III

A few days later, at 18 Rua de São Bento, Uncle Timóteo was leaving the second-floor apartment of Colonel Stephenson, an old English friend of his, who had enlisted with the Portuguese army after the war of 1832. The colonel was a robust old man, a great drinker of brandy and teller of anecdotes, who still spoke Portuguese with a strong English accent. Timóteo visited him often, since the colonel’s gout prevented him straying far from his huge armchair, his ‘shell’ as he called it, and they would sit and smoke large pipefuls of tobacco together, discuss politics, social mores and English cuisine, drink a bottle of brandy between them and remember the past, occasionally uttering a few of their favourite oaths.

As Uncle Timóteo was making his slow way down the last flight of stairs, his wooden leg thudding on each step, a little girl of about eighteen months, very plump and blonde and precariously balanced on chubby, red legs, came tottering across the courtyard on her own, squealing with laughter and waving her arms in the air, her tiny fists tight shut.

Through a side door off the courtyard was a mercer’s shop; the child’s mother, a kind, healthy, cheerful young woman, who owned the shop and was known to Timóteo, had doubtless become distracted for a moment and allowed the little one to wander out into the courtyard alone. Just then, Timóteo heard the sound of horses’ hooves departing, and saw a tall, blonde woman, Madame de Molineux, come hurrying into the courtyard, with the black train of her riding habit draped over her arm. A white veil on her hat covered her face, and she wore a bunch of violets in a buttonhole in her bodice.

As she was crossing the courtyard, heading straight for the stairs, the child teetered unsteadily into her path. Madame de Molineux impatiently kicked her to one side; the child fell face first, her hands outstretched, and lay on her belly on the flagstones, screaming and unable to get up.

Madame de Molineux had moved on. A woman rushed out from the shop, scooped the child up in her arms and ran back in with her, covering her with kisses.

Madame de Molineux was already on her way up the stairs, when Timóteo, who was just two steps down from her, said, frowning:

‘You’d have to have a heart of stone to kick a child.’

Madame de Molineux stopped dead; beneath her veil, her face had flushed scarlet, but, turning round, she said in a cold, cutting tone:

‘Are you addressing me?’

Timóteo, standing very erect, also turned round:

‘Who else would I be talking to? Is that any way to treat a child who can barely walk? If I were the child’s mother, I’d give you a good slap!’

Madame de Molineux instinctively raised her whip. Timóteo’s eyes were now fixed on hers, with a strangely insistent, increasingly angry look in them.

‘You insolent man!’

At that, Timóteo coloured and said slowly, with his cane at the ready:

‘Call the man of the house, if there is one; tell him to arm himself to the teeth and come out here right now.’

Madame de Molineux looked at him, shrugged and muttered:

‘You’re mad.’

But Timóteo shouted up at her:

‘I don’t know who you are, madam, but one thing’s certain, you’re no lady!’

And with that he stormed off. Still shaking, he scrambled into his carriage and struck the floor repeatedly with his cane. Yet, despite the storm of anger roaring inside him, he was thinking: ‘Now where the devil have I seen that face before?’

As soon as the maid opened the door, Madame de Molineux strode across the entrance hall, revealing black, ankle-length breeches beneath her skirt. With the train of her riding habit still draped over one arm and her whip clutched angrily in her hand, she rushed over to the living room window; she wanted to see the man who had insulted her, but the carriage had already pulled away and she saw only the back of the driver, with his hat pulled down over his ears.

She threw her whip down on a chair and unfastened her hat; her hands, in their suede gloves, were still trembling slightly; she took a few agitated steps about the room. The close-fitting, black riding habit emphasised the line of her bust, the curve of her slender, supple waist, the slightly lascivious tilt of her hips. Anger made her already tall figure seem even taller; there was a cold glint in her dark eyes, and beneath her face powder, her cheeks were blazing. She stopped pacing, hurled down her gloves and, going into her bedroom, shouted:

‘Mélanie!’

She had rented the apartment fully furnished, and her bedroom had the mean banality of a hotel: the rug by the dressing table was worn with use; the drapes around the bed were made from thin, cheap cotton, and the other curtains in the room were of blue rep, bleached and faded by the sun; and there was a crack in the ceiling plaster. However, just as an artist, with a little skilful shading, can lend charm and originality to a banal lithographed figure, so Genoveva had succeeded in making her room seem rich and interesting, simply by adding here and there a few refined, luxurious touches. A magnificent plaid coverlet lay across the bed; the linen sheets bore her bold monogram and a countess’s coronet, both embroidered in scarlet silk; her sumptuous lace nightgown was folded away in a blue satin case; the gold tops of various glass bottles glinted on the chest of drawers; on a round table covered by an ugly bit of felt cloth, cheaply dyed, lay a snakeskin blotter bearing a silver crest, as well as an elegant paper knife and fine writing paper with an expensive watermark; on the dressing table, in boxes lined with cherry-red velvet, was the bright steel of her scissors, the gleam of tweezers and the golden brown of tortoiseshell combs; a pair of long, buttoned, pale suede gloves had been flung casually down; some lace hose overflowed from a drawer crammed with silk stockings, so light they might blow away; and wafting on the air, like her personal signature, was the vague, subtle aroma of opulence, of opoponax and Tanglewood.

‘Mélanie!’ she shouted impatiently. ‘Where were you? Come and help me undress!’

And she began unbuttoning her riding habit, her fingers still trembling with rage.

Mélanie was twenty-five and came from Plancus, in Provence, but all she retained of that hot land, where the blood burns, were her dark, avaricious eyes and the supple, sensual movements of her tall, skinny body. Paris, where she had rolled about like a pebble on a river bed, had smoothed, polished, refined and perfected this tall, handsome girl, who had arrived, some years before, weeping bitterly, having left her family and run away with a Catalan. Now she had a slim, expressive, bold nose, dry lips which she constantly moistened with her tongue, hips as narrow as a boy’s, and a light, quick step. She had led a complicated life: after the Catalan, she had moved on to a Carlist, who had been followed in turn by a Brazilian. For many years, she had worked as a maid in the gloomy Hotel Português do Meio-Dia de Pernambuco in Rue Lafayette; then she had got lost in the depths of Paris, where she had lived in one miserable garret after another and danced frenetically in dance halls, where she was paid for her pains by some and cheerfully beaten by others.

