The Seamstress (28 page)

In Taquaritinga, Degas had promised her fine dresses, a wedding party, a ride in his motorcar. The only promise that had materialized was a wedding announcement, days after they’d arrived in Recife. News of their union was featured in the society pages of the
Diário de Pernambuco
newspaper, without a photograph.

Mr. Degas van der Ley Feijó Coelho traveled inland and wed Miss Emília dos Santos, resident of Toritama, in an intimate ceremony. A honeymoon voyage was delayed due to the groom’s legal studies at the Federal University of Pernambuco.

 

They had erred in her hometown. Emília was upset, but Degas assured her that those kinds of mistakes often occurred. Their wedding party would be scheduled when the weather cooled, he said. The dresses, the driving, the dinners and luncheons would come with time. He was very busy with his studies, Degas said. Surely she must understand.

Emília nodded. The tragic men of her childhood fantasies were gone. The deaf, dumb, handsome figures from the pages of
Fon Fon
had been replaced by a real man. And from him, Emília had not expected love or romance. She’d only expected his attention, his guidance. She’d hoped her husband would serve as a teacher, escorting her through Recife society and eventually showing her the world. But as soon as they’d arrived in the city, Degas became closed and hard to grasp. He had no more stories to tell her, no more compliments to give. Each day he treated her politely, pulling out her chair at breakfast and kissing her cheek before leaving. Emília was suspicious of his courtesy, seeing it as a gentlemanly way of tolerating her. Each night, after Emília had gotten into bed, Degas crept into their room and took his pajamas from the closet. Then he promptly returned to his childhood bedroom.

In
Fon Fon
’s photo spreads of elegant houses and apartments, the master bedrooms often had two twin beds—one for the husband and one for the wife. In the colonel’s house, Dona Conceição couldn’t tolerate her husband’s snoring, so they slept in separate bedrooms connected by a door. Emília could accept this; she liked having a bed to herself. But she worried about her wifely duty. Every other day the Coelho maids changed Emília’s bedsheets. No one inspected them. Dona Dulce and Dr. Duarte didn’t look for the reddish-brown blot that would prove Emília’s purity. Emília convinced herself that city people didn’t practice the same barbaric post-wedding rituals as country people. Perhaps Degas’ behavior was normal, she thought. Perhaps gentlemen took their time.

“All men are billy goats,” Aunt Sofia had warned her once, when she’d caught Emília fawning over an actor in
Fon Fon
. “They all have urges. Rich ones are the worst; they’re sneaks!” But what did Aunt Sofia know about gentlemen? Degas had no urges. Except for his quick hellos and good-byes, he hadn’t touched Emília. She took longer baths, spritzed herself with perfume, and discarded her dowdy, slit-front nightgown for an embroidered gown and robe the Coelhos had given her. Degas did not seem to notice these improvements. Her husband, like everything else in Emília’s new surroundings, was foreign to her. The city and the Coelho house had different smells, different sounds, different bugs and birds, different plants, different rules. Why then, did she expect her husband to act like the farmers she’d grown up with? Overwhelmed by so many changes, Emília locked herself in her bedroom for a few minutes each day. She lay on her bed, took deep breaths, and shut her eyes. Perhaps
she
was different, and everything around her normal. Perhaps it wasn’t Degas who was deficient or odd, but her. If he hadn’t touched her, there must be a reason—was Degas revolted by her country ways? Did he, like the Coelho housemaids, silently condemn his choice of a wife?

During their quick courtship, Emília had let herself think of only the benefits of their union. She’d thought only of spaces filled with furniture and gas ovens and comfortable rugs. She hadn’t thought of the empty spaces: the bed with its wide white expanse of sheets; the dining table, with its long, creased tablecloth and its place settings separating one diner from the next. And the narrow upstairs hallway where, each night, Degas left Emília standing as he walked into his childhood bedroom and shut the door.

7

There were many wild birds on the Coelho property. They called to each other in the pitanga trees. They hopped about the courtyard. Above their cries and twitters rose the sharp, unchanging song of Dr. Duarte’s corrupião. It had been a gift from one of the men in his political group, and it arrived at the Coelho house knowing nothing except the tune that accompanied the first strophe of the national anthem. The bird varied only its pace. When the maids entered the study, the song was fast and panicked. After it received a fresh helping of pumpkin seeds and water, its song was slow and lazy. In the evenings, when Dr. Duarte tried to teach it the second strophe, the bird held stubbornly to the old tune.

One afternoon, as Emília embroidered in the Coelhos’ courtyard, the bird’s song was choppy and frenzied. The glass door to Dr. Duarte’s study was open. The corrupião had been left in the sun. It hopped frantically from one end of its cage to the other. It dipped its orange wings into its empty water bowl. Emília put down her embroidery. She stepped into the study and dragged the bird’s pedestal into the shade.

A hot beam of sunlight ran across Dr. Duarte’s massive wooden desk. Beside it, on a pedestal similar to the corrupião’s, sat a porcelain bust. The head was divided into large, labeled sections:
Hope. Logic. Amativeness. Wit. Benevolence. Destructiveness.

The room’s walls were lined with shelves. Books sat on most of them. On others were skulls ranging in size from tiny to large. In the back, caught in the sunlight’s farthest reach, were glass jars with bulbous lids. Emília shielded her eyes with her hand. They resembled Dona Dulce’s jam jars, except they were larger. And instead of containing dark, sweet preserves they were filled with amber and yellow liquids that glowed brightly in the sun. Emília closed the study’s glass doors and pulled down their shades. She walked toward the back shelves.

There were objects floating in the jars. They were filmy and dull, as if the liquid surrounding them had leached their color. In one jar, there floated a tongue, curled and muscular. In another, a pale gray heart. Emília could not recognize the other jars’ contents. There were two bean-shaped organs, a large yellow mass that looked fibrous and thick, and a flaccid brown organ that leaned against its glass confines. Above these was the largest jar, alone on a shelf. The glass was labeled
Mermaid Girl
.

Her eyes were closed. Her head was bowed, her body curled. A layer of hair—downy and fine—covered the fetus’s small head. The infant looked as if she were in a deep, peaceful sleep and could wake at any moment. Emília wished the corrupião would stop its incessant singing. Two smooth stumps tapered from the girl’s tiny torso, making it look as if she was hiding her arms behind her back. Her legs were fused together, like a fin. Emília touched the jar. Strands of the girl’s hair waved back and forth in the amber fluid.

The study’s hallway door opened. Emília moved away from the shelf. Dr. Duarte entered. He started at the sight of her.

“I’m sorry,” Emília said, “I came in to move the corrupião out of the sun and to close the shades.”

Dr. Duarte grunted. He placed his briefcase on the desk, then stood beside Emília. He smelled of cigar smoke and cologne and something else—a mixture of overripe fruit and salt air; the smell of warehouses along the port, the smell of the city.

“Spying on my collection?” he said.

“Oh no!” Emília replied. Her heart beat fast. She wanted to leave, but Dr. Duarte blocked her path. He examined her face.

“I obtained these things after the subjects passed on,” he laughed. “No need to look at me like that, I’m not the lobisomem!”

“Of course not,” Emília whispered. A blush burned her cheeks. For an instant, when she’d first seen the jars’ contents, Emília had thought of the tale of the lobisomem. It was an awful story that the kids in Padre Otto’s school used to tell—the tale of a wealthy old man cursed by one of his servants and forced to kidnap children and eat their organs so he would not turn into a werewolf.

“She is an anomaly,” Dr. Duarte said, pointing to the jar nearest Emília.

“A what?”

“An abnormality. There are only one in a hundred thousand fetuses with fused legs and hands. Her mother was a criminal, perhaps an alcoholic. She inherited this, poor dear.”

He turned the jar around. The girl’s shoulder bumped against the glass. Her hair waved.

“She died at birth,” Dr. Duarte said. “It’s best. She would have become a criminaloid like her mother.”

“Because she has no legs?” Emília said. She placed her hand on the jar, hoping to steady it. “That isn’t her fault.”

“That is the problem!” Dr. Duarte shouted, clapping his hands together. Emília jumped.

“Most medical criminologists,” Dr. Duarte continued, “even pioneers like Lombroso, believed that obvious deformities—a tail or several nipples or a receding chin—identified a criminal. That’s because they had no way to measure exactly how these things affected human behavior.”

He stared at her, waiting for a response.

