Instead of rejoicing that the old world, which had brought nothing but disaster and sadness, had vanished so completely and permanently, I was flooded by an overwhelming melancholy, like the sea flooding a sinking ship, like a second shipwreck.
Only the bed was the same; I could swear to that, and I lay there on it as if on an island, the only survivor of an all-engulfing deluge.
Then, with a shiver, I became aware of my nakedness. I saw clothes lying in front of the bed, hauled them ashore and put them on. They hung about me in wide folds. It was a uniform; the decorations that I had hoped to win before my departure had been attached to the sleeves and shoulders. Was this a mockery? The rough lining chafed my hurt and irritated skin: this robe humiliated me more than anything I could remember; I threw it off in a fury. Rather than wear this I would stay naked all my life. All my life, would that be so much longer? But there was more lying in front of the bed — food. I devoured it. I grabbed for the jug, thinking there might be a few dregs at the bottom, and found myself drinking fresh water.
On the ground there was another item of clothing, a long, wide garment. I put it on and found it tolerable, though I became almost a stranger to myself. Still I kept it on, but lowered myself out of the window to come to myself again in the wood. The plant world at least had not become totally alien.
But now I was beset by heavy unknown perfumes, and kept stumbling over treacherous roots, impeded by the long garment. I wanted to rest, hidden among the trees, but now it was no longer autumn, and it was hot; I sought the shade, but the leaves were smoky hot, the earth seemed to be heated from within and was alive, with armies of ants advancing from all sides, big red ants that bit, while spiders lowered themselves from the branches and the buzzing of the mosquitoes resumed. I fled, running to where there was a clearing, and was suddenly back in front of the gate, yanked at the bars in order to escape hellish torments of this unbearable paradise, though outside I could see nothing but the sea, that other hell. This time the gate did not budge. Again I turned and went into an avenue, but my legs gave way and I stopped as if turned into a tree trunk.
At the end of the avenue, lit beneath the foliage by a shaft of light, stood Diana, like a Madonna in a green niche.
I stalked her like a panther in the wild. She would no longer escape me now, evaporate into a cloud or fade into the wood.
She did not move a muscle; she seemed to be bending intently over something — a flower or a book, what did it matter?
One more leap: she turned round, I stumbled backwards just as fast. It was Diana, but with the slanted eyes of a Chinese woman.
II
PILAR HAD HAD NO MORE SLEEP since her father had left and her door was guarded. She herself watched out for the attack that was bound to come. The man supposed to prevent her flight was asleep, or if not, he was keeping his eyes shut. Gold is a good sedative too. It took a long time, but Pilar also knew a herb that banished sleep. Yet it came as a relief when she finally saw the halberdier leave and a little later saw an ungainly body clambering into the foliage of the tree. She now had a reason to leave her father’s house.
Yet she still dawdled, and suddenly a great calm descended on her. She looked out into the twilight; then she went inside and heard the thud on the balcony, she went into the hall and was able to slip unimpeded past the guard who was sitting against the wall with his knees bent.
Darkness had just fallen, and she passed the walls of the houses. But before she reached the monastery she turned off into the Chinese district; the whole population was out in the street. Whenever she walked through the centre of Macao she was greeted with respect and regarded with disrespect on all sides. Here no one paid any attention to her. She was wearing the clothes that would have angered her father far more than Veronica’s costume. It reminded him that he, a Portuguese, had married a Chinese wife. But she felt comfortable in these wide-fitting silk trousers, the jacket, with her hair combed into a quiff on her forehead.
There was a great commotion in the narrow streets, but it calmed her as if it had been the roar of the sea; it did her good after the silence of being shut up in the house. In the bustle, in the darkness where the light of burning resin flickered, between the filthy overhanging houses, she felt safe and at home. And so she finally found herself at the house of her nursemaid, whom she had not seen for ten years, and who by now must be seventy and was even more wrinkled and grubby than she had been back then. Pilar was received without astonishment, and was given a mat on which she rested for two whole days. But she couldn’t stay. So the nurse’s son, who was as stupid as the hulk he sailed in and the lampreys he fished for, took the woman across the water at night.
Pilar had only a vague memory of there being a garden with dense vegetation, and a little wooden house that her father called a quinta—usually accompanied by an expletive — a bridge and a stone roof over the sea. She was often alone there with her mother. Her mother sat on a mat, drank tea, stared into the distance and paid little attention to her. Sometimes her father was there too, and then they sat on chairs and there were papers and documents strewn everywhere. Her mother said nothing, but just looked at him pityingly, until he got up and went into the garden. Her mother lay down on the mat, Campos wandered round the garden, hacking off branches and trampling on flowers. Then he got drunk.
It was a happy moment for everyone when the sloop came to take him back across to the town. Sometimes they both had to go with him, sometimes her mother would refuse and he would take her under his arm and set her opposite him on a beautiful cushion. But little Pilar screamed and whined; then he would put her under the canopy, and she would walk back unsteadily over the narrow bridge, and sometimes fall into the water and be fished out by the nurse. Amid universal laughter the sloop would then finally row off and they were left behind in peace.
Since she was twelve, since the death of her mother, they had never been back there and always remained, in both the hot and cold seasons, in the sweltering or chilly town. Campos had no nostalgia for the way his wife looked at him with a mixture of contempt and pity, for the strange feeling that came over him when he was alone among the trees, as if they were whispering about him, as if all kinds of eyes were looking at him. No drink or singing helped. He preferred to stay where he was top dog: among his councillors and officers who always agreed with what he said.
Campo never talked of the quinta again. Perhaps he had forgotten all about it. In any case he wouldn’t look for Pilar there, and he couldn’t imagine that, having had as spoilt an upbringing as was possible in a colony, she would be able to live in a neglected country estate that over the years must have turned into a wilderness.