What I’d like you to do is to step into Mary’s world and follow the footprints she’s left behind. After all, who could do this better than her identical twin?
All the information we have are the three names Mary wrote in her letters: “Zeynep,” “Socrates” and the name of a palace. These names alone may not be enough to trace her. But, unfortunately, that’s all we have.
Mary’s letters are in the antique chest. You’ll find the key to it in my jewelry box.
Diana, I hope you and Mary will soon be united, just like you once were within me.
And when that happens, please write to me.
Diana, my darling, this is not a time to say good-bye. No time is. Please never forget, I am always with you. And I love you very much.
Your Mother
2
DIANA UNFOLDED the farewell letter Mary had written to her father. It was now time for it to turn to smoke.
17 March
Dear Dad,
I have to leave home today.
You must be wondering why.
Yesterday, after so many years, I read Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince again. The book seems to have changed completely! The only thing that hasn’t changed is that the rose is still my favorite character. And the fox, of course; because it is he who teaches the little prince how to become responsible for his rose.
I think I’m beginning to understand at last what “being responsible for a rose” means. And that’s the reason why I’m leaving.
At the end of the book, Saint-Exupéry urges us to ask ourselves, “Has the sheep eaten the rose, yes or no?” He says the answer to this question changes everything.
So I’m asking myself a similar question:
“Have Others stolen my rose, yes or no?”
Saint-Exupéry was right; the answer to this does change everything. But I know that no grown-up will ever understand why.
I’m leaving because my answer to this question is “Yes.”
I’m leaving to reclaim my rose . . .
Mary
Diana turned to the bottles once again.
“So tell me, bottles!” she said. “Tell me what on earth all this means . . . Doesn’t it seem insane? To take off after reading a book? To go missing on account of a rose? What’s all this about? Reclaiming your rose, being responsible for a rose . . .
“No, no, I’m not interested in knowing what the rose in The Little Prince stands for, nor in what it means to that girl. I couldn’t care less! All I want to know is why it’s me who’s being made to pay because some girl I’ve never even seen left home and then wanted to kill herself.”
She fell silent, angry with herself for appealing for help to the bottles she’d despised such a short while before. But who else was there? Who else except these bottles would listen to her?
“How true Mom’s words are,” Diana murmured. “She said Mary was unique. Well, of course she’s unique. The way she stole my mother from me makes her one of a kind.”
After a moment of silence, Diana crumpled Mary’s letter in her hand and threw it into the fire. “Forgive me, Mom,” she whispered, watching with an expressionless face as the ball of paper slowly turned to ashes.
3
STARTLED, Diana awoke to the sound of the doorbell which, despite its melodious chime, cut like a knife through her aching head.
“Senhora Lopez! Senhora Lopez! Please answer the door!”
Hearing no reply, she remembered that it was Senhora Lopez’s day off. Holding on to the sofa, she dragged herself up. Then, hardly able to stand, she made her way to the door.
On looking at the security camera, she could see that the unwelcome caller was Gabriel, the courier who regularly delivered flowers and all kinds of beribboned packages to her.
When she opened the door, she found Gabriel standing with yet another festooned package, its top reaching almost to his chin. His brown face, brown overalls and brown hat were a perfect match for the color of the package.
“Good day, Miss,” Gabriel said. “I have yet another gift addressed to Rio’s most beautiful girl. Would you know if she happens to live here or not?”
“Isn’t it a bit early to be delivering parcels, Gabriel?”
“Well, this must be the right address, then. But maybe the wrong time?”
“What time is it?”
“It’s already noon.”
“Is it really that late?”
Diana took the package and signed her name in the delivery book in a scrawl that resembled any signature but her own. And before Gabriel could say his usual, “Take care till the next time your admirers bring us together,” she shut the door.
Receiving prettily gift-wrapped packages always used to make her day. This time, however, she wasn’t the least bit interested in knowing what was inside the package, nor who’d sent it. She left it there on the floor and headed back to the sofa.
As she walked past the mirror in the hall, she noticed wine stains on her shirt. She suddenly remembered her mother, as she’d become accustomed to these days. Somehow, any small or seemingly unrelated thing was enough to take Diana back to her life with her mother. A color, a smell, a word, and now this stained shirt. The memory of the day she’d bought this shirt and the conversation she’d had with her mother afterward came to life as if it were only yesterday . . .
FOR DIANA, it had been just another day spent shopping. At the boutique, she’d first debated whether she needed a new shirt or not, telling herself she’d done enough shopping that day already, but finally she’d ended up buying yet another yellow shirt.
When she showed it to her mother, Diana didn’t bother to conceal the $2,200 price tag.
After glancing at the price, her mother asked, “Darling, did you read about the Paris auction in yesterday’s paper?”
“No, Mom, why?”
