Chronicle of the Murdered House Page 13

  And for all my digging into that past that did not belong to me, I learned nothing more than that Senhor Valdo spoke of his wife with all the indifference, gravity, and distance with which we sometimes interrupt our work to recount an anecdote about someone long since dead.

  8.

  Ana’s First Confession

  Father Justino, you may never receive this letter.

  I may never have the courage to send it, and may simply keep it, crumpled up, in my bosom. When my heart beats, it will feel against it that piece of paper wet with tears—and one day, when I’m dead, maybe they will find only an envelope from which the address was long ago erased by the cold sweat of death. And yet, who else, apart from you, would be interested in these pathetic words stopping my mouth? When I used to visit the sacristy of our old church, such thoughts as these often led me to think of some way of delivering this letter into your hands. True, I would never have the courage to give it to you personally, indeed, the mere possibility makes me catch my breath—but alone in the shadow of the images that fill the sacristy, I imagined leaving it somewhere, between the pages of your prayer book or perhaps among the vestments you put on to say mass. I was convinced, though, that you would recognize my writing and would perhaps steal five minutes from your sacred duties to read, possibly with interest, everything that my fever and my impatience now set down.

  I don’t honestly know where to start; before beginning this confession—because that is how I want you to see it, Father, since only then will my heart find some relief—I thought it would be the easiest way to explain myself, that the words would come naturally. I see now how wrong I was, and I hesitate, stumbling over sentences like a schoolgirl struggling with a class composition. This is because I am not writing about an actual fact, a palpable revelation that I could present as definitive proof—shall we say—of everything I saw. It is not even my intention to affirm anything, and what follows is merely the outpouring of my soul and its horribly confused contents. That is the truth, Father, the only one I can set down in this letter—and yet, in order to begin this confession, I needed a certainty that even today causes me to quake, for a keen, tormented conscience is worth more than any testimonial. And besides what is the truth?

  It is, I think, something more often intuited than put into words. Father, I believe I have seen the tangible presence of the devil, more than that, I have, with my own silence and, therefore, my acquiescence, contributed to the silent destruction of the house and family which have, for many years, been mine. (Forgive my vehemence, Father, but ever since I entered this house, I have learned to refer to it as if it were a living entity. My husband always said that the blood of the Meneses had imbued these walls with a soul—and I have always walked between them rather apprehensively, feeling fearful and puny, imagining that huge ears were listening to and judging my every action. I don’t know whether I was right or wrong, but the house of the Meneses bled me white, like a plant made of stone and whitewash that needed my blood in order to live. My whole childhood was a preparation for crossing that sacred threshold, from the moment, that is, when Senhor Demétrio deigned to choose me as his partner in life. I was still only a girl, but from then on, my parents tried to bring me up as the Meneses would wish me to be brought up. I never went out alone and wore only dark, unflattering clothes. I myself (ah, Father, now that I know better, now that I can imagine having been another person—there are days, moments, when I think of the forests I could have explored, the seas I could have sailed!—I feel a great bitterness, a heavy weight on my heart), yes, I myself struggled to become that pale, artificial creature, convinced of my high destiny and of the important position that awaited me in the house of the Meneses. Before we married, Demétrio used to visit me at least once a week, to make sure I was being properly brought up. My mother, conscious that I had been specially chosen, would exhibit to him the colorless being she was creating for the satisfaction and pride of those who lived in the Chácara: she would make me parade before him, and I would nervously carry out her orders, eyes downcast, wearing clothes that any reasonable person would have found ridiculous. At the time, I had no idea what a genuine emotion was . . . a passion, for example. I was a faded figure, stitched together out of childish, watery threads, and I imagined life to be like a story glimpsed through a window. My bloodless, mechanical gestures resembled those made in some tedious and now empty ritual. Allow me, Father, to speak to you like this, now that my dead and poisoned heart expects nothing more from the world. I repeat, I knew nothing of love or passion or any other earthly graces, the only flowers that grew in my soul were the sad creations of a timid, imprisoned imagination, and now I see everything filtered through the incoherence of others, their injustice, their baseless fears, their anxieties, their greed—and yes, why not, through my own anxieties too, my own vain, belated revolt . . .)

