Quincas Borba

by Machado De Assis

  “When did these come?”

  “At noon today,” the servant replied.

  Two magnificent busts. Next to the eagle-eyed look of the uncle, the pensive look of the nephew was lost in space. The servant said that his master, as soon as the busts had arrived and were in place, had spent a long time admiring them, so oblivious that he, too, was able to look at them, without admiring them. “No me dicen nada estos dos picaros,” the servant concluded, making a broad and noble gesture.

  CXXXV

  Rubião was a generous patron of letters. Books that were dedicated to him went to press with a guarantee of two or three hundred copies. He had diplomas from literary, choreographic, and religious societies, and he was a member of a Catholic Congregation and a Protestant Fraternity at the same time, not thinking about the one when people mentioned the other to him. What he did was pay his dues regularly to both. He subscribed to newspapers without reading them. One day, when he was paying the bill for one, he discovered from the collector that it supported the government party. He told the collector to go to the devil.

  CXXXVI

  The collector didn’t go to the devil. He collected the price for six months, and, since he possessed the natural observation of bill collectors, he muttered out on the street:

  “Now here’s a man who hates the paper and pays. How many are there who love it and don’t pay?”

  CXXXVII

  But—Oh, stroke of fortune! Oh, impartiality of nature!—our friend’s prodigality, if it had no cure, did have compensation. Time no longer passed for him as for an idler without ideas. Rubião, for lack of them, now had imagination. Formerly he’d lived for others more than for himself, had found no inner equilibrium, and indolence marked hours that never came to an end. Everything was undergoing a change. Now his imagination tended to leap about a little. Sitting in Bernardo’s shop, he would spend a whole morning without time’s wearying him, nor did the narrowness of the Rua do Ouvidor restrict his space. Delightful visions repeated themselves for him, like that of marriage (Chapter LXXXI) in terms where the grandeur didn’t take away from the graciousness. There were those who saw him leap from his chair more than once and go to the door to get a good look at the back of a person passing by. Did he know him? Or could it have been someone who chanced to have the features of the imaginary creature he was looking at? These are too many questions for just one chapter. Suffice it to say that one of those times nobody was passing by. He recognized the illusion himself, went back inside, and bought a bronze geegaw for Camacho’s daughter, whose birthday it was and who was going to be married shortly, and then he left.

  CXXXVIII

  “What about Sofia?” the lady reader asks impatiently like Orgon: “Et Tartuffe?’ Alas, my friend, the answer is naturally the same—she, too, was eating well, sleeping soundly and smoothly—things that also don’t prevent a person from loving when she wants to love. If this last reflection is the secret motive behind your question, let me say to you that you’re most indiscreet, and I want nothing to do with hypocrites.

  I repeat, she was eating well, sleeping soundly and smoothly. She’d come to the end of the Alagoas committee with praise in the press. Atalaia called her “the consoling angel.” And don’t think this name made her happy even though it praised her. On the contrary, placing the whole charitable activity in Sofia’s hands might mortify her new friends and cause her to lose the work of many months in one day. That was how the article in the next number of the paper explained it, naming individually and glorifying the other committee women—“stars of the first magnitude.”

  Not all the relationships were substantive, but the greater part of them were firm, and our lady was not lacking in the talent for making them lasting. Her husband was the one who sinned for being boisterous, excessive, outgoing, making it obvious that he was collecting favors, that he was receiving unexpected and almost undeserved kindnesses. Sofia, to correct him, bothered him with bits of censure and advice, laughing:

  “You were impossible today. You were acting like a servant.”

