The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao

by Martha Batalha

  The first time Isabelle appeared in the stationery store, she had to face the curled lips of Dona Eulália, who during those years only left the cash register once a day to use the bathroom. But when Antonio’s mother learned about the girl’s family, the curled lips transformed into a smile, to later curl again to say Bonjour, comment allez-vous? À bientôt, à bientôt!

  Jean Bouquier was a man with many contos de réis in his bank account, not only because he knew how to sell but because he knew what not to buy. From his front door to the street, his house was one of the most luxurious on the Rua Conde de Bonfim. From the front door to the back it was one of the most frugal. He examined the stamps on each letter he received, and those without an ink-stamp were unglued from the envelope to be reused for a future missive. His shoes passed through a peculiar metamorphosis, which allowed Jean to wear the same pair he’d had since he’d turned eighteen: he would send the soles to be redone from time to time, and if the sole was in good shape but the shoe worn, he kept the sole to make a new pair. The coffee grains used one day were reused the next, and the few times he ate at restaurants he returned his plate as if it had been licked clean. Jean wasn’t there to send back grains of rice he’d already paid for.

  The only excesses were his trips to Paris, taken as a sort of title on investment. Jean had three daughters to marry off, and the back-and-forth between the two continents increased the chances of a good marriage. Besides, accommodation in Paris was free. The family stayed in the house of Jean’s brother, Jacques Bouquier, who also owned a bookstore. A favor that Jean never had to repay. ‘No, brother, you don’t want to expose your family to the dangers of Brazil. Rio is a filthy place, with fetid alleys full of stale air. When a breeze does arrive, it’s only to spread mysterious illnesses that wipe out foreigners. A true horror!’ he would say.

  It wasn’t exactly a romance that occurred between Isabelle and Antonio. It was a spark, lit one rainy Wednesday when the girl was instructed by Eulália to look for a notepad with Antonio in the stockroom. ‘Those in the window have faded in the sun, show the young lady the new models that arrived last week. Tinoco put them on the shelf in the back,’ Eulália said.

  The stockroom’s single lamp was not bright enough to illuminate the entire space, and the noise of the rain on the rooftop only increased the sense of seclusion. As Antonio showed his client the pile of notepads, Isabelle’s arm touched his, and never stopped touching it. Antonio felt his stomach do a somersault and a wave of heat climb up his neck. Seconds later the heat flash became a terrible itch, one of those that nails can’t resolve. What Isabelle felt remains a mystery. During that infinite moment in which their arms touched the young woman continued looking at the block of notepads with a peculiar sort of interest, as though it were the military band playing in the park, or an opera at the municipal theater.

  Antonio didn’t have time to ask himself why his stomach was doing a somersault, or why his neck itched so much. Isabelle also could not hear her father’s complaining, for he would certainly protest the purchase of a notepad given there was so much paper at home.

  The day after the touching of arms, Jean Bouquier suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on the left side of his body. When he understood it was necessary to hire a manager for the bookstore, that he would have to pay for the doctor visits, for the vials of medicine and the nurses, he did the math and thought it a better deal to die.

  His widow and daughters wailed throughout the funeral. They were tears of rage. Jean Bouquier left his fortune to his brother, and just a few contos de réis to his wife. Now she would have to make her own decisions. Beginning with the choice of whether to spend the inheritance on five years of life without want, like the rich woman she had been until then, but who hadn’t yet had the chance to really enjoy life. Or to use the money to live the rest of her days frugally, like the years she’d spent with her husband.

  When Isabelle arrived with red eyes in the stationery store, the news of the death and the will of Jean Bouquier had already made the rounds through the neighborhood. Dona Eulália didn’t have a trace of French on her lips and the girl understood that she would never return to seek out a notepad in the stockroom.

  Time passed. Antonio’s neck was cured of the wounds caused by the itching. His teeth yellowed, his chest was soon void of muscle. Some of the houses in Tijuca were demolished and gave way to small buildings three stories high. Dona Eulália left her post behind the cash register to spend her days seated next to the radio.

  One Friday afternoon Eulália appeared in the stationery store with a red-headed young woman wearing a dress of ivory-colored silk and fat pearl earrings.

  ‘Antonio, look who’s here. Henriqueta!’

  Henriqueta was a distant cousin on his father’s side. So distant, in fact, that her side of the family still had some money. She had short hair, narrow eyes, and an awkward smile, the kind that asks permission to express itself.

  ‘You remember Henriqueta, don’t you? From the house in Glória, where we used to spend Christmas? From the picnic along the Trail of the Silk-Cotton Trees where we celebrated your brother’s birthday? You remember, don’t you?’

  Antonio didn’t remember the picnic. But he remembered a Christmas tree that touched the ceiling of a huge salon, his father intercepting the waiters serving champagne, and a girl who was taller than him, who kicked his shins with her orthopedic boots.

