Even then, she’d had that slightly drooping flower-like head and the same troubling brown eyes flecked with yellow and bisected by her upper eyelids, thus leaving the southern hemisphere afloat in the blue-white of the sclera. At the time, though, no one noticed her head or her eyes, or even her small mouth and full lips, the corners of which were squeezed tightly together in order to suppress any sobs, which, once overcome, she drove deep down inside her. She wore a kind of fixed, meaningless smile, more of a grimace really. But again, no one saw that smile. The girl—the child—did not yet exist in detail; it was too early. Her eyes, the smile-that-wasn’t-a-smile, her face, were all part of an unknown, mysterious whole. Mysterious? No, not even that, perhaps merely abstract.
Their main feeling at the time was one of perplexity, not knowing quite what attitude to take (should they just behave naturally, or be tenderly and slightly sentimentally protective?), but their main concern, of course, was for themselves; despite being convinced that it was really for that dark bundle, dressed in heavy mourning from head to toe—even down to her brown skin, burned by the African sun, her freckles, her straight, almost black hair—who had stepped cautiously off the plane from Luanda, as if undecided (or wary), and who was coming to stay for good. Nevertheless, there they were, waiting at that airport seething with people either arriving from the outside world or setting off. Yes, the woman was especially concerned. The new arrival was a simple, albeit tragic, creature, who—luckily for her—had not yet grasped the magnitude of that tragedy. Tomorrow, in a week, or, worst-case scenario, in a month, she would feel better or almost. One forgets so quickly when one is fifteen… A fortunate age! But as for her, the woman, what a responsibility and, at the same time, what kudos!
She wouldn’t talk to her about her father or her mother, at least not at first—then it would be as if that dreadful accident hadn’t happened. And on that subject, what must the child have thought or felt when she got on the plane? Would she have been afraid, poor thing? She was going to help that child to be born again, give her a new life—I mean, how extraordinary was that? If anyone could, she could. She was now embracing the inert bundle and covering it with loud kisses (she had gone for the easiest option: pure, undisguised tenderness): “Leninha! I recognized you right away, but how you’ve grown, and you look so much older too. And you’re so pretty, my love, so pretty.” Then she turned to make some soft, quick comment to the man who was with her, before again kissing Lena: “My little girl” (doubtless an unfortunate choice of words). Lena was becoming ever more rigid and withdrawn.
“Hadn’t we better be going, Laura? The child must be tired…”
These were the first words Lena actually heard, because the ones spoken by her aunt had become all mixed up inside her and been forgotten almost before she had grasped their meaning. Those last words, however, seemed natural and sensible, even slightly irritated, which is what she needed, accustomed as she was to a utilitarian vocabulary. Hadn’t we better be going… She then looked at the tall, well-dressed man with the aquiline nose, a very handsome man, although not that young any more. He looked like, yes, he looked like that French actor, Georges something or other…Marchal or Pascal?
Who was that Georges something or other? The husband of the woman perhaps (and already she was referring to her aunt as “the woman”); no, he definitely wasn’t her husband: Her mother had always made it clear that her older sister was single… Unless she had married very recently and told no one… But at her age? Besides, this was a secondary matter. There were more urgent problems troubling her. Would they make her go to high school? Would they let her carry on with her painting? Before, they… She thought of her mother and father like that too, as they, but for a different reason of course, so that she wouldn’t cry. They had decided, or, rather, agreed… She refused to see them again as she did in her imagination, or as she now didn’t even know how to imagine them. Nor did she want to remember them as they were before they got on that plane to carry them to a nearby town. She didn’t want to. They had flown off, and she had been left sad and alone, until the day she was, like a trunk, put on another plane, one that did reach its destination. And there she was, an as-yet unopened trunk, its contents both banal and unknown. They… No, she didn’t want to think about her father and mother. She didn’t want to. And then she smiled a diligent little smile, brimming with good will, at her aunt and the man accompanying her.
Georges something or other wasn’t called Georges, but Pedro, and he was a family friend. Lena had been confused by this expression, because it wasn’t one she knew; she had never heard it before. A family friend. Which family? A friend of the family or of her aunt’s? No, that couldn’t be right. He was so… And she was so… It was impossible. And yet everything seemed to point to that. Good grief, how ridiculous.
