Seated on one end of the sofa, his eyes vacant, half-closed, the major was thinking laboriously and intensely about nothing at all. Because inside his head, behind that ample forehead, slightly domed and very pale (the pallor of a soldier with no war to fight), the major could find only a high, smooth, white wall, desolatingly impossible to climb—the wall separating the present from the lost past, which had left nothing behind, not even a brief, fugitive memory.
True, there was the face of that woman sitting opposite him and slightly to the right, and that seemed terribly important among so many other faces of no importance whatsoever. There were her pale, slightly squinting eyes, her sparse eyelashes that trembled in the light, fluttering like those moths so fragile they barely exist, the sort that feed on wool and crumble into dust if you touch them. Her voice, at once hesitant and serious. A placid voice, without the hint of a smile. And those slightly raised eyebrows, naturally high and thin, as perfect as if they had been drawn in pencil. Old-fashioned, even antiquated, eyebrows, and quite different from other eyebrows. There was an expectant air about them, or perhaps a touch of incredulity: “Really? Is that true? Are you sure?” Or something along those lines. And what about her hands? It was as if they, too, were familiar to the major: large but slender, with long, bony fingers and unvarnished nails. He noticed this because all the other women present had painted their nails blood red or shocking pink. Luísa, who wasn’t there, and who had left one day without a farewell note, used a mother-of-pearl shade of varnish. That other woman’s hands were naked and very still: serene, modest, and averse to any exhibitionism, but not at all shy, definitely not. They were simply there, not retreating or advancing one millimeter. The major studied them intently where they rested on her round knees, one on top of the other. She didn’t need them to talk. Nor did she need them to pick up a cigarette (she didn’t smoke) or a glass. She had just said that she never drank alcohol. “Does it not agree with you?” someone had asked, feigning interest. “No, I just don’t like it,” she had replied as if it was a matter of no importance. Even then, though, she hadn’t smiled to apologize for this strange dislike. The major felt that it would be only natural to smile and that, in the same situation, he would definitely have smiled at such a clear-cut declaration of abstinence, a slightly embarrassed and apologetic smile. However, despite all this information, the major could still not climb that wall.
The woman had returned to Lisbon from abroad a few days earlier, and from the conversation he’d overheard, but in which he took no part (because he was listening and watching too hard), he gathered that she was married and that her husband was a diplomat. Her name was Adriana, again a suitably serious, rather old-fashioned name. Adriana Moura. That name, however, either in part or whole, meant nothing to the major. It was a new name, newborn, unattached, which set off no echoes in his memory. He had never known an Adriana, and the only Moura he could recall had been his math teacher. Besides, the major was not a man to connect names with the people they belonged to. He remembered the people and remembered the names, but separately. He was certain, though, that he had never heard that particular name.
“Never staying in one place for long becomes very tiring eventually,” he heard her voice say rather solemnly, as if the wearisome business of never staying in one place for long were a matter of grave importance.
“Absolutely,” said the fat, jewel-laden woman with whom she was talking. “Absolutely.”
“It takes a while to get used to a place, and just when you’re beginning to feel comfortable and at home, almost as if you belong, off you go again to the other side of the world.”
“It must be very tedious, and yet…”
“Yes, there are positive aspects to it. The boys are already fluent in three languages. The youngest can even understand Flemish, which is a real nightmare of a language. And there’s never time for us to get tired of the people or the cities. There’s never time for us to get tired of anything.”
The fat lady then said that she had no gift for languages herself, which, she thought, was a great pity. Her accent was appalling, even in English, which she had spoken since she was a child. She had no ear for it, that was the problem; she had a terrible ear for languages. Whenever she went to London…
The major decided to break free—what was he doing there anyway?—so he left the sofa and made his way over to join a group of men standing near the window who might perhaps be discussing politics. “Excuse me. Sorry, may I get past?” All around him were lights of different tonalities, from pale café crême to an almost dazzling white, from a sandy yellow to a soft pearly glow. Coming from four different lampshades, the tones interpenetrated and finally fused into a single color that made the women’s skin and arms and shoulders a uniformly unreal white. Too white to be ordinary skin. Some people were sitting down, others standing up, and one young woman with red hair had sat down on the floor with her glass beside her. He had, as usual, remembered the names he had been given, but had no idea who they belonged to. They were abstract, incorporeal, mysterious names. Maud Navarro. Afonso Nobre the writer. And still more. But which one was Maud Navarro and which one Afonso Nobre the writer? Who were all the others? He had fixed only on Adriana Moura, her face, her hands, her name. Where did he know her from? Where had he met her? When?
The major had great faith in the Common Market, as he declared to Fontes, the party’s host, a huge, fat, greasy man, who had no faith in it at all—“None at all, my dear Aníbal, and I’ll tell you why…”—and at the same time the major was thinking, still thinking, that he had met that woman before, had perhaps spoken to her, at least seen her flutter those pale eyelashes. Fontes was preparing to launch into an exposition on the problems with customs regulations, and the major, who had heard these slow, detailed, almost scientific expositions before, discreetly moved away again, saying he needed to find an ashtray where he could stub out his cigarette. Very slowly, because every loss was a gain. People talk and talk, he thought. Life is one long monologue repeated a million times that ends in death. Meanwhile, everyone carried on talking and not listening to the others, not a word, so focused were they on their own voices. Always making the same points, always arguing (With the others? With themselves?) about the same subjects. What was his personal monologue like? He had never noticed, but he must have one, he must.
The young woman who had been sitting on the floor came over to him, holding her empty glass in her right hand. She was holding it delicately as if it were a flower whose perfume you could smell from some way away. She had drunk too much, and her large green eyes, heavily edged with black eyeliner, were as choppy as the sea after a storm. She had a knowing smile on her full lips, and her disheveled hair kept falling over her face.
“Major,” she said. “Tell me about your last battle.” She sat down on the empty ottoman just outside the smoking room and patted the seat next to her. “Come on, Major. I won’t eat you. Would you be very kind and pour me another whiskey? It’s there, on that table. My legs are a bit wobbly; why do you think that might be? Major…”
“Yes…”
“Tell me something interesting, something that, oh, how can I put it…”
“I’m not really a soldier, just a pencil-pusher. What’s your name?”
“Maud. Maud Navarro.”
