She looked at me, almost shocked:
“I’m just a servant to him . . . an old woman!”
I could not conceal my disappointment:
“So he’s a true Meneses, then.”
She thought for a moment, then said:
“No, on the contrary. He’s not like a Meneses at all.”
I placed my hand on hers:
“Thank you, Betty, you can’t imagine what a relief it is to me to know that.”
Despite those words, she could see how sad I was.
“On the other hand,” she went on, as if trying to console me, “there’s another person who never stops talking about you.”
“Who?” I asked, and the dying flame flared up in my heart.
“Senhor Timóteo. He’s the one who sent me to see you.”
I nodded somewhat indifferently. Betty pretended not to notice, but I knew she was watching my every look and gesture. Senhor Timóteo wanted me to go to his room, she said, he had much to tell me. You probably don’t remember who Timóteo is, Colonel, despite the interest and curiosity you have always shown regarding family matters—doubtless out of consideration for your ungrateful friend—nor will you understand why he, more than anyone else, should want to see me. It’s hard to explain, especially since, in the Meneses family, Timóteo was far from being its dullest or its least unusual member, on the contrary, but to describe his personality, I would have to speak not so much about what he did or felt and more about the dense, unstable, electrically charged atmosphere that surrounded him—like the atmosphere you might find in certain smoky bars. Were I to describe his actions and feelings, they would be like mere supports propping up the foggy world he inhabited. He navigated his room like some splendid, deep-sea fish in the small maritime stronghold of his aquarium. What he said could seem abrupt and disconnected to those who merely heard him speak, but for anyone who understood him, there was a complete coherence between the things he said and the turmoil of his thoughts.
But it’s late, Colonel, and I must leave this letter and my visit to Timóteo until tomorrow. I do not complain about my life, because I am responsible for what happens to me, but you are still very far from being able to judge what my life has been . . .
19.
Continuation of Nina’s Letter to the Colonel
. . . A melancholy I cannot disguise. I will continue writing this letter, but I know you will never receive it. It will never leave this house, because nothing that belongs to me ever manages to cross its frontiers. That has always been the problem here: my sense of being a prisoner, alone and hopeless. I knew this from the very first moment, ever since I set foot on that first stone step, when the familiar scent of violets wrapped about me like a fatal sigh uttered by the earth itself. And yet still I came—I myself opened the door of my prison, because some more potent force was driving me on, and I came to meet my fate. No, you will never receive this letter, but I will continue to write it, because that is the only way I feel I can still talk to you, my one friend, my other life. I will continue to tell you interminable tales about Valdo, Timóteo, and the Meneses family generally, and I hope you will listen to me as willingly as ever, and I may even hear, above the clamor of some clumsy phrase of mine, some words of advice whispered in my ear. Ah, Colonel, were I brave enough, I would admit that I am already beginning to regret this latest adventure of mine, but I am sure some of us are fated always to make mistakes, until the day, who knows when or where, we are given a final explanation for mistakes that have left us feeling so uncertain and so wretched.
Going back to what I was saying before, I decided that I must visit Timóteo, since, in the past, he was the only one who had ever shown me any friendship. Although I had better not go now, I thought a moment later, because they might doubt that I really had been ill. No, later, a little later, when I could say that I was feeling better, and then no one would have any reason to suspect me. How cunning I had become, and quite shamelessly so! However, seeing Betty there, still apparently waiting for my answer, I decided instead to go and see him at once. Smoothing my hair with my hands, I went to that room I knew so well. The door stood open, as if Timóteo were expecting me. As usual, darkness reigned. My eyes were still adjusting to the gloom, when, from behind the piles of furniture—what a mess it was, this room that always used to be so scrupulously tidy!—I saw a huge, misshapen figure emerge, and I did not at first recognize my old friend. When I stopped, he rushed toward me, and only then did I recognize his warm, husky voice:
“Oh, Nina, I knew, I knew you would come back!”