“A waistcoat belonging to Descartes was auctioned for $250,000.”
“Oh, really? I’m glad we weren’t there. You wouldn’t have bought it and then the fact that you didn’t buy it would have meant that it stuck in my mind. Anyway, look, my shirt is much smarter than Descartes’s waistcoat, don’t you think?”
“All of $250,000, Diana!”
“Oh, all right, I see what you’re getting at. You’re trying to tell me that $2,200 really isn’t too much to pay for a shirt like this, aren’t you, Mommy dearest?”
Diana knew perfectly well that wasn’t what her mother had in mind, but she wanted to use her charm to pass off the incident lightly, so she could go and happily hang up her new shirt along with all the others.
“Well, you’re right on one point, darling. Your shirt is certainly smarter than Descartes’s waistcoat. His waistcoat wasn’t made of silk or cashmere, nor was it from Donna Karan or Armani. In fact, it wouldn’t cost more than $30 at the mall.”
“Still, the auction price makes sense, Mom. I mean, the waistcoat was worn by Descartes!”
“True. Being worn by a person like Descartes certainly increases the worth of a piece of clothing. But can you imagine the reverse?”
“What do you mean?”
“A piece of clothing increasing the worth of a person.”
Diana hung her head for a moment. She’d realized what her mother, in her own inimitable way, was once again trying to say: “The only thing you need in order to feel special is yourself.”
“I know what you mean, Mom, but people always want to see me wearing the best. As soon as they see me, they look me up and down from my shoes to my hair and only then do they say, ‘Hi.’ If I wear the same clothes two days running, they look at me in horror.
“Do I like being judged by my appearance? Or seeing the insincere respect in people’s eyes? Their whispers about my couture collection, my Cartier, my Maserati,
my this, my that . . . No, Mom, I don’t like it. But you know that it’s because of who we are, that everyone, at every moment, expects the best of everything from me.”
“And you believe it’s your duty to live up to their expectations, darling, is that it?”
“What can I do? We’re not living in the jungle.” Smiling playfully, she added, “Admit it, Mom. Diana Oliveira has become a trademark. How can I disappoint my public, my fans who shower me with endless adulation?”
Five months ago, however, from the moment the doctor had uttered these few words, many things in Diana’s life had changed.
“We’re going to lose your mother,” the doctor had said.
4
THE KITCHEN WITH its medicine cupboard seemed so far away. Every day, the house appeared to grow larger and larger to Diana; the distances from the living room to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the bedroom and from the bedroom to the bathroom were all getting longer. For a month now, she hadn’t gone down to the basement where the swimming pool was located, nor climbed to the top floor with its terrace and art studio, so she had no idea whether the ways there had become longer, too. Nor did she have any desire to find out.
When she finally reached the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of water and drank it in one gulp. Then another. And a third, this time with two aspirin dissolved in it.
She journeyed back to the living room. As she headed for the sofa once again, her phone rang. It rang a second time, a third, a fourth . . . After the seventh ring, she decided to answer it.
“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy—” howled a young man’s voice.
Diana immediately cut the connection, and threw the phone onto the table.
Was it true? Was it really her birthday? Why did anyone have to remind her of that?
In the past, she always used to count the days till her birthday and make plans for it in advance, preparing a list of people to thank afterward in the order they’d feted her. And the first name on that list had always been her mother’s.
This would be the first birthday she would spend without her. The first of all the rest of her birthdays.
Her eyes filled with tears.
She went to the cabinet and searched through several drawers before she finally found her diary. Sitting on the floor, she opened it and began to write.
My beloved Mother,
You said you were always with me . . . If you are, then why do I miss you so terribly?
I just learned that today is my birthday.
Oh, Mom . . . Where are you?
Forgive me, Mom, for not having replied to you sooner. It’s just that this is the first time I’ve opened my diary since you went away.
No, I’m not angry with you because of your confession. Maybe in the beginning I was a bit cross, perhaps even a little bit heartbroken, but it didn’t last long. I’m sure you had good reasons for keeping the truth from me.
But I’m sorry, Mom, I never searched for Mary. I’ll never forgive her for causing you to live your last days in worry and fear. And—can you believe it—I didn’t even read her letters. Maybe she’s already been dead a long time. Forgive me . . .
You know what hurts the most, Mom? Because I broke my promise to you, I feel like I can’t even keep you alive in my heart. Everything always reminds me of you, but this only makes it all worse. I feel like I can’t remember you in peace . . . If only she hadn’t showed up, things wouldn’t be like this.
And I’m not interested in knowing about that man, either. I’m sure you had every reason to believe that he was as good as dead to both of us.
Anyway, let me answer your questions, Mom . . .
Today is the last day of school. I’ll still be graduating among the top three of my class. The ceremony is on 19 May at 5 p.m. You can’t imagine how much I wish you could be there . . .
