Quincas Borba

by Machado De Assis

  CLX

  At that point the rain let up for a bit, and a ray of sunshine managed to break through the mist—one of those damp rays that seem to be coming from weeping eyes. Sofia thought she could still go out. She was anxious to see things, to have a ride, to shake off that torpor, and she hoped the sun would sweep away the rain and take charge of earth and sky. But the great star perceived that her intention was to turn it into the lantern of Diogenes and it told the damp ray: “Come back, come back to my bosom, chaste and virtuous ray. You’re not going to lead her where her desire wants to take her. Let her love if she feels like it. Let her answer love notes—if she receives them and doesn’t burn them—don’t you be a torch for her, light of my bosom, child of my entrails, ray, brother of my rays …”

  And the ray obeyed, retreating into the central focus, a bit startled at the fear of the sun, who has seen so many ordinary and extraordinary things. Then the veil of clouds grew thick and dark again, and the rain began to fall in buckets once more.

  CLXI

  Sofia resigned herself to reclusion. Her soul was now as confused and diffused as the spectacle outside. All images and names were being lost in a desire for love. It’s proper to say that she, when she came out of those vague and obscure states of consciousness, would try to flee them and lead her spirit into a different matter. But what happened to her was the same as what happens to those who are sleepy and struggle to stay awake: her eyes would close every time she awoke, and she would awaken again only to have them close once more. Finally, she stopped looking at the rain and the mist. She was tired and she went to open the pages of the latest number of the Revue des Deux Mondes. One day, during the best times of the Alagoas committee, one of the elegant ladies of that time, married to a senator, had asked her:

  “Have you been reading Feuillet’s novel in the Revue des Deux Mondes!Ü

  “I have,” Sofia answered. “It’s very interesting.”

  She wasn’t reading nor did she know the Revue, but the next day she asked her husband to subscribe to it. She read the novel, she read the ones that followed, and she talked about all the ones she’d read or was reading. After she’d opened the pages of that number and read a novella, Sofia retired to her room and dropped onto the bed. She’d spent a bad night, and it didn’t take her long to fall asleep—a deep, long sleep without dreams—except toward the end, when she had a nightmare. She was facing the same wall of mist as during that day, but at sea, in the prow of a launch, lying face down, writing a name in the water—Carlos Maria. And the letters were engraved on it and making themselves even clearer, they filled up with foam. Up to that point, there was nothing to bewilder her unless it was the mystery. But it’s common knowledge that the mysteries in dreams resemble natural events. That’s when the wall of mist splits apart, and no one else but the owner of the name himself appears to Sofia’s eyes, walks toward her, takes her in his arms, and speaks many tender words to her, similar to the ones she’d heard from Rubião’s mouth a few months before. And they didn’t annoy her like the latter’s. On the contrary, she listened to them with pleasure, half falling back, as if fainting. It was no longer a launch but a carriage where she was riding with her cousin-in-law, holding hands, saying loving things with words of gold and sandalwood. Here, too, there was nothing to terrify her. The terror came when the carriage stopped, several masked figures surrounded it, killed the coachman, pulled open the doors, stabbed Carlos Maria, and left his corpse on the ground. Then one of them who seemed to be the leader took off his mask and told Sofia not to be frightened, that he loved her a thousand times more than the other man. Immediately after that he grabbed her by the wrists and gave her a kiss, but a kiss damp with blood, smelling of blood. Sofia let out a scream of horror and woke up. There was her husband, standing by the bed.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Oh!” Sofia took a deep breath. “I screamed, didn’t I?”

  Palha didn’t say anything in reply. He was looking off, thinking about business. Then an apprehension took hold of the woman that she’d really spoken, murmuring some word, some name—the same one she’d written on the water. And immediately stretching her arms into the air, she dropped them onto her husband’s shoulders, touched the tips of her fingers around his neck, and murmured, half jolly, half sad:

  “I dreamt they were killing you.”

  Palha was moved. Having made her suffer for him, even in dreams, filled him with pity, but with a pleasant pity, a personal, intimate, deep feeling—which would make him wish for other nightmares so they could murder him before her eyes, and so she would scream in anguish, shaking, full of grief and terror.

  CLXII

  The next day the sun came out bright and warm, the sky was limpid, the air was cool. Sofia got into the carriage and went visiting and for a ride in order to make up for her reclusion. The day itself was already good for her. She hummed as she dressed. The manners of the ladies who received her in their homes—and those whom she met on the Rua do Ouvidor, the continuous activity, the news of society, the fine appearance of so many elegant and friendly people were enough to chase the cares of the day before out of her soul.

  CLXIII

  In that way, then, what had seemed like a pressing urge was reduced to pure fancy, and with the interval of a few hours all bad thoughts withdrew to their chambers. If you were to ask me about any remorse on Sofia’s part, I wouldn’t know what to tell you. There’s a balance between resentment and reproval. It isn’t only in actions where consciousness passes gradually from novelty to habit and from fear to indifference. The simple sins of thought are subject to that same alteration, and the custom of thinking about things shapes them to such a degree that in the end the spirit neither finds them strange nor rejects them. And in those cases there is always a moral refuge in external immunity, which is, in other more explicit terms, the unblemished body.

