Chronicle of the Murdered House. Lúcio Cardoso
being presented to me swathed in such an elaborate lie. I stood up, my attention now entirely awakened, and leaned over the counter beside him. Thus, with his face almost touching my own, not even the most fleeting of emotions flitting across it would escape me. Such close attention seemed to displease him and, watching me out of the corner of his eye, he returned once again to the strange occurrences that were worrying Dona Ana. Now, everyone in our quiet little town knew very well that anything to do with the Chácara was of almost no interest to Dona Ana and that her days were filled with weeping and bemoaning the misfortunes of her life. So it was inconceivable that she should interest herself in any “strange occurrence” that might have occurred in the Meneses household. I remained silent, however, and he would have been far better off contenting himself with that silence. My head bent low, leafing randomly through the yellowing pages of my dictionary, I heard him give me the curious information that a strange animal was prowling around, causing concern to the inhabitants of the Chácara. There was nothing apparently outlandish about such a piece of news, but his emphasis on the word “strange” and the particular manner in which he described the noises made by the creature and the footprints it left behind, brought an unwitting smile to my lips. He noticed the smile and repeated the phrase with a certain vehemence.
“A strange animal?” I asked, trying to catch his eye.
“Yes, a wild dog or a wolf.”
Once again there was a short silence. I shut the book firmly and enquired:
“In that case, how can I be of assistance?”
He reached out and placed his hand on my arm, and by the way that hand trembled I understood that we had reached the crux of the matter.
“What do you advise?” he asked. “It is for this, and only this, that I have come.”
It must of course be true, for nothing would induce me to suspect a lie lurking behind such a bold affirmation, but even so I could not help but laugh:
“But, Senhor Demétrio, I know nothing about hunting! You would perhaps be better off asking . . .”
He shook his head violently:
“No! No! There are reasons why I have come to you. You could, for example, suggest to me a poison, or some deadly substance that could be placed in a trap.”
“One does not kill wolves with poison,” I said, and ostentatiously put the dictionary back in its usual place on top of the cash register.
The precise meaning of my gesture, its willful indifference, was not lost on him. He stared at me, and with such hard eyes, filled with such sudden, aggressive resentment, that I felt a shudder run through me. There was no doubt he had come here for some other reason, of that I was certain, and, since he feared broaching the subject directly, he was equivocating, circling around the problem, waiting for me to come to his rescue. He could see that I had not the slightest intention of helping him out (why should I? For a very long time, indeed since time immemorial, there had never been the slightest hint of affection between the Meneses family and me), and it was this that had drawn from him such a piercing look of rage. Instead of encouraging him in his confession (or whatever it might be), I changed the subject completely, as if that story about a wolf had never been mentioned. As it happened, one wall of the pharmacy was in a very bad state due to a small explosion caused by an inexperienced assistant. I pointed to the exposed bricks and ruined plasterwork, adding with a smile:
“These are hard times we live in, Senhor Demétrio! Just look at that wall in dire need of repair. For two months now I’ve been trying to raise the necessary funds, but I still haven’t enough to purchase even one brick!”
Standing before me, motionless, he followed this apparent digression with the utmost attention. He was probably trying to find in my words a hidden meaning, an insinuation of some sort. All I meant was that the wall needed repairing and I did not have the necessary funds. Nevertheless, he had a sudden flash of inspiration, and his eyes lit up as he once again reached out his hand and touched my arm:
“Perhaps I can help you. Who knows? A brick or two here or there; we’re always glad to help our friends.”
I was standing with my back to him as he said these words. I turned around slowly and looked deep into his eyes. I thought I could see stirring in those depths a glimmer of something like hope—what kind of hope I could not possibly say, so shrouded and secretly did it flicker before me, so seared into the sad depths of that soul. He did not look away; on the contrary, he offered himself to me like an open book, and we stood for several seconds as there passed between us, rapidly and invisibly from one to the other, incoherent thoughts, fragments of ideas and feelings, things that the subconscious barely brought to the surface, but through which we were able to reach an important level of mutual understanding.
“A few bricks . . .” I murmured, “are exactly what I need.”
“Shall we say . . . a cartload?” he suggested, leaning familiarly over the counter.
He was certainly breathing faster, and his now bright eyes avidly scanned my face, searching for a word of ready acquiescence with an almost shocking degree of haste and lack of decorum. Even so, I shook my head sadly:
“A cartload? Let’s say three, Senhor Demétrio. I could scarcely fill that gaping hole with fewer than three cartloads of bricks!”
Something akin to a smile—a minuscule, meager smile of victory—appeared on his pallid face. As I was expecting, he nodded his agreement. We had reached a place from which it would be impossible for me to retreat, and so it was in the serenest of voices that I returned to the initial subject:
“A wolf on a country estate is always a dangerous thing. Nevertheless . . .”
He repeated that word back to me, as if pronouncing it took enormous effort.
“Nevertheless . . .”
I took a few paces around the shop, trying to behave as naturally as possible.
“Nevertheless, there do exist practical means of eliminating them, without having to resort to poison.”
“Such as . . . ?” he prompted.
I left him without an answer for a moment and stepped through into the rear of the house. I should explain that my private quarters consisted of a small, dimly-lit backroom with treacherous floorboards, whose only advantage was that it offered me a place to lay my head at night right next to the shop, and thus enabled me to attend to any customer who might appear at a late hour. However, news had spread that some thieves were operating in the town and this was probably why I had taken to keeping a small revolver among the linen in the top of the chest of drawers. “They won’t catch me unawares,” I said to myself. So I opened the drawer, rummaged through the sheets and soon found what I was looking for. I returned to the pharmacy as silently as I had left, and placed the gun on the shop counter.
“What’s this?” asked Senhor Demétrio, not daring to touch the object.
“Oh,” I exclaimed, “just a little plaything. It’s very easy to handle, but will put paid to any wolf.”
He seemed to hesitate, staring all the while at the gun, still not touching it. I don’t know what conflicting thoughts were doing battle deep within him, only that in due course he slowly reached out his hand, took the revolver, and, raising it almost to eye level, examined it closely.
“It’s a woman’s gun,” he said, polishing the mother-of-pearl inlay on its grip.
“It belonged to my mother,” I explained.
He turned the revolver this way and that, and I could clearly see the satisfaction in his eyes.
“Does it work all right?” he asked, pointing the barrel toward the back of the shop.
“Perfectly.”
And, trying to dispel his last remaining scruples, I added:
“They don’t make guns like that any more.”
From that moment