“Well, Maud, Maud Navarro, as I say, I’m really just a pencil-pusher. No wars for me. Haven’t you read the newspapers? An oasis of peace: Isn’t that how they used to describe Portugal? An oasis of peace in a troubled world. That was then, of course. Now it’s too late. I stopped trying. The only hand-to-hand combat I engage in is with bureaucracy. Those are my unsung battles. I get through several pens a month; they are my munitions. I’ve never killed anyone, Maud Navarro. I am by nature a peace-loving man.”
Her eyes were growing ever stormier, and she was looking at him, fascinated.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “Nor do I want to. You’re very modest, Major, and it suits you. Yes, it really does. You don’t want people to know that you’re a hero and killed dozens of the enemy. Dozens! No, what am I saying? Hundreds! Wait, I know. You won the battle of Cannae, didn’t you? That’s where you got that scar on your face.” She was laughing so much that tears were rolling down her cheeks, and that rain of tears washed away the bad weather, leaving the sea green and almost transparent. “Major, I’m proud of you,” she said ecstatically. “One day, when I’m an old lady, I will tell my grandchildren that I once sat next to Hannibal on an ottoman the color of… What is this color anyway?”
“And that you had drunk too much.”
She paused. “Perhaps I won’t tell them that,” she said. “Perhaps that’s not really necessary.”
“Perhaps. Although I would say it was obvious.”
“Besides, I’m talking nonsense!” she cried. “I have no intention of having any grandchildren!”
She was looking at him. A long uncivilized look that attached itself to his eyes and from which he wouldn’t have been able to detach himself even if he had wanted to. Would he want to, though? “Major…” However, just at that moment, he had looked away, because something demanded his presence elsewhere. He turned just in time to see that woman, Adriana, studying him intently, almost scrutinizing him. Her lips were pursed, her brows slightly furrowed. As soon as the major met her gaze, she turned and continued her interrupted conversation with the fat woman who, while she may have lots of diamonds, had a terrible ear for languages; well, one can’t have everything.
Adriana clearly knew him too, but where from? He stood up without saying a word to Maud Navarro, who, besides, seemed oblivious to everything going on around her, and he again went over to the group of men—now reduced to two, Fontes and Aires—who were exchanging whispered anecdotes, then roaring with laughter, and turning bright red with the effort, because both men were fat, the proud owners of many pounds of the kind of abundant, flaccid flesh that afflicts the wealthy and comes from lavish suppers, a sedentary lifestyle, and the alcohol they consumed in the evening—on every evening of every year—in their favorite bars. The major was thinking all this as he watched them glorying in their laughter, not even stopping for the inevitable coughing fit that followed.
“Listen, my friend, you simply must hear the story Aires just told me,” said Fontes, once he had finished coughing. “Go on, Aires, tell him.”
They put their heads together; Aires’ voice, leaning in close, whispered, became a mere murmur, almost a mumble. Manuela, the hostess, said out loud and with a natural ease of manner that exuded class:
“There they are with their silly stories, but why do they have to keep them to themselves? There aren’t any young innocents among us.” She smiled at Maud. “Apart from you, my love. But I reckon you could tell a few good stories of your own, eh?”
“Where would you like me to start?” Maud asked wearily. Then she returned to her whiskey, and the other guests returned to the conversations they had interrupted in order to smile at this exchange. It was Fontes’ turn to tell a story. The major, however, didn’t hear it, even though he appeared to be listening and laughed politely at the end. Aires became positively apoplectic, and another man who had joined them (Afonso Nobre the writer?) laughed in the moderate fashion befitting an intellectual. “Yes, very amusing,” he said distractedly. “Very amusing.”
The major was still laughing, although with no idea what he was laughing at. He laughed simply because the others were laughing, out of sheer conformity. Out of fear that he would be seen not to be joining in. I’m just a wimp, he thought sadly. I always have been. What would have become of me in a war? Or in an occupied country? What would I have done if I’d actually had to do something and leave the flock? He was feeling thoroughly fed up and longed to be alone at home again. This is what almost always happened when he made a foray into society. It was clear that everyone around him had been given some important or secondary role and that he alone was marring the play by strolling around among the other actors with no makeup on and without a proper costume, with no witty line to come out with at just the right moment; he alone was ruining the show, just as one day, as a boy during a school play, he had raced across the stage whooping like a Sioux Indian while a little moon-faced girl was declaiming tremulously, “Dear friends and family, I am a poor widow, whom God has deprived of all strength and shelter in this world.” Everyone had applauded him then—it was so unexpected—while the little girl, a would-be actress, burst into loud sobs. No one was applauding him now. They doubtless thought him unpopular and talked about him behind his back, and spoke, needless to say, about Luísa, adding perhaps that they could quite understand her position.
That feeling came from way back, and always resurfaced at these so-called society happenings. The major had never felt at ease in those situations, never felt part of it. He had always remained on the outside, looking in. The ladies went to the hairdresser, wore low-cut dresses, carefully painted their faces, and were charming and brimming with wit. The ideal woman! As for the men, they wore beautifully cut, rather dark suits and smelled of lavender in a discreet, very masculine way, and they were all either very intelligent or very rich or very funny. Each of these styles had their supporters and their fans. He, though, was always the soldier and continued to be despite everything, even though he was visibly dressed in civvies, wearing any old tie and any old suit made by any old tailor, and always his same old self. He didn’t have much money and wasn’t particularly intelligent or witty. He wasn’t particularly anything.
He thought about Luísa, whom he had resolved not to think about. And this happened because of the total silence surrounding her name. He had thought of her several times since he arrived at the party, perhaps precisely because no one had mentioned her or asked him about her. And yet that would have been perfectly normal. There was no reason why they should all know, but they did. Manuela, Fontes, Aires…others. All of them perhaps. Even drunk Maud Navarro, even Adriana Moura, who had returned from abroad only a few days ago. Luísa knew so many people; she had so many friends of whom he knew nothing… She was so nice, so kind.
“What are you thinking about, Major?”
He started, then turned, and found himself looking at her with no idea what to say, like a boy caught by the teacher reading an obscene book. Without even realizing it, he had moved away from the group of men and hadn’t seen her coming toward him and stopping right there by his side. She was waiting, and she gave the impression that she needed his answer urgently and that not just any answer would do. And she was studying him intently. What are you thinking about, Major?
