But these were merely the thoughts of an instant. I ran up the steps and found myself outside the drawing room. There, as in the garden, I was greeted by an atmosphere that seemed more fiesta than funeral. Few, it seemed, were taking any notice of the poor dead woman, wrapped in a sheet and laid out on the table. She had become a non-person, the remote reason for the gathering, and the visitors, forgetting why they were there, were standing around in groups chatting, some of them more loudly than was appropriate. I think I even heard, coming from one end of the drawing room, some barely suppressed laughter. Indeed, the party would have been completely free of any reminder of death were it not for the insistent smell of decomposing matter that had been radiating out from the dying woman’s bedroom for the last few days. People talked with an urgency artificially created by the forbidden, with the heat and haste you find in theater foyers or during pauses in an important speech, but then the conversation would suddenly be interrupted by a disconcerting silence, words would die unspoken, a fan would flap more vigorously. And people’s eyes, drawn by the undeniable truth, would glance furtively over at the body, the source of the offending smell. But with each passing minute you could sense that the solitary white body was growing ever more disconnected from its surroundings. With extraordinary speed, it was ceasing to be a corpse laid out for viewing, and becoming merely an anonymous, indifferent object. As soon as I appeared, a woman detached herself from one of the groups and rushed toward me:
“Oh, Senhor Valdo, how terrible!” she said, her thick, coarse hand grasping my arm.
It was Donana de Lara. She was dressed entirely in purple, the front of her velvet dress embroidered with beads, and she smelled of incense and sacristies. I pushed her away almost roughly. Her eyes glittered with barely suppressed anger. She stared at me for a moment as if waiting for an explanation, then shrugged and moved away. Once again gathering an audience around her, I saw her, in the distance, angrily waving her fan in my direction, doubtless commenting on my rudeness, and letting one of her “those Meneses” fall from her pursed and withered lips. Farther along, beside the door leading to the hallway, I saw another group who were clearly engrossed in watching something happening outside the room. I went over and heard someone mutter:
“It’s the infected clothes.”
Pushing past the people blocking my way (they moved aside reluctantly, as if I were depriving them of a fascinating spectacle), I soon saw what was going on. In the hallway, amid a pile of clothes, stood Demétrio. Just Demétrio, and he seemed to have grown in the last few hours: his face, normally so tired-looking, exuded an inner energy, an unbending, righteous determination. Just behind him, watching, but clearly not joining in, was Ana. The first thing I noticed about her was that she seemed almost to be sleepwalking, present but not participating, like a piece of flotsam washed up on the beach. I spoke to Demétrio and sensed for the first time just how hard it would be for me to describe him: all his deepest, most secret characteristics had floated to the surface and, to those who knew him, he was exhibiting his true self with almost dazzling wantonness. Hair disheveled, eyes wild, he was dragging clothes and boxes out of the little storeroom and throwing them all into the middle of the hallway. Not just clothes but shoes as well, along with lace and other bits and bobs—a whole world of knick-knacks that brought back painful memories. Hurriedly, as if time were of the essence, he was hurling all these things onto the floor and kicking them carelessly to one side when they got in the way. I stared at him; he was moving with the nervous, abandoned haste of a maniac. Completely oblivious to the people watching from the drawing room—he, who had always been the most private of individuals—he was carrying out his task as if something vital depended upon it, like saving the world, for example. He interrupted his frenzy only once or twice to wipe the sweat off his glistening brow, but without looking up from the piles of clothes on the floor. At one such moment, however, he did look up and saw me watching, but so intent was he on what he was doing that he didn’t even recognize me. He was about to stoop down again when I took a few steps toward him.
“Ah,” he said and stood there, motionless among the clothes, still clutching some of them in his hands.
“I don’t understand, Demétrio. What are you doing?”
Only then, hearing my words, did he come to his senses and survey the tremendous mess now filling the hallway. He slowly turned and stared at me, as if trying to ascertain exactly what I was thinking. But then, no doubt guessing my thoughts, his face seemed first to swell, then contract, then resume its normal, reserved expression.
“The clothes are infected,” he said.
“What?”
He probably thought, as was his habit, that there was nothing more to say. His actions were sufficient proof that what he was doing was necessary and could not be challenged by anyone. Even so, seeing that I expected more of an explanation, he gestured impatiently and added:
“You are aware, aren’t you,”—and it was impossible not to detect a hint of irony in his voice—“that Nina died of a contagious disease?”
“Perhaps,” I replied.
He turned to Ana as if calling upon her testimony, her infallible testimony:
“Perhaps! That’s what always happens, and it’s always down to shameful negligence. Two or even three more people might fall prey to the same illness and all because of the criminal recklessness of a few.”
“It isn’t certain that cancer is contagious,” I replied.
“But nor is it certain that it isn’t.”
