They married the following year. Plinio Correia would, for forty years, perform the same job as manager in Rio de Janeiro’s Electric Light Company. His salary would never be magnificent or deplorable, his ambitions would waver between nonexistent and irrelevant. He expected nothing from life beyond perpetual motion – as far as he was concerned, the unknown always constituted a threat. The most adventurous thing to happen to Plinio was a five-day bus trip to Iguaçu Falls. He and Zélia would grow old in the most common way of growing old; getting more distant every single day.
At first, Zélia saw marriage as the solution to her unhappy days in Bangu. Later she saw marriage as a mistake. A mistake who snored loudly by her side every single night. When she watched Plinio sleeping with his mouth wide open, Zélia would think about the mediocrity of her life. She thought about Nicolas, she thought about how she should have made more of an effort that night at the ball. She thought about how she might have been the Casino Queen of Lambari instead of the wife of some nobody in Tijuca.
What Zélia never learned was that Nicolas hadn’t kept a distance that night due to some poor intellectual display or her less-than-perfect looks. What happened was that the young man, accustomed to a dozen or so single young women in Lambari, had an overdose of sensations upon finding so many interesting Rio girls at the Clube dos Democráticos. This city is paradise, he’d thought to himself. He encountered little difficulty in re-evaluating his priorities, placing marriage at the bottom of the list and putting a few years of experimentation at the top.
Perhaps it was due to the curse of Oluô Teté (who, after growing disillusioned following eight failed trysts, lost his patience and put a spell on all the women in Rio). The fact is that ever since Rosa’s mother’s time, the women of Rio have been forced to confront the curse of being so beautiful, so intelligent and so numerous, that the men of the city have the luxury of not needing to choose just one.
That’s how Zélia came to live in Tijuca, fully aware that she would never ever leave. It wasn’t a bad place to be. It was much better than the tiny room in the back of the house in Bangu. But Zélia wasn’t able to see the gifts life brought. She could only see her average husband, her unremarkable kids, her plain old house. The girl who had once carried around a blue notebook continued exploring the world around her in order to uncover shortcomings only she could see.
If a neighbor didn’t say good morning, it wasn’t because she hadn’t seen Zélia, but because she had ignored her. If the guava she bought had worms, it was because the seller wanted to pull one over on her. If Dona Irene gained weight, it was because she was unhappy; if she lost weight, it was because she’d become depressed. If the baker’s daughter worked the cash register, it was because she wanted to nab a husband; if she wasn’t helping it was because she was thick-headed. If her god-daughter earned good grades it was because she was a show-off; if she hid her report card, she had no brains.
And what about you, don’t you know how to do anything except listen to the radio? Zélia crossed her arms and turned her nose up as she addressed her husband, the mistake.
Seated in his corner, Plinio didn’t respond. He was plagued by the affliction that assails so many men: the vow of silence after a few years of marriage. By the time of their fifteenth anniversary, his burps outnumbered his syllables uttered.
At some point, Zélia’s constant dissatisfaction began to modify her appearance. When cutting the squash, unclogging the sink, dusting the top shelves, Zélia made all sorts of grimaces, which in the beginning were out of place, but later became permanent features.
She soon had dark circles under her eyes, the result of nights of little sleep. If as a child Zélia waged war against sleep, in the years following her marriage she simply could not doze off. Oh, what good just a bit of sleep would do in this tedious little life of hers! No such luck. Zélia spent more and more nights laying awake, which only increased her dark circles and foul mood. The sleepless nights so coveted during her naïve years became a burden to be carried for the rest of her endless days.
After some time, when Zélia looked in the mirror, she could no longer tell if she was embittered because she was ugly or if she was ugly because she was embittered. Her escape was the window. There she could see everything beyond her painful reality. And that’s where she saw Euridice, this young lady who didn’t seem to be entirely at ease and who was most deserving of the judgment that Zélia knew only too well how to dish out.
