She was now alone in the apartment: her sister and niece would be gone for a good two hours, and Adriana wouldn’t be home until later on. She went to fetch the keys she had hidden away and returned to her nieces’ bedroom. The dresser had three small drawers; the one in the middle belonged to Adriana.
As she approached the drawer, Amélia felt a sudden wave of shame. She knew that what she was about to do was wrong. It might help her find out what it was that her nieces were so carefully concealing from her, but if forced to confess, how could she admit that she had shown such a lack of respect? Once they knew, they would all fear further raids on their privacy, and they would hate her for that. Discovering their secret by chance or by some more dignified means would not, of course, have damaged her moral authority, but using a fraudulently acquired key and tricking those people — who might get in her way — into leaving the house, well, one really couldn’t sink much lower.
With the keys in her hand, Amélia wrestled with her desire to know and the undignified nature of what she was about to do. And what guarantee was there that she wouldn’t find something she would prefer not to know at all? Isaura seemed fine now, Adriana was as cheerful as ever, and Cândida, as always, had total confidence in her daughters, regardless of what might be going on in their heads. The lives of all four seemed set to return to calm, tranquil, serene ways. Would violating Adriana’s secrets make such a return impossible? Once those secrets were unveiled, would there be no going back? Would they all turn against her? And even if her niece had committed some grave fault, would Amélia’s good intentions be enough to justify her infringing the right we all have to keep our secrets secret?
These same scruples had troubled Amélia before and been successfully repelled. However, now that it would require just one small movement to open the drawer, they returned in force, like the last, desperate burst of energy from a dying man. She looked at the keys in her open hand. And while she was thinking, she noticed, unconsciously, that the smaller key would not fit. The opening in the lock was too wide.
Scruples continued to rush in upon her, each trying to appear more urgent and more convincing than the others, and yet already they were growing less forceful, less confident. Amélia took one of the larger keys and put it in the lock. The clink of metal, the creak as the key turned, banished all scruples. It was the wrong key. Forgetting that she had one more key to try, she persisted and was alarmed when it seemed to stick. Tiny beads of sweat appeared on her brow. In the grip of an irrational panic, she tugged hard at the key, then tugged harder still and finally managed to pull it out. The other key was clearly the right one. But after that physical effort, Amélia felt so weak and tired she had to sit down on the edge of her nieces’ bed, her legs shaking. After a few minutes, feeling calmer, she got up. She tried the other key, and slowly turned it in the lock. Her heart began to pound so loudly that her head throbbed. The key worked. There was no going back.
The first thing she noticed when she opened the drawer was the intense smell of lavender soap. Before moving any of the objects in the drawer, she made a point of noting their various positions. At the front were two monogrammed handkerchiefs, which she recognized at once as having belonged to her brother-in-law, Adriana’s father. To the left, a bundle of old photographs, bound together with an elastic band. To the right, a black box embossed in silver, but with no lock. Inside were some loose beads from a necklace, a brooch with two stones missing, a sprig of orange blossom (a souvenir from a friend’s wedding) and little else. At the back was a larger box, this time with a lock. She ignored the photographs: they were too old to be of any interest. Carefully, so as not to displace any of the other objects, she removed the larger box. She opened it with the smallest key and found what she was looking for: the diary, as well as a bundle of letters tied up with a faded green ribbon. She did not bother to untie the knot: she already knew about those letters, which dated from between 1941 and 1942. They were all that remained of a failed romance, Adriana’s first and only one. It seemed ridiculous to Amélia to hang on to those letters ten years after the breakup.
She thought all this while she was removing the diary from the box. From the outside, it looked utterly banal and prosaic. It was an ordinary school exercise book. On the cover, in her best handwriting, Adriana had obediently written her name in the space provided, along with the word DIARY in capital letters that had a slightly Gothic look to them, at once childish and earnest. She must have been really concentrating when she wrote that word, her tongue between her teeth, like someone marshaling all her calligraphic skills. The first page was dated January 10, 1950, more than two years ago.
Amélia began to read, but soon realized that there was nothing of interest. She jumped over dozens of pages, all written in the same upright, angular writing, and stopped at the final entry. When she read the first few lines, she thought perhaps she had found the source of the problem. Adriana was writing about some man. She didn’t give his name, referring to him only as he or him. He was a colleague at work, that much was clear, but nothing led Amélia to suspect the grave fault she had feared. She read the preceding pages. Complaints about his indifference, disdainful outbursts about how foolish it was to love someone who proved unworthy of that love, all mixed up with minor domestic events, comments about the music she had heard on the radio — in short, nothing definitive, nothing that might justify Amélia’s suspicions. Until she came to the entry where Adriana talked about the visit her mother and aunt had made on March 23 to the cousins in Campolide. Amélia read the passage attentively: the tedium of the day… the embroidered sheet… the acknowledgment of her own ugliness… her pride… the comparison with Beethoven, who was also ugly and unloved… If I’d been alive in his day, I would have kissed his feet, and I bet none of those pretty women would have done that. (Poor Adriana! Yes, she would have loved Beethoven, and she would have kissed his feet as if he were a god!) The book Isaura was reading… Isaura’s face, at once happy and as if contorted in pain… the pain that caused pleasure and the pleasure that caused pain…
Amélia read and reread. She had a vague feeling that the answer to the mystery lay somewhere there. She no longer suspected Adriana of having committed any grave fault. Adriana obviously liked that man, but he didn’t love her. Why would he want to make me jealous when he doesn’t even know I like him? Even if Adriana had spoken of her love to her sister, she couldn’t have said any more than she’d written in the diary. And even if she was afraid of being indiscreet and hadn’t confided to her diary everything that had happened, she wouldn’t have written that he didn’t love her! However insincere she was when writing the diary, she wouldn’t conceal the whole truth. If she did, what then would be the point of keeping a diary? A diary is made for unburdening oneself. The only thing she had to unburden herself about was the pain of an unrequited, indeed totally unsuspected love. So why were the two sisters so cold and distant with each other?
Amélia continued to read, going back in time. Always the same complaints, problems at work, some mistake she had made adding up a column of figures, music, the names of musicians, her mother’s and her aunt’s occasional tantrums, her own tantrum over the matter of her wages… She blushed when she read what her niece had to say about her: Aunt Amélia is very grumpy today. But immediately after that, she was touched to read: I love my aunt. I love my mother. I love Isaura. Then back to Beethoven again, the mask of Beethoven, Adriana’s god. And always that ever-futile he. She went further back in time: days, weeks, months. The complaints vanished. Now it was love newborn and full of uncertainty, but still at too early a stage to doubt him. Before the page on which he appeared for the first time, there were only banalities.