Eventually, I began to feel my way forward in the darkness. There she was, her head resting on a pile of pillows, her hair a tangled mass, her eyes open. (That was the first thing I noticed, that she had her eyes wide open.) She was wrapped in a white sheet, perhaps because of the heat, and, when I stood looking down at her, her body seemed longer than it actually was. Did I feel tenderness, excitement? I would be lying if I said yes. I had suffered so much during those last few weeks that I had no time to feel either emotion. What I felt was a dull sense of revulsion and impotence, a rage at my own inability to do anything to stop what I considered to be an abandonment, a desertion. (Written in the margin: I did love again, or saw others love in that same violent way. And there was always someone saying goodbye, out of fear or boredom, or for one of those many other reasons that can bring a relationship to an abrupt halt. I also often saw those who, faced by a love that had not yet died, became consumed by some illness or agony of unknown origin, but the roots of which lay in their fear of giving themselves entirely. Abandonment and desertion do exist. They are inherent in human fear.) At the sight of that prostrate body and those eyes now seeking me out—for the silence, a subtle change in the air, a passing shadow or a thickening of the atmosphere, must have betrayed to her the presence of another being, or more than that, the presence of the beloved—I could hold back no longer and collapsed with a moan at the foot of the bed. A moan I said, and I lied only out of shame. For some seconds, transfixed by the terrible pain of being brutally robbed of the one atmosphere in which I could breathe freely, I blindly rolled my head back and forth, weeping and biting the bedspread in an attempt to smother my own frenetic grief, clutching at the sheet in a desperate attempt at a caress. Everything I had kept silent about during those long days, everything I had kept locked up inside me, my respect for the situation, my tolerance of other people, my self-pity, my hope, my exhaustion, my memories, and even my ignorance, all this overflowed, and I did not have the strength to contain the force of that explosion, even though I knew I should, and even though I tried to do so, pressing the crumpled bedspread to my face. I had become extraordinarily sensitive, and every corner of my body, every fold of my skin was trembling as I remembered innumerable kisses, vanished caresses, sudden acts of tenderness, as if the whole of me, in allowing that apparent façade to crack, were suddenly reemerging into the self so laboriously shaped by her voluptuous, willing consent. That was the only time when, in my wretchedness, I dared to curse the love consuming me. The words rose unstoppably to my lips, while I continued to roll my head from side to side and clutch at the sheet.
“You promised me! Why did you break your promise? You said you would come back and be mine again! That you would always be mine! Why then did you leave me? What a fool I was falling in love with a woman without pity, without a heart, without anything! What kind of creature are you, a tart, a whore? Don’t imagine I care that you’re dying and that yours is the very worst of agonies . . . no! I don’t give a damn, I’m leaving, going far away, and I won’t come back. I will never again set foot in this house.”
I was crying, the tears streaming down my face. And then she rested her hand on my head, so lightly I barely felt it. Poor hand, poor ghost of a hand. It reminded me of the warm, authoritative fingers she had once placed on my lips. I don’t know why, but that was the only part of her body that gave me the distinct impression she was already dead.
“What madness, André,” and her slow voice was like a breath touching my head. Making a huge effort, she had abandoned her pillows and was leaning over me. “What madness. I can guarantee, I can swear I’m not worthy of your tears. I’m bad, André, worthless.”
What did it matter to me if she was good or bad? To me, who had never once asked what she was. Outside of her, what did I care for such concepts? She and she alone was important, and she, for me, was the sole measure of good and evil. I got to my feet and sat on the bed.
“Who cares about what is good or evil,” I said. “It’s you I love, Nina.”
I heard a hoarse moan emerge from her lips:
“André!”
I was cruel then and, standing up, I made as if to leave:
“Do you want me to go and never come back?”
And I took two paces toward the door, but she sat bolt upright then, her tangled hair falling about her shoulders.
“No, André, no, anything but that.”
And she fell limply back, at the same time holding out one hand to me. I rushed to her side:
“Ah, you do love me, you do still love me!”
I could not tell if her gesture was intended to repel or to draw me to her; she was shaking uncontrollably, and all her vitality seemed concentrated in her eyes, in the deep, pitiless depths of those eyes watching me from some place far away, where I was not, but where, possibly, there still bloomed the diabolically perfumed memory of who I had been and of the pleasure I had given her.
“André . . .”
And she neither called to me nor sent me away, content with being the beloved, loving and brazen, tremulous and humble, proud and subjugated, in the final moments of her time as a frail human being. I sat down again and took her in my arms, and she let me do so.
“My love.”
She moaned:
“Don’t do that, it hurts, don’t do that.”
Emanating from her, from that whole dying, sweating, trembling creature, came the same strong, warm, unbearable smell I had noticed when I entered the room. However, in the brief time I had been by her side, that smell had already become part of her, and in the process of transposition binding us together, it had now become part of me too and was the smell of my own sweat and my own blood.
“My love, my poor love,” I said again, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth; and she turned away, her dry lips parted. For me, though, she seemed far more beautiful in her rejection of me than if she had submissively offered herself up.
