Chronicle of the Murdered House. Lúcio Cardoso
Continuation of Ana’s Second Confession
16. Father Justino’s First Account
17. André’s Diary (II)
18. Letter from Nina to the Colonel
19. Continuation of Nina’s Letter to the Colonel
20. André’s Diary (III)
21. André’s Diary (IV)
22. Letter from Valdo to Father Justino
23. Betty’s Diary (IV)
24. The Doctor’s Third Report
25. André’s Diary (V)
26. André’s Diary (V – continued)
27. Ana’s Third Confession
28. Father Justino’s Second Account
29. Continuation of Ana’s Third Confession
30. Continuation of Father Justino’s Second Account
31. Continuation of Ana’s Third Confession
32. End of Father Justino’s Account
33. End of Ana’s Third Confession
34. Betty’s Diary (V)
35. Second Letter from Nina to the Colonel
36. André’s Diary (VI)
37. Valdo’s Statement
38. André’s Diary (VII)
39. The Colonel’s Statement
40. Ana’s Fourth Confession
41. André’s Diary (VIII)
42. The Doctor’s Last Report
43. Continuation of André’s Diary (IX)
44. Valdo’s Second Statement (I)
45. Ana’s Last Confession (I)
46. Valdo’s Second Statement (II)
47. Ana’s Last Confession (II)
48. André’s Diary (X)
49. Valdo’s Second Statement (III)
50. The Pharmacist’s Fourth Report
51. Valdo’s Statement (IV)
52. From Timóteo’s Memoirs (I)
53. Valdo’s Statement (V)
54. From Timóteo’s Memoirs (II)
55. Valdo’s Statement (VI)
56. Postscript in a letter from Father Justino
“Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days. Then Jesus said,” Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
—John 11, 39-40
18th . . . 19 . . . – (. . . what exactly does death mean? Once she’s far from me—her mortal remains buried beneath the earth—how long will I have to go on retracing the path she taught me, her admirable lesson of love, how long will I keep trying to find in other women, in all the many women one meets throughout one’s life, the velvet of her kisses—“this was how she used to kiss”—her way of smiling, the same rebellious lock of hair–and who will help me rebuild, out of grief and longing, that unique image gone forever? And what does “forever” mean—the harsh, pompous echo of those words rings down the deserted hallways of the soul—the “forever” that is, in fact, meaningless, not even a visible moment in the very instant in which we think it, and yet that is all we have, because it is the one definitive word available to us in our scant earthly vocabulary . . .
Yes, what does “forever” mean, save the continuous, fluid existence of everything cut free from contingency, of everything that changes and evolves and breaks ceaselessly on the shores of equally mutable feelings? There was no point in trying to hide: the “forever” was there before my eyes. A minute, a single minute—and that, too, would escape any attempt to grasp it, while I myself will escape and slip away—also forever—and like a pile of cold, futile flotsam, all my love and pain and even my faithfulness will drift away—forever. Yes, what else is “forever” but the final image of this world, and not just this world, but any world that we bind together with the illusory architecture of dreams and permanence—all our games and pleasures, all our ills and fears, loves and betrayals—it is, in short, the impulse that shapes not our everyday self, but the possible, never-achieved self that we pursue as one might pursue the trail of a neverto-be-requited love, and that becomes, in the end, only the memory of a lost love—but lost where and when?—in a place we do not know, but whose loss pierces us and, whether justifiably or not, hurls every one of us into that nothing or that all-consuming everything where we vanish into the general, the absolute, the perfection we so utterly lack.)
. . . All day I wandered about the empty house, unable to dredge up even enough courage to enter the drawing room. Ah, how painfully intense was the knowledge that she no longer belonged to me, that she was merely a piece of plunder to be manhandled by strangers without tenderness or understanding. Somewhere far from me, very far, they would be uncovering her now defenseless body, and with the sad diligence of the indifferent, would dress her for the last time, never even imagining that her flesh had once been alive and had often trembled with love—that she had once been younger, more splendid than all the world’s most blossoming youth. No, this was not the right death for her, at least, I had never imagined it would be like this, in the few difficult moments when I could imagine it—so brutal, so final, so unfair, like a young plant being torn from the earth.
But there was no point in remembering what she had been—or, rather, what we had been. Therein lay the explanation: two beings hurled into the maelstrom of one exceptional circumstance and suddenly stopped, brought up short—she, her face frozen in its final, dying expression, and me, still standing, although God knows for how long, my body still shaken by the last echo of that experience. I wanted only to wander through the rooms, as bare now as the stage when the principal actor has made his final exit—and all the weariness of the last few days washed over me, and I was filled by a sense of emptiness, not an ordinary emptiness, but the total emptiness that suddenly and forcefully replaces everything that was once impulse and vibrancy. Blindly, as if in obedience to a will not my own, I opened doors, leaned out of windows, walked through rooms: the house no longer existed.
Knowing this put me beyond consolation; no affectionate, no despairing words could touch me. Like a stock pot removed from the flame, but in whose depths the remnants still boil and bubble, what gave me courage were my memories of the days I had just lived through. Meanwhile, as if prompted by a newfound strength, I managed, once or twice, to go over to the room where she lay and half-open the door to watch what was happening from a distance. Everything was now so repellently banal: it could have been the same scene I had known as a child, had it not been transfigured, as if by a potent, irresistible exhalation, by the supernatural breath that fills any room touched by the presence of a corpse. The dining table, which, during its long life, had witnessed so many meals, so many family meetings and councils—and how often, around those same boards, had Nina herself been judged and dissected?—had been turned into a temporary bier. On each corner, placed there with inevitable haste, stood four solitary candles. Cheap, ordinary candles, doubtless found at the bottom of some forgotten drawer. And to think that this was the backdrop to her final farewell, the stage on which she would say her last goodbye.
I would again close the door, feeling how impossible it was for me to imagine her dead. No other being had seemed safer from, more immune to extinction. Even in her final