The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (25 page)

“Look at Saint John,” he went on, “he lived off grasshoppers in the wilderness instead of growing peacefully fat in the city while making Pharisaism in the synagogue lose weight.”

God spare me the narration of Quincas Borba’s story, which I listened to in its entirety on that sad occasion, a long, complicated yet interesting story. And since I won’t be telling the story, I’ll also dispense with describing his person, quite different from the one that had appeared to me on the Passeio Público. I shall be silent. I will only say that if a man’s main characteristic isn’t in his features but in his clothing, he wasn’t Quincas Borba: he was a judge without a robe, a general without a uniform, a businessman without a budget. I noted the perfection of his frock coat, the whiteness of his shirt, the shine of his shoes. His very voice, hoarse before, seemed to have been restored to its original sonority. As for his mannerisms, without having lost the previous vivacity, they no longer had the disorder and were subject to a certain method. But I don’t wish to describe him. If I were to speak, for example, about his gold stickpin and the quality of the leather of his shoes, it would initiate a description that I am omitting in the name of brevity. Be satisfied to know that his shoes were of patent leather. Know, furthermore, that he’d inherited a few braces
of contos
from an old uncle in Barbacena.

My spirits (allow me a child’s comparison here!), my spirits on that occasion were a kind of shuttlecock. Quincas Borba’s narration hit it, it went up, and when it was about to drop, Virgília’s note hit it again, and it was hurled into the air once more. It would descend and the episode on the Passeio Público would receive it with another stroke, equally as firm and effective. I don’t think I was born for complex situations. That pushing and shoving of opposite things was getting me off balance. I had an urge to wrap up Quincas Borba, Lobo Neves, and Virgília’s note in the same philosophy and send them to Aristotle as a gift. Nevertheless, our philosopher’s narrative was instructive. I especially admired the
talent for observation with which he described the gestation and growth of vice, the inner struggles, the slow capitulations, the covering of slime.

“Look,” he observed. “The first night I spent on the São Francisco stairs, I slept right through as though it had been the softest down. Why? Because I went gradually from a bed with a mattress to a wooden cot, from my own bedroom to the police station, from the police station to the street …”

Finally, he wanted to explain the philosophy to me. I asked him not to. “I’m terribly preoccupied today and I wouldn’t pay attention. Come back another time. I’m always home.” Quincas Borba smiled in a sly way. Maybe he knew about my affair, but he didn’t say anything more. He only spoke these last words to me at the door:

“Come to Humanitism. It’s the great bosom for the spirit, the eternal sea into which I dove to bring out the truth. The Greeks made it come out of a well! What a base conception! A well! But that’s precisely why they never hit upon it. Greeks, Sub-Greeks, Anti-Greeks, the whole long series of mankind has leaned over that well to watch truth come out, but it isn’t there. They wore out ropes and buckets. Some of the more audacious ones went down to the bottom and brought up a toad. I went directly to the sea. Come to Humanitism.”

A week later Lobo Neves was named president of a province. I clung to the hope of a refusal, that the decree would again come out dated the I3th. The date was the 31st, however, and that simple transposition of ciphers eliminated any diabolical substance in them. How deep are the springs of life!

As it isn’t my custom to cover up or hide anything, on this page I shall tell about the wall. They were ready to embark. In the meantime at Dona Plácida’s house I caught sight of a small piece of paper on the table. It was a note from Virgília. She said she would expect me at night in the yard, without fail. And she ended: “The wall’s low on the alley side.”

I made a gesture of displeasure. The letter seemed uncommonly audacious to me, poorly thought out, even ridiculous. It wasn’t just inviting scandal, it was inviting ridicule along with it. I pictured myself climbing over the wall, even though it was low on the alley side. And just as I was about to get over it I saw myself in the clutches of a policeman who took me to the station house. The wall is low! And what if it was low? Virgília didn’t know what she was doing, naturally. It was possible that she was already sorry. I looked at the piece of paper, wrinkled but inflexible. I had an itch to tear it up into thirty thousand pieces and throw them to the wind as the last remnants of my adventure. But I retreated in time. Self-respect, the vexation of the running away, the idea of fear … There was nothing to do but go.

