What frightens me most about what I see around me is the poverty of other people’s lives. I am astonished that, up until now, I have been able to live with only my father, Betty, and Aunt Ana for company. They lack all understanding, are so narrow-minded, so immune to grand emotions, that they have come to symbolize for me everything I have spontaneously left behind. Only with her arrival could I perceive my mistake. I compare her to those other people and I cannot but feel the vast difference, the thrilling, expansive air she seems to breathe as opposed to the stuffy atmosphere that has always surrounded me. Following that period of depression in which I began to explore my new discoveries, a wave of enthusiasm suddenly swept through my being like a fresh spring breeze: I even performed a solitary waltz around my room. I leaned out of the window, breathed in the dry air from the fields, and gazed over at the distant blue silhouette of Serra do Baú, and life seemed to me suddenly very grave and beautiful, filled with a meaning I had never known until that moment, but which existed and gave color to the trees and the leaves, to the clouds and the sky, to everything that glowed and pulsated with infinite love. I felt glad to be alive, and even considered kneeling down and giving thanks to God, whichever God that might be, for having made me aware of all those marvels. I know, too, that certain forms of madness are also composed of such moments.
After this, I decided to change all my habits. I began by collecting together the books Betty had lent me—naïve tales by English authors—and gave them back to her. She was in her room and, as it happened, was dusting her bookshelves, carefully piling up the books covered in brown paper. “Why are you giving them back?” she asked when I placed the small pile of books beside her. And doubtless assuming that these were authors who no longer interested me, she said: “I have a very good novel here, by José de Alencar.” “No, Betty,” I said gently, “I don’t want to read books like that any more.” “But this one’s really good!” she insisted. And holding it out to me: “It’s The Silver Mines. Have you read it?” I shook my head. And sensing her disquiet and knowing that she was trying to read my thoughts, I said: “I’m not a child any more.” I left her alone with her books, and she silently watched me leave, her eyes full of the pain I was inflicting on her.
That night, though, I found it hard to sleep, my mind troubled, as if a vague notion of having betrayed someone were weighing on my conscience. A friend perhaps, the thought of whom painfully, ceaselessly circled around and around inside me, and in those dark places, where the light of understanding had not yet penetrated, I tried in vain to revive the echo of promises I had trampled underfoot. I got up several times, went to the window, breathed in the night air; I came back, opened the drawer and took out this notebook, trying to soothe myself by writing. I gave up in the end and went back to bed. And yet, whenever I had felt restless before, those things had always worked: the night air used to bring me the consolation for which I searched in vain now, and this notebook, my faithful companion for so many years, had always gladly welcomed my confessions.
I was thinking about her. Not as she was now, but as she had been when she had lived here before. The garden and the pale moonlight on the trees were just as I had always known them, ever since I was born. What had happened before, who would have gone to meet her along those same paths, and what event or human image from that time illumined the depths of her mind? Slowly, and as if I were about to set off in search of those same paths, I returned to the window and peered at the shadowy shapes of the trees, the moonlit patches of sand, the dark swathes of undergrowth, from which there came a faint breathing, as if the spirit of the darkness itself were present. I could not explain my suffering, nor the many strange reasons jostling inside my head, but of one thing I was sure: I was alive in a way to which I was utterly unaccustomed, but I was alive—painfully, wretchedly, suffocatingly, voluptuously alive.
Undated – She came, she finally came to meet me, just when I was beginning to lose all hope. It was quite a cold night, and I had over my shoulders an old cape I normally never wore because it was now too small for me. Whenever I thought I could hear footsteps—it was windy and the sudden gusts made the branches creak—I would immediately take the cape off and throw it down on the bench, preferring to shiver rather than have her see anything that might remind her of the child whom I considered to be dead. I even rehearsed what I would say, words in which she could not fail to sense my new maturity. I adopted a deliberate, slightly cool tone of voice, a tone I remembered hearing my father use, and which seemed to me appropriate for the current situation. Despite all these precautions, I think it was precisely that remnant of childishness that she noticed when she confronted me in that secluded place. Despite keeping a close watch on the path and continually peering into the darkness, I did not hear her arrive, because a particularly strong gust of wind was rustling the leaves in that hidden part of the garden. I suddenly turned and saw her standing there, tall and still, and doubtless expecting me to notice her, in the belief that her mere presence would be enough, and I felt then how foolish all my preparations had been and was tormented by the thought of my pointless attempts to stage-manage our encounter. What I would have given to overcome my shyness, and to appear bold and frank during what was our first real meeting. Because, for good or ill, that was our first meeting, the initial moment of everything that would happen afterward, almost a commitment—and, yes, a hidden bond between us, given that she had agreed to come and thus consented to being an accomplice in an affair that was just beginning to unfold. Contrary to my expectations, she was the first to speak:
“Here I am,” she said, taking a step forward. And then in a clearly reproving voice, she added: “Are you quite mad, sending me that note?”
