“This house is so large,” Ermê said. “Does anyone else live here?”
“Just us,” said Aunt Olympia. “We do everything ourselves, with Dona Maria Nunes’s help. We take care of the garden and orchard, clean and cook, wash and iron our clothes. That’s what keeps us busy and healthy.”
“Doesn’t José do anything?”
“He’s a Poet; he has a mission,” said Aunt Julieta, the Keeper of the Ring.
“And because he’s a poet he doesn’t eat? You didn’t touch your food,” Ermê said.
“I’m saving my hunger for later.”
When dinner was over, Aunt Helena asked Ermê if she was a religious person. My aunts, accompanied by Dona Maria Nunes, always prayed a novena after dinner in the small chapel in the house. Before they retired to the chapel—Ermê declined the invitation, which pleased me, for we could be alone—I kissed them aunt by aunt, as I always did. First Aunt Julieta—a thin, bony face with a long hooked nose, delicate lips like the drawing of the sorceress in my childhood fairy tale books, small and brilliant eyes, contrasting with the pallor of her face—till then I had not found out why she was Keeper of the Ring and I wanted to ask her, Why it is thou who wearest the Ring? but I felt I would know very soon. Aunt Olympia was dark with yellowed eyes, she kissed me with her heavy lips and wide mouth and her large nose and her well-pitched voice; for every feeling she had a corresponding mimicry, almost always expressed facially with glances, scowls, and grimaces. Aunt Regina looked at me with the small, clever, mistrusting eyes of a Pekingese puppy—she was perhaps the most intelligent of the four. Aunt Helena stood up when I went to her. She was the tallest of all, as well as the oldest and prettiest; she had a strong and noble face, like that of my grandmother Maria Clara, the bomb-throwing anarchist, and her sisters called her the archetype of the family; they said all the men of the family were good-looking like her, but the photo of Uncle Alberto, their other brother, younger than my father, who died of the plague in Africa while fighting beside the blacks, showed a figure of singular ugliness. Aunt Helena asked to have a word with me in private. We left the dining room and spoke for a few moments behind closed doors.
When I returned, my other aunts had already retired.
“It’s funny the way all of you talk. It’s ‘thou’ this, ‘thou’ that,” Ermê said.
“We use ‘you’ with the servants and unimportant people we don’t know,” I said. “It was that way in Portugal and continued in Brazil when the family came here.”
“But you don’t use ‘you’ with the housekeeper.”
“Dona Maria Nunes? But she’s like one of the family; she’s been in this house since the time of Grandmother Maria Clara, even before my father and my aunts were born. Dost thou know how old she is? Eighty-four.”
“She looks like a sailor, with her face all wrinkled and sunburned,” Ermê said. “She’s different from you, you’re so pale!”
“It’s so I can keep my poet’s face,” I said. “Let’s go to my favorite place in the house.”
Ermê looked at the shelves full of books. “I spend most of my time here,” I said. “Sometimes I sleep here on the sofa; it’s a kind of bedroom-library. It has a small bathroom off to the side.”
We were standing, so close our bodies were almost touching. Ermê wore no makeup on her face, her neck, her arms, but her skin shone with health. I kissed her. Her mouth was fresh and warm like mature wine.
“What about your aunts?” Ermê asked as I placed her on the sofa.
“They never come here. Don’t worry.” Her body had the firmness and scent of a tree of many fruits and flowers, the strength of an animal wild and free. I shall never be able to forget her.
“Why don’t you find a job and marry me?” Ermê asked. I laughed, for the only thing I knew how to do was write poems. And why work? I was quite rich and when my aunts died would be richer still. “I’m rich too but I plan to work,” Ermê said. “All right, let’s get married,” I said. I got dressed, left the library, and went to the pantry.
Without a word, Dona Maria Nunes handed me the bottle of champagne and two glasses. I took Ermê to the Small Parlor, pushed aside the books that still occupied the antique table, and placed the champagne and glasses on it. Ermê and I sat down, side by side.
I took from my pocket the black crystal flask that Aunt Helena had given me that night, and I recalled our conversation behind the door: I myself must choose and sacrifice the person I am to eat on my twenty-first year of life, isn’t that it? I asked. Yes, thou must kill her thyself; use no foolish euphemisms; thou wilt first kill her and then eat her, today, the day thou thyself hast chosen, and that is all, Aunt Helena replied. And when I said I did not want Ermê to suffer, Aunt Helena said: Do we ever make people suffer? And she gave me the black crystal flask decorated with wrought silver, explaining that it contained an extremely powerful poison, the smallest drop of which was enough to kill; as colorless, tasteless, and odorless as pure water, it would cause instant death—we have had this poison for centuries and it grows even stronger, like the pepper our ancestors brought from India.
“What a lovely bottle!” Ermê exclaimed.
“It’s a love potion,” I said, laughing.
“Really? Do you swear?” Ermê was laughing too.
“One small drop for you, one small drop for me,” I said, letting a drop fall into each glass. “We’re going to fall madly in love with each other.” I filled the glasses with champagne.
“I’m already madly in love with you,” Ermê said. With an elegant gesture she raised the glass to her lips and took a small sip. The glass fell from her hand onto the table and broke, and Ermê’s face fell against the fragments of crystal. Her eyes were still open as though she were lost in thought. She never even knew what happened to her.
My aunts came into the room, along with Dona Maria Nunes.
“We are proud of thee,” said Aunt Helena.
“Nothing will be wasted,” said Aunt Regina. “The bones will be ground up and given to the pigs, along with corn meal and cobs. We’ll make sausage from the intestines. The brains and the choice cuts thou shalt eat. Where dost thou wish to begin?”
“With the tenderest part,” I said.
From the window of my room I could see the beginning of daybreak. As commanded in the Decalogue, I donned my dress coat and awaited my summons.
At the great table in the Banquet Hall, which I had never in my life seen in use, my mission was fulfilled amid great pomp and circumstance. Every light of the immense chandelier was burning, making the black formal attire of my aunts and Dona Maria Nunes glow.
“We seasoned it very lightly in order not to spoil the taste. It’s almost raw. It’s a piece of rump, very tender,” said Aunt Helena. Ermê was slightly sweet like veal, but tastier.
As I swallowed the first mouthful, Aunt Julieta, who had been watching me attentively, seated like the others around the table, removed the Ring from her forefinger and placed it on mine.
“It was I who took it from thy father’s finger on the day he died, and kept it for today,” said Aunt Julieta. “Now art thou head of the family.”
In a word, the state of immorality was general. Clergy, nobility and the common people were all perverted.
JOAQUIM MANUEL DE MACEDO, A Walk Through the Streets of Rio de Janeiro (1862–63) the art of walking in the streets of rio de janeiro
AUGUSTO, THE WALKER, WHOSE REAL NAME IS EPIFÂNIO, lives in a space above a women’s hat shop on Sete de Setembro, downtown, and he walks the streets all day and part of the night. He believes that by walking he thinks better, finds solutions to his problems; solvitur ambulando, he tells himself.