Chronicle of the Murdered House. Lúcio Cardoso
I longed to be free of those “good times”! She, alas, would not continue in time at all, but I would, and who would keep me company on the long journey ahead?) When I said nothing, she turned and winked at me, as if to prove that the memory of those days was still alive, days I was trying in vain to bury. And oddly enough, despite that attempt to put on a bright, vivacious, youthful air, there was a stoniness about her face, which lent that wink a grotesque, melancholy quality.
“Yes, of course, Mother,” I stammered, again bowing my head.
She shot me a glance in which there was still a remnant of her old anger:
“Mother! You’ve never called me ‘Mother’ before, so why start now?”
And I was so stunned that the mirror trembled in my hands:
“Of course, Nina, of course the old times will return.”
She continued struggling to untangle the knots in her hair, which formed a kind of halo around her head and seemed to be the one thing still alive: through its resurrected waves, a new spring, mysterious and transfigured, was beginning to flow through her veins.
“You need never be angry with me again, André, and you need never again spend hours sitting on the bench in the garden waiting for me.” And suddenly, as if giving in to the memory of that scene, her voice took on a velvety tone, tinged with a childish, feminine melancholy, in which I, deeply touched, felt all the pulsating force of her loving soul. “I’ll never again hide as I did that time, do you remember? And I’ll never pack my bags to go traveling alone.”
Tears, landscapes, lost emotions—what did any of that matter now? In my eyes, she seemed to be dissolving like a being made of foam. It wasn’t treachery or lies or even forgetting that was causing her to drown (and with me unable to save her), it was, instead, the impetus of what had once been and that she had so cruelly summoned up.
“Oh, dear God, please don’t!” I cried.
Then, still vibrant with emotion, still with the comb in her hand, she looked at me as if she had just woken up. And a great darkness filled her eyes.
“You don’t understand, do you, you’re too stupid!” she said.
And her hands—what proof did she need, what forgotten testimony, what lost memory?—reached greedily across the bedspread in search of mine. She leaned forward and I glimpsed her thin breasts beneath her nightdress. Intercepting that glance, she quickly adjusted her clothes, not that she was ashamed to reveal herself naked to me, but ashamed, rather, of her present ugliness. I turned away to hide the tears filling my eyes. And she, poor thing, had been so beautiful, her breasts so full and firm. Driven by some diabolical impulse, she suddenly, brutally, undid her nightdress and shook me hard, saying:
“Fool, why shouldn’t the good times come back? Do you really think it’s going to end like this? That’s just not possible. I’m not as ugly as all that, they haven’t taken everything from me, look . . .” and she tugged at my arm, while I kept my gaze firmly averted. “You see, it’s not all over yet. Perhaps we can move to some big city where no one will know about us.” (Did she really believe what she was saying? Her grip on my arm relaxed, her voice quavered.) “Ah, André, how quickly everything passes.”
She fell silent, and I could see that she was breathing hard. The entirely fictitious color in her cheeks fled, and her head lolled back. It wasn’t those wasted words that seemed to dispirit her most, but the vision of that false paradise she had been evoking. I tried to cheer her, saying:
“No, Nina, you’re right. We could move to Rio perhaps, where no one will know us.”
And I thought to myself: I could never hate her, it’s beyond my capabilities. Irrespective of what god or devil had conceived me, my passion was above all earthly contingencies. I knew only the feeling of that body breathing hard in my arms, and in the hour of her death, for she breathed exactly as she had in those moments of passion. In my innermost thoughts, I was sure nothing could save her, and that the pieces we held in our hands were of no use to us now. Love, travel, what did those words mean? On the empty board, fate had finally made its move. The solution no longer depended on our will alone, nor on what we did, regardless of whether our actions were good or bad—the peace for which we had so longed, would, from now on, be a time of resignation and mourning.
And yet even I wasn’t sure what provoked those thoughts—perhaps I was exaggerating, perhaps it was the influence of my naturally melancholic temperament. She was, after all, feeling better, she was talking and making plans, just as she used to. But something stronger than me, stronger than my own sad certainty and my clumsy interpretation of the facts, was telling me that it was precisely those words that spoke of the inevitable end, and that death had nailed to her bedhead the decree announcing eternal rest. She could make one final effort, she could laugh and insult me, or say she was leaving and abandoning Vila Velha forever, or simply devour me with hungry kisses—but I knew she was looking about her now with eyes that were no longer of this world, and I was capable of anything except lying to those eyes. What I saw rising up in them was like the sap rising up the trunk of a tree—except the branches were all dead, and no flower was about to bloom in that dying landscape. Yes, she could still kiss or caress me, but both kisses and caresses were directed at me as if I were no longer there. It wasn’t her soul, but her lips—impregnated with a thick saliva that was like the last residue of earthly passion and fleshly effort—that were trying to revive the delirium of the past. In the depths of that search, faces, situations, and landscapes bubbled away. And I said nothing, too moved to speak. In her struggle, she must have felt my silence. In her febrile state, she must have thought it was simply a remnant of ill feeling from one of our old arguments—and she perhaps blindly imagined that I could still be seduced by the future she laid out before me, a future in which I no longer believed. For I knew this was the final act, and an unstoppable sob rose in my throat and remained stuck there, preventing me from saying a word. Then, slowly, she ran her hand down my cheek to my lips.
“Ah, so that’s how it is!” she exclaimed in a voice of inexpressible sadness. “That’s how you show your gratitude to me for allowing you to come to my bedside? You’ve clearly already forgotten everything, André.”
Her fingers continued for some time to stroke my cheek and play upon my lips as if trying to cajole some laggardly word from them, and then, sitting up in bed, she again began mechanically combing her hair. Her eyes occasionally flashed like a gradually dying light, but it was the sign of a storm that was already moving off, leaving the ravaged countryside to sleep. And I could not have said what darkness it was that I sensed covering the landscape of her body, what moldering, grave-like smells already emanated from her words.
“You’re right, André,” she said at last. “You’re right. I understand now: you’ve finally found your path. All it took for you to realize you were on the wrong path was for me to step out of the way.” Her grave voice became enticing, wheedling. “But I know you, André, I know you can’t live without women. I bet you’ve already seduced one of the housemaids . . . an easy enough conquest, eh?”
Overwhelmed by grief, I cried:
“Nina!”
And when I leaned toward her, she pushed me away, almost violently.
“Don’t call me that. I forbid you to call me by my name.”
I withdrew, cowed by that voice so reminiscent of the old, authoritarian Nina. She regarded me in silence for a while, doubtless pleased with the effect of her treacherous words. Quietly, like someone gauging the impact of what she was about to say, she went on:
“I bet you’re already anticipating the hour of my death. You want to be free of me . . .”
“No!” I cried out desperately, flinging myself forward onto the bed. “How can you be so cruel, how do you even dare to say such things? You like to see me suffer, Nina, you always have . . .”
Yes, I knew this, but what did it matter now? All that mattered was being able to embrace her, cover her in kisses, and tell her one last time, before she departed, that