Even while she was saying this, there was such an intense sadness about her that I felt my heart might break. She was, I felt, so very lonely, imprisoned in a world of dead emotions, empty of all hope, and those feelings chimed perfectly with my own, like an echo of my own emotions. Such passionate fellow feeling gave me the courage to answer:
“I needed to see you, somehow or other . . .” and the hesitancy I had so wanted to avoid was evident in the breathless, uncertain tone in which I spoke those words.
She shook her head:
“It’s ridiculous to take such risks. Have you thought what your father . . .”
“My father!” I said scornfully.
She appeared not to notice this interruption and continued to scold me:
“If you wanted to see me, if it was as important as you say, then why didn’t you just seek me out in the drawing room or somewhere else in the house?”
“No, no,” I blurted out.
And more softly, as if I was ashamed of my words:
“It would be impossible inside the house.”
She gave me an indefinable look:
“Why?”
I shrugged, unable to find words to justify what I had said. Then she came a little closer and looked deep into my eyes:
“I hate such subterfuges. No one in the house is plotting against you. Besides, such behavior is only justifiable between . . . lovers.”
She said this almost dismissively, and yet I felt my face flush scarlet with shame as if my secret had been uncovered. No, I should not say that she had perhaps uncovered my secret, because she had seen it for precisely what it was, had stripped it bare before my eyes. I could see it now, I understood everything: I was the one who had gone too far and dared to imagine what should never have existed even in my thoughts. What folly, and how typical of the still childish me, full of absurd presumptions. She would have been perfectly within her rights to slap me or punish me in some other way, to relegate me to the humble position I should never have abandoned. Feebly, like someone repeating a particularly meaningless lesson, I kept saying to myself that the woman before me was my mother, and however crushing I found that horrible truth, I could not escape it if I did not want to return again and again to the dubious, compromising situation in which I found my
self. She doubtless noticed my confusion and examined me in silence, including the cape I had not had time to take off, and which lent me the cowed air of a schoolboy caught committing some grave fault. I could almost see myself in her silence: thin, tremulous, trying in vain to conceal my own fragility. I was just considering fleeing that place, when she came closer still and placed one hand on my shoulder:
“Listen André, you’re still just a child, but I know, I understand these things,” and again a kind of mist wrapped about what she was saying, and I noticed in her voice the complicit tone that had so struck me before, “but this has to end. What do you take me for? Despite your youth, you must behave like a man.”
More than her words, which, in that brief time, had run the gamut of many different emotions, I think it was her hand on my shoulder that decided me. It was still there, and what she was saying was exactly what she should say in that situation, but rather than dismissing me or imposing her authority, she then raised her hand to my face in a slow caress, running her fingers over my chin, my lips, where they lingered for so long that they set my whole being aflame.
“Yes, like a man,” I said blindly, feeling those fiery fingers touching my cheek. And gripped by a sudden, diabolical fury, I desperately grabbed the hand stroking my face and cried: “But it will never end, and you know why! You’re the one who wants it, the one who calls to me. Ah, if you knew . . .”
I had finally dared to break my silence and confront her gaze. I saw then that her pale face, her fragile, poisonously malevolent beauty, had changed completely at my words, as if a veil had been torn away: her eyes closed and a tremor ran through her body as she said:
“Me? Oh, André . . .” and it was impossible to know if she was genuinely shocked or merely pretending.
I let go of her hand, and she took a step back, but that movement, far from repelling me, drew me in, as if it were not a rejection, but an incentive to my boldness.
“Yes, you,” I said. “You. Why do you toy with me like this if you consider me a mere child? Why do you clutch me to you and agree to meet me at the far end of the garden?”
These words were dictated by my own febrile state, and I wasn’t even aware how unjust I was being, since any mother would have responded to such an appeal from her son. I, however, was at one of those decisive moments when the subterranean truth, still too formless to withstand the light of day, bursts to the surface like a wave of dammed-up water. She must have felt the same, realizing that we would not emerge the same from that moment, that my words had shattered the fantasy world she was trying to impose on us and that we stood now, alone and naked, at the very center of an irrefutable truth. She must have felt she needed to make a supreme effort, some quick, brutal gesture, in order to confirm or deny her response or her revolt. Accordingly, she raised her hand and slapped me hard on the cheek. Everything whirled around me, the garden, the house, the sky—and I was so utterly calm, so absolute was my determination and my certainty, that I could count every beat of my heart, and smell on the wind the errant perfume of this or that flower, and even count the stars turning in the firmament. No words were necessary, the mystery had been forever resolved—my heart overflowed with wild joy, the joy of victory and maturity, the joy condemned men feel when they discover that death is not a harsh act of sacrifice and consummation, but one of self-realization and freedom. Because in that simple slap I saw not an insult, but an affirmation, and sensing that I at last had her cornered, I dragged myself to the very brink of salvation, even if it meant my eternal ruin.
