Quincas Borba

by Machado De Assis

  “Let’s leave it that there must be an angel for you, too. I know a magnificent one for you. Angels always seek me out.”

  Teófilo, Dona Fernanda’s husband, had seen them from a distance and came over to join them. He was carrying a crumpled newspaper in his hand. He didn’t greet their guest, but went straight to his wife.

  “Do you know what they’ve done to me, Nana?” he said with clenched teeth. “My speech on the fifth came out today. Look at this sentence. I said: When in doubt, abstain, as the wise man advises. And they put: When in debt, abstain … It’s intolerable! You should know that it was precisely about an outstanding debt by the navy, and I claimed in my speech that there were too many expenses. So it can look like a crude remark on my part. It’s as if I were advising nonpayment. In any case, it’s an absurdity.”

  “But didn’t you read the proofs?”

  “I read them, but the author’s the one least qualified to read them well. When in debt, abstain” he continued, with his eyes on the newspaper. And snorting: “That can only…”

  He was dejected. He was a man of talent, seriousness, and hard work, but at that moment all great acts, the most daunting problems, the most decisive battles, the most profound revolutions, the sun and the moon and the constellations, and all the beasts of the field and all human generations were not as important as the substitution of an e for an ou. Maria Benedita looked at him, not understanding. She thought she was suffering from the greatest sadness, but here was one just as great as hers and much more painful. In that way the gnawing melancholy of a poor girl was on the same level as a typographical error. Teófilo, who only then noticed her, held out his hand. It was cold. No one can fake cold hands. He must really have been suffering. Moments later he flung the paper to the ground with a violent gesture and started off.

  “But Teófilo, you can correct it tomorrow,” Dona Fernanda told him, getting up.

  Teófilo, without turning around, shrugged his shoulders, hopeless. His wife ran to him. Her friend was still bewildered. She remained alone on the bench, free of them now, receiving the full force of the sun, which didn’t make love or speeches. Dona Fernanda took her husband into a study and consoled him for that blow with kisses. At lunch he was already smiling, even though with a pale smile. His wife, to get his mind off his worry, brought up her plan to get Maria Benedita married, and it would have to be a deputy, if there was some bachelor in the chamber, no matter what his politics. He could be in the government, in the opposition, in both, or in nothing—as long as he was a husband. She made a few reflections on that theme, lively, jolly ones, which filled time and were aimed at doing away with the memory of the switched letters. Merciful creature! Teófilo, understanding his wife, was becoming happy, and he agreed to the suitability of getting Maria Benedita married.

  “The worst part,” his wife put in, looking at her friend, “is that she’s in love with someone whose name she refuses to tell.”

  “She doesn’t have to,” her husband said, wiping his lips, “it’s obvious that she’s in love with your cousin.”

  CXX

  The following Sunday Dona Fernanda went to the church of Santo Antonio dos Pobres. When mass was over, amidst the bustle of the faithful greeting each other and bowing to the altar, whom should she see but her cousin rise up, erect, cheerful, somberly garbed, holding out his hand to her.

  “Did you come to mass, too?” she asked, surprised.

  “I did.”

  “Do you come regularly?”

  “Not regularly, but often.”

  “Frankly, I didn’t expect to see such devotion in you. Men are generally a bunch of heretics. Teófilo never sets foot in a church except to baptize his children. Are you all that religious, then?”

  “I can’t answer that with certainty, but I have a horror of banality, which is what speaking ill of religion is, that’s all. I came to mass, I didn’t come to confession. Now I’m going to see you home, and if you invite me to lunch I’ll have lunch with you people. Unless you want to have lunch with me. I’m on this street, as you know.”

  “I’d like to go alone with you, if it’s all right, so I can give you a rather long bit of news.”

  “Let’s walk slowly, then,” Carlos Maria said at the church door, offering her his arm. And, two steps farther on, “An important piece of news?”

  “Important and delightful.”

