The people who knew her or, rather, who thought they knew her only because they saw her pass by every morning—always looking very serious and nearly always in a hurry, still pulling on her gloves or her beret—those same people, when they opened the morning paper, all thought that it couldn’t possibly be true, that there must be some mistake, or that it was someone with the same name, a photograph of someone very like her. Because what possible connection could there be between that rather sturdy, very punctual woman, with her hair starting to go gray, and who, despite being nearly forty, was still always addressed as Miss Arminda, the woman who, every day, at half past nine on the dot, would walk down the street to catch the bus to work and always gave the slightest of nods to the barber standing in the doorway of his shop without actually looking at him and the slightest of smiles to Dona Perpétua standing at her window to keep an eye on passers-by; what possible connection could there be between her and that name, which was her name, and that blank-faced photo, also hers, there in the newspaper, in between a supposed suicide and an armed robbery?
Then again, on second thought, upon further reflection, people came around to the idea that it wasn’t as unlikely or as bizarre as it had seemed initially. People do tend to have second thoughts—that is, to correct their positive first impressions of others. And they nearly always find that they were quite right to do so. In this case, for example, they would all agree, or were beginning to agree, even though they didn’t know what the others thought and hadn’t even exchanged views on the subject, that there had always been something suspicious about that young woman. This was especially true among other women. They enjoyed visiting each other, talking about their children’s illnesses and the lives of other people, the ones who weren’t there. She didn’t. She was always at home. They only saw her when she went to work because, by the time she came back (she only worked in the mornings), the shops were all closed, and families were gathered around the table for lunch. Her maid, an old lady who could barely walk, was as silent as the withered tree trunk she resembled. The nosier neighbors had often offered her a coffee or a little glass of brandy in exchange for answering a question or two. Where did Miss Arminda work? What did she do at home in the afternoons? Was she working? Sewing? Embroidering? The old lady, though, would merely smile a broad, toothless, expressionless smile and say, “That depends.”
The truth is that she did absolutely nothing, and this was something that none of those hard-working women could ever comprehend, for they were always cooking, making clothes for their husbands and children, keeping their houses spotlessly clean; they never had any time on their hands, and they were—even those who were unaware of it, and who would be astonished if anyone said as much—extremely happy. They didn’t do much thinking, those women, although they usually talked a lot. And it would never enter their heads that Arminda spent her afternoons sitting in a chair, her hands folded in her lap, thinking. And yet this is what she did, and had done for months, ever since her mother died and left her alone in the world. Arminda thought. That is how she spent her afternoons.
Her thoughts, moreover, had undergone an evolution, following a dangerous curve, so dangerous that the end of that curve would lead to the prison gates. After the death of her mother, Dona Laura, Arminda had done a lot of thinking, had grieved for herself, thinking all the while that the tears she shed were for her mother. Then she started mulling over her past life, perhaps in order to feel less lonely and to fill her own thoughts with other things. Inevitably, she began by thinking about that. Because that, after all, had been the beginning and end of everything, a kind of birth in which the child—herself—had been born dead. There had been nothing before, and there could be nothing afterward. Far ahead, in the distance, at the very end of night, she could make out only a flickering, fleeting light, which she could never reach, a light that was always just ahead of her, and that, later, when she did finally catch hold of it, would burn her up.
When that had happened, she was living in a small provincial town, where her mother was a teacher. Her father had died some months before, when she was just fourteen. A child with a woman’s body, tall for her age and already quite well developed. She was a happy child and enjoyed playing with the other girls and running about with them in the fields nearby, close to the house where she was living. One afternoon, when she was coming back from school, walking alone along a deserted road, a car drew up alongside her. Would you like to go for a drive? asked a soft, persuasive voice. Arminda said Yes. She said Yes because she knew nothing about life, because no one had warned her against it. That man would take care to fill that gap in her knowledge, in his own fashion of course. Not sparing her a single detail. He was a man in a hurry and doubtless had his own reasons and no time to waste on any childish nonsense. They found her later that night, on the highway, some miles from the town, walking along like a sleepwalker with her dress all torn.