Undated – She said not a word more, but looked at me, and what an intense, devouring gaze that was! Seeing her in that fearful state, I understood various things, feeling that everything else was mere cloud and fantasy in the face of my strength and my will. She was unveiling me only to reveal new depths, a dynamic, irreducible vision of my very being! She looked at me as if her whole frightened self were begging for clemency. I feel no shame when I say—because I am sure that never, in my entire life, will I see such a pure vision—it was as if her clothes had fallen away and she had emerged, female and naked, into the darkness of the garden. At one mad stroke, I had revealed what constitutes the difference between a man’s body and a woman’s, and there it was, fragile and delicate, like an open vase waiting for me to fill it with my blood and my impatience. She was still staring at me, and as she did so, by a strange process I could not understand, I felt myself growing in her eyes, maturing and taking on definite form: I was someone. For the first time, she was actually seeing me, not some other person who lay behind my personality, an echo, a shadow from the past. Just then, I was the one who existed, and she was listening intently, observing on my face the signs of that metamorphosis, that new self being carved out. While this impression did not last long, it lasted long enough to fill the whole world with a powerful magic, overflowing all the usual boundaries, taking on physical form and washing about us like some absurd, luminous matter—then everything returned to its former narrowness, as if the only reality, the fundamental truth of that transfiguration, were a lightning flash too bright for our human nature, one that instantly abandoned us once more to darkness and lies.
The lie was there, and it was me and my pathetic cape and the female shape beginning to grow before me. She was slowly gathering strength again, like a vast, secret, poisonous sunflower burgeoning in the shadows. I felt she was about to leave me, that her decision to flee was already there in the air, a decision with its roots in skepticism and incomprehension. I cannot begin to describe my anguish, seeing the dream that had glowed for a moment in my hands suddenly dissolve. She turned her back on me and began to walk briskly away toward the main path. It felt as if some external force was wrenching vital fibers from my being, leaving me helpless and drained of life in the now pitch-black garden. So powerful was that feeling that I took a few steps after her and called softly, but still loud enough for her to hear:
“Mama!”
The surprise of that word, and the pain, which, despite my best efforts, must have been apparent in my voice, made her stop—and then, the miracle occurred again, and I managed to cancel out the existing atmosphere and superimpose on the ordinary world the real world dwelling within. Softly, so that she, too, would feel the wild excess of the word, I said again:
“Mama . . .”
And I saw then that, although still with her back to me, she appeared to be waiting. I paused, imagining the inner struggle she must be engaged in, the concessions she might make if she did turn back, if she accepted the implication behind that word. But there she was, frozen, and the fact that she had stopped was clearly not a rejection. Through the trees came a powerful smell of lemon blossom—she raised her head, as if breathing in the perfume wafting to her on the breeze. Then slowly, so slowly that I barely noticed, she turned and came back toward me. Now there she was before me again. My impulse was to hurl myself into her arms, to cover her with kisses, to bind her forever to my passion. I held back, though, and waited, knowing that she would be the first to speak.
“Child!” she exclaimed in a dull voice. “Child, what do you want of me, tell me, what do you expect?”
Only a fool would have heard in the way she spoke the faintest glimmer of rancor or revolt. No, those words contained only infinite tenderness, almost surrender, unable now to fend off the fury of desire she sensed growing inside me. But seeing her so helpless, another feeling was fermenting inside me, and I was wondering how often she would have said the same thing, in identical situations, and to how many different men . . . How could I know her entirely and possess her without the moment being contaminated by memories of other men she had loved and who had doubtless left deep scars on her soul? And that very male jealousy made me realize that all childish feelings had died in me. Another self was beginning to rise up, aggressive, imperious, full of an absolute hunger and thirst, like an animal waking in some primitive forest.
“What do I expect, what do I want?” I said, feeling my whole sel
f vibrating from head to toe. “I love you, I adore you, I want you for myself alone!”
And I rushed toward her and took her in my arms. Despite my own feverish state, I noticed that she was not trembling, that she did not refuse my embrace, as would have seemed plausible. (No, I do not want to accuse her: what would be the point? After all, what excuse could I find for my own fault, if it can be considered a fault?)
We sat down on a stone bench, while she kept murmuring, as if invoking some invisible witness: “Dear God, dear God, what should I do, what should I do?” My one impulse, like a fire devouring me, was to crush that doubt, that last defense, to disable that final remnant of fear that seemed to make her hold back. I knew now that she would not have the strength to withdraw or to refuse me anything, but I delayed my victory, because I wanted her entirely, with not a trace of remorse or doubt. But words were of no use, and we could only know each other now through the attraction driving us into each other’s arms and that finally brought our lips together in the first and most desperate of loving kisses.
26.
André’s Diary (v – continued)
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Undated – There is not much more to say. After that kiss, everything changed. I thought I had won a final victory, but soon realized that, for her, this was merely a passing fancy, one of those moments of weakness so common in a certain type of woman. (Written in the margin in a different hand: I did not know about women then, or only in my fantasies. However, with astonishing speed, Nina taught me all I needed to know.) Not because things did not go as I had foreseen or as I had assumed they would with any woman once certain barriers had been overcome, but because a change took place in her, and what changed her and distanced her from me was the very thing I thought would bring us closer. That kiss, like the touch of a magic wand, ran through her from head to toe, and she closed her eyes, as if unable to fend off that wave of emotion. The shock must have been so great that she tried to struggle and, taking my hand, clung to it as if she were afraid of drowning.
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 31
