Quincas Borba

by Machado De Assis

  He didn’t know what to think. The act of going, of leaving her at the ball instead of waiting to accompany her to her carriage as on other occasions . . . It could be a deception of his … And he was thinking, remembering the night in Santa Teresa when he dared declare his feelings to the young woman, taking her by her delicate hand … The major had interrupted them, but why hadn’t he repeated it later on? And she didn’t treat him badly, nor did her husband notice anything ... At this point the idea of the possible rival returned. It’s true he was leaving because he was tired, but her behavior … Rubião went to the door of the salon to take a look at Sofia. Then he went over to a corner of the room, or to the card table, upset, annoyed.

  LXXI

  At home, as she undid her hair, Sofia spoke of that soiree as an irksome affair. She yawned, her legs ached. Palha disagreed. She was in a bad mood. If her legs ached, it was because she’d danced too much. To which his wife replied that if she hadn’t danced she would have died of boredom. And she went on taking out the hairpins, dropping them into a crystal glass. Her hair soon streamed down over her shoulders, which were partly covered by her cambric nightgown. Palha, behind her, said that Carlos Maria waltzed very well. Sofia trembled. She looked at him in the mirror. His face was calm. She agreed that he didn’t waltz badly.

  “No, ma’am, he waltzes quite well.”

  “You praise other people because you know that nobody is capable of taking your place. Come on, my proud fellow, I know you too well.”

  Palha, reaching out his hand and taking her by the chin, made her look at him. Proud of what? Why was he proud?

  “Oh,” Sofia moaned, “you’re hurting me.”

  Palha kissed her on the shoulder. She smiled, without any annoyance, without any headache, just the opposite of that night in Santa Teresa when she told her husband about Rubião’s advances. The hillside must have been unwholesome and the beach healthful.

  The next day Sofia woke up early to the sound of the birds trilling in the house as they seemed to be sending her a message from someone. She let herself remain in bed, and she closed her eyes in order to see better.

  To see what better? Certainly not the unwholesome hillside. The beach was something else again. Stationed at the window a half hour later, Sofia was contemplating the waves that were rising and falling at the entrance to the bay. The imaginative lady was wondering if that was the waltz of the waters, and she let herself be carried along on that current without sail or oars. She caught herself looking at the street beside the sea as if seeking a sign of the man who’d been there the night before last, late ... I can’t swear to it, but I think she saw the sign. At least it’s certain that she matched what she saw with the text of the conversation:

  “The night was clear. I stayed there for about an hour, between the sea and your house. Could I wager that you were not dreaming about me? In any case, I could almost hear your breathing. The sea was pounding hard, it’s true, but my heart wasn’t pounding any less hard—with this difference: the sea is stupid, it beats without knowing why, while my heart knew it was beating for you.”

  Sofia had a chill. She tried to forget the text but the text kept on repeating: “The night was clear …”

  LXXII

  Between two phrases she felt someone’s hand on her shoulder. It was her husband who’d just had breakfast and was leaving for downtown. They said goodbye affectionately. Cristiano advised her to look after Maria Benedita, who’d awakened quite upset.

  “Up so soon!” Sofia exclaimed.

  “When I came down I found her in the dining room already. She woke up with her mania to go back to the country. She’d had a dream . . . I don’t know what about…”

  “Irritable!” Sofia concluded.

  And with her light and skillful fingers she straightened her husband’s tie, pulled the collar of his morning coat to the front, and they said goodbye again. Palha went downstairs and left. Sofia remained by the window. Before rounding the corner he turned his head and they waved goodbye in the usual way.

  LXXIII

  “The night was clear. I stayed there for about an hour, between the sea and your house. Could I wager …” When Sofia was able to tear herself away from the window, the clock downstairs was striking nine. Angry, repentant, she swore to herself on her mother’s soul that she wouldn’t think about an episode like that anymore. She didn’t consider it of any value. The mistake had been in letting the young man follow to the end of his boldness. The truth is that in proceeding in that way, she’d avoided a great scandal, because he was capable of accompanying her to her chair and telling her the rest in front of other people. And the rest was being repeated once more in her memory like an insistent musical passage, the same words and the same voice. “The night was clear. I stayed there for about an hour...”

  LXXIV

  While she was repeating the declaration of the night before, Carlos Maria was opening his eyes, stretching his limbs, and, before going in to bathe, dress, and take a horseback ride, he reconstructed the night before. He had that habit. In the successes of the previous day he always found something done, something said, some touch that made him feel good. That was where his spirit lingered. Those were the halts in his route where he dismounted to sip a drink of cool water. If there was no success in any of them—or if they’d only gone against him, even so his feelings weren’t disheartening. All he needed was the taste of some word that he himself had said—some gesture he’d made, subjective contemplation, the pleasure of having felt alive—for the day before not to have been a complete loss.