She had been passed on to Genoveva by the mother of Madame de P., a Portuguese cocotte married to a German who had been governor of Metz in 1870. Mélanie had been trained by Madame de P. and she was an excellent chambermaid, astute, clean and discreet, and she spoke Portuguese as if she were a native of Lisbon, apart from a slight Brazilian lilt picked up from her days at the Hotel Pernambuco.

Genoveva had got into the habit of always speaking to her in Portuguese, the better to confide in her, for she had no secrets from Mélanie, indeed, she poured out to her, as if into a bucket of dirty water, whatever passed through her head, however evil, outrageous or immoral. Mélanie adored her; she even felt rather attracted to Genoveva, with her lovely figure, for Mélanie was becoming more of a sensualist with each night that passed, rather as a drunk grows drunker with each fresh glass of wine; a kind of greedy hysteria dulled her eyes; not that these libidinous preoccupations prevented her from zealously carrying out her duties. She was an excellent maid of vice, for she was the soul of discretion, treated Genoveva’s clothes as devoutly as a sacristan would the vestments of a priest, and had a real gift for duplicity and pretence; there was no one like her when it came to putting off a pressing creditor or an importunate lover. Her small, pink tongue, so prodigal in Provençal words, could produce a lie as naturally as it produced saliva. She was also very careful with money, an invaluable quality in a chaotic household, for she would scrutinise the cook’s accounts, question her about prices and haggle over every last penny. She combined the suspicious nature of a policeman and the acuity of a second-hand dealer. With her small feet, her feline gait, like that of a cat on heat, she would bustle about in her bonnet, darting lewd glances, coming and going, telling lies, sorting things out, gulping down large glasses of water, eating almost nothing and using men like the most refined of gluttons, first one, then another and another and another, sometimes several at the same time, though she never mixed them up, savouring in each man some particular pleasure: this one she liked for his twinkling eyes, that one for his honed muscles, others for their sheer talent for debauchery. Of love she would say: ‘Ça c’est de la fichue blague et v’là!’ It was just a lot of hot air.

Genoveva was shocked to learn that during their last year in Paris, Mélanie had had eleven men! Renaming her Mélanie the Maneater, she took her unreservedly into her confidence.

Genoveva was sitting on the bed, her admirably white neck and arms bare. Her pampered skin, subject to a regime of milk and ice water, seemed to absorb the light like the bold, fresh petals of a camellia; her rounded legs glowed palely like burnished ivory; her arms were slender, vigorous, with something marmoreal and sculptural about them, their milky softness and firm muscles betraying a sensual vigour. Her neck too was proud, strong, noble, and the two globes of her full breasts, visible beneath her camisole, had a robust, virginal firmness.

She stretched out her feet to Mélanie, who removed her mistress’ boots and the tight underbreeches she wore for riding; then Genoveva donned a long robe in dark silk and put her feet, encased in black silk stockings, in a pair of blue velvet slippers.

‘Here I am, all alone, with no husband, no son, no brother, no one!’

‘Whatever’s wrong, madam?’ asked Mélanie, puzzled, folding her thin arms.

‘I should have taken my whip to his face!’

And she told the astonished Mélanie about how Timóteo had insulted her. An old man, with a wooden leg and a carriage and a filthy old driver … he looked quite mad … and he had taken it upon himself to tell her off, and all over some child she had pushed out of way because it was getting tangled in her skirts. The brute had been coming down the stairs just as she was coming up.

‘He’d probably been to see the English colonel. I’ve bumped into him before, the other day, in fact; Senhor Dâmaso was going down the stairs with him. Yes, the wooden leg, the carriage … I’d say that’s him all right.’

‘Senhor Dâmaso is an ass,’ Genoveva said, getting to her feet and nervously fastening the silk buttons on her robe. ‘Bring me the bottle of gin, Mélanie, and some water. Where’s the Englishwoman?’

‘She’s in her room, madam.’

Mélanie bustled about nearby, her shoes creaking slightly as she crossed the carpet.

Genoveva, reclining in her armchair, was slowly drinking her gin. She seemed gradually to grow calmer. She lit a cigarette, blew out the smoke and relaxed, her legs crossed; her pale, rather narrow brow grew smooth, serene; she stretched and said:

‘I went for the most stupid ride today, along some ghastly road, all walls and gardens!’ She raised her eyes to heaven, exasperated. ‘And that bore, Dâmaso, he’s such an imbecile, such a fool!’

Putting her glass down on the table, she got up, her eyes suddenly hard and dark:

‘I feel like catching the next boat straight back to Paris! Stupid country, stupid people, stupid life!’

Mélanie made some comment about the climate and the city.

‘Oh, shut up and go away. I hate you. I hate everyone. Tell the Englishwoman to go into the living room and play the piano. After all, that’s what I pay her for. And pour me some more gin.’

Mélanie hesitated:

‘You know lately, madam, you’ve been drinking far too much. It’s terribly bad for the skin.’

‘Don’t you start preaching at me too!’ Genevova yelled. ‘I’ve had quite enough of that for one day. Go on, Mélanie, hurry up. Call the Englishwoman.’

She spoke with a brusque, impatient vivacity, in marked contrast to her aquiline face and her statuesque figure, which seemed to indicate a cool, serene temperament. She continued sipping her gin. It was a habit she had acquired in London when she had lived there with Lord Belton amongst the dank, viscous fogs in which everything fades and merges into a dull, dingy, impenetrable ink, and in which the gaslamps are just blurred, muddy points of light. Her southern nature, then, had been gripped by such a terrible sense of ennui that she had got into the habit of drinking gin to keep the cold out of her soul. Then she had convinced herself that gin warmed her temperament and lent a slightly violent, but pleasing madness to sensual excitements; she had continued to use it, but she never got drunk; she drank it with lots of water, but just enough of it to feel a warmer, more intense vitality circulating brightly through every muscle.

But Mélanie’s remark had clearly hit home, because Genoveva got up, dabbed her face with a damp towel, picked up an ivory-backed mirror and looked at herself. No, her skin was still soft, white, a little coarse at the sides perhaps, but not a wrinkle in sight; the only thing that betrayed her age was a barely perceptible graininess about her nostrils, like that left by cheap face powder. Her forehead was still smooth and unlined, and despite her thirty-nine years, her durable beauty was still at its peak; she just needed a little colour on her lips sometimes, when she feared they might look cracked.

