The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (13 page)

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

From there we went to Dutra’s house. The man was a delight, smiling, jovial, patriotic, a bit irritated by public ills but not despairing about curing them quickly. He thought my candidacy was legitimate. It was best, however, to wait a few months. And then he introduced me to his wife—an estimable lady—and his daughter, who in no way belied my father’s panegyric. I swear to you, in no way. Reread
Chapter XXVII
. I, who had an idea regarding the little one, stared at her in a certain way. She, who I’m not sure had one or not, didn’t stare at me any differently. And that first look was purely and simply conjugal. At the end of a month we were close.

“Come dine with us tomorrow,” Dutra told me one night. I accepted the invitation. The next day I told the carriage to wait for me on the Largo Sao Francisco de Paula and I went to take a stroll. Do you still remember my theory of human editions? Well, know, then, that at that time I was in my fourth edition, revised and corrected, but still contaminated with careless errors and incorrect usage. A defect that, on the other hand, was compensated for by the type, which was elegant, and the binding, which was deluxe. After my stroll, as I went along the Rua dos Ouvires I looked at my watch and the crystal fell to the sidewalk. I went into the first shop at hand. It was a cubicle, little more—dusty and dark.

In the rear, behind the counter, a woman was sitting and her yellow, pockmarked face wasn’t visible at first sight. But as soon as it was it became a curious spectacle. She couldn’t have been ugly, on the contrary, it was obvious that she’d been pretty, quite pretty. But the illness and a precocious old age had destroyed the flower of her beauty. The smallpox had been terrible. The marks, large and plentiful, formed bumps and
notches up and down her face and they gave the feeling of thick sandpaper, enormously thick. The eyes were the best part of the figure and yet they had a singular and repugnant expression that changed, however, as soon as I began to speak. As for her hair, it was gray and almost as dusty as the doorway to the shop. A diamond gleamed on one of the fingers of her left hand. Can you believe it, you future generations? That woman was Marcela.

I didn’t recognize her right away. It was difficult. She, however, recognized me as soon as I spoke to her. Her eyes sparkled and changed their usual expression for another, half sweet and half sad. I caught a movement by her as if to hide or flee. It was the instinct of vanity, which only lasted for an instant. Marcela settled down and smiled.

“Do you want to buy something?” she asked, holding out her hand to me.

I didn’t answer. Marcela understood the cause of my silence (it wasn’t difficult) and only hesitated, I think, in deciding which was stronger, the fright of the present or the memory of the past. She brought me a chair and with the counter between us spoke to me at length about herself, the life she’d led, the tears I’d caused her to shed, the longing, the disasters, finally the smallpox that had scarred her face, and time, which the illness had helped in bringing on her early decline. The truth is that she did have a decrepit soul. She’d sold everything, almost everything. A man who’d loved her in times past and died in her arms had left her that jewelry store but, to make misfortune complete, there weren’t many customers coming to the shop now—maybe because of the odd situation that it was run by a woman. She immediately asked me to tell her about my life. I didn’t spend much time telling it. It was neither long nor interesting.

“Did you get married?” Marcela asked after my narration.

“Not yet,” I replied drily.

Marcela cast her eyes out onto the street with the weakness of someone reflecting or remembering. I let myself go into the past then and in the midst of memories and nostalgia asked myself whatever could have been the reason for my having been so foolish. This one certainly wasn’t the Marcela of 1822, but was the beauty of times gone by worth a third of my sacrifices? That was what I was seeking to find out by interrogating Marcela’s face. The face told me no. At the same time the eyes were telling me that back then, the same as today, the flame of greed burned in them. Mine hadn’t been able to see it in her. They were the eyes of the first edition.

“So why did you come in here? Did you see me from the street?” she asked, coming out of that kind of torpor.

“No, I thought I was coming into a watchmaker’s shop. I wanted to buy a crystal for this watch. I’ll go somewhere else. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m in a hurry.”

Marcela smiled sadly. The truth is that I felt distressed and annoyed at the same time and I was anxious to get myself out of that place. Marcela, however, called a black boy, gave him the watch, and, in spite of my objections, sent him to a shop in the neighborhood to buy the crystal. There was no way out. I sat down again. Then she said that she wanted the protection of people she knew in times gone by. She thought that sooner or later it would be natural for me to get married and swore to me that she would get me fine jewelry at a cheap price. She didn’t say
cheap price
, but she used a delicate and transparent metaphor. I began to suspect that she hadn’t suffered any disaster (except for the illness), that she had her money safely put away, and that she was bargaining with the sole aim of satisfying her passion for profit, which was the worm that gnawed at her existence. That was exactly what I was told later.

While I was reflecting on that to myself, a short fellow, hatless and leading a girl of four by the hand, entered the shop.

“How’d the morning go today?” he asked Marcela.

“So, so. Come here, Maricota.”

The fellow picked up the child by the arms and passed her over the counter.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Ask Dona Marcela how she spent the night. She was anxious to come here, but her mother hadn’t been able to dress her … So, Maricota? Ask her for her blessing … Watch out for the
switch! That’s the way … You can’t imagine what she’s like at home. She talks about you all the time, and here she acts like a dummy. Just yesterday … Shall I tell her, Maricota?”

“No, don’t tell her, Papa,”

“Was it something naughty, then?” Marcela asked, patting the girl’s face.

“I’ll tell you. Her mother has taught her to say an Our Father and a Hail Mary every night to Our Lady, but yesterday the little one asked me in a very timid voice … can you imagine what?… If it would be all right to offer them to Saint Marcela.”

“Poor thing!” Marcela said, kissing her.

“It’s a love affair, a passion, you can’t imagine … Her mother says she’s bewitched …”

The fellow told many other things, all very pleasant, until he left, taking the girl, but not before casting a curious or suspicious glance in my direction. I asked Marcela who he was.

