The last time we saw each other (and “see” for me means being alone with her in the cellar), I was keenly aware that she was under the sway of alternating currents of enthusiasm and despair. It was as if she were trying to be the person she had always been, but that, independently of this, some powerful, inner preoccupation was dominating her thoughts. For example, when I asked about her lack of interest in me, she laughed until she cried, then subsided into a deep silence. I tried in vain to bring her back to the surface, but she hung her head and remained very still, eyes fixed on the floor. “What on earth is the matter?” I asked. She did not answer, but got up and went over to stand by the narrow window that looks out onto the garden. What ideas, what memories were adrift in her mind? She seemed so agitated, her expression shifting and changing under the influx of images long since vanished, but whose return evidently provoked a lacerating pain. I could not bear it, and standing behind her, I kissed the back of her neck, trying to restore her to life. She let me kiss her, as if she were dead. On one such occasion, I went further, giving lingering kiss after lingering kiss, determined not to leave her until a little warmth had returned to her icy skin. In an ecstasy, my lips moved from her shoulder down to her breasts. She finally clasped my head in her hands—we were sitting together on the mattress—and looked at me as if she did not even recognize me. I asked again: “What is it, what’s wrong?” Then she spoke, and there was such a poignant note of longing in her voice: “Here, many years ago . . .” And I saw then, as clearly as if it were there before my eyes, an identical scene, a love scene, with another man in my place. He must have kissed her as I had done, and that is what had provoked the abstracted look on her face. (Written in the margin: So many years have passed since then and yet, even now, I’m assailed by doubt: did she really love me or was she merely looking for someone else whom I closely resembled? The way she would sometimes touch my cheek, as if searching for some trace of a beloved face, the words she would say in moments of ecstasy—fragments of words and phrases that did not belong to any conversation we had ever had, but to her interrupted conversation with that other man; her insistence on certain caresses, certain expressions of love, revealed an intimacy learned from someone other than me—but who and when? Who was he and, given her perennial discretion, how could I ever find out? Even now, I still do not know whether it was me she loved or a ghost, but of one thing I am sure, she was the only woman I had ever loved.) Unable to contain my jealousy, I drew back and, seeing her still immersed in her thoughts, I raised one hand and slapped her face. She gave only a faint moan and turned to look at me, but there was no surprise in her eyes. “You have no respect for me at all,” I cried. “You don’t even see me, aren’t even aware that I’m here by your side.” Then, seeing her eyes fill with tears, I took her in my arms. She made me rest my head on her shoulder and stroked me as if I were a child. “Don’t be angry, André, all is not yet lost.” “Not yet lost?” And again I felt that incomprehensible threat hanging over us, like a shadow. “No, not yet,” and she squeezed me so hard, I almost gasped for breath, “not yet. But everything has its end, André.” I confess that, for the first time, I felt that she really did not love me. No, she didn’t and never would; there was a kind of poison in her veins that made it impossible for her to love me. Perhaps, up until now, she had merely been pretending. And I was so terrified, I felt so lost in that silence, that I covered her in kisses, saying: “No, never, what exists between us will never cease to exist, because that would be the end of me, my death.” She realized that I meant what I said and, tenderly stroking my hair, answered: “Don’t be afraid.” And in another tone of voice entirely, in which I recognized her old self: “From now on, I will be yours in a way I never was before.” I closed my eyes, feeling that those hovering threats had been banished and that this time she was not pretending.
Undated – I haven’t seen her since that day, which only increases my unease. I dare not question anyone, neither have I been able to glean anything from any overheard snippets of conversation. I even went into the kitchen, hoping to pick up something from what the servants were saying, but they were all unexpectedly silent and ignored me completely. I got angry then and told myself it would be best not to think about it any more and, in order to pass the time, I took my horse and rode along the roads around the Chácara. Everywhere, the ripe maize heads were tinged with red; birds, attracted by the maize, were already flying in over the fields, tracing silent trails across the blue sky. I passed a few mud-built huts, a well, a bridge over a stream. From a distance, the daughter of one of the farmhands eyed me curiously; I noticed in passing that she was pretty and blonde, but that was all. Then I rode along one of the dirt tracks that lead out into the countryside. The farther I went from the house, the farther from any familiar sights, the more alone and desperate I felt. No, there was nothing about that landscape to attract me, I found its very vastness oppressive; it seemed to take from me the pleasure of living and breathing. I reached a bend in the road where a pink ipê tree was in full bloom, then galloped back the way I had come. There stood the farmhand’s daughter, carrying a basket full of laundry. The stream foamed about my horse’s light hooves. And soon, with some relief, above the old trees I have known since childhood, I could make out the Chácara’s rather battered roof. It might be hell itself, but what did that matter if it was where I lived and was the only life that interested me. I dismounted, tethered the reins to a pillar, ready to call one of the servants to take the horse to the stables. And I was just about to go up, when I saw her standing motionless above me. I stopped, my heart beating furiously. She had obviously been watching me ever since I rode through the gates of the Chácara. Now I was the one to congratulate myself. Had I succeeded in worrying her? Had she suffered to think that I had managed to forget her for a few moments and was enjoying myself far from her presence? How good it felt to be cruel, how that feeling helped dissipate some of my anxiety. Having recovered from the shock of seeing her there, I continued on up the steps, saying in a voice in which surprise was mingled with disapproval:
“At last!”
