepressible anger. And by some bizarre coincidence—or perhaps it was simply the ineluctable nature of the hour—I sensed that both our memories were filled with images of times long gone. (Her, sitting by the pond on the day when I was so filled with desire for her and she touched my lips with her fingertips, saying: “Have you ever kissed a woman on the mouth?”—or on that other day when, sitting on a fallen tree trunk, she suddenly slapped my legs, crying: “Why, you’re almost a grown man!” And many other memories came flooding in, multiplying as if under the influence of some narcotic, forming a gigantic, colored spiral, in which her resplendent figure could be seen, like a sun visible from all angles.)
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 3
