The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (15 page)

“It’s very hot,” she said when we finished. “Shall we go out onto the terrace?”

“No, you might catch cold. Let’s go into the other room.”

In the other room was Lobo Neves, who paid me many compliments for my political writings, adding that he couldn’t say anything about the literary ones because he didn’t understand them, but the political ones were excellent, well thought out and well written. I replied with an equal show of courtesy and we separated, pleased with each other.

About three weeks later I received an invitation from him for an intimate gathering. I went. Virgília greeted me with these gracious words: “You’re going to waltz with me tonight.” The truth was that I had the reputation of being an eminent waltzer. Don’t be surprised over the fact that she preferred me. We waltzed once and once again. If a book brought on Francesca’s downfall, here it was the waltz that brought on ours. I think I grasped her hand that night with great strength and she left it there, as if forgetful, and I embraced her, and with all eyes on us and on the others who were also embracing and twirling … Delirium.

“She’s mine!” I said to myself as soon as I passed her on to another gentleman. And I must confess that for the rest of the evening the idea was becoming embedded in my spirit, not with the force of a hammer, but with that of a drill, which is more insinuative.

“Mine!” I said when I got to the door of my house.

But there, as if fate or chance or whatever it was remembered to feed my passionate flight of fancy, a round, yellow thing was gleaming at me on the ground. I bent over. It was a gold coin, a half doubloon.

“Mine!” I repeated, and laughed.

That night I didn’t think about the coin anymore, but on the following day, remembering the incident, I felt a certain revulsion in my conscience and a voice that asked me why the devil a coin that I hadn’t inherited or earned but only found in the street should be mine. Obviously it wasn’t mine, it belonged to somebody else, the one who’d lost it, rich or poor, and he might have been poor. Some worker who didn’t have anything to feed his wife and children with. But even if he was rich my duty remained the same. It was proper to return the coin and the best method, the only method, was to do it through an advertisement or through the police. I sent a letter to the chief of police enclosing what I’d found and beseeching him by the means at his disposal to return it into the hands of its true owner.

I sent the letter off and ate a peaceful breakfast, I might even say a jubilant one. My conscience had waltzed so much the night before that it had lost its breath, but giving back the half doubloon was a window that opened onto the other side of morality. A wave of pure air came in and the lady breathed deeply. Ventilate your conscience! That’s all I can tell you. Nevertheless, if for no other reason, my act was a nice one because it expressed the proper scruples, the feelings of a delicate soul. That was what my inner lady was telling me, in a way that was austere and tender at the same time. That was what she was telling me as I leaned on the sill of the open window.

“You did well, Cubas. You behaved perfectly. This air isn’t only pure, it’s balmy, it’s the breath of the eternal gardens. Do you want to see what you did, Cubas?”

And the good lady took out a mirror and opened it: before my eyes. I saw, I clearly saw the half doubloon of the night before, round, shiny, multiplying all by itself—becoming ten-—then thirty—then five hundred—expressing in that way the benefits I would be given in life and in death by the simple act of restitution. And I was pouring out my whole being into the contemplation of that act, I was seeing myself in it again, I found myself good—great perhaps. A simple coin, eh? See what it means to have waltzed just a wee bit more.

So I, Brás Cubas, discovered a sublime law, the law of the equivalencies of windows, and I established the fact that the method of compensating for a closed window is to open another, so that morality can continuously aerate one’s conscience. Maybe you don’t understand what’s entailed in that. Maybe you want something more concrete, a package, for example, a mysterious package. Well, here’s the mysterious package.

The matter is that a few days later on my way to Botafogo I tripped over a package lying on the beach. That’s not quite exact. It was more of a kick than a trip. Seeing a bundle, not large but clean and neatly tied together with strong twine, something that looked like something, I thought about giving it a kick, just for the fun of it, and I kicked it, and the package resisted. I cast my eyes about. The beach was deserted. Some children were playing far off—beyond them a fisherman was drying his nets—no one could have seen my act. I bent over, picked up the package, and went on my way.

I went on my way but not without some hesitation. It might have been a trick being played by some boys, I got the idea of taking what I’d
found back to the beach, but I felt it and rejected the idea. A little farther on I changed course and headed home.

“Let’s have a look,” I said as I entered my study.

