“What’s wrong? How can you ask me that?”
“But I’ve only just arrived, my dear!”
(Later on, going over the scene in my mind, I realized that this was just a woman’s way, or at least Nina’s way, of defending herself—because, feeling humiliated at having written that letter, she now felt compelled to give me a very frosty reception.)
“Exactly,” she retorted, her voice still angry. “That’s exactly what I mean. Since when did anyone leave a woman like me alone in a bar like this?”
The bar was no better or worse than any other bar in a big city, although it did perhaps have the distinction of being more secluded than most, rather like a hotel bar, with its frosted glass doors and wooden booths. Moreover, I had chosen it precisely because it was in the center of town and would save her having to walk any distance. There were undoubtedly other fancier or more luxurious bars, but none more appropriate for our particular kind of encounter. Her annoyance, to my eyes entirely unwarranted, almost made me smile—ah, how little time changes people! Nina was exactly as she had always been! And so, knowing her as well as I did, I immediately found the best way to calm her down:
“My dear, you have clearly been away from Rio for far too long! This bar, despite its somewhat modest appearance, is absolutely the latest thing in Rio. Anybody who’s anybody comes here, even artists and theater folk.”
The words she was about to unleash evaporated on her lips, and she ran her eyes curiously around the room—indeed she almost seemed to be noticing it for the first time. She changed her tone and said:
“The latest thing? Well then, you must be right. I’m obviously terribly behind the times.”
She sat down in one of the booths, shifting along so that I could sit beside her. I ordered two aperitifs from the waiter, and she continued talking:
“If you only knew what my life has become . . .”
And she detailed all her difficulties and hardships. As she spoke, I observed her closely, and how could I not believe she was telling the truth? She was badly dressed, worse even than before she had been married. It could, of course, be one of those little ruses of hers at which she had always been so adept, but I had to admit that her pallor and her air of exhaustion did not strike me as a ruse. Furthermore, there was a coarseness about her face and a disoriented look in her eyes, as if she had burned all her bridges. Together, these things completed the portrait of a woman who has lost her way and been deeply wounded. I felt sorry for her, and the old tenderness I had always felt for her, even when she lived only in my thoughts, returned to unsettle me. Once again, I could no longer distinguish truth from lies in what she was saying. For she probably was lying, without me knowing why or how, but in times gone by, on account of that same tenderness, had I not accepted from her all manner of scornful insults? Back then, I had desired her and was capable of committing the wildest extravagances for the most fleeting of her smiles. Now that I no longer desired her (or at least had learned to live by sacrificing my desires), why shouldn’t I once again endure her lies and insults in silence, not for what she meant to me now, but in memory of what she once had been? Pity is not a sentiment much appreciated by women, especially women like Nina, and I knew she would never forgive me if she realized that I no longer loved her as before. There was, of course, the pleasure of seeing her again, of hearing her voice, and feeling her warm, invigorating presence—so why not just close my eyes and pretend it was love? Not the old love, but something calmer and more all-embracing.
“You know I am always at your disposal, Nina,” I told her. “Nothing has changed between us.”
She gazed at me tearfully:
“I knew that,” she said. “And I couldn’t die without writing that letter.”
“I carry it next to my heart,” I declared, patting my breast pocket.
She sighed and turned away. From that angle she still had something of her former appearance, and seeing her looking so like her old self, I could only conclude with a certain melancholy that I was the one who had aged, for even though I was still capable of admiring her, I had lost the secret of adoring her.
“I’ve come to stay,” she said, shooting me a sideways glance, “for good.”
This statement hung heavy in the silence. She paused for a moment to let those last two words take full effect, then added:
“I know you don’t believe me, but I swear that this time I mean it.”
It was the same artificial tone she had used all those years ago, the same old story. How could I tell her that it wasn’t necessary any more, that I would still help her, that she could have from me anything she wanted; how could I tell her all that while keeping from her my own changed feelings? I did, though, notice a new element in her little drama, something I hadn’t seen before: a haste, an almost febrile need to play that familiar role while she still could. That is what most struck me in what she said. What was going on? What was the reason for such urgency? I let her speak without interruption, and as she spoke, her impatience showed me just how much, and how profoundly, she had changed. Her haste wasn’t a reason, it was a consequence—she was in a hurry because of something, and that something was slowly revealing to me a reality that could certainly not be described as vibrant, but rather as weak and feeble, an indication of a larger truth concealed behind her anxious expression. The faint lines around her eyes, her slightly downturned mouth, her no longer satiny complexion—how could I not see, how could I not sense that her beauty was reaching its end? My heart was filled with a deep, deep pity—she was just a woman losing her charms, and she knew it. She had not yet lost them completely, but she had lost at least a third, and that missing third must surely haunt her when she looked in the mirror, smoothing away her wrinkles, peering deep into her eyes, replacing that third with a fiction, an emblem of what she no longer possessed. Good or bad, it scarcely mattered—it would never be good enough to fool a man who had once been a slave to every one of those charms. How I congratulated myself on not revealing from the outset how much I pitied her! And how I praised myself for being prepared to maintain that sensitive silence come what may! She took a few appreciative sips of her aperitif, then turned to me:
“But we will go again to all those wonderful places, won’t we?”
