(A tale. Author: Francisco Cesar Pinheiro Rodrigues)
A
little before seven o’clock in the morning Benvinda is arriving at the house
where she has been working for eight years. Her footfall demonstrates an
unusual vivacity. She is a house maid, thirty-eight years on her back, quite
tawny, almost dark – or maybe just that, depending on the observer’s level of
prejudice – she is smart and wise, despite her little education. Benvinda has
an eighteen-year old daughter, as wise as her and who works in a bank and
studies at night.
Upon
walking, Benvinda experiments an excitement that she had not felt in years. She
is in love….And surprised. Why did such a manful and handsome guy, with a
Spanish accent, was interested on her, a simple house maid, way older than him?
“Mysteries
of love?”, she asks herself. “Why not?” Once, Benvinda heard her current
mistress, while handling a magazine, say to her husband, a court judge, that a
certain Sheik of Arabia, upon his voyage to Brazil, fell in love with the
hotel’s maid and took her to the Middle East, where they got married.
It
is true, Benvinda remembers, that the Arabian potentate already has a few wives
in his homeland. But that is another question, a matter of nationality, of
legal differences that should be respected. As far as she understood, on his
country, the big man could undertake as many wives as his “pocket” could hold.
The interesting thing to Benvinda is how such maid, suddenly - in a snap – “Oh!
The illustrious follies of Love!” - had become the rich third, fourth or fifth
– she couldn’t quite remember – Madame
of an important man. With the right of luxury, housemaids, limousine,
chauffeur, etc. And the picture of this lucky maid, in Benvinda’s opinion, did
not show any unique beauty. It was a common face, sort of like hers, just
younger. Now, when comparing the two male, Benvinda smiled, with a superior
air. The Sheik, in the picture, was fat, kind of old, ugly, whilst hers was an
appetizing one, capable of seducing, with one foot on the back, any rich lady.
And he probably wasn’t poor either, in view of the expensive and showy shirts
he wore.
Speaking
of rich ladies, Benvinda nourishes an intense disdain for the girls who, in
mini-skirts, ventilate way too much their “pudendal parts”… By the way, this
expression pleases her quite a lot; she finds it quite sophisticated and uses
it frequently…She finds it elegant and generic, disobliging her from the
mentioning of specific dirty words. And she was shocked even more with the
first bikini thongs that came out; they, certainly, were uncomfortable and
tickled “down there”, in the “pudendal parts”. She would never wear these
“indecencies”. Her daughter, by a strike of miracle – because the second
generation almost always reacts against the first – agreed with her.
A
certain time, at the tank, while washing one of these swimsuits – or strap? –
belonging to her mistress’s niece, she was impressed with the petite size of
the piece. On that occasion, she could not prevent herself from making bitter
speculations, of odoriferous nature, related to that rope that allowed to show
one’s bu..I mean, the “pudendal parts”, so shamelessly. But what baffled her
the most was the fact that the user of that swimming-thong was a righteous and
sensate girl. If she was a good girl, thought Benvinda, why wouldn’t she wear a
whole bikini? How could fashion have such power over people? And why didn’t the
Government do something about it?
Julio
– that’s the name of the hottie – has been flirting with Benvinda for more than
a week now, but, up to this point, he has not made any passionate advancement,
like one of those making outs that make one wet, so common in all decades. And
this worried her a little. His “thing”, it seemed, was just talking and caring
for her, a fondness proper of someone older, precluded of something more
savage. Holding her hand would be the further he would go, and still he would
not hold it for very long. She thought: respect is a good thing, of course, but
when in excess, preoccupies.
Benvinda,
if not a dirty woman, is a needy one. She sorrows with the longstanding
abstinence. She would never giver herself for a man at the first or second
date. But, after the third or fourth, shall we say, there is no reason for
keeping such formalities, that exaggerated respect which is not any longer
obeyed by mankind. Then it’s just too much! After all, she is no queen of
England!
She
got to the point of thinking, for a moment, that there was something very wrong
with such diffidence: “Blimey! Would he happen to be a queer? I hadn’t thought
about that!... No, not possible! With that manly way, that hairy forearm, that
chest with hair coming out at the end of the shirt, that stubble and that manly
voice…No... Queer? Definitely not!”
Benvinda
had known, in the biblical way, few men, ten at most. She was terribly
disappointed when, very young and pregnant of her daughter, she found out that
her boyfriend was married and lived with his wife. The shock was far too great.
