to me by Senhor Valdo. Once or twice, he broke off in order to rein in some particularly strong emotion. Leaning on the counter and feigning an indifference I certainly didn’t feel, I repeatedly asked myself what it was that had made him go so far, what was the secret and pressing motive that had caused him to unburden himself to me in such a manner. Ah, how little we know of the human heart. Deep down, in that unfathomable place where the final scene of a comedy without spectators is played out, perhaps he was merely reacting against the wrath of the Meneses, their constant and oppressive tyranny.
He stood before me for some time, his head bowed, as if he had summoned up those memories purely for his own pleasure. However as soon as he raised his head, I saw his now shadowless face and realized that, during all that time, he had been speaking about someone who had already died, a being who had undoubtedly once been very dear to him, but whose irremediable absence had only be softened by the passing of time. I felt a shiver run through me, imagining the courtship that had preceded their nuptials: the Colonel, with no reason to come up to their rooms after the father’s death, pacing around downstairs waiting for Senhor Valdo to leave so that he could speak to Dona Nina—his pleas, his possible threats, his astonishing proposals—and then the final capitulation, the sublime flowering of that late passion, the wedding, and, at last, Dona Nina’s arrival . . .
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.
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,