“My aunt Sofia didn’t trust men with scanty beards,” Emília finally said.

Dr. Duarte tilted his head back and released a loud laugh.

“Your aunt is in the same camp as our esteemed Lombroso!” He smiled. His face was flushed, his eyes bright. “You cannot simply look at someone and see their criminal potential. That is archaic mumbo jumbo. Some poor unfortunate may have a terrible, flattened nose, but no other criminal characteristics. Now, don’t misunderstand me, I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Lombroso—he is, after all, the founder of the Modern School! Criminals differ from the rest of us. They are knowable, measurable, and predictable. Only the truth is not in our eyes, but in mathematics. It is all a question of scale.”

Emília nodded. He spoke clearly and forcefully, but when his words reached her ears they seemed jumbled and obscure. She thought of her measuring tape, of stretching it across shoulders and around waists. Aunt Sofia had always told them that a seamstress must be silent and sensible because she was privy to great secrets. With her measuring tape, Emília had noticed the curve of a suddenly swollen belly. She had held the tape gently around bruised arms. She had watched as new brides’ gangly, loose frames began to thicken and slump with time. Was this what Dr. Duarte meant—that what was measurable was knowable?

“Measurement allows us to see what is unseen,” Dr. Duarte continued. “The brain’s formation gives us a chance to distinguish between incurable criminals and deviants.”

“Deviants?” Emília asked.

“Petty thieves. Perverts,” Dr. Duarte said, bunching his thick fingers. “They are weak-minded individuals. They feel remorse after exhibiting degenerate behavior, but they’re selfish. They don’t want to give up private pleasures for the betterment of society. They can be salvaged, though, with discipline and sometimes with harsher measures: restraint, confinement, hormonal injections. Forgive me,” Dr. Duarte said suddenly. He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “This is not a discussion for ladies.”

“I enjoy it,” Emília said, happy to be having a discussion with anyone at all. Dr. Duarte smiled but it was without the gleam and energy he had had before. Behind them, the corrupião sang.

“How are you liking it here, so far?” Dr. Duarte asked.

“Oh,” Emília stammered. “It is…what I’d wanted.”

“Good.”

She stared again at the Mermaid Girl. Powdery detritus floated at the bottom of the glass. How long had she been in that jar? Would she stay that way forever, silent and curled, or would she slowly slough away, turning into a heap of powder? Emília wanted to ask Dr. Duarte but the question seemed silly.

“You have to agree,” he said, “that a wife is a motivating force for a man. Degas is finally concentrating on his studies. Dona Dulce wanted him to marry a Recife girl. She says that Cupid has short wings for a reason.” Dr. Duarte chuckled. “I must admit, I was taken aback when I received Degas’ telegrams about your…your association with each other. I thought it was another one of his tales at first. I wanted him to do the honorable thing, of course. And after some thought, I grew to like the idea.” Dr. Duarte reddened. “I certainly didn’t like him tarnishing an honest girl’s honor! What I mean to say is: it was a relief to know he’d found a wife. A good, hardy country girl is just what he needs.”

“Tarnishing?” Emília repeated

“It’s an expression,” Dr. Duarte said, waving his hand in the air impatiently. “Regardless of the circumstances, it was time. Fair or not, when a man gets older it’s a strike against him to be a bachelor. You have to agree, Emília, that Degas might have misbehaved with you, but he righted that wrong when he gave you his name.”

Her father-in-law liked to start his sentences with such phrases—
You have to agree
or
It is obvious that
—giving his listeners little choice. Emília lowered her head. Her ears tingled, her breath was short. It was one thing for people in Taquaritinga to believe she’d been ruined, but quite another for her in-laws to think such things. She’d never asked Degas about the telegrams he’d sent to Recife. She’d assumed he’d represented her fairly.

“Nothing to be ashamed of, my dear!” Dr. Duarte said. “These things happen. Even Dona Dulce will grow to understand that. Mothers always worry needlessly over their sons. When my father sent me to Europe to study medicine, my mother cried for three months. There was no money in having an education back then, but the Old families sent their boys off, so my father said his boy would be no different. My mother, pour soul, worried herself sick. She believed too much culture could rot a man. As if culture was like sugar and men like teeth!” Dr. Duarte quieted. “I understand better now, what she meant.”