The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (18 page)

“Have you been here long?” he asked.

“No.”

He’d come in serious, worried, his eyes open wide in a distracted way, a habit of his, but he immediately changed it into a true expression of joviality when he saw his son arrive, the little master, the future lawyer in
Chapter VI
. He took him in his arms, lifted him into the air, kissed him several times. I, who hated the child, drew away from both of them. Virgília came back into the room.

“Ah!” Lobo Neves said with a deep breath as he sat down on the sofa.

“Tired?” I asked.

“Very. I made a couple of hard coups, one in the chamber and the other in the street. And we’ve got a third one still to come,” he added, looking at his wife.

“What is it?” Virgília asked.

“A … Make a guess!”

Virgília had sat down beside him, taken one of his hands, straightened his tie, and asked again what it was.

“A box at the opera no less.”

“For Candiani?”

“For Candiani.”

Virgília clapped her hands, got up, gave her son a kiss with an air of childish joy, which was quite out of tune with her appearance. Then she asked if the box was on the side or in the middle, consulted her husband in a low voice as to what she should wear, about what opera would be sung, and I don’t know what other things.

“You’re staying for dinner with us, doctor,” Lobo Neves told me.

“That’s precisely why he came,” his wife confirmed. “He says that you have the best wine in Rio de Janeiro.”

“He doesn’t drink much even for that reason.”

At dinner I belied his words. I drank, more than I was accustomed to. Even so, less than was necessary for me to lose my reason. I was already upset and I became a little more so. It was the first great anger I’d felt for Virgília. I didn’t look at her one single time during dinner. I talked about politics, the press, the ministry, I think I could have talked about theology had I known anything about it or remembered anything. Lobo Neves followed me with great calm and dignity, even with a certain superior benevolence. And all of that irritated me too and rendered the dinner all the more bitter and long. I took my leave as soon as we got up from the table.

“We’ll see you later, right?” Lobo Neves asked.

“Maybe.”

And I left.

I wandered through the streets and retired at nine o’clock. Unable to sleep, I set about reading and writing. At eleven o’clock I was sorry I hadn’t gone to the theater, consulted the clock, wanted to get dressed and go out. I calculated that I’d get there too late, however. Besides, it would be a proof of weakness. Obviously Virgília was beginning to be
annoyed with me, I thought. And that idea made me desperate and cold successively, ready to forget her and to kill her. I could see her from there, reclining in her box with her magnificent arms bare—the arms that were mine, only mine—fascinating everyone’s eyes with the superb dress she must have had on, her milky white breast, her hair in tight curls in the style of the time, and her diamonds, less brilliant than her eyes … I saw her like that and it pained me that others should see her. Then I began to undress her, put the jewels and silks aside, undo her hair with my voracious and lascivious hands, making her—I don’t know whether more beautiful or more natural—making her mine, only mine, nothing but mine.

The next day I couldn’t stand it. I went to Virgília’s early, found her with eyes red from weeping.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You don’t love me,” was her answer. “You’ve never shown me the slightest sign of love. Yesterday you treated me as if you hated me. If I only knew what I’d done! But I don’t know. Won’t you tell me what it was?”

“What what was? I don’t think there was anything.”

“Wasn’t anything? You treated me like a dog …”

With that word I took her hands, kissed them, and two tears appeared in her eyes.

“It’s over, it’s all right,” I said.

I didn’t have the heart to argue and, besides, argue about what? It wasn’t her fault if her husband loved her. I told her that she hadn’t done anything to me, that I was necessarily jealous of the other man, that I couldn’t always bear him with a happy face. I added that maybe there was a lot of pretending on his part and the best way to shut the door on battles and disagreements was to accept my idea of the day before.

“I thought about it,” Virgília repled. “A little house all our own, by itself, in the middle of a garden on some back street, isn’t that it? I liked the idea, but why run away?”

She said that with the ingenuous and casual tone of someone who can think no evil, and the smile that slackened the corners of her mouth carried the same innocent expression. Then pushing me away, she retorted:

“You’re the one who never loved me.”

“I?”

“Yes, you’re selfish! You’d rather see me suffer every day … You’re an unspeakable egotist!”

Virgília began to weep, and so as not to attract anyone’s attention she put her handkerchief into her mouth, suppressed her sobs in an outburst that disconcerted me. If anyone had heard her everything would have been lost. I leaned toward her, took her by the wrists, whispered the sweetest names of our intimacy to her. I pointed out the danger. The fear calmed her down.

“I can’t,” she said after a few moments, “I can’t leave my son. If I took him along I’m sure he’d follow me to the ends of the earth. I can’t. Kill me if you want, or let me die … Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!”

“Calm down, someone might hear you.”

“Let them hear, I don’t care!”

She was still upset. I asked her to forget everything, to forgive me, that I was mad but that my insanity was because of her and would end because of her. Virgília wiped her eyes and held out her hand. We both smiled. A few minutes later we went back to the matter of the solitary little house on some back street …

We were interrupted by the sound of a coach in the yard. A slave came in to announce the arrival of Baroness X. Virgília consulted me with her eyes.

“If you have a headache like that, madam,” I said, “I should think it would be best not to receive her.”

“Has she got down already?” Virgília asked the slave.

“She’s already got down. She says she needs very much to talk to my lady!”

“Show her in!”

The baroness entered shortly. I don’t know whether she expected to see me in the parlor, but she couldn’t have shown any greater fluster.

“How good to see you!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been hiding, sir, that you never appear anywhere? Why, just yesterday I was surprised not to see you at the theater. Candiani was a delight. What a woman! Do you like Candiani? Naturally. Men are all alike. The baron was telling me last night in our box that a single Italian woman is worth five Brazilian women. Such impertinence! And the impertinence of an old man, which is worse. But why didn’t you go to the theater last night?”

