Chronicle of the Murdered House

by Lúcio Cardoso

  Senhor Valdo was still standing in front of me, and the two of us stood there awkwardly until he decided to break the silence. “Do sit down, Father Justino. You know you are always welcome in this house. In fact, I would very much like to talk to you . . .” I sat down. (And everything seemed to return to a certain order: the branch of jasmine stopped in its tracks; the chipped pillars took on a familiar air; the atmosphere itself grew calmer, as if, beneath the midday sun, everything around us were being numbed by dull, tepid everyday life.) “I don’t quite know how to talk about such things . . .” he began, and his voice, interrupting my thoughts, almost startled me, “. . . the truth is that I have never been much of a churchgoer and have always managed without the assistance of the sacraments.” “What things?” I asked. He shook his head, perplexed: “I don’t know how you would describe them . . .” I tried to be as undogmatic as possible: “For me, some things are a matter for confession and some are not.” He shook his head again: “No, it isn’t a matter for confession.” “Well, then, is there something you’d like to ask me?” I could tell from his silence that he was trying to gather his thoughts, searching for the best way to say what he wanted to say. “For example . . .” he continued. Then, breaking free of all constraints, he suddenly burst out: “Father, what is hell?” This was not the question I was expecting and I stayed silent for a few moments, looking at the sun beating down on the tiles of the verandah. As if in the grip of some superior force, I was filled with an overwhelming desire to reply: “Hell is this: this house, this verandah, this homogenizing sun.” However, I did not and turned to look at him: “Ah, my son. Hell by its very nature is the most changeable of things. When all’s said and done, it is the manifestation of all of man’s passions.” He seemed at first not to understand and repeated softly: “Passions?” I nodded: “Passions. The very deepest of inclinations. A desire for peace, for example.” As I said this, I sensed that I had perhaps been somewhat arbitrary in invoking the house, the verandah, and even the sunshine itself. Senhor Valdo bowed his head, deep in thought. Everything around us was silent, a pause within the already long noonday pause. A sweet smell of roses filled the air; far away, a bird taking flight let out a shrill cry. It would be hard to overcome that bright atmosphere, and yet, like an impulse rising up from the static surroundings, I felt a beating presence, a sinuous, unstoppable movement, a liberated spirit wheeling around above us. It made me shudder, and I turned to face Senhor Valdo just as he looked up and began to speak again: “Are you referring to this house, Father?” A mocking smile appeared on his lips: “There’s no peace in this house; quite the contrary.” He stopped, eyed me intensely, then concluded abruptly: “If the devil exists, then it is he who has destroyed the peace of this house.” Perhaps he was waiting for a gesture of protest or surprise from me, but I merely shrugged: “The indifference, you mean . . .” He stared at me again with undisguised astonishment: “What are you accusing us of, Father?” Once more, I gazed with infinite weariness at everything around me. He must have understood, for he, too, looked about him and gave a sigh. “Must we . . .” he replied in the voice of someone whose strength was gradually ebbing away, “must we believe in God in order to know that the devil exists?” Once again he had wrong-footed me, and I chose my words tentatively. I could, of course, answer immediately and settle the matter once and for all, but would I not then be ruling out the chance of hearing what he had to tell me? It would not be difficult for me to say, for example, that signs of the devil’s presence—after all, is he not the prince of this world?—were usually far more obvious than those of God’s presence. Or at least bolder and cruder. However, I limited myself to asking him a question to which I already knew his answer: “You don’t believe in God, is that it?” How, in the torpid heat of that verandah, was it possible to believe? He laughed again, and there was a roguish edge to his laughter that displeased me. “No, I don’t,” he said. Once again I felt that strange blind presence whirling about me. I thought of saying: “So there you are: that’s what peace is,” but I merely stared down at the floor and listened to the birds singing. (Into my mind came the memory of Dona Malvina, propelling her wheelchair along the garden paths and waving her stick: “Leave the birds in peace, boys. I don’t want any traps in my garden!”). When I came to, Senhor Valdo was staring at me with open curiosity. I needed to say something and so, leaving the spell of the past to the warm embrace of the light around us, I asked: “And the devil? Do you believe in him?” I saw him tremble and glance over at the other end of the verandah as if he sensed someone’s presence there. “Yes, I do,” he replied in a voice so faint I could scarcely hear him. It was my turn to look up then, as if obeying an order—and it was then that I saw her, modestly dressed and leaning in the doorway to the drawing room, providing a strange contrast to the radiant midday air.

  29.

