The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (17 page)

He fell silent, deeply downcast, his eyes in the air, not seeming to hear anything unless it was the echo of his own thoughts. After a few moments he stood up and held out his hand to me. “You must be laughing at me,” he said, “but please forgive my letting things out. I had some business that was eating at my soul.” And he laughed in a somber, sad way, then he asked me not to mention to anyone what had passed between us. I replied that absolutely nothing had happened. Two deputies and a district leader came in. Lobo Neves greeted them effusively, at first a little artificially, but then quite naturally. After half an hour no one would have said he wasn’t the most fortunate of men. He chatted, joked, laughed, and everybody laughed.

Politics must be an invigorating wine, I said to myself as I left Lobo Neves’ house. And I kept walking on and on until, on the Rua dos Barbonos, I saw a carriage and in it one of the ministers, an old schoolmate of mine. We waved to each other affectionately, the carriage went on its way, and I kept walking on … on … on …

“Why can’t I be a minister?”

That idea, resplendent and grand—extravagantly clad, as Father Bernardes would have said—that idea started a swirl of somersaults and I let myself stand there watching it, finding it amusing. I wasn’t thinking about Lobo Neves’ sadness anymore, I felt the attraction of the abyss. I remembered that schoolmate, how we played around on the hills, our joys and our mischief, and I compared the boy with the man and asked myself why I couldn’t be like him. I was turning into the Passeio Público then and everything seemed to be telling me the same thing—Why can’t you be a minister, Cubas?—Cubas, why can’t you be a minister of state? When I heard it a delightful feeling refreshed my whole organism. I went in, sat down on a bench, mulling that idea over. And how Virgília would enjoy it! A few moments later, coming toward me, I saw a face that didn’t seem unknown to me. I recognized it from somewhere or other.

Imagine a man between thirty-eight and forty, tall, slim, and pale. His clothes, except for their style, looked as if they’d escaped from the Babylonian captivity. The hat was a contemporary of one of Gessler’s. Imagine now a frock coat broader than the needs of his frame—or, literally, that person’s bones. The fringe had disappeared some time ago, of the eight original buttons, three were left. The brown drill trousers had two strong knee patches, while the cuffs had been chewed by the heels of boots that bore no pity or polish. About his neck the ends of a tie of two faded colors floated, gripping a week-old collar. I think he was also wearing a dark silk vest, torn in places and unbuttoned.

“I’ll bet you don’t know me, my good Dr. Cubas,” he said.

“I can’t recall…”

“I’m Borba, Quincas Borba.”

I drew back in astonishment… If only I’d been given the solemn speech of a Bossuet or a Vieira to describe such desolation! It was Quincas Borba, the amusing boy of times gone by and my schoolmate, so intelligent and so well-off. Quincas Borba! No, impossible. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t come to believe that this filthy figure, this beard tinted with white, this aging tatterdemalion, all that ruination was Quincas Borba. But it was. His eyes had something left over from other times and his smile hadn’t lost a certain mocking air that was peculiar to him. In the meantime he withstood my astonishment. After a while I turned my eyes away. If the figure repelled me, the comparison grieved me.

“I don’t have to tell you a thing, you can guess it all. A life of misery, tribulation, and struggle. Remember our parties where I played the part of the king? What a fiasco! I end up a beggar …”

And, lifting his right hand and his shoulders with an air of indifference, he seemed resigned to the blows of fortune and, I don’t know, was even happy perhaps. Happy perhaps. Impassive certainly. There was no Christian resignation or philosophical acceptance in him. It seemed that misery had calloused his soul to the point of taking away the feeling of the mud. He dragged his rags along just as he’d formerly done with the royal purple, with a certain indolent grace.

“Look me up,” I said. “I might be able to fix something up for you.”

A magnificent smile opened his lips. “You’re not the first to promise me something and I don’t know if you’ll be the last not to do anything for me. So what’s the use? I’m not asking for anything, unless it’s money, money, yes, because I have to eat and eating-places don’t give credit, greengrocers either. A nothing, two
vinténs
worth of manioc cake, the damned greengrocers won’t even trust you for that… It’s hell, my … I was going to say friend … A hell! Devilish! Absolutely devilish! Look, I still haven’t had any breakfast today.”