“Tell her I’m coming.”

“Where?” Dona Plácida asked.

“Where she said she expects me.”

“She didn’t say anything to me.”

“On this piece of paper.”

Dona Plácida focused her eyes. “But I found that paper in your drawer this morning and I thought that …”

I had a strange sensation. I reread the piece of paper, looked at it, looked at it again. It was, indeed, an old note of Virgília’s received during the beginning of our love affair, a certain meeting in the yard, which had, indeed, led to my leaping over the wall, a low and discreet wall. I put the paper away … I had a strange sensation.

But it was written that the day was to be one of dubious moves. A few hours later I ran into Lobo Neves on the Rua do Ouvidor. We talked about the presidency and politics. He took advantage of the first acquaintance who passed and left me after all manner of pleasant words. I remember that he was withdrawn, but it was a withdrawal he was struggling to hide. It seemed to me then (and may the critics forgive me if this judgment of mine is too bold), it seemed to me that he was afraid—not afraid of me, or of himself, or of the law, or of his conscience. He was afraid of public opinion. I imagined that that anonymous and invisible tribunal in which every member accuses and judges was the limit set for Lobo Neves’ will. Maybe he didn’t love his wife anymore and therefore it was possible that his heart was indifferent in its indulgence of her latest acts. I think (and again I beg the critics’ good will), I think he was probably prepared to break with his wife, as the reader has probably broken with many personal relationships, but public opinion, that opinion which would drag his life along all the streets, would open a minute investigation into the matter, would put together, one by one, all circumstances, antecedents, inductions, proofs, would talk about them in idle backyard conversations, that terrible public opinion, so curious about bedrooms, stood in the way of a family breakup. At the same time, it made vengeance, which would be an admission, impossible. He couldn’t appear resentful toward me without also seeking a conjugal breakup. Therefore he had to pretend the same ignorance as before and, by deduction, similar feelings.

I think it was quite hard for him. In those days especially, I saw how hard it must have been for him. But time (and this is another point in which I hope for the indulgence of men who think!), time hardens sensibility and obliterates the memory of things. It was to be supposed that the years would dull the thorns, that a removal from events would smooth the sore spots, that a shadow of retrospective doubt would cover the nakedness of reality. In short, that public opinion would occupy itself a bit with other adventures. The son, as he grew up, would try to satisfy the father’s ambitions. He would be heir to all his affection. This
and constant activity and public prestige and old age, then illness, decline, death, a dirge, an obituary, and the book of life was closed without a single blood-stained page.

The conclusion, if the previous chapter has one, is that public opinion is a good glue for domestic institutions. It’s not entirely impossible that I’ll develop that thought before finishing the book, but it’s also not impossible that I’ll leave it the way it is. One way or another, public opinion is a good glue, both in domestic order and in politics. Some bilious metaphysicians have arrived at the extreme of presenting it as the simple product of foolish or mediocre people. But it’s obvious that even when a conceit as extreme as that doesn’t bring out an answer by itself, it’s sufficient to consider the salutary effects of public opinion and conclude that it’s the superfine work, of the flower of mankind, to wit, the greatest number.

“Yes, it’s tomorrow. Are you going to come on board?”

“Are you mad? That’s impossible.”

“Goodbye, then!”

“Goodbye!”

“Don’t forget Dona Plácida. Go see her from time to time. Poor thing! She came to say goodbye to us yesterday. She cried a lot, said I’d never see her again … She’s a good person, isn’t she?”

“Of course.”

“If we have to write, she’ll get the letters. Goodbye for now then, until …”

“Two years maybe?”

“Oh, no! He says it’s only until they hold elections.”

