What was happening in that house, I thought, was certainly extraordinary. I went over to Senhor Valdo to say goodbye and, taking me amicably by the arm, he said he would accompany me to the front steps. “You have brought me some very good news, Senhor Aurélio,” he said. And as we walked, he added, sighing:
“Oh, yes, it will be a boy. I haven’t the slightest doubt that it will be a boy. And I can guarantee that this time my brother won’t get his own way: the boy will be born right here, just like all the Meneses, and he’ll be called Antônio, just like my father.”
We came to the top of the steps, and he said goodbye in the same contented mood. Some time later, I heard that Dona Nina had left for Rio de Janeiro, which meant that the child would not be born at the Chácara. Later still, I heard that it had indeed been a boy, and christened not with the name of Antônio, but André.
12.
Betty’s Diary (iii)
13th – Today, there was a slight panic in the house because Dona Nina woke up feeling ill, complaining of a headache and nausea. Senhor Valdo wanted to stay by her side, but was unable to, because he had to go to Vila Velha to sort things out with the bank. (I also heard him say he had a meeting with a farmer from Mato Geral, who was prepared to buy the land in Benfica that they haven’t yet been able to sell, because the soil is so poor and dry.) So he asked me to stay and keep his wife company. “She’s not yet used to the Chácara,” he said, as if this were the only possible explanation for Dona Nina’s ailments, which, I thought to myself, might be truer than he imagined, because this dull, country life, with no diversions, could hardly be to the taste of someone accustomed to the hustle and bustle of the city. When I first arrived here, I too found it a real struggle—indeed, it was hard to believe normal human beings could live so completely cut off from the world.
Dona Nina was lying on the bed, a towel placed over her eyes.
“Ah, Betty,” she exclaimed when she heard me come in, “could you please bring me a little salt water?”
I did as she asked and, having soaked the towel in the salt water, began to massage her forehead, without really believing this would bring her any relief. She explained that she often had such crises, and a cloth soaked in salt water was the only thing that helped reduce the pain.
“Could it be the weather?” I asked.
She shrugged:
“Possibly.”
“You should go out more,” I said, “there are some lovely walks around here.”
She smiled:
“I’ll tell you a secret, Betty: I loathe landscapes. I feel much better in an enclosed room like this.”
“Why?”
She sighed:
“I don’t know.” Then, after a pause: “It’s so lonely here.”
I tried to win her over, listing the most picturesque places to visit: the slave cemetery (and for a moment, I could see those mounds of earth, the dilapidated, roughly carved crosses, many of which bore ancient dates and strange names—Joana, Balbina, Casimiro—which seemed more like the names of people you had known and loved and long ago forgotten than those of poor slaves who had grown old on the estate . . .), or the waterfall at Fundão and, if she wanted to travel a little further, there was the ruined house in Serra do Baú.
She listened to all this in bored silence. Then she said:
“There’s too much space, too much land. No, I can’t, Betty, I can’t.”
She asked me to open the window, because she did sometimes like to look out at the garden. The old flower-beds, which lined the path leading to the front door (many of them edged with upturned empty bottles) were, in her opinion, the best thing on the estate. “Besides, I enjoy watching the gardener at work,” she added. When the sun was not too hot, she would walk alone in the garden, where she would pick a leaf from a mint bush or from a geranium and breathe in the scent. And she would ask the gardener to teach her the names of the plants, wanting to know which could be used as remedies and which were merely weeds. On one side of the Chácara, behind the Pavilion, there was a stream, where she would go and sit with her bare feet in the water.
“Now that really is nice, Betty,” she said, “feeling the water tickling the soles of your feet.”
Thinking that something had finally aroused her interest, I told her that the same stream had once worked the flour mill at the old house in Baú, and then she removed the towel from her eyes and asked:
“What house is that, Betty? Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“It used to belong to the Meneses,” I explained.
She half-sat up, saying:
“Show me where it is.”
“From here you can only see the tops of the mountains—it’s that bluish streak in the distance. Behind it—can you see that dark line even further off?—is the Serra dos Macacos. They say the gypsies lives there, but I’ve never seen them.”
“And does no one ever go there?”
I shook my head:
“Almost never. When we used to make a nativity scene in the house at Christmas—when Senhor Valdo’s mother was still alive—we would ride out there looking for moss and the like. But now . . .”
I gradually began to tell her what I knew, about how important the old house had been in the area, how its owners used to welcome visitors from the towns of Leopoldina and Ubá and other nearer towns—and how, later on, the land was divided up and sold off, and about the death of Maria Sinhá. When she heard that name, she asked me almost urgently:
“Who was Maria Sinhá?”
This was a subject about which I knew very little! I had heard only the occasional comment, because Senhor Demétrio did not like to talk about her. There used to be a portrait of her stored in the basement, next to Anastácia’s room. Dona Nina immediately became interested:
“I want to see that portrait!”
Giving in to her enthusiasm, and seeing that her melancholy was fast fading, I promised that we would make an expedition to see it as soon as she was well.
“I am well,” she said. “I want to go now, today.”
“But Dona Nina . . .”
“Betty,” she said, almost begging me. “Can’t you do me that one favor?”
“I can, I could, but . . .”
She made an imperious gesture—she was born to command!—waving away any further objections on my part, as if there were nothing in the world she wanted more than to see that portrait. When she realized that she had got what she wanted, she asked if there was anyone else in the house who knew about Maria Sinhá. I said that when Anastácia was a girl, she had seen Maria Sinhá, already very old by then, accompanied by a faithful slave.
“How very fascinating,” she said.
And she declared her intention of going to speak with Anastácia. I laughed: Anastácia was so ancient she barely made any sense any more. Dona Nina would not be denied, though, saying that she would know how to separate reality from fantasy and adding:
“Besides, this house suffers from too much reality. It could do with a little fantasy.”
We agreed that, when it got dark, I would come and fetch her and we would visit the basement.
Undated – After supper, when the house was plunged in the most absolute silence, I went to fetch Dona Nina. She was waiting for me, looking out of the open window. (She has lived in that room, next to Senhor Timóteo’s, ever since she married Senhor Valdo. It has quite a large window, covered by an iron grille, and a person standing outside could easily reach up to it with their hand. I’ll explain why: the Chácara is built on a slope, and while it is very high on the side where the verandah is, it reaches its lowest point at Senhor Timóteo’s room, which is the last room and shares part of a wall with the kitchen, which is, of course, also at the lower end of the building. I explain all this now so that, later on, if necessary, I’ll be able to remember everything. Dona Nina was leaning at the window, a dreamy look on her face, and, almost without turning around, she said: “Do you know, Betty, a few days ago, I found a bunch of violet
s on the windowsill here. Who could have put them there, do you think?” “An admirer,” I answered jokingly. She looked at me very seriously: “Well, his admiration only lasted a day, because there’s been nothing else since.”)
We left the room as quietly as we could and went out through the door that opens onto the area near the fountain and the garden. It was cloudy, but not raining as yet. Beneath the arch leading into the basement, we found Anastácia, sitting on the ground, plaiting some wool. We asked her to open the door, and with much groaning and grumbling, she got to her feet. While Anastácia was turning the large key in the lock, Dona Nina tried in vain to get some information out of her. Anastácia must have been drinking because her words were slurred and she kept spitting. She finally managed to open the door, though, and we entered a dark, damp, musty space with huge beams on the ceiling.
“You shouldn’t have come, Dona Nina,” I said, “the air in here is almost unbreathable.”
“And what’s wrong with that, Betty?”
