Chronicle of the Murdered House

by Lúcio Cardoso

  “He’s dead,” I said. “He died just now.”

  He lowered his eyes and, just for a moment, which could as easily have indicated annoyance as pity, his lips trembled, and he said not a word. During that single, solitary moment, what image must have passed through his mind? I had no doubt there was a secret locked deep in his heart. Everything about him said so, from his expressionless face, his pale hands, his old-fashioned clothes, even his tight, willful self, which, in the shadows of that dimly lit room, seemed to be armoring itself against any threat to his dignity, as he stood, a timeless figure, reflected in mirrors that endlessly repeated his image, and only his image. But then, as if from far away, I heard him say:

  “How very odd. So young too—I don’t know why he would do something like that.”

  He seemed sincere in this assertion—or, rather, his voice had taken on a slightly different timbre, and there was in it a degree of astonishment, as if something deep inside some secret, private zone was being forced to acknowledge this proof of the mysteries of this world.

  “Did he kill himself?” I asked.

  “Yes, he did,” he answered. “We were on the verandah when we heard the shot. My wife went to see what had happened . . .”

  (Curiously, it wasn’t hard for me to imagine the entire scene: the various Meneses on the verandah, Senhor Demétrio in the hammock pretending to read a book, Senhor Valdo nearby drumming his fingers on the balustrade, Dona Ana hunched over her embroidery. I could even describe the precise moment that followed the shot—a long, anguished minute-long pause, during which, suddenly torn from their innermost thoughts, they all looked at one another foreseeing some unimaginable nuisance.)

  “Poor boy,” I exclaimed rather unconvincingly. “He must have suffered terribly to do something so desperate.”

  Senhor Demétrio looked at me with evident disapproval, as if I had said something utterly foolish, or something that in some way or other impinged on the honor of the Meneses.

  “Will you fill out the death certificate?” he asked.

  I shook my head:

  “Not until you have informed the appropriate authorities.”

  He looked at me, and there was such surprise in his eyes that it took me all my strength not to waver.

  “What did you say?”

  I repeated what I had said and his expression froze and became even more inscrutable than before.

  “It would be the first time the police have ever entered this house,” he said.

  Despite his attitude, though, and for reasons I could not fathom, the usual pride and resentment in his voice had gone, to be replaced by an enormous sadness, such as only accompanies an awareness of impending disaster. For a moment, sitting quite still in front of me, his hands impassively resting on the back of his chair, I had the impression that his attention was fixed on something far beyond us, a scene revealed by that sudden presentiment and by shame—perhaps, who knows, the ruin of his own house. But, I repeat, I saw in him no sense of outrage, only resignation, together with that selfless indifference adopted by martyrs in the face of their imminent sacrifice. In one of those flashes of insight that often come to me, I saw what that man must already have suffered and the high price he had paid for his pride, for him to have reached the end of all his dreams like this, naked and resigned. Because there was a serenity in his manner, a final, dramatic gesture of acceptance and abdication: the house of Meneses was crumbling around him, burying him in its rubble and enveloping him in darkness. It wasn’t only the house he was renouncing, but his own self, for he could not hold on to the house if his pride was not intact.

  People might say that all this was nothing more than my own wild imaginings, but the truth is that, for a long time, I had sensed some sort of evil gnawing at the foundations of the Chácara. It had once been a stronghold, a monument to tenacity (and one which I had learned to respect and admire since my childhood, back when the road still twisted and turned between tall, majestic mahogany and aroeira trees and was rich, in equal parts, in treacherous marshes and bandits), but now it lay before me, fragile and defenseless in the face of its imminent destruction, like a gangrenous body invaded by the poisons coursing through its own blood. (Ah, how often I would return to that image of gangrene—not now, but later—in order to explain what I felt and the drama unfolding around me. Gangrenous, rotting flesh, purple and numb, through which blood no longer flows, its strength vanished, to reveal the poverty and eloquent misery of human flesh. Veins furiously throbbing, enslaved to the delusion of another hidden, monstrous being, famished and dissolute, who has taken charge of this final stretch of our existence, raising throughout the conquered land the scarlet standards of its deadly, purulent victory.)

