The music had begun to repeat itself, but there was still no sign of Filipa. Renata went up to her room to look for her and found her sprawled on the bed. She called out to her, then went over to give her a nudge and wake her up. Filipa’s arm fell limp off the side of the bed.
A shiver ran up Renata’s spine. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She picked up her friend’s hand and felt the tears come as their two dozen years of friendship flashed before her eyes: the difficulties they’d overcome, the crises they’d got through, the joys they’d shared, the ideas they’d developed and redeveloped, the boyfriends, the husbands, the clothes, the dreams. They’d had their fair share of arguments, but nothing serious; it was always as if they’d just been going through the motions. Now this. It was all Renata’s fault for being so mysterious about the surprise she’d promised for the party, because Jerónimo was alive. Olavo had tracked him down, and he’d wanted to tell Filipa right away, but Renata had thought it would be a fun surprise. She’d driven her friend to her death. What would she tell Jerónimo? What would she say to Diegues, who so adored Filipa? What would become of Mate? Renata was a strong woman, but there were limits. She felt a lump move up her throat and her stomach turn. She was starting to choke. She screamed.
Filipa squeezed her hand. Renata froze. Her jaw dropped, her heart skipped a beat. Filipa rolled over and sat up, stretching her arms.
‘Oh God, look at my hair!’ she said.
She’d slept for over five hours. She looked at Renata, who was as a pale as a ghost. ‘Don’t you go getting ill on me, not today of all days, I need you to be there for me.’ She gave her friend a hug. Then she offered her a tranquilliser, a trip to heaven and back in a matter of hours.
Renata refused the pill, but took a sip of water and went downstairs. She couldn’t decide whether to tell Olavo about what had just happened. She wasn’t even sure if it had just happened or if she’d imagined it. When she’d gone into the room she’d seen the pills, found Filipa inert and felt no pulse. But Filipa had come back to life. It was too unbelievable for words. She realised that in her shock she’d forgotten to tell Filipa about Jerónimo. She decided to keep it as a surprise, to get her own back on Filipa for the fright she’d just given her.
There were no speeches at the party and Filipa told none of the guests that it was supposed to be a family reunion. She said they’d been invited at random having been picked out in the hotel’s annual prize draw. Perhaps this sounded mad, but she didn’t care, people could think what they liked. She just wanted to get the night over with and start the new year afresh.
Somewhere between the manufactured gaiety provided by the hotel and the genuine jollity brought by the guests was an empty space into which other emotions could be projected. Expectations perhaps, or tentative hopes.
A few people seemed tense, but the general mood was one of high spirits, though this did not extend to the staff. Filipa and her team were observers rather than participants, like an audience watching a play in which miscast actors read from different scripts. The moody lighting made it hard to make out the details of faces, and nobody seemed unduly concerned by the spotlight that flew around the room and periodically came to rest on someone’s face. The guests had been told the party was being filmed for the hotel to use in a promotional video, though really it was being recorded for posterity by someone whose life they’d helped influence.
Filipa watched the evening unfold from her table. She tried not to assign names to faces immediately, wanting her first impressions to develop naturally. She looked at people through their eyes and was soon reminded of the first hateful stare she’d received as a child. She would never forget Maninha’s eyes. She was the only guest Filipa recognised at once. She was sitting with a man who must have been her new husband and behaving in a ludicrous fashion that she presumably took for city chic. Filipa could live a thousand years and never forget drawing Maninha’s face with torn-out eyes. She’d mutilated Maninha by robbing her of her eyes. It had been her first crime. Others had followed, but none that had moved her so. She only killed in self-defence, and silently, with everything thought through. One day she would have to confess it all before a spring or a mountain, and speak of the living dead. Perhaps she’d do it in January, which was only an hour away. Every January she made a list of things she needed to do. For now she looked at Maninha, her first foster mother of sorts, and wished her no harm. She would not judge.
The moment was fast approaching when she’d have to greet the guests and she felt herself baulk at the prospect. She wanted to offer a touch of charm and at least a modicum of affection, but she was finding it difficult seeing people who’d had such an impact on her life.
There was the woman the priest had handed her over to when she’d first arrived in the capital. She’d thought of Joana San Martin many times over the years, but without any feeling. Filipa was sparing with her feelings, having found that being generous with them caused problems. So many people had come and gone in her life, leaving gaps and the need for surrogates. Now, whenever she felt inclined to truly give herself to someone, she worried that nothing seemed real. She even found herself questioning her feelings for Mate, Bia, Renata, Olavo, Diegues and one or two others. She’d arranged things so that no one could ever hurt her, and she knew this wasn’t normal.
As a rule, she tried not to look at people she didn’t like. That way they were reduced to a name, an insignificance, and they couldn’t get close to her heart. Olavo said she lived in a permanent state of nirvana, but she disagreed, she’d simply worked too hard building up her defences to go bandying her emotions around. She’d never forget the look Joana San Martin had given her when they first met. She’d been nice to begin with and even stroked Filipa’s hair, but her attitude quickly changed and there’d been a moment, albeit brief, when she’d let slip a look of desperation. Later on they’d been left alone together, but by then she showed no trace of anxiety, as if Filipa had gone from being a fearsome beast to a harmless microbe. Devoid of emotion, the woman had shown Filipa to a room and told her she was not to come out. The maid would sometimes unlock the door and say the Misses was out, but that Filipa was to keep quiet and make sure no one saw her.
