The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (11 page)

Suddenly I heard a voice. “Hello, my boy, this is no life for you!” It was my father, who was corning with two proposals in his pocket. I sat down on the trunk and welcomed him without any fuss. He stood looking at me for a few moments and then extended his hand in an emotional gesture.

“My son, make adjustment to the will of God.”

“I’ve already adjusted,” was my answer, and I kissed his hand.

He hadn’t had lunch. We lunched together. Neither of us mentioned the sad reason for my withdrawal. Only once did we talk about it, in passing, when my father brought the conversation around to the Regency, It was then that he mentioned the letter of condolence that one of the Regents had sent him. He had the letter with him, already rather wrinkled, perhaps from having been read to so many other people. I think he said it was one of the Regents. He read it to me twice.

“I’ve already gone to thank him for that mark of consideration,” my father said, “and I think you should go, too …”

“I?”

“You. He’s an important man. He takes the place of the Emperor these days. Besides, I’ve brought an idea with me, a plan, or … yes, I’ll tell you everything. I’ve got two plans: a position as deputy and a marriage.”

My father said that slowly, pausing, and not in the same tone of voice but giving the words a form and placement with an end to digging them deeper into my spirit. The proposals, however, went so much against my latest feelings that I really didn’t get to understand them, My father didn’t flag and he repeated them, stressing the position and the bride.

“Do you accept?”

“I don’t understand politics,” I said after an instant. “As for the bride …, let me live like the bear I am.”

“But bears get married,” he replied.

“Then bring me a she-bear. How about the Ursa Major?” My father laughed and after laughing went back to speaking seriously. A political career was essential for me, he said, for twenty or more reasons, which he put forth with singular volubility, illustrating them with examples of people we knew. As for the bride, all I had to do was see her. If I saw her, I would immediately go ask her father for her hand, immediately, without waiting a single day. In that way first he tried fascination, then persuasion, then intimation. I gave no answer, sharpening the tip of a toothpick or making little balls of bread crumbs, smiling or reflecting. And, to say it outright, neither docile nor rebellious concerning the proposals. I felt confused. One part of me said yes, that a beautiful wife and a political position were possessions worthy of appreciation. Another said no, and my mother’s death appeared to me as an example of the fragility of things, of affections, of family …

“I’m not leaving here without a final answer,” my father said. “Fi-nal an-swer!” he repeated, drumming out the syllables with his finger.

He drank the last drops of his coffee, relaxed, started talking about everything, the senate, the chamber, the Regency, the restoration, Evaristo, a coach he intended to buy, our house in Matacavalos … I remained at a corner of the table writing crazily on a piece of paper with the stub of a pencil. I was tracing a word, a phrase, a line of poetry, a nose, a triangle, and I kept repeating them over and over, without any order, at random, like this:

All of it mechanically and, nonetheless, there was a certain logic, a certain deduction. For example, it was the
virumque
that made me get to the name of the poet himself, because of the first syllable. I was going to write
virumque
—and
Virgil came
out, then I continued:

My father, a little put off by that indifference, stood up, came over to me, cast his eyes onto the paper …

“Virgil!” he exclaimed. “That’s it, my boy. Your bride just happens to be named Virgília.”

Virgília? But, then, was it the same lady who some years later …? The very same. It was precisely the lady who was to be present during my last days in 1869 and who before, long before, had played an ample part in my most intimate sensations. At that time she was only fifteen or sixteen years old. She was possibly the most daring creature of our race and, certainly, the most willful. I shan’t say that she was already first in beauty, ahead of the other girls of the time, because this isn’t a novel, where the author gilds reality and closes his eyes to freckles and pimples. But I won’t say either that any freckle or pimple blemished her face, no. She was pretty, fresh, she came from the hands of nature full of that sorcery, uncertain and eternal, that an individual passes to another individual for the secret ends of creation. That was Virgília, and she was fair, very fair, ostentatious, ignorant, childish, full of mysterious drives, a lot of indolence, and some devoutness—devoutness or maybe fear. I think fear.

There in a few lines the reader has the physical and moral portrait of the person who was to influence my life later on. She was all that at sixteen. You who read me, if you’re still alive when these pages come to life—you who read me, beloved Virgília, have you noticed the difference between the language of today and the one I first used when I saw you? Believe me, it was just as sincere then as now. Death didn’t make me sour, or unjust.

“But,” you’re probably saying, “how can you discern the truth of those times like that and express it after so many years?”

Ah! So indiscreet! Ah! So ignorant! But it’s precisely that which has made us lords of the earth; it’s that power of restoring the past to touch the instability of our impressions and the vanity of our affections. Let Pascal say that man is a thinking reed. No. He’s a thinking erratum, that’s what he is. Every season of life is an edition that corrects the one before and which will also be corrected itself until the definitive edition, which the publisher gives to the worms gratis.

“Virgília?” I interrupted. “Yes, sir. That’s the name of the bride. An angel, you ninny, an angel without wings. Picture a girl like that, this tall, a lively scamp, and a pair of eyes … Dutra’s daughter …”

“What Dutra is that?”

“Councilor Dutra. You don’t know him, lots of political influence. All right, do you accept?”