She would be beautiful until she was forty-five, ‘with the help of plenty of cold water and a little peace of mind’, she thought, smiling.

At that point, however, Mélanie came in with a piece of paper in her hand; it was from a man wanting money for the hire of the carriage.

Genoveva was furious. Why hadn’t she put him off What right had creditors to come bothering her like that? And seeing Mélanie still holding out the piece of paper to her, she said:

‘Take it away! What do I want with that? Why should I pay him? I’d rather die.’

‘I just thought that seeing as how you got some money yesterday …’

Genoveva stamped her foot.

She had received some money yesterday, but that didn’t mean she wanted to spend it. She was amazed at Mélanie, really she was. Was one supposed to line the pockets of thieves? And, her mirror still in her hand, she added:

‘You know, Mélanie, you’re a different woman since you left France. You’ve grown positively stupid. It must be the Lisbon air.’

And she leaned back calmly in her chair, as if abstracted, as if mesmerised by the jumble of inner visions that came back to her from her past; they paraded before her, like scenes in a play. She had been prey to such moments of remembrance and meditation ever since she had arrived back in Portugal; and in that nascent habit of looking back, of staring into space, she had experienced for the first time a vague premonition of old age. Her life up until then had been so full, so difficult, so intense, so packed with events, worries and sensations that she had always lived in the excitement of the moment, had concerned herself only with living, but during the enforced quiet of her life in provincial Lisbon, she would sometimes examine her past, rather as a man might climb a tall tower in order to spy out the land.

She would picture herself, delirious with fever, in a sad, ancient town in the north of Spain, in a room in an inn right next to a church, whose bells, which tolled at every hour of the day, came to represent for her the gloomy sound of eternity. She was being tended by an old woman with skin the colour of parchment, and who wore a large tortoiseshell comb in her hair and passed the time laying out cards on the bedside table, by the light of a tall brass oil lamp, in order to divine the fate awaiting her son, who had recently embarked for Manila.

Then, when she was better and able to sit by the window alone, Genoveva would peer out at the sad street with its broad paving stones, at the narrow shutters of the windows opposite, and at the muleteer with a silk scarf tied about his head, who stopped outside the inn, his mules laden with wineskins. Girls would walk briskly past, gesturing or turning languidly, a scarf wrapped tightly about their shoulders; men swathed in cloaks adorned with bands of scarlet velvet would go into the inn, cigarette in mouth; and canonesses, in swept-back veil and curved headdress, would pass by on their way to the cathedral.

Then she was in a village in northern France, near Rouen, in the low house where she had lived with a man she detested, but to whom she was bound by poverty, ignorance of the language and a lack of family. It was winter; every morning the windows would be covered in frost, and she would sit by the stove watching the constant snow or drizzle and the open umbrellas passing by accompanied by the rustic laughter of some villager. At night, her lover would return, ground down by his fate, worn out with visiting the sick in villages and houses; he would eat his soup with his head bowed, casting her an occasional malevolent glance.

When the weather was fine, she would open the window. Opposite, a barber, who wore a frogged jacket edged with astrakhan, and who had a look of the south about him, would be strolling up and down, waiting for customers, staring up at the pale sky; and they would occasionally catch each other’s eye, like two exiles, their faces filled by the same longing for sun and hot countries. Then, as darkness fell, she would sit at the piano and play songs from Portugal or Spain, and the village schoolteacher, on his way home from school, hearing those sweet melodies, would stop and listen, stockstill in the street, his textbooks in his hand.

Then she saw herself leaving in a coach, heading for the Pyrenees and another life in Luz: walks along the road to St-Sauveur, across the bridge over the Gave, along an avenue of elms. And there she would stand, watching the foaming torrent gushing forth from the dark rock whose darkness was relieved only by sudden patches of dull green vegetation that grew, dishevelled and wild, along the steep banks; watching the laughing foreigners pass by on sadly trotting donkeys. She found in the broad, open syllables of the mountain patois something of the sweetness of her own language. Would that sad, mean life never end? The whiteness of the snow, the proud beauty of the dark vegetation made her long for cities, for narrow streets flanked by tall buildings; nature bored her, and she yearned for the theatre and for the hubbub of café life.

Then she had met Lord Belton, and she saw herself once more in the lovely house in St John’s Wood, London, where she had lived for several years. Every morning, the maid, her plump, red arms all bare, would have to whiten the three front steps; it was summer and the trees in the garden were a sweet, tender green. Cabs would drive silently by over the white, surfaced roads and, beyond, she could hear the vast, unceasing, monotonous hum of London.

There she was out for a gentle morning ride in Hyde Park, trotting over the black, churned-up earth, hearing the creak of new leather on her saddle and watching the grass growing green amongst the solemn trunks of the chestnut trees; or else strolling beneath a pale silver sun in Regent Street with its broad, cream-painted façades on which the gold on black lettering glittered like new. A lively, impatient crowd fills the pavements; there are boats plying the wide river; ranks of carriages progress sedately down the street: landaus occupied by white-haired old men and driven by fat, apoplectic, bewigged coachmen, and slim, speedy coupés that afford an occasional glimpse of a camellia-white profile.

Noisy cabs; huge, packed omnibuses, manned by red-uniformed conductors, meandering down the crowded streets, bearing the tall, black letters of advertisements; phaetons passing by at a nonchalant trot; a serving boy with the blond curls of an angel; tilburies driven at a cracking pace by men with hard features, their minds on money, frowning as they talk, impatient, whip at the ready; then everything stops; people run, women carrying parcels gather up their skirts, open their sunshades, and they all cross the road; the policeman lowers his arm again, and the queues of carriages roll serenely by, the sun glinting on harnesses and silver axles; and on either side, behind the shop façades, jewels glitter in black velvet display cases, glossy lengths of silk fall in rich folds, black or brilliantly coloured; cashmere shawls from India hang from ivory hooks; the colourful ranks of hats, with their fluttering plumage, gesture like rare birds; the velvets lie dark and soft to the touch; in the depths of the shop, prodigious armchairs proffer seats of embroidered satin; Venetian mirrors throw back disparate glittering reflections; and, outside, the harsh voices of newspaper boys bawl out the world’s news: the price of shares, the echo of some distant war.

