him, the old man was anxiously racking his brain, scarcely daring to draw breath: ‘Yes, I remember it well . . .’ ‘Moreover, the matter concerns a major, who was just a lieutenant back in your day.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ the father replied. ‘I remember that lieutenant very well. To judge from the sloppy way he saluted me, he seemed very full of himself.’ Sensing that the old man was hooked, the Colonel stroked his chin: ‘Indeed . . . But the damned thing is I can’t quite remember . . .’ The father cried out: ‘For the love of God, man!’ And the Colonel: ‘Quite. It’s a funny old business. It’s always at exactly this point that my memory seems to fail me.’ The old man shook him: ‘Please, please, carry on . . .’ But the Colonel had cruelly decided to stop. Suspended at its very climax, the story hovered in the air like a slowly evaporating cloud. Already on his feet and standing motionless before him, the Colonel said: ‘It’s late, my friend, and it’s quite a walk home.’ He was blinking as if struggling to pick up the threads of a memory. ‘For pity’s sake,’ groaned the cripple. But the other man, unmoved, was shaking his head: ‘It’s a terrible thing, unbelievable really, but I can’t remember a thing about what happened next.’ The father wrung his hands: ‘Not one more detail? Nothing?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘A snippet? Anything at all?’ The Colonel was implacable: ‘Alas, I’ve completely forgotten—don’t know what’s come over me.’ And all just as the Colonel was beginning a tale about the regimental depot, at the time when the old man was still a serving officer. A deep sigh filled his chest, as if his own life were escaping him. And that night the Colonel rose and bade him a chilly goodbye, as if the father had mortally offended him. A great silence fell upon the room. Then the father began to shout and foam at the mouth. He was having an attack, just as he used to in his younger days. He spent the rest of the night in a bad way, his body rigid, his eyes bulging. The next day, his face pale and drawn, his very first question was: ‘No message from the Colonel?’ ‘No,’ replied his daughter, standing by his bed. ‘Oh God, I’m suffocating! I need some air!’ he exclaimed, and pressed his hands to his chest. The strange thing was that, for three nights, three interminable nights of permanent agony, the Colonel failed to show up. The father sniffled and sobbed over his misfortune. His daughter tried in vain to distract him, but he became even more irritated, calling her ‘lazy’ and ‘slovenly’ and any other insults that came into his head. ‘Calm down, father,’ she replied. He twisted and turned in his wheelchair, saying he was done for, abandoned by God and by man, one foot already in the grave. He stretched out his hands, examining them: ‘Do you see, Nina? This is what used to happen to me as a young man. I nearly died.’ ‘Hush,’ she consoled him, ‘I’m here beside you. Nothing’s going to happen to you.’ Then he told her she was just like her mother—a mediocre Italian actress who had run off back to Europe saying she was homesick—and that one of these days she, too, would abandon him. His was a terrible fate, and why? What had he done? Nothing, nothing at all. There he was, rotting away in that room, with no friendly voices and not knowing what was happening in the world, or even how his former comrades-in-arms were faring. Oh, it was all too much—what a miserable fate, what indignity! Finally, on the fourth day, the Colonel reappeared, and found a broken man, crushed by adversity. ‘I’m a dead man, my friend,’ the father declared as soon as he saw the Colonel, who went over to him, feigning complete ignorance. ‘But what happened? What can have brought you to this state, and so quickly?’ The old man smiled, the sad smile of a defeated man: ‘I’m a dead man, Colonel.’ The Colonel sat down then and whispered: ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been able to come for the last few days.’ Then added mysteriously: ‘Things have been happening at the barracks . . .’ This insinuating statement made the father’s eyes gleam. And reaching out one trembling hand, he touched his companion’s arm. ‘Shall we play today?’ There was a long, painful pause. Slowly, however, the Colonel’s features revealed his true feelings: ‘I’m sorry, my friend, but today is quite impossible.’ A kind of strangled cry rose to the father’s lips: ‘You mean you’re not going to tell me the rest of the story?’ ‘Please believe me, I’m very sorry, but it’s quite impossible.’ ‘Why?’—and the father, who for years had not risen from his chair, found himself almost standing, ready to prevent his friend’s sudden departure. ‘Because . . .’ He stopped, and for the length of that pause it really did seem that the very existence of a human being hung in the balance. ‘Because I don’t remember the rest of the story.’ He said this coolly, and it was clear from his wan smile that he had just told an enormous lie. At that instant, there must have passed before the father’s eyes, like a flash of lightning, the empty nights, the silence, the absence of any human companionship, nothing but those four walls, and, ashen-faced, he fell back in his chair. ‘What do you want?
