“Oh, it’s you!” she said in a loud voice and with little show of surprise. I said nothing. “It’s you,” she said again, and, oddly, there was a note of recrimination in her voice.
“Yes, it’s me,” I said at last. “I came because we didn’t quite finish our conversation.”
She gave a scornful smile:
“What more have you got to say to me?”
“Nina,” I said, and this was the first time I had ever called her by her name. A kind of complicity bound us together, perhaps a sense of imminent violence. “Nina,” I said again, “I made a promise to myself.”
After the words we had exchanged in the garden—and especially after everything she had revealed to me—those words did seem to surprise her. She stood up and looked at me—ah, those eyes! Almost forgetting why I had come, I searched them for the aggressive, mutable light that had seduced so many men. I had never seen them from so close up, eyes that, in my silent, jealous thoughts, I had imagined to be all-devouring and full of treachery. I saw now that they were perfectly ordinary eyes, almost childish, possibly even slightly alarmed at the mysteries of this world.
“What has that got to do with me? Why have you come to my room?” and she, too, looked deep into my eyes.
I waited a moment for us both to calm down. What I had to do allowed for no sudden shocks, no hesitations. I wanted the serenity of accomplished fact to hover over those final words.
“I promised myself,” I went on, “that I would kill anyone who went into that room. I can’t forget and I can’t forgive, and that is why I am here.”
I spoke as slowly as possible. Meanwhile, those childish eyes remained fixed on mine. And suddenly she spoke almost gently:
“Did you love him so very much?”
It was my turn to smile:
“What do you care how much I loved him?”
She continued to look at me, and I confess that her insistent gaze began to trouble me. I had never before revealed so much of myself to anyone, and I was doing so to her of all people.
“I’d like to hear you say it in your own words.”
“Why?”
“So that just once I can imagine you as being slightly more human.”
“So you know,” and I turned away, fleeing those implacable eyes.
She came up behind me:
“It’s a shame we both loved the same man.”
I spun around, my heart again filled with rage:
“You?” I spat out the word in a tone of utter contempt.
She smiled sadly:
“Yes, me, what’s so strange about that?” And with a look on her face in which I recognized the old Nina: “Do you think I wouldn’t be just as capable as you of loving a gardener?”
Ah, how the truth, even one you have lived with all your life, even one mulled over minute by minute in the depths of your mind, even one drenched in secret tears and watered with futile, sacrificial blood, how very different it seems to us, how brutal and cynical it sounds on someone else’s lips! In the garden, she had spoken and even moaned at the recollection of their moments of pleasure, but only now did I see that they really had loved each other. Why? What had rendered me indifferent to the revelation made only seconds before? I don’t know, it’s something I will never be able to explain. But just then, through the magic of a few banal words, I understood not only the love that had bound them together, but love itself, the love I had never known. Dear God, it had only lasted a moment, but what did it matter if that moment still illuminated her life? No, I could not bear the brutal truth of what had been spoken between us, as if, up until now, I had been lying to myself, imagining a feeling I would be the first to dismiss. She must have sensed my confusion, because she leaned closer:
“I loved him,” she said in a soft, calm voice. “I loved him and he loved me, what more do you want? Haven’t we said all we need to say on the subject? What more do you want me to tell you? Do you want to be humiliated, do you want me to say that his full lips crushed my lips when we kissed, that he used to put his tongue in my mouth, that he nibbled my breasts? Is that it?”
And in that hushed, whispered voice I felt the tremor, not just of those words, but of the secret caresses, the shared madness, the ecstasies that had never been mine—everything I had so long imagined, about which I had felt such a piercing jealousy, and that had become a mere accumulation of suspicions, but never certain-ties—and which now revived a truth I had never fully acknowledged, peopled as it was by the specter of gardens and darkness and kisses, the sheer compelling impetus of a mutual love, one that would never ever be mine!
This caused me such intense pain that I covered my face with my hands and collapsed onto the bed, on the very spot where Nina had been sitting. The warmth of the bedspread only filled my mind with still more terrible and obscene images: from every side, like mushrooms springing up in the shadows, I felt hands sprouting, fingers interlacing, touches, sighs, wild nights of love. Still covering my face, I sat very still, waiting for my blood to quiet. Nina was doubtless savoring her victory. And yet, when she spoke again, there seemed to be a note of pity in her voice.
“When you spoke at the Pavilion about him . . . about . . .”
Staying exactly where I was, I waited for her to say the name again, like a final slap in the face. She understood and said instead:
“. . . about André.”
“As I said, I don’t care about André.”
There was another pause, as if she lacked the courage to go on, either because the words were too painful or because she feared touching on a subject she preferred to leave alone.
“Despite everything,” she went on, “despite everything . . . if you think about it . . .”