“No?”

“No. I left home early. Do you know where I live? On the third landing of the São Francisco stairs, to the left of a person going up. You don’t have to knock on the door. A cool house, extremely cool. Well, I left early and I still haven’t eaten …”

I took out my wallet, picked a five
mil-réis
note—the least clean one—and gave it to him. He took it with eyes that gleamed with greed. He held the note up in the air and flourished it with enthusiasm.

“In hoc signo vinces!”
he roared.

And then he kissed it with a great show of tenderness and such noisy carrying on that it gave me a mixed feeling of nausea and pity. He was sharp and he understood me. He became serious and asked my forgiveness for his joy, saying that it was the joy of a poor man who hadn’t seen a five
mil-réis
note in many a year.

“Well, it’s in your hands to see a lot more of them,” I said.

“Yes?” he hastened to say, lunging toward me.

“Working,” I concluded.

He made a gesture of disdain. He fell silent for a few moments then told me positively that he didn’t want to work. I was disgusted with that abjection, which was so comical and so sad, and I made ready to leave.

“Don’t leave until I teach you my philosophy of misery,” he said, taking a broad stance before me.

I presumed that the poor devil was crazy and I was going to leave when he grabbed me by the wrist and stared for a few seconds at the diamond I was wearing on my finger. I could feel the quivers of greed in his hand, an itch for possession.

“Magnificent!” he said.

Then he began to walk all around me, examining me closely.

“You take good care of yourself,” he said. “Jewelry, fine, elegant clothes, and … Just compare those shoes with mine. What a difference! There’s no comparison! I tell you, you take good care of yourself. What about girls? How about them? Are you married?”

“No …”

“Me either.”

“I live at…”

“I don’t want to know where you live,” Quincas Borba put in. “If we see each other again, give me another five
mil-réis
note. But allow me not to look you up at home. It’s a kind of pride … Now, goodbye, I can see that you’re impatient.”

“Goodbye!”

“And thank you. Let me thank you a little more warmly.”

And saying that he embraced me so swiftly that I couldn’t avoid it. We finally separated, I with long strides, my shirt wrinkled from the embrace, annoyed and sad. The pleasant side of me no longer dominated, the other one did. I would have preferred to see him bearing this misery with dignity. Yet, I couldn’t help comparing the man of today with the one of days gone by, growing sad as I faced the chasm that separates the hopes of one time from the reality of another …

“So, goodbye! Let’s go have dinner,” I said to myself.

I put my hand into my vest and I couldn’t find my watch. The final disillusionment. Borba had stolen it during the embrace.

I dined in sadness. It wasn’t the loss of the watch that tormented me, it was the image of the perpetration of the theft and the remembrances of childhood, and once again the comparison, the conclusion … Starting with the soup course the yellow, morbid flower from
Chapter XXV
began to open up in me and then I ate hurriedly in order to run to Virgília’s. Virgília was the present. I wanted to take refuge in it so I could escape the burdens of the past, because the encounter with Quincas Borba had turned my eyes back to the past and I had really entered it, but it was a broken, abject, beggarly, and thievish past.

I left the house, but it was early. If I went now I’d find them still at the table. I thought about Quincas Borba again and then I got the desire to go back to the Passeio Público and see if I could find him. The idea of regenerating him rose up in me like a driving need. I went, but I couldn’t find him now. I inquired of the guard, who told me that, indeed, “that fellow” came around there sometimes.

“At what time?”

“He doesn’t have a set time.”

It wouldn’t be impossible for me to run into him on another occasion. I promised myself I’d be back. The need to regenerate him, get him back to working and having respect for his person was filling my heart. I was starting to get a comfortable feeling, one of uplift, of admiration for myself… At that point night began to fall. I went to meet Virgília.

