After the dissolution, Marcos went to live in his second cousin’s apartment. It was a penthouse in Copacabana with art nouveau gates, which gave the young man the impression he was in prison. Perhaps it was hormones, perhaps it was nerves, perhaps it was the new responsibilities of a life together. The fact is that Maria Ester changed drastically after the marriage. She let her mustache grow, began to burp out loud, and sat just like Buddha amid the sofa cushions, ordering around the maid and her husband. Marcos’s only consolation was to spend time out of the house. His father arranged a job for him in government that required absolutely nothing from him. He passed his free hours in an office downtown, looking at his notebook and redrawing the lines for his games of tic-tac-toe. Every now and then, he thought about the son he would never see, calculating his age without knowing whether he was doing the math in order to imagine his son, or the time he had spent away from Guida.
Guida, for her part, needed to tell Antonio about Marcos. She spent days wringing her hands and walking from one side of the bedroom to the other, trying to determine the best way to reveal the truth but finding no response in any of the walls against which she almost banged her head every few seconds. She asked Euridice for advice, and her sister ended her agony with a single phrase: ‘The best way of telling the truth is to tell the truth.’
One Thursday morning, Guida took Chico to school. Then she walked to the stationery store, to speak with her fiancé. The worry in the young woman’s eyes made Antonio send his assistant Tinoco home early and lock the door to the store, displaying a sign that read Back soon.
The two of them sat in the back of the store. It was while looking at the floor and wringing her hands that Guida told Antonio the truth. Yes, she had been a wild, crazy child: she had fled home at the most tender of ages to marry a man who had sold himself as a good provider. This good provider was nothing more than an opportunist who abandoned Guida with her son still in her womb, leaving a trail of destruction that began in her heart and extended to all the material comforts stolen from the daily life of the young single mother and her tender child. She had to support her new family on her own, and that’s how she came to work behind the cash register at a haberdashery in Rio Comprido.
Guida raised her eyes and looked straight at her boyfriend.
‘And that’s why, my love, we cannot marry. I was already married; I can’t commit myself again. I promise to be your devoted companion for the rest of my days. But we can never step foot in a church or before a justice of the peace.’
Antonio’s face relaxed the more Guida spoke. The woman he loved could never, ever, marry him. They would never have a formal commitment. He wouldn’t have to sign papers, he wouldn’t have to make promises in front of a judge. He wouldn’t have to hear the implicit threats in the priest’s homily, when the holy man said that what God brings together can never, ever, be undone for the rest of our lives. For the first time in weeks he no longer felt a terrible itch. He took Guida’s hands and with the widest smile he’d ever given he said that yes, he agreed to never marry her. They embraced and Guida didn’t mind dirtying her face with the cornmeal plaster that Antonio wore on his neck and which no longer had any use.
In May of that year, Antonio and Guida announced to the neighborhood that they would marry. They would take their vows in Portugal, according to the wishes of Guida’s grandmother. It seemed this grandmother was a very religious woman, who had once knelt for months on end, rubbing her knees raw as she asked the Virgin Mary for a second husband for her granddaughter, one as good as the first had been. Now that her request had been granted it was necessary to carry out the marriage in the city of Fátima, named for Our Lady to whom Guida’s grandmother was devoted.
The trip to Portugal went through a series of changes, none of them announced by Antonio and Guida. They traded Europe for Brazil’s countryside, and the ceremony in a church for two weeks in a hotel. They barely left the bedroom, so there was no need to worry about a possible encounter with anyone they knew.
Not everyone in the neighborhood believed the story they’d told. Some women expressed surprise upon discovering the matchmaking capabilities of Our Lady of Fátima, who had up until that point shown more concern for the great questions facing humanity, like an end to war, or the Day of Judgment. Others were suspicious about a wedding without guests – not even Antonio’s mother could be present. Many of them were indignant at the groom’s cruelty. How could a forty-nine-year-old man abandon his mother for so many days, leaving her to the care of two nurses who worked in shifts so that she was never alone?
There were many questions in those days, but no one in the neighborhood managed to disprove the story told by Antonio and Guida. They did arrive at a consensus on one thing: the enormous ring Guida wore on her left hand was made of solid gold.
Chapter 12
No one knows for sure what came first. These were facts that were blurred over time and space, and later were diluted in the memory of the participants. One witness would say it happened like this, another would say it happened like that, and the only consensus was that the events did in fact take place.
And this is what occurred: Antenor passed all tests of resistance, ability, and political maneuvers thrown at him by the upper brass of the Bank of Brazil. His desk went through transformations imperceptible to the naked eye but visible after some years. It gradually grew bigger and moved to areas with wide-open spaces near large windows.
After decades of dedication and advancement he landed at a desk in an office of his own, which received the early morning sun through the five neoclassic windows of the bank headquarters. A smaller office, occupied by a secretary in black stilettos, separated Antenor from the other public servants, who at this point were more public than he was.
