The next day, Vítor went to find out how Genoveva was. In his mind, he could still see her as she had appeared to him the previous day, reclining on a sofa, her gestures languid, her words weary. He was most put out to see Dâmaso’s coupé at the door. Since the coachman knew him, he resisted the temptation to withdraw discreetly and went in. On the final flight of stairs, he bumped into Dâmaso, who was coming down. They were both slightly embarrassed.
‘She’s gone out,’ said Dâmaso brusquely.
‘I thought she was ill.’
‘Ill?’ said Dâmaso, surprised. ‘No, she’s in perfect health. She’s gone out. I spent the night with her.’
This was a lie, but he wanted to humiliate Vítor and make him think he was happy. The poor lad turned pale. They went down the stairs in silence.
‘So, what have you been up to?’ asked Dâmaso, at the front door, drawing on his gloves.
‘Oh, nothing much,’ said Vítor vaguely.
Dâmaso got into the coupé and, wanting to appear in command, he ordered the coachman rather sharply to drive on and slammed the carriage door shut with a satisfied air, although, he was, in fact, furious because Genoveva had gone out, having promised to wait for him.
Vítor walked slowly down the street. The brusqueness of his friend’s words had set a distance between them. ‘So much the better,’ thought Vítor. ‘The man’s a fool.’
And he immediately set off on a trawl of all the places where he might meet him. He was furious with him and he wanted to meet him in order to greet him with indifference, as if his mind were on other things. He walked round the Aterro, up and down the Chiado, looked in at all the shops, ate a few cakes at Balthreschi’s, but there was still no sign of Dâmaso.
At supper, he was so glum that Uncle Timóteo, who had had enough of silence, said irritably:
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, say something. I’m dying for a bit of conversation.’
Vítor apologised; he was done in, under the weather. And having mumbled a few more words, as if his tongue were heavy as lead, he sank back into taciturnity. He couldn’t get Dâmaso’s words out of his head: ‘I spent the night with her’; they sang ironically inside him; he could see her undressing, throwing her arms about Dâmaso’s neck, sighing with love; he felt nothing but intense hatred and immense scorn for her. He consoled himself by thinking how superior he was to Dâmaso, but even while he despised him, he envied him.
‘And how’s your friend Dâmaso?’ asked Uncle Timóteo.
Vítor recovered himself immediately. He didn’t know, he hadn’t seen him. Nor did he want do. The man was basically a fool. Vítor unleashed a torrent of remarks about the ludicrous figure Dâmaso cut, about his sheer fatuousness, his crass stupidity. He warmed to his theme, retailing some of Dâmaso’s more laughable faux-pas and ridiculing his clothes. He cut rancorously into his roast veal, as if he were slicing away at Dâmaso’s hated flesh.
‘What did the lad do to you?’
‘To me? Nothing. Honestly. If he had, I’d have split his head open, I would, as sure as two and two make four. I’d tear him limb from limb. I’d walk all over him.’
He was speaking with increasing choler, his pale skin red with passion.
Uncle Timóteo glanced at him out of the corner of his eye and smiled to himself.
‘Poor chap,’ he murmured.
That night, Vítor visited all the theatres. As it was growing dark, a fine drizzle began to fall. In the cab he took from Rua dos Condes to the Teatro da Trindade and from the Trindade to the Teatro de São Carlos, he was planning what attitude he would take if he should see her in a box. He would not even visit her. He would merely greet her coldly. He would flirt with other women. He would take a tip from the actors. He would speak to Dâmaso and yawn in his face, and if Dâmaso so much as looked at him or made some bold remark, then he would beat him round the head with his cane.
But he did not see Genoveva, and every colour seemed dull to him, every woman hideous, every face inexpressive, and the city, wrapped in damp mist and drizzle, seemed sad as a prison, solitary as a cave. Near the Teatro Dona Maria, he met Palma Gordo, his hands in his pockets, his jacket pulled tightly around him and revealing the plump curves of his large buttocks.
‘Have you seen Dâmaso?’ Vítor asked him.
Palma, a cigarette between his fleshy, sweaty fingers, said drunkenly:
‘He’s probably with that …’ and he used an obscene word.
Vítor almost struck him, but instead turned his back on him and stalked off home.
‘Stupid vile woman! Hussy! I’m never going to think about her again!’
He went in to ask if there was a letter for him. Nothing.
That only fuelled his hatred. ‘The wretch!’ he thought.