They’ll be bankrupt before we know it. Mark my words: Euridice knows how to throw banquets, but a few years from now she’ll be living off crumbs.
Chapter 2
Since her financial woes existed only in the heads of others and not in her household budget, Euridice continued with her plans. She dreamed up cakes, tried out new soups and worked up original sauces, carefully noting the recipes in her notebook. That notebook was her diary. The account of all she did to bear her domestic exile, to transform the walls of that house into something less oppressive.
Some months later, Euridice’s right-slanted handwriting had filled the entire notebook, and she thought it was time to show it to her husband. She prepared a special dinner with one of the dishes Antenor liked: turkey medallions in Madeira sauce.
The day before the dinner she went to the poultry market to buy the turkey. She walked back home with the bird in her hand and Zélia looking on from a distance, indignant because it wasn’t yet Christmas Day. Euridice set the turkey loose on the patio and went inside to prepare the bowl of cachaça she’d give to the animal before slaughtering it. The alcohol would calm the bird and ensure its meat was tender. She closed the liquor cabinet and leaned against it. Her recipe book was done; she wanted to publish it, and – who knew? – maybe write another one. She’d have her own radio show, perhaps even a column in the Young Ladies’ Journal! She’d offer cooking and baking courses for newlywed women. Her wide eyes opened even wider. It was within reach; she need only speak with Antenor. Yes, she need only speak with him. Her eyes returned to their normal size. She took two swigs of cachaça before serving the bowl to the turkey.
On the Night of the Great Feast, Antenor returned home at five-thirty in the afternoon, as he always did. He kissed his wife on the forehead before heading for the bedroom to change his clothes. He put on his slippers and went back downstairs for dinner. Aromas even more extraordinary than those that typically escaped from Euridice’s kitchen wafted through the dining room, the bedrooms, and the house next door, prompting Zélia’s husband to complain: ‘Leftover soup, again?’
When he saw the Italian tablecloth and wine glasses reserved only for special occasions, Antenor was caught by surprise. When he saw the four-course meal – with his favorite turkey medallions with that brown thing on top – his surprise grew. But he was even more surprised with his wife’s lack of appetite. Euridice sat quietly by his side during the meal, and served dessert to the children in the kitchen. When Antenor was halfway through his citrus pavé she poured herself a glass of wine, took a gulp, and placed the notebook on the table.
‘Look at this, Antenor,’ she said, pushing the notebook towards her husband. ‘All my recipes are in here. Do you think I could publish it?’
Antenor set his plate aside. He burped discreetly and began leafing through the notebook. Euridice sat there motionless, listening to the rustling of pages, until her husband broke out in laughter.
‘Stop kidding around, woman. Who buys a book written by a housewife?’
Her husband’s laugh entered in one ear and never went out the other. She lowered her head, began fidgeting with the ruffles of her apron and tried to explain. She’d been cooking for years, and the dishes seemed to be quite good. But Antenor had no patience for chitchat. He returned to the matter he considered to be truly important.
‘Pass me the toothpicks.’
And Euridice, who had never known life beyond those walls, or beyond her parents’ house and neighborhood, figured her husband
was right. Antenor knew things. He had studied accounting, he was an employee of the Bank of Brazil, and discussed politics with other men. When she was working on her recipes, she had been certain she was doing something meaningful, but now, before her husband, everything seemed worthless. Publishing a book, having a radio show – all fantasy. The one with vision in the family was Antenor – a vision defined by everything he saw from the trolley on his way to work. But even this limited vision was greater than any that could come from Euridice, who never saw beyond the walls of her house, the local market, the grains in the cupboard, and the overwhelming emptiness that gnawed away inside her.
The rest of that evening was like any other. Mother and daughter cleaned the plates from the table while Antenor and Afonso went to the living room to listen to Radio Nacional. Euridice washed the dishes without looking up. A tear or two mixed in with the dishwater.
‘Is this good, Mommy?’
Standing on her tiptoes on top of a stool, Cecilia helped her mother dry the dishes.