To be honest, I haven’t been taking my evening walks. But don’t worry, I’ll start again as soon as I feel less tired.
As far as my job applications are concerned, last week two of the best law firms in the city offered me a job. They both want an answer by the end of the month, but I haven’t decided yet which to accept.
I know, you’d tell me to turn them down and become a writer instead. I really wish I could do that, Mom. But you know as well as I do that you’re the only one who likes my stories. Everyone else thinks they’re no good.
Anyway, I only dreamed of being a writer because of those wonderful stories you used to tell me. It was your stories that added meaning to my life. But now you’re gone. And so are your stories. You can never tell me another story and if I did write a book, you could never read it. You could never say, “Oh, that was amazing, Diana.”
That’s all my news for now, Mom. I hope, somehow or other, you’ll know that I’m doing okay.
DIANA’S EYES STAYED fixed on her diary for a while. She’d written because she couldn’t help feeling that her mother was expecting some news from her. But that was ridiculous! The dead couldn’t read letters written to them any more than they could receive the news that their daughters were okay.
She closed her diary and walked to the silver frame her mother had had made especially for her as a birthday present. A month before she died, she’d handed her this frame, which had a handcrafted black rose motif on each of its four sides. “Happy birthday, my darling,” she’d said. Diana had immediately realized what her mother hadn’t put into words and had refrained from mentioning—that there were still two months to go until her birthday.
She stroked the four black roses that decorated this most precious remembrance of her mother. Then she read aloud her mother’s poem written inside the frame:
No, it’s not what you think:
You have not lost me.
I speak to you through everything,
From behind the remembrances . . .
A tear ran down her cheek. “No, Mom, it’s not what you think,” she whispered. “I have lost you. And you don’t speak to me.”
5
DIANA SAT DOWN next to the package to open it in the hope that perhaps it had been sent by her mother. She was amazed that not even this gift-wrapped parcel had reminded her of her birthday.
Inside it was a bottle of champagne, a heart-shaped crystal, a birthday card and a love letter with no name on it. Before she had the chance to get up and throw the items into the bin, the doorbell rang again. It seemed there was to be no peace for her today.
On the viewing screen she could see that the uninvited guests were her “close” friends, Isabel and Andrea. These “close” friends were only interested in how she did her hair, what she wore, how entertaining or how popular she was. But Diana also knew that it was through friends like Isabel and Andrea that she felt admired, through them that she felt special, and through them she’d become the “Diana.”
Given what she owed them, now that they’d come she couldn’t very well refuse to invite them in, tell them to come later or shout through the keyhole, “I don’t want to see anyone!”
So she opened the door.
“Happy birthday to you; happy birthday to you; happy birthday, dear goddess; happy birthday to youuu!”
Their display of joy ended abruptly when they took in her disheveled appearance.
“What happened to you, Di?” Isabel asked.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to mix your drinks, Di!” Andrea said. Then, perhaps thinking that the view from the living room wasn’t good enough for her, she caught Isabel’s hand and drew her quickly toward the steps up to the terrace, as she started firing questions: “Aren’t we having a birthday party tonight, Di? Why weren’t you at school? So what’s the plan?”
As soon as they stepped out onto the terrace, Isabel ran her finger along the edge of the teak furniture
. “There, Senhora Oliveira! This dust is sufficient proof that although the whole city lies at your feet, you’ve given up enjoying the view. Isn’t that right, Andrea?”
“Indeed!” Andrea said.
“Well, Di,” Isabel continued, “you haven’t answered Andrea’s question. What’s the plan for tonight?”
“I don’t think I’m going to do anything.”
“What?!”
“I never like to disappoint you, you know that, but I went to bed really late last night and my head’s splitting, so—”
“But today’s your birthday, Di!”
“I really don’t feel like—”
“What’s got into you, Diana?” Isabel said, looking at her sternly. “You used to be the one who brought everyone together, but now we hardly ever see you. We know you’re going through a tough time, we all understand that. But do you think shutting yourself up in the house will help you get over it? Do you think that’s what your mother would have wanted? Pull yourself together. You’re a strong girl.”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“I’m weak.”
“No, you’re not. You can’t be. You have a long way to go, goals to achieve, dreams . . . But if you keep behaving like this, you’ll never—”
“What dreams?”
“Well, didn’t you dream of becoming a successful lawyer?”
Heaving a sigh, Diana first looked at Isabel and then Andrea. They really had no idea, did they?
“I never dreamed of becoming a lawyer, Isabel.”
“What do you mean?”
“I only ever dreamed of being a writer.”
“Oh, right, that dream!” Isabel said.
“Oh, come on, Di,” Andrea said. “We’re not kids anymore. When I was little, I wanted to be a singer. But when I grew up, guess what, I realized I have the voice of a crow!”
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