The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (20 page)

Suddenly my conscience gave me a tug, accusing me of having Dona Plácida surrender her virtue, assigning her a shameful role after a long life of work and privation. Go-between was no better than
concubine and I’d lowered her to that position by dint of gifts and money. That was what my conscience was saying to me. I spent a few minutes not knowing how to answer it. It added that I’d taken advantage of the fascination Virgília held over the ex-seamstress, of the latter’s gratitude, ultimately, of her need. It made note of Dona Plácida’s resistance, her tears during the early days, her grim expressions, her silences, her lowered eyes, and my skills at bearing up under all that until I could overcome it. And it tugged at me again in an irritated and nervous way.

I agreed that that was how it was, but I argued that Dona Plácida’s old age was not protected from beggary. It was a compensation. If it hadn’t been for our love affair, most likely Dona Plácida would have ended up like so many other human creatures, from which it can be deduced that vice many times is manure for virtue. And that doesn’t prevent virtue from being a fragrant and healthy bloom. My conscience agreed and I went to open the door for Virgília.

Virgília entered, smiling and relaxed. Time had carried away her frights and vexations. How sweet it was to see her arrive during the early days, shameful and trembling! She traveled in a coach, her face veiled, wrapped in a kind of collared cape that disguised the curves of her figure. The first time she’d dropped onto the settee, breathing heavily, scarlet, with her eyes on the floor. And—word of honor!—never on any occasion had I found her so beautiful, perhaps because I had never felt myself more flattered.

Now, however, as I was saying, the frights and vexations were over. Our meetings were entering the chronometric stage. The intensity of love was the same, the difference was that the flame had lost the mad brightness of the early days and had become a simple sheaf of rays, peaceful and content, as with marriages.

“I’m very angry with you,” she said as she sat down.

“Why?”

“Because you didn’t go there yesterday as you’d told me you would. Damião asked several times if you weren’t coming at least for tea. Why didn’t you come?”

As a matter of fact, I had broken the promise I’d made and the fault was all Virgília’s. A matter of jealousy. That splendid woman knew that it was and she liked to hear it said, whether aloud or in a whisper. Two days before at the baroness’ she’d waltzed twice with the same dandy after listening to his courtly talk in a corner by the window. She was so merry! So open! So self-possessed! When she caught an interrogative and threatening wrinkle between my eyebrows, she showed no surprise, nor did she become suddenly serious, but she threw the dandy and his courtly talk overboard. Then she came over to me, took my arm, and led me into the other room, with fewer people, where she complained of being tired and said many other things with the childlike air she was accustomed to assume on certain occasions and I listened to her almost without replying.

Now, once more, it was difficult for me to reply, but I finally told her the reason for my absence … No, eternal stars, never have I seen such startled eyes. Her mouth half-open, her eyebrows arched, a visible, tangible stupefaction that was undeniable, such was Virgília’s immediate reply. She nodded her head with a smile of pity and tenderness that confused me completely.

“Oh, you …!

And she went to take off her hat, cheerful, jovial, like a girl just back from school. Then she came over to me where I was seated, tapped me on the head with one finger, repeating, “This, this,” and I couldn’t help laughing, too, and everything ended up in fun. It was obvious I’d been mistaken.

On a certain day months later Lobo Neves arrived home saying that he might get the position of president of a province. I looked at Virgília, who’d grown pale. Seeing her grow pale, he asked:

“What, don’t you like it, Virgília?”

Virgília shook her head.

“I’m not too pleased,” was her reply.

Nothing more was said, but at night Lobo Neves brought up the project again a little more resolutely than during the afternoon. Two days later he declared to his wife that the presidency was all set. Virgília couldn’t hide the dislike it caused her. Her husband replied to everything by saying political necessities.

“I can’t refuse what they ask of me. And it even suits us, our future, our coat-of-arms, my love, because I promised that you’d be a marchioness and you’re not even a baroness yet. Are you going to say I’m ambitious? I really am, but you mustn’t put any weights on the wings of my ambition.”