  Demétrio would declare himself satisfied with the examination—turn to the right, smile, show how you must curtsy when in society—and say to my mother: “Excellent. You must always remember that she is being brought up to be a Meneses.” He would dismiss me then, but first, bending down a little—only just enough to breathe in the perfume of my hair—he would add: “As you know, one day we will be visited by the Baron himself. I want to be able to present to him a wife worthy of me, someone who, with her graces, can dazzle the Baroness he brought with him from Portugal.” At the time, I did not know that, for Demétrio, the Baron’s visit was like a disease, his dearest obsession. Or rather, to be fair and to make plain everything I saw and heard in this respect, it was, I would say, the obsession of the entire Meneses family. Because, in our district, the Baron’s family was the only one that considered itself superior to the Meneses, not only in terms of wealth, which was said to be immense, but in terms of tradition, for they were the direct descendants of the Portuguese Braganças. The families appeared to be on good terms, and always greeted each other and exchanged a few words when they came out of mass, but, either because the Baron was all too aware of his own importance or merely in order to punish the pride of the Meneses, he had never once visited the Chácara, although, with the easy magnanimity of kings and princes, he was always promising to do so. Thus, year after year, that ever-postponed visit became a wound, a tumor in the soul of the man who would be my husband. Everything he did or thought turned in some way on that possibility—it was as if he expected the Baron’s visit to give him the final seal of approval, the definitive proof of his own glory and of his family’s reputation.

  Shortly after we were married, I was witness to an argument between Demétrio and Timóteo. I’m not sure if you know, Father, or may perhaps suspect from the malicious rumors that are rife in our town, but Timóteo has always been a very strange man, with extremely eccentric habits, which have obliged the family to shroud him in silence, as one would a shameful illness. Initially, when I first came to live in the Chácara—which, at the time, retained a little of its former glory—I would catch an occasional glimpse of Timóteo when he returned from town with some of his friends. In my room at the end of the hallway I could hear the sound of their laughter and talk wafting up from the garden. (I should say, out of respect for the truth, that Timóteo almost always arrived home completely drunk—he was an utter wastrel, who squandered the money left him by his father, mocked his brothers’ meanness and generally heaped scorn on them.) This behavior infuriated my husband and, once, when he burst in on one of Timóteo’s private parties, he told him a few harsh truths, the kind, I imagine, that should and can be said only once.

  Timóteo laughed and said that his brother was nothing but a puffed-up fool; and as for the Meneses, who were, Demétrio felt, sullied by Timóteo’s behavior, they were merely the rotting shoots of a family doubtless of bastard origins. My husband started shouting then, and for some reason, he mentioned the Baron, perhaps because, in our household, regardless of the circumstances, his name is unavoidable. “He’ll never come here,” sneered Timóteo. “Do you really think a
nobleman would cross our grubby threshold?” I must confess that I had never before seen Demétrio in such a rage; all the insults Timóteo had come out with up until then were as nothing compared to that. From then on, their shouted exchanges became so wild, so frenetic, that I couldn’t understand what they were saying; feeling frightened, I left my room and heard my husband threatening to take away Timóteo’s inheritance and, if he continued to live as he did then, to have him locked up in a lunatic asylum. In some families, “inheritance” is a sacred word never to be taken in vain. There was a pause, and the tension eased. But I think Timóteo’s strange decision never to leave his room dates from then, fearful lest his brother should carry out his threat. Perhaps, deep down, the Chácara does mean something to him as well—perhaps inheritance is a disease of the blood. Those stones form the inner fabric of the family; the Meneses are made of concrete and whitewash, just as other families pride themselves on the nobility of their blood.