No doubt considering that he had explained himself enough, he went back to pulling items out of the storeroom and throwing them on the floor. And just to clarify (for it’s an important detail), although I did think it was far too early to be clearing out a dead woman’s possessions, I would not have been so shocked had his actions merely reflected his customary zeal. But he wasn’t merely removing the offending items; he was literally hauling them out with a violence and a revulsion that were a mortal offence to the person who had once owned them. I don’t know why, but that zeal struck me as somehow intended as an insult aimed at Nina beyond the grave. His actions seemed to reach out toward that infinite space, where perhaps someone would understand the sheer extent of his malice. They weren’t just garments, a dead person’s belongings: they were living things still imbued with energy and meaning. This impression was made still stronger when, from one of the boxes, as if from some deep well, there appeared a green dress she had worn shortly after returning from Rio. We all froze at the sight of it: it was as if Nina herself were there, watching us trampling over her mortal remains. But Demétrio only hesitated for a moment before flinging it brutally onto the pile, as if the dress were a particular affront to his zealous state of mind. One of the straps of the dress got caught on his legs, and Demétrio, trying to free himself from it, kicked it away, so that it landed almost at the feet of the curious onlookers by the door. This was too much for me. As if a terrible cry had pierced the air, I leapt blindly onto the pile of scattered garments and seized Demétrio by the arm:
“Stop it,” I cried, immediately letting go of him and snatching another dress from his hands.
Demétrio turned toward me, an irrational gleam in his eyes.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Just stop it,” I repeated, holding up the dress I had snatched from him.
“There’s nothing left. It’s all gone,” he said, gasping.
“It’s too soon to be doing this, Demétrio.”
He stepped forward, trembling and panting, very close to me now, hesitating as to what he should do next. Seeing that I wasn’t letting go of the dress, he said to me in a low, clear voice:
“She’s dead, Valdo. She’s rotting.”
And as if intending to end the discussion with these brutal words, he snatched the dress back from me. I felt the blood rush to my head and reached out to grab it again—he eluded my grasp and was about to throw the dress onto the pile, but I hurled mysel
f on him in an attempt to prevent this final insult. He would not give way and, for a moment, we grappled with each other; from behind us I could hear the onlookers’ muffled comments. Ana looked as if she were about to intervene, and two or three other people rushed to separate us. But I had no intention of giving in, and we pushed and pulled our way over to the window. At that moment, we weren’t brothers, but two strangers locked in mortal combat. It was clear that I would get the better of him and, when I felt his heavy breathing on my neck, I was surprised that I had dared to go so far and that he had agreed to fight. Something was truly wrong for the Meneses to fight like that in front of so many strangers. As I grappled with him I said to myself, with the sudden lucidity that comes to us in such extreme moments, that it was he, not I, who had the most extraordinary role in all of this, unexpectedly allowing his true self to surface after a lifetime spent trying to conceal it. For a second I thought he was going to have an apoplectic fit; he turned red, almost purple, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets. He couldn’t hold out much longer, and when he finally released his grip on me, I pushed him away and he fell back onto the pile of clothes. There on the floor, propping himself up on his elbows, he looked at me with seething resentment. I brandished the dress in front of him:
“Is it from this, from her, that you want to be free?”
His eyes flashed:
“I have nothing to say to you. I don’t have to explain myself.” And then groaning as he tried to get up: “You should show some respect for your elder brother.”
His gaze turned slowly toward Ana, who had clearly decided not to get involved, and his eyes conveyed more of a silent reproach than a cry for help, as if, in that decisive moment, he was finally taking stock of all his failed relationships.
Later on, when I was waiting for the cart from the station to take me away from the Chácara forever, Ana came to find me. That evening, on the sun-scorched road, with the sun already sinking behind the Serra do Baú, she seemed smaller, more shrunken and timid. She said nothing at first and was probably waiting to see my reaction, and when I gave a hint of a gentle smile (after all, compared to the new life that lay before me, what did all these things from the past matter?), she leaned on the fence and sighed deeply. She was waiting for me to speak first, to break the silence that had existed between us from the very first moment she had set foot in that house. Her eyes, always so vague and evasive, were now staring at me intensely, almost begging me to listen to her. I put down my suitcase and, brushing the dust from my clothes, I asked her what she wanted. She replied that she had something to tell me, but didn’t know if now was the right moment. I couldn’t help smiling at such a declaration from someone who, after living in the same house as me for so many years, had never said much more than hello or goodbye. And for a second, scrutinizing her perhaps more closely than I wanted, I saw her whole personality laid bare before me. With a sense of shock, I realized that there stood one of the central figures in the drama we had all just lived through: Ana—so despised by everyone, and yet who had also perhaps tasted the bitter fruits of love—was the only one whom no one had ever asked to give her version of events. I reached across the hedge toward her, grazing my arm on the thorns: “Well, Ana, it’s just us left now. There’s nothing to stop us being friends.” I saw her face grow so dark, it was like the shadow cast by the surrounding mountains as the sun set behind them. She seemed about to say something along the lines of “it’s too late for that,” but the words did not appear, and she simply stood there staring, quite still, as if she hadn’t even noticed my hand reaching out to her. I shrugged (these impossible creatures!) and then, averting her eyes, and as if repeating something she had already said to herself a hundred times before, she began to speak, and as she spoke, I found that I wasn’t so much discovering a new view of events, or adding anything to the story I already knew, but rather that the things I already knew slotted perfectly into the overall picture she was drawing for me. My awareness of events, until then somewhat shaky, became clearer until the whole story lay before me, so vivid and complete that it almost burst out of its narrow frame.
