Chapter 10
The whole house seems to come alive when Doctor Lobo joins us for dinner.
His infectious high spirits, his booming voice which bounces off the walls.
He is the total opposite of this sulking, brooding version of Leandro.
His presence makes me feel better, infuses the house with a sense of normality, and I resolve to speak to him in private about my concerns.
He may have some insight into Leandro’s personality or background that explains all this, or at the very least he can advise in a medical capacity.
But how much can I reveal? How well does he know Leandro?
He hangs his hat on the hatstand, takes off his gloves, and tells me I look astonishing.
“Have you spoken with my mother?” I ask as we settle at the table.
“She is a lovely woman, your mother,” Doctor Lobo says as he spoons boiled macaxeira onto his plate.
He tells me how Mother was very concerned initially, and insisted on coming here in person, but eventually capitulated when Doctor Lobo assured her that I would be returning in two and a half days and under his close watch in the meantime.
“You’ve performed a miracle.”
I wish I could have watched this exchange.
There is no one else in the world who could have convinced my mother to allow me to spend time alone with Leandro, medical retreat or no.
But I also suspect that her relenting had little to do with concerns for my health.
As far as Mother is concerned, the damage is already done, as I am already with child.
Doctor Lobo carries the dinner conversation, first by divulging rumors that Dom Pedro I helped compose the old national anthem, and how some believe this makes it morally repellent to prefer it over the new one.
I am reminded of Mother’s warnings that it is improper for a young lady to engage in political discussions, and am therefore glad when he switches topics to his time abroad.
As with most men of his station, his family sent him to learn his trade in Europe as a young man, and he studied medicine at the University of Padua in Italy before returning to Brazil to open his own medical practice.
I don’t mention that Mother says European cities are epicenters of godlessness and immorality.
I find Doctor Lobo’s stories fascinating, but Leandro hardly speaks, stuffing food in his mouth with vague disinterest. I catch him eyeing me often, but when I meet his gaze he looks away.
The old, pre-accident Leandro would not have looked away.
He would have locked eyes with me, maybe even winked.
He would have at least pretended he was interested in Doctor Lobo’s stories, would have laughed and joked.
He would be the spark of the night, spontaneously reciting verses, and later when the moon aged he would play his viol?o and sing for us.
The old Leandro would be eating a lot and not just picking at his bean stew, looking as though our company is insufferable.
“What about you, Leandro?” I try, facing him from across the table between two tall candles. “Do you have stories to share from your time in Europe?”
Leandro’s brothers studied law and the fine arts in Europe, but Leandro returned to Brazil as directionless as he was before.
That is why his father, the comendador, assigned him the renovation of the Santa Tereza mill, in the hopes of seeing Leandro become a sugar baron.
Given the current state of the mill, it’s looking more like the baron of jararacas.
Leandro’s whole demeanor hardens. The same look comes across his face as when I asked about his parents.
At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but now that he’s across the table from me, it is plain as daylight: He’s angry.
His jaw squares. He shakes his head slightly and returns his attention to his food, stiff necked, and now I know that my question irritated him.
I can hardly eat now. Why is he so ill-tempered?
I try to recall the last time he was sweet with me.
Right after the accident. Then, by the time we got to the tour, he was cold again.
Is he mad because I dropped the perfume?
No, he seemed kind then. And if he reacted this way to such an innocuous question about his travels in Europe, I most certainly won’t be asking about the rotten cake or the bizarre book-tearing ritual.
Even the way he sits, shrunk into his seat like he doesn’t want to be seen or spoken to. But I do catch him eyeing me quite frequently out of the corner of his eye. At one of those times, I hold his gaze and work up my courage to address him again.
“How are the renovations going, Leandro?”
“The renovations?”
“I visited the mill this afternoon.”
He stares dumbly.
“I was expecting to see carpenters and sledgehammers and painters,” I continue, “but all I saw were dead leaves and jararaca nests.”
A loud silence falls again. He blinks, opens his mouth tentatively. His lower lip quivers. “I…I have to excuse myself. I must use the chamber pot.”
He gets up and quickly disappears down the dim corridor.
The moment he leaves, I turn to Doctor Lobo.
“Doctor, I’m concerned about Leandro.” I keep my voice low but I speak quickly because I don’t have much time. “He’s much changed since the accident.”
“How so?”
I tilt my head, puzzled. “Didn’t you know him before the accident?”
“Yes, of course I did.”
“Well, don’t you see, then? He’s awfully ill-tempered and sullen. He’s not well at all.”
“He’s still recovering from the shock.”
“It is not merely that. Earlier today I saw him in his study ripping pages out of books, one by one, like a madman.”
“Hmm.” He nods thoughtfully. “Kindling for the fire pit, perhaps?”
“I thought so, too, at first, but think about it. Who uses pages of books for kindling? Old newspaper is what people normally use. And besides, no fire has been built in the outdoor pit.”
He drums his fingers on the table, eyes narrowing.
I want to throw more at him, to mention the decaying cake, the lack of renovations, the police visit, the mysterious woman-scented room.
But those things all preceded the accident, so Doctor Lobo won’t be able to account for them.
Leandro is the one that needs to explain them to me.
“Ripping pages out of books, you say?”
“Yes, for quite a while. There was a big pile.” I recollect his frenzied movements, the feverish aura about him.
“From the same book or from different books?”
“Different books.” I glance over at the hallway for signs of Leandro’s return. I watch the floor, expecting to see the blur of his shadow manifest before he does. “He moved quickly, as though he wasn’t even checking what book it was. There can be no sense in such behavior.”
“I see.” He snaps his fingers. “I know what it is. This is a harmless thing, you see.”
“What is it?”
“Sometimes patients engage in repetitive behaviors to soothe their minds. Often when they are distressed. It helps calm their nerves.”
It has never occurred to me before that repetitive behaviors can soothe one’s mind, but I suppose there is a ring of reason to it.
This doctor, so self-assured and collected, could not be more different than this nervous version of Leandro.
As he swirls his drink, my eyes float to his strong hands and his cryptic dark gaze.
It stirs up a kernel of sinful desire from my depths. I crumple the napkin in my hand.
“Now, tell me, Madalena…” His eyes pierce me as though he’s reading my mind and knows my darkest secrets. My skin grows hot yet I cannot look away. He evokes an intimacy that I have not felt with Leandro since I awoke in this place. “Why were you spying on him?”
“Well, I was just…He keeps a rotting cake in the kitchen, a very vile thing, did you know this? Not that it can be blamed on the accident but most disturbing still.”
“A rotting cake?”
“Yes. How do you explain that?”
“Perhaps it was forgotten.”
“You don’t understand,” I say, frustrated.
“He’s lied to me about one of the rooms. It smelled of a woman’s perfume, but he said there were no recent guests.
He’s lied about the renovations, there’s been no work done on the mill.
How can he live in this decaying fazenda, and have done no work on the mill?
Was Leandro unwell prior to the accident?
Some disease of the mind if not of the body, something which he managed to keep secret from me and others? ”
He frowns. I sense a resistance in him, and I fear I may have crossed a line. I know I have no right to Leandro’s medical history.
I continue desperately: “Something isn’t right with him. Maybe it is merely the shock of the accident, but I fear it is a deeper matter.”
“Perhaps you didn’t know him as well as you thought you did.”
I am silenced. He echoes my mother’s words and I want to throw my plate at him.
“He is in nervous shock, due to the accident,” he adds.
“This is to be expected, a weakness of the nervous system following sudden fright. Madalena, I heard that you had an incident in one of the rooms.” Doctor Lobo appraises me.
“That you nearly fainted and brought down a whole case of jewelry and broke a perfume bottle. Leandro and Maria das Dores were very much concerned about you.”
I take a sip of wine, trying to hide my irritation that Leandro told him about that. “I just felt faint and dizzy for a bit, but it went away. It was nothing.”
“I see. And have you felt any sudden bursts of intense emotion recently?”