I didn’t answer right off. I stared at my shoetops for a few seconds. Then I declared that I was willing to think both things over, the candidacy and the marriage, provided that…

“Provided that what?”

“Provided that I’m not obliged to accept both things. I think that I can be a married man and a public man separately …”

“All public men have to be married,” my father interrupted sententiously. “But do what you will. It’s all right with me. I’m sure that seeing will be believing! Besides, bride and parliament are the same thing … that is, not… you’ll find out later … Go ahead. I accept the delay, provided that…”

“Provided that what?” I interrupted, imitating his voice.

“Oh, you rascal! Provided that you don’t let yourself sit there useless, obscure, and sad. I didn’t put out money, care, drive not to see you shine the way you should and as suits you and all of us. Our name has to continue; continue it and make it shine even more. Look, I’m sixty, but if it were necessary to start life over I wouldn’t hesitate a single minute. Fear obscurity, Brás, flee from the negligible. Men are worth something in different ways, and the surest one of all is being worthy in the opinion of other men. Don’t squander the advantages of your position, your means …”

And the magician went ahead waving a rattle in front of me as they used to do when I was little in order to make me walk more quickly, and the flower of hypochondria retreated into its bud to leave another flower less yellow and not at all morbid—the love of fame, the Brás Cubas poultice.

My father had won. I was prepared to accept diploma and marriage, Virgília and the Chamber of Deputies. “The two Virgílias,” he said with a show of political tenderness. I accepted them. My father gave me two strong hugs. It was his own blood that he was finally recognizing.

“Are you coming back down with me?”

“I’ll go down tomorrow. First I’m going to pay a visit to Dona Eusébia…’’

My father wrinkled his nose but didn’t say anything. He said goodbye and went back down. The afternoon of that same day I went to visit Dona Eusébia, I found her scolding a black gardener, but she left off everything to come and talk to me, with a bustle and such sincere pleasure that I immediately lost my shyness. I think she even put her pair of robust arms around me. She had me sit down by her feet on the veranda in the midst of many exclamations of contentment.

“Just look at you, Brazinho! A man! Who would have said years back … A great big man! And handsome, I’ll say! You don’t remember me too well, do you?”

I said that I did, that it was impossible to forget such a familiar friend of our house. Dona Eusébia began to talk about my mother with great longing, with so much longing that she immediately got to me and I grew sad. She perceived it in my eyes and changed the topic. She asked me to tell her about my travels, my studies, my love affairs … yes, my love affairs, too. She confessed to me that she was an old gadabout. At that point I remembered the episode of 1814, her, Vilaça, the shrubbery, the kiss, my shout. And as I was recalling it I heard the creak of a door, a rustle of skirts, and this word:

“Mama …, Mama …”

The voice and skirts belonged to a young brunette who stopped in the doorway for a few seconds on seeing a stranger. A short, constrained silence followed. Dona Eusébia broke it with a frankness and resolve.

“Come here, Eugênia,” she said, “say hello to Dr. Brás Cubas, Mr. Cubas’ son. He’s back from Europe.”

And turning to me:

“My daughter, Eugênia.”

Eugênia, the flower from the shrubbery, barely responded to the courteous bow I gave her. She looked at me, surprised and bashful, and slowly, slowly came forward to her mother’s chair. Her mother fixed one of the braids of her hair whose end had become undone. “Oh, you scamp!” she said. “You can’t imagine, doctor, what it’s like …” And she kissed her with such great tenderness that it moved me a bit. It reminded me of my mother and—I’ll say it right out—I had an itch to be a father.

“Scamp?” I said. “But isn’t she beyond that age now? It would look that way.”

“How old would you say she is?”

“Seventeen.”

“One less.”

“Sixteen. Well, then, she’s a young lady.”

Eugênia couldn’t hide the satisfaction she felt with those words of mine, but she immediately got hold of herself and was the same as before—stiff, cold, mute. As a matter of fact she looked even more womanly than she was. She could have been a child playing at being a young lady but, quiet, impassive like that, she had the composure of a married woman. That circumstance may have diminished her virginal grace a bit. We quickly became familiar. Her mother sang her praises and I listened to them willingly and she was smiling, her eyes sparkling as if inside her brain a little butterfly with golden wings and diamond eyes were flying …

I say inside because what was fluttering outside was a black butterfly that had come onto the veranda all of a sudden and began to flap its
wings around Dona Eusébia. Dona Eusébia cried out, stood up, swore with some disconnected words: “Away with you! … Get away, you devilish thing! … Holy Mother Virgin! …”

“Don’t be afraid,” I said and, taking out my handkerchief, I shooed the butterfly away. Dona Eusébia sat down again, puffing, a little embarrassed. Her daughter, pale with fear, perhaps, concealed that impression with great willpower. I shook hands with them and left, laughing to myself at the two women’s superstition, a philosophical, disinterested, superior laugh. In the afternoon I saw Dona Eusébia’s daughter pass by on horseback, followed by a houseboy. She waved to me with her whip. I must confess that I flattered myself with the idea that a few steps farther on she would look back, but she didn’t turn her head.