She had remembered his rank, just as he had remembered her name. Where did he know her from? He was even about to ask her straight out, with no beating around the bush, but he stopped because she was still waiting. After all, what was he thinking about?
Since he couldn’t mention Luísa, he went back in time a little and ended up saying rather plaintively:
“I was thinking that here we are, the only ones not wearing masks at a masked ball where no one is dancing.”
He waited, expecting her to arch her eyebrows in a gesture of incomprehension or scorn, but instead she merely asked:
“Why is that? Why do you assume I share your feelings?”
The major looked at her, perplexed, or, rather, he continued to look at her much as he had before, but with just a touch of perplexity. He found her answer rather awkward and felt that this new conversation was already beginning to resemble a bout of drawing-room swordplay, a form of conversational dueling he detested and for which he had no natural talent.
“Perhaps because you don’t appear to me to be wearing a mask,” he said at last, in a modest attempt to join in the game.
She broke in:
“Oh, nonsense,” she declared. “And don’t go making assumptions. Besides, I’m useless at metaphors—for me, words always mean exactly what they mean.”
Given her response, he decided that this was the right moment to ask her where they had met before. He didn’t though. His wretched timidity got the better of him. He merely asked if she would like to sit down and then took a seat opposite her. Adriana was waiting. She had her legs pressed together, her feet together, and her hands placed one on top of the other on her knees, like a sensible young lady. She wasn’t wearing any rings or bracelets. Not even a wedding ring. The major knew, however—from eavesdropping on her conversation—that she was married and had children. And that her husband was a diplomat somewhere.
“You arrived a few days ago, I understand,” he said, just to say something.
“Yes, a week ago. I’m always either leaving or arriving. I seem fated to be eternally packing suitcases and unpacking them. I must have spent whole years of my life filling and emptying suitcases.”
“Some women spend years dusting their own little patch of world, or waxing its floor, enthusiastically and despite terrible back pain. Some even get TB from all that work. Others spend their life looking in shop windows or in the mirror.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, a life within a life. My mother, poor thing, spent her life darning socks. Sometimes they were socks no one would wear anymore and that she knew no one was ever going to put on. But she darned them with all the passion of an artist, all the time complaining. ‘I’m a victim,’ she would say. ‘I’ve never had a moment’s rest. Everyone goes out and has fun, everyone except me.’ When the socks were ready, she would put them away in a drawer. What was that about? I really don’t know.”
“Perhaps she was obeying some order from above,” said the major. “Perhaps she really had to do that.”
“My situation is different,” she said. “I don’t do the choosing. It just happens that I’m the one who has to pack the cases and then unpack them. A pointless task, but necessary. It’s become second nature to me now, and I’m getting better by the day. It’s a speciality like any other. What’s best placed at the bottom, what’s best on top, what you can stuff down the sides. And the art of filling empty spaces, Major… There comes a point when it’s not a suitcase anymore; it’s a rectangle of very compact matter.” There was a silence. “I’m only ever anywhere for a short while,” she went on. “For example, I’m here in Lisbon for just two weeks. Five years is the maximum I’ve stayed in any one place, and I spent them in Cape Town. Now I live in Amsterdam, but I hate the weather and miss the sun terribly. In fact, I came here just to have a few days in the sun.”
“Yes, the weather’s very pleasant in May.”
“Especially when you live in the north. It’s paradise.”
“Where do I know you from?” the major asked then. “I’ve never been to Cape Town, and I’ve never visited Holland. To tell you the truth, I’ve only once crossed the Portuguese border, and that was to go to Madrid for a football match. We must have met here, but where?”
She smiled for the first time. It wasn’t a happy smile, nor was it a smile indicating amusement, nor even the smile of someone who needed to smile. It was a smile of relief. “Finally!” that smile was saying. He heard her sigh softly and saw the wings of her eyelids flutter twice, covering her pale or, rather, colorless eyes, which had laugh lines around them.
“That’s what you’ve been thinking since the first moment you saw me, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“And you can’t remember…”
“And I can’t remember.”
Her smile went out like a light, and her face once again grew serious. “I, on the other hand,” she said as if she were thinking this to herself, “have never forgotten you. I only saw you once, Major, only once. And for just a few minutes. It was a long time ago. You were possibly a lieutenant at the time, or a second lieutenant.”
“It was that long ago?”
“Some twenty-five years ago. I was fifteen at the time. Or fourteen. I’m thirty-nine now. Yes, I must have been fourteen.”
The major lit a cigarette and put the pack away in his pocket, all very slowly, not hurrying in the least, like a man who has all the time in the world now that he’s on the right track. He glanced at his watch, but only to check that it was still early and there was no need to rush.
“Where was that? Where did we meet, I mean?” he asked. He still could not remember, but he was no longer bumping up against the white wall of forgetting. He was simply waiting. The wall was still as high and smooth as before, but there was now a very small crack in it, and that gave him hope. In a few moments, the wall would crumble, and he would be able to see through to the other side. “Where was it? Twenty-five years ago, you say? Well, twenty-five years ago, I was in Elvas, I think…”
“My name is Adriana,” she said suddenly.
“Yes, I know. I made a note of your name, and I suppose you did the same with mine.”
“I didn’t need to. An unnecessary task. You were a second lieutenant—I remember now—Second Lieutenant Aníbal Morais. I didn’t know you were a major now or that your hair had gone so gray.”
“Time.”
“Yes, time.”
There was no point in hurrying her. She would tell him, but only when she chose to. Not a minute sooner. She was a woman who knew what she wanted. But what did she want?”
“I sometimes thought you must be dead. Well, that’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Perfectly possible,” he agreed patiently. “Two years ago, I had pleurisy, and five years ago, I was involved in a very serious car crash. I was in the passenger seat.”
She said, “I hope you’ve made a full recovery.”
“Yes, fortunately I have. A few scars, but that’s all. They look rather good on a soldier.” He indicated a deep white line on his left cheek. “See?” he asked.
“I do.”
“And ten years ago, I had to have an urgent operation. According to the surgeon who operated on me, they caught me at the very last second of the very last minute. So, as you see, I could easily have been dead.”
“When was that?” asked Manuela, who happened to be passing. “I didn’t know anything about that, Aníbal.”
He laughed.
