Chapter 22
“You must be careful, Sinhá Madalena,” Maria das Dores says, pressing the gauze to my arm. She moves meticulously slow, as if to purposely irritate me. “You must listen to Senhor Neves and Doctor Lobo.”
“Must I?”
I draw a sharp inhale. She wants me to listen to Leandro and Doctor Lobo.
It is because of the incident with the cake yesterday.
She was looking at me the same way when I tossed the cake into the flames.
As if I am out of control. But it’s not only that.
Maria das Dores has always looked at me askance, from the very beginning.
From the moment I met her three days ago. Why does she hate me?
It doesn’t matter. I have cleaned the wounds, washed myself, and put on a dress. It is enough. I rise.
“The bandages aren’t fully done—”
“This will do, thank you. Is the carriage ready?”
“What carriage?”
“The carriage to take me home!”
She blinks.
I look out the window. There is no carriage waiting. Astounding.
“Did Leandro not…” I sigh, exasperated. “Go tell the driver to get the carriage ready.”
She nods and scampers off.
I go to Leandro’s room to see if he is there.
I have no more patience for his slowness, his deranged manner.
Especially now that I know his true nature—that he rejected our baby.
Looked me in the eye and pretended it wasn’t his.
It was nice of him to come look for me this morning, but he still did not say anything about the baby.
He did not take back what he said last night.
“Leandro?” I call out.
Leandro is not in his room.
I deduce he must still be downstairs. A small pile of glossy photographs on his nightstand catches my eye. Not the older daguerreotypes, but more modern, smaller ones. I pause. I see the outline of a woman. I pick it up.
In the photograph, a young woman sits gracefully in the drawing room with her long dark hair high up in a ponytail. Her hair is lustrous and velvety, her skin smooth and sun-kissed.
Her face is cast in shadows.
I recognize the drawing room of this very house. These photographs were taken here. By Leandro, no doubt.
She holds flowers in her hands, has a hibiscus tucked behind her ear and one in her hair.
She is barefoot. In another photograph she wears pointed heels.
There are many photographs of her, all inside this house.
But in all of them, her face is obscured.
At times, it is simply cast in shadows or she looks away.
I can see the delineation of her jaw. Other times, she wears a veil.
Sometimes she’s facing a dark corner of the house.
It is peculiar, as if the photographer angled it this way on purpose.
These must have been taken by Leandro, but he himself doesn’t appear in any of the photographs.
I recognize the pearl earrings and silver bangle bracelets from the vanity in the lavender room. She must be the mystery woman from Leandro’s past. The one who smells of lavender rose. The one whose dresses he gave me. Maybe even the foul woman who appeared in the mirror.
I flip through the photos faster and faster. A deep discomfort burrows in my gut. I search for Leandro in the photos, for anyone else, but they’re all of her.
It appears that he couldn’t get enough of her.
Her wearing a purple pendant around her neck and opal rings on her knuckles. With her knees on the carpet, with her head resting on a pillow, with the window as a backdrop, with the wall paintings as a backdrop.
Most of the time she wears a simple gray dress, the kind one might wear around the house. I recognize it—it was amid the pile Leandro gave me to wear the day I woke up here.
I come across a series of photos that make me sick.
She tips a bottle of liquor toward her mouth, wearing an underskirt and nothing else.
She lets the drink spill onto her exposed neck and chest. She lifts her skirts and rests a hand on each knee, spreading her legs for the camera obscenely, wearing stockings and high heels.
She sits on a bed littered with rose petals.
Bustles and veils and corsets are strewn on the floor alongside men’s pants and shirts.
She beckons to the camera with her fingers and a vicious smile.
I sweep my arm over the dresser and hear the clattering, breaking, and scattering.
Shards of glass and clay litter the floor, water spills from a broken vase, and I revel in all of it.
A blazing fire rips through me from head to toe.
Maybe I have hysteria, but I was right. I was right about him having an affair, I was right about his deceitfulness, about his betrayal, about his lies, and all of them yesterday, all of them looked at me like I was a madwoman.
Footsteps thunder up the stairs, then Leandro appears at the door. He gawks at the mess on the floor. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s no wonder”—my voice is icy—“you denied the baby. No wonder…”
“What…?”
His face. Leandro’s gawking face inspires a primal rage within me. I seize the candlestick from the mantel and lash out at him.
“You ruined me, you vile, disgusting coward!”
Leandro cowers against the wall, raising his arm protectively over his head as I hit him with the candlestick.
“You sent me all those letters, while this is what you were doing this whole time. You’re a disgrace, you should be ashamed of yourself! You walk around composed and reserved, but then you do vile things in this house and you lied to my face when I asked if someone had slept in that room recently.”
“Sinhá Madalena, stop!” Maria das Dores says from the hallway.
Her voice breaks me from my frenzy. I draw back from Leandro, out of breath.
“You’ve always been against me!” I point a finger at her. My head is hot with fury. She is just like Doctor Lobo, always taking Leandro’s side. Why does everyone take Leandro’s side? Even Maria das Dores, always looking at me sideways…Wait…Is this why she’s always been so guarded around me?
“Did you know about this?”
“Know about what?”
“Does he bed you, too?”
“What?”
“Does he photograph you naked, too?”
Maria das Dores clasps a hand to her mouth, black eyes wide with horror, then slowly backs away from us.
“She is innocent,” Leandro says. “She is old enough to be my grandmother.”
“And still I wouldn’t put it past you.”
Even now, she’s looking at me as if I’m a wild beast. But Leandro deserves so much more than this. Leandro cradles his shoulder, but there is not even a bruise. Two lives he ruined, mine and my baby’s.
I toss the candlestick to the ground. Already my life-giving rage is deflating into a hollow, abject desolation.
“It was all lies. Everything you said in the letters, all lies. You lied and lied and lied…”
“I didn’t!” he cries out.
“I have the proof right here.” I spin on my heel and reach for the photographs. Already I feel the satisfaction in my veins of knowing that I will hurl the photograph in his face, and he will pale when he sees proof. I scan the mess of photographs quickly for the obscene one.
I find it. “Look at this and tell me—”
The words die in my throat. As I pick up the photo, I notice something I failed to notice before.
Her nakedness, her obscene posture, so shocked me at first that I had hardly noticed her face. Here she is looking at the camera head-on, laughing at the photographer, like Leandro is her plaything.
Her face is youthful and oval, her lips heart shaped, her nose tiny and straight.
I know this face.