Then she seemed to see London on a rainy night. The rumble of carriages makes the city buzz; the shopwindows grow suddenly blank; thousands of cabs cut through the darkness of the streets with their lanterns, like so many bloodshot eyes; the ginhouses blaze, and drunks stagger out of them; the policemen wield their truncheons to control the crowds; the sound of a post horn announcing the arrival of a coach echoes out above the noise; beneath the portico of the opera house there is the clack of carriage steps being lowered and, inside, the discreet rustle of silk along velvet-floored corridors; the special escort of grenadiers, wearing shakos, stand motionless in one corner; and, in the auditorium, a sudden silence falls; bare shoulders glisten in the light; there is a subdued murmur, a breath of perfume, and the white feathers worn by occupants of the ladies’ gallery in the boxes tremble slightly; Patti sings, and the gentlemen, always so correct, silently hold out to their companions programmes printed on shiny, expensive-smelling paper.

Then, it’s time to go home, and, by eleven, the city is a vast, darkened room; the tobacconist’s windows are lit with bright lights that illuminate the dark cigars within; the oyster bars are open, selling scarlet lobsters and prawns on beds of gently melting ice …

Yes, she had grown fond of London … and there she had found love. She remembered her escape with cruel George de l’Estrolies, crossing the Channel on a stormy night, she downstairs in the salon, wrapped in a shawl, barely able to speak, in an agony of vomiting; she could hear the waves thudding onto the deck, the siren whining, the captain’s calm, husky voice booming out; and it seemed as if the fog would never lift; a mournful bell kept ringing at the prow; and she could hear the siren even when, still queasy, almost asleep in George’s arms, she finally arrived in Paris.

Ah, those first days in the Hotel Mirabeau, in Rue de Pau! What bliss! The air seemed sweet to her, buildings smiled, faces beamed, voices cooed; gone was the brute violence of monstruous London; in its place was a charming, small city, full of flowers, sun and perfume, wrapped in blue sky, like a jewel in cotton wool.

Then came the day when he left her – ah, the tears, the jealousy. Like a heroine in a novel, she too had looked longingly down into the Seine and imagined how her corpse would look laid out in the morgue, on the cold, smooth slab, with a tap dripping onto her green, drenched body.

The city which, until then, had seemed so friendly, cheerful, festive, welcoming and easy, now terrified her with its frank egotism, and faces which, before, had seemed to exude a bright serenity, now seemed colder than the façades of the houses; she loathed the sight of the satin-upholstered carriages, while she had to walk along in the mud, in her last pair of shoes; she loathed all those rich foods on sale in the grocery stores, all those silver platters in the restaurants, when she could only afford a bit of bread and sausage. But, like a good Portuguese girl, she prayed every night for Our Lady of Joy to send her a rich man.

Then came the long nights on the boulevards, the search for money, for a libra, even twenty mil-réis. She would never forget those nights: at first, she would sally forth hopefully: on either side of her, the boulevard was ablaze with the harsh lights from restaurants and cafés and the glint and glimmer of jewels and silks in the shopwindows. The petite brune brimmed with eager excitement to see the café tables filling the pavements, the thousand points of light from the carriage lanterns, the glow of the newspaper kiosks, to hear the muffled sound of footsteps running, the occasional blurred chords from a theatre orchestra. Everyone seemed happy, pleased. In the midst of all that money, all that joy, how could one gold coin, just one, fail to fall into her outstretched hand?

She was in no hurry. It seemed to her that all those men were bound to come up and speak to her, but, since she was shy, timid and inexperienced, she did nothing to overcome that shyness; rather, she withdrew into it and sat on a chair beneath the lofty branches of a tree and waited.

The streets full of cafés gradually emptied, and large, bare stretches of pavement appeared, filled only by pools of light from the café windows. At that point, she would get up and walk down the boulevard, but if a man so much as glanced at her, the sense of shame would return, and she would look away, offended and grave-faced. Eventually, the lights in the shops would go out too; the darkness would spread; the plump waiters from the cafés would begin to close their doors; then she felt impatient, a need to act, move, do something; there were fewer carriages now; the last omnibus went by; all the lights were out, and in the deserted streets all that could be heard was the slow step of some sergent de ville.

Then she would go in search of her one friend, an Englishwoman called Miss Maguire, tall and thin as a tree, and with the waxen pallor of the tubercular. Every day, in the morning, she coughed blood; every day, she would get drunk; and then a kind of rage would enter her, a need for disorder, noise, debauchery; she went to bed with men for free, out of despair, her face almost green, the palms of her hands sticky with sweat.

Often she did not eat all day, and she would sit on the benches in the Café Roch, or walk along the Boulevard des Capucines, her hands shaking, her stomach empty, a vague smile on her lips, hoping that someone would invite her to supper, but she would find instead some foreigner with a penchant for cheap French women, who would offer the poor, starving girl only prawns and beer!

At last, though, Our Lady of Joy took pity on Genoveva; the rich man she had been praying for suddenly appeared out of nowhere, as if by magic. She could hardly remember how they had met; her poor brain, grown stupid on hardship, debauchery and gin, scarcely retained any sensations at all, and ideas flowed through her mind like water. But she did meet him, and he took charge of her life. He was the Comte de Molineux, her husband.

She lived with him for twelve years. He was very old and utterly repellent! He made disgusting noises when he ate; the skin on his face was flaccid and wrinkled; he had no teeth; his bald head was tinged with yellow. But, as well as being a cynic and a vile libertine, he was extremely wealthy. He had served every regime, had had a hundred masters: Louis XVIII, Charles X, Louis Philippe, the Republic, the Empire; he so loved authority that he would prostrate himself before anyone who came to power, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, ready to lick the boots of the new arrival, regardless of what was on those boots, be it mud or blood.

He felt a boundless love for the Empire, for it had perfected the two arts crucial to a life of sensuality – cooking and debauchery. And he loved it too for the advantages it brought him: he loved the constitution, the Emperor, the Emperor’s son, even the Emperor’s dog. The high point of his day was supper, which was served in his bedroom. He would linger over it, grunting as he chewed, licking his fingers, his head lolling and loose, his hands planted on the table, his eyelids drooping, his lips greasy; and she, poor thing, had to be standing by, half-undressed, all fresh and exotically perfumed, just so that he could run his hands, still sticky with sauce, up and down her legs.