She was expecting marriage, or at least a decent friendly support, but, instead
of it, all that was left to her was loneliness and a growing belly. She even
considered killing herself. Or aborting. But she was helped by her mistress at
the time, a kind woman, an enlightened catholic, firm of her convictions, who
discouraged Benvinda of committing a sin. She said Benvinda was to kill an
innocent being that could come to hearten her senescence. And, indeed, her
daughter had only brought joy to Benvinda, wise as she only.
What
was left of this unsuccessful relationship of hers was a rather bitter opinion
regarding the character of men in general: “liars and selfish”. After the birth
of her child she would only “come out of her seriousness” once in a while, when
her libido began to whistle as high as a pressure cooker on the verge of
exploding. When things got to this point she would go to a some popular dancing
houses where she could always find a provisory company, equally in need of
damned libido discharge. Despite being rather ugly than pretty, she has a body
quite molded by the domestic gym – forced – of sweeping, washing and mopping –
the gym of the poor, who earn to “work out”. But she has always left these
after-party rendezvous with a strong feeling of guilt, however, remediable with
a long period of prayers and meat abstinence – the one from the meal and the
other one too. She has changed her religion three times, in her seek for a
peace she can never attain. This is how she had been living her life until,
unexpectedly, that attractive and respectful man appeared. She met him
casually, when she was leaving the residence in which she works, at the end of
a certain afternoon. He was standing on the other side of the street, looking
for an address that seemed impossible to be located, because such number did
not exist. When he saw Benvinda leaving the house, he asked her help. And then
a chaste and unexpected romance started.
What
made Benvinda a bit suspicious was his fad of making questions. Someone more
curious would be impossible: “What is your overlord’s name? Are you happy? Are
you sure?” - this part she found quite stupid. “Do you earn enough? Couldn’t
you employer pay you better? I’ve heard he is a court judge and has received,
as an inheritance, a few days ago, several gold bars and thousands of
dollars…He needs to be careful and keep them all safe, or else you know what
could happen….Hasn’t he thought about keeping all this in a bank?”
These
questions worried her. She asked him how he knew about this inheritance
received by his overlord. The man explained that he learned these facts by
coincidence, once he had a friend who is a court official, working exactly on
the registry in which the inventory of goods
was taken, goods left by a rich industrial to his only son, a court
judge. So when he told his friend, the court official, that he now had a
girlfriend who worked on a judge’s house, Julio was asked the name of the
judge. The official was well informed and told Julio about the heritage, in gold
and dollars. The official commented this with Julio because, usually, heirs do
not mention, in the stocktaking, heritages in gold and dollars.
The
explanation was plausible, yet she was left fidgety. On the other hand, if
Julio was really a robber, he would not need to make so many detours. All he
would need to do was draw a gun and grapple the boss on the right time, upon
his arrival at nighttime, or depart, in the morning.
Benvinda
finished these thoughts as soon as she arrived at her employer’s house, in a
high middle class district.
She
had just put the keys in the door lock when she felt a hand pressing firmly her
left arm; at the same time a gun barrel squeezed her ribs.
Right
behind her stood two burglars, both with silk socks over their heads. Benvinda
was pushed forward and in less than five seconds the three of them were inside
the house.
A
diffuse weakness followed the shock. Benvinda’s legs were floppy. She almost
urinated, a common reaction she has in moments of great fear. Despite her usual
cleverness, her head got stuck, hollow, dominated. Her mouth was shut steadily
by the same man that had grabbed her before, by the back; he was now holding
her front.
“Not
a cheep!” was the hard, yet murmured, warning from the bandit that was holding her.
“If I press this trigger your brains will go to Outer Space!” And Benvinda,
very imaginative, “saw”, clearly, her bloody brains, in pieces, flying in slow
motion by the living room.
“Where
does your boss keep the gold and the dollars?” the same bandit asked, close to
her ear. Meanwhile, his partner was doing a quick inspection on the level floor
of the fine house.
“What
gold?”, she whispered, in a sudden and surprising recovery of her cleverness.
The
thief could not keep from finding this funny. He didn’t appear to be nervous.
Calmly and without desire, he luffed her with his left hand, rubbing her
breast, whilst smiling under his disguise.
“Congratulations!