Everyone in town talked about what had happened to the teacher’s daughter. Arminda, though, was quite oblivious to this because she never again left the house. She was too terrified. It seemed to her that every man she saw from the window was that man with his brisk hands, his impatient body, his heavy breathing, which she thought she could still hear months later. She had forgotten his face, as if he never had one. He was just that man. Sometimes she would wake up screaming, and then she would climb out of bed and run to embrace her mother or the maid who, even then, was already old and beginning to wither away. This was when they moved to Lisbon, because Arminda’s mother couldn’t stand the gossip, the inquisitive looks, the lack of sensitivity of people who seemed to think that that was the subject she most wanted to talk about and so they never spoke of anything else. For all those reasons, and because she knew that if they stayed there, her daughter would never marry, she decided to retire from teaching and leave the town.
They rented a modest second-story apartment on Rua da Fé. Dona Laura had some stocks and shares, which, together with the small income she made from giving a few private lessons, provided them with enough to live on. Arminda showed no desire to finish her studies, and her mother hadn’t even considered finding her a job. She knew that her daughter was a wounded creature and would bear the scars for the rest of her life. If Arminda ever did go out into the street, she walked along with downcast eyes, not looking at anything. At home, she spent all her time devouring novels as if those fictitious worlds gave her some compensation for her otherwise empty existence.
Only one thing, one thing alone, could draw her out of the apathy in which she appeared to be permanently sunk: the children playing in the parks or in the street when they came home from school. She would watch them with wide, greedy eyes, like a poor, hungry child gazing into the window of a cake shop. From when she was very small, she had dreamed of the children she would have. She would have lots, she used to say. Yes, lots. At least five or six. But that sad encounter had destroyed all such hopes. She knew she would never be able to give herself to a man. She had tried, just to show willingness. At the time, she was twenty years old.
In the house of a cousin of her mother’s, who also lived in Lisbon, she met a serious young man, a bank clerk, who genuinely loved her. The cousin had told him Arminda’s story, and he had been very moved. He wanted to make her forget all that and transform her into a woman like any other woman. He asked her to marry him. Full of hope, Arminda agreed, already looking forward to the child she would have. However, the first time they were alone together, he took her hand in his, and she leaped to her feet, beside herself with fear, raced like a madwoman down the stairs, deaf to the voices calling after her, and only stopped when she reached home. She lay on her bed for hours, sobbing inconsolably. Her mother wept too, in silence, lacking the courage even to take Arminda in her arms, fearing to wound her still more deeply by saying the wrong thing.
The years passed. The children who came into the world in the same year her son might have been born had she married, turned fifteen, then sixteen. Some already had girlfriends. She, however, was still Miss Arminda, and she would be until the day the newspaper called her just plain “Arminda.”
Meanwhile, Dona Laura died. Her mother’s death gave her life a sudden jolt. Then everything went still again, as still as a lake of stagnant water into which a stone had fallen. The wheelchair in which Dona Laura used to sit remained forever empty and she forever alone.
Without her mother, the house began to feel unbearable. She would have liked to get a job, but she knew this was impossible. She started going out, to the Park, to Campo Grande. She would sit on a bench and watch the children. Fearing that the neighbors or her own maid would think her mad, she invented, for both neighbors and maid, a job to which she went every morning. And every day, so as not to arouse suspicion, she would leave the house at the same time. The first rainy morning of her new life left her at a loss as to what to do. She spent it walking the streets, then returned home at the usual hour. Later, though, she discovered a quiet little café opposite a school in Largo do Intendente, and there she spent any rainy mornings with a cup of coffee and a book, always keeping a watchful eye on the children entering and leaving the school gates.
The light she had glimpsed earlier, and which, at first, was faint and fleeting as a will-o’-the-wisp, gradually grew steadier and one day revealed itself to Arminda so clearly she could even touch it. At first, she recoiled as if she had received an electric shock, but then she reached out her hand and grasped it. She even smiled at the new prospect on offer. Why not? she thought. And she began to devise a plan to kidnap a child, something that seemed to her perfectly straightforward and possible. Adopting an orphaned or abandoned child did not for one moment occur to her. That really would frighten her. Talking to people, answering all those endless questions, visiting government offices. Kidnapping a child would be far simpler.
There followed days of great excitement. Why hadn’t she thought of this ages ago? she asked herself. The idea had come to her like a long-delayed dawn after the black night of her life.