Antenor’s promotion to vice-president hadn’t been big news in itself. He had always believed he was predestined to occupy a leather chair in a room decorated with Persian rugs. That appeared to be the natural order of things. He was merely following the river current, a river that had never had any undertows, since the day he’d begun memorizing his multiplication tables.
It was around this time that Antenor began to think he knew everything. The best shoes were to be found at Casa Aguiar, a GE radio was better than an Emerson. Minancora cream was good for anything and Leite de Rosas was useless. It didn’t matter what anyone else said, their words were transformed into a buzz later interrupted by Antenor, who would say, ‘Don’t interrupt me! GE is better because that’s how it is.’ Afonso was an excellent student, Antenor knew this. It was the grades he received that were incorrect. Cecilia was an exemplary young lady whose lipstick was smudged because a friend had bumped up against her face. Euridice was a fulfilled woman absent of worries, thanks to him, Antenor, who never allowed the spoon to touch the bottom of the food jars. They had always had abundance, they would always have stability, and for that reason, his wife was happy.
Euridice’s eyes wandered until they landed on her husband. He was a lost cause. Later they simply wandered, as she sat in front of the bookshelf. The woman’s melancholy state, which had improved with her sister’s presence, worsened when Guida went to live with Antonio. The house fell silent once more, and once again there were more hours in the day than there ought to be. Antenor had work, Maria had her cleaning, her children had their whole lives. And Euridice, what did she have?
Afternoons in the living room, facing the bookshelf. Now and then Maria poked her head out of the kitchen to look at her boss, her feet stretching out over her slippers, arms resting across her belly, a wooden spoon lolling from one hand. Euridice didn’t even notice, or pretended not to notice. The maid would walk back into the kitchen, shaking her head. When Cecilia and Afonso arrived, Euridice pretended not to see, looking from side to side. When Antenor arrived, she pretended even harder. She didn’t want to give her husband explanations.
Perhaps it had been the repetition. Years and years seated in the same p
lace, facing the emptiness embodied by the bookshelf. Or perhaps it happened because it was meant to. The fact is that during that new season of empty gazes, Euridice began to feel different. It was a weak sensation in the beginning, almost like an itch. She noticed that it only appeared when she sat there in the same place, eyes fixed on the same spot.
Euridice began to sit at her post less to gaze at the nothingness and more to wait for that sensation to arrive. The sensation would appear, and in the midst of the silence it found room to grow. It grew until Euridice could see it, and Euridice saw that the sensation was exactly that: the sensation was the gift of observation.
Euridice could see the bookshelf for the bookshelf.
She saw the bookshelf.
She rose to her feet and passed her right hand along the spines of the books. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert. Gilberto Freyre, Caio Prado Jr., Antonio Candido. Virginia Woolf and George Eliot, Simone de Beauvoir and Jane Austen. Machado de Assis and Lima Barreto, Hemingway and Steinbeck. Some of those books she had read and already forgotten, others she had bought and forgotten to read. A few others were added by Antenor, who bought books the same way others buy light bulbs: they are always good to have around, just in case.
It was a decent library. She sat back down on the sofa in the company of a book, and for the first time in a long time she directed her full attention to the pages before her. Later she grabbed another, and another, and began connecting the imaginary dots that made all of those texts one.
When she’d finished reading, Euridice put on one of her dresses and went downtown to buy a typewriter. Returning home, she cleared some space on the desk in the study that had until then been Antenor’s. She sent Maria to find another place for the accounting texts her husband had stubbornly held on to since he’d turned eighteen. She placed the typewriter on the desk and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the letters. Tack-tack-tack is lovely on the ears, Maria thought to herself. As long as the sound could be heard, no one in the house would sit staring at the bookshelf.
Tack-tack-tack was the sound that defined those times. In the beginning, the sounds came out more slowly, a tack here and a tack there. Later they were transformed into a constant noise, a tack-tack-tack-tack-tack that filled the entire afternoon, so constant that its noise became nearly imperceptible.
Beyond writing, Euridice found herself another function for her hands, which was to light the cigarettes she would sneak into the first-floor bathroom. Each cigarette was a cry of freedom that was complete in itself and left no tracks. She soon had yellow teeth, and breath full of mint mixed with something Antenor couldn’t quite identify. She also acquired a sure expression, which came from the combination of the puffs of smoke and the books she read.
The only person who knew about her cigarettes was Maria. She saw her boss lock herself in the bathroom, smelled the cigarette smoke leaving the ventilation window, and heard the sprays of perfume Euridice launched into the air, to fool herself into thinking she had fooled Maria. The maid couldn’t have cared less. In fact, she thought that it had taken a long time for Don’Euridice to find a form of escape. When she herself was upset about something – for instance, my husband showed up, stole our money, and began whacking the children with the broom – she used the bottles from Antenor’s bar to alleviate her frustrations. Maria avoided the Ballantine’s – she knew Antenor continued drinking it during the Nights of Whiskey and Weeping – and instead explored the liquors that sat there like statues. When the alcohol in the bottle became low, she would replenish it with water and sugar so Antenor wouldn’t take notice, and life would continue, easier to face.