“Oh, that was ten years ago, possibly eleven. We were just talking…now what was it we were talking about?”
He turned to Adriana, who laughed and made room on the sofa for Manuela.
“Sit down,” she said. “The two of us were drawing up a catalog of memories. Ten years ago, five years ago, two… Do you want to join in?”
The major looked at his watch, and it occurred to him that it was getting late, almost a quarter past one.
“Are you in a hurry to leave?”
“No, not at all…”
He became aware that the two women were chatting away enthusiastically—Manuela waving her white arms, Adriana quite serene—about someone he didn’t know named Ventura. The major looked around. Here and there, he caught stray, random sentences. “Everyone who meets him dies suddenly, it’s a fact.” “Ramiro only survives because he’s strong as an ox.”; “Last year, when I was in Sweden…” “You were in Sweden?” “Yes, a wonderful country and a fine people, the Swedes. When you visit a country like that, it makes you realize that our country, that we’re basically…”; “Yes, he’s interested in space travel now, which I find odd in someone like him. Doesn’t it smack a little of denying the existence of God…” “Denying… I don’t understand…” “Perhaps you don’t believe in God…” “Of course I do. If Hell and all that didn’t exist, this life would be too immoral.”
It was Maud who was speaking, no longer holding a glass and considerably more sober. He looked at her and smiled. She abandoned the short, fat, pink gentleman (Afonso Nobre the writer?) and came over to him. The major reluctantly stood up.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked.
“Why? Was I ill? Ah, I see. Yes, you’re right, I was a little merry. I still am, but so what? Come here, I want to tell you something…”
She drew him over to a less crowded spot. “I find this kind of party deadly dull,” she said softly. “It’s only when I drink that I can enjoy myself a little. If I was in my normal state, I might not have noticed you or that old-fashioned lady, the one talking to Manuela now, and who you were getting on so well with. No, I would have been slumped somewhere like a useless lump.” He said, “She and I know each other, that’s all, but I can’t remember where we met.”
Maud, however, wasn’t listening. “When I drink, I like everyone,” she said. “Nice people, admirable people. If I don’t drink, everything seems almost unbearable.”
“You’re exaggerating,” said the major.
“Possibly.”
“Why do you come to these parties, then?”
“That is the question. Why do I come? I never miss a party, Major. Everyone knows they can count on me. There’s never any question of my not coming. I always come.”
“Yes, but why?” he asked, purely for the sake of asking.
“Because they would find it odd if I didn’t. She’s depressed, they would say, and that’s a bad sign. They would start to uncover things about me and invent I don’t know what. After spending two months in hospital with nervous exhaustion, I have to keep a close eye on my reputation. I mustn’t dye my hair another color because I didn’t do that before. I must enjoy parties as much as I did before. I have to be exactly as I used to be before. Do you understand, Major?”
“And did you used to drink a lot before, Maud Navarro?” he asked gently.
“Major, you must be psychic. No, before, I didn’t drink. I started drinking the day when… On a very bad day. A very bitter day. After that… Well, things never did get back to normal, at least not enough for me to stop drinking…”
She fell silent and looked at him with a suddenly detached air:
“I’ll see you later,” she said. “They’re calling you. Off you go.”
He turned and saw that Adriana was once again alone and waiting expectantly. He didn’t want to rush back. He poured himself a whiskey, raised the glass to his lips, and said to Maud, “I do have to go. It’s a matter of life and death. Finding out where I know her from.”
“She’s a funny little thing,” Adriana said when he returned to his seat opposite her. “A little unstable, unfortunately. She’s spent time in the hospital. And she drinks like a fish.”
“I know, she told me about that, but she seems normal enough. Well, reasonably normal, like the rest of us.”
“Possibly,” said Adriana, her mind elsewhere.
Then the major said quietly, “I’m waiting.” He no longer felt in the least bit shy with this woman. This old-fashioned lady, as Maud had called her. And the major had to admit that Adriana did resemble a wax figure placed among the public to confuse them.
“Yes, I have to tell you everything now,” she said. “I’ve started, and I can’t stop now. I’ve been putting off the moment for a long time, prolonging the period during which I could justifiably allow myself to remain silent. Why speak about past events? What do we gain by that? But there it is, I’ve started. I spoke to you when it seemed to me that you were wondering who I was, and that’s when I asked what you were thinking about. I don’t even have to apologize for the apparent informality.”
She was looking down at her right hand, with which she was slowly smoothing a crease in the black silk on her thigh.
“I’m Teresa’s sister,” she said, without looking up.
“Teresa…”
For a moment, he didn’t know who she was referring to. That name thrown out like that, with no place or face to attach it to, meant nothing to him. Teresa… Then suddenly, everything became clear, and Adriana herself emerged from behind the now-ruined wall, seated primly in a wicker chair, having opened the door to him, her hair in braids and sitting, as now, with her hands resting on her round knees, her restless gaze submerged beneath all that apparent serenity.
Off in the distance, Teresa’s voice. A different voice, now constrained, now too free, now static, now too fast. Invisible obstacles seemed to break up the sound, distorting it or holding it back, apart from the occasional piece of open ground that made it dangerously loud. Where had it gone, that voice, so easy and clear, the young voice that she would throw out like a red streamer? Teresa was very pale like her sister, and her eyes seemed to rock back and forth as if she were in a small boat battered by the storm and abandoned to the fury of the elements. “The fury of the elements,” he could almost swear that he had thought those very words. For a moment, he was afraid she might fall, dragged under by her vague, fluctuating eyes, and he even took two steps forward to catch her in his arms in case she did. However, it was as if she suspected or feared or even foresaw his thoughts and intentions. She recovered quickly, almost abruptly, and held out one damp, slightly tremulous hand to him. Her arm, though, pushed him harshly away. “Hello, what are you doing here?” said the voice that came and went. “Not again. Go away, I asked you not to come to the house. At least my sister is here today; otherwise, what would people think…the neighbors I mean? You have no idea what these provincial folk are like. These women with nothing to do, forever curtain-twitching, gossiping, and inventing stories.” She had turned right around and was talking with young Adriana, who was staring at him uncomprehendingly, with those pale, slightly squinting eyes. “Imagine, Anica: Second Lieutenant Aníbal Morais has fallen in love with Alicinha and wants me to talk to her about him. You know what Alicinha is like… I’m not going to get involved in such things…”
“Who was Alicinha?” the major asked Adriana, there in that large room with aquarium-green walls, bathed in the bright light from those four lamps.