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?” I asked, aware of the growing silence between us.

  He started, as if waking up.

  “No, no. Thank you.”

  I said goodbye and left, expecting at any moment to see the pale face I had spotted twice before. I don’t know if it was my imagination or if it had any basis in reality, but I certainly thought I saw that same face for a third time, hiding near a tree. Ah, yes, this time there was no doubt about it: an inner voice was telling me that the Chácara was now in its final days. As I walked, I was seized by a strange feeling: that everything around me was pure, senseless illusion. Where was Dona Nina? Why didn’t she come to meet me and lean on my arm, as she had done once before? I walked on, my footsteps slower than I wished. When I reached the gate, I turned around, hoping that a miracle might yet happen, but everything was still and the somnolent air that hung over the house was as thick and dense with meaning as the air surrounding the poor suicide in the cellar.

  14.

  Ana’s Second Confession

  My intention in writing this memoir is not, as many might think, an exercise in self-justification—or written in the hope of being seen in a better light after my death. Because should some human eye alight upon these pages when I am gone, it will matter very little what that person thinks of me, because I will be nothing but a pile of ashes, and it may be that no one will even remember the woman bent now over this sheet of paper. Before beginning this confession, I thought I would deliver it to Father Justino, who has long been part of my life—I made my confession to him on the occasion of my first communion—and his advice has often proved useful. What I want is to get at the truth, a complete truth that does not frighten or make me blush, but which is the exact expression of the silent being full of compromises that I represent. The first truth, if I am to be honest with myself, is that lately I have been something of a stranger to the Church and to the sacraments, so much so that I am not even sure I would know now how to kneel before a priest. And yet here I am, and I ask myself what is the point of this vague litany of woes, this continual lament that I cannot keep locked in my heart? May Father Justino forgive me for what are possibly the worst, the harshest, and most contemptible of feelings, but even I do not understand what is wrong with me, because I feel so utterly changed. Everything to do with the Church seems to me pointless and absurd, as does everything else in this world. I was quite content until the moment I realized that I was drowning in darkness, in this darkness, which never weighed on me before, but now leaves me with the unbearable feeling that I am being poisoned. It’s as if I were struggling for air in some soft, viscous element; in the depths of my being, some force is trying in vain to break through the crust of habit, to reveal itself and impose its power on me, a power whose origins are unknown to me. I repeat, I do not know what is wrong—silent and troubled, I drift past people and lack the courage to tell them what is wrong with me, although I am lucid enough to be certain that a monster exists inside me, a booming, urgent being who will, one day, swallow me up. Ah, what is this voice that demands to speak, what is it that makes me walk along with head erect, what is it that propels me forward, like a creature wounded by the dart of suffering? I cannot go on, Father, you are the one person I should speak to, it
is your pity, your understanding as a man, as a saint, oh, what am I saying . . .

