Chronicle of the Murdered House. Lúcio Cardoso
seemed entirely untroubled by the brilliant light and set off purposefully. I don’t know what dark force impelled me to follow her. You may no longer remember the exact layout of that part of our garden, Father, but you often went there to hear my late mother-in-law’s confession; you walked together there on innumerable occasions, or so the story goes—and no one would, I think, be better equipped to identify the place where we were heading. It was to the right of the Pavilion, where there used to be a clearing with a statue at each corner, each representing one of the four seasons. The only survivors were Summer and the lower half of Spring, inside which, as if it were a vase, a vigorous fern grew, overflowing the broken edges. The plants and trees had grown taller, and yet the clearing remained untouched, as if it were a redundant space, floating in the midst of that dense vegetation. That—a place no one ever went to—was where Nina was heading, and this only intensified my curiosity. I continued to follow her, hiding behind trees as I went. My fear of being seen meant that I missed part of what happened next. When I got closer to the clearing, I hid behind the trunk of an acacia tree, and I saw Nina, trembling with rage, talking to Alberto, our gardener. I moved closer still and hid behind a tall clump of ferns, not wanting to miss a single word of what they said. However, everything must have happened very quickly, because I saw Nina raise her hand and slap the boy. He dropped the spade he was carrying and stepped back, putting his hand to his cheek. The strangeness of the scene left me momentarily stunned—and I had barely recovered from my shock, when I saw Nina give the boy a shove, then stride off in the opposite direction from which she had come. Alberto was left alone, rubbing the cheek she had struck. He clearly lacked the courage to do anything else and merely followed her with his eyes until she had disappeared from sight. I don’t know what I did then, I must have slipped or lost my balance, because he immediately turned toward me. “Ah, it’s you, Senhora,” he said, and there was no surprise in his voice. Only then did I notice how he had changed. When people are of no interest to us, they fade into the background like insignificant objects. For me, Alberto had always been the gardener, and I had never thought of him in any other way. Now, simply by virtue of Nina’s presence, I discovered him just as I had discovered myself. This, Father, must be the devil’s main talent: stripping reality of any fiction and placing it naked, in all its impotence and anxiety, in the very center of a person’s being. Yes, for the first time I really saw Alberto and I saw him in various ways simultaneously: first, that he was young, second, that he was handsome. Not handsome as he was in that precise moment, but handsome as he must have been before meeting Nina, pure and serene in the simplicity of his small, provincial soul. Now, split in two, the old him and the new came together in that same dark beauty, and there he was, as if by chance, looking slightly disheveled, like those gods whom the myths conjured out of foam or wind. I sensed the person he would have been, retrospectively, if you like, not as Nina loved him, but as I might perhaps have loved him. He was different now, but I knew he was different. There was a weariness about his face, the sadness of knowledge in his eyes. I spoke to him as if for the first time, and my voice shook because I was speaking to a human being and not to an abstraction. “What’s wrong, Alberto?” And the odd thing is that he addressed me then as if I were an abstraction, as if I did not exist or were merely the colorless being he was accustomed to greeting. “Did you see how she treated me?” he said, by way of a response. At the same time, this was spoken in such a clearly confessional tone that I could not possibly misunderstand, and a wave of bitterness rose up in my heart. I turned away to hide my tears. And yet there was nothing special about what he had said to me, except that, for him, the veil had not been torn asunder and he saw me as he did every day: the same poor, sad, empty being I had always been. Forgetting I was there, he exclaimed again: “Did you see the way she treated me! But she’ll pay for it one day, and pay dearly, the slut!” That last word shocked me, and I spun around. He seemed then to wake from his dream and muttered an awkward: “Sorry . . .” I confess I was still trying to control my own feelings, and so, pretending not to have heard the insulting term, I went over to him and asked again: “What’s wrong, Alberto, what happened?” But he did not answer and had grown distant again. At this point, I began talking, and it was as if another being had entered me and was using my lips to utter those strange words: “I know exactly what’s going on. You’re probably in love with her and dream night and day about her beautiful hair, isn’t that right? Of her white skin, Alberto, her body, which you cannot have . . . Be a man and have the courage to confess, you’re madly, hopelessly in love with her, aren’t you?” I was holding him and shaking him, completely out of control. He came to his senses then, stared at me for a moment in amazement, and then began to laugh. I did not at first understand that laugh, which had the affect of a cold, concentrated beam of light that quickly dissipated the shadows on his face. And then I understood: how ridiculous I must look in my dark dress, my hair caught neatly back in a bun, my thin lips pressed together, braced for the first insult, the first lie, the first offer . . .
I could not bear what, for me, was not so much a laugh as an offence of the gravest order; I recoiled, turned, and fled, feeling that, without even having met him, I had already lost him forever.
5th – We haven’t had a moment’s peace since she arrived. She’s constantly asking for things and is never happy, complaining about the servants, the house, the weather, everything, as if we were to blame for what is happening to her. I haven’t yet seen her at rest, and I don’t honestly think she knows how to rest. She is always pacing back and forth, doing something or thinking of something to do—this gives her a feverish, almost hostile appearance, which creates an uneasy, expectant atmosphere. In the servants’ quarters, the maids complain, and in the house itself the masters and mistress sit around, grim-faced.
It’s odd, but despite all this activity, and right from the very first moment, she struck me as not being in the best of health. She complained of headaches and looked very pale; dark shadows appeared under her eyes. Once installed in her room, she began unpacking the many suitcases she had brought with her. I asked why she needed so many dresses, and if she planned to wear them all, adding: “Because the family hardly ever goes out.” She responded tartly: “What do I care what the family does or doesn’t do? I will do exactly as I please.” Then she asked what amusements were to be had in town—dances, theaters, meetings of some kind. I couldn’t help but laugh as I continued to unpack quantities of capes and dresses. Seeing the angry glance she shot me, I told her straight out that there were no dances and no theaters, that the Baron very occasionally invited a few families to his house, but that we never went. “Why?” she asked, still helping me unpack. “That’s how Senhor Demétrio lives,” I said. She dropped everything and gave me a hard look: “I don’t want to live the way Senhor Demétrio lives,” she said. I merely shrugged, imagining the battles that lay in store for us if she really intended to live a different kind of life. I said nothing, but was filled with dread for the future. When she had finished unpacking, she dropped into a chair, exhausted. “I can’t do any more.” Her forehead was beaded with sweat, which seemed excessive after carrying out such a minor task.
“Are you feeling ill?” I asked.
She slowly shook her head:
“No, not ill. But I haven’t felt well since I arrived. Perhaps it’s the atmosphere in this house. I’m afraid I won’t be able to bear it. Oh Betty, if you knew how unhappy I am!”
I don’t know why, but I felt she was telling the truth. The way in which she spoke those words left no room for doubt, and my heart ached for her. If you asked me to explain, I couldn’t, but it was clear to me that she was suffering from some unnamable malaise.
“I think you should rest a little, Senhora. Then you can think about the future more calmly.”
She fixed her eyes on me again, and this time they were filled with scorn:
“I never rest, Betty. What kind of a woman do you think I am, to waste my time lying in bed?”
My suggestion filled her with a disgust verging on terror. I finished putting away all her clothes, then dusted the furniture