We advanced slowly, and Anastácia lit a small lamp hanging from the ceiling. In the half-light, in the corners, we could see various objects piled up, some of which I recognized, for example, the furniture that had belonged to Senhor Valdo’s mother when she was alive—large wardrobes, the doors hanging off the hinges, sideboards and low stools. There was also a prayer desk, on which the velvet upholstery on the kneeling pad was torn, revealing the cotton stuffing. Against the wall stood a huge mirror, cracked from side to side, and our figures moved silently about in its still untarnished surface. And finally, slightly to one side and turned to face the wall, was a painting—it must have been about a yard tall—the frame still perfect. We turned it around and saw that it was covered by a thick layer of dust. From one side hung a frayed black crepe ribbon, and for some unfathomable, unfounded reason, we both felt suddenly sad and troubled. Anastácia dragged the painting into the light and wiped the surface with a cloth, and slowly, as if emerging from the still depths of a lake, a face began to appear, and the clearer the features became, the faster our hearts beat, as if we were violating a secret that should have been left sleeping in the dark past. It was the face of a woman, there was no doubt about that, but so stern, so unemotional, so detached from any mean, everyday thoughts, that it was more like the face of a man—a man, moreover, utterly disillusioned with the vanities of this world. There was no promise of serenity, none of the greens and pinks that conceal barely suppressed laughter or the twinkle of a sudden burst of youthful spirit—no. Everything about that face was dense and mature. The colors were the grays of tamed passions and the ochers of contained violence. It wasn’t the face of an old woman, but of a woman at the outer limits of herself, with nothing to cover herself but the truth itself, whose caustic effects might or might not be dangerous. We could only really see her head, and it was difficult to make out much else, apart from the velvet choker around her neck, and her hair, unadorned, caught up neatly on the top of her head. Hers was not an unfamiliar face, on the contrary, it immediately reminded us of someone we knew very well—the strong, aquiline nose, the shape of the eyes and the line of the jaw were to be found to a greater or lesser extent in the faces of all the Meneses, more obviously so in one person than another, but nonetheless identifiable, like threads of water flowing from the same well-spring that contained the germ of all the family’s energies and characteristics. We stood there for a while, trying in vain to comprehend what lay hidden behind those eyes—and the odd thing was that the portrait, with its enormous sense of authority, its sober masculine atmosphere, had doubtless been painted by one of those traveling artists who used to visit farms and estates. It was clear that Maria Sinhá was accustomed to obeying only her own will—the determined shape of her mouth, with not a hint of docility, was that of someone used to giving orders, and her haughty gaze to seeing only obedient gestures. I once heard someone say, I can’t remember when, that she would ride the fields even in the rain, helping the cattle hands with their work—and that no one was better than her when it came to lassoing a calf and bringing it down, or breaking a wild horse. The people, heads bowed, said she was a woman without religion, as she proved when a priest disobeyed her orders by entering the estate uninvited in order to administer the last rites to a dying slave. Grabbing the priest by the cassock, she dragged him out onto the road and, with astonishing strength, threw him off her property, leaving him cut and bruised. I told these things to Dona Nina and saw that she grew thoughtful—and as the face of that woman before us was taking shape again in time, it was as if a very faint, distant music were gradually becoming clearer, louder, purer. Old Anastácia must also have been able to hear this through her fogged mind, because, when I turned to her, I saw her make the sign of the cross before that portrait exposed now to the light. As we put the painting back in its place, it occurred to me that it was a memory, a memory of times that will never return.
Undated – Dona Nina was exhausted by the time we got back to her room, and she asked me to bring her a cup of coffee. While she was drinking this, we talked further and she asked more questions. She clearly wanted to broaden her knowledge of the family, perhaps as a sign of good will and an attempt to become acclimatized. At one point, however, she sighed and said that her life at the Chácara was far from easy, and added in a murmur: “It’s so quiet here, so monotonous.”
“You should do some physical work,” I suggested. “For example, you could work in the garden. Or plant a flower bed.”
The idea seemed to interest her:
“Yes, it would be good to plant some flowers,” she said.