I went to meet Virgília. I quickly forgot Quincas Borba. Virgília was the pillow for my spirit. A soft, warm, aromatic pillow embroidered in cambric and lace. It was there that it was accustomed to rest away from all unpleasant feelings, those that were merely annoying or those that were even painful. And when things were put into proper balance, that was the only reason for Virgília’s existence. There couldn’t have been any other. Five minutes were enough to forget Quincas Borba completely, five minutes of mutual contemplation, with hands clasped together. Five minutes and a kiss. And off went the memory of Quincas Borba … Scrofula of life, rag out of the past, what do I care if you exist or not, if you bother the eyes of other people, since I have ten square inches of a divine pillow on which to close my eyes and sleep?

Alas, not always to sleep. Three days later, going to Virgília’s—it was four in the afternoon—I found her sad and downcast. She refused to tell me what it was, but since I insisted so much:

“I think that Damião suspects something. I’ve noticed some funny things about him lately … I don’t know … He treats me well, there’s no doubt about that. But his look doesn’t seem the same. I’m not sleeping well. Just last night I woke up terrified. I was dreaming he was going to kill me. Maybe it’s just an illusion, but I think he suspects …”

I calmed her down as best I could. I said that they might be political worries. Virgília agreed that they might be, but she was still very distraught and nervous. We were in the living room which, as it happened, faced the yard, where we’d exchanged our initial kiss. An open window let the breeze in, rustling the curtains slightly, and I sat staring at the curtains without seeing them. I was holding the binoculars of the imagination. In the distance I could make out a house of our own in which there wasn’t any Lobo Neves or any marriage or any morality or any other bond that impeded the expansion, of our will. That idea intoxicated me. With the elimination of world, morality, and husband in that way, all we had to do was go into that angelic dwelling.

“Virgília,” I said, “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“What is it?”

“Do you love me?”

“Oh!” she sighed, putting her arms around my neck.

Virgília loved me furiously. That answer was her open wish. With her arms around my neck, silent, breathing heavily, she remained staring at me with her beautiful big eyes, which gave the singular impression of a moist light. I let myself remain watching them, looking lovingly at her mouth, as cool as dawn and as insatiable as death. Virgília’s beauty had a tone of grandeur now, something it hadn’t had before she was married. She was one of those figures carved in Pentelic marble, of noble workmanship, open and pure, tranquilly beautiful, like the statues but neither indifferent nor cold. On the contrary, she had the look warm natures have, and it could be said that in reality she summed up all love. She summed it up especially on that occasion, in which she was mutely expressing everything the human eye can say. But time was urgent. I clasped her hands, took them by the wrists, and, looking at her, asked if she had the courage.

“For what?”

“For running away. We’ll go where it will be more comfortable for us, a house, big or small according to what you want, in the country or in the city, or in Europe, wherever you think, where nobody can bother us and there won’t be any dangers for you, where we can live for each other … Yes? Let’s run away. Sooner or later he’s going to find out something and you’ll be lost, because I’ll kill him, I swear.”

I stopped. Virgília had grown very pale. She dropped her arms and sat down on the settee. She remained that way for several minutes without saying anything to me, I don’t know whether hesitating in her choice or terrified at the idea of discovery and death. I went over to her,
insisted on the proposal, told her all of the advantages of a life alone together, without jealousies, terrors, or afflictions. Virgília listened to me in silence, then said:

“We might not escape. He’d catch up with me and kill me just the same.”

I pointed out to her how it wouldn’t be that way. The world was rather vast and I had the means to live wherever the air was pure and there was a lot of sunshine. He’d never get there. Only great passions are capable of great actions, and he didn’t love her enough to be able to find her if we were far away. Virgília made a gesture of horror, almost indignation. She murmured that her husband loved her very much.

“Perhaps,” I answered. “Perhaps he does …”

I went over to the window and began drumming my fingers on the sill. Virgília called to me. I stayed where I was, chewing on my jealousy, wanting to strangle her husband if I’d had him there at hand … At that precise moment Lobo Neves appeared in the yard. Don’t tremble so, my pale lady reader. Relax, I’m not going to initial this page with a drop of blood. As soon as he appeared in the yard I gave him a friendly wave along with a gracious word. Virgília hurriedly left the room, which he entered three minutes later.