Virgília was disoriented. The next day I found her at the Gamboa house sad and waiting for me. She’d told everything to Dona Plácida, who was trying to console her as best she could. I was no less downcast.

“You’ve got to come with us,” Virgília told me.

“Are you crazy? It would be madness.”

“What then …?”

“Then we’ve got to change the plan.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Has he already accepted?”

“It seems so.”

I got up, tossed my hat onto a chair, and began pacing back and forth, not knowing what to do. I thought for a long time and couldn’t come up with anything. Finally, I went over to Virgília, who was seated, and took her hand. Dona Plácida went over to the window.

“My whole existence is in this tiny hand,” I said. “You’re responsible for it. Do whatever you think best.”

Virgília had an afflicted expression. I went over to lean against the sideboard across from her. A few moments of silence passed. We could
only hear the barking of a dog and, I’m not sure, the sound of the water breaking on the beach. Seeing that she wasn’t saying anything, I looked at her. Virgília had her eyes on the floor, motionless, dull, her hands resting on her knees with the fingers crossed in a sign of extreme despair. On another occasion, for a different reason, I would certainly have thrown myself at her feet and sheltered her with my reason and my tenderness. Now, however, it was necessary to have her make her own effort at sacrifice for the responsibility of our life together and, consequently, not shelter her, leave her to herself, and go away. That was what I did.

“I repeat, my happiness is in your hands,” I said.

Virgília tried to hold me back, but I was already out the door. I managed to hear an outburst of tears and, I can tell you, I was on the point of going back to stanch them with a kiss, but I got control of myself and left.

I would never finish were I to recount every detail of how I suffered during the first few hours. I vacillated between wanting and not wanting, between the compassion that was pulling me toward Virgília’s house and a different feeling—selfishness, let us suppose—that was telling me: “Stay here. Leave her alone with the problem, leave her along because she’ll resolve it in favor of love.” I think those two forces were equal in intensity; they attacked and resisted at the same time, fervently, tenaciously, and neither was giving way at all. Sometimes I felt a tiny bite of remorse. It seemed to me that I was abusing the weakness of a guilty woman in love, without any sacrifice or risk on my part. And when I was about to surrender, love would come again and repeat the selfish advice to me and I would remain irresolute and restless, desirous of seeing her and wary that the sight of her would lead me to share the responsibility of the solution.

Finally a compromise between selfishness and compassion: I would go see her at her home, and only at her home, in the presence of her husband so as not to say anything to her, waiting for the effect of my
intimation. In that way I’d be able to conciliate the two forces. Now as I write this, I like to think that the compromise was a fraud, that compassion was still a form of selfishness and that the decision to go console Virgília was nothing more than a suggestion of my own suffering.

The next night I did go to the Lobo Neves’. They were both home, Virgília quite sad, he quite jovial. I could swear that she was feeling a certain relief when our eyes met, full of curiosity and tenderness. Lobo Neves told me about the plans that would bring him the presidency, the local difficulties, the hopes, the solutions. He was so happy, so hopeful! Virgília, at the other end of the table, pretended to be reading a book but she would look at me over the page from time to time, questioning and anxious.

“The worst part,” Lobo Neves told me, “is that I still haven’t found a secretary.”

“No?”

“No, but I’ve got an idea.”

“Ah!”

“An idea … How’d you like to travel north?”

I don’t know what I told him.

“You’re rich,” he went on, “you don’t need the paltry salary, but if you’ll do me the favor, you’ll come along with me as secretary.”

My spirit gave a leap backward, as if I’d seen a snake in front of me. I faced Lobo Neves, stared at him demandingly to see if some hidden thought had caught hold of him … Not a shadow of it. His look was direct and open, the calmness of his face was natural, not forced, a calmness sprinkled with joy. I took a deep breath and didn’t have the courage to look at Virgília. I could feel her gaze over the page, also asking me the same. And I said yes, I’d go. In all truth, a president, a president’s wife, a secretary was a way of resolving things in an administrative way.