  Continuation of Ana’s Third Confession

  I had no intention of following them, nor did I care what they got up to, until pure chance revealed their secret to me. I had been wandering about the house, eavesdropping on the servants’ silly conversations, and vainly watching the slow hands of the clock, when I found myself in the drawing room. At that hour, the windows were closed and the curtains drawn. It was then that I saw André—I hadn’t seen him for three days, because Valdo, alarmed by one of his son’s hysterical outbursts, had shut him up in one of the rooms in the Pavilion—anyway, I saw André creeping very cautiously toward the verandah, like someone about to commit a crime. What prompted me to follow him was, as I say, merely the terrible idleness that hangs over a household like ours. Everything is so firmly fixed in its place that the most insignificant of incidents attracts attention. I had never really thought much about André. Not even to consider his defects or to try and understand his foolish passions, as I had done with his father, but I had, of course, noticed him coming and going, I was aware of him as a living, breathing being who lived alongside me, and I even went so far as to try and imagine what kind of person he really was—a solitary creature like all the others, trapped inside his own deficiencies and errors—but I had never felt interested enough to ponder his real nature. That evening, though, I got a slight surprise: when I went over to the window, in the furtive, silent manner I had adopted ever since Nina’s return—you will perhaps say that I was spying, that I was following a trail like an animal in search of disaster—I noticed André placing something, a note perhaps, under one of the loose bricks along the edge of the verandah. It was growing dark, and the garden was plunged in a diffuse, purplish glow that reached as far as the colored glass frieze under the verandah roof. Possibly because of the cold, André was wearing an old cape he had worn as a child. Silhouetted against the light from the garden, he lingered for a moment, glanced around him, then disappeared. I thought I saw him gesture to someone I could not see, but I was too far away to be sure. I was about to abandon my hiding place and go out onto the verandah when I saw Nina approaching; she was walking slowly, tentatively, as if afraid she might be seen. She stopped at the same spot and deftly lifted the brick, removed the note, and unfolded it. I noticed that she was looking for somewhere bright enough to read it. This took only a moment, then she screwed up the note and threw it down; I made a point of noticing the exact point where the ball of paper fell. She did all these things very impatiently. She did not immediately move away, she paused to think, and I saw the dreamy expression on her face. Maybe it was just the light, but I realized again how very beautiful she was. Leaning on the balustrade, head back, her lips parted as if to drink in the cold air of the coming night. What would she be thinking, what inner battles was she waging? I don’t know and I never will. But, still keeping well out of the fading light, I continued to observe her, recalling, one by one, with utter clarity, the details of everything that had happened between us. Seeing her still so young and so alluring, I understood, but how could I forgive her, when to do so would be to accept God’s manifest injustice? I saw her utter a deep sigh, then
, with the same cat-like steps, she left the verandah. I waited a little longer, afraid she might come back, but when the night had completed its invasion of the verandah—apart from one piece of the glass frieze, which glinted stubbornly red like a phosphorescent eye—I left my hiding place and went outside. There was the screwed-up ball of paper, and, I confess, my hands shook when I picked it up. It was pointless trying to read it in the dark and, besides, someone might find me. I ran to my room, bolted the door, and turned on the light. My heart was beating fast—I was finally about to be given the key to the secret. I smoothed out the paper and saw that it was written in a pale, tremulous hand, as though by someone in the grip of a powerful emotion. The light was rather dim—this had always been one of the Chácara’s fundamental failings—and so I went over to the prayer desk at the far side of the room and took out the little lamp that was always lit to illumine the image of Our Lady of Grace. By that light I read these words: “. . . they let me out today, and I need to see you immediately—alone. How can you be so cruel to me? I will be waiting for you in half an hour, in the clearing next to the Pavilion.” Those words, read by the unsteady flame of an oil-lamp, did not surprise me in the least. Nothing that Nina did would surprise me. I thought only: Ah, so it’s incest! And I was filled by a kind of dense peace. She was clearly capable of anything, I had said as much time and again, and what could a woman driven by such desperate energies do except hurl herself against the walls of the atmosphere surrounding her, before that same atmosphere smothered her? I almost envied her, envied that brutal impulse, that blind search to satisfy her appetites! What astonished me was the speed with which everything had happened, and now, sitting on the bed, clutching the sheet of paper once more rolled into a ball, I was thinking that things must already have happened, and that I was merely seeing the emergence of events that had long been fermenting in the hearts of those more than willing participants. I don’t really believe in fate, that would be foolish—what is fatal is our human tendency to slide toward the abyss and chaos. That potently fertile soil, loneliness, had enriched those vulnerable fields. Nina would love anything, anyone; it would be impossible for her to live like a plant alone in its flower bed. She would send out roots, spread her seeds on the wind, until she overflowed the boundaries of the bed and found some defenseless, will-less bush. (Written in the margin: Only later, much later, did I realize that this was not quite true: Nina was simply reacting. To what? To whom? I hardly dared think. But the helpless, solitary plant I imagined was, in my opinion, a hard, spiny cactus. She was reacting against that savage love—in order not to die, in order not to be torn to pieces.) I stood up, muttering: “Just like before, just as she always does,” and I could not conceal my bitterness. Still standing, I repeated: “Just like before.” Then the thought of the Pavilion rushed in on me, and I heard in my ears the words I had read in the note: “I will be waiting for you in half an hour, in the clearing next to the Pavilion.” This was almost exactly what had happened before. The Pavilion was still there, and Nina would be waiting next to it, possibly in the dark and with the same perfume floating on the air. Except that now, everything had changed, and I had promised myself that no one—no one—would ever again enter the room where he had breathed his last. I had often seen her sloping off down to the Pavilion, and I knew where she was going: to that room, that poor, dark, cramped room that had served as the stage for their secret love. (I remember his chest covered in blood, the pink foam bubbling out from the corners of his mouth, the gardening tools piled in the corners, the precise hour and, in particular, my own pain. I remember as if it were yesterday. I remember, to my own great torment, that his lips had uttered a single name, and what I said, what I did, is lost forever in the great flood of facts exemplifying the futility of all human effort.) But everything was different now, and I kept the key close to my heart. It wasn’t a medal or a scapular pressed to my beating breast, it was merely the key to the room where God had so cruelly wounded me. That is probably the supreme problem, God and man, but however hard I try, I cannot imagine God without love, regardless of what kind of love that might be, even the most sinful kind, because I cannot imagine man without love or man without God. Perhaps that is why, ultimately, Nina does not frighten me; what I hate about her is that she got in my way. She can sully whatever she likes, she can destroy whatever she can lay her hands on, but, even if it costs me my life, she cannot enter that room, where I built my altar. (I know that voices will be raised against me—to serve God one must renounce human love. In that case, I prefer not to serve God, because he made me human, and I cannot and do not wish to spontaneously renounce what constitutes my own self and forms part of my very essence. What kind of God would require us to renounce our own personality, in exchange for a marvelous kingdom we cannot even glimpse through the mist? I know, it’s a question of Grace, but for a poor, limited, earthbound creature like me, how can I see renunciation and saintliness, goodness and peace, other than as an act of criminal violence perpetrated on the spirit that inhabits me?)

  I hesitated not a moment longer: I covered my head against the cold night and set off into the garden. Absorbed in my own thoughts, I hurried down the avenue that led to the clearing. The air was utterly still and, despite the chill, the roses were lifting their heads attentively in the darkness. When I arrived, there was no one there, and I had plenty of opportunity to find a place to hide. This was not the first time I had done this when following in Nina’s footsteps, and doing so all those years later made my heart beat as hard as it had then. I did wonder if I was acting out of pure habit, but when I noticed my frozen hands, tight, dry lips, and heavy heart, I realized that rather than these being the signs of dull habit, they were evidence of another, far stronger feeling driving me on. (I can even hear voices saying: What about the love of God? But what do people who can no longer express ordinary human love know of God’s love?) If it weren’t for the fact that all the trees and shrubs had grown enormously since then, it was almost as if my observation post had remained unchanged. I was just settling down behind a clump of ferns, when I heard footsteps. I kept very still and saw someone walking toward the clearing, although I could not yet see who it was. The otherwise calm air was occasionally shaken by a sudden gust of wind, and then, high up, the clouds would thicken and cover the moon, plunging everything into deep gloom. It was at one such moment that I spotted my nephew, André. I confess that when I realized it was him, I felt a twinge of curiosity. It was almost as if I were seeing him for the first time. Oddly enough, he seemed older and less familiar than I imagined. Thin, and with his straight hair falling forward over his face, the cape slung over his shoulders, he could have cut an almost childish figure, were there not something very grown-up about his gestures—a certainty, a determination of which I had no idea he was capable. I should make it clear that I felt no pity for him, but was thinking coldly: so he was the sinner, the most recent prey to fall into Nina’s talons. How would he cope? Would he be up to the role reserved for him?

  I don’t know how long we waited, with him shifting restlessly about on the bench, alert to the slightest sound, and me in my hiding place behind the clump of ferns. Finally, she appeared; I saw her dark figure emerge from the avenue and walk slowly toward the bench. I could gauge his excitement from the way he sprang to his feet. However hard I strained my ears, I could not hear what they were saying. There was a moment when she seemed about to leave, but then she turned back and continued talking to him. What would they be saying, what could they be talking about that could be of any interest to me? It would just be a string of vacuous inanities, the kind of things lovers say to each other. In the circumstances, it was hard to imagine anything more ridiculous. Having never heard or spoken such things before, he might have the right to say those things, but what right did that woman have to deceive him, having sullied her lips with every possible false promise? Time seemed to stand still, and I looked up at the moon drifting across the sky. Finally, I saw that they were heading f
or the Pavilion—ah, so she had given in—and I thought to myself: “It’s time.” I had brought a small flashlight with me, but felt it best not to turn it on. If she went into the room, I would not hesitate to do so, though. I was hoping that when Nina found the door locked, she would give up, but I hadn’t realized how fragile the door had become. All it needed was a hard shove from either her or André. (No, I should be more precise: I was convinced, as I still am, that she was the one who did this.) From where I was, I heard the door creak wearily open. Anger flooded my heart and seemed to blind me, and I walked toward the Pavilion, my flashlight in my hand. It wasn’t hard to locate the exact point where they had entered. Standing before the open door, I trembled, breathing in the musty smell emerging from the darkness, as if they had just desecrated a grave.