And following the romantic tradition, according to which any difficulties encountered with ideal love are best remedied by a good dose of licentiousness, he went off to dine at the Malta with a Spanish woman called Mercedes, a delightful girl from Málaga, who claimed to be the daughter of a general and affected aristocratic manners, but ate with her hands and licked her fingers afterwards.
Vítor drank a whole bottle of Colares wine and two glasses of cognac, convinced that sadness made him interesting, and thinking of Alfred de Musset who also used to get drunk in order to forget his disillusion with love.
However, the next day, when he woke up, a very simple idea filled him with light and joy, like a ray of sunlight suddenly illuminating a dark room: ‘It’s ridiculous of me to be so angry simply because she went out for a walk.’
And at two o’clock, he was knocking on Genoveva’s door. He waited for a moment in the living room and saw her come in, happy, refreshed, wearing an ample silk robe, and smiling and holding her arms out to him, amiability itself. At the mere sight of her, all his anger melted like snow around a fire.
She knew he had called the previous day when she was out. It was such a lovely day for going to Belém on the ferry. And she was so sorry he hadn’t gone with her; the Tagus looked absolutely gorgeous.
And then, feeling a need to unburden himself, Vítor told her that he had gone looking for her in the streets in the morning and, at night, in the theatres.
‘But why, why?’ she murmured, although her whole face glowed with satisfaction at his solicitude.
She declared herself to be most content.
Tormented by mordant curiosity, Vítor blushingly asked after Dâmaso.
‘I don’t really know. I saw him the day before yesterday in the evening, because I wasn’t well during the day. He came back that night, but I wouldn’t see him, and he came yesterday morning and yesterday night as well, but I didn’t let him in then either.’
Vítor felt a milky sweetness running through his veins. And to make the conversation more intimate, to show how he had thought about her, he mentioned the idea of having her portrait painted. He praised Camilo Cerrão’s genius: he was the only true artist in Portugal, unknown, ignored, poor, but a genius nonetheless. But Camilo’s plans made Genoveva roar with laughter.
‘Me giving bread to the poor? Good heavens. Why doesn’t he show me boiling vegetables? What does the man take me for? He probably wants to entitle it Rich and Poor or Charity. The man’s mad.’
But she didn’t entirely reject the idea of a portrait; if the man had talent, then she would be interested, but only if she were wearing a low-necked, pale blue silk dress which left her arms bare, and she were holding a half-open fan and sitting on a Gothic-style chair, next to a marble vase full of roses.
She cited other famous poses: the portraits of Bonnat, of Carolus-Duran, of Mademoiselle Altheim. She spoke easily, with rapid gestures, her face lit by ever-changing expressions, all of them joyful, pleased.
And Vítor, who had seen her two days before, pale, languid, prostrate on the sofa, found a new freshness and charm in her, and, having loved her so when she was weak and ill, he adored her now in the vivacity of restored health.
‘Would you like something to drink?’
She was thirsty; she had a curação and soda. She was very happy at the moment and saw everything through rose-coloured spectacles.
‘Don’t you ever have times like that?’
‘I used to,’ he said, and they launched into a long conversation about their shared sympathies and their many affinities.
‘We’re very alike in a lot of ways, aren’t we?’ she said.
And she gave him a long look, as if utterly charmed with him. Then she sprang to her feet and went over to the piano; she wanted him to play.
He regretted not being able to oblige, because there were times when the piano could be so companionable! There were certain states of mind that only music could express. Sometimes, at dusk, for example, he longed to set to music all the vague emotions filling his soul.
‘You poet!’ she said, laughing.
She seemed to listen to him avidly, to thrill to each new confidence he made about his feelings, ideas and habits, always drawing him out. She wanted to know what time he got up, what books he read, which were his favourite operas, as if pushing open the closed doors of his soul, just a crack, but wanting to be shown the whole house; and her eyes never stopped scrutinising and studying him.
‘And how’s Miss Sarah?’ he asked.
She clapped her hands, laughing out loud.
‘You’ll never imagine, she’s in love with you.’
‘No!’
‘It’s true. She speaks only of you. She says she finds you handsome, interesting, romantic. And I don’t think she’s right,’ she said, her eyes wide and shining, fixed on his.
She got up and placed her hands on his shoulders, examining him closely.
‘No, I don’t think she is,’ she said. ‘You’re very sweet, but that’s all.’