Every morning in Parque Eduardo VII, she would see a little boy in a blue stroller. He was blond and pink and would either be waving his plump little hands in the air or sleeping like an angel. His regular nanny called him Joãozinho. Arminda had gone over to him several times, smiled at the nanny, then fearfully touched the child’s lovely little face. She now regretted having drawn attention to herself. Even though the nanny spent all her time either reading or flirting with one of the park keepers, she would be sure to remember her when the baby disappeared and might even be able to describe her to the police. Arminda, however, was sure everything would be fine and that she would never be found out. For the first time since that, she was filled with hope. Besides, she couldn’t possibly give up Joãozinho now. She was in love for the first time, irrationally in love with that pink baby waving his small plump hands in the air. It had to be him.
One day, she told the maid that someone at work had asked her to take care of a child for a while and, that very afternoon, she was going to buy a stroller and some baby’s clothes. For the first time in her life, she went into a pawn shop, taking her mother’s rings and her gold chain. At lunchtime, she returned home in a taxi with a stroller and a suitcase.
The next day, fate was on her side. The baby and the nanny were in their usual place, and there was no one else around. No, there was someone else, the park keeper, but Arminda knew that his presence would be useful because he would distract the nanny. She moved a little farther off. They had their backs to her and were laughing. The nanny had held out her hand to say goodbye to him but then carried on talking. The little boy was happily asleep. Arminda picked him up very gently so as not to wake him. Then she slipped away without anyone seeing her. No one saw her on Rua da Fé either. It was lunchtime, and all the shops were shut. Only Dona Perpétua, at her window, saw her pass, but she wasn’t wearing her glasses and so couldn’t quite see what Miss Arminda was carrying, perhaps a kind of package held close to her chest. For the same reason, she didn’t see Arminda’s bright eyes and the look of utter happiness on her face, a happiness she had never known before.
She wasn’t a complete stranger to the child, and so he didn’t cry much when he opened his eyes. It was as if he already knew her or somehow sensed that Arminda loved him. He whimpered a little, and she lifted him out of the stroller where she had placed him and very cautiously clasped him to her, rocking him gently. She felt as if her heart would burst, unable to contain so much happiness.
That happiness lasted exactly two days and two nights. She spent those nights awake in a chair, beside the stroller, changing Joãozinho’s nappy whenever he wet himself or covering him with a blanket, afraid he might catch cold. The maid would appear now and then and look at her with her old, dull, weary eyes, which could, nonetheless, still see.
The maid’s silent gaze made Arminda blush. They understood each other very well. They had lived together for thirty-eight years. How could they not understand each other? Although they spoke very little, the old lady knew many things, among them that Arminda had never had a job and that she had kidnapped Joãozinho in one of the parks where she spent the mornings. She prepared herself for the arrival of the police and wore her best clothes, in order to be decently dressed when they came to arrest them.
And come they did. On the third morning. The neighbor on the first floor had mentioned, while at her sister’s house, where she had gone to have supper, that there was now a baby in the apartment above. She had heard it crying at night. Her brother-in-law, who had read about the kidnapping in the paper, asked for more details and then phoned a policeman friend of his. And that’s how it happened.
When they knocked on the door, Arminda had just finished giving Joãozinho a bath. She was surrounded by nappies, talcum powder, a basin full of water, and a brand-new towel. Her eyes were shining, and her quick, apparently confident gestures, newly learned, were merely a sad imitation of those of her neighbors who were wives and mothers. The maid tried to stop the policemen at the door but soon gave up. Why bother if, sooner or later, they were sure to come in?
Arminda turned very pale when she saw the two men enter her bedroom, and she clutched Joãozinho to her breast so tightly that he began to cry.
“It was you, wasn’t it, Senhora?” asked the taller of the men brusquely, gripping her arm. “You’re under arrest. Come on, be quick. And you too!”
Arminda opened her eyes very wide. That iron grip on her arm was suddenly the hand of that man, and the harsh, brusque, implacable voice was his voice. She put down the baby, who was crying more and more loudly, and fought back, as she had on that other occasion, twenty-four years ago, and the police had a real struggle to handcuff her. The maid’s eyes filled with tears. “Poor child,” she kept saying, “poor child.” But one of the men shook her and said:
“What do you mean, you crazy old bat? If you felt so sorry for the child, why didn’t you report her?”
The old woman shrugged and went to fetch Arminda’s coat. She herself had been dressed and ready for a long time.