(Yes, what else can I say except that here I end? Now that the cellar door has been opened, the key to which I had so jealously guarded, now that the room has been despoiled, the room where I watched him, Alberto, dying, his chest soaked in blood, I have nothing more to hide or to do. No jealousy drives me on, no other feeling, either positive or negative. I see the house shaking, the foundations trembling, the Meneses themselves collapsing—but, as I said, none of that matters. My life, what I consider to be my portion in life, ends here. At least it would, if that depended solely on my will. I feel I have been assimilated into this landscape like some trivial detail. One day, when the dead mortar allows the first weed to sprout among the ruins, I will set off in search of a pile of earth topped with a few dried flowers. There will be no wall around it, no fence, nothing but a jequitibá tree growing not far off, and covering with its dark leaves one third of that cemetery, where the cattle and the horses graze freely. I will say to myself: “That is where she lies resting, or, who knows, mulling over her past crimes.” Above, vast and dull, will hang a heavy autumn sky. I will sit down in the shade of the jequitibá and write her name in the earth with a twig. For a moment, it will be the only part of her to survive oblivion. Then a sudden wind will appear and erase her name, one of those winds that sometimes, out of nowhere, sweeps across the fields, and then all that will be left is the pile of earth, until another wind scatters that, mixing it up with more earth, and then the cemetery itself will disappear, and the crosses too, and the place will return to being open countryside, where other cattle will graze, occasionally finding among the lush grass a fragment of wood that still bears a date or part of a name worn away by the elements. Then, no one will remember that she ever existed. Only I, if I’m still alive, of course, and, in the shade of another jequitibá tree, young and sprouting fresh, new leaves, only I will trample the grass, looking for the place where she was buried, pushing my way through the dense undergrowth, avoiding any pools of water, until I stop at a spot where, unexpectedly, a red flower has just opened—a cactus flower—entirely alone and covered in spines. I will say “it was here” and, for a long time, will gaze up at the sky until evening falls and I hear, like a warning, the sound of cowbells tinkling as the cattle make their way back to the corral.)
Troubled by these contradictory thoughts, I left the laundry basin and walked slowly back to the house.
46.
Valdo’s Second Statement (ii)
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On my return, I found the atmosphere unchanged. It was clear at once that the patient was still very ill, and every expressive, silent face bore the same look of expectation. This time, however, there was one difference: I was accompanied by a doctor, a young man from the city unaccustomed to our country ways, but whose evident good will had immediately endeared him to me. He examined everything in the house with curious eyes, in which there was, perhaps, just a hint of mischief—how strange we Meneses must have seemed to him, concealing, as we did, beneath a thin veneer of liberality all the difficulties and complexes of a once wealthy family relegated to this provincial backwater. I was even more keenly aware of this when we were met by Ana, who was her usual austere, silent self and wearing her usual drab clothes. She was carrying a folded handkerchief in her hand, which, from time to time, she discreetly pressed to her nose.
“Excuse me,” she said wearily. “The smell gives me a headache.”
I introduced her to the doctor, and she held out her hand, but in such a stiff, ceremonious manner that it was more as if she were bestowing a distant blessing than greeting a guest.
“What is it, Ana?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s nothing.” But then, as if contradicting this statement, she indicated the bedroom door.
I left her to take care of the recent arrival’s suitcase and proposed that the doctor should go in and see the patient at once. “As you are no doubt aware, we have already lost a great deal of time.” The doctor suggested that it was perhaps inadvisable to enter the room unannounced, and that he would rather hear about the patient’s current state from someone who had been with her over the last few days. As it happened, Betty was the one to provide this information, for just as we reached the hallway, she came out of the room carrying a cup.
“Ah, Betty, I’m so glad you’re here,” I said, drawing her to one side and asking her to tell the doctor what had happened during my absence.
“I’m afraid the news isn’t good,” she said, shaking her head. “Dona Nina has been very ill indeed.”
And while she spoke to the doctor, I took a few steps back so as not to hear all the depressing details. (I can still remember the two of them standing there: she, small and prim in her clean, modest clothes; he, the city doctor, tall, well-dressed, bending down slightly, to hear what she said. A few steps behind them was the closed door of the bedroom where Nina lay. How difficult it was for me not to hope, despite everything: I had chosen a young doctor, very different from the one we were accustomed to, with different methods and experiences—so how could I not feel confident that he might coax from the immutable laws of nature one tiny spark to light our way into the future? I hoped and I believed, and as time went on, instead of despairing, I hoped and believed still more.) I left them to it, convinced that no one could do a better job than Betty. (An image, an old one, surfaced in my mind and, for a few moments it occupied my thoughts entirely, like a clear jet of water: Betty, the young girl whom my mother had employed to teach English to my brother Timóteo, who was then only a small boy. The young foreign woman, scarcely more than a girl, suitcase in hand and umbrella under her arm, replying haltingly to the questions put to her. From then on, she had become an invaluable member of the family. Leaving her with the doctor, I felt almost reassured, for I knew that everything would be that much safer if it lay in her good hands.)