  You must understand now why I am avoiding going to church and avoiding your eyes too, eyes that must know all possible human weaknesses. On several occasions, I saw you looking at me anxiously and perhaps I should have stopped and tried to explain to you the crisis engulfing me. But Father, damnation is a fire that burns in solitude; sometimes one person burns, sometimes two, sometimes a whole community, but we are each alone in our own particular flame, sole owners of what we might call our evil or our crime. That is why I could not kneel at your feet or share with you the fierce fire consuming me—that would be a sacrifice beyond my capabilities. I know that I began this confession as a letter intended to survive my death; I think now, though, that this is my last and most desperate attempt to find myself again, and to feel, in my dull, cold state, not happy as I would like to be, but indifferent as I always was. I know you have been worried about me lately, have noticed my absence at morning mass. I know you have spoken about it with this person and that, asking if I was ill; that you have approached various acquaintances asking if it is work that occupies my mornings—oh, I know all this, and can probably imagine the rest, you shut up in your little sacristy, your face buried in your hands, thinking how very hard it is to drive God’s sheep through this world. It would be pointless trying to hide, you know what is wrong with me, even though I myself cannot put a name to the mysterious malaise afflicting me. You may remember the last time you saw me: it was in the afternoon as I was leaving the church, after making fruitless efforts to recover enough inner peace to pray as I so often had in the past. My heart refused to hear my plea, and I merely sat, motionless, muttering words that no longer had any meaning for me and feeling the beating of a heart that seemed dead to any kind of hope. Does that frighten you, Father? Hope is the most important of all the theological virtues: without it everything shrivels up, without it nothing can exist, and without hope’s constant presence, not even charity can warm our heart. Behind me, high up, the bell was tolling and the sound of its ringing spread out across the town and was lost somewhere along the dusty roads. I got up and hastily made the sign of the cross—and it was then that I saw you, immediately in front of me, leaning against one of the pillars, talking to another parishioner, who was presumably arranging the date of a baptism or a wedding. Ah, the shudder that ran through me at that moment, as I wondered if I would have the strength to confront your searching gaze. I quickly realized there was no escape, because you were looking at me as if waiting for me to pass. This so bothered me that I considered hiding or escaping through one of the side doors—and it was then, as I moved off to the left, that the string on the scapular I wore around my neck suddenly broke. I had worn it for many years, that small Agnus-Dei made of white felt, so begrimed that its original color had long since been lost, and which had been given to me by my mother. Now, there it lay between us, in the great pool of red light flooding in through the stained-glass window. If I bent down to pick it up, you would see me do so and rush to help me, and then there would be no avoiding the conversation that would inevitably ensue. I felt I could not bear that. I don’t know what came over me, but I pretended not to have noticed the fallen scapular and walked away, head high, as if nothing had happened. I was deluding myself, though, because you saw my maneuver for what it was. Taking two or three steps in my direction, you bent down, picked up the scapular and held it out to me. At that moment, we were both standing right in the middle of the scarlet light coming in through the window. Half-blinded, I pretended not to have seen your gesture and, greeting you coldly, continued on my way without even a glance at the hand returning the scapular to me.

  Please forgive me, Father Justino, now that misfortune has returned me to myself.

  ....................................................................................................

  It was precisely four o’clock in the afternoon when I saw him, and I was in a state of great agitation. I don’t know if you remember him, Father, the gardener my mother-in-law brought to the Chácara as a child. (She and my husband would often talk about how he arrived wearing a black beret and turned-up trousers and still speaking with a Portuguese accent.) As soon as I saw him looking around as if he were searching for something—as I found out later, this was merely the nervousness and confusion of someone so young—I imagined that perhaps this would be the day, and that we would not reach nightfall without something strange occurring. And what happened was perfectly in keeping with the heavy atmosphere, full of foreboding, in which we were living at the time, frequently shaken by those electrical currents that zigzag through the apparently still air like lightning flashes illuminating the horizon, and which were brief interludes in that apparent state of bucolic peace. I put down the embroidery I was working on—if I am being strictly truthful, I should say that I wasn’t really doing anything at all, absorbed in watching the boy from the verandah and only pretending I was busy with my sewing. I didn’t want him or anyone else to guess what I was thinking or feeling. Slowly, as if I were merely going for a walk, I went down the steps and followed him into the garden. Not far away was an oitizeiro tree from behind which I could easily see the Pavilion, because I was still spying on Nina at the time, still obsessed with knowing what she might be doing. In these closed-off places, in this tight-knit world of country houses, we are so few and so few things happen that we miss not the slightest flicker of life that appears before us. I had gathered from Alberto’s agitated state—the gardener’s name was Alberto—that something important must be going on, that some drama was about to unfold. The whole place was steeped in that troubling atmosphere; in the distance, dogs were barking as if they could sense something strange in the air, while the trees, with unusual restraint, stood utterly still, as though waiting. Hiding behind the oitizeiro tree, I admit that I felt slightly ashamed: seeing the sky still blue above me and the centuries-old serenity of the things around me, it seemed to me then that I was distorting or exaggerating the facts. Perhaps the tumult I was feeling existed only in me—perhaps I was being misled by the blood flowing so ardently through my veins. But no, I would soon be given ample confirmation of everything I was imagining. From where I was standing, I distinctly heard a shot—a single sharp shot cutting through the silence like a sword—and Alberto came running down the path. Shortly afterward, I heard another shot. What filled my consciousness was neither fear nor terror, but a quite different feeling, cold and inhuman—a feeling of joy or, rather, peace, knowing that my predictions were coming true. It was not hard to imagine what had happened: indeed, I was almost certain what it was, the facts fitted so logically together. Father, when you judge these words of mine, please remember, with all the indulgence you can muster, that I was suffering greatly at the time; more than that, I had grown weary of suffering. I could not bear the presence of that woman any more, watching as, day after day, she sucked up all the life around us, brazenly and disrespectfully garnering all the good things always denied to me. Yes, I was thinking smugly that, in his despair, Alberto had shot her dead. I admit I was trembling, and Nina’s hair, caked in blood, seemed to wave endlessly before my eyes. I waited a while, until I saw him run past me, dripping with sweat—and then, dizzy and indifferent to the blinding sun, I did not hesitate to leave my hiding place and grab him.

