They were embarrassed; they muttered to each other. Those sitting in the grass near Novinha glanced at her and glanced away, eager to see how she was reacting, painfully aware of the fact that the Speaker was right, that they didn’t like her, that they at once feared and pitied her.
“Tell me, is this the man you knew? Spent more hours in the bars than anybody, and yet never made any friends there, never the camaraderie of alcohol for him. You couldn’t even tell how much he had been drinking. He was surly and short-tempered before he had a drink, and surly and short-tempered just before he passed out—nobody could tell the difference. You never heard of him having a friend, and none of you was ever glad to see him come into a room. That’s the man you knew, most of you. Cão. Hardly a man at all.”
Yes, they thought. That was the man. Now the initial shock of his indecorum had faded. They were accustomed to the fact that the Speaker meant to soften nothing in his story. Yet they were still uncomfortable. For there was a note of irony, not in his voice, but inherent in his words. “Hardly a man at all,” he had said, but of course he was a man, and they were vaguely aware that while the Speaker understood what they thought of Marcão, he didn’t necessarily agree.
“A few others, the men from the foundry in Bairro das Fabricadoras, knew him as a strong arm they could trust. They knew he never said he could do more than he could do, and always did what he said he would do. You could count on him. So within the walls of the foundry he had their respect. But when you walked out the door you treated him like everybody else—ignored him, thought little of him.”
The irony was pronounced now. Though the Speaker gave no hint in his voice—still the simple, plain speech he began with—the men who worked with him felt it wordlessly inside themselves. We should not have ignored him as we did. If he had worth inside the foundry, then perhaps we should have valued him outside, too.
“Some of you also know something else that you never talk about much. You know that you gave him the name Cão long before he earned it. You were ten, eleven, twelve years old. Little boys. He grew so tall. It made you ashamed to be near him. And afraid, because he made you feel helpless.”
Dom Cristão murmured to his wife, “They came for gossip, and he gives them responsibility.”
“So you handled him the way human beings always handle things that are bigger than they are,” said the Speaker. “You banded together. Like hunters trying to bring down a mastodon. Like bullfighters trying to weaken a giant bull to prepare it for the kill. Pokes, taunts, teases. Keep him turning around. He can’t guess where the next blow is coming from. Prick him with barbs that stay under his skin. Weaken him with pain. Madden him. Because big as he is, you can make him do things. You can make him yell. You can make him run. You can make him cry. See? He’s weaker than you after all.”
Ela was angry. She had meant him to accuse Marcão, not excuse him. Just because he had a tough childhood didn’t give him the right to knock Mother down whenever he felt like it.
“There’s no blame in this. You were children then, and children are cruel without knowing better. You wouldn’t do that now. But now that I’ve reminded you, you can easily see an answer. You called him a dog, and so he became one. For the rest of his life. Hurting helpless people. Beating his wife. Speaking so cruelly and abusively to his son Miro that he drove the boy out of his house. He was acting out the way you treated him, becoming what you told him that he was.”
You’re a fool, thought Bishop Peregrino. If people only react to the way that others treat them, then nobody is responsible for anything. If your sins are not your own to choose, then how can you repent?
As if he heard the Bishop’s silent argument, the Speaker raised a hand and swept away his own words. “But the easy answer isn’t true. Your torments didn’t make him violent—they made him sullen. And when you grew out of tormenting him, he grew out of hating you. He wasn’t one to bear a grudge. His anger cooled and turned into suspicion. He knew you despised him; he learned to live without you. In peace.”
The Speaker paused a moment, and then gave voice to the question they silently were asking. “So how did he become the cruel man you knew him to be? Think a moment. Who was it who tasted his cruelty? His wife. His children. Some people beat their wife and children because they lust for power, but are too weak or stupid to win power in the world. A helpless wife and children, bound to such a man by need and custom and, bitterly enough, love, are the only victims he is strong enough to rule.”
Yes, thought Ela, stealing a glance at her mother. This is what I wanted. This is why I asked him to speak Father’s death.