Vítor almost blushed. She seemed to him to be taking the provocative role of the man, and he seemed more like the woman, receiving those incitements to love with feminine passivity.
Genoveva tidied his hair with the tips of her fingers and straightened his cravat, but she wouldn’t let him hold her hands; she drew back, saying:
‘That’s what we agreed. We’ll always be friends, but no more than that.’
She made him an old-fashioned curtsey, and her shining eyes blazed a challenge.
She went and sat down at the piano and began to play her favourite song:
Chaque femme a sa toquade,
Sa marotte et son dada.
She sang out boldly, giving to certain words the charming, saucy inflection which the singers at the Teatro do Bulevar used when they wanted to be provocative or lewd.
Voyez ce beau garçon-là,
C’est l’amant d’A …
C’est l’amant d’A …
And she looked at him in a way that made him tremble with desire.
Voyez ce beau garçon-là …
Her eyes seemed to indicate him, confirming her feelings, surrendering herself:
C’est l’amant d’A …
C’est l’amant d’A …
Then she stopped singing and remained sitting on the piano stool, her face suddenly serious; and she said to him with an almost disdainful smile:
‘Like Aninhas, eh?’
Vítor froze.
‘There’s nothing to be ashamed about. They say she’s very pretty. She was a cook, I understand, and gets an allowance from a shopkeeper in the Chiado of fifteen thousand mil réis a month; she’s learning French, and can already conjugate the verbs. You see how well informed I am. So how is this interesting young woman?’
‘It’s a lie,’ said Vítor.
‘No, it’s not,’ said Genoveva, standing up. ‘Dâmaso told me. He knows her.’
Vítor swore to himself that he would give Dâmaso a good beating, and then began justifying himself, explaining away his relationship with Aninhas. It was true, he had been with her; she was a poor uneducated creature, terribly stupid; she was more like a friend, really; he had never given her his heart …
‘A man with my tastes and feelings is hardly likely to attach himself to a woman who can barely read. Besides, I haven’t seen her for a month. She bores me, so I left her. She wrote to me the day before yesterday, and I didn’t even read the letter.’
‘Really?’ she said.
‘I swear.’
‘Not that anyone has any rights over you.’ And she walked about the room, her silk robe dragging behind her. Then, looking directly at him: ‘I knew you weren’t getting on actually. She met Dâmaso and told him all about it. Poor thing! Make it up with her and don’t break her poor heart.’
‘You’re making fun of me,’ said Vítor, hurt.
‘No, it’s just the advice of a good friend. She, naturally, can console herself with a fine length of cashmere from her lover … or with one of his assistants.’ She laughed. ‘You used to write poems for Aninhas.’
‘Right, that’s it, I’m going,’ he said angrily.
She took his hat out of his hands.
‘I’m sorry to have spoken disrespectfully of your beloved.’ Then, seeing his angry face. ‘I’m only joking,’ she said, stroking his silk hat. ‘Will you write poems for me?’
‘Of course.’
‘I want you to write me a sonnet a day. That would be so chic!’ Holding out his hat to him, she added: ‘And now, my dear friend, goodbye. It’s three o’clock.’
‘You’re sending me away!’
‘I have to.’
‘You’re expecting Dâmaso,’ he said with a rancorous smile. She placed a finger on her lips.
‘Shh! Be good now and off you go.’
Vítor was filled by jealous, despairing rage.
‘All right, I’ll go, but I won’t be back.’
‘Fine,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders.
They looked at each other for a moment.
‘Why do you make me suffer?’ he asked disconsolately.
She gave a forced laugh.
‘Suffer? What an extraordinary young man you are. You’ve been to see me twice, you barely know me and yet you think I’m making you suffer simply because I have to be alone at three o’clock. That’s most unfair.’
‘It’s because I adore you,’ he said.
She placed her hand over his mouth.
‘No grandiose words. It’s not right.’ Then she curtseyed and smiled: ‘If you want me, come and ask my mother for my hand.’
She laughed out loud and ran into her bedroom, from which she returned bearing a posy of violets.
‘Now, be a good boy,’ she said, placing them in the buttonhole of his frock coat. ‘You see what care I’ve taken over them, so no complaints. La voilà! Bonapartist violets.’
He leaned beseechingly towards her, his lips humbly begging a kiss.
Genoveva looked suddenly troubled and, lowering her head, she received his kiss on her hair.
He was so moved, he let out a heartfelt sigh and stood there in the middle of the room like an idiot, looking at her, trembling, not moving.