“A cousin of ours. A nice girl. Dead now.”
“Ah.”
The other Adriana, the one with eyes wide with astonishment—Anica as she was then—in her pleated skirt and with her hair in braids, was staring past her sister at Second Lieutenant Aníbal Morais, who that year was the most handsome officer at the Elvas barracks.
“Don’t say a word about this at home,” Teresa was saying to her. “It’s all so stupid.” Then she turned to him again, where he stood motionless in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do or say. “And now you’d better leave; yes, that really would be the best thing to do.” Her voice was now her voice again. That game of hide-and-seek in the hills was over, and her voice was once more clear, almost cheerful. “Let’s see. I would like to help, I really would. No, don’t thank me, best not to. I might not be able to do anything. Alicinha is such a funny creature, isn’t she, Anica? If I’m to do this, though, you must promise never to come back to my house. If José were to hear about it…isn’t that right, Anica? If he ever heard about it… So, we’re in agreement, then. You won’t come back here, and I’ll do what I can. Let me think. I might come up with some brilliant idea, you never know.”
Anica’s cool, calm little voice made itself heard for the first time. It wasn’t a distrustful voice, but helpful, encouraging.
“Why not write to Alicinha or call her? That would be simpler.”
She wasn’t addressing the visitor, but her sister—although the unspoken subject of the verb “write” was clearly him—and her suggestion was too logical to be rejected out of hand. Teresa hesitated for a second. She must have thought that she could carry on regardless. She sounded suddenly irritated. “But I already told you that he doesn’t want to speak to her until he can be sure he’ll be welcome.”
She hadn’t said anything of the sort, but that didn’t matter. And while she was speaking, Teresa walked very slowly over to the door and opened it wide. He had shaken Anica’s hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he had said. Then he had shaken Teresa’s hand, which was less stiff now, but still cautious, and she had somehow managed to say to him, so that her sister wouldn’t hear, so quietly that even he barely heard, that she would expect him the next day at the same time.
“I saw you once, Major,” said Adriana. “That time you were there for just five minutes, and my sister, poor thing, dreamed up that whole story for my benefit. I didn’t understand at the time, but Alicinha…she had such bad luck, poor thing. She had been in love with José, my brother-in-law. Then Teresa appeared on the scene… She died, did I mention that?”
“Who, Teresa?”
“No, Alicinha. When she was thirty-five and still single. I think she died from lack of love, but the doctors gave some complicated name to the illness that carried her off.”
“Poor thing.”
“Yes, poor thing.”
She paused, then said:
“I thought you were a prince, you know.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
He, however, had barely noticed little Adriana, or Anica as she was called then, and as he had slouched angrily back down the stairs, he had even called her a rather rude name. He was disappointed and still very young. And he loved Teresa. Oh, how he loved her! Did he love her? Yes, perhaps he did. At the time. And the presence of her sister had annoyed him. What was she doing there?
“I’d gone there to take Teresa some groceries,” Adriana said casually. “Jam, sugar, that sort of thing, which our mother always sent her at the beginning of the month. Teresa was having quite a hard time of it, because her husband didn’t earn much and, worse still, never would, as she well knew. Like my own marriage later on, it wasn’t a marriage between equals, but whereas I went up a rung, she had gone down one. My brother-in-law was a good man, but that was all. And being a good man wasn’t enough, especially not for the woman he married.”
“Yes, she told me…”
She broke in, “Yes, of course she did, forgive me. I’m not thinking clearly. I was trying to give you a general idea of the situation, forgetting that you must have known it all in detail. A good man. A serious man. He believed in people, and that was what killed him eventually. Thinking about it now, I find his belief in people almost moving. Did you know him, Major? I mean, did you ever meet him?”
No, he said, he had never seen him, then asked slightly warily if the husband had been caught embezzling money. That’s what he’d heard…
Adriana frowned. “Whoever told you such a thing? Embezzling? My brother-in-law? He would never do such a thing!” There was a note of scorn behind the surprise in her voice. “Never!” she said again. “Don’t you know the real reason? Did no one tell you? Didn’t you at least suspect…”
“Well, I…”
She sighed. A sigh that was simultaneously light and heavy. As if she had taken a deep breath, then exhaled very slowly, bit by bit, afraid that someone would hear.
“There are people in this world whom we don’t even notice, aren’t there?” she asked, as if she had forgotten his last unfinished sentence. “They’re timid and humble. They accept the position they’ve been allotted in society, with no feelings of ambition or resentment. They do so much for other people that it becomes normal, as normal as it is for no one to do anything for them. Who would even think of it? I suppose that’s what José was like…”
“Aren’t you sure?”
“No, I’m not. It never occurred to me while he was alive, and, besides, I was very young then. When I was older, I did sometimes think about it, but only briefly—well, I had other things to do. I mean, I never paused for long enough to… There were always more important things to worry about. Always. Afterward, it was too late. But I know he was a good man.”
“One moment,” said the major. He got up and went to get another drink, because he needed it, and while he was doing that and opening the bottle and pouring the pale golden liquid into his glass and putting the top back on the bottle and picking up the bottle of mineral water and unscrewing the top and choosing an ice cube, one of the bigger ones, and going back to his place beside Adriana and taking a first sip, during that time, the major saw again, as he had all those years ago, then completely forgotten, the shadow of that man who was going to die. He had been told, “He embezzled some money, then gassed himself. At night. In the office where he worked.” And even though he hadn’t known him, had known only his wife, he had thought long and hard about him and remembered now how he had imagined him then, wandering slowly around the deserted office. He was no longer a man, only a shadow. Probably hesitant, fearful, or even, when he was about to kill himself, repentant. Sad, filled with self-pity, he who had once had “such a hopeful future,” tearful perhaps, and with an overwhelming desire to be rocked in someone’s arms, to be a child again, or, more than that, the mere silhouette of a baby in his mother’s protective womb. Perhaps he had half-opened the wooden shutters, slowly pushing back the locks, reining in all his haste and strength, so as not to make a noise. With the light from outside, from a streetlamp or whatever, it would be easier to do what had to be done. But it was possible, too, to do it in the dark and then dissolve into that same darkness.
