The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (22 page)

That was what I was thinking when Virgília broke out into a warm greeting for her old relative. She went to meet him at the door, talking and laughing, took his hat and cane, gave him her arm and led him to a chair, or to
the
chair, because in the house it was “Viegas’ chair,” a special piece of work, cozy, made for ill or aged people. She would go close the nearest window if there was a breeze or open it if it was hot, but carefully seeing to it that he wouldn’t get a draft.

“So? You’re a little stronger today …”

“Ha! I had a rotten night. I can’t shake off this hellish asthma.”

And the man was puffing, gradually recovering from the fatigue of arriving and climbing the steps, not from the walk because he always came in a carriage. Beside him, a little to the front, Virgília would sit on a stool, her hands on the sick man’s knees. In the meantime the young master would come into the room without his usual leaping about, more discreet, meek, serious. Viegas was very fond of him.

“Come here, young master,” he would say to him and with great effort would put his hand into his wide pocket, take out a pillbox, put one in his mouth and give another to the boy. Asthma pills. The boy said they tasted very good.

This would be repeated with variations. Since Viegas liked to play checkers, Virgília would follow his desire, enduring it for a long spell as he moved the pieces with his weak, slow hand. At other times they would go out to stroll in the yard, with her offering him her arm, which he wouldn’t always accept, saying that he was solid and capable of walking a league. They would walk, sit down, walk again, talk about different things, sometimes about some family matter, sometimes about drawing-room gossip, sometimes, finally, about a house he was thinking of building for his own residence, a house of modern design because his was an ancient one, going back to the time of King John VI, like some that can still be seen today (I think) in the São Cristóvão district with their thick columns in front. He thought that the big house where he was living could be replaced and he’d already ordered a sketch from a well-known mason. Ah!, then indeed, Virgília would see what an old man of good taste was like.

He spoke, as can be imagined, slowly and with difficulty, with pauses for gasping, which were uncomfortable for him and for others. From time to time he would have a coughing attack. Bent over, groaning, he would lift his handkerchief to his mouth and inspect it. When the attack
had passed he would go back to the plans for the house, which would have this and that room, a terrace, a coach house, a thing of beauty.

“Tomorrow I’m going to spend the day at Viegas’,” she told me one time. “Poor thing! He hasn’t got anybody …” Viegas had been put to bed once and for all. His married daughter had fallen ill precisely at that time and couldn’t keep him company. Virgília would go there from time to time. I took advantage of the occasion to spend the whole day next to her. It was two in the afternoon when I got there. Viegas was coughing so hard that it made my chest burn. Between attacks he was haggling over the price of a house with a skinny fellow. The fellow was offering him thirty
contos
, Viegas demanded forty. The buyer kept insisting, like someone afraid of missing a train, but Viegas wouldn’t give in. First he refused the thirty
contos
, then two more, then three more, and finally fell into a severe attack that shut off his speech for fifteen minutes. The buyer was most solicitous to him, rearranging his pillows, offering him thirty-six
contos
.

“Never!” the sick man groaned. He asked for a bundle of papers on his desk. Not having the strength to take off the rubber band that held the papers, he asked me to do it. I did. They were the accounts for the construction of the house: bills from the mason, the carpenter, the painter. Bills for the wallpaper in the parlor, the dining room, the bedrooms, the studies. Bills for the hardware, the cost of the lot. He was opening them one by one with a trembling hand and he asked me to read them and I read them.

“See? One thousand two hundred, paper at one thousand two hundred a room. French hinges … Look, it’s a giveaway,” he concluded after the last bill was read.

“Well, all right … but …”

“Forty
contos
. I won’t give it to you for anything less. The interest alone … add up the interest …”

He coughed out those words in gushes, syllable by syllable as if they were the crumbs of a crumbling pair of lungs. In their deep sockets his eyes rolled and flashed, reminding me of a night light. Under the sheet the bony outline of his body was sketched out, coming to points in two places, his knees and his feet. His yellowed, slack, wrinkled skin barely covered the skull of an expressionless face. A white cotton cap covered the cranium that had been shaved by time,

“So?” the skinny fellow then said.

I signaled him not to go on and he was silent for a few moments. The sick man stared at the ceiling, silent, gasping hard. Virgília turned pale, got up, went to the window. She sensed death and was afraid. I made an attempt to talk about other things. The skinny fellow told an anecdote but got onto the house again, raising his bid.

“Thirty-eight
contos,”
he said.

“Huh? …” the sick man grunted.

The skinny fellow went over to the bed, took his hand and it felt cold. I went to the sick man, asked him if he felt like something, if he wanted a glass of wine.

“No … no … for … fort … for … for …”

He had a coughing attack and it was his last. Shortly thereafter he expired, to the great consternation of the skinny fellow, who confessed to me afterward that he was ready to offer forty
contos
. But it was too late.

