That is why I clung to the remnants of the one thing that, for me, represented existence. That is why I defended those remnants, like someone defending the image of their only chance of happiness in this world. I cannot remember when Father Justino said this, but I can hear his voice telling me: “You cannot imagine the blood, the turmoil, the negativity of those souls made for love, and who are betrayed by their own destiny.” It was not hope that made me kneel so earnestly before that grave, because I have no hope. (I am perhaps the only creature totally without hope. Time does not exist for me, nor does the past or the future, everything is irremediably permanent. That is what hell is like—an empty space with no frontiers in time.) I repeat, it was not hope that made me tend those poor remains so zealously: it was a need to justify myself, to have in my hands unmistakable proof that there was once a moment when I truly existed.
That is the only reason I was waiting for her, ready to bar the way along that path forever. She did not see me at first, and she must have had a shock, because I was so still and so calm. I can see myself there, all in black (and so very still it was almost as if my heart had stopped beating), and leaning against the pockmarked cellar wall. I watched her draw closer and then I moved, just once, barely visible in the darkness, but enough to show her that the way was blocked. She stopped and I could see her breathing quicken. We did not have much to say to each other, silence was enough. We stood there, and I could feel her struggling to contain her emotion. That was when she said in a voice rich in sarcasm:
“I know who you are,” she said. Then in a different tone: “And I know that you’ve been following me for a long time.”
It was ridiculous of her to say such a thing, especially when these were the first words we had exchanged in fifteen years. I say again, the silence was enough, because everything that contains a death, even a death cast and recast over fifteen years, needs only a moment or a glance to makes its presence felt. That is why I simply laughed, and maybe my laughter was too brief or too fierce, but those fifteen years of effort were finally finding their release through that small crack.
“What are you laughing at?” she cried. “What?”
I did not respond immediately—I wanted to have her there for a while at my mercy, to see her squirm before my eyes like a wounded reptile. And, of course, that unfamiliar darkness in which she was thrashing about—she must have forgotten it, just as she had forgotten the garden, the trees and the whole backdrop to her sin—was for me the element in which I lived and breathed each and every day.
“What? Tell me.” And she launched herself at me, coming so close that I could feel on my cheek the furious blast of her breath.
“No reason,” I said, “or only one. Yes, I’ve been following you, but not because of you.”
“Why then?”
“Because of him.”
“Oh!” And then her voice, too, sounded more like a laugh. “So you want to defend him as well . . . you want . . .”
I was so taken aback, all I could say was:
“Who?”
She said nothing and took a step back. She was probably calculating how best to wound me, now that we were face to face; more than that, she was probably working out just how long we had waited for that moment and even perhaps how often we had both imagined that scene—that particular scene, unique among all others. Then, as if she had finally reached a conclusion, she shrugged and clothed herself in coldness. In that look, the look of someone judging another person touched by madness, I saw how much she must despise me, how much she thought she knew about me.
“I know who it is,” she said. “It’s the boy, my son.”
I looked up, surprised at this unexpected statement, and laughter rose once more to my lips.
“Nonsense,” I said. “How could you possibly think such a thing. I have absolutely no interest in your son.”
She seemed troubled and again recoiled slightly, examining me from head to foot. Ah, what pleasure I took in feeling superior to her, safe with my sly secret. It was as though she no longer understood the person before her and were cautiously trying to sniff out some hidden threat. She had understood nothing, not then and not before. All my imaginings were just that, the whims of a feeble imagination immersed in its own deliriums. There was no rival, no enemy, nothing existed, except a life I had thought was real and in which no one else had a part—a mockery, in short, of my own pathetic vanity. Blindly, I took a step forward, while these words came quickly to my lips:
“You’re mistaken. I have no interest in André whatsoever. I know what’s going on, because that is my punishment in this house: to know everything. But what do I care if you consort with him in dark corners, like a bitch in heat? That is your personal hell, your personal misery.”
