Yes, I would go. The door would open and reveal the landscape that I had forbidden myself to enter. It did not matter to me that the landscape consisted of nothing but death and ruin, and that it might or might not suit my purpose. The time had come for me to arise and walk, though not, as I had said to Betty, to say goodbye, for people like Nina and I never say goodbye, except to proclaim the truth and give sustenance to men starved of hope. I neither trembled nor feared to speak this word, for there are as many words for “hope” as there are desires in every human heart. To satisfy the bitter hunger of those around me, I would leave a handful of scorched bones. Rising above my triumph, above my own self, right at the very point where Nina’s death had given me my liberty, I would declare: “Meneses, O Meneses, remember that all is dust and to dust it will return, just as the dust returns to the earth.” Screams and howls and pleas and curses—how would any of those things help once this proud house was no more?
Finally, my march would begin, and it was Nina’s corpse that had flung open my prison door. I got up again and restlessly paced the room. Never had it seemed to me so small, so suffocating, so narrow. I knew every one of its nooks and crannies like old friends, and yet here, suddenly, at a simple call of destiny, they had all become strangers to me. Like someone evoking the name of the one who always accompanies all secret designs of vengeance and extermination, I repeated again and again: “Meneses, O Meneses,” and delayed opening the door and showing myself and delivering the final blow that would leave my enemy forever prostrated at my feet. While these thoughts raced through my mind, my blood too began to flow faster through my veins and my whole body throbbed like a secret dynamo, whirring away on the plan elaborated during my many days of torpor.
Step by step, like a cat, I moved toward the door, I opened it and listened, and I could smell, washing over me, the scent of wilted flowers and burnt candles that spread from the drawing room throughout the house and finally reached me, like a warm nuptial perfume.
53.
Valdo’s Statement (v)
It will not, I believe, be that hard for me to describe some of the main episodes that took place during Nina’s wake and which gave Vila Velha so much to talk about. I think they were, in fact, the culmination of a series of events that had long been discussed in hushed tones and which so spectacularly contributed to the final demise of the Meneses’ prestige locally, already so weakened by successive scandals. At least, that was when I made my decision to leave behind forever not just the family home, but the whole region—for the entire state of Minas Gerais was no longer big enough to hide my shame, and I intended to head south, to São Paulo or Rio Grande, and there begin a new life and forget all my past misfortunes. But I am anticipating events, and must instead try, first, to describe that gathering, which was already decidedly odd and quite unlike most wakes. My fight with Demétrio had certainly stirred things up, and there was talk of all sorts of bizarre tensions that were, supposedly, about to explode at any moment, although I knew nothing about that at the time, and was merely watching from the verandah as people came and went, and felt sad that so many were taking advantage of that melancholy occasion to invade our family enclave.
It was extremely hot and people were using all kinds of makeshift fans to cool themselves, and there was a constant stream of mourners coming out onto the verandah in search of fresh air, the men tugging at their sweat-soaked collars. Glasses of water and orangeade, cooled by the black kitchen-maids in wells dug beneath the lemon trees, were being passed around. Some visitors restricted themselves to patiently mopping their brow with a handkerchief, while others paced nervously up and down complaining about the unbearable heat. They all knew that the burial would only take place in the afternoon, and yet they were constantly checking their watches as if the time were fast approaching, or as if such a gesture would help to speed time up. In low but perfectly audible voices people were discussing who should carry the coffin, and while one group was commenting unfavorably on Father Justino’s absence, another, at the far end of the verandah, was gravely debating whether or not the deceased would be laid in the family vault. I imagined the procession carrying the coffin along the dusty road in the broiling sun to the somewhat distant town cemetery with its whitewashed walls and rather dilapidated tombstones. I was still immersed in these sad reflections when I saw a troubling figure approaching me. She was a tall, middle-aged woman; her hair was still very black, and she was sumptuously dressed as if for a party rather than a wake. Her clothes, however, while clearly very expensive, had an old-fashioned, pretentiously provincial air about them. She came over to me, opening and closing a large fan encrusted with mother-of-pearl.
