Chronicle of the Murdered House Read online

  There had always been certain limited places for gay people in Brazil: they had taken a leading role in making Rio’s Carnival the most opulent in the world; and a leading role, too, in religion: in Catholicism and, even more notably, as priests, soothsayers, and palm readers in the African-descended religions. Shut out of so many areas, they became gatekeepers of their own domains: organizers and collectors, tastemakers and decorators. One area they were shut out of was literature: they had turned up occasionally in Brazilian books, notably in Adolfo Caminha’s short Bom-Crioulo of 1895. But even gay writers (Caminha seems not to have been gay) wrapped a cordon sanitaire around gay lives: Mário de Andrade’s story “Frederico Paciência,” for example, was only published posthumously, and though it was ahead of its time—it was begun in the twenties and appeared in 1947—its hesitations and implied condemnation of homosexual love leave it far behind ours.

  Appearing in this context of no context, Lúcio Cardoso’s Chronicle predictably scandalized the more predictably scandalizable critics. In words that hint at Lúcio’s affinity with Clarice Lispector, his champion Otávio de Faria answered those critics: “Are we going to leave off on our attempts to reconstruct the world, this tremendous responsibility, on which our salvation may depend, in order to obey a half-dozen prejudices?”

  •

  On December 7, 1962, a lifetime of heavy drinking and drug abuse finally caught up with Lúcio Cardoso. To what extent did these addictions have to do with his sexuality? Even in our far freer times, and as evidenced in numerous studies and articles, substance abuse is notoriously higher among gay people, a toll largely attributable to homophobic discrimination and bullying.

  Earlier that year, in May, he had had a warning. Arriving at his home in Ipanema, his sister Maria Helena “saw the muscles in his face ceaselessly trembling, while he, in the greatest affliction, tried to calm them with his hand.” The crisis passed, but the doctor was clear. “Look, Lúcio, what you had was just a spasm, leaving your mouth a bit crooked and that drawling way of speaking. Thank God, because it could have been much worse. With time, if you keep doing your exercises in front of the mirror, everything will return to normal. But from now on don’t overdo it, don’t drink, don’t wear yourself out partying, try to lead a calmer life, since if you go on like before something worse can happen.” Despite his sister’s desperate attempts to help him, he refused to heed the doctor’s warning. “I’m not a child for you to be taking care of me,” he told Maria Helena. “Don’t touch those bottles! If I want to drink, neither you nor anybody else is going to stop me.” Later, Maria Helena would write:

  I’ll never forget that date: December 7, 1962. It was a calm day, completely normal, until the afternoon. Between six- thirty and seven the phone rang.

  “Lelena, I’m at Lazzarini’s house, helping out with a dinner for his friends.”

  I recognized the voice of Nonô, whom I hadn’t seen in more than two days. He sometimes vanished like that for a week, which worried me after his spasm.

  “Be careful, don’t drink, don’t take any pills.”

  “Relax, I’m being a saint.”

  Later that night, not having heard from him, she went to his apartment, directly behind hers. She found the door unlocked, which she thought was strange. She went in and discovered her brother gravely ill. Terrified, she called an ambulance; that night he fell into a coma. He emerged from the coma, but a massive stroke had left him permanently paralyzed. He would never again be able to speak normally. His writing career was over.

  Maria Helena cared for him for years, always hoping that their attempts at rehabilitation would allow him to resume his career. It was a painful struggle, days of hope punctuated by weeks and months of despair. In a moment of frustration, trying to get him to do his exercises, Maria Helena told him:

  “You’re very stubborn, that’s why so much has happened to you. Remember when you had your first sickness, just a spasm? I begged you, but you kept on drinking and popping pills. Did it work, your stubbornness?”

  He got even more irritated and to my surprise said:

  “It did. I died.”

  Nursed by Maria Helena, Lúcio eventually become a talented painter, using only his left hand. The little watercolor on my shelf eventually grew into full-fledged scenes, and before his death he would show these paintings in four different exhibitions. In the eloquent memoir Maria Helena published at Clarice’s suggestion, she records his painful, fitful, exhausting progress—until, miraculously, he finally managed to start writing again.

  “Can be 100 years—I have in the spirit young—life, happiness, everything!” he scrawled. “I, writer by fate.” “I looked at him with great affection and admiration. God had tried him in the cruelest way yet he had more happiness and love in his heart than sadness and bitterness. The dark days passed quickly, followed by light, much light.” After saying it for years in order to keep up his spirits, Maria Helena could finally exclaim, this time with conviction, “Darling, the day is not far off when you will be able to write novels again.”

  The end soon followed, on September 22, 1968. When he was already in a coma, Clarice visited him. “I didn’t go to the wake, nor to the funeral, nor to the mass because there was too much silence within me. In those days I was alone, I couldn’t see people: I had seen death.”

  Contents

  1. André’s Diary (conclusion)

  2. First Letter from Nina to Valdo Meneses

  3. The Pharmacist’s First Report

  4. Betty’s Diary (I)

  5. The Doctor’s First Report

  6. Second Letter from Nina to Valdo Meneses

  7. The Pharmacist’s Second Report

  8. Ana’s First Confession

  9. Betty’s Diary (II)

  10. Valdo Meneses’ Letter

  11. The Pharmacist’s Third Report

  12. Betty’s Diary (III)

  13. The Doctor’s Second Report

  14. Ana’s Second Confession

  15. 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 th
e 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

  1.

  André’s Diary (conclusion)

  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 days, when there was clearly no other possible denouement, even when, terrified, I understood from the silence and the stillness that she 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 be
ds. 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: