by an inexperienced assistant. I pointed to the exposed bricks and ruined plasterwork, adding with a smile:
“These are hard times we live in, Senhor Demétrio! Just look at that wall in dire need of repair. For two months now I’ve been trying to raise the necessary funds, but I still haven’t enough to purchase even one brick!”
Standing before me, motionless, he followed this apparent digression with the utmost attention. He was probably trying to find in my words a hidden meaning, an insinuation of some sort. All I meant was that the wall needed repairing and I did not have the necessary funds. Nevertheless, he had a sudden flash of inspiration, and his eyes lit up as he once again reached out his hand and touched my arm:
“Perhaps I can help you. Who knows? A brick or two here or there; we’re always glad to help our friends.”
I was standing with my back to him as he said these words. I turned around slowly and looked deep into his eyes. I thought I could see stirring in those depths a glimmer of something like hope—what kind of hope I could not possibly say, so shrouded and secretly did it flicker before me, so seared into the sad depths of that soul. He did not look away; on the contrary, he offered himself to me like an open book, and we stood for several seconds as there passed between us, rapidly and invisibly from one to the other, incoherent thoughts, fragments of ideas and feelings, things that the subconscious barely brought to the surface, but through which we were able to reach an important level of mutual understanding.
“A few bricks . . .” I murmured, “are exactly what I need.”
“Shall we say . . . a cartload?” he suggested, leaning familiarly over the counter.
He was certainly breathing faster, and his now bright eyes avidly scanned my face, searching for a word of ready acquiescence with an almost shocking degree of haste and lack of decorum. Even so, I shook my head sadly:
“A cartload? Let’s say three, Senhor Demétrio. I could scarcely fill that gaping hole with fewer than three cartloads of bricks!”
Something akin to a smile—a minuscule, meager smile of victory—appeared on his pallid face. As I was expecting, he nodded his agreement. We had reached a place from which it would be impossible for me to retreat, and so it was in the serenest of voices that I returned to the initial subject:
“A wolf on a country estate is always a dangerous thing. Nevertheless . . .”
He repeated that word back to me, as if pronouncing it took enormous effort.
“Nevertheless . . .”
I took a few paces around the shop, trying to behave as naturally as possible.
“Nevertheless, there do exist practical means of eliminating them, without having to resort to poison.”
“Such as . . . ?” he prompted.
I left him without an answer for a moment and stepped through into the rear of the house. I should explain that my private quarters consisted of a small, dimly-lit backroom with treacherous floorboards, whose only advantage was that it offered me a place to lay my head at night right next to the shop, and thus enabled me to attend to any customer who might appear at a late hour. However, news had spread that some thieves were operating in the town and this was probably why I had taken to keeping a small revolver among the linen in the top of the chest of drawers. “They won’t catch me unawares,” I said to myself. So I opened the drawer, rummaged through the sheets and soon found what I was looking for. I returned to the pharmacy as silently as I had left, and placed the gun on the shop counter.
“What’s this?” asked Senhor Demétrio, not daring to touch the object.
“Oh,” I exclaimed, “just a little plaything. It’s very easy to handle, but will put paid to any wolf.”
He seemed to hesitate, staring all the while at the gun, still not touching it. I don’t know what conflicting thoughts were doing battle deep within him, only that in due course he slowly reached out his hand, took the revolver, and, raising it almost to eye level, examined it closely.
“It’s a woman’s gun,” he said, polishing the mother-of-pearl inlay on its grip.
“It belonged to my mother,” I explained.
He turned the revolver this way and that, and I could clearly see the satisfaction in his eyes.
“Does it work all right?” he asked, pointing the barrel toward the back of the shop.
“Perfectly.”
And, trying to dispel his last remaining scruples, I added:
“They don’t make guns like that any more.”
From that moment on, he was, you might say, fully convinced. Watching him, I wondered whether he had come to my house specifically to obtain the gun. Would the Meneses, so richly endowed in resources and stratagems, really not already have such a weapon? In what circumstances would they use it? What reason would they have to compromise some other person by a course of action that they were, in all likelihood, about to embark upon? And if the matter did indeed concern a wolf—the idea seemed almost ridiculously naïve—then why did they not find a simpler way to kill it, with a trap, for example? I shrugged my shoulders: it was a transaction that suited me well.
Senhor Demétrio squeezed the trigger, swung out the cylinder, even rubbed the barrel on the sleeve of his jacket. It was evident that all this filled him with an intense, secret pleasure, as if, in the dim light of the pharmacy, he could already sense his enemies being felled. He eventually finished his examination and stared at me, and I swear that behind the smile that spread across his face lay a very deep, possibly ancient sentiment, shamefully immoral and cruel—ah, yes, the shrewd smile of someone who feels perfectly confident in the value of the transaction he has just entered into. At the same time he placed his hand on my arm:
“Thank you, my friend. I do believe there could be no better method for killing wolves.”
I returned his smile and we bade each other goodnight. Senhor Demétrio made his way out into the street, clutching the revolver in his pocket, while I, shaking my head over the mysteries of human nature, returned to my dictionary.
19th – The mistress (I think that’s what I’m expected to call her . . .) was supposed to get here today, but, at the last moment, we received a telegram saying she would only arrive tomorrow. It didn’t really matter to me, after all, a few hours here or there makes no difference, but I could see how badly the news affected Senhor Valdo. I saw the sad look on his face as he stared out of the window, the telegram still in his hands. Despite the persistent fine rain, he had gone out into the garden himself to pick some of the loveliest dahlias. While we were tidying the house—moving furniture, plumping cushions, discovering old objects dismissed as redundant, but which somehow gave the house an air of discreet luxury—he seemed extraordinarily lively and happy. He told me not to worry if Dona Nina did not at first understand my position in the family, because it wasn’t necessarily easy for someone new to realize that I wasn’t just one of the servants, but had occupied the rather different position of housekeeper since before his mother’s death. When I remarked that, with the arrival
