Quincas Borba

by Machado De Assis

  For someone in such a hurry it was too long a speech. Sofia realized it a little too late. She repeated to Rubião that she’d see him later, that she had to go back to the parlor. The piano had stopped. A discreet rumble of applause and conversation could be heard.

  CXVI

  They were going to marry? But how is it, then, that… ? Maria Benedita—it was Maria Benedita who was marrying Carlos Maria. But then Carlos Maria … He was understanding now; it had all been a mistake, confusion. What seemed to have been going on with one person was going on with another, and that’s how people can arrive at slander and crime.

  That was what Rubião was thinking as he came out into the dining room where the butlers were clearing the dinner table. And he continued, walking the whole length of the parlor. “Just imagine! And Palha wanted me to marry the cousin, not knowing that fate had a different groom for her. The young man’s not ugly, much better-looking than she. Alongside Sofia, Maria Benedita isn’t much or anything at all. But she’s pleasant all the same … They’re getting married and soon … Will the wedding be sumptuous? It probably will. Palha’s a bit better off now …” and Rubião cast his eyes over the furniture, the porcelain, the crystal, the draperies. “It’s got to be sumptuous. And, besides, the groom is rich …” Rubião thought about the coach and the horses that would pull it. He’d seen a superb team in Engenho Velho a few days before that was just right. He would order another pair like them, no matter what the price. He had to give the bride a present too. As he was thinking about her, he saw her enter the room.

  “Where’s Cousin Sofia?” she asked Rubião

  “I don’t know. She was here a minute ago.”

  And as he saw her ready to move off, he asked for a word with her and for her not to get angry. Maria Benedita waited. Without hesitation he gave her his congratulations. He knew that she was going to get married … Maria Benedita turned quite red and murmured that he shouldn’t tell anybody. There was no servant around then. Rubião grabbed her hand and squeezed it between his hands.

  “I’m like a member of the family,” he said. “You deserve happiness, and I hope that you’ll get it.”

  A bit frightened, Maria Benedita pulled her hand free, but in order not to upset him, she smiled. None of that was necessary. He was delighted. We know the girl wasn’t pretty, but she looked beautiful from the strength of the good wishes. Nature seemed to have placed its most delicate ideas in her. Smiling too, Rubião went on:

  “It was your cousin who told me. She swore me to secrecy. I won’t say a word ahead of time. But what can I tell you? You’re good and you deserve everything. No need to lower your eyes, there’s nothing shameful about marriage. Come, lift up your head and smile.”

  Maria Benedita cast her radiant eyes on him.

  “That’s the way!” Rubião applauded. “What’s wrong with confessing to a friend? Let me tell you the truth. I think you’ll be happy, but I feel that he’ll be even happier. No? You just see if I’m not telling the truth. He’ll tell you what he feels himself, and if he’s sincere, you’ll see that I’m only prophesying. I know quite well that there’s no scale to weigh feelings on. All I’m trying to say is that you’re a beautiful and good young lady … Go, get on with you. If not, I’ll keep on telling truths, and you’ll be blushing all the more …”

  It was true. Maria Benedita was blushing with pleasure as she listened to Rubião’s words. At home she’d found acquiescence, nothing more. Carlos Maria wasn’t that tender. He loved her circumspectly. He spoke to her of marital bliss as if it were a tribute he was going to receive from fate—a payment owed, complete and certain. Nor was it necessary to treat her otherwise for her to adore him above all things in this world. Rubião repeated his goodbye and stood looking at her as he would at a daughter. He watched her go off like that, crossing the room, lively and satisfied—so different from the way he’d found her at other times—to disappear through one of the doors. He couldn’t hold back these words:

  “A beautiful and good young lady!”