  And of course I met Timóteo on other occasions too; I particularly remember walking down the hallway one afternoon and seeing him peer around his bedroom door. He stared at me for some time with a look of complete and utter disdain, then he laughed: “You’re a Meneses too.” And as if suddenly recollecting that I had been a witness to that earlier angry scene, he added: “You can tell my brother that his dream will never come true: the Baron will never set foot in this house.” I didn’t pass on these words, but one day (recently in fact), Demétrio again mentioned the Baron, and I commented, without really thinking about it, that he would never come to the Chácara. He turned on me, eyes blazing: “The only person you can have heard that from is my fool of a brother! He’s doubtless planning to besmirch our name forever, but I won’t let him leave this house as long I’m alive. He’s basically an atheist, a revolutionary, a man who believes in nothing—he would be better off dead than trying to destroy the Meneses name with his dissolute lifestyle . . .” I bowed my head, sorry I had ever spoken.

  So you see, Father, that is the lens through which I have always viewed the family of which I am a member. I began this long parenthesis as a way of explaining my own role in everything that happened subsequently and in order to beat my breast, convinced of my own guilt . . .)

  It is hard to continue my confession, especially, as I said, because what I am setting down is not so much an indisputable truth as a presentiment. I cannot pinpoint at what precise moment the transformation occurred—but she was here among us, having arrived only shortly before, and was already making her influence felt in the febrile times we lived in then. I had always gotten on well with my husband, even though I did not love him. That, Father, is the first time I have ever said those words, which seem to come stumbling to meet me, strange and rebellious—but if I cannot tell you the secret that has lived inside me all this time, who can I tell? As I say, I did not love him and never have, indeed, sometimes, I almost hated him—that is the sad truth. But ever since I came to this house like a fruit picked when still green, I had remained green and slightly hard, with a few bruises and lacerations here and there, but intact, preserved—and for me, the world was stuck fast in that permanent state of coldness and deceit. Until the moment when, standing in front of my mirror, I suddenly understood my husband’s look and saw in it all the disdain he felt for me. I didn’t feel humiliated exactly, or unhappy, because I didn’t care what he thought about me. But that look, born of such anger, somehow revealed to me the palpable reality surrounding me: I woke up and, for the first time, looked around in astonishment, not quite understanding what was happening. What surprised me most was the silence; I had never known such stillness, a complete absence of rhythms and dissonances; it was icy and fluid, as slippery as the sleep of death—and that was what alerted me to my own mediocrity. There must be a place in hell for the mediocre, and Satan himself, trident aloft and looking down on his inert prey, must ask himself, slightly perplexed: “What am I supposed to do with this thing, when its mere presence makes even suffering dwindle in intensity?”

  I looked in the mirror then and was startled by my pale skin, my dark clothes, my inelegance. I repeat, and will do ad infinitum: this was the first time such a thing had happened to me, and I was gazing at my own image as if at a complete stranger. This could have lasted no more than a minute—that was me, that being looking at herself in the mirror, my eyes, my hands, my silently moving lips . . .—and I must confess, Father, it wasn’t fear, anger, or resentment that so abruptly turned me against my husband. After that look, which had woken me up to the real world, he did not leave the room, doubtless waiting to see the effect of his words. He had gone over to the window, and I went after him, grabbed his arm and shook him furiously: “You despise me, don’t you? You despise me!” He pushed me away nervously, impatiently, and as if sensing the approaching storm, asked uneasily: “What’s gotten into you today? I’ve never seen you like this before . . .” Never. I stood there like a pathetic creature abandoned by its creator. I could easily have retorted that I had never felt like that before, either. My whole being was filled by the most disparate, intoxicating feelings. I said: “It’s Nina you adore, isn’t it? I’ve seen the way you look at her . . .” I said this slowly, as if someone were whispering the words to me. He turned pale, looked deep into my eyes, then shouted: “You must be mad! Wherever did you get that idea?” I don’t know what I said in reply, but the effort was too much for me and I collapsed onto a chair, sobbing and laughing at the same time, covering my face with my hands. By the time I had calmed down, he was no longer in the room.