He hadn’t seen that shadow. Indeed, no one had seen it. No one had imagined it. Perhaps only Teresa, but who knows? The major, though, thought about it, unconsciously, on that day, many years ago, when he was still only a second lieutenant, and now here it was back again, standing impassively before him. It was a very calm shadow, imbued with the stillness that all insoluble things bring with them. There was nothing to do. It wasn’t even trying to do anything. Or to dream of doing anything—even that was forbidden. No, he wasn’t crying. He wasn’t thinking about his mother or even his wife. Nor was he thinking—as everyone does at some point—that he had a bright future ahead of him. He was far away, about to enter death, propelled into it, dead and forgotten. He was walking slowly, aimlessly, among the desks, just so he could touch them, feel the rough wood, so that he could accustom himself to the touch. Or perhaps to orient himself, so as not to stumble and make a noise. Or perhaps so as not to hurt himself, to preserve for a few more minutes—or hours—that body on loan to him during his brief sojourn among men. And then he sat down, possibly to ponder purely technical details, only to stand up again and take a few more steps. He was getting closer and closer to the kitchen.
“So, he hadn’t…” the major said.
“Embezzled any money? Of course not. The poor fellow didn’t even deal with any money in the office. As I said, he was a serious man.”
“You mean…”
“Had you never thought about what happened, Major?”
“Not really. A little, yes, but I never thought about it properly. So that’s what happened?” he asked without a trace of alarm, but filled with sadness.
“Yes.”
He thought about Teresa, who had never been a very influential person in his life, which didn’t mean she hadn’t been very important once. It was just that her importance had been confined, so to speak, to a matter of months. At the time, he had thought, with all the sincerity of tender youth, that he loved her. Soon afterward, though, indifference had set in, and he had grown tired of her but hadn’t known how to break free without inflicting great pain. She was very clingy, and it was the first time she had been in love. If you leave me, I’ll kill myself, she would say. And she would beg him to take her far away from there; “there” being the place where everyone knew the mediocre life she was obliged to lead, the husband she had quickly ceased to love, whom she may even have despised—yes, she had despised him, he remembered now—and that very modest, almost rundown house. In the end, he had left her—he had to, taking advantage of being transferred elsewhere—and he then behaved like an errant coward. How else could he have escaped her? He didn’t write to her, nor did he receive her letters, because when he left—he couldn’t even bear to recall their final parting—he had given her a false address, on a street that probably didn’t even exist, number 200. Yes, number 200: that he had never forgotten. Later, he heard that she had been very ill and later still, some time afterward, that her husband had committed suicide. Having been found embezzling money, he had been told. That was enough, and he had never asked any further questions, for fear he might be given another version, one he didn’t want to hear. This is why he had never known for certain what had happened. He had been given only hints. Was it possible that… Could it have been… At the time, he simply shrugged off such questions and moved on. He forgot all about the man in the empty office. As the years passed, all memory of him was erased.
“Initially, I would sometimes ask myself, did I do the right thing?” said the woman. “Did I act fairly or stupidly or both those things? That is the problem…or was, I should say. Then things calmed down.”
The major said nothing, waiting. She moistened her thin lips with the tip of her tongue, then took a deep breath.
“Five months after our meeting, the one when she talked about Alicinha…”
“There was only that one meeting.”
“True. I had turned fifteen and took things very much to heart, very seriously. I suppose all girls are like that. I mean, of course, that’s how girls were then. I don’t know what girls are like now. Probably because I don’t have any daughters of my own. I lived according to certain preconceived ideas, and I still live according to some of them,” she said. “Those that have survived.”
“We all do. More or less, even though we may like to think we don’t. Or we might even react against them—that can happen too.”
“One of those ideas was—and still is—that between a couple, a couple in the abstract sense, there should be no lies. Anything but that—a breakup, separation, divorce, anything—isn’t that right, Major?”
“Yes,” he said meekly. “Yes…”
“It’s true, isn’t it? I’m glad to hear you say that. Of course, Teresa and her husband weren’t just a couple in the abstract—they were a particular couple, which is as different as chalk and cheese. However, I didn’t understand that then, because I was very young. I didn’t see the difference. When you left, Major, my sister was utterly distraught. Then, when she received no answer to the letters she wrote to you, she went from being hysterical to deeply depressed. Her heart was broken, as was her pride, but no one knew that. As it happened, the neighbors she had claimed to be so afraid of that afternoon hadn’t said a word, presumably because they hadn’t seen anything. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep; she was no longer her pretty, lively self, more like her own future corpse. A future that wouldn’t be long in coming, if you see what I mean. Her nerves were clearly in a terrible state, that much was clear, but she refused point-blank to see the doctor we were all insisting she should see. My brother-in-law was going crazy. He really loved her, the poor man.”
I didn’t know that, but what could be more natural, thought the major, taking one last sip of his drink.
“One day, she told me everything,” she went on. “Not, perhaps, the wisest choice. Instead of talking to me, she could have spoken to a priest or confessed all to one of her friends, who would probably have been more understanding. But it was a gray, rainy day, and I happened to be there when the mailman once again walked past the house with no letter for her. She then felt a real need to make her confession. Oh, she didn’t just tell me what happened. She told me the part she had played in it too. She really dragged herself through the mud. Now that she knew you weren’t coming back, Major, she was filled with belated remorse. She looked at me for a long time, as if trying to assess how capable I would be of understanding, then she said, ‘I’m going to tell you everything. You’re my sister, and now you’re a grown woman. You have to understand me.’ I said, ‘Everything?’ and she said again, ‘Everything.’ That was when you and Alicinha both vanished from the story: Alicinha because she was surplus to requirements and had nothing to do with it; you because it turned out you were completely different from the man I thought you were. A prince? Some prince! All that was left were the brutal soldier and the adulterous woman. How sad. Both of you deceiving a poor man whom I had never particularly liked—he was just that: ‘a poor man’—but whom I suddenly saw as the victim of lies and betrayal.”
“Those are big words!”
“I know. At the age I was then, you do think in big words. Well, we did then. There were no blurred edges. The colors were all separate and undiluted. Blue and red stood side by side and never made purple.”
“Never?”
“Never. Or only in certain twisted minds. But I was a sane and healthy girl.”
“And then?” asked the major.