“Is that so? So long, then. Watch out, they’re looking at us.”

“Who?”

“Over there on the sofa. We’d better break up.”

“It’s awfully hard for me.”

“But we have to. Goodbye, Virgília!”

“See you later. Goodbye!”

I didn’t see her leave, but at the designated hour I felt something that wasn’t pain or pleasure, a mixed sort of thing, relief and longing all mixed in together in equal doses. The reader shouldn’t be irritated by
this confession. I know quite well that in order to titillate the nerves of fantasy I should have suffered great despair, shed a few tears, and not eaten lunch. It would have been like a novel, but it wouldn’t have been biography. The naked truth is that I did eat lunch, as on every other day, succoring my heart with the memories of my adventure and my stomach with the delicacies of M. Prudhon …

… Old people from my time, perhaps you remember that master chef at the Hotel Pharoux, a fellow who, according to what the owner of the place said, had served in the famous Véry and Véfour in Paris and later on in the palaces of the Count Molé and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. He was famous. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro along with the polka … The polka, M. Prudhon, the Tivoli, the foreigners’ ball, the Casino, there you have some of the best memories of those times, but above all, the master’s delicacies were delicious.

They were, and on that morning it was as if the devil of a fellow had sensed our catastrophe. Never had ingenuity and art been so favorable to him. What a delight of spices! What a delicacy of meats! What refinement in the shapes! You ate with your mouth, with your eyes, and with your nose. I can’t remember the bill on that day. I know that it was expensive. Oh, the sorrow of it! I had to give magnificent burial to my love affair. It was going off there, out to sea, off into space and time, and I was staying behind at a corner table with my forty-some-odd years, so lazy and so hazy. It was left for me never to see them again, because she might come back and she did come back, but who asked for an out-pouring of morning from the evening sunset?

The end of the last chapter left me so sad that I was capable of not writing this one, of taking a little rest, purging my spirit of the melancholy that encumbers it and then continuing on. But no, I don’t want to waste any time.

Virgília’s departure left me with a sample of what it’s like to be widowed. During the first few days I stayed home, catching flies like Domitian, if Suetonius is telling the truth, but catching them in a particular way, with my eyes. I would catch them one by one, lying in the hammock in the rear of a large room with an open book in my hands. It was everything: nostalgia, ambitions, a bit of tedium, and a lot of aimless daydreaming. My uncle the canon died during that interval along with two cousins. I didn’t feel shocked. I took them to the cemetery as one takes money to the bank. What am I saying? As one takes letters to the post office. I sealed the letters, put them in the box, and left it to the postman to see that they were delivered into the right hands. It was also around that time that my niece Venância, Cotrim’s daughter, was born. Some were dying, others were being born. I continued with the flies.

At other times I would get agitated. I would open drawers, shuffle through old letters from friends, relatives, sweethearts (even those from Marcela), and open all of them, read them one by one, and revive the past … Uninstructed reader, if you don’t keep the letters from your youth, you won’t get to know the philosophy of old pages someday, you won’t enjoy the pleasure of seeing yourself from a distance, in the shadows, with a three-cornered hat, seven-league boots, and a long Assyrian beard, dancing to the sound of Anachreonic pipes. Keep the letters of your youth!

Or, if the three-cornered hat doesn’t suit you, I’ll use the expression of an old sailor, a friend of the Cotrims. I’ll say that if you keep the letters of your youth, you’ll find a chance to “sing a bit of nostalgia.” It seems that our sailors give that name to songs of the land sung on the high seas. As a poetic expression it’s something that can make you even sadder.

Two forces, however, along with a third, compelled me to return to my usual agitated life. Sabina and Quincas Borba. My sister was pushing the conjugal candidacy of Nhã-loló in a truly impetuous way.
When I became aware, I practically had the girl in my arms. As for Quincas Borba, he finally laid out Humanitism for me. It was a philosophical system destined to be the ruination of all others.