  “Alberto,” I cried. “Where are you going?”

  He tried to push me away.

  “I’m going to fetch a doctor,” he said.

  I was so certain of what had happened that I clung to him, determined to keep him there.

  “No, no, please, don’t pity her, don’t go back. She needs to die!”

  He stared at me in astonishment:

  “She?”

  In my madness, I thought I had perhaps not been firm enough and had failed to dissuade him from fetching a doctor and that he had not yet recovered from his state of shock.

  “Yes,” I said, “Nina.”

  “But s
he didn’t do anything. Don’t you understand, it’s him.”

  I finally released my hold on him and took two steps back—what a strange figure I must have cut, my hair all disheveled, the red glow of the setting sun lighting up my face, my lips half-open in a scream that never emerged.

  “Him?” and as if roused by the clamor of a distant alarm bell, the mean soul that normally inhabited my body hurriedly regained its composure.

  “It’s the master,” he said. “He’s hurt.”

  “Valdo?”

  He repeated the name back to me in a neutral voice:

  “Valdo.”

  I let him go and remained fixed to the spot. Night was falling with astonishing speed, the flowers hung limply on their stems; far off, an unexpected wind was blowing. Above me, the leaves of the oitizeiro tree were already stirring. Then, slowly, I went back to the house.

  So it was Valdo. Perhaps he had tried to take his own life. Perhaps he was the victim, the unexpected victim of the crime for which I had waited so long. And if he died, perhaps Nina would succumb to Alberto’s passion, perhaps she would surrender to him, despite all the problems this would cause. I trembled. I trembled even more than I had at the thought that such things could happen. Father, I cannot describe the feeble, tormented creature who climbed back up the steps, clinging to the rail. The wind was blowing hard now, and I could feel it beating on my face, but what did it matter, what did anything matter? By the time I reached the verandah, I was like a mortally wounded animal. There were people there, moving about. I again pretended that I knew nothing, that I hadn’t even heard the shot. I didn’t care what had happened to Valdo. Soon, all movement stopped, and it really was almost as if nothing had happened. I did notice my husband, as if through a veil, and he seemed to be waiting for someone or something. He spoke to me, but I didn’t understand what he was saying. He got angry and shouted at me, but still I did not understand. Then he walked over to the verandah and back, and I myself doubted that anything of any importance had occurred—for example, that Valdo might be dying from a gunshot wound. I waited. I waited for hours in the darkness, slumped in an armchair in the drawing room, listening to the strangely clear ticking of the clock and staring at the old family silver gleaming on the sideboard. It could not be true, it was all some monstrous mistake, someone would come and bring me news; I would be rewarded. It was night now, and the wind continued to blow—a strange, slow wind, circling and buffeting the house again and again with mortal gusts. Then I heard the sound of footsteps not far off, perhaps near the steps, perhaps even closer. I listened carefully and was aware that the person outside was walking very slowly as if wanting to go unnoticed: I got up then and went over to the verandah, where I leaned against the wall. From there I could see what was happening both inside and outside the house and in the garden too, as far as the Pavilion. I did not need to look that far, though, for only a few feet away was Alberto. He had his face pressed to the wall, and appeared to be crying. I went over to him and he looked up. When he saw me, he set off into the garden almost at a run. In that brief second, I realized that something very strange was going on.