I again brushed her forehead with my lips, and beneath my lips I felt her temples beating dully. Locked in that embrace, what words I said, what urgent pleas, begging her to surrender to my hunger! The sheet had fallen to one side, revealing one intact breast, and that was all it took. My hands, as if driven by some external force, pulled down the sheet to expose her whole torso. She fell back, half-fainting, and I felt the weight of her head on my arm, but I could still not make out her features, because the room was plunged in almost absolute darkness. Around us hovered that same burgeoning smell, a viscous, repellent smell that came in gusts, as if someone were stirring warmed-up leftovers in a vat. I let her lie back on the pillows, feeling that the supreme moment had arrived. Her breathing was labored and she was moaning softly, her body twitching now and then as if prompted by the pulsations of an invisible dynamo.
“Nina,” I said, and my dull voice echoed strangely in the silence of the room.
In response to that cry—whose meaning she could not fail to understand, and which resounded through every filament of her long-suffering flesh—she called out quite loudly:
“Why? Why did you come?”
“Nina,” I said again, “there’s no one here, just the two of us.”
The echo of those words, “just the two of us,” struck a hollow note, like the bass note of an organ vibrating in the darkness embracing us.
“Why . . .” she said again and suddenly sat up, her hair glued to her forehead, neck and shoulders with sweat.
“Just once more, Nina,” I said.
She did not respond, but a great shudder ran through her from head to toe, like an electric current. At the same time, her eyes fixed on mine—they were a deep, deep blue, of an indescribable intensity—and after gazing at me just long enough to fully take in my body and to draw from that sight the final revelation of our separate existences, they closed again, and she lay back on the bed. But in that gaze, I saw, like warring elements, not only an awareness of the room (a miserable room, a prison, like all human rooms), but also the memory of our hours o
f love, our promises, of everything that made up the warm, dark bond of our union. Now her body was lying stretched out on the bed, as if, before death itself came—and it would not be long in coming—another different death might be given to her. I lay down beside her—forgive all these details, but I promised myself to record as much of what happened as possible, so as to preserve a perfect image in my memory—and motionless, I listened for some time to her uncertain breathing. Then her hand, urgent, cold, reached out to find me, touching first my side, then sliding down to my stomach, and coming to rest on the exact place in which all my life force lay concentrated. It was not a touch, but a pressure, and that pressure—there could be no doubt—was an invitation.
I leaned closer and blindly placed my lips on her now entirely unresponsive lips. At first, when mine touched hers, I still felt the warm caress of ripe fruit that comes with any intimate kiss; but as I pushed my tongue into her mouth, I was overwhelmed not by the sense of discovering another person’s earthy essence, but by a rancid, indefinable odor, which emerged from within like an excess of the oil that was keeping the dark depths of that human engine working. Those into whose hands this notebook may one day fall will say: madness, youth. Madness or youth, what does it matter, this was my one encounter with death, as it carried out its subterranean work of unpicking and destroying the internal harmony that makes up every living being. The image of the closed door would not leave me. And yet, at that moment, I was intent on savoring not life, but death. I made love to her, I don’t know how; it was both a terror and a yearning to find completion in her death. Had she herself not urged me, had she herself not told me it was necessary to go through the wall, to possess and break down and absorb those we love? I made love as I never had before, without really knowing what I was loving or possessing. It was not an interior or a woman or any identifiable thing. I was giving myself to a monstrous absorption, a fall, a gangrenous dissolution. I could feel the darkness itself pressing down on me, and as if caught up in a whirlpool, my very being felt as if it would be shattered by the force that kept me spinning and spinning, and not a single part of me remained immune to the frenzy of that terrifying journey. Until I heard a cry slice through the air, and I woke. She lay limp in my arms, gasping for breath. And down my fists and my fingers ran a liquid which was neither blood nor pus, but a thick, hot substance that dripped down as far as my elbows and gave off a foul, unbearable smell. I released her then, and she sank back against the soft pillows. That slow liquid was still running down my arms. Was she dead? Alive? A pointless question. I was alive, amid the debris of that mad experience. I was alive, and knowing this made me stand up, overwhelmed by emotion, gazing at the still sensate being lying panting on the bed. From every side, like an invisible, ever-swelling river hurling its furious waves against the banks that we represented, a feeling of failure and impossibility interposed itself between us; I retreated, step by step, to the wall, as if allowing those waters to boil and rise up to our impotent chests and dizzy us with their smell of salt and sacrifice. The world quickly sank into its accustomed silence. For the first time, I shook my fist at the heavens: let God, if he existed, take the better part and pluck from her, at that very moment, her final breath, and impose his law of oppression and tyranny. Let him dissolve us into vile matter and, while we were yet alive, and for his greater amusement, reveal to all the world our pestilential essence of tears and excrement—nothing mattered to me any more. Literally nothing. A vacuum formed inside me, as hard as stone. I was aware that I was breathing, moving, existing, as if the stuff of which I was made had suddenly rusted up. And I had never felt so certain that, for as long as I lived, I would continue to proclaim the news that we human beings are pathetic, wretched creatures, and that, anywhere on earth, all we are ever offered is a closed door. Everything else, alas, is a chimera, madness, illusion. Everything I represented, like an island surrounded by the rough waves of that sea of death, was proof that the human race was doomed forever to a clamorous, oppressive solitude. No bridge exists, it never did: the judge in charge of our case denies us that. And so the power that invented us is equally wretched, for it also invented pointless longing, the rage of the slave, our perpetual wakefulness in this prison from which we will only escape through madness, mystery, and confusion.