There, I had said it, and she was waiting, standing slightly apart from me. I expected her to be angry, to attack me, to commit some desperate act. Instead, in a soft, singularly calm voice, she asked:
“So why are you following me, then? What do you want from me?”
My sense of victory vanished like smoke: I felt lost. Everything inside me was so fragile that all it would take to shake me to my roots and expose my weakness was a word, a withdrawal, a show of serenity.
“Because you . . .” I stammered, but lacked the courage to go any further.
It was hard to say—it was almost like betraying myself and handing myself over to my enemy bound hand and foot. Was this why I had lied all those years, endured life within those cold, uncharitable walls, spoken only to my own sad, numb, hopeless heart? To speak would be to offer her the comfort of an explanation, and she must have understood this, because her voice rang out with a note of triumph:
“Answer me. Why are you following me? What do you want? Are you in love with my son too? Is that what you want? If you were brave enough . . .”
And then she revealed the depths to which she had sunk:
“Ah, if you knew what soft skin he has . . . how he kisses and caresses . . . A grown man couldn’t do it better.”
Then she stopped. In the darkness, I could feel her waiting for some response. Those provocative words hung in the air. However, my silence must have frightened her. She withdrew still further and leaned against the wall, hiding her face in her hands. I thought she must be crying, but could hear no sobbing. Finally, she fixed her dry eyes on me:
“What am I saying?” she cried. “How dreadful! I must be mad.”
And more quietly, as if trying out the effect of the words on herself:
“My son.”
I coolly corrected her:
“Your lover.”
She said nothing, but I could see her eyes shining in the darkness. After a while, as if she had recovered her strength, she said:
“If it’s not him, then why are you following me?”
This time, I smiled to myself—she clearly didn’t understand at all! I didn’t know what to think, was this one of those acts she was so good at putting on, or was she really so utterly removed from everything that had happened? No, I could not forgive her, still less understand her. For me, she would always be the woman I had imagined her to be. I did not want her carefree and flighty, blissfully ignorant and light of heart; I needed her to be hard and fierce, defending her territory inch by inch, as ferociously as someone chained forever to a guilty passion. With infinite calm, I began to speak:
“Because I made a promise to myself . . . ever since that time, don’t you remember?” (And I had never before spoken like this; it felt so very strange that I could hardly believe that the words “that time” had suddenly appeared there between us, clear and palpable, like a piece of terrain suddenly revealed before our cowardly steps.) “You could come back whenever you wanted, you could wreak havoc again just as you are doing now, but you cannot harm me any more than you already have. Does that frighten you? No. You are doubtless playing a part for me, just as you do for everyone else. But I know your secret. I swore to myself, you see,” and I advanced on h
er almost threateningly, “I swore that I would seal up this room—the very room from which you have just emerged—and that no one else would ever set foot in it. Only me, when, on certain days, my sense of loss grew too much and the pain of the world unbearable.” (She, of course, would never understand that “pain of the world.” So intense were my feelings when I spoke those words, that an involuntary sob escaped me.) “When I saw you come back, I was afraid you might remember this small room, which is the only thing that belongs to me, the only possession I have.”
I could no longer hold back my tears and my voice was drowned by my sobbing. I noticed, though, that she did not draw back, on the contrary, she was watching me intently. Ah, I could bear anything but that woman’s pity. I managed to get a grip on myself, dried my eyes and went on:
“And you headed straight here . . . to this room, to my hiding place. Do you understand now that I really don’t care if you’re bedding your own son, perverting him, teaching him to enjoy base pleasures? No, I swear, I really don’t care. I know that both of you are made of base matter, and so I’m sure you’ll get on like a house on fire. But I don’t want you using this room, you hear me? I don’t want your laughter and your moans to waken the dead. Use any bed but this one.” My voice had grown softer: “The bed that still bears the bloodstains of the man you killed.”