  “People want to see God, ever merciful, take our dear Teófilo to his bosom, leaving the most charming of all widows bereft… There’s no need to put that face on, cousin. Leave your arm where it is. Let’s get to the news. The girl from Pelotas has arrived, I’ll bet.”

  “I won’t tell you what it is unless you promise to listen seriously.”

  “I promise.”

  Dona Fernanda confessed that she was reluctant about getting him married to her countrywoman from Pelotas. She didn’t want any regrets. She’d discovered someone here who was deeply in love with her cousin. Carlos Maria smiled, began a witticism, but the news bolstered his spirits. Deeply in love? Deeply in love, a fierce passion, his cousin confirmed, adding that perhaps the definition didn’t really fit the person’s actual feelings anymore. Now it was a quiet and silent adoration. She’d wept over him night after night while there was still hope … And in that way Dona Fernanda went on revealing Maria Benedita’s secret. All that was left was the name. Carlos Maria wanted to know it, she refused. She wouldn’t say it. Why give him the pleasure of knowing who it was that adored him if he wasn’t running off to meet her soul? It was better to leave it a mystery. She wasn’t weeping anymore now. Modest and without drive, she’d abandoned all hope of being loved, and, in time, she’d been left as nothing but a devotee, but a devotee without equal, one who didn’t expect to be heard or rewarded someday with a kindly look from her beloved god …

  Cousin, you …”

  “I what?”

  Carlos Maria ended up saying that the advocate was a match for the cause. Really, if that girl adored him to such a degree, it was proper and natural for his cousin to have such a strong interest in her. But why not tell him her name?

  “Right now I’m not saying anything. Maybe someday … But, you understand, it would be quite difficult for me to get you married to my countrywoman knowing that another person loves you so much. And it might also be that the one here wouldn’t suffer that much if she saw you married. Yes, sir, it seems absurd, but you have to know her. I tell you that once you were happy, she’d be capable of blessing her beautiful rival.”

  “This isn’t romanticism anymore, it’s mysticism,” Carlos Maria argued after a few steps, his eyes on the ground. “It’s not in tune with our times. Have you got some proof of such a state of mind?”

  “I have … That’s your house there, isn’t it?” Dona Fernanda asked, stopping.

  “it is.”

  “A nice building. Solid.”

  “uite solid.”

  “One, two, three, four… seven windows. Does the salon go from one end to the other? It’s just right for a ball.”

  And, walking:

  “If I had a larger house here, I’d give a great ball before going back to Rio Grande. I like parties. My two children don’t give me much trouble. By the way, I’ve been wanting to put Lopo into a good school. Where can I find a good school?”

  Carlos Maria was thinking about the unknown devotee. He was far, far away from education and its establishments. How nice it was to feel oneself an adored god, and adored in an evangelical way with the devotee in a room, the door closed, in secret, not in a temple in sight of everyone. “And your father, who sees all that happens secretly, will repay you.” Oh, wouldn’t he pay if he knew who it was. Married, a proper woman? No, it couldn’t be. She wouldn’t be confessing it to anyone. A widow or an unmarried woman, more likely unmarried. He sensed that she was unmarried. What room did she shut herself up in to pray, to evoke him, to weep for him, to bless him? He was no longer insistent regarding the name. But the room, at least.<
br />
  “Where can I find a good school?” Dona Fernanda repeated.

  “School? I don’t know. I’m thinking about the woman of mystery. You can easily understand that a person who adores me in silence, without hope, is an object of some attention. Is she tall or short?”

  “Maria Benedita.”

  “That girl… ? Impossible. I’ve spoken to her a lot of times, and I never noticed anything. I always found her cold. You must be mistaken. Did she give you my name?”

  “No. No matter how many times I asked her. She confessed the miracle without naming the saint, but what a miracle! Be proud to be adored as no one ever has been … Whose house is that?”