“I spent whole days shaking, afraid of those same neighbors always watching from behind their curtains. They must know and were sure to talk. They were just waiting, but for what? Anyway, we needed to pre-empt them. It was urgent. One day, I went to see her and told her that she should tell her husband everything and ask his forgiveness. He was sure to understand.”
“Impossible,” said the major.
“That’s exactly what she said, that it was impossible. That he would never forgive her. He was a good man, but somewhat limited. And he had too much faith in her. The affair would stay there forever between them, getting bigger and bigger, ever more present, making the air unbreathable. I can see her now, sitting on the bed, looking deathly pale, her hair hanging loose over her shoulders, all the time searching for the exact words to express what she was trying to say. ‘Getting bigger and bigger, you understand. Lodged between us forever. No, it’s impossible.’ She wasn’t talking calmly, but excitedly. She was feverish; she barely ate anything and lay awake all night. She was thinking about you, I suppose. And when she thought about what her husband would say, she would weep. ‘What’s wrong with her, for heaven’s sake? What is wrong?’ Poor José! The doctor finally did go and see her and prescribed tranquilizers. She didn’t take them though. She pretended she did and told everyone that she was taking them, but she didn’t. I think she wanted to stay in that febrile state so as not to forget you, so that you would remain there with her. Those pills meant sleep and forgetting. Or perhaps it was a way of punishing herself… Or of taking her revenge, who knows?”
“I never heard anything more about her,” said the major, staring into space. “Only about your brother-in-law. That he’d died, I mean, because he’d embezzled some funds.”
“A lie.”
“Yes, as you said, a lie.”
“One day, she did tell him about it. I threatened her. I told her that if she didn’t tell him, I would. It was the only way to feel cleansed of all that.”
“I see,” murmured the major. “I see.”
There was an awkward silence, and the major looked around desperately for some diversion. Fontes was coming over, looking even fatter and greasier than he had earlier. “Seborrheia,” thought the major with a coolness that alarmed him. He was looking crumpled now and no longer smelled of eau de cologne and Lucky Strike, but of sweat and alcohol. Maud appeared too. “What have you two been plotting all this time?” she asked. Her lips were shiny with freshly applied lipstick, and her blonde hair was neatly combed. Two lines on either side of her mouth, however, indicated how tired she was and even how old. “How old is she?” wondered the major. Only a while ago, she had seemed very young, maybe twenty. Now she looked more like twenty-eight or even more.
Fontes was talking to Adriana about Afonso Nobre, who had just left and who had been the guest of honor.
“No one has ever read anything by him,” he was saying. “He’s very arid, they say. And I always say, well, there’s arid and there’s arid. And aridity doesn’t usually lie in the books themselves, but in the mood we’re in when we read them. If we were prepared to think a little, to learn from what we read, rather, of course, than just killing time or—still worse—having decided beforehand that we’re not going to like what we read, then Afonso’s books would be anything but arid.”
He turned to Maud Navarro. “Tell me, my dear, have you read any of Afonso’s books?”
“No, I’m completely innocent. I’ll swear on the Bible if necessary.”
“You see? You see? People are just too lazy to think.”
“Don’t generalize,” she said. “I do read, of course. Whenever I have time. But I don’t read Afonso Nobre, and who can blame me? No one has read him, not even you. Well, you might have flicked through one of his books, but the only person who actually reads him, paying full attention, is the proofreader, poor man.”
Fontes mentally threw his arms up in the air. “You see? You hear what she’s saying?” Maud moved away in search of other interests, having first smiled at the major, and Fontes went to join his wife, who was summoning him over because the fat, bejeweled woman wanted to say her goodbyes.
“What became of her?” the major asked as soon as they were alone again.
“She remarried.”
“Ah,” said the major.
“She lives in Africa.”
“Ah,” said the major again.
“In Lourenço Marques.”
“A great city!”
“So they say.”
“They do.”
“Civilized, evolved.”
“More than Lisbon, it would seem.”
“Much more.”
“Isn’t life strange?”
“It certainly is.”
“And how is she?”
“Teresa?”
“Yes, Teresa.”
“Well, she’s older of course. She’s put on weight. The last time I saw her—she came to visit me in Cape Town—she had dyed her hair blonde, a sort of greenish blonde.”
“Goodness.”
“There comes an age when women have to dye their hair, and they never choose their natural color, but a different one, sometimes the most unexpected of all.”
The major tried to imagine Teresa with her greenish hair, but it was hard work, requiring good will and persistence. He tried to imagine her fat as well, and older. And very happy.
“Is she very happy?” he asked.
She gave an almost imperceptible shrug.
“As for happiness…it’s not exactly an immutable state, is it, Major? It changes with time. Teresa might be very happy now. She has money and leads the kind of life she wants to lead. As for love…well, she’s over fifty now, dear Major. So…”
“But before?” he asked.
“Oh, before. It was a marriage of convenience really. Her husband wasn’t particularly well educated, but I suppose she adapted. I don’t know anything definite, only that the marriage had its positive aspects, and that she—not that she’s ever said as much—is grateful to me.”
The major sighed softly and lit a cigarette.
“When they told me about her husband, the other one, the first one…” he said. “I can’t remember now who it was who told me. Someone from Elvas obviously… I thought about him a lot at the time. And yet I still didn’t know anything for certain, nor did I want to… I rather balked at certainty. He’d been caught embezzling money, that’s what I was told.” He exhaled a large cloud of smoke and watched it disperse in the air and the perfumed glow from two lit candles. Then he went on: “The last employee was leaving, turning out the lights one by one until he reached the last one in the corridor. Then he closed the door and turned the key twice in the lock. Then he, or his shadow, emerged from his hiding place. He took off his shoes so as not to be heard and stood next to the locked door. He could still go back, he knew that, but he knew, too, that he wouldn’t because there was no point. And he knew that last-minute solutions exist only in cloak-and-dagger stories and B-movies. He was a desperate shadow, but wise too.”
Finally, the major went on, in silence now, he opened the door and entered the boss’s office. He sat down on the high-backed chair, ran his hands over the desk’s glass top, mechanically opened and closed the drawers. Simply to do something or to escape his thoughts for a little longer.