  During the ensuing decades, Henriqueta had corrected her flat feet and developed into a pretty young woman. Her prettiness should have disappeared already; in those times prettiness was not something that women kept after the age of thirty. But Henriqueta was one of the rare women of that time who refused to grow old, retaining a certain youth in her face uncommon for her age. She had everything she needed to be happy, but she was desperate. She regretted having been too choosy at a time when women shouldn’t have that luxury. She had spent her youth refusing fiancés. One was too tall, another was too short, the other was too ugly, another even uglier, and all of them – all of them – too boring. She discarded each one in turn, and when two or three white hairs appeared on her head they discarded her.

  Faced with the possibility of spending the rest of her life like her two unmarried aunts, who filled their days with arguments and egg custard, Henriqueta’s independent streak was broken. She got it in her head that she needed to marry, or else she wasn’t Henriqueta Castro Lima. And exactly because she was Henriqueta Castro Lima, she knew it wouldn’t be difficult to acquire a husband. She had a coat of arms in her pocket, an inheritance in the bank, and an enormous desire to be happy. She would find her companion, and she knew she would be able to fall in love with the man her money could buy.

  True love was what existed at the moment between Eulália and Henriqueta. It seemed Antonio’s cousin was in need of a cozy nest. She abandoned the enormous salons of her mansion to spend whole afternoons in the tiny living room in Antonio’s apartment. Even from the hall he could hear the chuckles the two shared. He would arrive home to find empty coffee cups and cake crumbs on the center table.

  During the long talks between the women, many ancestors were brought back to life. Beginning with Onofre the Useless, who was redeemed from his ethylic sins and raised to the position of a fated martyr. It wasn’t for a lack of character but an excess of adversities that his life ended amid distilled beverages. The two women spent many hours trying to discover links between them to justify the long afternoons spent talking. But the only link was he who opened the door at quarter past six each afternoon, who kept his head down after saying goodnight, and who walked to his room in silence.

  ‘Antonio, son, come sit with us!’

  He would thank her for the invitation but reply that he was busy. He needed to add some new stamps, recently arrived from overseas, to his collection. He only left the bedroom when the living room fell quiet, and to listen to the praise showered on his cousin Henriqueta during dinner. She had traveled the world, and had a house in Petrópoli
s. She had studied in Porto, and had a Ford 1934.

  Antonio’s discomfort only grew. He would leave his spoon on the table to relieve himself of an itch that began at his waist, climbed up through his chest, and settled on his back.

  Antonio lost a lot of weight during those weeks. He frequently abandoned his dinner halfway through, pulling off strips of skin from his neck. Dona Eulália raised her eyes to the heavens and asked the Virgin Mary to relieve his discomfort, and then lowered them again to prepare the mixture of Minancora cream and cornstarch that she applied to her son’s wounds. Later she switched the cornstarch for talcum powder, and then the talcum powder for wheat flour. The wheat flour for Rugol cream, the Rugol cream for Leite de Rosas moisturizer, and the Leite de Rosas for an emulsion of camphor oil with cornmeal.

  One March afternoon, Henriqueta was in the living room with Eulália when the Tijuca sky grew dark. The rains everyone had been waiting for all month were ready to fall in a single downpour. Henriqueta jumped to her feet with fright, Eulália told her to sit down. Imagine if she let the young woman leave at a time like that, when the streets were about to become rivers. Henriqueta insisted on leaving, Eulália insisted she stay, and after just a few minutes of this game they both knew that the guest wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  ‘You’ll eat dinner with us today.’

  It was the perfect opportunity to turn the affair into a love triangle. But candles were lit only because the electricity failed. The dinner was for two only because Eulália announced she had a headache. And the man on the other side of the table was there only because he had to be. Henriqueta understood all this very quickly. As quick as the lightning rods that lit up the living room and her cousin, who never took his hands off his neck. She rose from the table, walked up to Antonio, and kissed his cheek. A kiss that didn’t cause Antonio any excitement. It was as if he was being kissed by a sister.

  The following day the wounds on Antonio’s neck began to heal. A few weeks later, Henriqueta took a ship to New York, where she intended to spend a few months. She had heard that in that city, women over thirty lived as though they were forever twenty years old. She never returned to Brazil.

  In the years that followed, mother and son would lead a peaceful existence. Eulália with her radio and her medicines, Antonio with his papers and Euridice. Euridice, whom he followed from afar and admired so much, and who, he accepted tranquilly, would never be his.

  Everything changed that winter. Antonio began to stutter before Guida, and Eulália’s health began to worsen again. Her blood pressure fell, her blood sugar rose – and how was it possible to live with that strange noise coming from her intestine? Her days were numbered.

  ‘Take advantage of the little time I have left,’ she would say to Antonio from beneath the covers.

  That was a half-truth, since no one’s day of death appears on the calendar. Or perhaps it’s better said that it was a half-lie. There were two things that Eulália had no intention of ever doing. One was to die. The other was to allow her son to marry a bride she hadn’t chosen.

  But Antonio, perhaps for having tired of his mother the professional complainer, perhaps because he needed something beyond stamps and stationery, stopped listening to Eulália with two ears and an open heart. He took her temperature, measured her blood pressure, doled out her medicine, and cooked her rice without salt, without seasoning, without fat, and almost without rice, so frugal was he. Then he would wash his hands, change his clothes, and go out dressed up to the nines to meet Guida.