“Forgive me,” she said, “but we are old acquaintances . . .”
I found out later that she was Angélica, the daughter of the Baron de Santo Tirso. She owned several properties in the town and, perhaps out of spite or mere wickedness, people said that she was not quite right in the head. I replied, frankly, that I did not remember her, and she tapped my face with the end of her closed fan and laughed:
“Ah, Senhor Valdo, how time passes. I’m Angélica. Once, with my father . . .”
And as she spoke, she was all studied poses and gestures, as if her whole body were trying to contain something that might otherwise overcome her and escape. I looked at her and shuddered: her white skin seemed to have been pieced together like a patchwork and had an oily, corpse-like sheen. “Would you care to . . .” I began.
She brandished her fan.
“I saw a lot of clothes lying on the floor. You must forgive me, and perhaps now is not the right time . . .”
“Do go on.”
Beneath her long eyelashes, far too long to be natural, her eyes flashed greedily.
“I don’t know if you’re aware, but we have an orphanage in town for young girls. If it wasn’t inconvenient . . .”
I was taken aback: was she actually going to ask me for the clothes? The very clothes that Demétrio was throwing out because they were infected?
“If it wouldn’t be too much bother,” she continued unperturbed, “I would very much like to make use of the dresses for the poor orphans.”
I looked at her, not knowing what to say. Once again she smiled, and once again I felt that same unease.
“But you’re aware that . . .”
“Yes, yes, I know. But there’s no proof, believe me. The doctors say . . .”
“Mightn’t it be better not to take any chances?”
She again tapped me with her fan, as if I had said something foolish.
“Oh, Senhor Valdo, what a silly idea! If you only knew how needy those girls are . . .”
She stopped. We evidently had nothing more to say to each other, and yet she did not move, but stood gazing me through half-closed eyes.
“Whatever you wish, Senhora. Take whatever you wish.”
She was about to reply when, from the foot of the steps, came a murmur of voices. I leaned over the balustrade to see what was going on, and saw two or three black servants running toward the house. When the fastest runner reached the steps, he cried:
“Senhor Valdo! It’s the Baron!”
Upon these words a sort of electric current ran through the people assembled on the verandah and crossed the threshold into the drawing room:
“The Baron!”
And that lit fuse, infecting those still inside, triggered a kind of strange buzz of excitement: yet more people appeared at the door, pushing each other out of the way in their eagerness to see the new arrival.
But the Baron was still some way off. Baking under the merciless sun, an old car was advancing sedately up the main avenue through the garden, noisily belching smoke and bearing within it the noble family. The car stopped almost at the foot of the steps, in front of a group of gaping onlookers already preparing to bow and scrape as the occasion demanded.
When the gloved chauffeur opened the car door, the first to get out was the Baroness, tall and well-dressed, with
a stern, placid, strangely melancholy face. Immediately after her came the Baron: short and very red-faced, and holding a leather satchel under his right arm and looking somewhat alarmed at the commotion around him. He climbed the steps accompanied by his wife and, before he had even reached the top, a pale, emotional Demétrio rushed to greet him, bowing reverentially, and with extraordinary abandon for a man normally so reserved, he threw himself into his guest’s arms before the latter had even so much as acknowledged him.
“Such a tragedy, Baron!” he cried.
(Such a tragedy? And he had ordered her to be rolled up in a sheet when her body was still warm, just so as to hasten the Baron’s arrival! I trembled with indignation, thinking of the sheer hypocrisy of it all.) The Baron said a few words to him that I could not hear, and then majestically ascended the remaining steps. Or as majestically as he could, for he was (as I’ve said) short and fat, and his movements were restricted by the bag he was clutching to him as tightly as if it contained something very precious. Nodding desultorily to the people on either side of him, he made his way over to the far end of the drawing room, away from the exposed corpse, and sat on a velvet banquette placed there especially for the occasion. His feet, shod in ankle-length boots, did not quite touch the ground. He looked around inquisitorially—the look of a rough and ready Portuguese peasant—and so everyone sensed that they should find something else to do and dispersed around the room, some of them contemplatively gathering around the corpse. Then the Baron, who had quite possibly been waiting for just such an opportunity, took the satchel from under his arm, opened it and, reaching into it, pulled out something to eat—perhaps a sweet of some sort. (By that time, he was already possessed by the demon of gluttony that would eventually bring him to a cruel and long-drawn-out death; he was never to be seen without that bag of food and, wherever he was, whether visiting or at home, he was always chewing. His sly, shifty eyes glinted in his flabby face, the eyes of someone sensing that he has been caught red-handed and who, for that very reason, is always ready with an excuse. As he chewed and sucked, a sickly sweet substance dribbled down his chin, giving his face the repugnant appearance of a piece of greasy ham, as if the essence of the foods he was so constantly and laboriously ingesting were oozing out of every pore in his body.)