‘Addio!’ she said gravely.
He left, feeling the ground moving beneath his feet.
When she heard him shut the door behind him, she called Mélanie.
‘As soon as Dâmaso arrives, show him in. I need to talk to him. I’ve run out of money.’
She sighed and sat down hard on the sofa, leaning back with her hands behind her head.
‘Mélanie, this is not going well.’
‘The poor lad looked so fed up,’ said Mélanie.
‘Poor love! Oh, Mélanie, where does this absurd, sudden passion come from? Who would have thought it?’
‘These things happen, Madam.’
Genoveva shook her head sadly, her eyes fixed on the floor.
‘No, this is serious. My heart tells me it will end badly.’
Vítor did not forget Genoveva’s request: ‘I want you to write me a sonnet a day.’ He remembered the hero of the novel Don Juan de Pasini, who, every evening after supper, would sit quietly smoking a cigar on the terrace of his castle by the edge of a wood and write a sonnet to his current lover. Italian gentlemen of the Renaissance, whom Titian had painted and who had dined with Cesare Borgia, used to do the same. And he thought it very elegant to write a sonnet each morning and send it to her like a bouquet of flowers. Later, he would publish the poems as a collection and entitle it Caresses; the book would gain great notoriety and he would become famous, but a prospect had only to open up before him and his imagination would gallop away into it like a racehorse, only to lie down after a few jumps, its flanks heaving, like an exhausted nag.
And the following morning, after breakfast, he shut himself up in his room and sat down in his slippers, with a packet of cigarettes on the table and a glass of water to clarify his ideas, and prepared himself to write. For hours he paced the floor and, by supper time, he had produced the first eight lines.
When Clorinda came to call him for supper, he appeared at the table with the wild eyes and animated face of a man newly emerged from the world of ideas.
‘Have you been asleep?’ asked Uncle Timóteo.
‘No, I’ve been writing,’ he said with all the reserve of an initiate speaking to the uninitiated.
After supper, he shut himself up in his room again until nine o’clock, when he at last finished the final two tercets and went out to get some air.
It was a windy, rather gloomy night, with large clouds wandering the sky, occasionally revealing the pale moon. The gusts howling about him made him shudder to his very soul; the houses were all shut up, the gaslights sputtered fearfully, and as he roamed the streets, he was filled by premonitions of terrible misfortunes and mysterious murders. He walked along the Aterro; the water beat sadly against the quays, and over the glittering expanse flickered the narrow lights of boats whose masts, lit by a sudden, icy light, stood out like spectres against the sky.
But that backdrop did not coincide with his luminous state of mind, and so he returned home to make a fair copy of his sonnet with almost paternal delight.
He went to bed with a book by Alfred de Musset, feeling that life was good; at last he felt that ideal, noble, picturesque passion he had read about in books and poems and which had so enchanted him. And fortune had favoured him by giving that passion a dazzlingly glamorous wrapping, which seduced both his mind and his imagination. What other woman in Lisbon could compare to Genoveva? Who else had such clothes, such admirable ideas, such experience of love, so much knowledge of the world and of society?
Of course she had had lovers, but that simply made him appreciate her love all the more. It’s so easy to please a poor bourgeois woman who sees only her husband’s slippers and her ill-tempered children; it’s so easy to seduce a girl of eighteen with her schoolgirl imagination and ideas about motherhood derived from playing with dolls. But what a glorious thing to be able to interest a woman who knows men so profoundly, a woman whom repeated disappointments have made sceptical, who has grown weary of sensation. It must be akin to the austere pleasure an atheist might feel on becoming a Catholic. One would possess not merely a beautiful body, but a whole complex being. Each of her lovers, each of her relationships, had shaped her, leaving in her spirit or her sense of remorse some part of their personality; holding her in one’s arms, possessing her, would be like possessing the refinement of all the elegant people she had known, the wit of dramatists, the polished manners of diplomats, and all the civilisations of which they are the flower, the essence, the delicious, artificial epitome.
How his life had changed. Only a month ago, his existence had been as stupid and banal as the macadam surface of the road, traipsing from the tedium of Dr Caminha’s office to the vulgar pleasures of Aninhas’ bedroom: he had been a dullard, a nonentity!
Now, though, Genoveva’s love had idealised him, ennobled him, lined his soul with sweetness inside and clothed it with glory outside. And he stretched out proudly on the bed, listening to the wind moaning and brushing against the walls of the house.