“He’s a watchmaker in the neighborhood, a good person. His wife, too. And the daughter is a charm, don’t you think? She seems to like me a lot… They’re good people.”

As she spoke those words there seemed to be a quiver of joy in Marcela’s voice. And on her face something that spread a wave of happiness across it…

At that point the black boy came in carrying the watch with a new crystal. It was about time. It was already beginning to bother me being there. I gave the boy a small silver coin, told Marcela that I’d come back on another occasion, and went out with long strides. To tell the truth, I must confess that my heart was pounding a little. But it was a kind of death knell. My spirit was bound by opposing impressions.
Remember that the day had dawned happily for me. My father had repeated in advance for me at breakfast the first speech I would make in the Chamber of Deputies. We were laughing a lot and the sun was, too, brilliant as on the most beautiful days in the world, the same way that Virgília should laugh when I told her about our breakfast fantasies. All is going well when I lose the crystal to my watch, go into the first shop at hand, and, behold, the past rises up before me, lacerates and kisses me, interrogates me with a face scarred by nostalgia and smallpox …

I left it behind and hurriedly got into the carriage, which was waiting for me on the Largo São Francisco de Paula, and I ordered the coachman to drive fast. The coachman whipped up the animals and the carriage began to shake me up. The springs groaned, the wheels cut rapidly through the mud that the recent rain had left, and yet it all seemed stock-still to me. Isn’t there a kind of lukewarm wind that blows sometimes, not strong or harsh, but a little sultry, which doesn’t blow the hat off your head or swirl women’s skirts up, and yet is or seems to be worse than the one that does both those things because it lowers, weakens, kind of dissolves the spirit? Well, I had that wind with me, and, certain that it was blowing on me because I found myself in a kind of gorge between the past and the present, I was longing to come out onto the plain of the future. The worst of it was that the carriage wasn’t moving.

“João,” I shouted to the coachman, “Is this carriage moving or not?”

“Oh, Little Master! We’re parked by the Councilor’s door already.”

He was right. I hurried in. I found Virgília anxious, in a bad mood, frowning. Her mother, who was deaf, was with her in the living room. After the greetings, the girl told me dryly:

“We expected you sooner.”

I defended myself as best I could. I mentioned a balky horse, a friend who’d held me up. All of a sudden my voice died on my lips, I was paralyzed with wonder. Virgília … could that girl be Virgília? I took a good look at her and the feeling was so painful, that I took a step back and turned my eyes away. I looked at her again. The smallpox had eaten at her face. Her skin, so delicate and pink and pure before, just a day ago, looked yellow to me now, stigmatized by the same lash that had devastated the Spanish woman’s face. Her eyes, which used to be lively, were dull, her lips were sad and she had a weary air about her. I took a good look, took her hand and softly drew her toward me. I hadn’t been deceived, they were pockmarks. I think I took on an expression of revulsion.

Virgília drew away from me and went to sit down on the sofa. I spent some time looking at my shoetops. Should I leave or stay? I rejected the first suggestion, which was quite absurd, and walked over to Virgília, who was sitting there without saying a word. I looked in vain for some vestige of the illness on her face. There was none. It was the usual delicate and white skin.

“Haven’t you ever seen me before?” Virgília asked, noticing that I was staring at her intently.

“Never so pretty.”

I sat down while Virgília, silent, clicked her fingernails. There was a pause of a few seconds. I spoke to her about things that had nothing to do with the incident. She didn’t say anything in response nor did she look at me. Except for the clicking of her nails she was the statue of Silence. Only once did she set her eyes on me, but far above me, raising the left corner of her mouth, knitting her brows to the point of bringing them together. That whole combination of things gave her face an intermediate expression, somewhere between comic and tragic.

There was a certain affection in that disdain. It was a kind of contrived expression. She was suffering inside, and quite a bit—it was either real suffering or just annoyance. And because pain that’s covered up hurts all the more, quite probably Virgília was suffering twice over what she really should have been suffering. I think that’s called metaphysics.

Another thing that seems metaphysical to me is this: put a ball into motion, for example. It rolls, touches another ball, transmits the impulse, and there you have the second ball rolling like the first. Let us suppose that the first ball is called … Marcela—and it’s only a supposition. The second Brás Cubas—the third Virgília. Put the case that Marcela, receiving a flick from the past, rolls until she touches Brás Cubas—who, reacting to the impelling force, begins to roll, too, until he runs up against Virgília, who had nothing to do with the first ball. And there you have now, by the simple transmission of a force, two social extremes come into contact and something is established that we can call… the solidarity of human aversion. How is it that Aristotle left that chapter out?

Virgília was positively a mischief-maker, an angelic mischief-maker, but one all the same, then …

Then Lobo Neves appeared, a man who was no slimmer than I, nor more elegant, nor better read, nor more pleasant, and yet it was he who snatched Virgília and the candidacy away from me in a matter of a few weeks and with truly Caesarian drive. There was no anger preceding it, no family dispute at all. Dutra came to tell me one day that I should
wait for another opportunity because Lobo Neves’ candidacy was backed by people of great influence. I gave in. Such was the start of my defeat. A week later Virgília asked Lobo Neves, smiling, when he was going to be a cabinet minister.

“As far as I’m concerned, right now, according to others, a year from now.”

“Promise me that you’ll make me a baroness someday?”

“A marchioness, because I shall be a marquis.”

From that moment on I was lost. Virgília compared the eagle to the peacock and chose the eagle, leaving the peacock with his surprise, his spite, and the three or four kisses she’d given him. Maybe five kisses. But even if there’d been ten, they wouldn’t have meant anything. A man’s lip isn’t like the hoof of Atilla’s horse, which sterilized the ground it trod. Quite the opposite.