  Ever since that moment I have felt like a different woman. Oh, I continued to live like everyone else, as I always had up until then, but a fire burned ceaselessly inside me. Whatever I did, whatever distractions I came up with, I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister-in-law. She was so beautiful, so different from me. Everything about her was bright and animated. She was surrounded by an aura of interest and sympathy, whereas I was an opaque, clumsy being, plumped down in the world, with no gifts of warmth or communication. One day, I found her sitting in the sun, combing her hair, and I went over to her and, on an irresistible impulse, ran my hand over her hair. She started at my touch and spun around; when she saw it was me, she hesitated, then smiled: “Do you think I have pretty hair?” she asked. I rather shamefacedly said that I did, but dared not go any closer. And yet what a whirlwind was in my heart! “I always take very good care of my hair,” she said with an almost voluptuous nonchalance. “Men love pretty hair.” She shook her head, making her beautifully combed, coppery locks ripple and shine in the sunlight. “See?” she said. And she went on mischievously: “They like to stroke hair like mine, to rub their face and lips on it . . .” She looked at me and, seeing my embarrassment, concluded: “But men are terrible creatures, aren’t they!” “Shut up!” I cried, tormented by an unbearable feeling of unease. She got up then and came over to me: “You wish you were like me, don’t you? Come, admit it, what wouldn’t you give to have hair like mine?” I felt my eyes filling with tears. Nina must have realized she had gone too far, because she moved a few steps away in silence, then said: “Forgive me, I sometimes forget who I’m talking to . . .” Her kindness wounded me more than her previous words. For a few days, we avoided speaking to each other or even meeting, but the truth is that I never lost sight of her, I followed her like a shadow, peered through shutters, through half-open doors, through windows, wherever I could catch a glimpse of her strange, magnetic figure.

  It was around this time that she moved to the Pavilion. I’m not sure if you remember it, a wooden structure at the far end of the garden, it used to be painted green, but for a long time now, it’s been no particular color at all, scarred by time, battered by the rains, with patches of mold and cracks opened up in the walls by the damp, all of which made it look rather grubby and unpleasant. Yet at the time, I envied her because she was free of us, of the Chácara—oh, she knew exactly what she wanted!—and free, too, if she wished, to lead a completely separa
te life, with not a thought for the Meneses. Oddly enough, though, alone now in the big house, I could find not a moment’s rest, always imagining what my sister-in-law might be doing, her plans and thoughts. I would look at my ancient shoes, my frumpy clothes, my prim manners, my prematurely old smile, and feel an unhealthy curiosity to know what Nina might be wearing, how she had learned to choose her clothes, what she did and what it was about her that attracted men. It was this same curiosity that revealed to me the silent presence of the devil. Don’t judge me, Father, don’t go thinking that I’m rushing to judgement, trying to squeeze the facts into a narrow rationale. By dint of sniffing and watching and following like a cautious, hungry animal, I finally came upon the infernal trail that would lead me to the fire in which I am burning today.

  My husband always used to take a nap after lunch, whether in a hammock on the verandah or in our large bed in the warm shadows of our shuttered room. I took advantage of those moments to go out into the garden and slip quietly down to the Pavilion, spying and suffering and imagining the life that must be going on inside—and, yes, why not say it, Father—eaten up with melancholy and envy. There were flowers everywhere, and I would sit down among the flower beds, crushing some small petal against my cheek and trying in vain to calm my fever. Again and again I would catch a glimpse of Nina through the curtains or hear her voice far off, as if we were separated by an impenetrable wall. One day, though, when the sun seemed even hotter than usual and the poppies were wilting in the heat, I suddenly saw her coming down the Pavilion steps at a speed which, at first, I thought languid and, later, judged to be cautious. She was wearing a flimsy pink negligée tied at the waist with a velvet ribbon. I give these details so that you can picture the woman and understand what a very disruptive presence she was. For a moment, dazzled by the sun, I saw her whirling around among the flowers, her clothes fluttering about her. She 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 . . .