How she would admire his sonnet, how pleased she would be that he had obeyed her; how could she resist giving him a kiss; and that hope filled his soul with a fierce languor.
The next day, with his sonnet in his wallet, he went to Rua de São Bento. Mélanie opened the door and said:
‘She’s not in. She went off to Queluz this morning with Senhor Dâmaso. But Miss Sarah’s here … do come in.’
She opened the door and called Miss Sarah. Vítor went in, like a man fallen from a great height. Saddened, a vague smile on his lips, his heart cold, he entered the salon. He heard the swish of stiff silk over the carpet and Miss Sarah was by his side, red-faced and erect; she too told him that Madame and Mr Dâmaso had left very early for Queluz.
And sitting down, opening and closing the book she had in her hands, she gazed admiringly at Vítor, fixing him with her bluish eyes, with their murky, yellowish whites.
Vítor, holding his hat on his knees, was so embarrassed he didn’t know what to say.
The Englishwoman remarked that it was a lovely day. Vítor looked very grave and, after serious reflection, said: ‘Yes, it is.’ Then Miss Sarah told him that Madame and Mr Dâmaso had gone off in an open carriage and taken their lunch with them. They seemed very happy. She added a few words of praise about Mr Dâmaso. He was charming, a perfect gentleman.
Vítor, downcast, muttered:
‘Absolutely.’
‘And when will they be back?’ he asked. Miss Sarah said that they might well spend the night in Queluz; she hadn’t actually heard them say so, but it seemed the logical thing to do. She asked if Queluz was very pretty.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Vítor, getting up.
But Miss Sarah did not want to lose him so soon. She started talking about Portugal and the Portuguese – such charming people. ‘It was paradise here. They treated women with such respect. The English could learn a thing or two from them.’
She spoke, gesturing awkwardly, bending her neck this way and that, bestowing the widest of smiles on Vítor, then glancing away as if dazzled, only to look back at him, fascinated, revealing all her spinsterish hopes to him.
But Vítor was standing up, tapping his hat impatiently against his leg. Miss Sarah then declared that she mustn’t keep him, that she, of course, lacked Genoveva’s charms.
Vítor, embarrassed, protested: ‘No, it’s just that I have such a lot to do.’
Miss Sarah recovered herself: ‘You’re probably off to see some lady love. Oh, I know what you fickle young men are like, so easily taken in by appearances.’
Her crisp, singsong tones, her dull English eyes, seemed to paralyse Vítor; finally, with an effort, he broke through his inertia, said goodbye to Miss Sarah and left. She curtseyed deeply and placed in one last glance a fulsome declaration of her desires.
Once Vítor was out in the street again, he vented all his rage against Genoveva in one thought: ‘She’s nothing but a vulgar prostitute.’ That calmed him down. And like a candle extinguished by a puff of wind, his love disappeared. Clutching his cane, he strode off down the street; his hatred kept pace with his dissatisfaction with her, with home and with life in general; it spread like a gas, embracing everyone and everything; he wanted to pick a quarrel, to round on someone with his walking stick, to write an article in the newspaper saying vile things about women, to see her poor and begging for alms! He felt no hatred for Dâmaso; he hardly gave him a thought: he was what she deserved, a dumb brute. He thought sarcastically: ‘I hope they have lots of children and all go to hell together.’ It was a splendidly sunny day, but everything seemed to him blurred by a sad mist; and the voices drifting up from the river seemed to him but an importunate buzz. Back home, he flung his hat down on the floor and was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of abandonment, solitude and emptiness. It was as if all the things he cared about, his friends, his home, his relationships, had retreated and left him alone, a martyred, solitary figure in a vast, dark, empty space; he felt weak, unhappy, unfitted for life, and he sat down on his bed and wept.
In order to avoid Uncle Timóteo’s questions and conversation, he went to dine at Silva’s in a private room. And when the waiter offered him a menu and asked him what he wanted, Vítor replied in desolate, woebegone tones:
‘Poison, if there is any.’
The joke consoled him. He even read the newspaper that the waiter brought him; but he always remembered to strike a sad pose whenever the waiter returned, for nothing consoles effeminate temperaments more than letting others know of their pain.
He walked slowly through the Chiado, with the weary abandon of an adolescent and he gazed calmly about him with the bruised lassitude that follows tears, and yet he did not mind suffering for love, because at least he could console himself with the thought that his sorrow had a noble origin.
