Campo never talked of the quinta again. Perhaps he had forgotten all about it. In any case he wouldn’t look for Pilar there, and he couldn’t imagine that, having had as spoilt an upbringing as was possible in a colony, she would be able to live in a neglected country estate that over the years must have turned into a wilderness.
The father and the frustrated lover stared obsessively at the thick walls of the monastery and imagined Pilar, the disobedient fugitive, the object of helpless desire, behind them, engaged in subdued conversation with the fathers, walking in the cloisters. Ronquilho sometimes had the subsequent vision of Pilar in a whitewashed cell, kneeling on a narrow bed above which was a crucifix, and then she undressed and the setting changed: Pilar kneeling at a bench on which he was sitting, with the sword between his knees, its hilt like a cross. His disappointed senses did not conjure up reality: Pilar wandering down silent avenues, moving more freely and gracefully than she had ever done, dressed more airily than he had ever seen her.
To her great astonishment the garden was a tangle and half overgrown, but the wooden house had not been looted, and the effects and furniture, though covered in a thick layer of dust, were undamaged. The nurse was able to tell her that the islanders regarded it as an abandoned temple, and believed her mother’s ghost still went there and that it was inhabited by spirits: they kept hearing voices. Pilar heard them too, but after a few days she realized what it was: the wind whistling through the gaping cracks in the walls and creatures nestling invisibly under the overgrown bushes and tall grass. There were still rumours that she could not explain, but she did not fret about them. She was happier living here than in her father’s house, over which his constant outbursts of rage hung like a lowering storm, where scarcely a day went by without the turmoil attendant on his office spilling over into it. The fisherman brought supplies, and the nurse prepared them; in a few days she had grown used to the Chinese food and ate it as if she had never known any different. It was as if she was growing further apart from her father every day, and closer to her mother.
Autumn was approaching, and the heat was only intense in the middle of the day. In the mornings and evenings she could walk down the cool avenues, dressed as she felt like. She did not ask herself how this was going to end. And why should it end?
The boundaries and direction of her life were not clear to her, as they were to other women. She did know that Chinese women, if they were not infirm, were sold to a man they had usually not seen and had to serve him for the rest of their lives. No man had been proposed as a possible husband except Ronquilho. There seemed to be no one in the whole settlement who met her father’s requirements: this one she did not want, this one she had run from, others she did not know, and so she would not serve, would have no children. At present the future of her existence was as vague to her as the islands and coastlines she could see in the distance: perhaps she would sail past them one day, but probably they would be little different from the ones she knew.
She had an equally vague notion of Portugal, the land where her father and other powerful men and also the Dominicans came from. She had heard that women of quality there lived as they wanted and had their own entertainments, indeed that they could be merciful and accept a man or let him pine for years, as their heart or whim dictated, but she could not understand how that was possible. She could not understand how one could escape men like Ronquilho and her father other than by flight, as she had done; she could not believe there was anywhere where a simple refusal was sufficient to be free of their desires.
She associated with the church because it was all that existed besides the narrow, coarse society of the ruling soldiers. If instead of the Dominican order alone there had been nothing but a commedia dell’arte in Macao, she would of necessity have resorted to it and instead of representing Veronica would have played such stock characters as Genoveva, Melibea or Sigismunda. Cut off from everything, she was now living in a vacuum that would have driven a European woman to despair and soon afterwards to suicide; the Mongol half of her race helped her, and she let time pass without worrying, not caring what direction her earthly existence took. Her body remained alive, was thriving with food and more exercise than before, her eyes had the clouds and the sea to help the days pass, her skin had the cool water, which she could enter at any time undisturbed. Everything is subject to change, the immovable rocks, the sea’s waves lapping unaltered for centuries, just the same as the spiralling leaf and the butterfly that lives for a single day, and how and when she would join them, she did not know; for as long as her body was left in such peace, her soul did not suffer.
The priests had talked about that, but she did not know she had one. She knew that her body had parts that were more tender and more easily aroused than others; she did not long for them to be loved, she wanted to be untouched. She liked looking at herself in the water, but did not touch herself. She never desired anyone else.
Of the Chinese, apart from her mother and the Hao Ting whom she had seen a few times at an audience, she knew only the servants, of the Portuguese only those who ruled by force or lived in prayer and ostensible humility. Neither group had the feelings capable of moving her. But the figures that she did not know, the courtiers and poets and scholars from Lisbon would also have left her cold. She could not understand how one could admire heroes and poets and out of admiration love them. That one could suffer because of unrequited love and as a result be unhappy for years or even a lifetime seemed stranger to her than the complicated ceremonies of a Chinese wedding or funeral.
If she had been told that at the same time as she was living all alone in the overgrown quinta, a strange shipwrecked mariner was wandering around the island, and suffering unspeakably because no one could understand him, no one looked at him or took him in, she would have been astonished and would have felt no pity.
III
IT WAS DIFFERENT when she unexpectedly caught sight of him.