‘Yes, Cecilia. One day you’ll make a terrific housewife.’
The last thing Euridice took from the table was her notebook. She ran her fingers over the cover, then raised her head and turned her eyes away. She tossed the notebook into the trash, where it landed atop bits of pavé.
Two hours later, Antenor was breathing loudly and Euridice tossed and turned among the bedsheets. That man, she knew, was a good husband.
Antenor never disappeared for days and never lifted a hand to her. He brought in a good salary, complained very little, and conversed with the children. The only thing he didn’t like was to be interrupted when he was listening to the radio or reading the newspaper, when he slept until late or when he took a nap after lunch. And as long as his slippers were set parallel to the foot of the bed, his coffee was nearly scalding, there weren’t any fatty bits in the milk, the children didn’t run through the house, the sofa pillows were arranged the right way, the windows were closed no later than four o’clock, no racket was made before seven in the morning, the radio was never too loud or too soft, the bathrooms smelled like eucalyptus and he never had to eat the same dish two meals running, he didn’t ask too much.
All right.
That wasn’t the entire truth.
It was nearly the entire truth.
The part of ‘nearly’ that Euridice didn’t like to remember had to do with the ever-so-sad night when she’d disappointed her husband by being unable to stain the bedsheet. If Euridice could have buried that night in the backyard, she would have, together with some chicken bones, which a neighbor had told her were good for the plants. Except that Antenor never allowed her to, and never allowed her to because of the Nights of Whiskey and Weeping.
Such nights occurred every two or three months. Antenor would arrive at home, kiss his wife on the forehead, go to change his clothes in the bedroom, and come back to the living room in his slippers. When Euridice and Cecilia began to set the dinner table, he would say: ‘Today I’m going to eat a bit later, woman. First, I’m going to have my whiskey.’ Euridice would shoot him a look that said You know what happens when you drink your whiskey, and Antenor would respond with a look that said I know what I’m doing when I drink my whiskey.
The truth is that during the Nights of Whiskey and Weeping the only thing Antenor knew he was doing was drinking whiskey. After the first few sips, strange things began to happen, and Antenor saw no other alternative than to take a stand against them.
For example: at the beginning of these nights, everything seemed to be just fine. Antenor was Antenor, Euridice was Euridice, and Afonso and Cecilia were two happy children who played catchball in the living room. Metamorphoses took place after the first glass, because Euridice – who rushed to put the kids to bed early – walked out of the living room as Euridice and upon her return became That slut who couldn’t save herself for her husband on their wedding night.
‘Who was he?’
With his body sunk into the armchair, a glass of whiskey in his hand, Antenor gazed at his wife like a man who’d been stabbed in the heart. It was no use asking, ‘Who do you mean, Antenor?’
‘Him, Euridice. The guy. I have the right to know his name!’
How Antenor suffered. He wept until his nose began to run. He was overcome with self-pity. He was a hard-working man, a serious man, who didn’t deserve to be married to a slut.
The metamorphoses continued. Afonso and Cecilia were no longer Antenor’s children but the children of God knows who, because a woman who hadn’t been chaste before marriage could very well continue to be unchaste – was that what a man like him deserved? Was it? ‘Tell me, Euridice, is that what I deserve? Why? Why?’
The only upside to these nights was that they never took long to fizzle out. They always ended with Antenor asleep on the sofa and Euridice taking the glass of whiskey from his hand, whispering: ‘Antenor, it’s this whiskey you drink that makes me unchaste.’
Yes, Antenor was a good husband. That’s what Euridice thought after the Night of the Great Feast, which turned into the Night of the Notebook Covered in Pavé. She usually regained her composure after convincing herself of her husband’s qualities, but not that night. Antenor’s burst of laughter wouldn’t allow her to sleep.