“A migraine.”

“Hah! Some love affair, don’t you think, Virgília? Well, my friend, you’d better hurry up because you must be forty … or close to it … Aren’t you forty years old?”

“I can’t say with certainty,” I replied, “but if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go check my baptism certificate.”

“Get along with you …” And holding out her hand to me, “Until what next time? We’ll be at home on Saturday. The baron misses you …

Out on the street I was sorry I’d left. The baroness was one of the people who was most suspicious of us. Fifty-five years old and looking forty, sleek, smiling, vestiges of beauty, elegant bearing, and refined manners. She didn’t talk a lot or all the time. She possessed the great skill of listening to others, spying on them. At those times she would sit back in her chair, unsheathe her long, sharp vision, and take her ease. The others, not knowing what was going on, would talk, look, gesticulate, while she would simply look, sometimes staring, sometimes moving her eyes, carrying the ruse to the point of looking inside herself sometimes because she would let her eyelids droop but since eyelashes are lattices, her glance would continue its work, rummaging in the souls and lives of others.

The second person was a relative of Virgília’s, Viegas, a worthless old man of seventy winters, sucked dry and yellowish, who suffered from a chronic case of rheumatism, no less chronic asthma, and a heart lesion. He was a walking hospital ward. His eyes, however, gleamed with plenty of life and health. Virgília, during the first weeks, wasn’t afraid of him at all. She told me that when Viegas seemed to be watching with his stare, he was simply counting money. He was, in fact, a great miser.

There was still Virgília’s cousin, Luís Dutra, whom I disarmed now by dint of talking to him about his prose and poetry and introducing him to acquaintances. When the latter, linking the name to the person, showed themselves to be pleased with the introduction, there was no
doubt but that Luís Dutra overflowed with happiness. And I made use of that happiness with the hope that he would never catch us. There were, finally, two or three ladies, several fops, and the servants, who naturally would avenge themselves for their servile status in that way, and all of them constituted a veritable forest of eyes and ears among which we had to slip along with the tactics and subtlety of serpents.

Now, whenever I think about those people, my legs carry me off down the street so that without realizing it I found myself at the door of the Hotel Pharoux. I was in the habit of dining there. But, not having deliberately walked there, I deserved no credit for the act, but my legs, which had done so, did. Blessed legs! And there are those who treat you with disdain or indifference. Even I, until then, held you in low esteem, getting annoyed when you tired, when you couldn’t go beyond a certain point and left me with a desire to flap my wings like a hen tied by the feet.

That time, however, it was a ray of light. Yes, legs, my friends, you left the task of thinking about Virgília to my head and you said to one another, “He’s got to eat, it’s dinnertime, let’s take him to the Pharoux. Let’s divide up his consciousness, one part can stay with the lady, we’ll take over the other part so that he goes straight ahead, doesn’t bump into people or carriages, tips his hat to acquaintances, and, finally, arrives safe and sound at the hotel.” And you followed your plan to the letter, kind legs, which obliges me to immortalize you with this page.

I dined and went home. There I found a box of cigars that Lobo Neves had sent me, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a pink ribbon. I understood, I opened it, and took out this note:

That letter was a blow. Nevertheless, immediately after nightfall I ran to Virgília’s. I was on time, she regretted it. Through an open window she told me what had happened with the baroness. The baroness had told her quite frankly that there was a lot of talk at the theatre the night before regarding my absence from the Lobo Neves box. They’d commented on my relationship to the house. In short, we were the object of public suspicion. She finished by saying that she didn’t know what to do.

“The best thing is to run away,” I hinted.

“Never,” she replied, shaking her head.

I saw that it was impossible to separate two things that were completely linked in her spirit: our love and public opinion. Virgília was capable of equal and great sacrifices to preserve both advantages, and flight left her with only one. I might have had a feeling similar to spite, but the commotion of those two days was already great and the spite quickly died. It’s all set. Let’s arrange the little house.

As a matter of fact, I found it a few days later, made to order in a corner of Gamboa. A jewel! New, freshly painted, with four windows in front and two on either side—all with brick-colored blinds—vines at the corners, a garden in front. Mystery and solitude. A jewel!

We arranged for a woman known to Virgília, in whose house she’d been a seamstress and servant, to go live there. Virgília held a real enchantment over her. She wouldn’t tell her everything. She’d easily accept the rest.

For me this was a new situation in our love, an appearance of exclusive possession, of absolute dominion, something that would soothe my
conscience and maintain decorum. I was already tired of the other man’s curtains, chairs, carpet, couch, all the things that constantly brought our duplicity up before my eyes. Now I could avoid the frequent dinners, the teas every night, and, finally, the presence of their son, my accomplice and my enemy. The house rescued me completely. The ordinary world would end at its door. From there on there was the infinite, an eternal, superior, exceptional world, ours, only ours, without laws, without institutions, without any baroness, without eyes, without ears—one single world, one single couple, one single life, one single will, one single affection—the moral unity of all things through the exclusion of those that were contrary to me.

Such were my reflections as I walked along Valongo right after seeing and arranging for the house. They were interrupted by a gathering of people. It was because of a black man whipping another in the square. The other one didn’t try to run away. He only moaned these words: “Please, I’m sorry, master. Master, I’m sorry!” but the first one paid no attention and each entreaty was answered with a new lashing.

“Take that, you devil!” he was saying. “There’s sorry for you, you drunk!”

“Master!” the other one was moaning.

“Shut your mouth, you animal!” the whipper replied.

I stopped to look … Good Lord! And who did the one with the whip turn out to be? None other than my houseboy Prudêncio—the one my father had freed some years before. He came over to me, having ceased immediately, and asked for my blessing. I inquired if that black man was his slave.