  CXVII

  The story of Maria Benedita’s wedding is brief. And even though Sofia might find it common, it’s worth saying so. It has already been admitted that if it hadn’t been for the epidemic in Alagoas, there might not have been any wedding, from which it can be concluded that catastrophes are useful, even necessary. There are more than enough examples, but a little story I heard as a child will suffice, and I shall give it to you here in a couple of lines. Once upon a time there was a cottage burning by the side of the road. The owner—a poor ragged wretch of a woman—was weeping over her disaster, sitting on the ground a few steps away. Suddenly, a drunken man happened along. He saw the fire, saw the woman, and asked her if that was her house.

  “It’s mine, yes, sir, and all I have in this world.

  “Do you mind if I light my cigar from it?”

  The priest who told me this certainly must have edited the original text. You don’t have to be drunk to light your cigar on somebody else’s misfortune. Good Father Chagas!—his name was Chagas—a priest who was more than good and who in that way instilled in me for many years the consoling idea that no one in his right mind will profit from the ills of others, not to mention the respect the drunkard had for the principle of property—to the point of not lighting his cigar without first asking permission of the owner of the ruins. All consoling ideas. Good Father Chagas!

  CXVIII

  Farewell, Father Chagas! I’m getting to the story of the wedding. That Maria Benedita loved Carlos Maria is something that was seen or sensed ever since that ball on the Rua dos Arcos where he and Sofia waltzed so much. We saw her the next morning, all ready to go to the country. Her cousin calmed her down with the promise that she was arranging a fiancé for her. Maria Benedita thought it was to be the waltzer from the night before and stayed on, waiting. She didn’t confess anything to Sofia—first out of shame and later so as not to lose the effect of the news when Sofia revealed the person’s name. If she were to confess it right away, it might happen that the other woman would slacken in her task, and it would be a lost cause. Let’s dismiss all this, a girl’s petty calculations.

  The epidemic in Alagoas had come about in the meantime. Sofia organized the committee, which brought with it new relationships for the Palha family. Included among the women forming one of the subcommittees, Maria Benedita worked with all of them, but she gained the especial esteem of one of them, Dona Fernanda, the wife of a deputy. Dona Fernanda was a bit over thirty, was jovial, expansive, ruddy, and robust. She’d been born in Porto Alegre, had married a lawyer from Alagoas, the deputy from a different province now, and, according to rumor, about to become a minister of state. Her husband’s origins were the reason for her joining the committee. And it was a good move, because she brought in donations like a field commander, not the least bit shy and accepting no refusals. Carlos Maria, who was her cousin, went to call on her the moment she arrived in Rio de Janeiro. He found her even more beautiful than in 1865, the last time he’d seen her, and it could well have been true. He carne to the conclusion that the air in the south was made to fortify people, double their charms, and he made the promise to go there to live out his days.

  “You must go there because I can arrange a marriage for you,” she said. “I know a girl in Pelotas who’s a bijou, and she’ll only marry a man from the capital.”

  “Me, naturally?”

  “From the capital and with big eyes. Look, I’m not fooling. She’s a country girl of the highest class. I’ve got a picture of her here.”

  Dona Fernanda opened the album and showed him a picture of the person.

  “She’s not ugly,” he agreed.

  “Is that all?”

  “All right, she’s pretty.”

  “Where can you find something to top that, cousin?”

  Carlos Maria smiled without answering. He didn’t like the expression. He tried to change the subject, but Dona Fernanda went back to his marrying her friend from Pelota
s. She stared at the picture and colored it in with words, saying what her eyes were like, her hair, her skin. And then she gave him a short biography of Sonora. That was her pretty name. The priest who’d baptized her was hesitant about bestowing it in spite of the prestige and influence of the child’s father, a wealthy rancher, but he gave in finally, stating that a person’s virtues could carry the name to the roster of the saints.

  “Do you think she’s going to join the roster of the saints?” Carlos Maria asked.

  “If she marries you, I do.”

  “That doesn’t explain anything. If she married the devil, the same thing could happen and with even more certainty because of the martyrdom involved. Saint Sonora. It’s not a bad name, it sounds nice in that setting. Saint Sonora... In any case, cousin …”

  “You’re sounding like a Jew, be quiet,” she interrupted. “So, are you refusing my country girl?” she went on, putting the album away.

