was around this time that she moved to the Pavilion. I’m not sure if you remember it, a wooden structure at the far end of the garden, it used to be painted green, but for a long time now, it’s been no particular color at all, scarred by time, battered by the rains, with patches of mold and cracks opened up in the walls by the damp, all of which made it look rather grubby and unpleasant. Yet at the time, I envied her because she was free of us, of the Chácara—oh, she knew exactly what she wanted!—and free, too, if she wished, to lead a completely separate life, with not a thought for the Meneses. Oddly enough, though, alone now in the big house, I could find not a moment’s rest, always imagining what my sister-in-law might be doing, her plans and thoughts. I would look at my ancient shoes, my frumpy clothes, my prim manners, my prematurely old smile, and feel an unhealthy curiosity to know what Nina might be wearing, how she had learned to choose her clothes, what she did and what it was about her that attracted men. It was this same curiosity that revealed to me the silent presence of the devil. Don’t judge me, Father, don’t go thinking that I’m rushing to judgement, trying to squeeze the facts into a narrow rationale. By dint of sniffing and watching and following like a cautious, hungry animal, I finally came upon the infernal trail that would lead me to the fire in which I am burning today.
My husband always used to take a nap after lunch, whether in a hammock on the verandah or in our large bed in the warm shadows of our shuttered room. I took advantage of those moments to go out into the garden and slip quietly down to the Pavilion, spying and suffering and imagining the life that must be going on inside—and, yes, why not say it, Father—eaten up with melancholy and envy. There were flowers everywhere, and I would sit down among the flower beds, crushing some small petal against my cheek and trying in vain to calm my fever. Again and again I would catch a glimpse of Nina through the curtains or hear her voice far off, as if we were separated by an impenetrable wall. One day, though, when the sun seemed even hotter than usual and the poppies were wilting in the heat, I suddenly saw her coming down the Pavilion steps at a speed which, at first, I thought languid and, later, judged to be cautious. She was wearing a flimsy pink negligée tied at the waist with a velvet ribbon. I give these details so that you can picture the woman and understand what a very disruptive presence she was. For a moment, dazzled by the sun, I saw her whirling around among the flowers, her clothes fluttering about her. She seemed entirely untroubled by the brilliant light and set off purposefully. I don’t know what dark force impelled me to follow her. You may no longer remember the exact layout of that part of our garden, Father, but you often went there to hear my late mother-in-law’s confession; you walked together there on innumerable occasions, or so the story goes—and no one would, I think, be better equipped to identify the place where we were heading. It was to the right of the Pavilion, where there used to be a clearing with a statue at each corner, each representing one of the four seasons. The only survivors were Summer and the lower half of Spring, inside which, as if it were a vase, a vigorous fern grew, overflowing the broken edges. The plants and trees had grown taller, and yet the clearing remained untouched, as if it were a redundant space, floating in the midst of that dense vegetation. That—a place no one ever went to—was where Nina was heading, and this only intensified my curiosity. I continued to follow her, hiding behind trees as I went. My fear of being seen meant that I missed part of what happened next. When I got closer to the clearing, I hid behind the trunk of an acacia tree, and I saw Nina, trembling with rage, talking to Alberto, our gardener. I moved closer still and hid behind a tall clump of ferns, not wanting to miss a single word of what they said. However, everything must have happened very quickly, because I saw Nina raise her hand and slap the boy. He dropped the spade he was carrying and stepped back, putting his hand to his cheek. The strangeness of the scene left me momentarily stunned—and I had barely recovered from my shock, when I saw Nina give the boy a shove, then stride off in the opposite direction from which she had come. Alberto was left alone, rubbing the cheek she had struck. He clearly lacked the courage to do anything else and merely followed her with his eyes until she had disappeared from sight. I don’t know what I did then, I must have slipped or lost my balance, because he immediately turned toward me. “Ah, it’s you, Senhora,” he said, and there was no surprise in his voice. Only then did I notice how he had changed. When people are of no interest to us, they fade into the background like insignificant objects. For me, Alberto had always been the gardener, and I had never thought of him in any other way. Now, simply by virtue of Nina’s presence, I discovered him just as I had discovered myself. This, Father, must be the devil’s main talent: stripping reality of any fiction and placing it naked, in all its impotence and anxiety, in the very center of a person’s being. Yes, for the first time I really saw Alberto and I saw him in various ways simultaneously: first, that he was young, second, that he was handsome. Not handsome as he was in that precise moment, but handsome as he must have been before meeting Nina, pure and serene in the simplicity of his small, provincial soul. Now, split in two, the old him and the new came together in that same dark beauty, and there he was, as if by chance, looking slightly disheveled, like those gods whom the myths conjured out of foam or wind. I sensed the person he would have been, retrospectively, if you like, not as Nina loved him, but as I might perhaps have loved him. He was different now, but I knew he was different. There was a weariness about his face, the sadness of knowledge in his eyes. I spoke to him as if for the first time, and my voice shook because I was speaking to a human being and not to an abstraction. “What’s wrong, Alberto?” And the odd thing is that he addressed me then as if I were an abstraction, as if I did not exist or were merely the colorless being he was accustomed to greeting. “Did you see how she treated me?” he said, by way of a response. At the same time, this was spoken in such a clearly confessional tone that I could not possibly misunderstand, and a wave of bitterness rose up in my heart. I turned away to hide my tears. And yet there was nothing special about what he had said to me, except that, for him, the veil had not been torn asunder and he saw me as he did every day: the same poor, sad, empty being I had always been. Forgetting I was there, he exclaimed again: “Did you see the way she treated me! But she’ll pay for it one day, and pay dearly, the slut!” That last word shocked me, and I spun around. He seemed then to wake from his dream and muttered an awkward: “Sorry . . .” I confess I was still trying to control my own feelings, and so, pretending not to have heard the insulting term, I went over to him and asked again: “What’s wrong, Alberto, what happened?” But he did not answer and had grown distant again. At this point, I began talking, and it was as if another being had entered me and was using my lips to utter those strange words: “I know exactly what’s going on. You’re probably in love with her and dream night and day about her beautiful hair, isn’t that right? Of her white skin, Alberto, her body, which you cannot have . . . Be a man and have the courage to confess, you’re madly, hopelessly in love with her, aren’t you?” I was holding him and shaking him, completely out of control. He came to his senses then, stared at me for a moment in amazement, and then began to laugh. I did not at first understand that laugh, which had the affect of a cold, concentrated beam of light that quickly dissipated the shadows on his face. And then I understood: how ridiculous I must look in my dark dress, my hair caught neatly back in a bun, my thin lips pressed together, braced for the first insult, the first lie, the first offer . . .
I could not bear what, for me, was not so much a laugh as an offence of the gravest order; I recoiled, turned, and fled, feeling that, without even having met him, I had already lost him forever.
5th – We haven’t had a moment’s peace since she arrived. She’s constantly asking for things and is never happy, complaining about the servants, the house, the weather, everything, as if we were to blame for what is happening to her. I haven’t yet seen her at rest, and I don’t honestly think she knows how to rest. She is always pacing back and forth, doing something or thinking of something to do—this gives her a feverish, almost hostile appearance, which creates an uneasy, expectant atmosphere. In the servants’ quarters, the maids complain, and in the house itself the masters and mistress sit around, grim-faced.
It’s