He went into the Teatro de Dona Maria, bought a box in order to lend elegance to his grief and, leaning his elbows on the worn leather balcony, he glanced distractedly about the theatre, occasionally watched the play, and out of habit and to pass the time, made eyes at a good-looking woman in a box near the stalls, who stared furiously back. But he really was suffering; sometimes, just the thought of Genoveva troubled him; and when he saw that it was half past ten and imagined that, at that hour, they would be going to bed in Queluz, he was gripped by despair and by such intense anger, that he flung open the door of his box, left the theatre and again aimlessly wandered the streets. His footsteps took him as far as Rua das Janelas Verdes, for his thoughts were so agitated that he was trying, through sheer physical exhaustion, to restore calm to his soul. A clock struck one o’clock, and he returned home.
When he reached his front door, he was just taking his key from his pocket when out of a dark doorway nearby emerged the figure of a woman, who ran towards him and clung to him, crying softly:
‘Vítor!’
It was Aninhas.
‘What do you want?’
‘Please, don’t turn away. Listen. Just say a few words, please. I’m going mad. If you don’t hear what I have to say, I’m going to throw myself in the river. Vítor, I swear I will …’
Her voice was choked with tears and she was speaking loudly now.
To avoid a scandal, for people were still coming out of the Writers’ Guild, he walked with her as far as the Academy, in darkness at that hour, opposite the arcade of the Museum of Fine Arts.
Aninhas clung anxiously to his arm, sobbing softly and murmuring:
‘I’ve been like a madwoman … I didn’t care about anything any more … I simply wanted to die.’
‘But what do you want from me?’
The words poured out of Aninhas, who walked, then stopped, gesturing wildly, as she tried to explain what had happened ‘the other day’: No, it wasn’t Policarpo who had been with her. That was true. It was another man. But he wasn’t her lover; he was an old man, a devil, an animal, a Senhor Lopes who lived in Travessa da Palha. Necessity had driven her to it. Policarpo was so mean, he barely gave her enough to pay the rent. She had two bracelets in pawn, as well as the diamond pendant. She just hadn’t known where to turn. The old devil had been after her for ages, and she had to get those things out of pawn. In the end, she had agreed. But she cursed him now. She hated him.
‘That’s the truth. I swear on my mother’s life. May I die if it’s not true. Ask Rosa. I wrote to you explaining everything. And if I hadn’t found you today, I would have done away with myself.’
She grasped his hands and squeezed them tight. In the darkness of the square, he could see only her dark eyes gleaming in her pale face shadowed by the black lace shawl she wore over her head. A sweet sensation softened him; that passionate declaration was compensation for Genoveva’s disdain for him, and with his vanity thus consoled, he was filled by a desire to forgive. In a gentle voice, he said:
‘But if you were in difficulties with money, why didn’t you say? I could have given you the money.’
‘No, no, I wouldn’t take a penny from you. I love you and from you I want only love. I’ll get whatever I can from the other man, but not from you. Let’s make it up. I haven’t slept. I’ve been ill. Ask Rosa. Today, I just couldn’t stand it any longer and so I came to wait for you. Please, say yes.’
But the pain he had suffered at Genoveva’s hands gave Vítor a desire to avenge himself on Aninhas. He brushed her harshly aside.
‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the first time you’ve done this to me, and I’ve had enough. Goodbye.’
And he addressed the sinner in a low voice tinged only with melancholy:
‘Be happy, Aninhas.’
The girl was crying softly, and still Vítor did not leave. Feeling weak, and annoyed with his own weakness, he took out on her his feelings of irritation, saying that she wasn’t to be trusted; he wasn’t prepared to put up with her games any longer; he had plenty of other women; and just to make her cry all the more, he said that he loved her, that he had always loved her, but that, on reflection, he had decided it was over.
‘Goodbye.’
‘Are you going, then?’ she said blankly, holding back her tears.
‘Yes, goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, Vítor.’
That easy acceptance of their separation infuriated Vítor. He did not leave, but kept walking, his hands in his pockets, saying horrible things to her, repeating his litany of tedious complaints, his words oozing a rancorous, misanthropic, desperate bile.
‘Don’t be angry, Vítor,’ she was saying, resigned and tearful. ‘I don’t want to force you to do anything. I did what I could. I only came to ask your forgiveness. Now, goodbye.’
Then Vítor insulted her and listed the names of all her lovers: Alves, Guerra, Teira Vesgo, João Patriota.
Aninhas grew angry too then.
