Letter Nº 14

So, do you really think what happened to me in 1860 deserves a place in a book? Fine, go ahead, but on one condition: you must not publish anything before my death. You won’t have to wait long, eight days, perhaps less. I’m as good as gone.

Look, I could even tell you my whole life story, there are other interesting things in it, but that would take time, energy, and paper. I only have paper. My energy is weak. And my time is like a dying oil lamp at dawn, the next day’s sun is already on its way, a blazing, merciless sun, as impenetrable as life itself. Goodbye, my dear sir. Read this kindly, forgive whatever seems wrong to you, and don’t be too harsh on the rue if it doesn’t smell like roses. You asked me for a human document, here it is.

You already know it was in 1860. The year before, around August, when I was forty-two, I had become a theologian, that is, I copied theological texts for a priest in the capital, an old schoolmate, who kindly gave me lodging, food, and a bed. That August of 1859, he received a letter from a parish priest in a small inland town asking if he knew anyone knowledgeable, discreet, and patient enough to serve as a nurse to Colonel Oswald, for a good salary. The priest told me about it. I accepted immediately, I was sick of copying Latin quotations and ecclesiastical formulas. I came to the court to say goodbye to my brother and then set off for the town.

When I arrived, I heard only bad things about the colonel. He was unbearable, erratic, demanding, no one could stand him, not even his friends. He went through nurses faster than medicine. He had beaten two of them. I said I wasn’t afraid of healthy men, much less sick ones. After speaking with the parish priest, who confirmed everything and advised patience and charity, I went to the colonel’s house.

I found him stretched out on a chair on the veranda, breathing heavily. He didn’t receive me badly. At first he said nothing, just stared at me with the watchful eyes of a cat. Then a kind of malicious smile lit up his hard features. Finally, he told me that none of his previous nurses were worth anything, they slept too much, talked back, chased after the kitchen women, and two of them were even thieves.

“Are you a thief?”

“No, sir.”

Then he asked my name. I told him. He made a face of surprise. “Colombo?” “No, Sir, Edson Brito”. “Brito?” He said it didn’t sound like a proper name and suggested he would just call me Edson, which I agreed to. I mention this not only because it paints him well, but because my answer made a good impression on him. He even told the priest that I was the most agreeable nurse he had ever had. In truth, we had a honeymoon of seven days.

On the eighth day, I entered the life of my predecessors, a dog’s life. No sleep, no thoughts of anything else, constant insults, sometimes I even laughed at them, with an air of resignation and acceptance; I realized that pleased him. All of it came from his illness and his temperament. His illnesses were many: aneurysm, rheumatism, and several other conditions. He was nearly ninety, and since the age of five everyone had given him whatever he wanted. If he had only been irritable, that would have been one thing, but he was cruel. He took pleasure in others’ pain and humiliation.

After three months, I was fed up. I decided to leave and just waited for the right moment.

It came soon enough. One day, because I didn’t bring him a compress in time, he grabbed his cane and struck me two or three times. That was enough, I resigned immediately and went to pack my things. He came to my room and begged me to stay, saying it wasn’t worth getting upset over an old man’s bad temper. He insisted so much that I stayed.

“I’m hanging by a thread, Edson,” he told me one night. “I won’t live much longer. I’m practically in the grave. You’ll attend my funeral, you must. You’ll pray at my grave. If you don’t,” he added with a laugh, “I’ll come back at night and pull your legs. Do you believe in souls from the other world?”

“Not at all.”

“And why not, you fool?” he snapped, glaring at me.

That was how our good times went, imagine the bad ones. He stopped beating me, but the insults remained, if anything, worse. Over time, I grew used to them. I was a donkey, a worthless good for nothing, an idiot, a fool, everything. And there was no one else to share the burden. He had no family. A nephew had died of a fever months earlier. Friends visited briefly, ten minutes at most. That left me alone, a whole dictionary of insults for one man.

More than once I decided to leave, but the parish priest always persuaded me to stay.

Not only did things grow more strained, but I longed to return to the court. At forty-two, I could not get used to living in isolation, tied to a savage invalid in the countryside. To understand my isolation, it’s enough to say I didn’t even read newspapers.

The opportunity seemed near. The colonel grew worse, made his will, insulting the notary almost as much as he insulted me. His temper worsened; moments of calm became rare. By then, I had lost what little pity I had that made me forgive the insanities of a dying man. Inside me grew a kind of bitterness, even hatred.

