Chronicle of the Murdered House. Lúcio Cardoso
was condemned to die, even then I could not imagine her in the situation I saw her in now, lying on the table, wrapped in a sheet, her hands bound together in prayer, her eyes closed, her nose unexpectedly aquiline (I remembered her voice: “My father always said I had some Jewish blood in me . . .”). No other being had ever been more intensely caught up in the dynamic mechanism of life, and her laughter, her voice, her whole presence, was a miracle we believed would survive all disasters.
However hard I try to conjure her back, she is no longer here. So why speak of or even think these things? Sometimes, awareness of my loss strikes through me like lightning: I see her dead then, and such is the pain of losing her that I almost stop breathing. Why, why, I mutter to myself. I lean against the wall, the blood rushes to my head, my heart pounds furiously. What pain is this that afflicts me, what emotion, what new depths of insecurity, what is this complete and utter lack of faith or interest in my fellow human beings? But these feelings last only a fraction of a second. The sheer energy of our shared existence, the fact that she was still alive yesterday, that she touched my arm with her still warm hands and made a simple request, like asking me to close a window, all this restores to me an apparent calm, and slowly I repeat to myself: it’s true, but I no longer feel the same utter despair, my blood does not rise up before the undeniable truth that she is dead—and I feel as if I no longer believed it, that a last glimmer of hope still burned inside me. Deep in some passive corner of my mind, I imagine that, tomorrow, she will demand that I bring her some flowers, the same flowers that surrounded her in the last days, not as an adornment or a consolation, but as a frantic, desperate attempt to conceal the indiscreet presence of unavoidable tragedy. Everything grows quiet inside me, and that lie brings me back to life. I continue to imagine that soon I will go down the steps into the garden and pick violets from the bed nearest the Pavilion, where there are still clumps of violets to be found in the undergrowth; I imagine that if I walk around the garden, as I have done every day, I will be able to make up a small bouquet of violets and wrap them in a scented mallow leaf, while I repeat over and over, as if those words were capable of devouring the last shreds of reality: “It’s for her, these flowers are for her.” A kind of hallucination overwhelms me; I can hear her slow, soft voice, saying: “Put the flowers on the window sill, my love.” And at last I see her, intact, perfect and eternal in her triumph, sitting next to me, pressing the violets to her face.
Slowly I return to the world. Not far off, probably out on the verandah, a woman remarks how hot it is and mops her brow. I try to recast the spell—in vain, the voice has gone. Through the window, I see the sun beating down on the parched flower beds. Feeling my way cautiously through a now unrecognizable world, I walk down the hallway to the room where the body has been laid out. I know there must be a look of almost criminal hunger on my face, but what does it matter? I hurl myself on the coffin, indifferent to everything and everyone around me. I see Donana de Lara draw back in horror, and Aunt Ana regards me with evident disgust. Two pale hands, sculpted out of silence and greed, smooth the wrinkled sheet—I imagine they belong to Uncle Demétrio. But what do I care about any of them? Nothing more exists of the one thing that united us: Nina. Now, as far as I’m concerned, they have all been relegated to the past along with other nameless, useless things. I see her adored face, and am amazed to find it so serene, so distant from me, her adored son, who so often covered with kisses and tears that brow growing pale beneath the departing warmth, the son who kissed her now tightly closed lips, who touched the weary curve of her breast, kissed her belly, legs and feet, who lived only for her love—and I, too, died a little in every vein in my body, every hair on my head, every drop of blood, in my mouth, my voice—in every pulsing source of energy in my body—when she agreed to die, and to die without me . . .
. . . on the penultimate night, as we were waiting for the end, she seemed suddenly to get better and allowed me to come to her. I hadn’t seen her for days because, out of sheer caprice and because she was generally in such a foul mood even the doctor was frightened, she had forbidden all visits and ordered that no one should enter her room: she wanted to die alone. From a distance, and despite the darkness in the room—for she only rarely allowed the shutters to be opened—I could make out her weary head resting on a pile of pillows, her hair all disheveled, as if she had long since ceased to care. At that moment, I confess, my courage almost failed me and I could take not a single step forward: a cold sweat broke out on my brow. However, it did not take me long to recognize her old self, since she immediately addressed me in her usual reproving tones:
“Ah, it’s you, André. How could you be so inconsiderate when the doctor has plainly said that I must have complete and utter rest?”
Then in a slightly gentler tone:
“Besides, what are you doing in my room?”
Despite these words, she knew perfectly well, especially at that precise moment, that there was no need for either of us to pretend. I hadn’t asked to come in, she had been the one to order that her bedroom door be opened—giving in to who knows what impulse, what inner need to know what was happening outside her room? Perhaps she knew that for hours and hours, and days and days, I had not left her door, alert to any sign of life within—a thread of light, a whiff of medicine, an echo—for the slightest sound or sight or smell was enough to make my heart beat faster with anxiety. And so I bowed my head and said nothing. I would do anything, absolutely anything, to be allowed to stay a little longer by her side. Even if she were dying, even if the breath were slowly fading from her lips, I wanted to be there, I wanted to feel that human mechanism continuing to vibrate until the final spring broke. Seeing me so silent, Nina raised herself up a little on the pillows, gave a sigh, and asked me to bring her a mirror. “I just want to fix my face,” she said. And as I was about to leave, she called me back. This time her voice sounded quite different, almost affectionate, very like the way in which she used to speak to me. I turned, and she asked me to bring not only a mirror, but also a comb, a bottle of lotion and some face powder.
She said this in an almost playful tone, but I wasn’t fooled and could sense the silent, bitter agitation beating inside her. I hurried off to find these various things and returned to her side, eager to detect in this gay façade some flicker of genuine joy. She took the mirror first and, as if to avoid a nasty shock, very gingerly turned to regard her reflection—she looked at herself for some time, then again sighed and shrugged, as if to say: “What do I care? The day is sure to come when I’ll have to resign myself to not being pretty anymore.” It was true that she was very far from what she had been, but the same mysterious attraction that had once so captivated me was still there. That simple shrug of the shoulders was proof to me that the idea of dying was further from her mind than it seemed. This impression was confirmed when, leaning slightly on my arm, she asked in a voice that struggled to be confidential, but succeeded only in expressing a certain repressed anxiety:
“Tell me, André, does he know the state I’m in, does he know I’m at death’s door? Does he know this is the end?”
She was looking at me challengingly, and her whole being, concentrated and intent, was asking: “Can’t you see that I’m suffering in vain. You can tell me the truth, I know I’m not dying, that my hour has not yet come.” I don’t know now what I said—what did “he,” my father, matter?—and I turned away, precisely because I knew her hour had come, and that she would never leave what was now her deathbed. Nina saw what I was thinking and, placing one hand on my arm, said, trying to laugh as she did so:
“Listen to me, André: I’m better, I’m well, yes, almost better, I’ve none of the symptoms I had before . . . So don’t go thinking you’re going to rid yourselves of me just yet.”
And wrapping me in her warm, sickly breath, she added:
“I can’t wait to hear what he’ll say when he sees me back on my feet . . .”
I almost believed that her astonishing energy had finally triumphed over the germs of death deposited in her flesh. Reclining against the pillows—she was always demanding fresh ones, stuffed with light, cool cotton—she was busy smoothing her tangled hair, while I held the mirror for her. A divine fire, a marvelous presence seemed once again to be stirring inside her.
“The good times will return, won’t they, André?” she said as she struggled with her