He dragged me over to the window and only then could I see him clearly: he looked so very strange that initially I felt unable to react. He was not the person I had known before, but an exaggerated, over-exaggerated caricature. Yes, monstrous even, but extraordinarily touching. His still bright eyes had disappeared beneath a flaccid, sallow mass of flesh, which formed two large folds on his cheeks. His small, thin lips could barely articulate the words, which emerged like a sigh or, rather, like the hiss of air from a bellows. He was still in his feminine guise, but he had long since ceased to be a proud, magnificent grande dame. He was the mere wreckage of a human being, so decrepit and obese that he could scarcely move and had already reached the point where humans begin to resemble animals. The impression of utter decay was confirmed by the clothes he was wearing; what had once been splendid garments were now tattered rags that struggled to cover not the body of a middle-aged lady still capable of dazzling certain young men, but of an old lady defeated by neglect and dropsy.
“My poor Timóteo,” I stammered, unable to find the right words.
“I am so happy to see you, Nina, your very presence here restores me to life!” he hissed in that strange voice, while he took my hand in his, the damp, limp, weightless hand of certain creatures that live in the dark.
I don’t know why, but I found those words unimaginably touching; he had the ability to draw me instantly into that climate of overwrought sentimentality. I slumped down in an armchair, while the tears came into my eyes, tears so genuine that I could not even bring myself to stop them. Timóteo, possibly slightly shocked, came closer and placing one hand on my head, said:
“I understand you so well, I know exactly how you feel!” and his voice almost broke with emotion. “You know, I’ve often sat in that very chair and imagined seeing you again and unburdening myself to you. I wondered if you would have changed or if you would be the same Nina I’ve always known, the same eyes, the same hair. Ah, Nina, once we begin something, we must finish it. And we did begin something, do you remember? We began, Nina, and you were my only hope. Ever since you left, the Meneses have grown in strength, become the sole formidable power here. Nina, we must destroy this house. I mean it, Nina, we must kill the Meneses family. We must leave not a stone standing. When you left, I wept out of pure rage: I would never see my work finished, never. They were stronger than me, too loyal and determined for me to out-think them. They will end up burying me in this room. Ah, Nina, how often I have loathed myself, loathed my ugliness, my lack of dignity. Sometimes I would curse myself and my feeble blood! How often have I sat in that same chair and wept loudly, vainly, calculating what time and what resources were left to me! Sitting by this window, in the dim light, I would touch my swollen arms and legs, my distorted face. I knew I was ill, and that I was nothing but a heap of sweetly rotting manure. The very humus I am made of was a mixture of bad perfume and salt. Yes, my days were numbered, and my defeat, the defeat of my own will, would see the rise to omnipotence of the Meneses. The truth, Nina, it’s the simple truth.”
He fell silent, breathing hard. Then, drawing up a stool and sitting down beside me, he went on:
“I knew what was devouring me. I knew that the smell of decomposing jasmine in this room was the smell of my own cowardice. It was the absence of fever, my unimpugnable heart. It was my whole white, futile self. I would look at my white hands, my white feet, my white flesh—and a cold, pitiles
s wave of nausea would rise up within me. Ah, chastity is a terrible thing. Chastity, that is what was devouring me. Chaste hands, chaste feet, meek, chaste flesh. And I would weep, Nina, because nothing would ever set my blood on fire, and it was on this limp ruin that the Meneses were building the indestructible empire of their lie. Do you understand now why I wanted you, why I fantasized about your return, and why, sitting there, I so often talked with your absent self.”
No, I could not honestly say that I did understand, because everything he said seemed to me the fruit of a delirium. I sensed an echo, a tremor that spoke to me of some old and, who knows, possibly genuine cause, but how to connect that wild monologue with our past conversations, a monologue, which, not being based on any logical fact, took for granted a unanimity that bound me to him, not intellectually, but through a shared feeling of revulsion that existed in some opaque area of my consciousness? Through my tears—because I was still crying—I told him that I felt the same, and he, in a sudden burst of enthusiasm, kissed my forehead and my hands. Perhaps I should not have lied to him, because he was counting on me for what he called “our pact”; perhaps I should have told him that I found his words obscure and meaningless. But even though I did not understand, in my mind I did agree, I somehow understood him without understanding, I felt I was on his side, even though I did not know what side that was.