What do you want of me?’ he groaned. The Colonel shook his head without saying a word. ‘Just say it. Take whatever you want, but don’t treat me like this: have some pity on a poor old man.’ His voice trembled, his eyes filled with tears. The Colonel, a few feet away, looked impassively down at the broken man before him. ‘To tell the truth . . .’ A faint warmth seemed to revive the old man’s exhausted body. ‘Yes . . .’ The Colonel leaned over the table, ready to play his winning card. ‘I’ve been thinking . . .’ The father waited silently, his eyes fixed on the eyes of his friend. The other man, sighing, as if removing a great weight from his soul: ‘We get on so well with each other—I tell you my stories and you listen.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ the father stammered, like someone who can hear joyful ringing deep inside him. Then the soldier, his mind made up and with an impudent gleam in his eye: ‘Well, then, we could be friends, we could even be relations!’ The astonished father merely repeated: ‘Relations!’ as if he suddenly saw the possibility of supreme happiness in this world. ‘Relations . . .’ he said again. Then rapidly recovering himself: ‘But how?’ ‘Well, for example . . .’ the Colonel hesitated, looked at his friend as if not yet entirely sure of victory, then a confident smile reappeared on his lips: ‘For example, here we have a pretty young woman of marriageable age.’ ‘She’s my daughter!’ exclaimed the father outraged. ‘Yes, she’s your daughter,’ repeated the Colonel coldly, realizing that he had gone too far now to turn back, ‘so what if she’s your daughter? Your daughter also needs to marry, and if we agree . . . In any case, I think I have all the necessary qualities. Or do you have some objection? I may not be exactly young . . .’ The father interrupted him impatiently: ‘But . . .’ The Colonel continued unabashed: ‘There are no ifs or buts about it. Unless, of course, you can think of a better suitor than me? I’m not some down-and-out, I know a thing or two, and, what’s more, there’s my position in the army.’ ‘And you want me to gamble away my own daughter?’ The Colonel stood abruptly to attention: ‘It is not your daughter you are gambling away, it’s her happiness. And I think we can agree it is a bet you are sure to win.’ This argument seemed decisive. The old man tried to resist, wrung his hands and muttered something inaudible, but, seeing the Colonel about to leave, he bowed his head. ‘It’s true,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know . . .’ ‘Don’t know?’ The Colonel loomed forbiddingly over him. ‘You don’t know what? Because I do know: girls of that age have no right to want anything; they must do what their father decides.’ The old man tried one last time: ‘That’s exactly what I was going to say. She . . .’ The Colonel gave a contemptuous snort: ‘She? I’ll take care of that. Once I have your consent . . .’ The father thought it over for a minute and came to the conclusion that the request was not so unreasonable after all, and that they could very well come to an agreement, given that the Colonel himself was offering to speak to his daughter. When he heard the old man’s answer, the Colonel sat down again, pulled his chair closer and picked up where he had left off: ‘So then, my friend, as I was telling you the other day, you were unwittingly at the very fulcrum of the story. At the time, the district headquarters . . .’ The details poured forth and multiplied, but for the entire duration of the Colonel’s report, the father’s eyes remained inexplicably wet with tears.”
“I don’t know,” said Senhor Valdo, finishing his story, “if that was the end of the matter. Colonel Gonçalves wasn’t at heart a bad sort. He helped Nina many times, but the truth is he never managed to master her. Nina wasn’t as needy as her father, although they both had the same lust for life. And as was to be expected, the Colonel ended by losing the bet—the only time he did.”
That