She said nothing, but came down to meet me. I waited, leaning on the handrail. Below me, its reins hanging loose, my horse stood snorting. When she reached me, I grabbed her wrist:
“Where have you been?”
She tried to pull away.
“Be careful, André, your father is on the verandah.”
“So what?” I said through gritted teeth. “All these days without seeing you . . . couldn’t you at least have said something?”
“André . . .”
And there was such a pleading look in her eyes that I let go of her. The wind was tousling her hair. Rubbing her bruised wrist, she was gazing up at me with a wounded expression on her face:
“You didn’t used to be this way . . . you would never have treated me like this before.”
I turned away so that she would not see how upset I was.
“I’m going crazy,” I said.
She shook her head:
“You must stay calm. If you carry on as you are, you’ll spoil everything.”
That was tantamount to asking me to leave her alone. Suddenly, as we stood on those steps in the morning sun, a chasm opened up between us. I hadn’t been expecting that, and only really noticed when I felt how great the distance had become. And whatever I did, whatever I said—regardless of whether I heaped complaints on her or insults—would only drive us further apart. I just stood there, feeling utterly discouraged. She said nothing more, but in silence, as if accepting that there really was nothing to be done, she went down a few more steps. Enraged, as if this constituted a major affront, I shouted after her:
“Where are you going?”
She turned and fixed me with a serene gaze:
“For a walk.”
“Alone?”
She hesitated before answering:
“Yes, alone,” she said at last, and her lips trembled.
I caught her
up again and this time grabbed her arm:
“Why alone?”
She looked up, and I saw in her eyes that spark of anger, defiance, or sheer determination that I had seen on so many other similar occasions. She said:
“Because that’s what I want, André.”
Unable to contain myself any more, I seized her by the shoulders and began to shake her:
“Is this how you promised to love me . . . in a way you never had before?”
And I was so violent, so out of control, that she gave a cry and leaned back against the wall.
“Stop it, for God’s sake, you’re hurting me.”
Seeing how pale she was, I immediately released her. She was breathing hard and, with her head still resting against the wall, was rubbing her arm. I saw then how fragile she was, how profoundly, inexplicably helpless, and I did not know what to think:
“Oh,” I murmured, “if you only knew . . .”
And even as I was still feeling like an utter brute, my anger was fast dissolving to give way, finally, to the tenderness that had never entirely left me. Words deserted me, and for a few seconds, standing before her, I could find no way of expressing what I was feeling. She was equally silent and continued mechanically to rub her arm. I could bear anything but that passivity, that lack of will in a person normally so impulsive. I couldn’t understand why she was behaving like that, nor why she was being so evasive. Was she simply tired—she, who had urged on me the need to embrace my sin, or what she called sin—or was she merely giving in to the corrosive effects of remorse? The expression on her face was not her usual one, but that of someone struggling against intense, physical pain. It was as if she were oblivious to the noises of the outside world and aware only of the secret battle being waged by some emerging, evolving force in the very center of her being. Suddenly, everything I had been unable to see—too blinded by jealousy and distrust—was revealed to me, and I saw how much thinner she had become, how her features had changed, become sharper, her face gaunter, how she trembled before me, pathetic and defenseless. The change was so extraordinary that I even wondered to myself if she had ever been beautiful, if the fascination she held for me was not some diabolical mistake on my part. Was she just an ordinary woman, the same as all the others? There, in the full glare of the sun, I could easily find the answers to all those questions. And I took pleasure in examining her, in being cruel, and showing how cruel I was, and I enjoyed imagining her to be mean and cruel as well. I even adopted a superior air, that of someone who has suddenly noticed the trap set for him. However, this lasted no more than a minute, the time it took for me to recognize her again, to imagine, with keen, decisive eyes, the illness eating away at her, and which perhaps, out of pity, she was concealing from me. I folded her in my arms, and she offered no resistance.
“What’s wrong? Are you ill?”
She rested quietly in my embrace, as if she lacked the strength to do anything else. Then, glancing furtively up at the verandah, she said:
“Be careful. We’ll talk tonight.”
And pulling away from me, she went down the steps into the garden.