She said nothing, but I could tell from her ever faster breathing that she was moved, and perhaps, who knows, those words had led her back to her permanent reality, to the feelings and memories now filling her mind. Perhaps there was no need to imagine her utterly devoid of a soul; she must have a soul, a cold, egotistical one, but a soul nonetheless, capable of experiencing ecstasy and grief, even if that grief were unjustified, even criminal.
“How cruel you are,” she said. “Believe me, I could demolish with a single word everything you have just said. And you’re so confident too . . .”
And suddenly she began to laugh, and I saw her eyes shining brightly in the darkness. I was troubled by her nonchalance, by her reaction to my offensive remarks. I know only that she spoke and for a long time, not as if she were remembering things that happened years before, but with the vivacity and warmth with which one speaks of present-day events. I used to imagine the remorse, the sad thoughts that must now and then surface in her mind. (Ah, I had seen him when he first arrived to tend the garden, still just a boy, almost André’s age. He had about him the inscrutable aura of the eternally innocent. And I had been the one to press his dying head to my bosom, the one to feel his heart—pierced by a bullet—stop beating in his youthful chest) and, in moments of greater calm, I even succeeded in imagining her feeling a tiny spark of tenderness and giving a smile intended perhaps for the poor dead lad. That, I felt, was what she must imagine love to be, like alms given out willynilly, a chance gesture devoid of any personal intent, a random gift. It had never occurred to me to idealize that repressed rage, the hot, long-buried rush of words to her lips. She spoke—and although she said nothing I did not know already, it was as if this were the first time she was revealing what had happened back then. I felt a new me being born, despite my certainty that, over the years, my jealousy would remain unchanged.
“If you must know . . . if you still don’t know everything that happened . . . then be assured that I loved him, loved him madly, and in this very bed that you tell me is still stained with blood. He was a boy, but I made him a man. I left my mark on him so that he would never ever forget me. Those who imagine love from afar, like a fruit they have never tasted, have no idea how delicious suffering can be—simultaneously terrible and sweet—because to love is to suffer. How can you speak of love, you, who have only ever known one repellent man? How dare you confront me and demand payment for a sin whose price you do not even know? He would lie in my lap weeping and begging me for a kiss, a caress, and at first, I would refuse him everything, only to give myself to him entirely later on. It’s strange to say his name now, especially because I have never once said his name out loud since then: Alberto. I’ll say it again—Alberto, Alberto—and you cannot take that name from my lips, because it’s as much a part of me as my own blood. Do you think he ever actually saw you, that he even noticed your presence? Never. But I knew, I was sure of it, I was watching you and knew you were following me. What delight I took in making you suffer, in seeing on your face, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, the signs of your sad passion. Do you know, I even hoped you would touch him. I wanted to see him besmirched by another woman. For a long time, I went around with a knife, imagining how I would kill you. Because if you had so much as touched him, I would not have hesitated, I would have murdered you at once. But the only image in his eyes was mine. He was glad to be blind. I would follow him too, when he wasn’t by my side; I would threaten him, promise to reveal everything so that he would be expelled from the Chácara. How he trembled then, saying that he would die outside, like an abandoned dog. All those things, though, only fueled our love. The afternoons we spent, our faces pressed together, hatching plans that never came to anything, but which were intoxicating just to imagine. It was good like that, I would breathe in his breath and we would touch each other as if we were one and the same body. When I came to my senses, I remembered that I was married to the Meneses, that I belonged to this house, that there was a reality. That was what finished me off, finished us off. Today . . .”
She stopped talking for a moment, apparently focused on her own thoughts, no longer talking for my benefit, but merely responding to an interior dialogue that must have been going on inside her for years. She continued in a very different tone, as if the heat of passion were cooling in her voice:
“I didn’t know how to accept my sin, if it was a sin. That is why now, when André holds me in his arms, I say to him: ‘André don’t deny it, accept your sin, embrace it. Don’t allow others to make a torment of it, don’t let them destroy you with their assumption that you’re a coward, a man who doesn’t know how to live his own life. The most authentic thing about you is your sin—without it, you would be a dead man. Promise me, André, promise that you will take full responsibility for the evil you are committing.’ And he swears, and with each day that passes, I see that he is more and more convinced of his victory.”
There was a diabolical fervor in those last words. She was moving away from my problems, from everything I knew and had assumed to be inherent in human nature. That woman clearly carried something within her that went beyond anything I was capable of. As I stood there, I hardly recognized her, it was as if I were seeing her for the first time—and I could not deny that she was beautiful, very beautiful, with those extraordinary words burning her lips, so potent that they seemed to bathe her in an infernal light.
“Anyway,” I said, wanting to have the last word, “you will never come back to this room.” (I tapped my chest, as if there lay source of all my strength.) “I have the key here: this door will never again open to you.”
She laughed as she was moving away:
“I don’t need a key,” she said. “It’s easy enough to open these old doors just by giving them a good shove. Besides, the room doesn’t mean anything to me any more.”
Those last words were spoken from a distance. And I soon found myself alone, with darkness closing in on me.
28.
Father Justino’s Second Account
I wasn’t intending to go in, since I had only come to ask for a donation. Holding my mule by the reins, I leaned against the post at the bottom of the steps and waited for the maid to announce me. It was almost midday and the sun was glittering on the wet sand of the garden paths. Senhor Valdo soon came out onto the verandah. I saw from the way he leaned on the balustrade that my visit was more than just a surprise, it was almost an auspicious event. “Ah, Father Justino,” he said to me, “what a pleasure! It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen you around these parts.” He seemed to be expecting me to come up the steps. I explained that I had come to ask for a donation for th
e forthcoming church festival. “But of course, Father!” he exclaimed and insisted that I come up. We could have a chat; he wanted to hear all about the construction of the new parish church. I noticed that he seemed nervous and somewhat preoccupied. It had indeed been a long time since I had been to the Chácara, although I used to go there frequently to visit my good friend Dona Malvina, Senhor Valdo’s mother, paralyzed in her wheelchair. I had not been back since her death—one somber evening that seemed to presage the Chácara’s present decline—first, because she was the only member of the family who showed any real interest in me, and, secondly, because with her death my work here was, alas, done, and other tasks called me to other parts of the parish. And so up until that day my contact with Senhor Valdo had been somewhat limited; you might even say that I did not really know him at all. He looked so exhausted and so much older that I wondered whether he had always been like that, if the anguish in his eyes was a permanent feature. Something was clearly gnawing away at him inside. I tied my mule to the post and went up to the verandah, trying to suppress the memories that swept over me with each step I took (Dona Malvina in her wheelchair, a blanket over her knees, her face twitching from the effects of her stroke: “Ah, Father Justino, I fear for what will happen when I’m gone. This house . . .”). Although I could not say that there had been a major transformation in the physical appearance of its inhabitants (it’s strange how suffering imposes its own particular mask on people’s faces; at that moment I could not quite recall what Senhor Valdo had looked like before, but it seemed to me now as if another face had been imprinted on his, and, strangely enough, that new face was Dona Malvina’s. The man standing before me was filled with the same eagerness, the same inquisitive gleam and even the same tics that had characterized my dear friend during the last few years of her life. The only difference was that, in her, all those things had been genuine, while, in him, they seemed borrowed or stolen, the result of some strange subterfuge. And yet there he was, installed in that place so laden with memories for me, with all the deft ease of a successful impostor), I could, however, at least state with certainty that the house itself had undergone a radical transformation. The verandah, for example, with its row of colored glass panes around the top, seemed larger because much of the furniture had been removed since my previous visits. The pillars were chipped around the edges, and the trees from the garden clung with intimate abandon to the slope outside and threatened to invade the house itself. An insolent branch of flowering jasmine had almost reached the middle of the verandah. Ah, it was clear that the voice of Dona Malvina was no longer to be heard in that world, which was undergoing a slow process of disintegration that was gradually eating away at the solid, austere name she had left behind.
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 33