  “You’re in the habit of exaggerating things, cousin. It might not be all that much. Adored as no one ever has been? So how did you find out I was the one?”

  “Teófilo was the first to spot it. When it was mentioned to her, she turned cherry red. She even denied it afterwards with me, and since that day she hasn’t come back to our house.”

  Such was the beginning of the love affair. Carlos Maria was amused at seeing himself silently loved like that, and all his prejudice was turning into sympathy. He began to see her, savoring the girl’s confusion, her fears, her joy, her modesty, her almost imploring expressions, a combination of acts and feelings that was the apotheosis of the man who was loved. Such was the beginning, such was the outcome. That’s the way we saw them on that night of the birthday party for Dona Sofia, to whom he’d said such sweet things before. Men are like that. The waters that flow by and the winds that roar past are no different.

  CXXI

  “Fine, he’s getting married, so much the better!” Rubião thought. Between that night and the day of the wedding, Rubião caught a few looks from Sofia in the air that bore a suspicion of temptation. Carlos Maria, if he returned them, did it more out of politeness than anything else. Rubião concluded that the case was fortuitous. He still remembered Sofia’s tear on the night of her birthday when she explained the story of the letter to him.

  Oh, good, unexpected tear! You, who were enough to persuade a man, might not be explicable to others, but that’s how the world goes. What does it matter that her eyes weren’t accustomed to weeping or that the night seemed to bring out feelings quite different from melancholy? Rubião saw it drop. Even now, he can see it in his memory. But Rubião’s confidence didn’t come from the tear alone, it also came from the Sofia who was present there, who had never been so solicitous or so affable toward him. She seemed sorry for all the trouble that had been caused, ready to heal things, either out of delayed affection or because of the very failure of the first adventure. There are virtual sins that lie dormant. There are late–blooming operas in the head of a maestro that await only the first rhythms of inspiration.

  CXXII

  “So much the better that he’s getting married!” Rubião repeated. The marriage wasn’t long in taking place, three weeks. On the morning of the designated day, Carlos Maria opened his eyes with a touch of astonishment. Was he really the one who was getting married? There was no doubt. He looked at himself in the mirror, he was the one. He reviewed the past few days, the quick march of events, the reality of the affection he felt for the bride, and, finally, the sheer happiness she was going to give him. This last idea filled him with great and rare satisfaction. He was still ruminating on it all on horseback during his habitual morning ride. This time he chose the neighborhood of Engenho Velho.

  Although he was accustomed to admiring eyes, now in all the people he saw a look that befitted the news that he was to be married. The oaks of a country estate, silent before he passed them, said very strange things that thoughtless people might have attributed to the breeze that was also passing, but which those who knew recognized as nothing less than the nuptial language of oak trees. Birds leaped from one side to the other, trilling a madrigal. A pair of butterflies—which the Japanese consider a symbol of fidelity, observing how they light from flower to flower almost always as couples—a pair of them accompanied the pace of the horse for a long time, going along the hedge of a country house by the side of the road, flitting here and there, sprightly and yellow. Along with this a cool breeze, a blue sky, the merry faces of men riding donkeys, necks stretching out of coaches to look at him in his elegance of a bridegroom. It was difficult, of course, to believe that all those gestures and appearances of people, animals, and trees were expressing any other feeling than the nuptial homage of nature.

  The butterflies disappeared into one of the thicker parts of the hedge. Another country house came along, without trees, with an open gate, and in the background, facing the gate, it squinted its eyes in the form of five eaved windows, weary of losing inhabitants. They, too, had seen weddings and festive gatherings. The century found them green still with novelty and hope.