But then, putting down her cup, she added firmly:
“No, Betty, there’s nothing here to interest me.”
“Nothing?” and I paused, as if testing her out. “I thought you already had some friends here.”
I don’t know what she understood me to mean, but she spun around, as startled as if I had said something truly outrageous.
“Friends? What do you mean?”
And at the same time, before I could explain, a look of terrible weariness came over her face, and I felt not only pity, but rather that I was able to gauge precisely and perfectly just how much that exile must weigh on her. This, I confess, worried me: what might happen here to a beautiful young woman, alone with her thoughts and guided only by the impulses of her own imagination? I remembered how I, too, had initially felt suffocated by all that greenery and how long it had taken me to adapt to that way of life, so different to the life I was used to. And I wasn’t unstable in the way Dona Nina was, with her febrile nature and her very different reasons for being here. Because it was clear that she loved Senhor Valdo—but not enough to bear the solitude in which he lived. I might delude myself for a minute or two and imagine that her enthusiasm would overcome all the obstacles imposed on her by that life, but I knew she would always reach the painful conclusion that she was not made for such a quiet existence, nor was it what she had imagined as her definitive ideal.
“I presume you don’t mean yourself,” she said, “because I know that you are my friend.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t mean me.”
Again I saw in her eyes that same look of either alarm or surprise, I’m not sure which.
“Who then?” And after a second: “You’re not suggesting . . .”
“I mean Senhor Timóteo, Dona Nina.”
The name evoked no immediate response, and she remained silent, as if carefully weighing my words. Suddenly, as though giving in to some inner pressure, she began to laugh—a brief, nervous laugh.
“Oh, Timóteo,” she said.
Still smiling, she poured herself more coffee, but I noticed that her hands were shaking; she was not exactly surprised to hear his name.
“Timóteo doesn’t count,” she said after a while.
“Why not? If it’s because you think him a little eccentric . . .”
She put down her cup, shaking her head.
“No, it’s not that. I
’ve known plenty of eccentric people in my time.”
I shrugged to indicate that I didn’t understand what she meant. Dona Nina tried then to explain:
“No, Betty, that isn’t it, it’s not because of what other people think either. What do I care what the world thinks about things I myself have no right to judge? No, that’s not the reason. But I think Timóteo has an excess, a superabundance of personality. He shut himself away in his room because he believes that nothing else exists outside. And all that exists inside is Timóteo and his problems.”
I remembered everything he had told me in the past—“the truth, Betty, only the truth matters”—and I felt even more intrigued by what she was saying.
“So you believe that . . .”
“There’s too much originality in him.” (Dona Nina was trying to speak emphatically, quietly laying the stress on certain words.) “Originality in the sense of purity: he’s too original.”
“I don’t understand, Dona Nina.”
She laughed again at my frankness.
“Ah, Betty, I could easily put it in simpler terms.”
“What then?”
She looked at me mischievously, doubtless trying to gauge whether or not her words would frighten me.
“I mean that he’s not normal, in the ordinary sense of the word.”
“You mean he’s . . .”
“Mad.”
I had finally understood. Darkness was gently falling about us. Outside, in the encroaching dusk, the birds were settling like leaves. A startled swallow, its white breast heaving, alighted for a moment on the iron grille. And the sweet smell of pomegranate blossom wafted in on the air. Dona Nina was still talking, and her warm voice divested itself of those thoughts like someone revealing herself naked to another person for the first time. It was very simple, but—after all, how else describe such a fleeting impression?—there lay the nub of what she had said about Senhor Timóteo. And it was this: whenever she went into his room, she felt as if he were leaning over her to peer into her soul. Literally leaning, like someone looking down into a well for some lost object. And she was sure it was not just curiosity, but a conscious effort, a slow, cool examination. He was obviously sounding out whether or not he could count on her for something—but unable to understand what that something was, she had begun to feel afraid, because a man like him was capable of anything.
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 17