During her stay at the quinta, the nurse noted with secret satisfaction, she was becoming more and more Chinese. She left her hair, which she had combed into a quiff low on her forehead as a disguise in her flight, as it was; she only felt comfortable in the robes that the nurse laid out for her, she made herself up at length and with great care, she had brought no books with her. Her feet, without having been deformed in childhood, were extremely narrow and small. She exchanged only a few words with the nurse, having forgotten her language, and did not sing.
She saw little of the nurse herself. They took turns to keep watch. No unnoticed attack was possible from the mainland side. The area was overgrown and surrounded by rocks; on the ocean side one could spot an approaching craft from a long distance. Usually they looked out from the roof of the house. What would happened if people came to look for them here? There was a well overgrown by creepers, in which she could hide. She could also run away with the nurse to Canton and become fully Chinese, and perhaps find Pedro Velho, further up the Pearl River, and place herself under his protection. Her thoughts were gradually turning in that direction.
Then she found the stranger lying in the unused room in the wooden house. She had stayed up that night, because the moon was so full and she slept badly on moonlit nights and because she liked seeing the waves glisten and surge like a herd of sea animals. She had overlooked him at first.
At first she thought he was dead. He was not breathing. He did not look like the men she knew, but like a supine Jesus, a Cristo jazente, with his protruding ribs, his thin goatee beard and the cadaverous colour and pained features of his face. But she felt that he could not be anything but an escaped prisoner or a deserter from the army.
She left him lying there; she would not wake him for the time being, perhaps never. Tomorrow the stupid fisherman was coming. He could take him with him in his empty sampan and set him down somewhere on a deserted beach, so that he could get on with dying, if he wasn’t dead already. She saw nothing cruel in this: think of all the people you saw die by the wayside, already c
overed in bluebottles that they could no longer shoo away! Even death was nothing but change.
But when morning came she wanted to see his face again. Now it had a half-resentful, half-attractive expression. He could not be like the others. Now she was curious to see his eyes open too. She put down food and water beside him, so that he could see it when he woke up, and let the boatman leave without him, however much the nurse insisted and pointed to the dangers. She herself didn’t know what she was supposed do with him: he was probably a fugitive and would want to keep hidden and could help them keep watch, but he might also betray them…
She stopped, bent over a flower and picked its petal. When she stood upright again, he was standing in front of her, looking at her at first happily and then reproachfully. Then he burst into a hectic tirade, a torrent of words, half of which she did not understand; though he spoke the words of her father’s language, the sound, the sentences, everything was different. Pilar closed her eyes so as to hear nothing but the voice, so as not to see the battered, emaciated man in front of her, his thin arms sticking out of his robe, the bloodshot eyes, the scab-covered lips open wide. The voice was also hoarse, yet not broken, and even seemed to be speaking contemptuously of everything across the water in Macao and of those who ruled it.
She went on listening. The voice became sad and reproachful again, and finally, because he was repeating himself, she realized that he was talking about her and blaming her for something.
This annoyed her; she laughed loudly, leapt aside among the bushes and observed him through the leaves. He lost his balance, tried to find her, but in vain, put his hand to his head, stamped his foot and suddenly turned. He went down the path, but did not get very far; after a few steps he slowed down, steadied himself on a tree trunk and leant his head against it. Slowly Pilar went towards him and waited patiently until he looked up. She treated him the way a child treats a wounded animal. But he just stood there. She made the branches crack, nudged him, laughed. Finally he looked up again, helpless and silently now, but still with a bitterly reproachful expression.
When he started talking again, Pilar was once more astonished; she had never heard this tone before: her father’s voice was always loud and imperious, Ronquilho’s boastful and shrill, while the monks spoke unctuously and full of devotion as if they were talking missals. But she suddenly realized that the stranger was delirious and had mistaken her for someone else who resembled her but had different eyes, obviously Portuguese. She now tried to calm him, but since she spoke Macao dialect, he had difficulty in understanding her. Still, he eventually allowed her to take him to the room he was occupying. She called the nurse, who knew of a remedy against fever.
The next morning he seemed calmer and Pilar went to see him again. When she opened the door, she had the momentary feeling that she was returning to her own room, from which she had fled. She was about to close the door again, but it was too late: he made straight for her, went down on one knee and took her hand in gratitude. He asked her who she was and for want of a house and a sword put his life at her disposal. She asked him to make himself known first. He did not give his name, but told her that he was a Portuguese nobleman who had fallen out of favour.
“You’re a strange kind of knight to say such things about her face to a woman whom you have known for less than a day: that it would be as beautiful as that of a former lover, if only the position of the eyes were different. I don’t know what you’ve been through in Portugal; perhaps your mind is confused. Anyway, I’ll tell you who I am: Dona Pilar, the daughter of the Procurador of Macao. Because Portuguese women do not venture so far from the fatherland, my father chose his bride from a Chinese family. That is why I have my mother’s eyes. She is dead, and my father wants to force me to marry a man I hate; I have no protectors but the Dominicans and they themselves are open to persecution. So I fled here, in the hope that no one will look for me in this place. The nurse and I take turns watching for an attack. We are tired; you can help us. I think you are also afraid of danger from across the water; keep your eyes open and don’t think of mine. I’m only here to escape from a man and I don’t want anyone else. Don’t keep comparing me with your former sweetheart or with a phantom. Keep watch at night and stay in your room during the day, and then you can stay.”