No, he hadn’t sat down on that fine, imposing chair, nor had he entered the boss’s office—why would he? He had sat down, but in his old swivel chair, very gently so that it wouldn’t make any noise. First, though, he went over to open the wooden shutters, just enough to let in a sliver of light. And he began to write. “My darling,” he wrote in a passionate hand. Or “My love”? Or simply “Teresa”? He glanced at the phone, tempted to pick it up. If he called her… Just to hear her voice for one last time, to ask her, to be certain… He even reached out his hand, touched the receiver, only to draw back. Why hear again those simple, terrible words? Besides, shadows can neither speak nor write. Plus they didn’t have a phone at home.
“Did he write a letter?” asked the major.
“Who? Did who write a letter to who?” she said surprised.
“Him. Did he write a letter to your sister before he…”
“I don’t remember. I might have known at the time, that’s possible, but I can’t remember now. There are so many things I don’t remember… Teresa avoided talking about it, which is understandable. She never had what you might call a vocation for suffering. The grief she felt for him was, if you like, sporadic. No, she had no vocation for suffering. And her husband’s death was more of a spur than anything else…”
“Yes…” said the major. “I was imagining him locked inside his old office,” he went on. “A man about to die in a dark house. An old house, wasn’t it?”
“What was?”
“The house, no, I mean the office.”
Adriana explained. “Yes, it was an old office. And the desk he worked at was old too. One of those worm-eaten desks with lots of scratches made with a penknife. To the right there was a lamp. On the wall behind his chair, a swivel chair, was a calendar with a picture of a woman in a swimsuit. But I think the calendar was old too, possibly five or six years out of date. I went there once on some errand; I can’t remember what it was. Teresa sent me. He was old too, even though he was only twenty-nine. He had nothing of his own, poor man. No one. I never understood why Teresa… I suppose she wanted to steal Alicinha’s boyfriend as a joke, or else just wanted to get married and he happened to turn up.”
“It’s often not much more than that. I mean, women’s ‘great loves’ often come to little more.”
Adriana thought for a moment, then said:
“My conscience is clear.”
“Is it?” he asked dully.
“Yes. At first, I wasn’t so sure. I felt fearful, uneasy, you see. I wasn’t certain, and yet, at the same time… Then I stopped feeling fearful or uneasy, and my clear conscience became definitively clear. Everything turned out for the best.”
“For her you mean?”
“Yes, for my sister. If things had worked out differently, there would only have been more affairs. And then she might have suffered, sometimes more, sometimes less. And she would have had a difficult time of it in that stupid, narrowminded town. As it is…well, she may not be very happy, but it’s better than the alternative. For him too really. He was a poor fellow. What more can a man like him expect from life but humiliations and failures?”
“A little hope perhaps,” said the major, but she replied that hope always leads to desolation and bitterness.
The major said “perhaps” and felt a great desire to run away. He couldn’t do so suddenly, though, not without a brief transitional period. He looked inside and around himself for some diversionary tactic, but found nothing. The other remaining guests seemed to be engrossed in the conversations they were currently engaged in. On the other side of the room, Maud Navarro was laughing loudly, with her head thrown back and her decolletage getting lower, almost dangerously so, perhaps because before she always used to laugh loudly and wear very low-cut dresses.
The major’s melancholy gaze lingered on her throat and chest, so white in the light. Then he noticed the sea-green walls and imagined he was in the middle of the ocean. What an idea! With mermaids old and young singing their songs; a mad mermaid with troubled eyes; another made of wax, cold and implacable, without a care in the world; old sharks with big bellies; him… Perhaps he was one of those deep-water fish capable of having whole seas of solitude and silence bearing down on him. Luísa, who wasn’t there and who would never come back because the world is large and full of other men: she was one of those bits of seaweed drifting, rootless, at the whim of the tides. And what about José? No, he had died and been devoured. The law of the jungle and the ocean.
He stood up and held out his hand to Adriana. “It’s late, and I have to work tomorrow. I must be going. But it was a pleasure to meet you, and to…”
“For me too, Major. Really. I hope we meet again.”
He said:
“You never know. Life does occasionally arrange these strange, unexpected encounters…”
“Indeed. And if you ever come to Amsterdam…”
“Which is unlikely. As I said…”
“You never know.”
“True, one never knows.”
The major bowed, smiled, and walked across the now much emptier room, threading his way through the other guests, saying, “Excuse me. May I get past?” And, “Thank you so much. See you again soon, Fontes. And thank you, Manuela. No, don’t get up.”
“Goodbye, Major!” said Maud Navarro. “Major Pencil-Pusher, isn’t that what you said? An innocent soldier, with no man’s blood on his hands.”
He began to say very quietly, “Well, there was someone…” but stopped and merely shrugged. He would like to talk to her about Luísa and about himself and how frustrated he felt not to have had the opportunity to fight for something. To fight, even though he loathed violence. To be necessary. He particularly wanted to tell her about that story, to talk to her about the man who had died one night because of the woman over there with the clear conscience, and because of him, who just happened to be there, and because of Teresa, who was now living a slightly happier life in Africa. In Lourenço Marques, that fine city.
“I’d like to have a longer conversation with you,” said the major. “When we have more time.”
“Whenever you like, Major.”
The major put on his coat and left. He was still well wrapped up even though it was May, because the pleurisy he’d had two years ago had not been without consequences. Out in the street, he thought about the red-haired girl with a touch of regret, because he knew that he would never look her up.
It was a lovely night, and the major decided not to go home, despite the pleurisy and the doctor’s advice to take things easy and despite having to go to work the following morning. He spent the night—what remained of it—walking around the city. He sat down on the benches in the parks and studied the ghostly trees giving off their own light, listening to the great silence surrounding him, broken occasionally by the disgruntled barking of some stray dog or other. He didn’t look at the sleeping houses or at the river down below, smooth and unruffled in the May moonlight. Nor did he think about Luísa. He was thinking about that man because he needed to think about him. He couldn’t just leave him like that, dead and forgotten by everyone, on that night when he had discovered that he had been equally alone in life and death. He once again saw him wandering about the deserted office, and accompanied him to the very end; he even helped him take the pipe and cut it, perhaps with the penknife he doubtless kept in one of the drawers in his desk to sharpen his pencils. Teresa’s husband! He shrugged. What was Teresa doing there? She should stay where she was. And it seemed to him that he could hear the gas whistling as it broke free from the red rubber snake imprisoning it.