we find ourselves further away from each other. At that moment, though, it appeared to be true, the air was filled with the scent of jasmine, and the whole burgeoning world around us seemed to approve and to promise that our love would remain alive. But what evil spell was cast on us, how was it that everything changed so quickly? What happened to me, what happened to our love? Are there no certainties in life, do we engender only forgetting and distance? Do words mean nothing at all, can they not be used to seal an oath? What are we, we who pass through life like so much foam, who leave no trace once we are gone, only a handful of ashes and shadows? I ask myself these questions, my heart in my mouth: does anything endure, does anything remain untouched by the rage of time, are there feelings that never die and are never betrayed?
But we have been here before. I can feel you retreating into sullen silence and staring off into the distance. Distance is the image of our weariness. There, where not a hint of me, not a shadow of my gestures, not an echo of my words will ever enter, there will you take refuge in your certainty and dig my grave with gnarled, heartless fingers. I am definitively dead for you, a vast, formless tombstone stands permanently between us. And that is what most wounds and consumes me. Imagining you far off, giving not so much as a pitying backward glance at what we were. Imagining your silence, the way you have completely forgotten what you swore and promised, and feeling that I was nothing but a name spoken long ago in a vast and now vanished garden. A name like a petal that falls. Ah, Valdo, Valdo!
On one such day, grown tired of thinking and suffering, I went to a pharmacist’s to buy a sleeping draught. I came back and sorted out all my things—boxes, ribbons, hats, the silly little bits and bobs I always have with me and that I find so helpful—putting everything in order so that, after my death, it could all be given to a friend of mine, a nurse. Then I scribbled a note to the Colonel, asking him to forgive me for not being the daughter he wanted me to be—and asking him to forget me, because things weren’t well with me. Lastly . . .
Anyway, you can imagine the letter. Then I filled a glass of water, emptied the whole contents of the tube into it and waited until I had courage enough to drink it. No, I’m lying, Valdo, that wasn’t the letter I wrote with the glass there before me. I wanted to write something that would be a summation of my life, my testament. I wanted the cries in that letter to echo through the vast spaces of your house and make the guilty parties tremble in their hiding places. I listed Demétrio’s crimes, stating that I would never forgive him, in this world or the next. I laid out all the reasons he would come up with once he learned I was no longer in this world. The adulteries and the sins he imagined I would be committing on the other side. It gave me such pleasure writing that letter, imagining my body lying there with a candle at each corner, to be gawked at by the curious. The dead have a language of their own and send a message that is, at once, a warning and a condemnation of our lives. I don’t know how much I wrote, but there were pages and pages of the stuff—and I don’t know what I wrote after that, what tears and pleas and curses I flung down on the paper. I know only that it was all very confused, that you would never have had the patience or the desire to decipher it. I can’t remember either how long I spent writing the letter, I do remember that it was already dark by the time I finished, and the pen had fallen from my hand when the door opened and I heard Colonel Gonçalves saying almost in my ear: “What were you thinking? Are you mad? Have you lost your reason?” I turned around; the floor was covered in sheets of paper. Gripped by a single thought, I made a grab for the glass, but the Colonel snatched it up and poured the contents down the sink. “Have you forgotten that you have a duty to your friends?” he went on. He helped me to my feet: “We must be patient with life.” He tilted my chin and shook his head reprovingly at the sight of my tear-filled eyes: “You need to get out more and have a little fun.” He gathered up the sheets of paper from the floor and tore them into pieces, then took me to a casino. I followed him like an automaton, blinded by the lights, feeling ill and weak. And yet I won thirty thousand cruzeiros. I have never known such luck. “You see!” exclaimed the Colonel “Fate is on our side.” I ended up almost forgetting my woes. We dined at a restaurant by the sea, the moonlight glinting on the water, we drank champagne, we danced. It was almost dawn by the time we came home: the sun was rising and lighting up the harbor. It was then that I decided to do as the Colonel advised, to forget and let my heart rest easy.
Don’t go thinking, though, that money was the cause of this transformation. You know very well that money has never been of great importance to me. What saved me was the Colonel’s disinterested friendship and concern. I know he’s not handsome or cultivated, and certainly not young, but there is genuine warmth in his gestures and sincerity in his words. We went everywhere together and, because he considered it to my advantage, he always introduced me as his niece. He would say: “She’s been living in Europe. She’s an artist.” For my part, I didn’t much care what anyone said. I knew I was being looked at and whispered about, but felt I had gone beyond worrying about what other people might think of me. Time seemed to pass infinitely slowly, and I would sigh, looking at people and things with equal indifference. But I made new acquaintances, even a few lasting friendships. I can see you smiling scornfully and murmuring: “Riffraff.” But what do I care about riffraff or dubious friendships: friendship can be a flower blooming on a dung heap, from which it draws its color and its sap. My whole life gradually changed. During that time, I must confess, not a day passed without the Colonel visiting me bearing gifts: “a souvenir, a memento of our friendship.” Now, Valdo, we come to the crux of the matter. If I were a free woman, I would have no hesitation in accepting gifts from this stranger. His courtship, because the truth demands that I call it that, would be justified, and I would not have the nagging sense that I’m leading someone on whose feelings I cannot reciprocate . . . I keep remembering that I have a legitimate husband—and I find the Colonel’s constant attentions troubling and vaguely humiliating. Despite this ............................................................................................. ................................................................................................................... ................. unable to continue in the same tone. I find myself in a ridiculous position and, thanks to your lack of foresight in not paying me my agreed allowance, I have to resort to various stratagems and hope that other kind folk will take pity on me. No, a thousand times no, I cannot go on like this. When you swore those oaths of eternal love, little did I think this was the path that awaited me. Now it’s too late to shed any tears. What I want is for you to come to my aid and send me the promised money, to do something so that I can at last disabuse the poor Colonel and live in peace with my conscience. You have the right to expel me—when I think about it, my departure was precisely that, an expulsion—to deprive me of my son’s affection and deny me your name, and, as you have been doing, even expose me to public execration. But you cannot deny me the help you owe me, indeed, to do so now would be an act I could only describe as the lowest of the low. If, as I expect, you claim to have no money, then sell one of those useless bits of furniture cluttering up the Chácara, yes, sell one of those dead artifacts and come up with the necessary money to feed someone who is still living. Some things are worth more than mere furniture, and they could even be the bringers of justice. Remember that when I left your house, having been accused of the most horrible of crimes, I took nothing with me but a few handkerchiefs with which to dry my tears as I wept over my misfortune. It is time, then, for you all to think of me other than as someone to be accused and insulted. I am not alone in the world, thank God, and I know how to stand up for myself, even if that takes my last ounce of strength and my last drop of blood. Take heed, Valdo, and don’t force me to take extreme measures. (Again I tremble and my eyes fill with tears: no, Valdo, I feel that I can still trust in the memory of the love that once united us. I know that everything will be resolved quietly, that you will send me the money I need in order to live—and thus an act of justice and understanding will give succor to a woman who was once so ignominiously forced to abandon her own home.)
My name is Aurélio dos Santos, and for many