Scarcely daring to glance at him (it was said he was one of the wealthiest landowners in Portugal), people at the other end of the room began commenting, without a hint of outrage: “The Baron is eating,” as if it were entirely appropriate for a member of the race of barons to bring a bag full of sweets to a wake. Not even five minutes had passed after the Baron’s entrance when the most remarkable event of the day occurred, an event so outrageous and scandalous in its repercussions that it completely overshadowed the intended purpose of the gathering, that of marking the death that had occurred in the house. I am referring to the appearance of my brother, Timóteo.
The excitement caused by the Baron’s arrival had abated somewhat, and everyone had settled down to watch him devouring a pastry when a swishing sound, like a pent-up stream of floodwater, came surging down the hallway and into the drawing room, where it frothed against the four walls. Suddenly, without warning and with the shock of the entirely unexpected, there appeared before our eyes the spectacle of Timóteo reclining in a hammock carried by three black servants, probably the same three who had come to announce the arrival of the Baron. Such a short space of time had elapsed between the two events that I even thought it must be some sort of set-up—but who in that house would have dared follow the orders of a creature who was generally considered to be completely mad? In any event there he was: the hammock, carried by two men at the rear and one at the front, swayed in the doorway, and, at first, no one had the slightest clue who or what it was.
Let me explain: it was one of those perfectly ordinary, loosely-woven hammocks so commonly found in the countryside. Its one distinguishing feature was that it was clearly rather old and worn, as if it had been hurriedly salvaged from a storeroom. However, what was so extraordinary was the person in the hammock, whom I recognized at once. Ah, but how he had changed, what a toll time had taken on him! He was not just fat, he was enormous, already exhibiting all the morbid signs of the slow, suppurating death that awaits those too long immobilized by their illnesses. He could scarcely move his round, flabby arms, which hung in mountainous folds, drooping lifelessly like the branches of a tree severed from its trunk. It was difficult even to make out his eyes in that mass of human dissipation and sloth: his fat, puffy cheeks formed a mask so exotic and terrifying that he looked more like a dead Buddha than a living creature still capable of speech. His long, unwashed hair hung over his shoulders in two thick braids like forest lianas, swaying and twisting with the movements of the hammock like two gnarled roots spreading out from a trunk battered by the years. Even stranger, this spectacle of a body, which seemed to encapsulate every possible vice of inactivity, idleness, and neglect, had about it something of the sea, the slipping and sliding of invisible tempestuous waters rolling randomly over this amorphous mass, which shone with all the deathly, silent pallor of distant lunar wildernesses.
The bearers of this extraordinary cargo paused for a moment in the middle of the room, uncertain what to do next. Timóteo clapped his hands and prepared to be lowered to the ground. (It was, I believe, only when Timóteo hitched up his skirt and reached one bare, white foot toward the floor that Demétrio realized what was happening; from somewhere behind me, near where the Baron was sitting, came a deep, doleful roar as if someone had been mortally wounded. I spun around, convinced that someone had been stabbed. But I saw no one, nothing, apart from the hunched figure of Demétrio slumped against the table where the coffin lay. It was he who had cried out, of that there was no doubt—deathly pale, he was clutching his belly as if vainly trying not so much to staunch a gushing flow of blood threatening to drain his body dry and leave him lying defenseless on the table, as attempting to preserve, like some human dishcloth, his own mortal essence.)
