My aunts dug their most extravagant formal dresses out of trunks and closets. Aunt Olympia was wearing her favorite clothing, which she saved for very special occasions, the dress she had worn the last time she played Phaedra. Dona Maria Nunes, our housekeeper, constructed enormous and elaborate hairdos for each of them; as was the custom in our family, none of the women had ever cut her hair. I stayed in my room, after reading the Decalogue, getting up from the bed now and then to look at the garden and the woods. It was a hard mission, one which my father had carried out, and my grandfather and great-grandfather and all the rest. I got my father out of my head right away. This wasn’t the right moment to think about him. I thought about my grandmother, who had been an anarchist and manufactured bombs in her basement without anyone suspecting. Aunt Regina liked to say that every bomb that exploded in the city between 1920 and 1960 had been made and thrown by Grandma. “Mom,” Aunt Julieta would say, “could not tolerate injustice, and that was her way of showing her disapproval; the ones who died were for the most part guilty, and the few innocents sacrificed were martyrs in a good cause.”
From my window, by the light of the full moon, I could see Ermê’s car, its top down, as it came slowly through the stone gate, climbed the hydrangea-lined road, and stopped in front of the beefwood tree that stood in the middle of the lawn. The cool evening breeze of May tossed her fine blonde hair. For an instant, Ermê seemed to hear the sound of the wind in the tree; then she looked toward the house, as if she knew I was observing her, and drew her scarf around her throat, pierced by a coldness that didn’t exist, except within herself. With an abrupt gesture she accelerated the car and, now resolute, drove toward the house. I went down to receive her.
“I’m afraid,” Ermê said. “I don’t know why, but I am. I think it’s this house, it’s very pretty but so gloomy!”
“What you’re afraid of is my aunts,” I said.
I took Ermê to the Small Parlor, where my aunts were waiting. They were most impressed with Ermê’s beauty and breeding and treated her with great affection. I saw at once that Ermê had won the approval of all. “It will be tonight,” I told Aunt Helena, “let the others know.” I wanted to finish my mission as soon as possible.
Aunt Helena told lively adventures of our relatives, who went back to the sixteenth century. “By obligation, all the first-born were, and are, artists and carnivores, and whenever possible they hunt, kill, and eat their prey. Vasco de Matos, one of our ancestors, even ate the foxes he hunted. Later, when he began to keep domestic animals, we ourselves would slaughter the lambs, rabbits, ducks, chickens, pigs, and even the calves and cows. We’re not like others,” said Aunt Helena, “who lack the courage to kill an animal or even see one killed, and want to savor it in innocence. In our family we’re conscious and responsible carnivores. Both in Portugal and in Brazil.”
“And we have eaten people,” said Aunt Julieta. “Our ancestor Manuel de Matos, was first mate on the Catrineta and ate one of the crewmen who was sacrificed to save the others from starving to death.”
“‘Hear now, ladies and gentlemen, an astonishing tale, of the ship Catrineta, which has much to tell …,’” I recited, imitating Aunt Olympia’s grandiloquent tone. All my aunts, with the exception of Olympia, burst out laughing. Ermê appeared to be taking it all in with curiosity.
Pointing at me with her long, white, bony finger, where the ring with our family coat of arms shone, Aunt Julieta said, “José has been trained since he was a little boy to be an artist and a carnivore.”
“An artist?” Ermê asked, as if the idea amused her.
“He is a Poet,” said Aunt Regina.
Ermê, who was majoring in literature, said she loved poetry—“later I’d like you to show me your poems”—and that the world truly needed poets. Aunt Julieta asked if she was familiar with the Portuguese “Book of Songs.” Ermê said she had read a few things in school, and that she took the poem to be an allegory of the struggle between Good and Evil, with the eventual triumph of the former, as is common in so many medieval homilies.
“Then thou believest that the angel saved the captain?” asked Aunt Julieta.
“That’s what is written, isn’t it? In any case, they’re just verses from the fanciful popular imagination,” said Ermê.
“Then thou dost not believe that an actual incident, similar to the poem, took place on the ship carrying Jorge de Albuquerque Coelho from here to Portugal in 1565?” asked Aunt Regina. Ermê smiled delicately without answering, as the young will do with old people whom they have no wish to displease.
Saying that they, she and her sisters, knew every novel of the sea that dealt with the Catrineta, Aunt Regina left the parlor, to return shortly with an armload of books. “This is Salvation of the Shipwreck by the Spanish poet Gonçalo Berceo; this is Cantigas de Santa María, by Alfonso el Sabio; this is the book by that poor man Teófilo Braga; this is the Carolina de Michaelis; this is an unfinished novel of the cycle, found in Asturias, with verses reproduced from the Portuguese originals. And this one, and this one, and this”—and Aunt Regina kept piling the books on the antique table in the middle of the Small Parlor—“all of them full of speculation, unfounded reasoning, humbug, and ignorance. We have the historical truth here in this book, the ‘Ship’s Log’ of our ancestor, Manuel de Matos, second in command on the ship that in 1565 took Jorge de Albuquerque Coelho from here to Portugal.”
After that we went to the table. But the subject had not yet been closed. It was as if Ermê’s silence encouraged my aunts to speak further about the subject. “In the poem, which balladeers took upon themselves to spread about, the captain is saved from death by an angel,” said Aunt Julieta. “The true story, which is in the Log kept by our ancestor, was never told, in order to protect Albuquerque Coelho’s name and reputation. Art thou enjoying the squid? It’s an old family recipe, and the wine is from our country residence in Vila Real,” said Aunt Regina. “The historian Narciso Azevedo, from Oporto, a relative of ours, though fortunately not by blood—he’s only married to our cousin Maria da Ajuda Fonseca, from Sabrosa—claims that during the voyage some crewmen came to Albuquerque Coelho with a petition asking authorization to eat several of their companions who had starved to death, and that Albuquerque Coelho adamantly refused, saying that while he lived he would not allow such a brutish desire to be satisfied. Now that’s all very well,” said Aunt Olympia, “but in reality what happened was quite different; the seamen who starved to death had been thrown into the sea, and Manuel de Matos saw that the entire crew, including Jorge Albuquerque Coelho, would all starve to death simultaneously. Speaking of which, this kid we’re eating we raised ourselves, dost thou like it?” Before Ermê could reply, Aunt Julieta went on: “The crew was called together by Manuel de Matos, our ancestor, and while Jorge Albuquerque Coelho absented himself, stretched out in the berth in his cabin, it was decided by majority vote—and I quote the very words of the Log, which I know by heart—to draw lots to see who would be killed. Lots were cast four times, and four crewmen were killed and eaten by the survivors. And when the Santo Antônio arrived in Lisbon, Albuquerque Coelho, who prided himself on his reputation as a Christian, a hero, and a disciplinarian, forbade any crewmen to speak of the affair. From what eventually came to light, the romantic Ship Catrineta was created. But the cruel and bloody truth is here in Manuel de Matos’s Log.”
The parlor seemed to darken, and an unexpected gust of cold air came in the window and ruffled the curtains. Dona Maria Nunes, who was serving, shrugged her shoulders, and for several instants a powerful, almost unbearable silence could be heard.