Nothing. No remembrance in the will, not even, an asthma pill so that when it was all over he wouldn’t seem ungrateful or forgetful. Nothing. Virgília swallowed that bit of failure in anger and she told
me with a certain caution, not because of the matter itself but because she’d mentioned it to her son, whom she knew I didn’t like very much or very little. I suggested that she shouldn’t give any more thought to such a thing. It was best to forget the deceased, an imbecile, a damned skinflint, and think about happy things. Our child, for example …

There, I’ve revealed the deciphering of the mystery, that sweet mystery of a few weeks before when Virgília seemed a bit different from what she normally was. A child. A being made from my own being! That was my only thought from that moment on. The eyes of the world, the suspicions of her husband, the death of Viegas, nothing interested me at that time, neither political conflicts, nor revolutions, nor earthquakes, nor anything. I only thought about that anonymous embryo of obscure paternity and a secret voice told me: “It’s your child.” My child! And I would repeat those two words with a certain indefinable voluptuous feeling and I don’t know how many feelings of pride. I felt myself a man.

The best thing was that we would both converse, the embryo and I, talking about present and future things. The rascal loved me, he was a funny little rogue, giving me little pats on the face with his chubby little hands or then sketching out the shape of a lawyer’s robe, because he was going to be a lawyer and he would make a speech in the chamber of deputies. And his father would listen to him from a box, his eyes gleaming with tears. From lawyer he would go back to school again, tiny, slate and books under his arm, or then he would drop into his cradle and stand up again as a man. I sought in vain to fix the spirit in one age, one appearance. That embryo had my eyes, all of my forms and gestures. He suckled, he wrote, he waltzed, he was interminable in the limits of a quarter hour—baby and deputy, schoolboy and dandy. Sometimes, beside Virgília, I would forget about her and everything. Virgília would shake me, scold me for my silence. She said that I didn’t love her anymore at all. The truth is I was having a dialogue with the embryo. It was the ancient dialogue between Adam and Cain, a conversation without words, between life and life, mystery and mystery.

Around that time I was in receipt of an extraordinary letter accompanied by an object that was no less extraordinary. Here is what the letter said:

I read this letter without understanding it. It was accompanied by a pouch containing a handsome watch with my initials engraved on it
along with these words:
A Remembrance of Old Quincas
. I went back to the letter, read it slowly, attentively. The return of the watch precluded any idea of a jape. The lucidity, the serenity, the conviction—a touch boastful, of course—seemed to eliminate any suspicion of lunacy. Naturally, Quincas Borba had come into an inheritance from some relative of his in Minas Gerais and the abundance had given him back his early dignity. I won’t say entirely so. There are things that can’t be recouped completely, but, still, regeneration wasn’t impossible. I put the letter and the watch away and I awaited the philosophy.

Let me put an end to extraordinary things now. I’d just put away the letter and watch when a thin, middling man came to see me with a note from Cotrim inviting me to dinner. The bearer was married to a sister of Cotrim’s and had just arrived from the north a few days before. His name was Damasceno and he’d been involved in the revolution of 1831. He himself told me that within the space of five minutes. He’d left Rio de Janeiro because of a disagreement with the Regent, who was an ass, a little less of an ass than the minister who served under him. Furthermore, revolution was knocking at the door again. At that point, even though his political ideas were somewhat muddled, I managed to get an organized and formulated idea of the government of his preference: it was moderate despotism—not with sweet talk, as they say elsewhere, but with the plumed helmets of the National Guard, except that I couldn’t tell whether he wanted a despotism of one, three, thirty, or three hundred people. He had opinions on many different things, among others the development of the African slave trade and the expulsion of the English. He liked the theater very much. As soon as he arrived he went to the São Pedro Theater where he saw a superb drama,
Maria Joana
, and a very interesting comedy,
Kettly, or the Return to
Switzerland
. He’d also enjoyed Deperini very much in
Sappho
or
Anna Boleyn
, he couldn’t remember which. But Candiani! Yes, sir, she was top-drawer. Now he wanted to hear
Ernani
, which his daughter sang at home to the piano:
Ernani, Ernani, involami …
And he said that standing up and half-singing; those things only reached the north as an echo. His daughter was dying to hear all the operas. His daughter had a lovely voice. And taste, very good taste. Oh, he’d been so anxious to return to Rio de Janeiro. He’d already gone up and down the city, filled with nostalgia … He swore that in some places he felt like crying. But he’d never sail again. He’d got very seasick on board, like all the other passengers except for an Englishman … The English could go to hell! Things would never be right until they all sailed away. What can England do to us? If he could find some stout-hearted men he could expel those Limeys in one night… Thank God he was a patriot—and he pounded his chest—which wasn’t surprising because it was in the family. He was descended from a very patriotic old captain-major. Yes, he wasn’t a nobody. If the occasion arose and he had to show what kind of wood his boat was made of … But it was getting late and I told him that I wouldn’t miss dinner and for him to expect me there for a longer chat. I took him to the parlor door. He stopped, saying that he felt very close to me. When he’d gotten married I was in Europe. He knew my father, an upright man he’d joined in a dance at a famous ball at the Praia Grande … Things! Things! He’d talk about it later, it was getting late, he had to carry the answer to Cotrim. He left. I closed the door behind him.