Ah, but, otherwise, life was sweet! What she loved most were the evenings spent in the Bois in spring, riding in her calèche drawn by her English horses; she would sit smiling beneath her silk parasol, suffused with a sense of intense well-being, conscious of a vague happiness emanating from everything about her: from the soft night, from the chestnut trees in the Champs-Elysées, from the delicate aroma of face powder, from the fine, polished surface of the lake – a constant happiness, continuous and sweet, that filled her heart the way water fills a sponge.

She lived on Rue de Balzac; she had money invested; her horses were known and recognised. She adopted the reserved manner of a married woman, but received, with extreme caution and a flurry of modesty, a civil servant from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Vicomte de La Rechantaye – just to put a little romance in her life. All dressed in black, carrying her prayer book, like a devout libertine, she would visit him in a hired carriage; she attended the church of St Thomas Aquinas; she was a supporter of the Empire, and never neglected to wear the requisite bunch of violets; she had the air of a well-fed pigeon; she kept an excellent table, and she was proud of her groom, a lad of sixteen, pretty as an angel and so corrupt he was already living with a woman of fifty and had caught an obscene disease so frightful that Dr Ricard had turned pale, fearing it to be some form of the plague passed down from the sixteenth century, from the time of Jubileu. Laughing, she would recount this fact to her female friends, pleased and proud to be the possessor of such a monster.

And all the other ladies envied her. Then came the terrible year of the war. A moment of supreme joy. On the day the Senate voted to go to war, the Comte de Molineux gave a supper; it was one of his happiest days too. She wore her cream dress all sprigged with violets. Her lover, the Vicomte de La Rechantaye, was to accompany the minister who was bearing the declaration of war to Berlin. And when she thought of her beginnings in an obscure, forgotten little town in Portugal, she was filled with pride to find herself there, on that historic day, and to have, round her table, diplomats, two captains eager for the fray, and two senators who, that very morning, by acclamation, had voted for war. How she had talked, in her bad French accent that she never quite lost! Everyone was certain of victory and, with a smug smile, they kept repeating the Emperor’s words: ‘It’s my little war.’

Yes, it was His Majesty’s little war, and they all smiled ecstatically, indulgently. Not long afterwards, she and the Count had to pack their bags and flee to Brussels.

There they had spent a bleak winter in a hotel; she learned of the Viscount’s death in the battle of St Privats; and when they returned to Paris after the Commune, on the very day when they were to prostrate themselves at the feet of the Republic, the Count suffered an apoplectic fit and fell dead on the carpet, his mouth fixed in a leer, the old reprobate!

And he had made no will; all his property went to some distant nephews in Normandy; and Genoveva was left with her furniture, her jewels and an income of three thousand francs. Poor thing!

For a year, she withdrew into obscurity, living on next to nothing. However, just as poverty seemed about to beckon again, Our Lady of Joy sent her the Brazilian, Gomes. He was extremely wealthy, but skeletally thin, with small, dark eyes, a black beard and skin the colour of morocco leather; he restored Genoveva to her life of luxury; they travelled throughout Europe, as far as St Petersburg; and he offered to take her to Brazil with him. She accepted in a moment of boredom, feeling suddenly too tired to start all over again, and hoping perhaps to marry; but she hated him, she had a horror of his flesh, which the skin disease he suffered from left covered with red blotches; and when they arrived in Lisbon, when she was confronted by that ocean to cross and by the prospect of seasickness, Brazil and continued contact with that odious man, she baulked, like someone who, on touching a piece of meat, feels the bile rising in her throat. The Brazilian, who was perhaps already regretting having made the offer, accepted her change of heart almost gratefully, gave her three hundred libras and left.

And so there she was in Lisbon. But for how much longer? She shrugged her shoulders and downed the rest of her gin.

The door opened slowly and Miss Sarah’s shrill voice asked:

‘Are you decent, my dear?’

Genoveva told her bluntly that she was not. She merely wanted her to play a little music; she would join her in the living room shortly.

Miss Sarah glided through to the living room, sat down on the piano stool, cleaned her glasses on her handkerchief and put them on; then, sticking out her sharp elbows and straining her neck muscles, she began singing in a sour voice, accompanying herself monotonously on the piano:

The last rose of summer …

However, when Genoveva still did not emerge from her room, she stopped, looked around her, removed her glasses, and resting her thin, mannish hands in her lap, gave a deep sigh.

In the light of day, her skin seemed coarser and drier, with red blotches on her cheeks and on her long, bony nose; her high, prominent forehead was pale and shiny; she wore her hair combed back from her somewhat receding hairline and coiled around her head.

Her black silk dress seemed to clothe a body of wood, devoid of soft contours. There was something icy and accusing about her hard, cold blue eyes. She poured all the servility imposed on her by necessity into chilly smiles that revealed large, carnivorous teeth.

She was sad. She spoke little, uttering only brief, rather sententious statements. She made vague, enigmatic references to her obscure, mysterious past, occasionally mentioning English names from the world of finance or from the aristocracy, every gesture and look imbued with longing for those illustrious acquaintances. Whenever Genoveva appeared in some unusually sumptuous outfit, Miss Sarah would regard her with a slight shake of the head, her lips pursed, as if remembering luxuries long since lost. Her conversation often grew misty with melancholy longing for the days when she depended on no one and had a house of her own, a home. Otherwise, she had all the blunt reserve of the great British Isles, as she called them. She made herself utterly inaccessible, like some bleak, steep-sided island. She stood very erect and wore a permanently martyred look; her hatred of the Catholic countries she had lived in only accentuated her rigid Protestantism. The most innocent lithograph of saints or of Christ would make her dry lips curl in a sneer of utter scorn for such idolatry. She found everywhere, apart from England, most uncomfortable; the windows never shut properly and every meal upset her stomach. In France and Portugal, it was the French and the Portuguese who were the foreigners; she was never a foreigner, because she was English. She had a secret weakness for alcohol and a vast appetite for childishly sentimental English novels; and when she spoke of men or of love, with the disdainful reserve of an ascetic virgin, she experienced a few murky moments of cold lust.

She detested Genoveva because of her clothes, her affairs, her post-coital pallor, her carriages … and, above all, because she received a salary from her. Being the servant of a foreign woman added the bitterness of humiliation to the sadness of poverty. She did not rebel, though, but accepted her fate and meanwhile grew thinner and spoke more frequently of ‘duty’.