“There are men like that,” said the Speaker, “but Marcos Ribeira wasn’t one of them. Think a moment. Did you ever hear of him striking any of his children? Ever? You who worked with him—did he ever try to force his will on you? Seem resentful when things didn’t go his way? Marcão was not a weak and evil man. He was a strong man. He didn’t want power. He wanted love. Not control. Loyalty.”
Bishop Peregrino smiled grimly, the way a duelist might salute a worthy opponent. You walk a twisted path, Speaker, circling around the truth, feinting at it. And when you strike, your aim will be deadly. These people came for entertainment, but they’re your targets; you will pierce them to the heart.
“Some of you remember an incident,” said the Speaker. “Marcos was maybe thirteen, and so were you. Taunting him on the grassy hillside behind the school. You attacked more viciously than usual. You threatened him with stones, whipped him with capim blades. You bloodied him a little, but he bore it. Tried to evade you. Asked you to stop. Then one of you struck him hard in the belly, and it hurt him more than you ever imagined, because even then he was already sick with the disease that finally killed him. He hadn’t yet become accustomed to his fragility and pain. It felt like death to him. He was cornered. You were killing him. So he struck at you.”
How did he know? thought half a dozen men. It was so long ago. Who told him how it was? It was out of hand, that’s all. We never meant anything, but when his arm swung out, his huge fist, like the kick of a cabra—he was going to hurt me—
“It could have been any one of you that fell to the ground. You knew then that he was even stronger than you feared. What terrified you most, though, was that you knew exactly the revenge that you deserved. So you called for help. And when the teachers came, what did they see? One little boy on the ground, crying, bleeding. One large man-sized child with a few scratches here and there, saying I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. And a half-dozen others saying, He just hit him. Started killing him for no reason. We tried to stop him but Cão is so big. He’s always picking on the little kids.”
Little Grego was caught up in the story. “Mentirosos!” he shouted. They were lying! Several people nearby chuckled. Quara shushed him.
“So many witnesses,” said the Speaker. “The teachers had no choice but to believe the accusation. Until one girl stepped forward and coldly informed them that she had seen it all. Marcos was acting to protect himself from a completely unwarranted, vicious, painful attack by a pack of boys who were acting far more like cães, like dogs, than Marcos Ribeira ever did. Her story was instantly accepted as the truth. After all, she was the daughter of Os Venerados.”
Grego looked at his mother with glowing eyes, then jumped up and announced to the people around him, “A mamãe o libertou!” Mama saved him! People laughed, turned around and looked at Novinha. But she held her face expressionless, refusing to acknowledge their momentary affection for her child. They looked away again, offended.
“Novinha,” said the Speaker. “Her cold manner and bright mind made her just as much an outcast among you as Marcão. None of you could think of a time when she had ever made a friendly gesture toward any of you. And here she was, saving Marcão. Well, you knew the truth. She wasn’t saving Marcão—she was preventing you from getting away with something.”
They nodded and smiled knowingly, those people whose overtures of friends
hip she had just rebuffed. That’s Dona Novinha, the Biologista, too good for any of the rest of us.
“Marcos didn’t see it that way. He had been called an animal so often that he almost believed it. Novinha showed him compassion, like a human being. A pretty girl, a brilliant child, the daughter of the holy Venerados, always aloof as a goddess, she had reached down and blessed him and granted his prayer. He worshipped her. Six years later he married her. Isn’t that a lovely story?”
Ela looked at Miro, who raised an eyebrow at her. “Almost makes you like the old bastard, doesn’t it?” said Miro dryly.
Suddenly, after a long pause, the Speaker’s voice erupted, louder than ever before. It startled them, awoke them. “Why did he come to hate her, to beat her, to despise their children? And why did she endure it, this strong-willed, brilliant woman? She could have stopped the marriage at any moment. The Church may not allow divorce, but there’s always desquite, and she wouldn’t be the first person in Milagre to quit her husband. She could have taken her suffering children and left him. But she stayed. The Mayor and the Bishop both suggested that she leave him. She told them they could go to hell.”