When the living-room clock struck three, she understood it was a summons. She got up, put on her slippers, walked to the kitchen and went through the trash. The notebook was covered in leftover pavé; a clump of papers made sticky by the whipped cream. The dampness had muddied the words on some pages, making it difficult to follow the steps of certain recipes. It was impossible, for example, to read the recipe for the chocolate truffles. But Euridice didn’t mind; she knew this recipe by heart. She had tried it for the first time at Cecilia’s first birthday party. After that, all the women on the block asked for the recipe, and soon Euridice’s sweet was making appearances at all the children’s birthday parties in Tijuca. But what did it matter whether she could see the recipe or not? She wasn’t even sure why she’d decided to rescue the notebook. Euridice pushed away her thoughts as she cleaned the cover of her black notebook with a rag. She stuck sheets of white office paper between the damp pages and stashed the book behind some encyclopedia volumes on the living-room shelf.
She walked back to the bedroom, and only then did she fall asleep.
Life went on. For the children, bananas and spaghetti. For her husband, food free of the texture of onions. For Euridice, chores that came to an end before they should, giving her time to sit on the sofa and admire her fingernail polish.
The months that followed the notebook’s burial behind the encyclopedia volumes were not easy. She tried to dedicate herself to her children, but this was a cross-eyed sort of dedication. With one eye she made sure Afonso and Cecilia were dressed for school, and with the other she asked: Can this really be all there is to life? With one eye she helped the children with their homework, and with the other asked: And when they no longer need me? With one eye she told the children stories, and with the other asked: Is there life beyond school uniforms, memorizing times tables and all these fables?
What helped her to withstand it all were the soap operas on the radio. Every day at three in the afternoon, Euridice sat in the armchair next to the radio, pressed its buttons, and stared at the bookshelf that stretched along an entire wall of the living room. Her eyes wandered across the spines, and beside the spines she saw Frederico and Armando, two friends who fell for a farmer’s daughter. She saw Betina, the mysterious woman who lost her memory and was found unconscious on the beach by a fisherman. She saw Maria Helena, so young, so single, and with child.
Euridice wrung her hands, wringing them for each character, her eyes fixed on the bookshelf – No, Armando, please, don’t kill Frederico! He’s your brother. Betina, don’t kiss Ricardo, he’s the one who killed your mother! Maria Helena, your son will conquer the world, don’t worry! Mama Dolores will make a great doctor of him. Things were going on inside that little
brown box, and nothing was ever going on in the life of Euridice Gusmao.
Life became even more eventless after the Gusmao-Campelo family acquired one of those marvels of that time and still to this day – a house maid. Maria das Dores arrived just in time to serve breakfast and left after washing the very last dinner plate, leaving behind her a trail of tidy beds, waxed floors, and sparkling bathrooms. Euridice continued to make trips to the market, the corner grocer, the butcher and the poultry shop, and to use any other excuse to get out of the house, as long as she could make it back at three in the afternoon to turn on the radio, wring her hands, and stare at the bookshelf.
The radio soap operas distracted Euridice for a while, but not for long. After a few months, the young woman would turn on the radio and stare at the bookshelf, but she no longer pondered whether Rita should marry Paulo or Ricardo, but instead, thought about the meaning of life.
She became taciturn. Every once in a while, she even gave a cross response to her husband.
‘Euridice, I see there are some little bits of curdled milk in my coffee.’
‘If you drank your coffee, you’d no longer see them.’
Maria das Dores – whose very name, Dores, meant suffering and destined her for a life of misfortune – only found her hardships multiplied. Euridice always found wrinkles in the bedspread, streaks on the floor and hairs in the shower. Maria didn’t mind arriving at work at seven in the morning and leaving at eight at night, she didn’t mind eating the same rice, beans, and stew every day, she didn’t mind ironing linen shirts in the tiny room in the back of the house, which in the summertime reached temperatures resembling high noon on the equator, as long as she could make it home every night to see her little ones. Maria was the single mother of three children, who ate the food she left in the oven and played with the toys she left out for them, and were old enough to take care of themselves at home, it no longer being necessary to chain them to the bed to make sure they didn’t get into the knife drawer or play with the stove.
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao Page 3