  CLXIV

  Only one incident afflicted Sofia on that pure, bright day—it was an encounter with Rubião. She’d gone into a book-store on the Rua do Ouvidor to buy a novel. While she was waiting for her change, she saw her friend come in. She quickly turned her face away and ran her eyes over the books on a shelf—some books on anatomy and statistics—got her money, put it away, and with her head down, swift as an arrow, went out onto the street and headed up it. Her blood calmed down only when she left the Rua dos Ourives behind.

  Days later, going into Dona Fernanda’s house, she ran into him in the entranceway. She thought he was going up, and she was ready to go up also, although a touch fearful. But Rubião was coming down. They shook hands in a friendly way and said goodbye, until later.

  “Does he come here often?” Sofia asked Dona Fernanda, after telling her about meeting him at the entrance.

  “This is the fourth time, the fourth or fifth. But he was in a delirium only on the second time. The other times he was the way you saw him now, calm and even talkative. There’s always something about him that shows he’s not completely well. Didn’t you notice that his eyes were a little vague? That’s it. Otherwise, he chats quite normally. Believe me, Dona Sofia, that man can be cured. Why don’t you get your husband to work on it?”

  “Cristiano is planning to have him examined and treated. But let me hurry him up a bit.”

  “Why, yes. He seems to be a good friend of yours and Mr. Palha’s.”

  “Could he have said anything inopportune regarding me to her in his delirium?” Sofia thought. “Would it be proper to reveal the truth to her?”

  She concluded that it wouldn’t. Rubião’s illness itself would explain anything inopportune. She promised that she’d get her husband to hurry things along, and that same afternoon she laid the matter before Palha. It’s a great bother, he replied. And he asked what business it was of Dona Fernanda’s to bring it up. Let her take care of it herself! It was a muddle, having to look after the other man, accompany him, and, probably, gather together and manage any remains of the money that still might be left
, making himself guardian as Dr. Teófilo had said. A devilish annoyance.

  “I’ve already got enough responsibilities on my shoulders, Sofia. And then what’s it to be? Will we have to bring him to our house? I don’t think so. Where can he be placed? In some nursing home … Yes, but what if they can’t take him? I’m not going to send him to Praia Vermelha … And what about responsibilities? Did you promise that you’d talk to me?”

  “I promised and I said you’d do it,” Sofia answered, smiling. “Maybe it won’t be as difficult as it looks.”

  Sofia still insisted. Dona Fernanda’s compassion had impressed her a great deal. She found it to be a distinguished and noble thing in her, and she felt that if the other woman, with no close or long-standing relationship to Rubião, showed herself interested to such a degree, it would be fashionable not to be any less generous.

  CLXV

  Everything was done calmly. Palha rented a small house on the Rua do Príncipe, near the sea, where he installed our Rubião, a few pieces of furniture, and his dog friend. Rubião adjusted to the move without any displeasure and, whenever his delirium returned, with enthusiasm. He was on his estate in Saint-Cloud.

  That wasn’t how it was with his household friends, who received the news of the move as a decree of exile. Everything in the old dwelling had been part of them, the garden, the grill-work, the flower beds, the stone steps, the cove. They knew everything by heart. It was a matter of entering, hanging up their hats, and going to wait in the parlor. They’d lost all notion of its being someone else’s home and of the favor they were receiving. After that, the neighborhood. Every one of Rubião’s friends was accustomed to seeing the people in the area, the morning faces and the afternoon ones; some of them went so far as to greet them as they would their own neighbors. Patience! They would now go to Babylon like the exiles from Zion. Wherever the Euphrates might be, they would find the willows on which to hang their nostalgic harps—or, more exactly, hooks on which to put their hats. The difference between them and the prophets was that at the end of a week they would pick up their instruments again and pluck them with the same charm and strength. They would sing the old hymns, as fresh as on the first day, and Babel would end up being Zion itself, lost and recovered.

  “Our friend needs rest for a while,” Palha told them in Botafogo on the eve of the move. “You must have noticed that he hasn’t been well. He has his moments of forgetfulness, upset, confusion. He’s going to receive treatment, and, in the meantime he needs rest. I’ve arranged a small house for him, but it could be that he’ll have to go into a rest home even so.”

  They listened in astonishment. One of them, Pio, recovering more quickly than the rest, replied that it should have been done a long time ago. But in order to do it one would have had to exert a decisive influence on Rubião’s spirit.

  “I told him many times in a nice way that he had to see a doctor because it looked as if he had something wrong with his stomach . . . It was a way of avoiding the real meaning, you understand, but he always said no, that his digestion was fine … ‘But you’re eating less,’ I told him, ‘there are days when you eat practically nothing. You’re thinner, a bit sallow…’ You understand that I couldn’t tell him the truth. I even got to consult a doctor, a friend of mine, but our good Rubião refused to see him.”