Many of the Lusos laughed; they could imagine tight-lipped Novinha snapping at the Bishop himself, facing down Bosquinha. They might not like Novinha much, but she was just about the only person in Milagre who could get away with thumbing her nose at authority.
The Bishop remembered the scene in his chambers more than a decade ago. She had not used exactly the words the Speaker quoted, but the effect was much the same. Yet he had been alone. He had told no one. Who was this Speaker, and how did he know so much about things he could not possibly have known?
When the laughter died, the Speaker went on. “There was a tie that bound them together in a marriage they hated. That tie was Marcão’s disease.”
His voice was softer now. The Lusos strained to hear.
“It shaped his life from the moment he was conceived. The genes his parents gave him combined in such a way that from the moment puberty began, the cells of his glands began a steady, relentless transformation into fatty tissues. Dr. Navio can tell you how it progresses better than I can. Marcão knew from childhood that he had this condition; his parents knew it before they died in the Descolada; Gusto and Cida knew it from their genetic examinations of all the humans of Lusitania. They were all dead. Only one other person knew it, the one who had inherited the xenobiological files. Novinha.”
Dr. Navio was puzzled. If she knew this before they married, she surely knew that most people who had his condition were sterile. Why would she have married him when for all she knew he had no chance of fathering children? Then he realized what he should have known before, that Marcão was not a rare exception to the pattern of the disease. There were no exceptions. Navio’s face reddened. What the Speaker was about to tell them was unspeakable.
“Novinha knew that Marcão was dying,” said the Speaker. “She also knew before she married him that he was absolutely and completely sterile.”
It took a moment for the meaning of this to sink in. Ela felt as if her organs were melting inside her body. She saw without turning her head that Miro had gone rigid, that his cheeks had paled.
Speaker went on despite the rising whispers from the audience. “I saw the genetic scans. Marcos Maria Ribeira never fathered a child. His wife had children, but they were not his, and he knew it, and she knew he knew it. It was part of the bargain that they made when they got married.”
The murmurs turned to muttering, the grumbles to complaints, and as the noise reached a climax, Quim leaped to his feet and shouted, screamed at the Speaker. “My mother is not an adulteress! I’ll kill you for calling her a whore!”
His last word hung in the silence. The Speaker did not answer. He only waited, not letting his gaze drop from Quim’s burning face. Until finally Quim realized that it was he, not the Speaker, whose voice had said the word that kept ringing in his ears. He faltered. He looked at his mother sitting beside him on the ground, but not rigidly now, slumped a little now, looking at her hands as they trembled in her lap. “Tell them, Mother,” Quim said. His voice sounded more pleading than he had intended.
She didn’t answer. Didn’t say a word, didn’t look at him. If he didn’t know better, he would think her trembling hands were a confession, that she was ashamed, as if what the Speaker said was the truth that God himself would tell if Quim were to ask him. He remembered Father Mateu explaining the tortures of hell: God spits on adulterers, they mock the power of creation that he shared with them, they haven’t enough goodness in them to be anything better than amoebas. Quim tasted bile in his mouth. What the Speaker said was true.
“Mamãe,” he said loudly, mockingly. “Quem fôde p’ra fazer-me?”
People gasped. Olhado jumped to his feet at once, his hands doubled in fists. Only then did Novinha react, reaching out a hand as if to restrain Olhado from hitting his brother. Quim hardly noticed that Olhado had leapt to Mother’s defense; all he could think of was the fact that Miro had not. Miro also knew that it was true.
Quim breathed deeply, then turned around, looking lost for a moment; then he threaded his way through the crowd. No one spoke to him, though everyone watched him go. If Novinha had denied the charge, they would have believed her, would have mobbed the Speaker for accusing Os Venerados’ daughter of such a sin. But she had not denied it. She had listened to her own son accuse her obscenely, and she said nothing. It was true. And now they listened in fascination. Few of them had any real concern. They just wanted to learn who had fathered Novinha’s children.