  Sofia figured in the day before. It even seemed that she was the main figure in its reconstruction, the faéade of the building, broad and magnificent. Carlos Maria savored the whole memory of the evening, but when he remembered his confession of love, he felt both good and bad. It was a compromise, an obstacle, an obligation. And since the benefits made up for the bother, the young man remained between both feelings, without any plan. As he remembered the story he’d told her of having gone to Flamengo Beach the other night, he couldn’t hold back a laugh, because it wasn’t true. The idea had come to him out of the conversation itself. But he hadn’t gone there, nor even thought of doing so. Finally he controlled his laughter and was even sorry. The fact that he had lied gave him a feeling of inferiority, which dampened his spirits. He got to thinking about rectifying what he’d said the next time he was with Sofia, but he realized that the correction was worse than the sonnet, and that there are pretty sonnets that lie.

  His spirits quickly rose. In his memory he saw the room, the men, the women, the impatient fans, the offended mustaches, and he stretched out full length in a bath of envy and admiration. The envy of others, let it be well noted. He lacked that terrible feeling. The envy and admiration of others was what was giving him an inner delight even then. The princess of the ball was giving herself to him. That was how he defined Sofia’s superiority, even though he was aware of a capital defect—her upbringing. He found that the young woman’s polished manners came from adult imitation, after marriage or a little before, which, even so, didn’t rise up very much out of the milieu in which she lived.

  LXXV

  Other women came into play—the ones who preferred him to other men as company and in the contemplation of his person. Was he courting or had he courted all of them? It’s not known. For some, of course: it’s certain, however, that he took delight in all of them. There were those of proven chastity who enjoyed having him alongside them in order to enjoy the contact of a handsome man without the reality or the danger of sin—like the spectator who takes pleasure in the passions of Othello and leaves the theater with his hands clean of the death of Desdemona.

  They all came to surround Carlos Maria’s bed, weaving the same garland for him. They weren’t all young women in bloom, but distinction took the place of youth. Carlos Maria received them as an ancient god, quiet on his marble, must have received his beautiful devotees and their offerings. In the general hubbu
b the voices of all could be distinguished—not all at the same time—but by threes and fours.

  The last was that of the recent Sofia. He listened to her, still taken with love but without the excitement of the beginning, because the memory of the other ladies, persons of quality, was now reducing the importance of the latest one. Nonetheless, he couldn’t deny that she was very attractive and that she waltzed perfectly. Would he get to have strong love for her? At that moment the lie about the beach appeared again. He got out of bed, annoyed.

  “What the devil made me say a thing like that?”

  Once again he felt the desire to reestablish the truth. And this time more seriously than the last. Lying, he thought, was for lackies and their ilk.

  A half hour later he mounted his horse and left his house, which was on the Rua dos Inválidos. Heading for Catete he remembered that Sofia’s house was on Flamengo Beach. Nothing more natural than to twist the reins, go down the streets perpendicular to the sea, and pass by the waltzer’s door. Find her there at the window, perhaps, see her blush, greet her. All that passed through the young man’s head in a few seconds. He got to give a tug on the reins, but his soul—not the horse—reared; it was going after her too fast. He gave another tug on the reins and continued on his ride.

  LXXVI

  He rode well. Everyone who passed or was in a doorway enjoyed watching the young man’s posture, his elegance, the regal calm with which he went along. Carlos Maria—and this was the point where he gave in to the crowd—took in all those expressions of admiration, no matter how insignificant. When it came to adoring him, all men formed part of humanity.

  LXXVII

  “Up so soon?” Sofia repeated on seeing her cousin reading the newspapers. Maria Benedita gave a start, but she calmed down immediately. She’d slept poorly and had awakened early. She wasn’t up to those late–night revelries, she said, but the other woman replied right away that she would have to get used to it, that life in Rio de Janeiro wasn’t the same as in the country, where they went to sleep with the hens and woke up with the roosters. Then she questioned her about her impressions of the ball. Maria Benedita shrugged her shoulders indifferently, but she answered verbally that they were good. The words came out few and faint. Sofia, however, wondered about the fact that she’d danced a lot except for polkas and waltzes. Why hadn’t she polkaed and waltzed too? Her cousin gave her a nasty look.

  “I don’t like to.”

  “What do you mean you don’t like to? You’re afraid.”

  “Afraid?”

  “You’re not used to it,” Sofia explained.

  “I don’t like to have a man hold my body tight against his and to move along with me like that in sight of other people. It bothers me.”

  Sofia became serious. She didn’t defend her point or continue on with it. She mentioned the country, asked if what Cristiano had said was true, that she wanted to go home. Then the cousin, who was idly thumbing through the newspapers, replied eagerly that she did. She couldn’t live away from her mother.

  “But why? Haven’t you been happy with us?”

  Maria Benedita didn’t say anything. She ran her eyes over one of the newspapers as if she were looking for some item, biting her lip, hesitant, restless. Sofia insisted on knowing the reason for that sudden change. She took her hands, found them cold.

  “You need to get married. I’ve already got a husband for you.”

  It was Rubião. Palha wanted it to come to that, marrying his partner to his cousin. Everything would stay in the family, he told his wife. The latter took it upon herself to handle the matter. She was keeping her promise to him now. She had a husband all ready for her.

  “Who?” Maria Benedita asked.

  “Somebody.”