Laura decided to devote one afternoon a week to her niece, to talking to her and making her—as she put it—a different woman from the one she would be in other circumstances. A fifteen-year-old girl is so complicated. She could remember it well. So complicated… So natural and, at the same time, so strange.
“Don’t you think so, Pedro?”
“Yes, possibly. But she’ll turn into a woman with or without your help, and a very pretty woman too. Perhaps she already was when she arrived, and we didn’t notice.”
This, Laura said, was typical man-think.
“Do you believe that’s all there is to it? And what about a person’s mind? Goodness, you’re such a materialist!”
And nothing would dim Laura’s maternal enthusiasm. She dressed Lena from head to toe, she took her to her own hairdresser, she taught her the art of using makeup discreetly, she selected a series of good books for her, she took her to the theater and to concerts.
One day, Lena asked:
“Aunt Laura, can I carry on studying painting?”
“Painting? What an idea! You’ll be going to high school in October. It’s all arranged. You’re fifteen, and you’re already shamefully behind the other girls.”
“But I want to study painting, Aunt Laura. I’m not interested in anything else. I just can’t concentrate on the other subjects. They… My father had already said that I could.”
Her little voice did its best to stand up for itself but immediately grew hoarse with the effort. Laura left her chair and went over to give her a kiss.
“My dear, don’t ask me for things that, for your own good, I can’t give you. You have to study, and we’ll talk about painting later. And you need to buck up a bit. I know you’ve suffered a terrible loss, but that’s no reason to spend your days lying on your bed staring at the ceiling. You’ve got to pull yourself together.”
“It’s just the way I am, Aunt Laura. I’ve always been like that.”
“Well, change then. It’s very simple.”
That had been the first shock. Lena’s inertia was deep-seated and difficult to shift. You could knead her like clay, and the clay would seem to take on the desired shape, but the moment you let go, it collapsed and she reverted to her usual self. Laura would get irritated; she didn’t want to nag, but she couldn’t help occasionally looking very annoyed. She recalled what Pedro had said when she told him that Lena was coming to live with her.
“There are boarding schools, you know,” he had said. “Why don’t you put her in one of those? I would never take on such a responsibility myself. At fifteen, she’s not a child anymore; she’s a grown woman coming into your home, possibly full of fine qualities, but also, as is only natural, full of defects too. Don’t get your hopes up. You don’t even know her: She’s a stranger.”
Now, though, he seemed to have grown fond of Lena. He bought her sweets, gave her tickets to the cinema, and, once, he had even gone to pick her up from school in his Jaguar. The other girls had all rushed over to her the next day:
“Who was that? Your dad?”
Lena had responded angrily—on the verge of tears or loathing, more the latter than the former—that, no, he wasn’t her dad; her father had died and her mother too. He was a family friend. And she found herself smiling at the expression, and at something else—quite what she still didn’t know, but that made her feel suddenly, bitterly happy.
“I came to pick you up just to show off,” he said later, looking at her with new interest. “People will be sure to congratulate me, because you’re a real beauty. They might think…”
For, one day, Pedro had discovered her oblique gaze, her large hesitant pupils veiled by eyelids made luminous by the subtle application of eyeshadow, as well as her apparently motiveless smile, no longer pained but amused, very slightly amused, which seemed to linger on her lips long after whatever thought had provoked it had gone.
“What are you smiling at?”
Lena was sitting curled up in the armchair, an open book forgotten on her lap. Her gaze seemed to have overflowed the pages.
“I wasn’t smiling, Pedro.”
She adjusted the position of her lips, which had formed a kind of sulky pout. She really wasn’t aware that she was smiling. It had just happened. More to the point, why were they having that irritating conversation?
“Men!” Aunt Laura said, and that one word had reached her, interrupting her thoughts, which had nothing to do with the book she was reading or, rather, not reading. “Men!” her aunt said again.
Lena looked up then and intercepted the look her aunt was giving Pedro: a long, caressing look, which was accompanied by a smile that made her look older. It was just grotesque.
“Not all men,” he said, “not all men. Let’s see…how many years has it been, Laura?”
“Fifteen.”
“Goodness, fifteen. How time passes. That’s how old Lena is!”
He had fallen silent then, thinking, and a deep vertical frown line appeared between his eyebrows. That was when he had looked at Lena and asked, “Why are you smiling?”
“I wasn’t smiling, Pedro.”