Telling her to keep quiet was unnecessary to the point of absurd, for Filipa had barely uttered a word since learning she was being sent to the capital. She only spoke when required to, which was hardly ever. Instinctively she reverted to her former silent ways.
Sitting beside her grandmother was her grandfather, Pedro San Martin. Filipa remembered him too. People had come and gone from the Vila all day long, there had been big dogs and little dogs, all groomed, bathed and spoiled. There were plants of the kind you only saw in books, not at all like the plants in Serrano. They were all the same size and grouped together by type, divided by colour and smell: sweet on the right, peppery in the middle and bitter on the left, like Jerónimo’s lemon trees. Little birds flew freely around the garden and must have been on friendly terms with the groundsmen, for animals and people mingled with ease. So why keep Filipa shut away? She wasn’t even allowed to look outside. Maybe she really had been very sick and the air would have done her harm.
Surveying the room and the guests, Filipa realised how cruel they’d all been to her. She’d passed through dozens of hands because no one was willing to take her into their arms. But she’d survived and here she was, in good health, successful and independent.
Pedro San Martin stood up and Filipa had to admit he struck an elegant and worldly pose. Why was her grandmother so lost in thought? Perhaps she was recalling the granddaughter she’d kicked out of the house one day, for reasons Filipa only understood years later: she was the child of a single mother and a dead father. Her father must have been dead, otherwise she’d have been given his name. But why hadn’t they given her up for adoption? Her birth certificate said Filipa San Martin, daughter of Fernanda San Martin. She’d been registered after her mother had left Serrano and given the name of ‘that foreigner bitch’, as Maninha liked to say. Filipa didn’t mind her mother being called a bitch, after all she had abandoned her and Jerónimo. She must have been a bitch, she often thought, not so much for abandoning her, but for abandoning Jerónimo. Filipa had done well out of life, while poor old Jerónimo had gone into his shell. And now he’d died.
Filipa turned to her mother. She’d left her until last, she wasn’t sure why. There was no denying she was pretty, Olavo’s photo hadn’t done her justice. She was sitting with her son, but she seemed anxious: she kept looking towards the door as if waiting for someone to arrive. Ah, yes, her new man. Olavo had said there was a new man in her life, a man she was hoping to marry, but that he wouldn’t be coming until later. Filipa had no interest in meeting him. She felt neither affection nor hatred.
So this was the Fernanda of Jerónimo’s stories. This was the girl who’d walked out on the boy who’d saved her, ‘the muddle-headed cow’, as Maninha also liked to call her.
For a second Filipa became filled with rage thinking of all the sorrow she’d seen stinging Jerónimo’s eyes. Why had her mother hurt the man who’d loved her so? Couldn’t all that suffering have been avoided? Why did her eyes look kind when she’d been so cruel? This woman was her mother, yet all Filipa saw was the person who’d crushed Jerónimo’s hopes and dreams. Filipa felt like letting out all her feelings, releasing the hatred that held her other emotions back.
Her brother looked to be about twenty-three. She was pleased to see him and felt she would be happy to make his acquaintance. He and she were the innocent parties in the room and there was no reason they couldn’t become proper siblings. Having a brother must be the best thing in the world. She’d never lived among siblings, all the families she’d ended up with either had no children or just one. Mate too was an only child. Filipa had never wanted more children, but seeing her brother and taking comfort in his very presence challenged that idea for the first time. It made her forget why she’d engineered this family reunion and think about how she’d like to fall head-over-heels in love for the first time and have another child for Mate’s sake. Her daughter deserved it and Filipa felt guilty for not having given her a brother already. Or a sister. But Filipa also wanted to experience being a woman in every sense, to find out if there really was a wonderful side to womanhood. She couldn’t think of anything particularly special about the lives of any of the women she’d known. The women in the valley, who’d spoken freely about intimate matters in front of her, thinking her deaf as well as mute, had never mentioned anything remotely pleasurable about their lives. What about Gremiana? Had she perhaps experienced all the facets of love? Had Valentim provided them, or had she provided them for herself? Still, Gremiana had been a fool not to seek a lover, or a pharmaceutical, as they called them in Serrano: she hadn’t wanted to sleep with another man and she’d paid for it with her life when she should have had the courage to see that life was the only thing worth living for.
As she contemplated this, Filipa remembered something she’d heard an old woman say many years ago by the spring: ‘Of course we still think Gremiana was unwise to try and change the simple-minded men.’ The woman had been talking to herself, for she no longer had the strength of voice to issue advice or indeed anyone to issue it to, and the knowledge of this weighed her down. She spent night after night, year after year, watching her belly rise and fall in tandem with her thoughts.