Slowly, for the first time since arriving back, and as my heavy burden of worries started to lift, I began to accustom myself once more to all the familiar objects, feeling my way as cautiously and contentedly as a blind man around a world where I had lived so comfortably and from which dark forces had tried to snatch me. Ah, yes, the provinces—I could never get used to living anywhere else. It was then, in the darkness of the drawing room, that I caught sight of the still, silent figure of Father Justino. I couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep, but he had a book open on his knees and a rosary clasped in his hands. Asleep, probably. Beside him, leaning on a chair, stood the sacristan, a young lad from the town, for whom the gravity of the moment had not yet succeeded in extinguishing the curious, playful gleam in his eye.
“How are you, Father Justino?”
He awoke with a start:
“Ah, it’s you, Senhor Valdo! I am as God wills it, my child,” he said.
He then explained that he had come on his own initiative, after hearing about the illness and thinking that, if the illness did prove fatal, it would simply not be right to allow someone to leave this life without God’s presence. I agreed, thinking to myself that I had never seen Nina take the slightest interest in anything to do with the Church. Did God exist for her? Were there times when she would invoke His name? I was appalled by the idea that we can spend a whole lifetime at someone’s side without ever asking the many important, indeed fundamental, things we ought to ask one another. When I remained silent, Father Justino launched into a series of explanations, asserting that the last rites, far from being a sacrament of death as most people supposed, offered hope, an appeal, as it were, to life. As he spoke—and that word “hope” rang out like the deep, solemn tolling of a bell—I became aware of a smell creeping surreptitiously and stealthily toward me, dense, invisible, a smell I hadn’t noticed before and which betrayed the presence in the house not of hope, but of a stark testimony to human frailty and human limitations. The smell was so strong that it made me dizzy and I turned toward the hallway.
&nb
sp; “Good God,” I said, “what on earth is that awful smell?”
“Ah,” said the priest, and his voice was extraordinarily gentle, “can you smell it, too?” Then he added in a tone of excruciatingly Christian resignation: “It’s her.”
“Nina?” I again glanced toward the hallway in disbelief.
You could almost see the smell wafting in waves out of the bedroom and through the drawing room, onto the verandah and out into the night, where it would be lost in the open air, a smell that seemed to leave the walls around us moist and sticky, the sweet, rancid, sweaty smell of the dying. At that moment, I must confess that the tiny thread of hope I had been clinging to vanished, and I felt afraid; this was not a fear of what might happen, nor of what I might see, but a piercing, urgent fear welling up out of the dark regions wherein lie the primordial fears of all men. Father Justino, who had no doubt watched the change coming over me, placed one hand on my shoulder:
“Isn’t it time you went to see how she is?”
“The doctor’s in there,” I replied somewhat evasively.
“Even so . . .” and I caught a slightly scolding tone in his voice.
I agreed, but if truth be told I had absolutely no desire to cross the threshold into the room that was the source of that stench. Then, as if by some prearranged signal, so timely was her appearance, Ana walked into the drawing room, and above the handkerchief with which she was rather exaggeratedly covering almost half her face, I could see two hard, piercing eyes that, far from expressing concern or dismay, showed only a cold, calculating awareness of what was unfolding around her. She made me feel ashamed of my initial hesitancy and I touched Father Justino’s arm as if doing penance for that minor error. He too must have realized what was going on, for on seeing Ana, he bowed his head as if not wishing to bother her with his gaze. We made our way to the bedroom, the priest a few steps behind me, and behind him the sacristan. As I was opening the door, I glanced back and saw Ana in the drawing room, and as she lowered the hand holding the handkerchief to her mouth, she seemed uncertain whether or not she should turn and follow us into the bedroom. In the end, she joined us as we were about to go in. “Probably better that way,” I thought.
When the door opened, the warm stench filling the room made us almost stagger back, but this time it was not simply a wave rolling over our heads, but an element in itself, something real and tangible, into which we plunged with no hope of rescue. This first impression paralyzed me, and from where I stood, unable to move, I looked over at the bed—and there she was, Nina, entirely wrapped in a sheet. So close, and yet no movement or sound betrayed her presence: she had lapsed into one of those periods of repose that so often precede a major crisis. Besides Betty and the doctor—the only ones not holding a handkerchief to their faces—two or three other people stood around the bed: a neighbor whom I did not immediately recognize (I later found out it was Donana de Lara), a maid, and a fourth person half hidden behind the curtain and therefore impossible to identify. Their eyes were all fixed on me, waiting for me to step forward. But the smell curled about me in successive waves, encircling me tighter and tighter, breaking again and again against the walls, clouding my vision, turning my stomach, and threatening to suffocate me, while I stood there incapable of movement. And there I would have stayed, inert, arms hanging limply by my side, if Betty had not beckoned me over to help her. When I reached the foot of the bed, I saw the doctor waiting for me, grim-faced.
“There’s nothing to be done,” he said.
And, responding to the question he saw forming in my eyes:
“This woman is dying.”
That last word reverberated through the air and hung there for a moment, frozen and pure, as if it were a concept beyond our understanding, before sweeping brutally into the consciousness of all those present. So it was too late; there was nothing to be done. The thing we had not feared, because we judged it to be impossible, was happening right there in all its violent reality. My vision grew blurred, and I steadied myself on the edge of the bed.