  “Cristiano, control yourself when we have people from outside. Don’t have your eyes popping out of your face as you bounce from one side to another like a child who’s been given some candy…”

  He would deny it, explain, or justify himself. In the end he concluded that, yes, he mustn’t be so obsequious. Courtesy, affability, nothing more …

  “Exactly, but don’t fall into the other extreme,” Sofia added, “don’t be grumpy …”

  Palha became both things then, grumpy at first, cold, almost disdainful, but either reflection or unconscious impulse would restore our man to his habitual animation and with it, depending on the moment, excess and clamor. Sofia was the one who really fixed everything. She observed, imitated. Necessity and vocation soon had her acquiring what neither birth nor fortune had given her. Furthermore, she was at that in-between age in which women inspire equal confidence in girls of twenty and matrons of forty. Some had great affection for her, others heaped praise upon her.

  That was how our friend gradually cleared the atmosphere. She broke off old familiar relationships, some so intimate that it was hard to dissolve them, but the art of greeting without warmth, listening without interest, and taking leave without regret was not among the least of her gifts. And one by one off they went, poor modest creatures without manners or taste in dress, unimportant friendships of humble merriment, simple, unelevated customs. She did exactly what the major had said with the men when they saw her pass in a carriage—which, parenthetically, was hers. The difference was that she no longer peeked to find out if they’d seen her. The honeymoon with grandeur was over. Now she was casting her eyes firmly in a different direction, avoiding with a definitive action the danger of any hesitation. In that way she was obliging old friends not to tip their hats to her.

  CXXXIX

  Rubião still tried to stand up for the major, but Sofia’s look of annoyance cut him off in such a way that our friend preferred to ask her whether, if it didn’t rain the next morning, they were still going riding to Tijuca.

  “I just spoke to Cristiano. He told me that he’s got some business, that we should put it off till next Sunday.”

  Rubião, after a moment:

  “Let’s the two of us go. We’ll leave early, ride, have lunch there, and we’ll be back by three or four o’clock …”

  Sofia looked at him with such a desire to accept the invitation that Rubião didn’t wait for a verbal response.

  “It’s all set then, we’re going,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  And he repeated the question because Sofia didn’t want to explain her negative response to him, so obvious as well. Obliged to do so, she explained that her husband would be envious and would be capable of putting off his business meeting just to go along. She didn’t want to upset his business affairs, and they could wait a week. Sofia’s look accompanying that explanation was like a clarion accompanying the Lord’s Prayer. Oh, she wanted to! She wanted to go up the road with Rubião the next morning, well mounted on her horse, not idly or poetically musing, but valiant, fire in her face, completely of this world, galloping, trotting, stopping. Up there she would dismount for a while. All alone, the city in the distance and the sky above. Leaning against the horse she would comb its mane with her fingers, listen to Rubião praise her daring and grace … She imagined she felt a kiss on the back of her neck…

  CXL

  Since it’s a question of horses, it wouldn’t be out of place to say that Sofia’s imagination was now a lively and willful charger, capable of crossing hills and crashing through forests. A different comparison might be better if the occasion were other, but a charger is the one that fits best. It carries the idea of impetuosity, blood, speed, and at the same time the serenity with which it returns to the straight road and, finally, to the stable.

  CXLI

  “It’s all set. We’re going tomorrow,” Rubião repeated as
he sought out Sofia’s excited face.

  But the charger had returned from the race fatigued, and it was left dreaming in the stable. Sofia was a different person now. The madness of the undertaking had passed, the envisioned ardor, the pleasure of going up the Tijuca road with him. When Rubião said he would ask her husband to let her go on the ride, she argued, spiritless.

  “You’re crazy! Leave it for next Sunday!”

  And she fastened her eyes on the piece of linen she was sewing—a trimming, a trifle, it’s called—while Rubião cast his eyes over a small stretch of wretched garden alongside the sitting room where he was. Sofia, seated at a corner of the window, was working her fingers. In two ordinary roses Rubião saw an imperial celebration, and he forgot about the room, the woman, and himself. It can’t be said for certain how long they were silent like that, alien and remote from one another. It was a maid who woke them up, bringing coffee. When the coffee had been drunk, Rubião stroked his beard, looked at his watch, and took his leave. Sofia, who’d been waiting for him to go, was satisfied, but she covered her pleasure with surprise.

