Ilmar Penna Marinho Junior - The beast of a thousand years

“I don’t want to be in your way now that you’re surrounded by important people”, she would apologize for her lack of curiosity regarding her husband’s business. She trusted him.

However, things began to become very muddy. Ana was the first to recognize that Leo had changed a lot. He was always tense. He had crossed the line of the conventional husband and became a man full of secrets and habits. He would give her increasingly evasive answers about his routine outside the house. In the ten years they’ve been married, that hadn’t bothered her. Lately, things had taken a contentious turn. This new, unknown Leonardo distressed her more and more. Rude words and attitudes in front of the neighbors or strangers became a usual thing. This would upset her and make her sad. She also didn’t accept the fact that her husband, despite having three cell phones, wouldn’t take her calls and called her less and less to tell her what was going on. The simple “hellos” were going up in smoke. He would justify himself, always saying he was busy with bloodsucker clients. It had never been like this before.

She didn’t like to question, as she had been doing lately, why had Leonardo changed so much, and why she put up with the man’s behavior without reacting.

On the long balcony, images of the waves crashing on the sand and the clouds tacked over the monolithic buildings of Barra were obscured by dark thoughts and painful reminiscences. She went back to the time when she nurtured the maternal and almost merciful feeling of comforting him from the absence of his parents, like the wet nurse who takes in her arms the fragile creature to feed her with the will to live. Since her marriage, she had created this kind of devotion with extreme compassion for this suffering, outraged man who, before the change of habits occurred, which included the torment of the cell phones at night, lovingly accepted her directions and advice. As time passed, he barely listened to her questions, let alone had the courtesy of answering them. This indifference was slowly killing her inside.

“How about leaving the cell phones off? Have dinner in peace at least today. Is it hard?” asked the woman sitting at the table, after serving the usual pea soup.

Leonardo was surprised by her tone of voice. It was the first time he heard his wife complaining at the table, in front of their son. For her to be irritable like this… it must be menstrual problems, he thought without much concern.

“Can we do that, darling?” reiterated the woman, with an even more nerve-wracking tone of voice that showed her annoyance for not being heard.

“I can’t. It’s the best moment to talk to people,” answered Leonardo, after the second quick dialogue on the phone, not audible at the table, except for a distinct “go ahead” at the end of the call. It was only possible to hear that because he answered the call standing in the dining room, without stepping on the marble floor of the balcony.

“Can you tell me why?” she insisted, not resigning.

“Just because people want to talk to me or they’ll do things wrong and I’ll have to work like a mule to fix the shit they did. Did you understand now?”

“Can’t you talk to me nicely at the table? Lucca is here. At least respect the boy.”

The son saw his father’s face tighten nervously, shutting up without replying. The cell phones kept ringing continuously throughout dinner. Leonard would stop eating and get up from the table. He would answer all the calls, without hesitation. His wife and son remained in an almost religious silence.

“How about a trip to Itaipava?” asked Ana, trying to compromise, even if she had to forget her annoyance with the cell phones. “It’s been so long since I’ve gone to my parents’ farm.”

“What for?” asked Leonardo, immediately showing his lack of interest in spending the weekend out of Rio with Ana’s family at the Magalhães Castro’s farm.

Ana knew that the “what for?” was his way of saying “no”. This made her think more seriously. The old Leonardo was predictable and trustworthy. He had a right time to leave and come back home. As soon as he arrived, he would kiss her lightly on the cheek and go buy bread. Now he lived like a nephelibata — she used the strange term after she checked its meaning on the dictionary and liked to use it to define her husband’s indifference toward his family world, full of sun and love. To her anguish, her husband was always on the clouds and, lately, would lock himself in the home den and ordered everything on the phone. After all, she didn’t want a lot from him: attention to his family, the tenderness from when they were dating, and silent cell phones during meals. She thought of the numerous times when she was concerned about his nervous cough. She wanted him to see a specialist. He never did. And Ana had to face, alone, the long silences of the words not spoken by a husband connected to some other place of the planet, oblivious to the earth cord connected to his home, which was always invaded by strange voices.

She decided to take action and expel the unknown enemies and clear things up, after so many repressed heartaches about to explode.

“Do you know that there’s a world waiting for us outside, Leo?” she suggested during dessert.

Leonardo was silent. Instead of looking at his wife’s face, he stared at the colorful kilim rug, very different from the soft red boukaras at his parents’ mansion in Botafogo. He kept his unapproachable silence for quite a while. He didn’t utter a word, just diverted his gaze to the dark night that framed the window and the outside world. In it, it wasn’t admissible to lose anything, much less time and money — thus thought Big Head, sitting at the head of the dining room table surrounded by his family.

Well, it was from this sovereign silence that Ana Magalhães — still young for her age, soft-spoken, musical in her long syllables, with faint wrinkles, enhanced by the fact that lately her countenance was always tense — decided to rebel and learn more about her husband’s life away from home. A shiver suddenly electrified her body; fear ran through her spinal cord when she thought about the bold gesture. She dreaded the fallout caused by female intuition. She reconsidered giving her husband more time to mend his ways. But she decided to go ahead with her fight; after all, there’s always a first time in life.

Chapter 4

ON THE MONTH OF MAY, at 6 PM in Angers, the sun still touches the walls of thin layers of shale and limestone blocks of the imposing fortress. Its light shines and reflects on the seventeen towers and also on the helmets, shields, swords, spears, and crossbows of the Museum of Medieval Weapons. In the long eleven-thousand-square-feet gallery going through renovations, when the workers and the engineers left the site, at the lack of construction work and voices, in the silence of the nave of an empty church, the only thing left were the lights being tested for the approval of the new lighting system and the modern ventilation system that would be able to keep the environment controlled at a constant temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

Father Antoine Duvert was, as usual, late, this time by fifteen minutes. Curator Ferdinand de Sailly’s wrinkles looked more prominent on behalf of the inconvenience of his pudgy cleric friend’s tardiness. He arrived breathless, with his cheekbones on fire, ashamed for being late for such an important meeting. Ferdinand knew that the chubby, cheerful character liked to chat on the narrow streets, bistros, and flowery parks with no concern for his watch, already a few minutes forward to avoid the usual tardiness. Father Antoine Duvert had promised to himself to arrive in time for the honorable invitation to see the new forty-lux lighting before the official opening to the public. That would be a privilege for few, to attend a sneak preview of the reopening of the famous gallery. This was announced with a big fuss by the city, through billboards scattered throughout Touraine and ads on the internet — although the priest considered this “a tool of the devil” that corrupts men.