  “I’m not refusing. Just let me go on with my celibacy, which is halfway to heaven.”

  Dona Fernanda let out a loud laugh.

  “Merciful God! Do you really think you’re going to heaven?”

  “I’ve been there already for twenty minutes now. Because isn’t it this room, peaceful, cool, so far away from the people out there? Here are the two of us, chatting away without hearing any blaspheming, without suffering the presence of any crippled, tubercular, scrofulous, unbearable spirits, hell itself, in a word. This is heaven—or a piece of it. Since we fit into it, it’s as good as the infinite. We’re talking about Saint Sonora, Saint Carlos Maria, Saint Fernanda, who, in contrast to Saint Gonçalo, has become a matchmaker for young girls. Where can another heaven like this be found?”

  “In Pelotas.”

  “Pelotas is so far away!” he sighed, stretching out his legs and looking at the chandelier.

  “All right. This is only the first attack. I’ll make others until you end up wanting to.”

  Carlos Maria smiled and looked at the tassels hanging from the silk sash around her waist, tied with a loose bow, either to observe the tassels or to take note of the elegance of her body. He could easily see, once again, that his cousin was a beautiful creature. Her shape attracted his eyes—respect turned them away. But it wasn’t just friendship that made him tarry there a little and that brought him to that house again. Carlos Maria generally loved the conversation of women as much as he detested that of men. He found men declamatory, coarse, tiring, boring, trivial, crude, banal. Women, on the other hand, were neither coarse nor declamatory nor boring. Their vanity was fitting, and a few defects did them no harm. Furthermore, they had the grace and gentleness of their sex. Even from the most insignificant of them, he thought, there was always something to be had. When he found them insipid or stupid, he thought to himself that they were unfinished men.

  In the meantime, the relationship between Dona Fernanda and Maria Benedita was becoming closer. The latter, in addition to being bashful, was rather sad at the time. It was precisely the disparity of character and situation that had brought them together. Dona Fernanda possessed the quality of sympathy on a large scale. She loved the weak and the sad from her need to make them happy and courageous. She had many acts of mercy and dedication to her credit.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked her little friend one day. “You almost never laugh, and you always go around with frightened eyes, thinking …”

  Maria Benedita replied that there was nothing the matter, that it was her manner. And she smiled as she said it out of simple acquiescence. She alluded to the loss of her mother as one of the causes of her melancholy. Dona Fernanda began to take her everywhere, having her to dinner, keeping a seat in her box for her if she went to the theater, and, thanks to that and to her genius for revelry, she shook out of the girl’s soul the hateful ravens that had been flapping their wings there. Habit and affection quickly made them intimate friends. Nevertheless, Maria Benedita continued to be silent about her mystery.

  “Whatever the mystery is,” Dona Fernanda thought one day, “I think the best thing would be to get her married to Carlos Maria. Sonora can wait.”

  “You need to get married, Maria Benedita,” she told her two days later in the morning at her country house in Mata-Cavalos. Maria Benedita had gone to the theater with her and had spent the night there. “I don’t want any shuddering. You need to get married, and you’re going to get married … I’ve been meaning to tell you that ever since the day before yesterday, but things like that, when they’re talked about in the salon or on the street, don’t have the force they need. Here in the country place it’s different. And if you feel like climbing, come up the hill a bit with me, then it’ll be just right. Shall we go?”

  “It’s getting hot…”

  “It’s more poetic than that, child. Oh, you bloodless Rio people! You’ve got water in your veins. Let’s stay here on this bench, then. Sit down. That’s it. I’ll stay here next to you, ready for anything. Marry or die. Don’t answer me. You’re not happy,” she went on, changing her tone. “No matter what you do, I can see that you’re going through life without any pleasure. Come on, tell me frankly, are you interested in anyone? If you are, confess it, and I’ll have that person sent for.”