“I am fine!” I bang my fist on the table and the force rattles the plates, the wineglass nearly topples over. “Has Leandro received this same level of scrutiny?”
He stiffens. In the silence, I realize that Leandro is standing by the table, eyeing me with no small amount of trepidation.
Maria das Dores replaces our dirty plates with fresh coffee and dessert.
I gaze down at my food, reeling with shame.
I can only imagine how Leandro feels about me now.
Of course he had to walk in at the worst possible moment, the only moment where I (slightly) lost my temper.
The very moment when I was speaking ill of him.
I don’t have emotional outbursts, and I’m frustrated with Doctor Lobo for suggesting as much at the same time that he ignores all of Leandro’s painfully obvious issues.
Still, perhaps my reaction was overly strong; surely Mother would say I should not speak to a man that way.
I know Doctor Lobo is diagnosing me in his head with hysteria or a nervous disposition at this very moment.
Worse still is that Leandro overheard me speaking critically of him.
How much did he hear? Did he overhear me speaking of the book-tearing ritual?
The perfumed room? The rotting cake? The absent renovations?
I can’t even remember the last thing I said.
If Leandro didn’t feel antagonism toward me before, he certainly does now.
Leandro sips his coffee in silence, avoiding eye contact at all costs.
When addressed, he nods and responds with one-word answers.
Doctor Lobo describes the latest fashions and philosophies abroad, eccentric topics such as astrology, alchemy, numerology, Hermetic philosophy, animal magnetism, and séances.
He describes recent developments in the field of alienism, ideas around the conscious and unconscious mind.
“The unconscious mind lies outside our conscious awareness,” Doctor Lobo says. “The case was made in a recent book by physicians Freud and Breuer, based on clinical work on patients with hysteria. We have trapped, suppressed memories, latent knowledge, which we are not aware of.”
Leandro stares as though spellbound. “Thoughts that are trapped in our subconscious?”
“Often it goes back to things that happened in our early years of childhood,” Doctor Lobo says.
“Which we no longer remember, but which continue to affect us. Trauma that solidified in the psyche as repressed memories and thoughts. These patterns of thinking, though unconscious, can cause diseases in the mind well into adulthood.”
“Repressed memories and thoughts…” Leandro mutters. “What can be done about it?”
“As a matter of fact…” Doctor Lobo sips his wine, eyes sparkling.
“There is one technique most effective at retrieving repressed thoughts. The alienist induces a mesmeric trance, and the patient enters a state where they are neither awake nor asleep, neither conscious nor unconscious. It is called hypnotism. From this place, latent knowledge can surface.”
Leandro’s eyes bulge with interest. I cannot believe that after ignoring me all night, this is what charms him.
“And what is the treatment,” I ask, “for the affliction of modern men who worship knowledge instead of God?”
They both look at me.
“ ‘You were dead in your transgression and sins,’ ” I recite, “ ‘in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh, and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.’ ”
Doctor Lobo looks dumbfounded.
“Ephesians,” Leandro says.
I finally have his attention. “When people find themselves lost, it’s always because of separation from God.
That is the cause of all ills, and love of God is the cure.
The idea that lost memories from childhood have the power to cause diseases in the mind is only the folly of modern men who think themselves beyond good and evil. ”
Silence falls. Mother says it is masculine and ungracious for a young lady to voice strong opinions, but the impulse to speak my mind was strong, and I don’t regret it.
In fact, I find it profoundly satisfying.
Leandro regards me with silent intensity now, as though his soul is about to launch out of his body. As though I have come alive to him.
Doctor Lobo sips his burgundy wine and switches topics to his hedonistic exploits in Paris after medical school, experiencing “joie de vivre,” chasing women, and generally wasting his father’s money.
I bring my liveliest, brightest, most engaged self into the rest of the dinner conversation, but Leandro is once again glassy-eyed and taciturn.
The intense spark of interest from the earlier conversation never returns, and he is like a candle that has been put out, watching us as though we are happening somewhere else.