Genoveva had been Gomes’ mistress when she first met Miss Sarah and had taken her on in an attempt to put her own life on a more solid footing, and in the belief that having a grave, serious paid companion might give her life some semblance of normality. Miss Sarah had been recommended to her as a person who had known misfortune in her life, who was quiet, very frugal, religious and a good pianist.

Genoveva soon realised that Miss Sarah knew little about religion and even less about music; beneath her bony fingers the vaguest, most languid of melodies shrivelled and became harsh, sharp marches in which the notes fell like axe-blows. She played as she walked – precisely, mechanically, lifelessly.

Genoveva kept Miss Sarah on because her prim clothes, tinted glasses, immaculate cuffs and severe nose were all evocative of a household of grave habits, regular hours and promptly paid bills, things which all worked to her advantage in shops. Seeing the lanky, black-clad figure in Genoveva’s parlour gave men confidence. She was like the saintly image placed at the entrance to a brothel. ‘She’s a substitute for my mother,’ Genoveva had said one day, ‘only much cheaper.’

The moment Genoveva came into the room, Miss Sarah put her glasses back on and began hammering the keys of the rented piano with her long, red fingers, like lobster legs, and again took up the melancholy Irish tune.

The last rose of summer …

‘Oh, no, please, no more last rose of summer! I’ve had quite enough of that.’

Miss Sarah stopped singing and, riffling through the sheet music on the piano, immediately began singing in plangent tones:

Dead leaves! Dead leaves!

‘No, not that either!’

And striding about the room, her silk gown rustling, Genoveva told her off for always choosing sad, gloomy songs. She had had enough of sentimentality. She wanted something happy, something jolly …

Miss Sarah removed her glasses and, spinning round on the piano stool, declared that she was pleased to say it had never been her custom to sing or to learn such wicked tunes.

‘Oh, go to the Devil, you old hypocrite!’ said Genoveva in Portuguese.

And Miss Sarah, sensing the anger in Genoveva’s voice, rose to her feet with great dignity and walked over to the door, where she turned and remarked that Genoveva was clearly out of humour.

‘Yes, I am as it happens,’ said Genoveva.

The Englishwoman felt it was her Christian duty to sit down and console her. She too was sad; we all have our sorrows; she herself had just received some letters from England.

Genoveva interrupted her again. She did not want to hear about them; she had quite enough sorrows of her own without hearing about other people’s.

Genoveva sat down at the piano; she had studied in Paris, but had never got beyond playing the scales, which she had calmly and stubbornly inflicted on everyone she knew, but she knew the accompaniment to a few slightly risqué songs; there was one in particular she was especially fond of: ‘L’Amant d’Amanda’, ‘Amanda’s Lover’, which, one summer, the whole of France had been singing; and in a warm, thrilling voice, she sang:

Chaque femme a sa toquade,

Sa marotte et son dada.

Amanda me demande

Un jour entre deux œillades …

Miss Sarah had got up and silently left the room. Genoveva, her head high, a mischievous smile on her lips, sang on in the rough, vulgar French of the music hall. She substituted the words she did not know with a lot of la-la-la-ing, then, slurring the words, in a bold, crude voice, finished with:

Voyez ce beau garçon là,

C’est l’amant d’A

Voyez ce beau garçon là,

C’est l’amant d’A

… manda!

She practised her scales once, quickly and inexpertly, then got up, shaking her hands, irritated and sad.

That refrain brought back to her memories of Paris, of the summer, when the parks are full of flowers, the trees grow green and the fountains sing in their marble basins. The whole of life glows and women’s pale dresses exude cool perfumes; then there are the joys of the countryside, the cottages overgrown with greenery, fishing on the Seine, wearing a straw hat, the social club where people sing with the windows wide open, the breeze from the river on hot mornings, when the sand glitters and gleaming yachts cut through the still water.

And everything around her made her feel sad and bored: the room with its cheap carpet, the balcony door with its tiny panes, barely letting in the light, the banal console table with its two ceramic dolls from Vista Alegre, the low bed with its coverlet in white fustian, the chandelier decorated with red, slightly fly-blown gauze, all saddened her.

A lugubrious sadness hung over the street, as if it were swathed in a dull merino cape. She was living near Arco da Bandeira, where there was a constant coming and going of errand boys and the clink of beakers on the fountain edge; the water left little muddy rivulets on the ground; at the door of the mercer’s shop opposite stood a large barrel of rancid-looking butter; there were hams hanging there, white with fat, and bunches of tallow candles; and above the houses, she could see part of the blank, vulgar façade of São Bento.

Genoveva yawned. The days seemed to her enormous, empty, and the sun progressed in monotonous splendour across the skies; but she preferred solitude to the company of Dâmaso. His fat, smug face, his small, plump, tremulous body, his lustrous hair pomaded into place, his garishly coloured gloves, his vain, rich man’s manners, all exasperated her. Sometimes, she felt like driving him from the room with a whip. Dâmaso, accustomed to easy conquests – Spanish girls and matronly mistresses, or some bourgeois wife dazzled by his phaeton – had at first been over-confident. Believing himself irresistible, he had spoken to Genoveva in terms worthy of Don Juan.

Genoveva had demolished him with an alarmed, ironic look and a few barbed remarks. The lion who had entered the room with mane flowing left with his tail between his legs. When he came back, Genoveva very calmly told him that, if she was to stay in Lisbon, she needed to pay off certain debts, and that would require a sum of one conto two hundred mil réis. Dâmaso did not return for two days, but passion and vanity urged him back, and after forty-eight hours of reflection, many cigarettes and much nervous running of fingers through hair, he returned humbly with the money in his hand.

Genoveva sensed that here was a bird ripe for the plucking, and on the first night that she loftily received him into her bedroom, she left him stunned and stupefied by the scientific application of her sensual skills. Dâmaso heard her utter ardent words that left him tumescent with almost painful pride; he received kisses that made him tremble and close his eyes with pleasure; he saw exquisite dresses, laces, silks that made him think nervously: ‘I’d give her my last penny.’