A new guest arrived and checked in at reception, having been directed to the hotel by a woman with big black eyes, while in the function room the priest who’d brought Filipa to the capital approached her table. Smiling shyly, he thanked her for his invitation and hurried away. Something about the encounter had clearly spooked him and when he got back to his own table his hands shook so much he spilled his coffee. Had he looked into Filipa’s eyes and recognised the frightened girl from all those years ago, a peasant’s daughter from a godforsaken valley?
People fussed around the priest and helped mop up the mess, while he looked over at Joana San Martin. She had always refused to give him an address for the girl, so he’d had to give the father the runaround whenever he came asking for her whereabouts. Then the valley had ceased to be and the priest had been transferred to another parish. He’d never heard from the father again and had forgotten about the matter, although the girl did pop into his head occasionally on sleepless nights. Twenty years had passed and he’d assumed disputes about the girl’s birth and custody would have either healed with time or been made redundant by the circle of life. He drew strength from these thoughts of impermanence and stood up to go and greet Joana San Martin.
Midnight came and the new year was born to the sound of fireworks exploding, corks popping, young people laughing and older people clutching at reasons to ignore their melancholy. Filipa left the task of performing a toast to Olavo and Renata, who duly wished everyone a Happy New Year on behalf of Hotel Samar and their host, Filipa San Martin.
At which point a man came rushing through the crowd heading straight for Filipa. He was very familiar to her, unforgettable in fact, for he’d raised her for the first seven years of her life. People moved out of the way without knowing what was happening, for only two other people in the room, the priest and Joana, knew who Filipa San Martin really was.
A cry rang out. No two: ‘Jerónimo!’ ‘Fipa!’
They fell into each other’s arms, but no sooner had they hugged than Jerónimo was scanning the room looking for Genoveva. He summoned her over and she came, looking bewildered by the sudden turn of events but sensing that something important linked her to the host of the party.
Genoveva smiled and looked just like the girl Jerónimo had found lost in the forest by the cabin. Letting the memory go, he relaxed his embrace of Filipa a little and said, with a sense of assurance that was almost unthinkable in a Serranoan:
‘Fipa, meet Genoveva-Fernanda, your mother.’
Genoveva stood there open-mouthed. She tried to say something, but nothing came out, so she just stared at Jerónimo’s lips.
‘I can’t wait to hear this story,’ she eventually said, stretching a hand out towards Filipa. Her other hand moved instinctively to her belly, which was trying to tell her something, or calling out to the creature it had lost.
‘It’s a long one,’ said Jerónimo. ‘A long, long story.’
Serrano entered the room, brought there by people, their memories, their gestures.
A shadow raced across the illuminated veranda and out into the garden. Everyone’s eyes were drawn towards the movement, which had brought with it a cool breeze and a countryside smell. A knot tightened in Filipa’s chest. The draught seemed to pass and the guests turned to each other in silence, seeking an answer, or a question, or expecting someone to appear. They took short breaths, agitated by the sudden vacuum. Everything seemed to pause for an instant, except the conscience of an old man experiencing as difficult a personal moment as it is possible to face.
Pedro San Martin, who’d carried a gun ever since he’d been attacked in his bedroom by a houseboy, pulled out his pistol and stared with hatred at his wife. She’d gone pale the second Jerónimo had appeared and had now collapsed under the table, perhaps already bound for the pits of hell. Appalled by his wife’s deceit and his own failures as a father, the old man, his hand shaking, turned the gun on himself and pulled the trigger. It made a dry click. The room started to move again and filled back up with air.
Filipa felt the need for a cool breeze, a storm, a running river, a singing spring, anything to set her free from the torture of living each day waiting for it to end.
She left Jerónimo and Genoveva gazing into each other’s eyes and the priest telling everyone the story of the country boy who’d saved the city girl from a fire some thirty years ago. Outside in the garden, where the light met the dark, she saw the Madwoman of Serrano. The madwoman looked back at her and a twinkle in her eye showed that it was a happy moment. It was the same twinkle Filipa had captured in one of her drawings many years ago.
Filipa was anxious. She was thirty-three years old. Did that mean her time was up? If her life’s events were predetermined by a madwoman from Serrano, what of the promises she’d been made as a child? Where did the parallels in their fates begin and end? Filipa walked unsteadily over to the Madwoman of Serrano. The young woman she’d known in childhood had become incredibly beautiful. She looked the way she always appeared to Filipa in thoughts and dreams. Her face was ageless and her eyes fixed Filipa with the full force of Serrano. They leaned into each other. They were women now, considered strong by others, although they felt no great sense of self-assurance themselves. After a while they sat down, still embracing. The village smelled magical, beautiful and bewitching.
‘Serrano,’ said Filipa, gulping in all the air she could. ‘Are we going back?’
The madwoman let a long moment pass before floating a few words into the air by way of a goodbye: ‘Serrano is no more and the curse is over. It’s all over.’
The Madwoman of Serrano moved away, her destiny fulfilled. For the first time in her hundreds of lives she cried tears of longing. Fireworks accompanied their farewell gestures.
Filipa felt free and alone.