Camões was left alone, sad at learning of a truth that left no room for any more hope. He stayed in the room, sometimes dizzy as if his life were about to explode and plunge into events that were unconnected with that life. When it was dark the nurse came in, motioned him to follow her and took him to the wall where he was to keep watch. The old woman put wine and fruit down beside him and left him alone. He kept a sharp watch over the bay; though some sails slid past, they never came close. The town was still in darkness, with only a faint beam from the lighthouse. In the middle of the night it was extinguished, and shortly afterwards a fire flared up in the same place on the dark cliffs which stayed alight all night. At sunrise, before he got a clear view of the town, the Chinese woman came to relieve him.
IV
SO IT CONTINUED for many days and nights. Sometimes the moonlight was so clear in his thoughts, so calm that he started writing, but he never got very far, and it was as if Diana and Pilar were looking down mockingly at him from each side. He had kept watch twelve times perhaps—the moon was on the wane—when one night the wind had turned and was blowing from the town to the island. He thought he could hear a commotion; the bonfire had not been lit, but on the other side of the town a wide column of smoke rose up, which gradually turned to flame. Should he warn Pilar? It occurred to him that he might find her with her eyes closed. He walked round the house, saw a faint light and pulled open the closed blinds. Pilar was lying undressed under a mosquito screen but was not asleep; she was not alarmed by his arrival, but got up calmly and wrapped a cloak around her.
“Are they close by?”
“They’re not coming.”
“So why have you disturbed me?”
“There’s a big fire in town.”
Without saying another word she went with him to the shore. At first she saw nothing; had the blaze been extinguished? Camões pointed in the direction of the smoke: at that very moment the fire reappeared and flames flared up. Pilar grabbed his arm.
“It’s the monastery. The Dominicans are being driven out. That must be because of me. Go across and see what’s happening.”
“Must I leave you unprotected then?”
“No one will come tonight and you can be back before morning.”
Camões took the sampan that was moored by the wall and in an hour and a half had crossed the bay; on the way back, with a following wind, it would be quicker. He forced his craft among a huddle of junks, so that it would be hidden, and committed the location to memory; then he climbed ashore. All the streets were empty. He hurried along, sometimes losing his way, but then he saw the smoke and fire rising above the houses again.
The monastery was situated in a wide open square; both wings were on fire, but the central section was still untouched. In front of the heavy locked gate he saw a hole with earth beside it, as if it had been freshly dug. A detachment of troops kept back a throng of ordinary Chinese. Amid the cries of mourning that rose from their midst, he heard the call for revenge and torture. Gradually Camões was able to make out from the conversations of the colonialists around him that the Dominicans had been accused of a murder for ritual purposes; the bodies of two children had been found in the monastery garden, and had been recognized as the children of a Chinese merchant. The people were yelling for revenge. If the Dominicans went unpunished, it would mean the end of the colony. The authorities had put a guard on all approaches to the monastery; tonight it had nevertheless been set on fire, and the rabble were waiting until the Dominicans had been smoked out in order to vent their anger on them. It was doubtful whether the weak guard would suffice to keep them in check.
Camões had carelessly asked a few questions, not realizing that the Portuguese i
n Macao, four hundred at the time, all knew each other, so that he was bound to call attention to himself. They asked in return who he was, and he did not know what to say; fortunately he was saved by the surging crowd. The fire had also spread to the centre of the monastery and the gate opened. The soldiers formed a double hedge, turning their lances outward against the thronging mass; some were run through and fell with a roar of pain, while the monks came calmly out. The last of them, a tall man with white waving hair, was going to close the gate behind him, as if wanting to protect the monastery for as long as possible, but two men plunged through the cordon and grabbed him.
“Are you going to let my daughter burn to death?” yelled one of them and yanked at his arms.
“She has never been here.”
“So where is she?”
“Safe. God will protect her.”
The soldiers surrounded the monks in a cordon three-deep and escorted them to where three Chinese in the robes of supreme judges were waiting. Ronquilho gave an order: the cordon opened and let the prior through. The Chinese judges seemed to question him briefly. Another order from Ronquilho: the soldiers withdrew and a Chinese force surrounded the monks and took them away.
The Procurador and the Hao Ting had agreed to satisfy the will of the people publicly by transferring them from Portuguese authority into the hands of Chinese justice. For the immediate safety of the monks this seemed preferable, though its effectiveness in saving their lives was doubtful. They would be lucky to die untortured. But Campos had justified himself to his compatriots and would be honoured for his strict justice among the Chinese people. For the second time after all the setbacks he had suffered, he had a good night’s sleep: on both occasions he had eliminated a powerful adversary, and on both occasions the expected booty had eluded him. First Velho, now the Dominicans. But on both occasions his lust for revenge had been satisfied. The monastery was slowly burning down. People were throwing books from one of the windows: the library was saved because Campos hoped to find compromising documents or clues to Pilar’s whereabouts.
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