  Can you believe it, future generations? Sofia was unable to give out Rubião’s name. She’d told her husband once already, had suggested him, and she was faking. Now, when she was really about to suggest him, the name wouldn’t leave her lips. Jealousy? It would be singularly strange if this woman, who didn’t love the man at all, was unwilling to give him to her cousin as a fiancé, but nature is capable of anything, my dear and respected friends. It contrived Othello’s jealousy and that of the Chevalier Desgrieux, and it was capable of contriving this other jealousy in a person who didn’t want to release what she didn’t want to possess.

  “But, who?” Maria Benedita repeated.

  “I’ll tell you later. Let me arrange things,” Sofia answered and changed the subject.

  Maria Benedita’s expression was different. Her mouth broke into a smile, a smile of hope and joy. Her eyes were thankful for the promise, and they spoke words that no one could hear or understand, obscure words.

  “Likes to waltz. That’s what it is.”

  Who likes to waltz? Probably the other woman. She’d waltzed so much the night before with Carlos Maria himself that she could well have been using the dance as a pretext. Maria Benedita concluded now that that was the very reason, the only one. They talked a lot between numbers, it’s true, but, naturally, she was the one they’d been talking about, since her cousin had taken it upon herself to get her married and was only asking her to let her arrange things. Maybe he found her ugly or graceless. Since her cousin wanted to arrange things, however … All that was being said by the girl’s happy eyes.

  LXXVIII

  Rubião was the one who hadn’t lost his suspicions so easily, just like that. He thought about talking to Carlos Maria, interrogating him, and he went so far as to go to the Rua dos Inválidos the next day three times. Not finding him in, he changed his mind. He cloistered himself for a few days. Major Siqueira pulled him out of his solitude. He came by to let him know that he’d moved to the Rua Dois de Dezembro. He liked our friend’s house very much, the furnishings, the luxury, all the details, the gold work, the curtains. He discoursed on that subject at length, recalling antique furniture. He stopped suddenly to tell him that he seemed bored. It was quite natural, something was missing there.

  “You’re happy, but something’s missing here. You need a wife. You should get married. Get married and then tell me if I’m wrong.”

  Rubião remembered Santa Teresa—that famous night and his talk with Sofia—and he felt a chill run up his spine. But there was no sarcasm in the major’s voice. Nor was it driven by interest. His daughter was the same as we’d left her in Chapter XLIII with the difference that she’d turned forty. She immediately started wailing over the years on the morning she passed the mark. She didn’t put a ribbon or a rose in her hair. No party. Only a speech by her father at breakfast, recalling her as a child, anecdotes about her mother and her grandmother, a costume at a masked ball, a baptism in 1848, a Colonel Clodomiro’s tapeworm, different things all mixed together to pass the time. Dona Tónica was barely listening to him, all wrapped up in herself, gnawing on the crust of her moral solitude as she regretted the latest efforts made in search of a husband. Forty years old. It was time to call a halt.

  The major remembered nothing of that now. He was sincere. He felt that Rubião’s house lacked a soul. And as he took his leave he repeated:

  “Get married, and then tell me if I’m wrong.”

  LXXIX

  And why not? a voice asked after the major had left. Rubião, terrified, looked around. All he could see was the dog, standing and looking at him. It was so absurd to think that the question had come from Quincas Borba there—or, rather, from the other Quincas Borba whose spirit was in his body—that our friend smiled scornfully. But at the same time, he repeated the gesture from Chapter XLIX, reaching out his hand and lovingly scratching the dog’s ears and neck—an act that could give satisfaction to the dead man’s spirit.

  That was how our friend, without an audience, opened up to himself.

  LXXX

  But the voice repeated: “Why not?” Yes, why shouldn’t he get married? he went on thinking. It would put an end to the passion that was slowly eating at him with no hope or consolation. Besides, it was t
he gateway to a mystery. Get married, yes, marry soon and well.

  He was by the gate when that idea began to flower. From there he went inside, going up the stone steps, opening the door, unaware of anything. As he closed the door, a leap from Quincas Borba, who’d accompanied him, brought him to. Where had the major gone? He wanted to go back down and see him, but he realized in time that he’d just taken him to the street. His legs had done everything. They were what had carried him along all by themselves, straight, lucid, without stumbling, so that his head was left with nothing but the task of thinking. Good old legs! Friendly legs! Natural crutches for the spirit!

  Holy legs! They took him to the couch, slowly stretched out along with him while his spirit worked on the idea of marriage. It was a way of freeing himself from Sofia. It could be even more.

  Yes, it could also be a way of bringing back to life the unity he’d lost with the change of milieu and fortune. But this last consideration wasn’t really the product of his spirit or his legs but was caused by something else, which, like a spider, he couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. What does a spider know about Mozart? Nothing. But it listens with pleasure to a sonata by the master. The cat, who has never read Kant, could still be a metaphysical animal. Marriage might really be the knot that would tie up his lost unity. Rubião felt scattered. Transitory friends whom he loved so much, who courted him so much, gave life the feeling of a journey to him, a trip where language changed with the cities, Spanish here, Turkish there. Sofia contributed to that state. She could be so diverse herself, now this, now that, that the days went by with no set accord, no lasting disenchantment.