I never thought you’d recover so quickly, mama! But playtime is over now. I
know your boss has the gold with him. You wanna play Joana D’Arc? You better be
careful, we can rape you and torture everybody in here!”, saying this he
pressed very steadily the gun barrel against Benvinda’s left nostril, hurting
her. Her eyes immediately were filled with tears, but she didn’t dare to
scream.
“You
don’t even need to answer. It’s gotta be in his room…Let’s climb the stairs,
slowly; you go first and I keep my gun aimed at your head. When we get to his
door, you ask him if he wants his breakfast. Pretend you are carrying a
tray…You got it? Or do you need a few punches to get it? If you do as I say, I
let you live. I let all of them live, by the way! All I want is the dollar and
the little pretty gold bars. So don’t play the heroin in here, get it?
She
nodded her head, overcome, and was pushed, without a sound or stumble while she
climbed the stairs that led to the upper floor.
All
the three stopped at the door of the couple, Benvinda in the front. She
received a nudge on her neck, with the beak of the gun, and a sign that it was
time for her to play the role of waitress:
“Mister
Nelson…don’t you want to have your breakfast, sir? I brought it on a tray for
you, sir.”
Benvinda,
although smart – or maybe exactly because of it – was not a good actress at
all. The question came out in a screechy and strange voice.
Her
boss, on his forties, a judge from the Criminal Court, used to dealing with all
sorts of crime, noticed something strange on the tense voice of the maid. He
also noticed something strange on this offer of breakfast in bed, for this
never happened in their house. Why this novelty, now? Yet, he did not think
right away on a raid. He answered: “Why, thank you, Benvinda, it’ very kind of
you, but I’ll have my breakfast downstairs, as usual.”
Upon
hearing this, the “main” robber – the other one had not yet opened his mouth –
hesitated a bit. He wasn’t waiting for this kind of answer. But he soon
reacted, whispering in Benvinda’s ear: “Again…Offer it again!”
And
so did Benvinda: “Sir, you need to taaaaake it!”, she cried, almost moaning,
desperate.
It
was then that the judge’s suspicion rang like an old alarm clock, a very noisy
one. “There is something there”, he thought, immediately alert, with his heart
beating fast.
He
jumped from his bed and, without putting on his slippers, on tiptoes, avoiding
any din, he approached the door. As crouched as possible, he peeped through the
horizontal crack. He found, only by the shadows, that since Benvinda was not a
quadruped, there were other people on the corridor. This conjugation of leg
abundance and bawling imposition for taking his breakfast in bed could only
mean one more chapter of the dangerous “real crime stories “ that he read every
day of his profession.
“Just
a moment, I’ll open the door in a second!”, he shouted, trying to issue a
normal tone. He then instantly approached his wife that, standing up, was
staring at him with her eyes popping out, aware of the situation. Close to her
ears, he murmured: “Lock yourself in the bathroom. Quick! Without any noise!”.
Next,
he gave a few steps towards his wardrobe, where he kept a shotgun of double
barrel, always loaded despite the implicit risk of this habit. He did so
because, as a judge, he had heard several reports of victims that hadn’t had
the time to load their guns when the burglars were already inside the house.
The
judge took the shotgun and went back to bed, where he laid and adjusted the
butt position. He was foreseeing the breaking of the door. So he set his gun
and waited, directing the barrels to the middle of the door. His wife, at this
point, was already locked inside the bathroom.
The
excessive delay and the suspicious silence of the master of the house convinced
the main thug that he was up to something. It was now or never, then. He pulled
back the housemaid and stroke three strong kicks on the door, which wasn’t very
strong anyway, The kicks thundered all over the silent house. On the fourth kick the door opened violently.
In
this exact moment the judge pressed one of the triggers. Then, apparently, for
what was found later in the investigation, the front thief, for some reason,
turned his face. That was found because his jawbone was plucked, almost
entirely, by the conjunct pressure of the small bullets – of lead or steel –
fired by the mighty shotgun, in a short distance.
The
gunshot also had the effect of a violent heavyweight jab in a battered
lightweight, because the bandit that entered the room first was thrown
backwards, tugging along his partner and even Benvinda, that didn’t have the
time to get down the stairs, for she was still quite vaulted.
All
the three rolled down the staircase, in tumble, while the jaw remover got up
from the bed and prepared himself for an occasional second shooting.
From
the top of the stairway the owner of the house observed that, down there, none
of the robbers was holding, at that moment, any gun. They were dizzy. A
revolver was lying on his doorway and another one was lying on the highest
step, both out of reach for the dotty bandits.