  “So soon?”

  “I’ve got to see a fellow before four o’clock,” Rubião explained. “We’re all set, then. Tomorrow’s ride canceled. I’ll tell them not to prepare the horses. But it’ll be next Sunday for sure, right?”

  “Of course, of course. I can’t say for sure, but if it can be worked out with Cristiano, I think so. You know that my husband’s a man with a lot on his shoulders.”

  Sofia saw him to the door, shook hands indifferently, answered some silly remark with a smile, went back to the room where she’d been—to the same spot—at the same window. She didn’t go back to her work right off. She crossed her legs, pulling down the skirt of her dress as she habitually did, and she cast a glance over the garden where the two roses had given our friend an imperial vision. Sofia only saw two mute flowers. She stared at them for some time, however. Then she immediately picked up her lacework, busied herself with it a little, stopped for a while, dropping her hands into her lap. And she went back to her work only to abandon it again. Suddenly she got up and tossed the thread and shuttle into the wicker basket where she kept her sewing things. The basket was one more remembrance from Rubião!

  What a bothersome man!”

  From there she went over to lean against the window, which opened onto the wretched garden where the two ordinary roses were withering. Roses, when they’re fresh, care little or nothing about the anger of others, but if they waste away, everything about them is cause for the vexation of the human soul. I should like to believe that this custom is born of the brevity of life. “For roses,” someone wrote, “the gardener is eternal.” And what better way to wound eternity than to make fun of its angers? I go, but you stay. But all I did was bloom and give aroma, I served ladies and maidens, I was a symbol of love, I decorated men’s buttonholes, or I expired on my own bush, and all hands and all eyes dealt with me and looked upon me with admiration and affection. Not you, oh, eternity! You rant, you suffer, you weep, you flagellate yourself! Your eternity isn’t worth one single minute of mine.

  So when Sofia got to the window that looked out onto the garden, both roses laughed with unplucked petals. One of them said it was well done! Well done! Well done!

  “You’re right to get angry, beautiful creature,” it added, “but it’s got to be over you and not him. What’s he worth? A sad man without charm can get to be a good friend and maybe a generous one, but repugnant, right? And you, courted by others, what devil brings you to lend an ear to that intruder in your life? It humiliates you, oh, you superb creature, because you’re the very cause of your own trouble. You swore to forget about him and you haven’t. But must you forget him? Isn’t it enough for you to look at him and listen to him to scorn him? That man hasn’t said a single thing, oh, singular creature, and you …”

  “It’s not entirely that way,” the other rose interrupted with an ironic and weary voice. “He’s been saying something and he’s been saying it for a long time, not dropping it, not changing it. He’s firm, he ignores pain, he believes in hope. His whole amorous life has been like the ride to Tijuca that you were talking about a while back. ‘It’s all set for next Sunday!’ Come now, some pity at least. Show some pity, my good Sofia! If you’ve got to love someone outside your marriage, let it be him. He loves you and is discreet. Go on, repent for your action a while back. What harm has he done to you, and what fault is it of his that you’re beautiful? And if there’s any blame, the basket doesn’t have any just because he bought it, even less the thread and the sewing things that you yourself had bought by a servant. You’re bad, Sofia, you’re unjust…”

  CXLII

  Sofia let herself go on listening, listening … She interrogated other plants, and they didn’t tell her anything different. There are these miraculous lucky hits. Anyone who knows the soil and the subsoil of life knows quite well that a stretch of wall, a bench, a rug, an umbrella are rich with ideas or feelings when we are, too, and that the reflections of a partnership between men and things constitute one of the most interesting phenomena on earth. The expression “Talking to his buttons,” which looks like a simple metaphor for “Talking to himself,” is a phrase with a real and direct meaning. The buttons operate synchronically with us, forming a kind of senate, handy and cheap, that always votes in favor of our motions.