‘Why throw those names in my face now? Yes, I’ve been with them, but they weren’t deceiving you; I was deceiving them with you. Have I ever asked you for anything? Tell me, have I ever asked you for so much as a penny?’
She was speaking loudly, standing on the tips of her toes.
‘Be quiet, the watchman will hear you,’ said Vítor furiously.
She shrugged impatiently. ‘It’s best if we finish it,’ she said. ‘That’s what happens when a woman makes sacrifices for a man.’
‘What sacrifices?’ exclaimed Vítor proudly.
‘Several times I came close to losing Policarpo because of you. And then what would become of me? The house is rented in his name; the furniture is in his name. He’s quite capable of putting me out in the street with just the clothes I stand up in. And then what would I do? Go on the streets and give my name to the police? And all for you! If my poor mother were alive today …’
Vítor felt profoundly humiliated; that argument was placing him in the infamous position of a pimp, and yet he had to recognise the truth of what she said. He felt an instinctive animal vanity because her words were proof of her disinterested love for him.
He walked on in silence. His life with Aninhas reappeared before him: he was tempted by the memory of voluptuous nights during which they had loved and laughed and played, eaten supper in bed. He compared that loving girl with Genoveva, so scornful and stubborn; he remembered the graceful, vigorous perfection of her body, her voluptuous sighs, the firmness of her skin; the thought troubled him. Besides, it was his duty not to be ungrateful, and so heavily does such a duty weigh on the conscience that even the least convincing accusation seeks shelter beneath that sublime justification. He stopped and asked:
‘What is it you want?’
Sensing from his voice that he was softening, she said urgently:
‘Come back home with me now!’
Vítor made a resigned gesture and asked:
‘But what about Policarpo?’
‘He’s gone to Almada. Anyway, I don’t care. Say you’ll come. We’ll be so happy!’ She clung to him with renewed passion.
‘Stop it. People might see.’
‘What do I care. The whole world could see and I wouldn’t care. Come back with me, Vítor.’
‘And you won’t deceive me again?’ he said, giving in.
‘Never. If I ever deceive you again, you can kill me. I’ll leave a note to say it was me; there’ll be no need for you to go to court over it.’
She was utterly sincere; she had read that oath of love in The King of the Mountain and was determined to carry it out.
And so Vítor went with her. Aninhas clung tightly to his arm and they almost ran along the street. They reached her apartment breathless and, while Vítor lit a match, she hitched up her skirts and bounded up the stairs; she was laughing nervously, impatiently. She rang the bell so loudly that the startled maid came running to open the door.
‘He’s here, Rosa, he’s here! I’ve brought him, look!’
And she dragged Vítor along the corridor and into the room. She threw off her shawl and her cloak and hurled herself on him, covering him in kisses. She clapped her hands; her excitement only increased the charm of her wild, furious affection for him; her lovely grey eyes glinted with passion. ‘I can read you like a book,’ he used to say.
‘Ask Rosa. It’s true, isn’t it, Rosa, how I cried and cried!’
‘Oh, she was in a terrible state,’ said the maid glumly.
‘You see, you see!’
And she asked Rosa to prepare the supper at once. They dined in bed. She put her arms around him; she pushed him onto the sofa, climbed on top of him and devoured him with kisses, examining him with wide, voracious eyes, as if she had never seen him before; his white forehead, his sparse beard, his curly hair, his effeminate beauty drove her mad; she smothered him in abrupt kisses, her eyes closed; she bit his lips; then she knelt before him, overcome with emotion, and burst into tears.
Touched by such passion, Vítor swore to himself that he would always love her, that he would forget the other hussy.
He lifted her up, sat her on his knee, kissed away her tears and said:
‘I love you, Aninhas, really I do. But don’t deceive me again, all right?’
She stood up, her tears dry now and shining; she held out her hand.
‘No, never, not even if I were dying of hunger. I’m yours alone.’
Impelled by a great wave of passion, she fell, half-fainting, into his arms and planted wet, urgent, drunken kisses on his neck.
The next day, Vítor did not leave Aninhas’ room until one o’clock in the afternoon, and Dâmaso’s coupé happened to pass just as he was coming out of the street door.
As soon as Dâmaso saw him, he had the carriage stop and he called to Vítor, who approached with the greatest reluctance.
‘So you’ve made it up, have you?’ said Dâmaso knowingly. ‘I met the poor girl the other day and she was so upset. You did the right thing.’
