For Joana San Martin, life became a prison cell filled with thoughts of her dead daughter. She couldn’t concentrate on work or think about anything other than Genoveva. If she’d only had another child, she might have been just as sad but she would at least have had a reason to go on living, she thought before rejecting the notion, disgusted by its cruelty. She returned to the papers on her desk and tried, for the seventh time, to read them. But the words soon became mixed up with memories of the past and places she associated with her daughter. Images of her little girl flooded her mind and anger built up inside her, until her rage became greater than her mourning and, without realising it, she turned a mental corner and began to bury Genoveva. Five and a half months had passed since the tragedy. It was perhaps not humanly possible to separate the living from the dead and return to life’s saga any sooner.
November began brightly and this augured well according to some: it meant the year had matured nicely and would bring splendour and opportunity in its final months.
‘Rich people have such strange ideas,’ thought Inês, one of the maids at the San Martin house, as she listened to Paula, a friend of the Misses, enthuse about the wonders of the month, its seasonal sports and the profits they brought to the tourism agency where she worked. Paula had come to try and persuade the Misses to go to the opening of a photography exhibition at the Palácio das Artes the next day.
‘I’m going to wear my grey jacket. It’s been demanding an outing for ages,’ Paula said, attempting to be flippant and looking for signs of complicity on her friend’s face.
Inês would never understand these women, not if she lived and worked for them for a thousand years. They were just so different. Inês enjoyed happy things, lively music, outdoor picnics, popcorn, ice cream, street fairs and the hot summer months. Why would anyone want to go and look at photos of people they didn’t even know? Inês liked flicking through photo albums as much as the next person, indeed she could spent entire afternoons doing so, but these were photos of her own family and friends. Smiling snapshots of her own life, records of happy moments. Photos were for remembering parties, weddings, first communions, saints festivals and other special occasions. What interest had she in looking at rugged landscapes, waning moons, leaping horses and people she’d never met?
Unless they were pictures of queens or princesses, of course, but that was different. She loved looking at photos of royal families in the magazines the Misses left lying around the house. In fact it was hard to describe just how important it made Inês feel to be so intimately acquainted with the private lives of royals. She had even been known to shed a tear or two on their behalf, for it was fate that had brought the royal families of the world together. And how pretty they were! Even the fat ones, though they were few and far between, managed to look prettier than ordinary women.
Still, she thought, picturing crowns on heads and smiling faces, images that spoke of power and contentment, betrayals too sometimes, as well as a slight snootiness that Inês was able to forgive them; she would still never go and look at photos of them in a gallery.
She sighed and went back to polishing the glasses that would be used later that night, then be washed, dried, polished and put away again, ready to be used the following day.
Genoveva had been pretty too. Her darling Gen, as pretty as a princess. Princesses shouldn’t die. God had not played fair with that girl.
After much insistence on Paula’s part, Joana finally agreed to go to Sílvio Luxemburgo’s exhibition. She found the photos interesting enough, without being particularly taken by any of them. They were of a town in the interior seeking national heritage protection and were perfectly well-executed, but the atmosphere in the gallery, though relaxed, made her feel uneasy. Gen had loved photography, just as she’d loved fashion and one or two other passing fads. She’d been so young, just a child. She should never have died.
Joana knew that Paula was determined to help her overcome the indifference she’d felt towards pretty much everything since the accident and that her friend was pleased to see her there, engaging with the photographs. Joana made the occasional incisive comment for Paula’s benefit, but she couldn’t help thinking of Genoveva, who’d developed a habit of taking her camera everywhere, her eyes forever on the lookout for a photo opportunity. She’d taken it on the fateful trip, excited by the prospect of photographing their team of seven boys and seven girls at the costume parade. The camera had never been found, nor had anything else to suggest how she’d spent her final moments.
The two friends made their way around the room, pausing occasionally to pass comment on one composition or other. Paula moved in to get a closer look at a landscape shot that appeared to be the highlight of the show. She immediately raised her hands to her mouth. No. It couldn’t be…
The model in the photo was Gen.