There was, however, one unfortunate incident in the morning. Mélanie led him to a small room where he saw, with a shudder, a long, shallow bath full of water and with two large blocks of ice floating in it. Mélanie, with all the gravity of a priestess, poured half a bottle of Eau de Lubin into the water, placed a Turkish towel nearby, along with a scrubbing brush for his feet and a mug foaming with amber soap; then she left him alone saying:

‘Call me when you’re ready for your rub.’

Dâmaso stood there, astonished, scratching his head, staring at the bath; he fearfully tested the icy water with his fingertips and immediately withdrew them, muttering:

‘She must be joking!’

He felt genuinely embarrassed; this was obviously some chic Parisian ritual, he thought, and he did not want to appear ungrateful, but the idea of immersing himself in that ice-cold water – never! He moistened one corner of the towel, dabbed it on his face and shivered. Sitting by the bath with all the foolish melancholy of a stork, he smoked two cigarettes and left, calling down the corridor:

‘Thanks for the bath, it was wonderful!’

When Mélanie reported, after he had left, that the gentleman had left the water untouched, apart from two cigarette butts floating in it, Genoveva exclaimed angrily:

‘The brute! That will cost him another hundred or so mil réis.’

And it did. A fortnight later, Dâmaso had, as Genoveva put it, ‘shelled out’ two contos and five hundred mil réis and was beginning to find it all a bit much. But he was idiotically in love, and it was as if all his bourgeois instincts – prudence, distrust, egotism, self-interest – had been chloroformed; he had only to moan or turn away and Genoveva would slip her soft arms around his neck and utter sweet words which had for him a hypnotic charm:

‘My little kitten, my darling, my mousikins, my little lamby-wamby!’

The classically eloquent vocabulary of the libertine were enough to quiet all his worries and for love to roar within him with Lusitanian impatience.

Meanwhile, Dâmaso carefully concealed his prodigality from his friends. He passed himself off as a romantic lover; he told everyone that she was rich, generous and uninterested in money; he secretly bought some coral buttons which he wore, claiming they were a present from her:

‘She just can’t stop giving me presents! The woman’s quite mad about me!’

He said this in cafés, in the Teatro de São Carlos, in brothels, and was even looking for a way of having it published in the society columns of the Jornal Ilustrado.

The last ‘present’ she had given him, the previous evening, was an old bill from Laffersein’s for three thousand francs, which he had placed in his wallet, quietly taking out a bill of exchange the next day on Marcenard and André, Madame Lafayette’s bankers, on sixty days’ notice, earning a hundred franc discount; and he had been astonished when Genoveva casually slipped the francs into an envelope and said to Mélanie with yawn:

‘Put that in the post, will you, Mélanie. It’s the price one pays for dishonour.’

But Dâmaso had begun to demand that their affair be more public. That happiness hidden away in the heart of São Bento, and which was costing him very dear, may have satisfied his flesh, but it did not satisfy his pride. He wanted to be seen out and about with her, to be envied in the Chiado, in the Casa Havanesa, stared at in the Teatro de São Carlos, and to hear people say: ‘Dâmaso’s a lucky devil, he certainly knows how to live!’

Genoveva did not put up much opposition, though she still spoke of the charm of a discreet, private affair. In fact, she was not at all keen on being seen out in public with that imbecile. She did, however, accept a first-class box at the theatre and even a Sunday at Campo Grande. Such outings became excuses for headaches, because Genoveva began to suffer from migraines, and the worst thing was they always happened at night, which was Dâmaso’s time to visit.

‘I’m so sorry, my love, but I feel dreadful. I’m afraid you really can’t stay with me tonight. I’m going to have to put you out in the street. It’s such a nuisance. If you only knew … I’ll come to the door with you.’

And when she heard him glumly closing the street door behind him, she felt such a sense of relief that she would call Mélanie and ask her to pour her some gin and then sit up in bed until two o’clock in the morning, drinking and chatting or writing to her women friends in Paris, saying she was in Lisbon, just off the coast of Africa, causing a sensation in the streets and civilizing a savage, who was rich as a nabob and innocent as a lamb.

That morning she had already determined to have a migraine. At first, Dâmaso did not want to leave her alone and ill.

In the end, Dãmaso began to find those headaches, which occurred three or four times a week, somewhat exaggerated. His bourgeois suspicions were awakened, but Genoveva seemed so weary, so cast down, complained so bitterly of the Lisbon climate, that Dâmaso would leave her, feeling sad but sympathetic. He wanted to get Mélanie on his side. The first time she brought a letter to his house in Rua da Comenda, Dâmaso, thinking himself very clever indeed, gave her two libras. Mélanie immediately turned on the confidences like a tap: ‘If you only knew, sir. She’s mad about you. It gets quite boring, sometimes, always talking about you, crying, saying she doesn’t want to go back to Paris because she’s so jealous. You’d better be careful, because if you so much as looked at another woman, she’d kill you. She’s quite capable of it. She’s very impulsive.’

Delighted, Dâmaso wanted to know more about Genoveva’s past. Mélanie was eager to oblige, though swearing him to secrecy. Her mistress had married the Comte de Molineux, a disgusting old man, but she had had no choice really, poor woman. Her first husband, an Englishman, had left her without a penny. But her lady had been faithful as a slave to the old man. And she had had no shortage of suitors! Dukes, princes, even the Emperor himself. But she simply wasn’t interested, although, she had been very fond of one young lad with the face of an angel, his name was Paul de La Rechantraye, not that there was ever anything between them, oh no. Then Paul died in the war, and that was that. But he was a sweet person, poor lad. When her old scoundrel of a husband died, he didn’t leave her anything either, and she was even obliged to pawn her jewels and then there were her debts … It was poverty that drove her into the arms of the Brazilian, but she couldn’t stand him and he meant nothing to her, and so, one fine day, she left him, just like that. She had served her lady for ten years and this was the first time, the only time, she had known her to be in love.

‘By why, why?’ asked Dâmaso.

Mélanie looked at him tenderly:

‘Why? Because you’re such a handsome young man, Senhor Dâmaso.’

Dâmaso gave her another two libras and could scarcely contain himself; he put his arms around her waist, out of pure joy, and pinched her, which made Mélanie squeal.

From then on, he needed Mélanie to provide him with constant affirmations of his happiness. And Mélanie was never lost for words. She was on to a good thing; she was radiant; accustomed to the meanness of Parisians, she found the Portuguese adorable.