“Wherever you wish.”
“To the casino . . . do you remember? And to theaters, and cinemas, and dances!”
I nodded in agreement even though, for some reason, I felt that all the things she listed were now inexplicably, perhaps impossibly remote.
“But,” she continued, shyly lowering her eyes, “I don’t have any proper clothes. I don’t dress as I used to.”
She herself had raised the subject that most intrigued me.
“What happened to all your beautiful dresses?”
She put her hand on mine, as if from the very beginning she had been seeking my approval, without daring to say so:
“I got rid of them. I burned them. They were weighing on me,” and here her voice trembled. “They brought back all the wrong sort of memories.”
She took her glass and squeezed it tight, as if making a wish:
“I wanted to live a new life, to have new clothes. If I carried on buried like that in the Chácara, I knew I would just fade away, rot. That’s why I wrote to you.”
“And I replied too. Didn’t you get my letter?”
She laughed for the first time, and for a moment there was a fleeting, miraculous, glimpse of her younger self.
“Oh. he went to such lengths to try and find out who I was writing to!”
“He?”
“Yes, Valdo.”
She evidently took a mischievous pleasure in having fooled her husband. At times like that I couldn’t help but admire her.
“And he never found out?” I asked.
“No.” And, after a moment’s pause: “Never.”
She gave me a look then that answered all my questions once and for all. I thought to myself: ah, so even she is losing her
old discretion. Suddenly I felt a great nostalgia for the Nina I had once known, and who meant so much more to me than the one now sitting next to me. Even so, I said to her:
“You will have all the dresses you need.”
“I knew you’d say that,” she said. “Thank you. It’s so wonderful to know that life goes on, that the good times will return!”
Perhaps there was genuine enthusiasm, or something akin to enthusiasm, in the way she spoke, and yet there was also an unmistakable sadness, as if she were talking about something lost and gone, rather than the possibility of a new life that might really bring her pleasure. This feeling cast an invincible melancholy over the rest of our lunch, and I gave a sigh of relief when we finished. She had scarcely touched the dishes she had ordered. (Another significant detail: she hesitated over what to eat, asked the waiter about everything on the menu, then ended up ordering several things and barely eating any of them.)
We stood up, ready to spend the rest of the day shopping. I could see that this was what she most wanted and, although I certainly wasn’t rich, I was nevertheless quite prepared to sacrifice some of my bachelor savings for her sake. She gave me her arm, and this gesture of familiarity that would once have stirred such powerful emotions in me, now provoked only a certain agreeable nostalgia, and it occurred to me how we always get, admittedly sometimes too late, the very thing for which we have battled all our lives. She had rather lost her city ways, for she walked cautiously, as if the crowds frightened her.
“Are you feeling unwell?” I asked.
“No,” she answered, adding with a wave of her arm: “It’s all these people . . .”
I don’t know how many shops we went to—shoe shops, dress shops, shops for knick-knacks, and even jewelry. At first, she chose fearfully, looking again and again at whatever it was, almost too timid to touch anything. But as time went on, her spirits picked up and, by the end, she was choosing things almost at random, almost frenetically, her forehead beaded with perspiration.
“There’s no rush,” I said to her gently, noticing how much paler she had become, “we have lots of time. We can come back for more tomorrow.”
She looked at me sternly:
“Tomorrow?” She threw her head back, drawing her lips into a forced smile. “Oh, I see—you’re afraid I’ll run off again, is that it? Didn’t I say that I was here to stay? Forever and ever?”
(Strangely, as she said those words, I had a very strong sense of just how false they were. Now that it’s all over, and I’m writing this statement, with no other aim than to reestablish the truth and clear her memory of certain slurs and slanders, I ask myself if I was to blame, if perhaps I unconsciously revealed my skepticism about what she was evidently planning. Because my actions or my lack of reaction, my silence, all carried within them an implicit rejection. Perhaps I was rejecting her on the one occasion when she was actually offering herself to me? And who knows, despite the false tone in which she spoke, perhaps she really had come back for good, as she so robustly asserted?)
In any event, just then, I felt there was no point in trying to make her understand anything at all—her ambition, her willpower, her whole person, was focused on a single objective and any attempt to divert her from her goal would have been completely futile. So I went along with her minor frenzy: she bought flowers, velvets, silks she scarcely touched, nightgowns, belts and buckles, kid gloves, a hat she thought was the height of fashion and a fur coat for the harshest of winters—all of which, I can tell you, cost me a small fortune. And so went almost all of my carefully husbanded savings. She tried things on, posed in front of mirrors, and even as she did so, throwing back her shoulders to test a décolleté neckline or asking for the waist to be taken in, I realized, to my astonishment, that she did all of this more or less automatically, barely looking at her own reflection in the mirror.
By the time we had finished, or at least when she judged that the time had come to stop for the day, it was already late and the sky was dark. The streetlamps had been lit and the cafés and pavements were overflowing. All around us was the warm, soft buzz of Rio at the beginning of summer.
