powder.
She said this in an almost playful tone, but I wasn’t fooled and could sense the silent, bitter agitation beating inside her. I hurried off to find these various things and returned to her side, eager to detect in this gay façade some flicker of genuine joy. She took the mirror first and, as if to avoid a nasty shock, very gingerly turned to regard her reflection—she looked at herself for some time, then again sighed and shrugged, as if to say: “What do I care? The day is sure to come when I’ll have to resign myself to not being pretty anymore.” It was true that she was very far from what she had been, but the same mysterious attraction that had once so captivated me was still there. That simple shrug of the shoulders was proof to me that the idea of dying was further from her mind than it seemed. This impression was confirmed when, leaning slightly on my arm, she asked in a voice that struggled to be confidential, but succeeded only in expressing a certain repressed anxiety:
“Tell me, André, does he know the state I’m in, does he know I’m at death’s door? Does he know this is the end?”
She was looking at me challengingly, and her whole being, concentrated and intent, was asking: “Can’t you see that I’m suffering in vain. You can tell me the truth, I know I’m not dying, that my hour has not yet come.” I don’t know now what I said—what did “he,” my father, matter?—and I turned away, precisely because I knew her hour had come, and that she would never leave what was now her deathbed. Nina saw what I was thinking and, placing one hand on my arm, said, trying to laugh as she did so:
“Listen to me, André: I’m better, I’m well, yes, almost better, I’ve none of the symptoms I had before . . . So don’t go thinking you’re going to rid yourselves of me just yet.”
And wrapping me in her warm, sickly breath, she added:
“I can’t wait to hear what he’ll say when he sees me back on my feet . . .”
I almost believed that her astonishing energy had finally triumphed over the germs of death deposited in her flesh. Reclining against the pillows—she was always demanding fresh ones, stuffed with light, cool cotton—she was busy smoothing her tangled hair, while I held the mirror for her. A divine fire, a marvelous presence seemed once again to be stirring inside her.
“The good times will return, won’t they, André?” she said as she struggled with her hair grown dry and stiff with fever. “And everything will be just as good as it was in the beginning, you’ll see. I’ll never forget . . .”
(How I longed to be free of those “good times”! She, alas, would not continue in time at all, but I would, and who would keep me company on the long journey ahead?) When I said nothing, she turned and winked at me, as if to prove that the memory of those days was still alive, days I was trying in vain to bury. And oddly enough, despite that attempt to put on a bright, vivacious, youthful air, there was a stoniness about her face, which lent that wink a grotesque, melancholy quality.
“Yes, of course, Mother,” I stammered, again bowing my head.
She shot me a glance in which there was still a remnant of her old anger:
“Mother! You’ve never called me ‘Mother’ before, so why start now?”
And I was so stunned that the mirror trembled in my hands:
“Of course, Nina, of course the old times will return.”
She continued struggling to untangle the knots in her hair, which formed a kind of halo around her head and seemed to be the one thing still alive: through its resurrected waves, a new spring, mysterious and transfigured, was beginning to flow through her veins.
“You need never be angry with me again, André, and you need never again spend hours sitting on the bench in the garden waiting for me.” And suddenly, as if giving in to the memory of that scene, her voice took on a velvety tone, tinged with a childish, feminine melancholy, in which I, deeply touched, felt all the pulsating force of her loving soul. “I’ll never again hide as I did that time, do you remember? And I’ll never pack my bags to go traveling alone.”
Tears, landscapes, lost emotions—what did any of that matter now? In my eyes, she seemed to be dissolving like a being made of foam. It wasn’t treachery or lies or even forgetting that was causing her to drown (and with me unable to save her), it was, instead, the impetus of what had once been and that she had so cruelly summoned up.
“Oh, dear God, please don’t!” I cried.
Then, still vibrant with emotion, still with the comb in her hand, she looked at me as if she had just woken up. And a great darkness filled her eyes.
“You don’t understand, do you, you’re too stupid!” she said.
And her hands—what proof did she need, what forgotten testimony, what lost memory?—reached greedily across the bedspread in search of mine. She leaned forward and I glimpsed her thin breasts beneath her nightdress. Intercepting that glance, she quickly adjusted her clothes, not that she was ashamed to reveal herself naked to me, but ashamed, rather, of her present ugliness. I turned away to hide the tears filling my eyes. And she, poor thing, had been so beautiful, her breasts so full and firm. Driven by some diabolical impulse, she suddenly, brutally, undid her nightdress and shook me hard, saying:
“Fool, why shouldn’t the good times come back? Do you really think it’s going to end like this? That’s just not possible. I’m not as ugly as all that, they haven’t taken everything from me, look . . .” and she tugged at my arm, while I kept my gaze firmly averted. “You see, it’s not all over yet. Perhaps we can move to some big city where no one will know about us.” (Did she really believe what she was saying? Her grip on my arm relaxed, her voice quavered.) “Ah, André, how quickly everything passes.”
She fell silent, and I could see that she was breathing hard. The entirely fictitious color in her cheeks fled, and her head lolled back. It wasn’t those wasted words that seemed to dispirit her most, but the vision of that false paradise she had been evoking. I tried to cheer her, saying:
“No, Nina, you’re right. We could move to Rio perhaps, where no one will know us.”
And I thought to myself: I could never hate her, it’s beyond my capabilities. Irrespective of what god or devil had conceived me, my passion was above all earthly contingencies. I knew only the feeling of that body breathing hard in my arms, and in the hour of her death, for she breathed exactly as she had in those moments of passion. In my innermost thoughts, I was sure nothing could save her, and that the pieces we held in our hands were of no use to us now. Love, travel, what did those words mean? On the empty board, fate had finally made its move. The solution no longer depended on our will alone, nor on what we did, regardless of whether our actions were good or bad—the peace for which we had so longed, would, from now on, be a time of resignation and mourning.
And yet even I wasn’t sure what provoked those thoughts—perhaps I was exaggerating, perhaps it was the influence of my naturally melancholic temperament. She was, after all, feeling better, she was talking and making plans, just as she used to. But something stronger than me, stronger than my own sad certainty and my clumsy interpretation of the facts, was telling me that it was precisely those words that spoke of the inevitable end, and that death had nailed to her bedhead the decree announcing eternal rest. She could make one final effort, she could laugh and insult me, or say she was leaving and abandoning Vila Velha forever, or simply devour me with hungry kisses—but I knew she was looking about her now with eyes that were no longer of this world, and I was capable of anything except lying to those eyes. What I saw rising up in them was like the sap rising