She had known everything for a long time. Ever since she first arrived at the Chácara, dazzled and naïve, she realized that she had been deceived and that her husband did not love her. Or at least that he no longer loved her. Even worse, it did not take her long to realize that he loved someone else. Given the Chácara’s narrow horizons, what other woman could attract Demétrio’s attention than the one whose presence filled the whole house? The fleeting signs of what had passed between them—a touch, a cry left hanging in the air, an angry gesture, sometimes so much more eloquent than an overt display of love, a lingering look, provoked by who knows what petty annoyance or betrayal or by nothing at all, a certain nervousness, a faint vibration in the air that suddenly alerts us to what is going on, as if we were being blindly propelled by some superior force through disintegrating walls—she had seen all these signs, and more besides, even in a man as guarded and cautious as Demétrio. Love can be hidden to a certain extent, but it will always escape somehow, like a noxious gas. She cited examples from the many she remembered. On one occasion, as she was about to enter their bedroom, she had found Nina on the other side of the door, just about to leave. That was at the beginning, before Nina started talking about going back to Rio, although things were already tense. Nevertheless, when she chanced upon Nina like that, Ana had felt certain that something had happened, something she could not yet pinpoint, but that she could already sense. Nina had stormed past her without saying a word, as if some violent argument had just taken place. Ana had found Demétrio sitting in his chair—slumped, she would almost say—still surrounded by an atmosphere full of inflamed emotions. He did not even turn around when she entered. Then almost not knowing what she was saying, or why, she remarked: “Nina’s leaving, isn’t she?” She would never forget her husband’s look of anger, surprise, and revulsion. If he could, he would have struck her dead that instant. “There are certain things,” he said, “that it would be better for you not to know.” And he stood up and left the room. From that moment on, Ana had known for certain that he was in love with his sister-in-law. At first, she had thought it was a mere flirtation, a strong attraction perhaps, such as loneliness often produces in certain sensitive souls. Then, as she watched the crisis deepen and saw Demétrio lying awake night after night, suffering in silence, she understood that it was more serious and that perhaps this man of iron really was in love for the very first time in his life. (While Ana was speaking, I myself was reliving the atmosphere in the Chácara then: all of us wide awake and ensnared in an unbreakable web of shared feelings, warily watching each other, sensing the storm building, and unable to do anything about it because we couldn’t tell where the lightning would strike . . .) But for Demétrio, love did not manifest itself as it did in other people—for him it was an illness, an unbearable physical malaise. His nature could not tolerate such an intrusion; it overwhelmed him and he was struggling like a drowning man. Slowly, he began to see Nina as a threat to his peace of mind, his well-being and even his integrity, and he ended up deciding that she was a danger to everyone—an evil that, for everyone’s sake, must be rooted out. It’s true that he never actually confronted the matter head-on (or so at least Ana assumed), and he never managed to come to terms with something that he saw as the result not of his own weakness, but of the diabolical actions of that woman. He both loved and hated her—that was his dilemma. However, it would not be too much to suppose that he had succumbed once or twice—perhaps even more, who knows . . .—and Ana had even surprised him once kneeling at Nina’s feet. Yes, on his knees, like a besotted lover or love-struck adolescent! Goodness knows what he had said on such occasions—what cries and curses, what pleas and promises might not have come from his lips? Often, watching him sleeping peacefully by her side, Ana would sit up and gaze at him with the intense pleasure of someone capable of reading the deepest stirrings of his soul. On his k
nees, groveling like a servant, his tears washing the feet that trod the dust in which he knelt . . . Ana’s hoarse voice had taken on an unexpected edge of triumph. I confess that I trembled as I listened to her, watching her furtively, not daring to advance down the dark passageways her words were opening up before me. She grew calmer and continued her story. She could almost swear that Nina had never responded to his appeals. (There was, though, one odd and painful detail in our conversation: Ana spoke not with resentment but rather with a certain nostalgia, almost wishing that Nina had indeed succumbed to Demétrio’s advances—what angered her was that the other woman had remained so aloof.) She finished by adding: “Nina was born to mock, and she mocked Demétrio as you might an impertinent child or a capricious old man.” Those were her exact words. Once again I reached across the hedge and touched her shoulder: “Why are you telling me all this?” She replied simply: “I believe this is the last time we will see each other.” There wasn’t the slightest trace of the theatrical, nor of suffering or awkwardness, in her voice. She simply believed that here, at this bend in the road, was where our journey ended, and there was no reason why it should be otherwise. I understood—God knows I understood her reasons—but her coldness terrified me. “You didn’t have to . . .” I said. This time she looked me straight in the eye: “I wanted you to know, even if it’s too late now, that I understood . . . the other day . . . when you had that fight.” It’s odd, but hearing her talking like that, I felt a certain distrust, an idea that perhaps she knew still more, and that she was only revealing part of the truth. But how to distinguish the truth from all the other inventions conjured out of light, obstinacy and error? The truth is what we make of it.
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 54