As soon as Euridice heard the front door open when the children returned from school she would remove the sheet of paper from the typewriter and lock it away with the others in the desk drawer. Then she would go to the living room and ask her children how their day had been.
‘It was good,’ Afonso would say.
‘I got a B on my math test,’ Cecilia announced one time. ‘The teacher said if I keep it up, I’m not going to have any trouble passing my college entrance exams. Luiza showed up with a French manicure. She said there’s a salon on Rua Mariz e Barros that does them that way. Can you buy me the new Tom Jobim album? I really want it.’
Antenor would arrive soon thereafter. He kissed his wife on the forehead, went to the bedroom to change his clothes, came back to the living room in his slippers. The family ate dinner together, one of them asking to pass the rice bowl, the other commenting on how hot it was that day.
Everyone knew about Euridice’s new routine but no one dared ask what she writing so much about. It was on an October night, when Euridice had already progressed quite far with her writing, that she let slip, between one forkful and another, the bit of information that sated the family’s curiosity.
‘I’m writing a book. It’s about the history of invisibility.’
Everyone continued eating in silence. No one bothered to ask any more about the book, if she wanted to publish it, what it was about, or who she was to decide to write just like that. They all held the conviction that Euridice was only to be taken seriously when announcing that dinner was ready or that it was time to wake up for school. Her projects were confined to the universe of that house. Or perhaps that of the neighborhood, if the project in question was making cheese sandwiches for a birthday party.
Euridice didn’t let herself worry. This not worrying was part of her new phase. She spent her days locked in the study, and if the sound of the typewriter fell silent, it was because books were lying open over the desk, with Euridice’s head square in between them. Now and then Maria heard someone talking and poked her head out of the kitchen to see if the visitor wanted a coffee. When she made it to the living room she would find Euridice talking to herself, behind the study door. She would let out a sigh before returning to the kitchen.
It was with her books that Euridice conversed. ‘This here seems brilliant, I can’t agree with this argument, this paragraph has everything to do with this other book, just look,’ she would say, addressing the pages before her. She underlined passages, wrote in the margins, and sometimes abused the exclamation point.
Now and then Euridice would catch the bus to the National Library. She would open the archive catalog, jot down a few numbers, and spend the day between stacks of books. She made notes in a new ruled notebook that Antonio was only too happy to sell her. Late in the afternoon she would return home, walking to the bus stop and clearing a path between the famished pigeons in the square in front of the library. But she saw neither the pigeons, the path, nor the bus. Euridice could only see the words that she’d read, as she looked distractedly through the bus window.
The only one who seemed to understand Euridice’s eccentricities was Chico. During Sunday lunches, when the Gusmao-Campelos welcomed Guida, Antonio, Chico, and Eulália into their home (this last one only appeared when she wasn’t sick, and she was never sick when Euridice was making salt cod), Chico went up to the study with his aunt. No one heard much of their conversations because they were conducted behind closed doors, and because no one was all that interested.
What caused consternation during Euridice’s new phase was her expression: that gaze of hers now seemed to pierce right through people, as though stealing their secrets. But as long as the household routine was maintained, as long as Afonso got a haircut and his uniform was clean, as long as Cecilia’s skirt was the right length and she didn’t laugh too loud, as long as Antenor’s slippers and the couch pillows were in the right place, Euridice could have whatever look on her face she very well pleased.
The Gusmao-Campelos had a life that was normal at last.
But that isn’t the full truth.
It’s nearly the full truth.
Antenor was still engaged in his mission to become a cuckold. He still drank more than he ought to on the Nights of Whiskey and Weeping, he continued to blame his wife for her nights of lust prior to their wedding. ‘Who was he?�
�� Antenor would ask, and Euridice would always respond that he never existed. But now she’d come to think that such nights would have been a good thing, for her and for Antenor.
Guida was present on one of those drinking nights. She sent Maria home as soon as she heard Antenor start to yell and did the dishes herself. She was drying the plates when Euridice appeared in the kitchen doorway, head hung low.
‘Antenor does these things. He thinks I wasn’t a virgin when we married because I didn’t bleed that first night.’
Guida continued drying the dishes.
‘That happened to me, too.’
‘What?’
‘The same thing happened to me. There wasn’t any stain on the sheet, but Marcos didn’t much care.’ She stopped for a second, looked straight ahead. ‘We were so in love in those days.’
Euridice eyed her sister the same way she eyed an interesting book. Then she went to put the silverware away.
Euridice’s writings lay in the desk drawer, stacked serenely in the darkness. The sunlight only snuck in once a day, when Euridice opened the drawer to add the pages she’d just written. There was hardly any noise, besides that of the typewriter. Despite the quietness of that life, those seemingly harmless pages had the near-magic power granted to certain sheets of paper: that of being able to disturb a great many people.
These great many people disturbed by Euridice’s writing were the other women in the neighborhood. In the minds of Zélia’s followers, Euridice’s latest antics went beyond boldness – they were an insult. Who was she to read difficult authors and write down anything besides cake recipes?
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao Page 15