And she had tried to imagine what he would be thinking when, now and then, he glanced at Laura. Perhaps he was thinking that, in those fifteen years, she had lost all the charm of youth as well as the permanent look of mild surprise that they, her parents, had mentioned, her wavy blonde hair, her arrogant body. And that look of surprise was beginning to seem ridiculous, her hair was now all too visibly blonde, and her body was growing fatter.
“Cellulite, my dear,” he said to her on another occasion. “You’d better watch it, because at your age…” But how old was she? Thirty-eight…and frankly, nowadays, thirty-eight wasn’t old at all…
“You mean forty.” And he smiled. “Remember, we’re exactly the same age and were born in the same month. Or have you forgotten?”
Laura was looking at him uncomprehending, as if she no longer knew him. Her gaze wandered around the room, from Pedro to her niece, who, at the time, was always, always reading. Deeply absorbed, but not actually looking at her book.
“It’s time you went to bed, Lena. You have classes in the morning.”
Lena closed her book and got slowly to her feet:
“Goodnight, aunt. Goodnight, Pedro.”
They, meanwhile, continued having one of those conversations that, however pointless, are essential for the coming storm. Lena listened to them for a while, before pulling the bedclothes up over her head. Her aunt wept a little, and he consoled her in his slow voice. “Now, now, this is pure childishness,” he said. Then they exchanged a rather frosty goodnight. When the front door closed, Lena turned out the light. It was so good, so sweet, to lie in the dark with her eyes open, dreaming. Dreaming about Pedro. Creating a possible life, smoothing away all the rough edges, breaking windows. Dreaming, for example, that her Aunt Laura had died. The darkness was so sweet. The daylight made everything different and difficult; it contaminated the dream. Not the night though. It was a soft, malleable, maternal material that embraced everything you handed it.
One day, he told her, like someone who has just made a discovery:
“You’re a woman now. A pretty woman. I’m sure others have told you that…”
“Yes, they have.”
“Have many people told you?”
“A few.”
“Important people?”
She pouted and shrugged, then looked straight at him:
“No, not very important.”
“And…were you pleased?”
“Shouldn’t I have been?”
She was a strange girl. She sat curled up in the chair and gazed at him with her large fluctuating eyes and that half-smile he wished he could understand.
Laura arrived then, bursting into the apartment, agitated and perfumed, and the whole atmosphere became saturated with Chanel No. 5. Lena wrinkled her turned-up nose and pursed her lips.
“Oh good, you’ve been keeping Pedro company. Sorry to be late, but it was so busy downtown…”
And then she would go on the offensive in the conversation. They would sometimes argue; it had become a habit. It could be about some unimportant matter, but, after they had exchanged a few bitter words, that unimportant matter would grow in size and become huge.
One day, after he had left, Laura flung herself down on the sofa and wept uncontrollably. She lay there, abandoned, her face shiny with tears, puffy and old.
“You understand how I feel, don’t you, Lena? I can sense him slipping away from me, and it’s just horrible.”
In a harsh, but very calm voice, Lena asked:
“Why didn’t you marry him?”
“I don’t know,” Laura said, slightly confused. “I just went along with it. Do you think I should have married him?”
“Possibly. But it’s too late now, Aunt Laura.”
Laura, with her ruined face, stared up at her:
“We never talked about it. Well, he never did. He always said he put his freedom above all else. And I didn’t insist, because I was happy with the way things were.”
Yes, she was happy. She just needed his presence now and then, to hear his voice on the phone now and then too. People are so different. Lena, for example, was in a hurry about everything; she couldn’t make do with a kind of pretend happiness that was thrown to her now and then like a bone to a dog. She had realized this when that—the accident—happened, when they… She was filled then with a feeling of desperate haste to do quite what she didn’t know—not yet, it was too soon—she simply felt in a mad rush to live, even if that meant running down someone who got in her way: her Aunt Laura, for example. But, at that point, she hadn’t even met Aunt Laura. She had never even seen her.
“His freedom!” And her voice was clearly mocking her aunt’s ingenuousness. “His freedom! Isn’t that what all men think? And yet they do marry… Why? Presumably because that’s the only way they can get what they want?”
Where had she acquired this knowledge that was making the blood rise in Laura’s face, making her feel suddenly ridiculously infantile, even innocent? Lena was sitting very erect in her chair, extremely erect. A faint smile on her lips. Because she had just realized that, in a way, Aunt Laura had died and wouldn’t cause her any problems.