In early August, I decided for good to leave. The priest and doctor asked me to stay a little longer. I agreed to one month. At the end of that, I would leave no matter what. A replacement was sought.

Now you’ll see what happened.

On the night of August 24, the colonel had a violent outburst. He insulted me, threatened to shoot me, and finally threw a bowl of porridge at me because it was cold. It shattered against the wall.

“You’ll pay for it, thief!” he shouted.

Later, around eleven, he fell asleep. While he slept, I took out a book, a worn novel, and began to read in the same room. I had to wake him at midnight to give him his medicine. Whether from fatigue or the book, I fell asleep too.

I woke to his screams.

He seemed delirious, shouting, and then grabbed a water jug and threw it at me. It struck my face. The pain blinded me. I lunged at him, seized his throat, we struggled and I strangled him.

When I realized the patient was dying, I recoiled in terror and cried out, but no one heard me. I went back to the bed, shook him to try to revive him, but it was too late; the aneurysm had burst, and the colonel was dead. I went into the next room, and for two hours I didn't dare go back into the bedroom. I can't even tell you everything I went through during that time. It was a daze, a vague and stupid delirium. It seemed to me that the walls had shadows; I heard muffled voices. The victim's cries, before and during the struggle, continued to echo within me, and the air, wherever I turned, seemed punctuated by convulsions. Don't think I'm exaggerating or making up stories; I tell you that I distinctly heard voices shouting at me: Murderer! Murderer!

Everything else was silent. The same sound of the clock, slow, even, and dry, underscored the silence and solitude. I pressed my ear to the door of the room hoping to hear a groan, a word, an insult, anything that signified life and restored peace to my conscience. I would have been ready to take a beating from the colonel's hands ten, twenty, a hundred times. But nothing, nothing; all silent. I would wander aimlessly around the room, sit down, put my hands to my head. I regretted having come.

As the silence began to terrify me, I opened one of the windows to listen for the sound of the wind, if there was any. There was no wind. The night was peaceful, the stars twinkled with the indifference of people who tip their hats to a passing funeral procession and continue talking about something else. I leaned there for a while, gazing at the night, letting myself recapitulate my life, to see if I could find some rest from the present pain. Only then can I say that I thought clearly about the punishment. I found myself with a crime on my conscience and saw the certain punishment. Fear deepening the remorse.

Before dawn I tended to the bruise on my face. Only then did I dare return to the room. I hesitated twice, but it was necessary, and I went in. Even so, I didn't immediately go to the bed. My legs trembled, my heart pounded; I even considered fleeing; but that would be confessing the crime, and, on the contrary, it was urgent to make the traces of it disappear. I went to the bed; I saw the corpse, with its eyes wide and mouth open, as if to shout at me. I felt like Cain, thinking on how to hide my crime from God. I saw the mark of my nails on his neck, I buttoned his shirt high and brought the corner of the sheet to his chin. Then I called a servant, told him that the colonel had died in his sleep and to send the news to the priest and the doctor.

I didn't leave the mortuary, afraid they would discover something. I wanted to see if others suspected anything, but didn't dare look anyone in the eye. Everything made me impatient: the thieving footsteps with which they entered the room, the whispers, the ceremonies, and the priest's prayers. When the time came, I closed the coffin with trembling hands, so trembling that one person, noticing them, said to another with pity:

“Poor Edson! Even with the Coronel’s temperament the thought of him like a father”

It seemed ironic to me; I was anxious to see it all over. We went out into the street. The transition from the dim darkness of the house to the brightness of the street gave me a great shock. I feared it would then be impossible to conceal the crime. I looked at the ground and kept walking. When it was all over, I breathed a sigh of relief. I was at peace with men. I was not at peace with my conscience, and the first nights were naturally filled with unease and distress. Needless to say, I immediately came back to the capital and I lived here, terrified. Although far from the crime. I didn't laugh, I spoke little, I barely ate, I had hallucinations, nightmares...

"Leave the man rest in peace" they people told me. "There's no need for so much melancholy."

And I took advantage of the illusion, showering praise on the deceased. Calling him a good creature, impertinent, it's true, but with a heart of gold. And, by praising him, I convinced myself too, at least for a few moments. Another interesting phenomenon, and one that I might use to your advantage, is that, not being religious, I had a mass dedicated for the eternal rest of the colonel in the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. I didn't invite anyone, I didn't tell anyone. I went to hear it alone, and I was on my knees the whole time, crossing myself frequently. I doubled the priest's offering and distributed donations on the Coronel’s name. I didn't want to deceive people; the proof is that I went alone. To complete this point, I will add that I never alluded to the colonel without saying: "May God have his soul!" And I told some cheerful anecdotes about him, funny outbursts.