Undated – I waited hours for her in the darkness. My eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, and I was amusing myself trying to make out the shapes of the old tools piled in the corners, the various crates and other less easily identifiable objects. All those things had once been useful, had had their moment, had been used by skillful hands to create the garden that was now succumbing to neglect. When had that been, who had lived here on the Chácara then, what had their lives been like? No answer came; those abandoned witnesses maintained a hostile silence. An idea occurred to me, a strange thought, doubtless born of those particular circumstances and my particular situation. That part of the Chácara—the Pavilion—had always seemed to me a fateful place, of which no one spoke, and if someone did have to mention it, they would do so only in the most roundabout way and never use its actual name; they would say “there” or “down there,” as I had heard Aunt Ana refer to it on more than one occasion. And I myself had never asked why it had suffered that fate. As a child, I had always known that the old garden tools were stored there, and if I ever went “down there,” it was only in order to listen to the lizards scampering about or to pick fruit from the overgrown trees. Despite that, and without anyone ever telling me as much, I knew that the Pavilion was linked to the drama that had happened years ago—the same drama everyone took such pains to keep from me. I had grown used now to that heavy, damp, musty atmosphere, the smell had impregnated me, become part of me, it was, you might say, the smell of what was happening to me, yes, why not, the smell of my love. Whenever I encountered that smell later on, the feelings I had then would always come rushing back. And it wasn’t only the smell, it was the touch, the feel of certain objects—for example, the cold, damp straw mattress on which I was lying and which gave off the scent of some special herb, was becoming part of what, in my mind, was already a memory, offering me a strange perspective on time, with things emerging from the past, which, even while they were still in the present, were already forming the basis of my future. They pulsated in the darkness with a secret inner life. And while I felt entangled in that silent web, I was still too young to recognize it as the source of that feeling. I say “feeling” even though I cannot pinpoint it exactly: rather, in the surrounding darkness, it was more a vague sense of being caught up in something hidden and violent (some bloody incident—but when and with whom?) and which I could only describe as the smell of evil. An evil atmosphere. And it was clear that the person I loved belonged to that atmosphere. Not because of the thing she called sin, but because of the mere fact that she existed and breathed and was herself, and shared the same tepid, spongy essence as sea anemones. For the truth is that it was the only place where Nina was fully herself, a brilliant, perfumed, ever-fresh flower among all those objects eroded by time. She embodied that musty, subterranean odor. Yes, that fragile creature was the simple, frank embodiment of evil, human evil. This idea filled me with terror, not the kind of terror that suddenly closed around me and rendered me instantly helpless, but a slow-growing terror, which began as a tingle in the soles of my feet, then advanced like a blockade on my heart. However, my poor heart now reacted to so few things in this world. To evil, yes, but so what? Were anyone to accuse me, I would say that evil was all I wanted, all that interested me on this earth.
She found me there, trembling, besieged by darkness. I did not get up, I did not go to meet her, as I would have done on other occasions. She would, of course, notice this change and doubtless think my love for her had lessened, when, in fact, I felt that my love had reached new heights and that everything else was a mere detail with no real existence. Lying there, legs outstretched and numb, I could no longer feel the blood circulating in my veins and was enjoying imagining myself the victim of a poisoning. Nina duly noticed this change and bent down to touch my face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. And I trembled, not because of all those other things I might have feared, but because I had suddenly realized how very alone we were. The touch of her hand on my skin gave me a clear sense that I was sliding, disappearing into another man’s body, another man’s will.
“But you’re trembling,” she said, and her hand continued to explore my face, as if engaged in some intimate guessing game.
“I’m just cold. I’ve been lying here for ages.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I couldn’t get away any sooner.”
As if she had sensed what I had been thinking earlier, her voice took on a gentler, more insinuating tone. She lay down beside me, snuggled up against me, radiating a new warmth that wrapped about my whole body. We were reaching the point where words became unnecessary, we were merely listening, and the faintest sounds became monstrous, discordant, animal noises, because we were only interested in one movement, and it was that somber, medieval mechanism that bound us together, uniting us not as two
distinct beings, but as one being, made of the same flesh and the same blood. With my ear pressed to her breast, I didn’t care if that beating heart was mine or hers; it was ours, and I felt myself to be a branch sprouting from her trunk, as if, in the gloom, we had been transformed into a tree and lost all human aspect, become vegetable and pagan, burning in the fire lit by the night and by our desire. Suddenly, in the middle of the silence, she said:
“Have you never thought, André, that you were once my baby? Has it never occurred to you that I carried you inside me before you were born, and that we were once even more united than we are now?”
“Never,” I murmured, “I have never thought we could be more united than we are now.”
“We could,” she said, and her voice was barely a whisper.
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 40