And I hesitated for a moment, because of shame, I think. The suspicion of a trick struck me again. It was certain that there’d been no outside witness there. But I had an urchin inside myself who would whisper, wink, grunt, kick, jeer, cackle, do devilish things if he saw me open the package and find a dozen old handkerchiefs or two dozen rotting guavas inside. It was too late. My curiosity was sharpened, as the reader’s must be. I unwrapped the bundle and I saw … found … counted … recounted nothing less than five
cantos
. Nothing less. Maybe ten
mil-réis
more. Five
cantos
in good banknotes and coins, all clean and in neat order, a rare find. I wrapped them up again. At dinner it seemed to me that one of the black boys was speaking to the other with his eyes. Had they spied on me? I asked them discreetly and concluded that they hadn’t. After dinner I went back to my study, examined the money, and laughed at my maternal worries regarding the five
contos
—I, who was well-off.

In order not to think about it any more I went to Lobo Neves’ that night. He’d insisted that I not miss his wife’s receptions. There I ran into the chief of police. I was introduced to him. He immediately remembered the letter and the half doubloon I’d sent him a few days before. He revealed the matter. Virgília seemed to be savoring my act and everyone of those present came up with some analogous anecdote to which I listened with the impatience of a hysterical woman.

The following night and during that whole week I gave as little thought as I could to the five
cantos
and, I must confess, I left them ever so peaceful in my desk drawer. I liked talking about everything except money, and principally money that had been found. It wasn’t a crime to find money, however, it was a happy thing, good luck, maybe even a stroke of Providence. It couldn’t be anything else. Five
cantos
aren’t lost the way you lose a pouch of tobacco. Five
cantos
are carried with thirty thousand feelings, you keep feeling them, you don’t take your eyes off them, or your hands, or your thoughts, and for them to be lost foolishly like that on a beach it has to be … Finding them can’t be a crime. Neither a crime, nor dishonor, nor anything that might sully a man’s character. They were something discovered, a lucky strike, like the grand prize, like a winning bet on the horses, like the stakes in an honest gambling game, and I might even say that my good luck was deserved, because I didn’t feel bad or unworthy of the rewards of Providence.

“These five
cantos,”
I said to myself three weeks later, “must be used for some good deed, maybe as the dowry of some poor girl, or something like that… I’ll see …”

That same day I took them to the Banco de Brasil. There I was received with many gracious references to the matter of the half doubloon, the news of which was already spreading among people of my acquaintance. I replied with annoyance that the matter wasn’t worth the great to-do. Then they praised my modesty—and since I got angry they answered that it was nothing more or less than something grand.

Virgília was the one who no longer remembered the half doubloon. Her whole being was concentrated on me, on my eyes, on my life, on my thoughts—that was what she said and it was true.

There are some plants that are born and grow quickly. Others are late and stunted. Our love was like the former. It burst forth with such drive and so much sap that in a short while it was the broadest, leafiest, and most luxuriant creation in the forest. I can’t tell you for certain the number of days that this growth took. I do remember that on a certain night the flower, or the kiss if you want to call it that, began to bud, a kiss that she gave me trembling—poor thing—trembling with fear, because it was by the gate in the yard. That single kiss united us—just as the moment was brief, so was the love ardent, the prologue to a life of delights, terrors, remorse, pleasures that ended in pain, afflictions that opened up into joy—a patient and systematic hypocrisy, the only check rein on an unchecked passion—a life of agitation, rage, despair, and jealousy, which, one hour would pay for fully and more than enough, but another hour would come and swallow it all up along with everything else,
leaving on the surface agitation and all the remains, and the remains of the remains, which are aversion and satiety. Such was the book with that prologue.

I left there savoring the kiss. I couldn’t sleep. I lay down on my bed, of course, but it meant nothing. I heard the hours of night. Usually when I couldn’t sleep, the chiming of the grandfather clock would upset me very much. The mournful tick-tock, slow and dry, seemed to say with every note that I was having one instant less of life. Then I would picture an old devil sitting between two sacks, that of life and that of death, taking out the coins of life and giving them to death, counting them like this:

“Another less…”

“Another less…”

“Another less…”

“Another less…”

The strangest thing is that if the clock stopped I would wind it up so it wouldn’t stop ticking and I could count all of my lost instants. There are inventions that are transformed or come to an end; institutions themselves die. A clock is definitive and perpetual. The last man, as he says farewell to the cold and used-up sun, will have a watch in his pocket in order to know the exact time of his death.

On that night I didn’t suffer that sad feeling of tedium but a different and delightful one. Fantasies swarmed inside of me, coming one on top of another like the devout women who crush forward in order to get a look at the singing angel in processions. I wasn’t hearing the instants lost but the minutes gained. From a certain time forward I didn’t hear anything at all because my thought, wily and frisky, leaped out the window and flapped its wings toward Virgília’s house. There it found
Virgília’s thought on a window sill. They greeted each other, remained chatting. We were tossing in bed, cold perhaps, in need of rest, and those two idlers there were repeating the old dialogue of Adam and Eve.

Brás Cubas?

Virgília

Brás Cubas