Half a Life_ A Novel - V. S. Naipaul [80]
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CARLA ANNOUNCED that she was going to move to Portugal for good as soon as she found a new manager. The news cast a gloom over us, people of Carla's estate-house group, and we tried over the next few weeks to get her to change her mind, not because we were thinking of her, but because—as often after a death—we were thinking of ourselves. We were jealous and worried. Carla's going away, the disappearance of the Correias, felt like the beginning of the breakdown of our special world. It touched new fears we didn't want to think about; it lessened our idea of the life we were leading. Even Ana, never envious of anyone, said with something like spite, “Carla says she's leaving because she can't bear to be alone in the house, but I happen to know that she's only doing what Jacinto told her to do.”
Soon enough the new manager was found. He was the husband of a convent-school friend of Carla's; and the story spread by Carla to win sympathy for the couple, was that life had not treated them well. They were not going to live in the manager's house; Álvaro and his family had left that (and the huts they had added on) in a great mess. They were going to live in the estate house. Ana said, “Carla talks about charity to a friend who has fallen on hard times. But that friend is going to have to keep the house in good order. Carla came back from Europe to a house that had begun to fall apart. I feel it in my bones that Carla is going to sell in a couple of years, when the market rises.”
There was a special Sunday lunch at the house, to say goodbye to Carla, and to meet the new manager. Even if I didn't know about his circumstances I would have noticed him. There was about him a quality of suppressed violence; he was like a man holding himself in check. He was in his forties, of mixed ancestry, more Portuguese than African, broad but soft-looking. He was polite to everybody, even formal, anxious in one way to make a good impression, yet different in manner and style from everyone, a man apart. His eyes were distant; they seemed a little bit removed from what he was doing. The bumps on his top lip were pronounced; the lower lip was full and smooth, with a shine; it was the mouth of a sensual man.
Mrs. Noronha, hunched up in her chair, head to one side, said in her way, “A bad time. A bad decision. Much sorrow awaits you in Portugal. Your children will bring you much sorrow there.” But Carla, who two years before would have jumped with fright at such a message from the spirits, paid no attention; and she paid no attention when Mrs. Noronha said it all a second time. The rest of us took our cue from Carla. We didn't interfere; we thought that what had happened or was happening between Carla and Mrs. Noronha was a private matter. Mrs. Noronha seemed to understand that she had overplayed her hand. She pressed her head into her neck, and in the beginning it looked as though anger and shame were going to send her away in a huff, as though at any moment she might make a gesture to her thin, sour-faced husband, the man of birth, and be wheeled out in disdainful style from the company of the half-and-half people. It didn't work out like that. Rather, over the hour and a half that remained of the lunch, Mrs. Noronha sought to play herself back into the general conversation, making neutral or encouraging comments about many things, and in the end even appearing to take an interest in Carla's arrangements in Portugal. It was the beginning of the end for her as a soothsayer—though she continued to appear among us for a few more years. And it had been so easy to puncture her. It might have been that, with the half-news and rumours that kept on coming from the besieged frontiers, the racial and social heights that the Noronhas represented