I was at Lúcia’s house. She wasn’t yet home, and her mother,
Dona Corina, once again spoke to me of her daughter’s new love, something which
pleased her greatly. Her eyes were shining. Her enthusiasm was so great she
even put down her knitting. She was getting on in age, (Lúcia had been a late
baby) but she looked after herself. Her mouth was shapeless these days, with
concentric wrinkles spreading out with the lipstick. It looked like a withered
flower.
“He’s an excellent boy,” she said, convinced, “an excellent
boy.”
For Dona Corina an excellent boy did not have an age nor a
physical or moral aspect. What was important was that he had a salary of more
than three hundred Contos. Her description of him as excellent merely shone a
light on Lúcia’s boyfriend’s income. I was yet to meet him.
“How old is he?” I asked, to say something, “Lúcia’s
boyfriend?”
Dona Corina took off her glasses. “Forty-five, but he
doesn’t look it. You must meet him. He doesn’t look more than thirty. You can’t
imagine how mad he is about Lúcia. He wants to rent a house and get married
this year.
“What does he do?”
“He’s an engineer, you know? Well, he is. And well thought
of too. He works for Tabor, you see. And he earns a lot, yes, he earns quite a
lot.”
It was with some difficulty that I swallowed the ‘how much?’
that was on my lips. I wasn’t really curious. I’d never suffered from
curiousity. I just wanted to know the precise quantities that merited the
classification ‘excellent’. In the end I asked myself ‘why bother?’ Dona Corina
went back to her knitting. I switched on the radio. I felt at home in Lúcia’s house
, my friend since ever and forever, as much as I had in my own home, which, of
course, I no longer had. It was incomparably better than hanging about the
boarding house where I now lived. The music on the radio was bad but I turned
up the volume anyway. Lúcia was late. I began to think it strange that she
still hadn’t presented me to that boyfriend, who, after all, she was going to
marry very soon. There just hadn’t been as yet a convenient moment, I supposed.
What other reason could there be? Without even stopping her knitting, Dona
Corina returned to the subject that was absorbing her.
“He’s from a very good family, you know? I’m sure you know
the name, Vale De Pomar, no?”
“No.” She frowned in amazement as if I had just confessed to
her that I didn’t know of the existence of the English Royal Family. Then she
stopped her knitting and went to the kitchen to see what the maid was doing,
saying,
“She’ll be doing nothing as usual. You’ll forgive me,
Mariana, please. These maids, if we’re not forever watching over them…………..”
I was left on my own to wait for Lúcia. I realised that I
had nothing to say to her anyway. So why was I there? For what purpose? I was
staying there out of inertia. The chair was comfortable and I liked the
pictures of the flowers in front of me. I felt a great softening of my already
heavy body.
Lúcia turned up around seven o’clock. She looked happy, and
she looked prettier than usual. She asked me in a detached way if I was staying
for dinner, and then, without waiting for a reply, she proceeded to ask me
about what I had been up to the past few days. We spent half an hour talking of
nothing in particular. I ended up laughing. What was all this about, I wondered?
I was expecting her to at least invite me to her wedding.
She laughed a little awkwardly. Ah, her mother had told me
about it. What a blabbermouth she is! No, she wasn’t keeping it secret, what an
idea, but the truth was that nothing as yet was settled. Mother had always been
one to simplify situations. As if a person can get married from one moment to
the next!
“But you never even mentioned him to me.”
“No, is that so?
You’re mistaken, for sure………..”
I got up. I was going, I told her. No, no, I hadn’t eaten.
They were waiting for me at the boarding house. I went to the window to see if
it were raining. When I turned round I saw Lúcia’s eyes fixed on me, on a
specific part of my body. Her sharp eye, interrogating, wanted to be sure about
something.
I was hoping with all my heart that I was mistaken, and
while I waited I didn’t go back to Lúcia’s house. She didn’t know my address,
perhaps.
For months I heard no news from her. One day my boss called
me. Normally he was an authoritarian, unfriendly man, but this time he was
sorry for me. He looked at me and he didn’t know how to begin. He coughed, he
shuffled his papers and he was very pale.
“Somebody has told Mr. Bruno (the big boss) that you are
going to, that you are going to……”
“Have a baby. That’s quite right, as you can see. I think
it’s obvious enough for the gossips to have saved their breath. It would have
been enough for Mr. Bruno to look at me.”
“Mr. Bruno has asked me to ask you to leave the premises
without causing any more scandal, because this has already gone far enough. He
asked me to say this to you twice, to ask you to go without any more scandal.
That’s all Mariana.” He was living his moment of kindness. “I’m very sorry. You
can pick up your wages from accounts. I’m very sorry, believe me. “ His hands
were on the desk, trembling. He wasn’t a good man. He was rude, unfair,
authoritarian. I didn’t tell him that, because he wouldn’t have understood.
I had to make do with my meagre savings until Fernandinho
was born and then I would look for new work. I had enough put by to pay for my
maternity.
One morning I read about Lúcia’s wedding in the newspaper.
It came in the ‘Society Echo’. The ruined uncle who was a count had given her
away. The bridesmaid was a friend of the family whose forefathers had been
grocers but who had a very solid fortune. The groom, João Frederico de Castro e
Nunes Vale de Pomar, had a best man with a name equally long and forgettable. I
did not think badly of poor Lúcia. How could she have possibly have introduced me
to her new family?
“This is my friend Mariana, who, as you can clearly see, is
about to have a baby….”
“And your husband? What does he do?”
“I don’t have a husband, Madam.”
“Then who is the child’s father?”
Then Lúcia would say, matter – of – fact, “Nobody knows. Do
you know Mariana? Sometimes people do know, you know? It happens………”
Many times each day I would imagine such conversations. I
could not think badly of Lúcia. The time that she and her fiancé and her mother
must have spent on finding the solution, on putting aside some possibilities,
and keeping others for a final choice. To explain my situation openly - that
required too much courage. To present me just as I was -
“You’re crazy, Lúcia. What about my family? All the Vale de Pomars?”
Then the silence. They would force me to realize that I was a friend that could
not be presented in polite society. “And what does Mother think?” Dona Clarise
would say firmly, “a lady should know how to preserve her good name.” I can
hear her now. She would have taken off her glasses and put down the eternal
knitting upon her fat knees. The hours they must have spent on my account.
Poor, poor Lúcia!
That was yesterday. Today it is poor me. I’m going to take
some sleeping pills to get some sleep.
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