No, that wasn’t the tone of voice I was expecting: Nina was talking as if she were dreaming, as if she were speaking to herself about things she was unsure of and had never dared say to anyone. I stood up and went over to her, as if drawn to her, and she seemed so absorbed in her own thoughts that she didn’t even notice, didn’t even turn around, but continued to talk in that rather slow way:
“. . . if you think about it . . . there is a certain resemblance. The full lips, the fine, strong fingers, the smell of his hair.” (Gradually, the image of the man rose up before me: through her, through a miracle of transposition, I began to see Alberto again, a new Alberto, one I had never known, but who pulsated as though he were still alive, almost within reach, a loving, complicit Alberto. Nina took two steps toward me, I took two steps toward her, and by taking those few steps, we were united, we became one, and I was drinking her in, making her mine, because I wanted to drag from her lips the presence of that lover, made eternal and formidable by her eloquence.)
“André . . .”
That name brought me abruptly back to reality. I retreated slightly, trying to recover my lost calm.
“What do you mean?”
She, too, seemed to wake up; she smiled and shook her head:
“Nothing. But there are certain similarities. Eyes and lips. Have you never noticed?”
She was standing directly in front of me now and, again, her eyes were probing mine suspiciously. This was not because of what we were, two unfortunate women in a room together, but because of the memories traced on our faces by the past, by what had been and was now transforming us into ghosts. So it was true then, she had loved him and she did have a heart, just like everyone else. All her betrayals, all her shameful deeds could be redeemed by that one genuine feeling—and it was that love, or its shadow, that was binding us together now, one in front of the other, like sisters.
“Are you suggesting . . .” I began, then foreseeing what was about to happen, I stopped, too weak to go on.
“That André is Alberto’s son, that he was never a Meneses.”
Slowly, while those words were still vibrating in the air, I took out the revolver and pointed it at her.
“This is why I came,” I said. “To kill you.”
Nina’s fa
ce betrayed not a flicker of emotion; her eyes merely went back and forth between the weapon and my face, as though she were troubled by other emotions, not fear, but feelings or memories or, who knows, the past events in which that small revolver had also played a part, but which had long since disappeared, only to be revived now, hard and bright and eloquent in the light of the lamp.
“That gun . . .” she said very simply.
“. . . is the same one,” I answered, completing her sentence. “There are two bullets left. I think that now . . .”
An icy smile spread across her features:
“You want to kill me?”
“I made a promise,” I exclaimed.
There was another brief pause, and while I still awaited some violent reaction on her part, her face remained unchanged, and she stood there, utterly calm, as if I hadn’t said a word.
“What do I care?” she cried suddenly, turning her back on me. “André will still have the same father. No amount of spilled blood—not even his father’s do you hear?—can ever erase the memory of the pleasure with which he was conceived. Or that night of passion . . .”
“Shut up!” I yelled, in a tone that was more pleading than commanding.
Again she turned to face me, eyes shining:
“What do you think I’m looking for in him? When we fall into bed together, what kind of satisfaction do you think I find?”
“He’s your son,” I murmured, feeling that, despite everything, she would never grasp the enormity of her crime, that it was not in her power or her nature to comprehend the gravity of that incestuous passion, which was merely one of a thousand possible kinds of madness, with no hope of a cure or restored lucidity.
“He is my son,” she went on, “but he is the son of a father who no longer exists. How I would love that man, how I would throw myself at his feet and kiss the ground he walked on if he did still exist. I go to bed with André as an attempt to find in his face, his body, in being possessed by him, the man who disappeared.”
Now I understood—and my amazement, which rose in me like a great flame whipped up by the wind, made me lower the revolver. I understood, and took a cruel pleasure in imagining the sinful effort involved in that attempt at resurrection. I had dared to ask a priest to bring him back to life, I had been brave enough to go to the outer limits of heresy and blasphemy, shaking a lifeless body that no human force could ever breathe life back into—but that woman had gone further still and invented a substitute, raising up her own son as a monument to the sin she could not forget. Seeing my astonishment and seeing the hand holding the gun hanging loose by my side, she laughed:
“You came here to kill me, didn’t you? So why don’t you?”
“I can’t.”
Doubtless realizing that I had fully understood both her crime and her pain, she turned and threateningly shook her fist at me:
“No, you can’t, and I’m going to tell you why. Because you’re a Meneses, because the blood of the Meneses, which is not your blood, has infected you with the same disease. Because you would never shatter the peace of this house with a gunshot—the sacrosanct peace of the family—nor would you commit incest or murder, nothing that might besmirch the honor they claim as theirs.”
“That’s not true,” I murmured.
And despite everything, possibly prompted by what I had just heard, the memory of my sleeping husband suddenly appeared in my mind with a strange clarity. For me, he was the Meneses family, and, suddenly, I could not rid myself of the image of his pale face, his sweat-beaded brow, his lifeless, moribund features. To condemn him, though, would be to condemn myself, for he had carefully been molding me into a Meneses almost since I was a child. She was absolutely right—and how humiliating that was! Standing there, with the revolver still in my hand, I had to admit that she had beaten me, me and all the other slaves to habit, to a single truth, to a teaching they dare not destroy or repudiate.