  Don’t think that this aspect saddened the horseman’s spirit. On the contrary, he possessed the singular gift of being able to rejuvenate ruins and to live off the primitive life of things. He even enjoyed looking at the old faded house in contrast to the lively butterflies of a moment before. He stopped his horse, thought of the women who’d entered there, other festive dresses, other faces, other ways. Perchance the very shades of those happy vanished people were coming now to compliment him, too, calling him with their invisible mouths the sublime names they had for him. He could even hear them laughing. But a rasping voice came along to mingle in the concert; a parrot in a cage hanging on the outside wall of the house: “A royal parrot, give him a carrot. Who goes there? Hop to Papa, Krr… Krrr.. .” The shades fled, the horse continued on. Carlos Maria hated parrots, just as he hated monkeys, two counterfeit humans, he would say.

  “Shall the happiness I give her be interrupted, too?” he reflected as he went along.

  Wrens flew from one side of the street to the other and alighted, singing in their own language. It was redress. That language without words was intelligible. It was saying many clear and beautiful things. Carlos Maria could see a symbol of himself in that. When his wife, bewildered by the parrots of the world, began to fall down with aversion, he would make her rise up to the trilling of the divine flock of birds that he carried in himself, golden ideas spoken in a golden voice! Oh, how he would make her happy! He could already foresee her, her elbows on his knees, her head in her hands and her eyes on him, grateful, devoted, loving, all imploring, all nothing.

  CXXIII

  So that picture, at the very same moment in which it was appearing in the groom’s imagination, was being reproduced in the spirit of the bride, namely, Maria Benedita, by the window, watching the waves breaking in the distance and on the beach, seeing herself kneeling at the feet of her husband, quiet, contrite, as at communion, receiving the host of happiness. And she was saying to herself, “Oh, he will make me so happy!” The phrase and the thought were different, but the feeling and the moment were the same.

  CXXIV

  They were married. Three months later they left for Europe. When she saw them off, Dona Fernanda was as happy as if she were greeting them on their return. She didn’t cry. The pleasure of seeing them happy was greater than the displeasure of separation.

  “Are you going off happy?” she asked Maria Benedita for the last time by the rail of the steamship.

  Oh, very happy!”

  Dona Fernanda’s spirit came out of her eyes, fresh, ingenuous, singing something in Italian—because the superb woman from Rio Grande do Sul preferred Italian music—perhaps this aria from Lucia: O bell’alma innamorata. Or this bit from the Barber.

  Ecco ridente in cielo

  Spunta la bella aurora.

  CXXV

  Sofia didn’t go on board. She was ill and sent her husband. It shouldn’t be thought that it was out of grief or sorrow. She managed herself with great discretion on the occasion of the wedding. She took care of the bride’s trousseau and took leave of her with many teary kisses. But going on board seemed shameful to her. She became ill, and, so as not to belie the pre
text, she stayed in her room. She picked up a recent novel. Rubião had given it to her. Other things there reminded her of the same man, trinkets of all kinds, not to mention the jewels that were put away. Finally, one strange word she’d heard from him on the night of her cousin’s wedding, even that, came to join the inventory of memories of our friend.

  “You’re queen of them all now,” he told her in a low voice; “wait till I make you empress.”

  Sofia didn’t understand that enigmatic phrase. She tried to suppose it some grandiloquent enticement to make her his lover, but she dismissed such an intent as too presumptuous. Rubião, though not the same bashful and timid man of other times now, wasn’t so sure of himself that one could attribute such high presumption to him. What did the phrase mean, then? Sofia thought anything was possible. There was no lack of flirtatious remarks. She’d come to hear that declaration of Carlos Maria’s, she’d probably heard others, which only brought out her vanity. And they all went away. Rubião was the one who persisted. There were pauses, born of suspicions, but the suspicions went away just as they’d come.

  “He deserves to be loved” Sofia read on the novel’s open page when she continued her reading. She closed the book, closed her eyes, and became lost in herself. The slave girl who came in a short time later to bring her some broth imagined that her mistress was sleeping and tiptoed out.

  CXXVI

  In the meantime, Rubião and Palha were leaving the ship on the launch returning to the Pharoux docks. They were thoughtful and silent. Palha was the first to open his mouth.