  CXLIII

  The ride to Tijuca took place without incident except for a fall from a horse on the way down. It wasn’t Rubião who fell, or Palha, but the latter’s wife as she went along thinking about something and whipped the animal in a rage. He reared and dropped her to the ground. Sofia fell gracefully. She was singularly slim, wearing a riding habit, her small, attractive body just right. If he could have seen her, Othello would have exclaimed, “Oh, my beautiful warrior lass!” Rubião limited himself to this as the ride began: “You’re an angel!”

  CXLIV

  “Thurt my knee,” she said as she entered the house, limping. “Let me see.”

  In the drawing room Sofia lifted her foot onto a stool and showed her husband the bruised knee. It had swollen a little, only a little, but touching it made her cry out. Palha, not wishing to hurt her, touched it only with the tip of his lips.

  “Did I reveal anything when I fell?”

  “No. Because with such a long dress … The tip of your foot was barely showing. There was nothing, believe me.”

  “Do you swear?”

  “You’re not at all very trusting, Sofia! I swear by everything holy, by the light that guides me, by Our Lord God. Are you satisfied?”

  Sofia was covering her knee.

  “Let me see it again. I don’t think it’s anything serious. Put a little something on it. Have someone go ask the druggist.”

  “It’s all right, let me get undressed,” she said, struggling to lower her dress.

  But Palha lowered his eyes from the knee to the rest of her leg where it met the top of her boot. It really was a good stretch of nature. The silk stocking enhanced the perfection of its shape. Palha, for the fun of it, kept asking his wife if she’d hurt herself here, and then here, and then here, pointing out the places with his hand as it descended. If just a little piece of this masterpiece were to appear, the sky and the trees would be astounded, he concluded as his wife lowered her dress and took her foot off the stool.

  “That might be so, but it wasn’t just the sky and the trees,” she said. “Rubião’s eyes were there, too.”

  “Come, now, Rubião! But that’s right. Did he ever repeat that nonsense from Santa Teresa?”

  “Never again, but, really, I wouldn’t like it. . . Do you swear, truthfully, Cristiano?”

  “What you want me to do is to keep going from one holy thing to the next until I reach the holiest of holies. I swore by God, that wasn’t enough. I swear by you, are you satisfied?”

  Silly little love plays. He finally left his wife’s room and went into his own. That timid and unb
elieving modesty of Sofia’s had had a good effect on him. It showed that she was his, completely his. For that very reason of possession he felt it was the place of a great lord not to be bothered by some quick, casual glance at a hidden piece of his realm. And he was sorry that the casual glance had stopped at the tip of the boot. It was only the border. The first villages of the territory lying before the city injured by the fall would give the idea of a sublime and perfect civilization. And, soaping and rubbing his face, his neck, and his head in the broad silver basin, scrubbing himself, drying himself, perfuming himself, Palha imagined the surprise and envy of the only witness to the disaster had it been less incomplete.

  CXLV

  It was around that time that Rubião gave all his friends a fright. On the Tuesday following the Sunday of the ride (it was then January 1870), he told a barber on the Rua do Ouvidor to send someone to give him a shave at his house the next day at nine o’clock in the morning. A French journeyman, name of Lucien, arrived there and went into Rubião’s study according to instructions given the servant.

  “Grr!” growled Quincas Borba on Rubião’s knees.

  Lucien greeted the master of the house. The latter, however, didn’t see the bow, just as he hadn’t heard Quincas Borba’s warning. He was on a chaise longue, bereft of his spirit, which had broken through the ceiling and had been lost in the air. How many leagues would it go? Neither a condor nor an eagle would be able to say. On its way to the moon—all it could see down here were the perennial bits of happiness that had rained down upon it, from the cradle, where fairies had swaddled it, to the Praia de Botafogo, where they had carried it over a bed of roses and jasmines. No reverses, no misfortune, no poverty—a placid life, sewn together with pleasure and with an excess of lace. On its way to the moon!