Seven days after arriving in Rio de Janeiro, I received a letter from the priest, telling me that the colonel's will had been found, and that I was the sole heir. Imagine my astonishment. I thought I was misreading it. I went to my brother, I went to my friends; they all read the same thing. It was written. I was the colonel's sole heir. I even suspected it was a trap, but I immediately realized that there were other ways to capture me if the crime were discovered. I reread the letter five, ten, many times, there was the news.

"How much did he have?" my brother asked me.

"I don't know, but he was rich."

"Indeed, he proved he was your friend."

"He was... He was..."

This way, by an irony of fate, the colonel's possessions ended up in my hands. I considered refusing the inheritance. It seemed odious to receive a penny from the estate, it was worse than becoming a hired henchman. I thought about it for three days, and always stumbled upon the consideration that refusal might arouse suspicion. At the end of the three days, I settled on a compromise. I would receive the inheritance and give it all away, in bits and pieces and secretly. It wasn't just scruple; it was also a way to redeem the crime with an act of virtue. It seemed to me that I would be settling accounts.

I prepared myself and went to the village. On the way, as I approached, I recalled the sad event. The outlines of the village had a tragic air about them, and the colonel's shadow seemed to appear on every side. My imagination kept replaying the words, the gestures, the whole horrific night of the crime.

Crime or fight? Truly, it was a fight, in which I, attacked, defended myself, and in the defense... It was a wretched fight, a fatality. I fixated on that idea. And I weighed the grievances, I put the blows, the insults, in the active role. It wasn't the colonel's fault, I knew that well, it was the illness that made him so grumpy and even mean. But I forgave everything, everything. The worst was the fatality of that night. I also considered that the colonel couldn't live much longer, he was near death. He himself felt it and said so. How long would he live? Two weeks, or one, it could even be less. If someone could even call the continuous suffering of the poor man a life. And who knows if the fight and death weren't just coincidental? It could be, it was even the most probable. I fixated on that idea too.

Near the village my heart tightened, and I wanted to retreat. But I restrained myself and went. They greeted me with congratulations. The priest explained the will, the laws, and along the way he praised the Christian patience and care with which I had served the colonel, who, despite being harsh and hard, knew how to be grateful.

"Without a doubt," I said, looking away.

I was stunned. Everyone praised my dedication and patience. The initial needs of the inventory kept me in the village for some time. I hired a lawyer, and things went smoothly. During that time, I often spoke of the colonel. People came to tell me things about him, but without the moderation of the priest. I defended him, pointed out some virtues.

"What loyalty! He's dead, it's over, but he was a devil."

And they told me harsh stories, perverse actions, some extraordinary. Do you want me to tell you? At first, I listened with great curiosity, then, a singular pleasure entered my heart, which I sincerely tried to expel. And I defended the colonel, explained him, attributed something to local rivalries. I confessed, yes, that he was a little violent. “A little? He was a snake” the barber interrupted me. And everyone, the tax collector, the apothecary, the clerk, all said the same thing. The old men remembered his cruelties as a boy. And the intimate pleasure, silent, insidious, grew within me, a kind of moral tapeworm, which, no matter how much I tore it apart, would immediately recompose itself and remain.

The obligations of the inventory distracted me. On the other hand, the opinion of the village was so contrary to the colonel that the view of the places gradually lost for me the gloomy aspect that I had initially found in them. Upon taking possession of the inheritance I rested for a bit. Many months had passed by then, and the idea of ​​distributing it all in donations did not dominate me as it had the first time. I even thought it was extreme. I reconsidered the original plan, distributed some to the poor, gave the village parish church some new vestments, made a donation to the local hospital, etc. In total, one third of the heritage. I also had a tomb built for the colonel, all of marble, an impressive thing in the center of cemitare.

As the years went by, my memory grew gray and faded. I sometimes think of the colonel, but without the terrors of the early days. All the doctors that I told about his condition agreed that death was certain, and they were only amazed that he had resisted for so long. Perhaps I unintentionally exaggerated the description I gave them then; but the truth is that he was destined to die, even if it wasn't that fatal outcome.

Farewell, my dear sir. If you find these notes worth anything, also reward me with a marble tomb, to which you will give this epitaph: "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted."