"I won't have it," she said. "You have no right to pry into my husband's life."
He raised an eyebrow. She knew Starways Code as well as anyone, and so she knew perfectly well that he not only had a right, the law protected him in the pursuit of the true story of the dead.
"Marc o was a miserable man," she persisted, "and telling the truth about him will cause nothing but pain."
"You're quite right that the truth about him will cause nothing but pain, but not because he was a miserable man," said the Speaker. "If I told nothing but what everyone already knows - that he hated his children and beat his wife and raged drunkenly from bar to bar until the constables sent him home - then I would not cause pain, would I? I'd cause a great deal of satisfaction, because then everyone would be reassured that their view of him was correct all along. He was scum, and so it was all right that they treated him like scum."
"And you think he wasn't?"
"No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins."
"If you believe that, then you're younger than you look," said Novinha.
"Am I?" said the Speaker. "It was less than two weeks ago that I first heard your call. I studied you then, and even if you don't remember, Novinha, I remember that as a young girl you were sweet and beautiful and good. You had been lonely before, but Pipo and Libo both knew you and found you worthy of love."
"Pipo was dead."
"But he loved you."
"You don't know anything, Speaker! You were twenty-two lightyears away! Besides, it wasn't me I was calling worthless, it was Marc o!"
"But you don't believe that, Novinha. Because you know the one act of kindness and generosity that redeems that poor man's life."
Novinha did not understand her own terror, but she had to silence him before he named it, even though she had no idea what kindness of C o's he thought he had discovered. "How dare you call me Novinha!" she shouted. "No one has called me that in four years!"
In answer, he raised his hand and brushed his fingers across the back of her cheek. It was a timid gesture, almost an adolescent one; it reminded her of Libo, and it was more than she could bear. She took his hand, hurled it away, then shoved past him into the room. "Get out!" she shouted at Miro. Her son got up quickly and backed to the door. She could see from his face that after all Miro had seen in this house, she still had managed to surprise him with her rage.
"You'll have nothing from me!" she shouted at the Speaker.
"I didn't come to take anything from you," he said quietly.
"I don't want anything you have to give, either! You're worthless to me, do you hear that? You're the one who's worthless! Lixo, ruina, estrago - vai fora d'aqui, nao tens direito estar em minha casa!" You have no right to be in my house.
"Nao eres estrago," he whispered, "eres solo fecundo, e vou plantar jardim ai." Then, before she could answer, he closed the door and was gone.
In truth she had no answer to give him, his words were so outrageous. She had called him estrago, but he answered as if she had called herself a desolation. And she had spoken to him derisively, using the insultingly familiar tu for "you" instead of o Senhor or even the informal voce. It was the way one spoke to a child or a dog. And yet when he answered in the same voice, with the same familiarity, it was entirely different. "Thou art fertile ground, and I will plant a garden in thee." It was the sort of thing a poet says to his mistress, or even a husband to his wife, and the tu was intimate, not arrogant. How dare he, she whispered to herself, touching the cheek that he had touched. He is far crueler than I ever imagined a Speaker might be. Bishop Peregrino was right. He is dangerous, the infidel, the anti-Christ, he walks brazenly into places in my heart that I had kept as holy ground, where no one else was