  “I’m not.”

  “No? Well, that’s exactly what’s needed. You don’t have to engrave it on your heart. I know a good candidate …”

  Maria Benedita turned completely around, facing her, her lips half open and her eyes wide. She seemed fearful of the proposal or anxious for it. Dona Fernanda, without sensing her friend’s real state of mind, took her hand first and asked her to tell her everything. She must be in love with someone, it was clear, she saw it in her eyes. She had to get her to confess it, she’d insist, beg—she’d hint at it if that was necessary. Maria Benedita’s hand had grown cold, her eyes were piercing the ground, and for a few moments neither said anything.

  “Come on, say something,” Dona Fernanda repeated.

  “I’ve nothing to say.”

  Dona Fernanda put on an expression of disbelief. She hugged her tighter, put her arms around her waist, and drew her close to her. She told her in a very soft voice, into her ear, that it was as if she were her own mother. And she kissed her on the cheek, on the ear, on the back of the neck. She laid the girl’s head on her shoulder, stroked it with her other hand. Everything, everything, she wanted to know everything. If her lover was on the moon, she’d send for him on the moon—wherever he was—except in a cemetery, but if he was in a cemetery, she’d give her a much better one who’d make her forget the first in a few days. Maria Benedita listened, all agitated, throbbing, not knowing how to escape—ready to talk and falling silent just in time, as if defending her chastity. She wasn’t denying, she wasn’t confessing—but she wasn’t smiling either and was trembling with emotion. It was easy to guess half the truth at least.

  “But I’m your friend, am I not? Don’t you trust me? Pretend I’m your mother.”

  Maria Benedita couldn’t resist much longer. She’d used up all her strength and she felt the need to reveal something. Dona Fernanda listened, touched. The sunlight was already beginning to lick the ground around the bench; it wouldn’t be long in climbing up their shoes, the hems of their skirts to their knees, but neither noticed it. Love had them absorbed. The revelation of one was like a strange rapture for the other. It was a passion that wasn’t known, wasn’t shared, wasn’t guessed. A passion that was losing its nature and its type and changing into pure adoration. At first, when she saw the beloved person, she would go through two very different states—one that she couldn’t define: excitement, foolishness, throbbing of her heart, almost a swoon. The second was one of contemplation. Now it was almost all the last. She’d wept a lot to herself, lost nights and nights of longings. She’d paid dearly for the ambition of her hopes. But she would never lose the certainty that he was superior to all other men, a divine being who, even if he didn’t notice her, would always be worthy of
adoration.

  “Well,” said Dona Fernanda when her friend finally fell silent. “Let’s get down to the essential thing, which is not idle grieving. No, my dear, this business of adoring a man who doesn’t notice you is all poetry. Get rid of the poetry. Just remember that you’re the only loser in the matter because he’ll marry someone else, the years will pass, passion will ride off in their saddlebags, and one day, when you least suspect, you’ll wake up without love and without a husband. So who is this savage?”

  “That I won’t say,” Maria Benedita answered, getting up from the bench.

  “Well, don’t,” Dona Fernanda put in, taking her wrists and making her sit on her lap. “The main thing is to get married. If it can’t be to this one, it will be to someone else.”

  “No, I’m not getting married.”

  “Only to him?”

  “I don’t know whether to him,” Maria Benedita answered after a few moments. “I love him the way I love God in heaven.”

  “Holy Virgin! Such blasphemy! Double blasphemy, child. The first is that you mustn’t love anyone as much as God, the second is that a husband, even if he’s a bad one, is always better than the best of dreams.”

  CXIX

  “A husband, even if he’s a bad one, is always better than the best of dreams.” The maxim wasn’t idealistic. Maria Benedita protested against it, because wasn’t it better to dream than to weep? Dreams end or change, while husbands can live a long time. “You said that,” Maria Benedita concluded, “because God picked out an angel for you … Look, there he comes.”