Despite
not having his jaw, the bandit that seemed to be the leader of the incursion,
was able to stand up, staggering, confuse, with a glazed look, one hand holding
the lowest part of the banisters. With the other hand he was feeling the
injury, the lacerated emptiness where there once was a jaw. From the hole, an
immense quantity of blood flowed. His partner, also hurt, but not too much,
jointly and severally tried to drag his venture colleague, holding him by his
waist. They dragged their selves towards the kitchen, certainly looking to
escape by the backyard, where there was a not too tall wall. All they thought
about, now, was escaping.
With
utmost caution, Benvinda’s overlord followed them, not too close, but attentive
to what was happening, wary for the possibility of existing a third burglar
giving support to the other two. But he was soon convinced they were by their
selves.
The
bandits arrived at the backyard’s wall; on the other side of this wall there is
a wasteland – an easy escape for the daring two. The bandit less hurt quickly
climbed the wall and, sitting on its top, with one leg at each side, tried to
lift his partner. But his endeavor was in vain. The jawless man had no strength
at all. He could barely stand up. The loss of blood, plus the violent trauma
had weaken him in such a way that he couldn’t do more than lift his arms and
emit a few grunts – an expression of pain, or maybe an explanation of his lack
of strength. Posteriorly, when this man was in autopsy, the owner of the house
learned that the load of lead had lacerated his tongue.
The
robber standing on the top of the wall explained to his colleague, screaming –
that is what the judge understood from it – that he, less hurt, needed to
escape, but that the other, severely bruised, should be restful, for he would
very soon return, reinforced, to take him away.
The
jawless one, however, did not seem to accept this solution. He wanted the other
one to take him at once. Although weak, he protested, snoring and coughing. And
then his friend, exasperated, stared at the judge, who was many meters away. He
raised his fist, and shouted with hatred: “I’m going now, but I will be back to
kill you!”
This
thug had barely raised his left leg, preparing to leave the wall and escape,
when the owner of the house performed the second shot, hitting him perfectly.
Since the distance was greater now, the lead load could spread itself better
and ended up also hitting his already damaged partner who, stumbling, gave a
few steps away from the wall and fell, capsized, on a small children pool. The
other one fell down dead on the other side, on the neighboring grounds.
When
the police arrived, half an hour later, Benvinda was already being medicated –
nothing serious with her – and was telling her boss about the nimble and chaste
“courtship” that she had with that guy so full of questions, and who was dead
on the other side of the house’s wall. When the disguise was removed from his
face, she soon identified him. At the beginning of the raid he had not uttered
one single word. At the inquiry it was
verified that the two thugs were bothers, born in Paraguay, with criminal
background both in their home country and in Brazil.
As
for the judge, the traumatic event stroke him as particularly bitter. Up to
that moment, concerning mammals, he had only killed a capybara, in the state of
Mato Grosso. And he had felt a certain discomfort when he observed the torn
state of that animal.
Against
his principles – he was a straight man – because of comprehensible defense
instinct, he was forced to slightly modify the facts, when relating them to the
Chief of Police that attended the location. He affirmed that the thief, when
sitting on the wall, mentioned he was going to draw a weapon to shoot him and
moved his hand, in search of a gun.
That
second shooting he performed – he knew, it was written in every Criminal Law
treaty – did not suit as self-defense, once the danger had already ceased. He
had shot because of a threat, a simple future hypothesis. But, as a citizen, he
asked himself, trying to relieve and reassure his consciousness: “What if the
thief really came back to fulfill his promise? Wasn’t it my duty to protect, at
once, my home, wife and kids?”
A
few days after the tragedy he asked to be removed to a Civil Court. He felt traumatized,
without psychological balance to judge any criminal. He would sentence them
all.
He
kept teaching Criminal Law, but his students complained that, despite being an
exigent and nitpicky professor, he would always become evasive and brief when
explaining the formal requirements of self-defense. Especially at the article
of “actual or eminent aggression”. He did not seem comfortable explaining this
item. And he would soon jump to another topic.
A
month after the episode they moved into an apartment, where they haven’t been
robbed until now.
As
for Benvinda, she was shaken and sad for the next few months, disappointed with
herself. Every time she looked into a mirror, she imagined that a donkey stared
at her.
(Tradução
de Marianna Perna)
THE END
.