In spite of everything, as I left there I had the shadow of some doubts. I pondered about whether or not it would be an insane exposure of Virgília’s reputation, if there wasn’t some other reasonable way of combining government and Gamboa. I couldn’t find any. The next day, as I got out of bed, my mind was made up and resolved to accept the nomination. At midday my servant came to tell me that a veiled lady was waiting for me in the parlor. I hurried out. It was my sister Sabina.

“It can’t go on like this,” she said. “Once and for all, let’s make up. Our family’s fallen apart, we mustn’t go on acting like two enemies.

“But I couldn’t ask for anything else, sister!” I shouted, holding out my arms to her.

I had her sit down beside me, asking her about her husband, her daughter, business, everything. Everything was fine. Their daughter was pretty as a picture. Her husband would come and show her to me if I’d let him.

“Come, now! I’ll go see her for myself.”

“Will you?”

“Word of honor.”

“So much the better!” Sabina sighed. “It’s time to put an end to all this.”

I found her to be stouter and perhaps younger looking. She looked twenty and she was over thirty. Charming, affable, no awkwardness, no resentments. We looked at each other holding hands, talking about everything and nothing, like two lovers. It was my childhood coming to the surface, fresh, frisky, and golden. The years were falling away like the rows of bent playing cards I fooled with as a child and they let me see our house, our family, our parties. I bore the memory with some effort, but a neighborhood barber came to mind as he twanged on his classical fiddle and that voice—because up till then the memory had been mute—that voice out of the past, nasal and nostalgic, moved me to such a degree that …

Her eyes were dry. Sabina hadn’t inherited the morbid yellow flower. What difference did it make? She was my sister, my blood, a part of my
mother, and I told her that with tenderness, sincerity … Suddenly I heard knocking on the parlor door. I went to open it. It was a five-year-old little angel.

“Come in, Sara,” Sabina said.

It was my niece. I picked her up, kissed her several times. The little one, frightened, pushed me off on my shoulder with her little hand, writhing to get down … At that moment a hat appeared in the door followed by a man, Cotrim, no less. I was so moved that I put the daughter down and threw myself into the arms of the father. That effusion may have disconcerted him a little because he seemed awkward to me. A simple prologue. Shortly after we were talking like two good old friends. No allusions to the past, lots of plans for the future, the promise to dine at each other’s house. I didn’t fail to mention that the exchange of dinners might have to have a slight interruption because I was thinking of traveling north. Sabina looked at Cotrim, Cotrim at Sabina. Both agreed that the idea made no sense. What the devil could I expect to find up north? Because wasn’t it in the capital, right there in the capital, that I should continue to shine, showing up the young fellows of the time? Because, really, there wasn’t a single one of them who could compare to me. He, Cotrim, had been following me from a distance and, in spite of a ridiculous quarrel, had always had an interest, pride, and vanity in my triumphs. He heard what was being said about me on the street and in salons. It was a concert of praise and admiration. And leave all that to go spend a few months in the provinces without any need to, without any serious reason? Unless it was political.

“Political, precisely,” I said.

“Not even for that reason,” he replied after a moment. And after another silence, “In any case, come dine with us tonight.”

“Of course I will. But tomorrow or afterward you have to dine with me.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Sabina objected. “At a bachelor’s house … You have to get married, brother. I want a niece, too, do you hear?”

Cotrim stopped her with a gesture I didn’t understand too well. It didn’t matter. The reconciliation of a family is well worth an enigmatic gesture.

Let hypochondriacs say what they will: life is sweet. That was what I was thinking to myself watching Sabina, her husband, and her daughter troop down the stairs, sending lots of affectionate words up to where—on the landing—I was sending just as many others down to them. I kept on thinking that I really was lucky. A woman loved me, I had the trust of her husband, I was going to be secretary to them both, and I’d been reconciled with my family. What more could I ask for in twenty-four hours?