Coming face to face with the image of her dead god-daughter, albeit in a delightful pose, was a tremendous shock for Paula, but she had the wherewithal to steer Joana away and out of the room. Joana seemed relieved to be leaving.
After accompanying Joana home, Paula rushed back to the gallery. Legs trembling, tears welling in her eyes, she approached the photographer and asked him for a minute of his time. He protested that he was pretty busy hosting and could she come back another day, but she told him it was a matter of urgency and she would be brief.
‘That can’t be right,’ said Sílvio, after listening to what Paula had to say. ‘The model I used was a lovely girl, certainly, but she was a total innocent, a bit simple even, you know? She was from some small village in the interior.’
To satisfy Paula’s doubts, he took her into a back room to show her more photos featuring the girl. These images hadn’t made the final cut for the exhibition but would be included in a book. As he laid the photos on a table, he listened as Paula described the accident and explained that none of the girl’s belongings had been found, including her ring and her grandmother’s locket, which she never took off. Sílvio began to recall that there had been things about the girl that hadn’t quite fit: her poise, the elegance with which she ate, the words she used, which were few but not the common ones you’d expect of humble country folk. Then there was the ease with which she’d posed for the camera, even suggesting some understanding of the profession. Many more details came to mind, for the girl had made a big impression on him.
Nevertheless, he wasn’t convinced it was the same person. How could she have escaped from a plane crash that had no survivors? How could she have ended up in that town, miles away from the crash? The photographer’s doubts tempered Paula’s enthusiasm and steered her towards caution rather than expectation. They agreed not to tell Joana, but to share their suspicions with her husband, Pedro San Martin. It had been over a month since Sílvio had left the town and the girl had not appeared on his final day. If they built up everyone’s hopes now and then couldn’t find her, or if she turned out to be just a lookalike, it would be a fresh blow to the family, and especially to Joana, who was devastated about having argued with her daughter before she went away.
Pedro San Martin contacted the local parish priest, who engaged the entire community to form a search party. The girl in the photos was tracked down a few days later. She allowed herself to be hugged by her family members, without seeming to recognise any of them. It was only when she saw Sílvio that anything registered: she immediately struck a pose for him.
On the last day of the photo shoot, Genoveva San Martin, or Fernanda, as Jerónimo called her, had got lost wandering through town. She ended up outside the door to a hairdressers and became fascinated by the room, the hairstyles and the people who went in and out. She said nothing to them, just offered an occasional smile. The owner of the salon was amused by her and, realising she was unwell and lost, took her into her own flat next door, informing the police and assuming that some relative would turn up for her sooner or later. The girl appeared to be totally at ease, accepting the woman’s help as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She said she didn’t like her hair and asked for it to be plaited, but she was unable to say where she lived. Her lack of concern about this seemed revealing of her mental health.
The new hairstyle exposed her face more and, although she had grown very thin, it remained as pretty as it had been before the accident. But it no longer showed any emotion, as if it were frozen in time. She displayed no surprise or wonder when her father arrived and hugged her. When he said he’d come to take her home, she climbed into the back of the car as if she’d been expecting nothing else since the plane came down.
She bid the hairdresser farewell, rather mechanically, and smiled at the priest, who turned away to dab at his tears. Surrounded by so many people, an idea flashed through her head that it would have been nice if Jerónimo had been there. But it was no more than a passing thought, too fleeting to fully take shape, like others she had that came and went without overly interesting or affecting her. Fernanda, the foreigner of Serrano, went back to being Genoveva San Martin.
Pedro San Martin couldn’t believe he’d got his daughter back over a year after the accident. With amnesia, yes, but he promised himself he would move mountains to restore her to health.
The Vila pulsed as it prepared a welcome party for the sole survivor of the plane crash, a girl who seemed stuck between two worlds, one in which questions need not be answered and another in which other people were just part of the scenery.