  Guida Gusmao. Who was that woman? She was sister to Euridice, the woman Eulália had never liked, but who she had never taken the time to sniff out, because married women gave off no odors capable of waking Eulália’s nose. She had never seen the young woman but had received detailed reports from her friend Zélia. Guida painted her nails red and had a teenage son. She wore make-up even to go to the open-air market and never stepped foot in a church. She walked about with her breast fuller than a Christmas turkey, as though it were bigger even than herself, and certainly bigger than that of the other women in the neighborhood. She was as affected as her sister, only in a different way. Euridice was affected because she enjoyed living in her world, and Guida was affected because she enjoyed being the most beautiful in our world.

  Guida was an adversary worthy of Eulália’s bitterness. If this Guida thinks she’s going to have anything to do with my Antonio beyond long walks she’s got another think coming, Eulália would spend her days saying to herself. Antonio will never leave me, he will never leave this apartment, Eulália repeated to herself.

  Eulália’s mantra was similar to another, this one coming from a few blocks up the street. Guida had already taken note of Eulália’s plans for domination but was certain that one day Antonio would be hers. ‘He’s going to be mine, all mine,’ she would say. ‘Mine alone,’ she repeated.

  It wasn’t long before Eulália’s illnesses worsened and Guida’s charms multiplied. One night, soon after that exchange of practicalities at the Colombo cafe, Guida and Antonio were out sharing a fondue in a candlelit restaurant when the waiter interrupted the couple.

  ‘Senhor Antonio Lacerda?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s your mother on the telephone.’

  ‘The end is nigh, the end is nigh,’ Eulália cried at the other end of the line. ‘I’m full of chest spasms, I don’t know how to breathe anymore. I only have a few hours left, or minutes – minutes! Come see me one last time, and call the priest to administer extreme unction.’

  Antonio flew through stoplights, barreled into the sacristy to wake the priest, flew up to the apartment three steps at a time, and found his mother knitting on the sofa.

  ‘I could have died of emphysema,’ she said without looking up.

  While Eulália nearly died once a month, Guida became younger and more beautiful with each day. Her breasts looked as though they wouldn’t fit inside her dresses. Her legs grew even longer, and her smiles grew so much wider that whenever he looked at that little space between her teeth, Antonio even forgot about Euridice. These moments of amnesia grew more and more common in proportion to the degree that Guida showed Antonio the true meaning of life, which he discovered was connected to the undoing of the clasps of a bra.

  There with those breasts – and those legs, and that rear – Antonio forgot about Euridice, forgot about his mother, forgot about the itching. When Guida began to talk practicalities, using words like commitment, and Antonio changed the subject, Guida denied him access to those parts of her body, and the man went wild. He forgot even more things, like the terrible consequences of asking Guida to marry him. The words gushed forth from his mouth, leaving him full of both regret and relief.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Guida replied, toppling on to the poor man with a hug.

  She was a winner.

  After Guida said yes yes yes she furrowed her brow. She was still married to Marcos, and to commit to another man she needed first to request the dissolution of their marriage.

  In the years that followed her abandonment she had spent hours going over every minute of her marriage, trying to find some sign that she had done something wrong, or many things wrong, to make her husband run away like that. She never found a reason and always arrived at the same conclusion: besides being an asshole, a creep, a maggot, and a good-for-nothing, Marcos was a weak and ill-prepared individual, and for this he deserved the nickname Sissy.

  Marcos the Sissy, she understood, was in no condition to lead an independent life. He had returned to Botafogo. He must have been behind the velvet curtains when I showed up at the house looking for him, Guida thought to herself. That was the truth. Marcos was behind the curtains, and he stayed there as Guida received the news from the doorman that he hadn’t returned to his parents’ house. When the young woman had made it halfway back to the trolley station, Marcos pulled back the curtain. He had the impression he saw Guida slightly doubled over, and for a few seconds thought about running to prote
ct her. The seconds passed, and Marcos decided to have a coffee.

  If he had returned to the mansion in Botafogo, it was to the mansion that Guida ought to address the letter requesting the dissolution of their marriage. She thought long and hard about what to write, but every time she thought she’d had a good idea it lost its meaning when she tried to put it to paper. She decided to write only what was necessary: ‘I want to sign papers to dissolve our marriage.’ It was all that needed to be said.

  But as soon as she picked up the pen to write it, Guida was overtaken with an unusual eloquence and filled four leaves of office paper with the speed of a medium. She unloaded everything – the hardships she’d suffered, her husband’s lack of manliness, the tough years in Estácio. She saved the news of their child for the climax. ‘His name is Francisco Gusmao. He has inherited your eyes, but nothing else.’

  Guida’s letter arrived just in time. Marcos was also looking for her, for the very same reason. He wanted to make official his union with a second cousin named Maria Ester.

  Some weeks later, Marcos and Guida met to sign the papers in front of a judge. It was, in reality, a non-meeting. Marcos saw from the room the contours of his ex-wife and directed his gaze to everything but Guida. Guida only took her eyes off the judge to sign the documents. When Marcos grabbed the pen, it still carried the warmth of Guida’s hand. He trembled as he signed his name.