The Speaker quietly resumed his tale. “After her parents died and before her children were born, Novinha loved only two people. Pipo was her second father. Novinha anchored her life in him; for a few short years she had a taste of what it meant to have a family. Then he died, and Novinha believed that she had killed him.”
People sitting near Novinha’s family saw Quara kneel in front of Ela and ask her, “Why is Quim so angry?”
Ela answered softly. “Because Papai was not really our father.”
“Oh,” said Quara. “Is the Speaker our father now?” She sounded hopeful. Ela shushed her.
“The night Pipo died,” said the Speaker, “Novinha showed him something that she had discovered, something to do with the Descolada and the way it works with the plants and animals of Lusitania. Pipo saw more in her work than she did herself. He rushed to the forest where the piggies waited. Perhaps he told them what he had discovered. Perhaps they only guessed. But Novinha blamed herself for showing him a secret that the piggies would kill to keep.
“It was too late to undo what she had done. But she could keep it from happening again. So she sealed up all the files that had anything to do with the Descolada and what she had shown to Pipo that night. She knew who would want to see the files. It was Libo, the new Zenador. If Pipo had been her father, Libo had been her brother, and more than a brother. Hard as it was to bear Pipo’s death, Libo’s would be worse. He asked for the files. He demanded to see them. She told him she would never let him see them.
“They both knew exactly what that meant. If he ever married her, he could strip away the protection on those files. They loved each other desperately, they needed each other more than ever, but Novinha could never marry him. He would never promise not to read the files, and even if he made such a promise, he couldn’t keep it. He would surely see what his father saw. He would die.
“It was one thing to refuse to marry him. It was another thing to live without him. So she didn’t live without him. She made her bargain with Marcão. She would marry him under the law, but her real husband and the father of all her children would be, was, Libo.”
Bruxinha, Libo’s widow, rose shakily to her feet, tears streaming down her face, and wailed, “Mentira, mentira.” Lies, lies. But her weeping was not anger, it was grief. She was mourning the loss of her husband all over again. Three of her daughters helped her leave the praça.
/>
Softly the Speaker continued while she left. “Libo knew that he was hurting his wife Bruxinha and their four daughters. He hated himself for what he had done. He tried to stay away. For months, sometimes years, he succeeded. Novinha also tried. She refused to see him, even to speak to him. She forbade her children to mention him. Then Libo would think that he was strong enough to see her without falling back into the old way. Novinha would be so lonely with her husband who could never measure up to Libo. They never pretended there was anything good about what they were doing. They just couldn’t live for long without it.”
Bruxinha heard this as she was led away. It was little comfort to her now, of course, but as Bishop Peregrino watched her go, he recognized that the Speaker was giving her a gift. She was the most innocent victim of his cruel truth, but he didn’t leave her with nothing but ashes. He was giving her a way to live with the knowledge of what her husband did. It was not your fault, he was telling her. Nothing you did could have prevented it. Your husband was the one who failed, not you. Blessed Virgin, prayed the Bishop silently, let Bruxinha hear what he says and believe it.
Libo’s widow was not the only one who cried. Many hundreds of the eyes that watched her go were also filled with tears. To discover Novinha was an adulteress was shocking but delicious: the steel-hearted woman had a flaw that made her no better than anyone else. But there was no pleasure in finding the same flaw in Libo. Everyone had loved him. His generosity, his kindness, his wisdom that they so admired, they didn’t want to know that it was all a mask.
So they were surprised when the Speaker reminded them that it was not Libo whose death he spoke today. “Why did Marcos Ribeira consent to this? Novinha thought it was because he wanted a wife and the illusion that he had children, to take away his shame in the community. It was partly that. Most of all, though, he married her because he loved her. He never really hoped that she would love him the way he loved her, because he worshipped her, she was a goddess, and he knew that he was diseased, filthy, an animal to be despised. He knew she could not worship him, or even love him. He hoped that she might someday feel some affection. That she might feel some—loyalty.”
The Ender Quintet (Omnibus) Page 63