Vítor tried to deny it. He had only come to see her because he had heard she was ill.
‘Now, now,’ said Dâmaso, beaming, still half-asleep, his collar all crumpled. ‘You can’t conceal the truth from me. Enjoy yourself. We went to Queluz yesterday.’
‘Have you just got back?’ asked Vítor, terribly pale.
‘No, we got back last night. We had a lovely trip.’
He seemed full of healthy joy; he was rubbing his hands, fidgeting in his seat, overflowing with a superabundance of happiness; he shouted to his coachman to drive on.
‘Enjoy yourself. And come and see us.’
Vítor returned home, furious. Dâmaso was sure to tell Genoveva that he had seen him leaving Aninhas’ house. It was too much! But, then, what did it really matter? Genoveva had made fun of him; this was his revenge; he would show her that he wasn’t dying of love for her. It was over. It was better like this. After all, Aninhas was younger, fresher, more loving. And if Genoveva was jealous, so much the better. Let her suffer!
He did not go back to Genoveva’s house. Policarpo stayed on in Almada and Vítor more or less lived with Aninhas; it was their honeymoon. They would get up at two in the afternoon, they dined several times at Silva’s and, one night, they went to the Teatro de Variedades to see a magician. It was the first time Aninhas had been to the theatre with Vítor and she spent all afternoon getting dressed. Vítor had advised her on her clothes, trying to emulate Genoveva’s elegance. She no longer wore her hair piled high or in ringlets; she dabbed opoponax on her handkerchief and wore pearl-grey gloves with eight buttons; that night, in her close-fitting, wine-red silk dress, a lace cravat, and with her pretty face, she looked so graceful and simple that Vítor felt quite proud.
When he sat down in the box with her, however, he turned pale as wax. In another box sat Dâmaso, in white tie and tails, looking prosperous, pleased, plump and victorious; and he was talking to Genoveva. Vítor was about to withdraw to the back of the box, when Dâmaso’s friendly waves pinned him to his chair; Genoveva merely nodded. She was looking splendid in a black silk dress decorated with embroidered velvet; she wore her hair in the plain English style that showed off her small, adorable head to best advantage. Her ears were adorned by black pearls and around her neck she wore a pearl-grey ribbon to match her gloves and, on it, a pendant made out of turquoise.
And like a wave bursting through dykes and sweeping all before it, the love Vítor used to feel once again filled his heart, overwhelming him. At first, he just stared like an idiot; and the stage, the dim lights and the moss-green walls of the boxes, all blurred into one; but Genoveva’s manner, the way she was laughing with Dâmaso, so enraged him that he leaned towards Aninhas, whispering sweet nothings, laughing loudly and dragging his chair closer.
Aninhas could not take her eyes off Genoveva; she wanted to know who she was; she studied her through her opera glasses, instinctively imitating certain of Genoveva’s poses. Vítor continued to affect an attitude of expansive intimacy with Aninhas, but Genoveva, grave-faced, did not look at him again. Vítor was desperate. Her indifference made him grow embittered. He began to be somewhat abrupt with Aninhas. He did not hear the actors’ amusing barbs and, sitting in the back of the box, he could not take his eyes off Genoveva. Even Aninhas noticed; she turned pale and asked him why he was staring at that woman?
‘Me? What possible importance could she have for me? I can look at whoever I want, can’t I?’
Aninhas’ eyes glittered; she already hated Genoveva.
But Genoveva did not look their way once. Dâmaso, on the other hand, took every opportunity to show Vítor how close he and Genoveva were, how happy; he struck triumphant poses, proudly twirled his moustaches and shrugged his shoulders pityingly whenever one of the actors muffled his lines.
At the end of the second act, Vítor noticed Genoveva get up and saw Dâmaso help her on with her cloak; it was the same cloak he had seen her in at the Teatro da Trindade; a thousand memories bore down on him. He felt like throwing himself at her feet, begging her to speak to him or look at him; and he picked up his hat and rushed out into the corridor. He got to the door just in time to see Genoveva entering the coupé, with a movement that revealed layers of white petticoat. Dâmaso smugly banged the door shut and gave him a pitying wave.
Vítor went back to the box with anger in his heart. He wanted the whole theatre to be burned to the ground, for the world to shatter into pieces. Sitting down again next to Aninhas, he did not take his eyes off the empty box opposite, where she had sat, where her perfume must still linger. The accumulated tears he could not shed flooded his heart.