I think, and I say this without any hesitation, that the situation would have been saved had Timóteo not gotten out of the hammock. His grand entrance was certainly extraordinary, but it might well have been taken merely as the act of a very sick man; however, by rising from the hammock dressed in one of those bizarre outfits of his, he insulted everyone in the room. Men will put up with a certain amount of the grotesque, but only as long as they do not themselves feel implicated in it. Standing before them, Timóteo was the very caricature of the world they represented—a comic character, at once both terrible and serene. He wore something that could not be called a dress exactly, but which had once been some sort of ball gown—goodness knows when or where—and which was now a faded mauve thing of shreds and patches, all ripped and hastily sewn back together. His wrists and neck were thickly circled with bracelets and necklaces—I had no idea where these had come from, but they were evidently the family jewels, no doubt secreted away in chests and drawers between layers of fine linens and foreign silks, gazed at by generations of covetous relatives, and yet there they were, resplendent and pure, adorning that vile, ignominious body. He looked slowly around at the crowd of shocked faces staring back at him. Nobody dared to move or say anything. As for me, I confess that my initial feelings, a mixture of extreme surprise and revulsion, gave way to a rising sense of pride, as yet undefined, but which thrust its roots down into the deepest corners of my being: for I sensed that Demétrio was the most severely affected by this little scene and would be the one to pay the highest price in the form of his downfall and shame. In my response I saw the old hatred that had always separated us, and which had its origins in my continual need to defend myself against his attempts to control and dominate us all. That hatred had always set us apart, our thoughts and opinions constantly at odds; a silent hatred, like two shadows pursuing each other. It was our mutual hatred that had finally exploded, and I could do nothing to stop it, for the irresistible impulse sweeping me along need
ed that violent eruption if I was to put back together the pieces of my own existence—both my old existence that I had now left behind, and my new existence, in which I had barely tried out my first steps. I confess that I was soon filled by a sense of euphoria, and a very strange euphoria at that. It was as if I had said to myself: “What do I care what happens, now that all of this means nothing to me, now that I’ve freed myself from the past, like someone abandoning an empty suitcase by the roadside?” Despite its strenuous efforts to smooth the rougher edges of events and turn genuine struggles and emotions into something safely mediocre, the day seemed now almost to be dissolving before me and, where death itself had failed to shock those poor, vain human beings, the apparition of that specter succeeded, a specter more powerful even than death because he was both alive and dead, bringing to the living a message from another world. No, I felt neither shocked nor afraid; unable to take my eyes off that extraordinary sight, I began to recognize in him—by what secret magic I do not know—the close physical presence of a family member, hidden from me until that moment by a mist of incomprehension, but who was entitled to a place at the Meneses table, and had come to claim it on the irrefutable grounds of its absolute physical resemblance, its warm consanguinity. And even more extraordinary, this vision of mine was not of a man, but of a grand old lady of the sort we had heard about without ever knowing precisely who she was, whose portrait we might one day find tucked away in the bottom of a drawer and sense, in a poetic flash of inspiration, that hers had been a mad, but transient spirit—a matron who had perhaps once been the tutelary deity of the family, but had been stripped of her mission and obliterated from memory by some fleeting drama of which only the scandalous echoes remained. And now here she was, reincarnated and timeless before our very eyes. As Timóteo swung his enormous, heavy, useless body to the floor, I suddenly saw the spirit of the lady who so ostentatiously moved within him: Maria Sinhá. The same Maria Sinhá who had provoked so much disapproval among previous generations of Meneses and whose portrait Demétrio had, out of family loyalty, ordered to be taken down from the wall and hidden in the basement—Maria Sinhá, who had rebelled against life’s normal constraints and terrified the peaceful inhabitants of the surrounding countryside with her sorties on horseback dressed as a man, her gold-handled whip for punishing the slaves, her baths of perfumed milk, her brazen audacity. How could I not sense her living presence, like a palm tree standing in the desert, daring once again to defy and corrupt, her hand raised in a supreme gesture of insult by which she would annihilate once and for all her eternal, never-changing enemies?
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 56