44.
Valdo’s Second Statement (i)
I really don’t know how I managed to make that journey to Rio. I only know that, one day, when I went into our room, I was so shocked by her physical appearance that I decided to set out immediately. I went over to the bed, took her pulse, felt how irregular it was and saw that her face, the familiar face that had once filled me with such tender feelings, was already taking on the sad, disfigured look of someone entering a state of coma. Was I exaggerating? Since my conversation with the doctor, when he had confirmed that the tumors had spread, I had been living in a perpetual state of alarm. But even if what I saw in her was in large part influenced by my own fears, there was no doubt that over the last few days the pace of her illness had accelerated extraordinarily. I went to the drawing room to find Demétrio and discuss with him the details of my departure. I found him sitting in a rocking chair, apparently absorbed in reading a book. André was asleep on the sofa nearby.
“Is it as serious as that?” asked Demétrio without getting up, gently rocking his chair.
“Serious?” My voice trembled. “It’s more than serious. I don’t believe she has many more days to live.”
He stared at me as if I had just said something ridiculous. What did he think? That the Meneses were exempt from mere matters of life and death? And in the brief silence that followed, I was the one to stare at him in disbelief; he looked away and casually leafed through his book. What a strange man, what a strange Meneses. I had known his habits for years and years and what it meant when he broke with them. And, standing there before him, I could not have said that he was exactly ignoring what was going on—no—and as proof of this, I could point to his more or less constant presence in the drawing room during recent days. He knew about Nina’s illness and was fully aware of its gravity, but it had probably not occurred to him that death would come so quickly. Looking at him then, and despite all our years of living in the same house, I suddenly realized what was so strange about him: a silence, a reticence in the face of events, and which, despite (for example) his presence in the drawing room, was neither more nor less than a rejection of everything that went on around him. And what had been so imponderable and secret about his nature now became utterly clear: he did not believe in the drama taking place in the house. It was in his nature to repel any abnormal occurrence, and even death itself, which, for others, was a decisive, unalterable fact, was for him an outrage and an affront against which he sternly set his face, and with all the force at his disposal. It might be supposed that these events wounded his sensibility, but I understood instinctively that in him it was not mere fastidiousness, but rather a deep loathing of any kind of disturbance not only to his daily domestic routines, but to the rigid, solitary principles that were his refuge. Death wasn’t a blow struck by some superior, ineluctable force, it was a gauntlet thrown down between equals, to which it was necessary to respond by fighting, and he, a proud Meneses, was, like any other human being, uncertain of the strength of his weapons. By sitting there in the drawing room, he was simply demonstrating that he was not running away and, although dazed and bewildered, he was ready to leap into combat—to join battle, as it were. However, and this is what his reaction demonstrated, he did not believe that the citadel was yet in such imminent danger. After a while, discomfited by the way I was looking at him and aware of the continuing silence between us, he said:
“You must take care, Valdo. This is no time to be running up expenses.”
His tone revived the atmosphere in which I had struggled all my life: failed investments, shaky banking transactions, loans that were never repaid, a whole series of financial disasters that had brought the family to its present
situation.
“I know,” I replied as coolly as possible.
Almost ignoring my response, he went on:
“Don’t forget that since our mother’s death, we have done nothing to add to the money she left us, or, rather, the only business deals we’ve made were bad ones. The income we have been living off is now practically exhausted.”
“I know,” I repeated calmly.
He closed his book and looked at me:
“Would it not be possible to avoid such excesses?”
I regarded him coldly—this was no time for arguments.
“I want to make sure she has everything she needs.”
“You really believe . . .” And once again he eyed me distrustfully.
“Yes, I do.” I replied firmly.
He sighed. “That’s different then. You must do as you see fit.”
I considered the matter closed and was on my way out of the drawing room, when I heard his voice again:
“Will you bring someone back with you?”
“What do you mean ‘someone’?” I repeated, not immediately understanding what he meant.
“A doctor.”
“Of course,” I said. And then after a slight pause: “That’s precisely why I’m going—to fetch a specialist.”
I saw a shadow flicker across his face, faintly altering it from within. It was as if some internal mechanism were swinging into action, and, like lubricating oil applied to rusty wheels and cogs, was setting stiff, sclerotic parts moving once again, giving his old face a new expression, even a surprising touch of sympathy.
“Would that make any difference?” Even his voice sounded different.
“What does that matter?” My answer, in this brief exchange so laden with meaning, was also spoken in a tone quite different from my normal one.
Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 48