“Is it possible, doctor?” I stammered.
“You must fetch the priest,” he said bluntly.
Father Justino, who, up until then, had been standing behind me, stepped resolutely forward. The sacristan followed, clutching the holy vessels. Abandoning her post by the door, Ana immediately went over to the chest of drawers and began lighting a candle. During the long pause that followed, none of the others dared move. Ana handed the sacristan a plate on which there were a few balls of cotton wool and took from him the flask of holy oils, which she placed at the foot of the cross. Then, as if by magic, the bloodless figure of Christ, standing on the chest of drawers with a small vase of aromatic herbs at his feet, suddenly glowed and glittered. In the shadows, the priest put on his purple surplice and stole. At the same time, Ana signaled to the maid to go and fetch a towel and a bowl of water so that the priest could wash his hands afterward. And so, dressed entirely in purple, he held up the silver bowl in which he dipped his fingers, and began to recite the Asperges me. Then, turning to face the sacristan, he handed him the first vessel containing the holy water, and took the second, which contained the holy oils. I noticed that the others were now kneeling and I did the same, barely taking in the fact that the last rites were being performed. Donana de Lara leaned over the bed and uncovered the dying woman’s feet, so white and slender they could have been the feet of a child. “Ah, Nina,” I thought to myself, “we could have been so happy, if only I had been able to understand you better.” I heard a muffled sob in the shadows: the priest, touching the eyes of the dying woman, was beginning to say the Confiteor in a slow, measured voice. I felt as if something inside me had been torn asunder, and I again whispered: “Nina!”, but not even her name, once so familiar, could achieve the miracle of reducing the distance between us and her. Kneeling, a folded newspaper in her hand, Betty was trying to drive away a particularly persistent fly. Then a dull, rhythmic sound began to echo around the room: it was the patient’s breathing, clearly audible in her final moments, growing slowly louder and drowning out all other noises until it became a single, harsh vibration, like the voice itself of the departing moment. I could no longer smell the stench; I could no longer feel anything—everything was meaningless. I stood up and went toward the door. From there I turned and glanced back at the group, so that, later on, the scene would not be totally erased from my memory. For the last time, I watched Father Justino leaning over and touching the soles of her poor abandoned feet with his oiled fingers. Then my eyes filled with tears, and I escaped out into the hallway.
47.
Ana’s Last Confession (ii)
In the days that followed, I lost all interest in the room and in everything that was happening there, and concentrated instead on something equally unexpected, and which I found deeply fascinating, namely, my husband’s response. Valdo had returned from Rio and brought with him a doctor, who, after the briefest of examinations, declared himself unable to do anything: Nina was dying. Despite this, he said that he would stay until the end, because we might still need help—“one can never predict how long a patient will last”—and perhaps also to justify such a long journey. Father Justino, who had other people to attend to, withdrew, having administered the last rites. A slight calm descended on the house.
With Betty’s help, I installed the doctor in one of the rooms at the back, between the kitchen and Timóteo’s room. Betty seemed to enjoy the novelty—he was probably the first guest she had seen at the Chácara—for she went out into the garden, picked a bunch of pinks and placed them in a jar on the new arrival’s bedside table. To continue my story, I should say that the doctor was no trouble at all; he barely ever came into the drawing room, apart from at mealtimes. And with the exception of a couple of brief local walks “to get to know the Minas landscape,” he spent all his time with his patient. He was clearly genuinely touched by her plight, and as he himself put it: “Dying is a very painful business and we should do all we ca
n to alleviate her pain.” And often, during those long hours of waiting, from the afternoon to the night, and from the night into the small hours, my husband and I spent more time together than we had throughout our entire married life. I don’t know who was to blame for our estrangement, nor do I care; we probably both partook of the shared guilt that afflicts all unhappy couples, each of us insisting that the other was to blame. However, at that moment, I was interested only in him and not in what had gone wrong with our ill-fated marriage. (While I was thinking these thoughts, and like an image born out of two dots suddenly connecting—our unfortunate marriage and Nina’s death agony—an old memory suddenly surfaced, so old I could not describe it exactly or pinpoint details: it was simply a memory, and as vague as memories often are. Nina was standing by Demétrio’s desk, holding a letter opener in her hand. He was on the other side of the desk, sweating profusely. When I opened the door, I felt as if I had burst in on something; there was a violence, a tremor in the air, an uncertainty, as if he had just that moment stood up. What had they been talking about? Why that charged atmosphere? I looked from one to the other, but they said nothing. And I never did know what had happened. As I say, this was in the early days, and while I was completely obsessed with Nina, she did not even deign to glance at me as she left the room. Now, years later, sitting beside my husband, that image kept returning to me, because I could see something of that same confusion on his face, the same anguished, helpless air I had noticed on the day when I found them together. And however hard I tried, the memory kept coming back, it would disappear for a while, then suddenly return, speaking to me of a relationship of which I knew nothing, an enigma I could not solve, but which lingered obstinately in my mind.)
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 50