‘If they’re all like him,’ she thought, ‘this is Paradise.’

But Genoveva’s demands for money grew and the migraines did not diminish. Dâmaso began to grow impatient; besides, he often found her odd, silent and bad-tempered, or else full of ironic remarks, and he sometimes caught her looking at him sharply, irritably. In the end, he confided in his best friend, Manuel Palma, a plump, stocky chap with a loud voice and bitten fingernails, who lived partly on Dâmaso’s generosity. He told him about Genoveva’s attacks of nerves, her bad moods; he was worried; could it be jealousy on her part?

‘She needs a good slap,’ said Palma.

That was how he always dealt with tarts (he called all women ‘tarts’). He wore the same jacket winter and summer and there was always a sweat stain around the rim of his collar; he had a voracious appetite and his short, fat legs seemed always on the point of bursting out of his tight trousers. He admired Dâmaso and spent all day praising Dâmaso, his horse and his dog.

‘Good God, man!’ said Dâmaso. ‘She’s not your run-of-the-mill Portuguese woman! You can’t slap a woman used to Parisian ways.’

‘To hell with Paris! Give her a good slap. That’s all tarts understand, a good slap!’

Sometimes, Dâmaso would enter Genoveva’s house with every intention of being masterful and forthright: he was her lover and he had the right to come and go as he pleased, and to stay as late as he liked; if she couldn’t agree to that, then they must say goodbye. But he had only to see the spectacle of her person, her clothes, her manner, to receive the lightest caress, and he was dumbstruck; and there was so much else too, a marvellously high degree of cultivation that cowed him and filled him with respect.

She loved to go for a ride in the morning and she looked magnificent in her riding habit. Dâmaso always took her along any streets where he might be known; he crossed the Chiado, caracoled across the Rossio, looking about him, his face alight, ready to receive admiring, envious looks. Unfortunately, the streets were entirely empty of anyone he knew, the windows empty of familiar faces. He ended up parading his glory past a few errand boys and some shopkeepers in their slippers, enjoying the sun. The experience put him in a bad humour.

He had said on several occasions that he wanted her to go out in public with him.

‘You don’t really expect me to go out in a hired carriage, do you? Give me a carriage, a pair of English horses and a decent groom, then we’ll cause a stir.’

And Dâmaso felt almost tempted to get her a carriage. He could see her going down the Chiado in one of her extra-ordinary outfits, her two thoroughbreds trotting along; and he could already hear the envious remarks made in the Casa Havanesa, in Balthreschi’s patisserie: ‘It’s Dâmaso, the lucky man. What class!’

Around two o’clock, he went to Genoveva’s. Mélanie tiptoed in to her mistress to tell her ‘that man was here’. Genoveva gestured wildly to say ‘No’, and then, whispering in Mélanie’s ear:

‘Tell him I’m asleep, that I can’t receive him, but that I expect him for supper at seven, without fail.’

And when Mélanie came back from delivering the message:

‘What did he say?’

‘He pulled a face.’

‘Well, the man can go to hell! The brute!’

And going into her room, she said:

‘Mélanie, bring me the cards.’

Mélanie set up the card table and the cards in the bedroom. And Genoveva, with a look of intense religiosity, began to spread the cards. She shuffled them gravely and slowly, with cabbalistic care; she cut the deck with her left hand and divided the cards into sets; then, her little finger cocked, she began arranging them in symbolic semicircles, her rings glittering on her small, white hands as she did so. Mélanie, standing behind her chair, followed with interest the revelations of fate, as if reading the pages of a book. Meanwhile Genoveva was muttering:

‘Chaos; an old man; a young man with a blonde woman; tears; a meeting in a public place because of a letter.’

She shuffled the cards again and reflected. Then suddenly:

‘He’ll come to me! He has to come to me! Three times, do you see?’

And she showed how the jack of diamonds kept reappearing alongside the queen of hearts.

‘He has to come to me.’

And her beautiful, dark eyes, illuminating her pale, aquiline face, were full of wonder at the idea of that unavoidable fate.

‘If I were you, madam, I’d think no more about it,’ said Mélanie.

Genoveva mixed the cards up again, staring into space, her eyes wide; she bit her lower lip and shrugged.

‘Otherwise,’ Mélanie went on, bustling about the room, ‘just ask Senhor Dâmaso to bring him along. You’re getting all worked up over nothing.’

‘No, I don’t want Dâmaso to bring him.’

Getting to her feet and going over to the mirror to comb her hair, she said:

‘I know it’s ridiculous, but … no one has ever made such an impression on me before. Ever since I saw him at the theatre … Well, I barely saw him really. I was standing at the door, I turned to pick up my train and there he was quietly smoking his cigarette. And I can’t get him out of here!’ She tapped her head. ‘He’s in my thoughts day and night. Apparently, his name’s Vítor and he’s a lawyer.’ Then with fond pity, she said: ‘A lawyer, poor thing. People weren’t meant to sit in an office all day shuffling papers! Poor love. And those eyes …’

She sighed and, sitting down at the foot of the bed, stretching, her eyes suddenly liquid with lust:

‘Oh, Mélanie!’

She got up again and said in a changed voice, harsh and cold:

‘I swear I’ve never felt like this about any man. I don’t even know what I want from him … I want to run away with him, go somewhere where no one will see us, I want to devour him, kill him, bite him. He’s so handsome, so sweet. He’s such a love. And yet, there’s something else … He actually looks like me!’

She went over to the mirror to confirm the vague resemblance to him in her own features.

‘Here,’ she said, indicating her forehead, ‘and the eyes. If I didn’t dye my hair blonde … He must be about twenty-five.’

‘Are you dressing for supper, madam?’

‘Hm?’

Mélanie repeated her question.

‘Yes, I’ll wear black. I’ve got to put up with that idiot again. But I want him to find out who that old man was. I want him to demand satisfaction from him …’

‘Are you decent, my dear?’ asked Miss Sarah, at the door.

‘Yes, of course. You can come in now. Would you like a drop of gin, Miss Sarah?’

The Englishwoman’s face lit up: ‘Just the tiniest drop, that’s enough. And a little water. Old Tom, is it? Just a little drop more, that will do, thank you.’

She sat down to concentrate on drinking her gin, devoutly repeating that very English maxim:

‘A little drink is good for the soul.’