“How about a nice, cold drink?” I suggested.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, putting her hand to her mouth, “I almost forgot!”
“What?”
“Something important,” she explained, eyeing me warily. “You don’t mind waiting for a moment, do you?”
“No, not at all.”
“You can wait in a bar. I won’t be long—I just need to visit someone.”
“In a bar? Yes of course.”
Then she stopped suddenly in the middle of the street, blocking the paths of several passersby, and stared at me. Given the intensity of her gaze one might almost have thought it was the first time she had laid eyes on me. She gave a stifled cry:
“But you don’t love me! You don’t love me any more!”
As with many of those whose sense of decorum or truthfulness prevents them from using such loaded expressions, we had never used the words “love” or “friendship” in relation to each other, or any other term or symbol that might approximate to such sentiments. So, on hearing her say this so unexpectedly, almost like a cry of surprise or grief, I suddenly felt ashamed, as if I had been caught committing some grave misdemeanor. And yet I had waited and waited all those years for the merest hint of such a cry, a pale reflection of something resembling not even love or friendship, but simply a little of that fleeting tenderness we sometimes bestow on our favorite objects or animals—or perhaps not even that, perhaps just one of those obliging gestures we would not even deny a poor beggar who held out his hand to us. And yet now there was that effortless, naked confession, and I was embarrassed, because I no longer knew what to make of it or what to say. Slowly, almost sadly, I replied:
“No, you’re wrong, Nina.”
She leaned on me, as if the ground had given way beneath her feet, and closed her eyes. I could see her trying to contain her emotion, gathering all her remaining strength.
“Nina!” I whispered.
She let go of me then and looked up, as if recovering her poise.
“Wait for me there,” she said, pointing to a nearby café. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Is it so very urgent, this thing you have to do?”
“Yes.”
I shrugged and let her go. But I followed her with my eyes for as long as I could. She was battling her way through the crowds, listing slightly to one side as if she were injured. I don’t know what impulse, what notion or presentiment—or perhaps all three together—filled me at that moment; I only know that I began to run after her, pushing and colliding with various passersby, trying not to lose sight of her. She kept up the same hurried, lopsided gait. At one point, I feared I was getting too close and that she might turn around and see me, but I put the idea to one side, quite sure that the blind force driving her on would never allow her to turn around. I was so close I could almost touch her. At times, when her pace slowed I could see her face, hard and tense, as if under the influence of some implacable will. She walked a little farther, then stopped in front of a doorway bearing a doctor’s nameplate. I stopped too, but I was not greatly surprised. Her sudden haste, her anxiety, could only be hiding something of the sort. But what was wrong with her? What sort of illness could have such a profound effect on her? I watched her climb the steps and disappear inside. Taking cover behind a tree, I decided to wait for her.
Less than a quarter of an hour later she reappeared, with the same resolute air as before. Resolute? Well, perhaps—there was certainly something fixed and fateful in her expression. I almost shuddered when I saw her: she was a different woman entirely. If I had passed her in the street, not knowing that she was back in Rio, I might well not have recognized her. And it wasn’t merely the effect of treacherous time or age on her physical appearance: it was something deep and obsessive, whose origins I still did not know and which must always have been there, but was only now coming to
the surface, like the debris that lurks at the bottom of a well and one day rises to the top when the water is disturbed. “What a strange and terrible woman,” I thought. And that was the very first time such a thought had crossed my mind. Feeling troubled, I allowed her to go ahead of me, then returned to the café where we had arranged to meet. It perhaps goes without saying that I waited for more than two hours, but she never appeared. On that occasion, there could be no doubt: she had revealed herself in all her calculating complexity.
Early the next morning I went to the doctor’s surgery. It was a small, cramped room, clearly not a well-known practice. If she was spending so much money on clothes and other fripperies, and if she really was ill, why not find a reputable doctor who could be of some use to her? (There, in that small, ill-furnished and tastelessly decorated room, I still could not understand why, for women who have always been sought after and flattered, illness was a source of deep shame, a terrible sin that must be concealed. I couldn’t imagine who might have given her such an address—perhaps she had merely seen it in a newspaper advertisement, but clearly she had come there secretly and she felt humiliated at having to make such a visit.)
The person who appeared as soon as I rang the bell did little to reassure me:
“What do you want?” he asked.
He was short and bald, with thick-lensed glasses, from behind which peered two hard, aggressive eyes. He was wearing a white coat with two red letters intertwined on the left pocket: R.M. His small, soft, chubby hands seemed cold and devoid of any pity. I explained as best I could the reason for my visit. The more I spoke the lower I felt myself sinking in his estimation, and he stared at me sternly while I stumbled over my apologies. When I finished by saying that I wanted to know about the state of health of the woman who had been there the previous day, he held up his hand to interrupt me:
“There is such a thing as patient confidentiality.”
I tried to convince him:
“Doctor, you must try to understand my situation. After all,”—and I did not hesitate to lie—“I am her husband.”
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 43