The lie proved unnecessary, because he found Anita in a drugged sleep brought on by her pills and Bibi playing silently with her dolls. “I’m hungry, Papa,” she said, clinging to his legs. Richard made her cocoa and got her a bowl of cereal. He felt unworthy of the little girl’s love; he felt stained, disgusting, and was unable to touch her before he had a shower. Afterward he sat her on his lap and buried his nose in her angel’s hair, inhaling her smell of curdled milk and innocent sweat. He swore silently to himself that from this moment on his family would be his first priority. He was going to devote himself body and soul to rescuing his wife from the dark well in which she was sunk and make it up to Bibi for all the months he had neglected her.
His intentions lasted seventeen hours. From then on, his nocturnal escapades became more frequent, longer, and more intense. “You’re falling in love with me!” Garota pointed out, and in order not to disappoint her he admitted it, even though love had nothing to do with how he behaved. His lover was disposable, she could have been replaced by dozens of others similar to her—frivolous attention seekers, girls afraid of being alone. The following Saturday morning he woke up in her bed again. It was nearly nine o’ clock. It took him a few minutes to find his clothes in the messy apartment, but he was in no hurry: Anita would probably be only half-conscious due to her pills, and wouldn’t get up until around noon. He was not worried about Bibi either, because this was the time of day that the maid arrived, and she would look after her. The vague sense of guilt he felt was becoming almost imperceptible. Garota was right, he was the only victim of this state of affairs because he was tied to a wife who was mentally ill. If he showed any sign of concern about deceiving Anita, she would repeat the old refrain: what the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t feel. Anita either was unaware of his flings or pretended not to notice, and he had the right to enjoy himself. Garota was a fleeting pleasure, nothing more than a footprint in the sand, thought Richard. Little did he imagine that she would become a scar he could never erase from his memory. His infidelity worried him less than the effects of alcohol. It took him hours to recover after a night on the town. He could spend the whole day with his stomach aflame and his body aching all over, unable to think clearly, his reflexes dulled. He floundered about as heavily as a hippopotamus.
That morning it took him a while to find his car, which was parked on a side street. He was also slow to put the key in the ignition and turn the engine on. A mysterious conspiracy left him moving in slow motion. There was little traffic at that hour, and despite his throbbing head he remembered the way back home. Twenty-five minutes had gone by since he woke up next to Garota. He urgently needed a cup of coffee and a long, hot shower. As he entered the driveway, his mind was on the coffee and shower.
Afterward he tried to find a thousand explanations for the accident. None of them was sufficient to blot out the precise image that stayed etched forever in his brain.
BIBI HAD BEEN WAITING for him at the front door. When she saw his car come around the corner she ran out to greet him, as she always did inside the house when he arrived. Richard did not see her: he felt the bump but did not realize he had run over Bibi. He braked at once, and it was then he heard the maid’s screams. He tried to convince himself he had hit a dog, because the truth already stealing into the back of his mind was too terrible to bear. A ghastly fear that instantly wiped away his hangover made him leap from the driver’s seat. When he could not see the cause of the accident he felt relieved for a moment. Until he bent down.
He was the one who had to pull his daughter out from under the car. The accident had not spoiled anything: the pajamas with their teddy bear design were still clean, she was still holding a rag doll in her hand, her eyes were still open with the expression of irresistible delight she always greeted him with. His heart beating wildly with hope, he picked her up with infinite care and clutched her to him, kissing her and calling her name. In the distance, from another universe, he could make out the cries of their maid and the neighbors, the horns from the blocked traffic, and later the police and ambulance sirens. When he eventually came to understand the magnitude of the disaster, he wondered where Anita had been at that moment, why he had not heard or seen her among the confused crowd milling around him. A long while later he learned that when she heard the squeal of brakes and all the noise, she had been on the second-floor window and from up there, frozen to the spot, she had witnessed everything. She saw her husband stoop down beside the car, saw the ambulance disappear up the street with its wolflike howl and ill-omened red light. From her window, Anita Farinha knew without a doubt that Bibi had stopped breathing, and she accepted this final stab of fate for what it was: her execution.
Anita went to pieces. She kept up an endless stream of incoherent utterances, and when she stopped eating was transferred to a psychiatric clinic run by Germans. Two nurses were placed at her bedside, one during the daytime and the other at night. They were so similar in their plump build and imposing authority that they looked like twins descended from a Prussian colonel. For a fortnight, these terrifying matrons took it upon themselves to feed Anita a thick liquid smelling of vanilla through a tube down her throat, to dress her against her will, and to almost carry her for walks around the patients’ yard. These walks and other forced activities, such as watching documentary films of dolphins or panda bears, intended to combat any destructive thoughts, had no appreciable effect on her. The head of the clinic suggested electroshock therapy, which he said was an effective and low-risk way of bringing her out of her state of apathy, as he termed it. The treatment would be administered under anesthetic and the patient was not even aware of it. The only slight drawback would be a temporary loss of memory, which in Anita’s case would be a blessing.
Richard listened to the explanation but decided to wait, finding it impossible to subject his wife to several sessions of electroshock therapy. For once the Farinha family supported him. They also agreed that her stay in that Teutonic institution should be no longer than strictly necessary. As soon as it was possible to remove the tube and feed her spoonfuls of nutritious baby food, they took the patient back to her mother’s home. If previously her sisters had been set on taking turns to care for her, after Bibi’s accident they did not leave her on her own for a minute. There was somebody with her day and night, watching and praying.