I don’t know how I made it to the door—all I can remember is Nina’s extraordinarily calm voice saying:
“And don’t go deceiving yourself. You never loved Alberto. It isn’t love that binds you now to the image of the person he was, it’s remorse.”
I stopped, still with my back to her. I did not dare to look at her, I wasn’t strong enough, nor would I ever be, not at least until, like her, I felt capable of committing any crime and any sin. She came a little closer and said with a passion that almost undid the cruelty behind her words:
“Not remorse for having given yourself to him—just once—not that it matters. But because you have always been a complete nonentity, utterly incapable of being anything more than that. You weren’t interested in him—how could a Meneses possibly be interested in a gardener?—but in your own freedom. Or what you imagined to be freedom.”
Unable to bear it any more, I opened the door and ran out into the hallway.
32.
End of Father Justino’s Account
I looked at her hard, but did not answer her question. She returned my gaze and then, as if reaffirming her challenge, she turned the revolver over and over in her hands.
“I wanted to kill her,” she said, “but I didn’t have the courage.”
She then told me, in detail, what had happened between her and her sister-in-law. She spoke haltingly, revealing the battling emotions within, and I could not say there was anger. No, not anger. With anger there is a certain warmth, a vigor that reveals the true nature of the soul. What I perceived in the woman standing before me, slightly hunched, her head tilted to one side, was something stagnant and inhuman that gave her, alas, an unmistakable air of eccentricity. What distances she must have traveled to arrive at that point, and how she must have turned and turned within her own solitude until, suddenly, unable to contain herself any longer, she had given vent to her spite before my astonished eyes. It was not difficult to surmise what she was thinking: she considered that the only thing the other woman merited was destruction, pure and simple, with no regard for sin or justice. She was absolutely convinced that hers would be an act of self-defense rather than violence. “What do we do with poisonous snakes?” was what she seemed to be asking. And so on and on she talked; I don’t know how long for—I only remember that the sun was setting and that through the trees I could see a faint, reddish glow. Bathed in this light, the pillars of the verandah were growing less substantial and the invading branch of jasmine was shrouding itself in shadow. Finally, she stopped speaking, and I touched her arm:
“Have you ever thought,” I asked, “that this woman might not be the capricious, wicked creature you suppose, but a human being just as capable of suffering as any of us?”
“Oh, Father!” she exclaimed. “How could that be? How could she suffer, being the way she is? Beauty is a cruel thing.”
This time I could hear the fear in her voice, and she seemed less sure of herself, but it wasn’t her rival who frightened her: it was beauty, the secret power of beauty.
“My child,” I replied, making a final effort to break down the barriers that separated us, “everyone’s suffering is different. What do you know, for example, about what God holds in store for her?”
Staring at some point in the distance, she said softly:
“God is unjust; he denies one person everything in order to shower all the others with graces.”
I must admit I shuddered when I heard that word. She was talking about human grace, the thing she was confusing with beauty and which was mortal and transient. For me, what was important was divine Grace. But either way, I can swear to you that I had never in my life seen a creature so devoid of grace, whether God’s or any other sort. The person I saw before me was entombed, deaf to any appeal for kindness as if somehow set apart by a perverse and stupid law. From whatever angle I looked at her, everything about her was dull and leaden.
“You always talk about God as if He did not exist.”
She spun around:
“If God exists, then why . . .”
&nb
sp; Her voice faltered.
“God exists,” I replied firmly. “You just lack . . .”
I was about to say the word, but stopped myself, sensing how fatally I would wound her. She seemed, however, to understand and completed my sentence for me:
“I lack His grace? Is that it? And by any chance . . .” she sighed deeply, “. . . by any chance does God’s Grace also exist?”
(There was no irony in her voice, but for some reason, I shuddered again. Rebellion is such a strange thing! Feeling a little lost, I asked myself what Grace really was. A prize? If so, who were its recipients? Who did God turn to first? Yes, God exists. But if we waited eternally on our knees for Him to distribute His gifts . . . ah, and I a priest was saying this! And was that not the crux of all my past struggles, of my battles with theories and theological scholars? Then all that is left for us is to contemplate the long line of our fellow creatures who have failed to hear His voice.)
“Yes, Grace exists,” I replied. “But it is not so much a gift from God as an effort made by man. God waits in hopeful anticipation, but we do not have the right to think of Him as a judge distributing gifts. He has a greater role, as the last supreme resort for man to unburden his despair. Because lack of hope is man’s greatest sin. May God preserve me from believing in nothing—because that nothing is merely the reverse side of the absolute certainty of those who are capable of believing in God.”
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 36