Timóteo talked for a while longer, demanding that I tell him everything. And for some reason, Colonel, he was the first and only person I told about our friendship. I must have spoken with some affection, because he was touched. “You’re so good, Nina, and how good that we have a friend!” he said more than once. When I had finished, he led me over to the window and drew back one corner of the curtain, so that the daylight fell full on my face.
“Ah,” he cried, “so this is the rare being with whom ministers and colonels fall in love! I want to see her, I want to see her from close up, to touch her with my own hands, to be quite sure that she really is here by my side.”
Holding back the curtain with one hand, he stroked my face with the other. There was nothing sensual about that gesture, it was more the meticulous pleasure that an artist takes in his work. He ran his fingers over my eyebrows, jaw, neck—and slowly slid his hand down to my throat.
“You are beautiful, still beautiful, very beautiful,” he said with the grave satisfaction of a blind man who no longer fears being betrayed by reality.
Before me, I saw only that swollen face, which should have been expressionless, and yet which, at that moment, despite everything, was lit with the light of a concentrated fire. He released me with a sigh, at the same time allowing the curtain to fall:
“You must remain exactly as you are, Nina, to the despair of all men. Ah, how your beauty must make them suffer!”
In the darkness, he again gently ran his fingers over my closed lids, one last time:
“But come now, dry those tears; what is the use of them? Tears are very little valued in the world. Besides, a strong woman like you should never cry.”
And saying this, he moved away. I saw him disappear into the shadows, leaving in his wake a vague scent of jasmine. I remained seated and, inexplicably, had the impression that he was sinking into an even greater darkness than before.
20.
André’s Diary (iii)
4th – I knew I could not ask about her, that no one would tell me anything, and yet she was the one thing that interested me. I could easily pretend not to care or, for the nth time, recount one of those hunting stories my father seemed to enjoy so much. (He would listen to me with more interest than usual, but his thoughts were clearly far away.) I could not, I felt, lie to myself though, and I knew that nothing, not the hunting trips, not my father, not my studies, were as important to me as my mother. On many nights, I lay awake, propped on one elbow, imagining what she would have been like—tall, fat, blonde, or dark. I had never seen a picture of her, no one had ever spoken to me about her looks. And what did it matter what she had looked like? All that mattered was the mystery shrouding her life. They all pretended and lied and changed the subject whenever I went into the drawing room—in vain. I knew there was a secret, and that only intensified my curiosity because, despite their silence and despite her name being like a dead object in our house, everything I touched, everywhere I went, the garden, the verandah, it all spoke of her. She had existed, she had lived in that same atmosphere, and everything had witnessed her passing. Again and again, leaning on the railings around the verandah, I would gaze up at the sky and think to myself that, in another time—precisely when I did not know—she must have done exactly the same and, staring up at the blue as I was now, felt the same pleasure.
I remember, when I was still only small, opening a cupboard that was, at least tacitly, forbidden territory, and finding myself wrapped in a strange, sweet perfume, which soon impregnated the whole room. I bent down and started rummaging around among the things filling the wardrobe: I pulled out various unfamiliar items of clothing, doubtless thrown in there as being of no further use. Remembering the whispers I had heard about Uncle Timóteo, my first thought was that these things must belong to him. I was quietly continuing my investigations, when my father came in, alerted, above all, by the perfume filling the room. He leaned on a chest of drawers and I, hearing a noise, turned and saw him there, saw how terribly pale he was, as if he were about to faint. Thinking that he must be feeling dizzy, I went to help him, but he held up one hand to stop me. I stood, frozen, in the middle of the room, still clutching bits of clothing and studying him with a joy in which there was a considerable dose of mischief. I was thinking of all the things that had been kept hidden from me, and looking at that shadow of a man, I realized that I had finally stumbled upon the very heart of the secret. I slowly raised my hands to show him my plunder: everyone was constantly running away from those memories, but there they were for all to see, and rather than merely resurrecting the perfume of a dead woman, what I was showing him was the ineluctable evidence of a life. He could not bear to see this and covered his face with his hands. For some time, he appeared to surrender himself to the great tide of memories washing over him—deep inside him, they must have been still throbbing and vivid and dripping blood. He lowered his hand, and while his distraught face clearly revealed how much he was suffering, he was completely oblivious to everything around him, as if, at that moment, nothing else existed. Like someone carefully observing a strange phenomenon, I took two steps forward, and only then did he look up, and a faint moan emerged from his lips.
“Oh, it’s you! How long have you been there?”
I was about to respond, but instead I raised my arm higher and showed him the clothes I was holding. He stared at them again, without, at first, understanding, then a kind of horrified shudder ran through him and, as if I were offering him some truly repellent object, he asked:
“Where did you find that?”
“In the bottom of the wardrobe,” I said.
“Put it back,” he ordered. “And don’t go looking in there again.” He hesitated, then in a steadier voice, added: “Unless you want to be punished.”
He rarely spoke to me in that stern manner. I went back to the wardrobe, threw the clothes inside and closed the door—but I did not leave the room. I stood there, my whole rebellious being burning with a single question: Why? Why? We remained like that for a while, until I sensed that he had calmed down. Standing there, he looked smaller, more vulnerable. His silent rage had vanished, and what lay between us now was a sense of terrible desolation. There was no point in saying anything, because all words were meaningless, apart from the one word that interested me—and he knew that. For the first time, we were being open with each other, and in his eyes, I had ceased to be a small ignorant child and had become, instead, a possible judge. I looked at him again, so that he would not forget that moment. Keeping my eyes firmly trained on him, I raised my fingers to my nose and breathed in the perfume still clinging to them. That way he
would know that my mother did still exist, and that her presence was still there between us. He must have understood this, because he allowed me to walk past him in silence and, in silence, to go out into the hallway and from there into the drawing room.
I don’t know how long I wandered about the house, bound to a presence I did not even know. The places, the objects, even the people seemed closer somehow. When the first lights came on, I was still struggling to retain that perfume, which was already fast disappearing, like a color absorbed into the night. I was once again on my own.
7th – Today, Betty and I were together in my room, looking out of the window, and the sky was more beautiful than ever. The garden was bright with moonlight, and the shadow cast by the house reached as far as the tree-lined path. Amid the surrounding peace and the serene light, I fixed my thoughts on her, only her, like someone drowning in an absent love. Oblivious to everything else, I tried to recreate the time when she had walked those sandy paths, immersed in unknown dreams and hopes. So intense were these imaginings that I thought I could see a figure moving about near the flower beds. My heart beat faster, and hot tears filled my eyes. I spun around to face Betty and asked in an urgent voice:
“Why does no one ever talk to me or say anything about her? What happened, what did she do, why do they keep everything hidden from me?”
Betty looked embarrassed and avoided my gaze. Seeing her so distressed and noticing that her eyes, too, were fixed on the garden, I imagined for a moment that perhaps her thoughts were not so very different from mine.
“Speak to me, Betty,” I went on, shaking her. “You must tell me what happened. You have no right to keep it from me!”
This was the first time I had questioned her so directly; up until now, however frustrated I felt, I had made do with her silences and the occasional escapes from the house that she afforded me. There must have been something in my attitude that told her this situation was at an end. Or perhaps in the grip of one of those impulses peculiar to people of a generous nature, and which occur almost against their will, she had reached the conclusion that it was only right and just that I should be told the truth. I know only that, in the face of my earnest pleading, her usual stiffness melted, and poor Betty stood before me, trembling, as if she had been caught committing some grave misdemeanor. When I saw this, I softened my voice, but still spoke firmly:
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 25
