Page 55 of An Immaculate Deception

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Lust?”

“Yes.”

She seems to have no response to this, so I leave the room. While I cross the corridor, no sound comes from Mother’s room. When I reach my own room, I still don’t hear anything. Why isn’t she leaving?

Then I hear her footsteps, light and rushed. She appears at my door with ruby-red lips. I don’t know why she’s still here. She steps toward me. A wordless warning rings in my ears, like a buzz.

She takes my hand in hers, and they are warm. I catch a whiff of lavender rose.

“Then let us take just a few more photos,” she says, voice soft and cajoling. The smile on her lips is not entirely convincing.

I raise one brow. “Why?”

“As a goodbye measure. Just a handful. What’s the harm in it?”

What’s the harm in it—she said the same thing about putting on Mother’s clothes that very first time.

I find no grounds on which to deny this strange request, so I acquiesce. But deep down I sense a trap.

I go to get the camera ready with a share of misgivings. Yet it is no doubt easier to go along with just a few more photos than to quarrel. On my way back to Mother’s room I hear the tune from the cylinder music box, then the sound of a bottle opening and liquid pouring into glass. This all seems excessive. Does she really think she’s going to change my mind with these antics? Alcohol, music, perfume. I almost feel sorry for her. I also don’t understand. Judging from her disdain, her condescension, the way she laughed at me, she cannot really admire me at all. So why bother with these efforts? She must only be doing this for the job, though the pay is meager, and she seems not to care much for her maid duties.

Satan seeks to corrupt, that is the end in itself.

It won’t work.

When I return to the room I nearly drop the camera. Joaquina sits with her long hair down over her shoulders, still as a painting, wearing nothing but a petticoat underskirt with eyelet embroidery. Hands languid on the armrests. The top half of her body is exposed.

Her lips curl and she tilts her head as if striking her first pose.

“What are you doing?” I say when I find my voice.

“Posing for the photos.”

“You’re indecent.”

I try to turn around so as not to look at her, but I cannot.

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“I can’t photograph you like that.”

“I think you can.”

I stare, stunned that a woman would speak to a man this way. Mother was right about women nowadays lacking decency and propriety. Joaquina laughs again, filling the room with triumph and derision. She is mistaken if she thinks I am going to photograph her in this state. I would then have her indecency captured forevermore. I could always look at it at any point in time. Even if she was dismissed and I never saw her again, I would have this fragment of sin captured and within reach.

My shock melts into something else. The edges of my mind soften. Despite being a wicked beast, she is beautiful. The gold of her skin gleams against the plumeria petals and the hazel of her hair. I think her beauty makes her feel entitled to cruelty. She laughs because she knows my true feelings, my nature. The image of her before me is so precious and ephemeral, I might never see her again—I must not let it fade.

I must capture it.

I already have the camera in hand anyway.

33

I do not sleep that night.

I spend all night with Joaquina in fits of passion and terror. Each time I thought we were done, she lured me into it again, in a new way I never knew was possible. I wake up the next morning surrounded by empty bottles and glasses, flower petals, her hair and limbs wrapped around me. The room reeks of alcohol, stale perfume, and sex. I slip away from under the bedsheets in disgust and attempt to avoid her throughout the day. She simply moves from the bedroom to the kitchen without bothering to pretend she had arrived in the morning. No regard for the rumors people might spread. The harder I try to not think about her, the more intrusive and obscene the thoughts that pop into my mind: her lying naked on my desk in my study. Her leading me by the hand across the kitchen into her cot.

Her barging into my study without knocking and straddling me on my chair wasn’t an intrusive thought, but reality. She did this before sundown when Maria das Dores was still in the house. Joaquina didn’t make any attempt to stifle her screams, either.