  The other four confirmed all of that invention with their heads. It was the most they could ask for and the only thing that would soften the stunning blow. They ended up asking for the address of the new house so they could check up on him. Poor friend! When they left there and took leave of one another, a phenomenon they’d hadn’t foreseen took place. They themselves had trouble separating. Not that they were joined together by friendship or esteem, their very self-interest made them dislike each other. But the habit of seeing themselves together every day at lunch and dinner—around the same table as if it had joined them to each other—made them necessarily tolerant, and time had made them mutually necessary. In short, it was the eyes of each that would suffer with the absence of the customary faces, the gestures, the sideburns, the mustaches, the bald spots, the individual faults, the way of eating, speaking, and being of their companions. It was more than a separation, it was a disjointing.

  CLXVI

  Rubião noticed that they hadn’t accompanied him to the new house, and he had them called. None came, and their absence filled our friend with sadness—during the first weeks. It was his family who’d abandoned him. Rubião tried to recall if he’d done them some hurt, either by word or deed, but he could find none.

  CLXVII

  “I talked to the man. I thought he had some crazy ideas. Even though I’m not a psychiatrist I think he can get well … But do you want to know an interesting discovery?”

  “Do you think he’ll get well?” Dona Fernanda asked, paying no attention to Dr. Falcão’s question.

  Dr. Falcão was a deputy and a physician, a friend of the family, a wise, skeptical, and cold man. Dona Fernanda had asked him to do her the favor of examining Rubião shortly after the latter had been moved to the house on the Rua do Principe.

  “Yes, I think he’ll get well as long as he receives regular treatment. It could be that the illness has no antecedents in his family. Have him go see a specialist. But don’t you want to know what my interesting discovery was?”

  “What was it?”

  “His illness might be related to a person of your acquaintance,” he answered, smiling.

  “Who?”

  “Dona Sofia.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He spoke about her with great enthusiasm, told me that she was the most splendid woman in the world and that he was going to make her a duchess, since he couldn’t make her empress. But they shouldn’t fool with him, that he was capable of doing what his uncle did, get divorced and marry her. I gathered that he had a passion for the young lady. And then the intimacy, Sofia here, Sofia there … You have to excuse me, but I think the two of them had been lovers …”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Dona Fernanda, I think they were lovers. What’s so strange? I scarcely know her. You don’t seem to have known her for a long time or to have been intimate friends with her. It could be that they were lovers and that some violent passion … Let’s suppose that she threw him out of the house … It’s true that he has delusions of grandeur, but everything might be connected …”

  Dona Fernanda wasn’t looking at him, annoyed at hearing that supposition on his part. She avoided discussing it because of the delicacy of the matter. She found the suspicion baseless, absurd, unlikely. She wouldn’t have believed that spurious love even if she’d heard it from Rubião himself. A crackbrain, in short. Even if he weren’t, it was still probable that she wouldn’t believe him. She couldn’t believe that Sofia could have been in love with that man, not because of him, but because of her, so correct and pure. It was impossible. She wanted to defend her. But in spite of her close relationship with Dr. Falcão, she changed the subject a second time and repeated the question of a while back.

  “Do you think he’ll get well, then?”

  “He might, but my examination’s not enough. You know that in these matters a specialist is best.”

  A while later, as he left, Falcão smiled at Dona Fernanda’s resistance in accepting the hypothesis. “There surely must have been something,” he said to himself. “A good appearance and if he’s not a dandy, he’s good-looking, and he’s got fire in his eyes. Surely…” And he repeated some of Rubião’s comments, recalled his expression and the tender tone of his voice, and the suspicion kept growing. “Surely…” Now it was impossible for them not to have been lovers. Dona Fernanda’s opposition seemed ingenuous to him—unless it was really a way to change the subject and not touch on the matter. It must have been that…

  At that point, without meaning to, the deputy stood still. A new suspicion attacked his mind. After a few quick moments, he shook his head voluntarily as if to deny himself, as if to find himself
absurd, and he continued walking. But the suspicion was insistent, and one that really occupies a man’s inner part doesn’t pay any attention to his head or gestures. “Who knows, maybe Dona Fernanda herself was sighing over him. Couldn’t that dedication be a prolongation of love and the rest?” And that was how questions were taking shape that ended up in Dr. Falcão’s most intimate part with an affirmative answer. He still resisted. He was a friend of the family, he respected Dona Fernanda, he knew her to be virtuous, but—he went on thinking—it could well be that a hidden, discreet feeling—who knows, maybe even brought on by the other woman’s passion … There are those temptations. The contagion of leprosy can corrupt the purest blood. A sad little germ can destroy the most robust organism.

  Little by little, his faint wish for resistance was giving way to the notion of the possibility, the probability, and the certainty. In truth, he’d heard of certain works of charity by Dona Fernanda, but this case was new. That special dedication to a man who wasn’t a frequenter of the house or an old friend or a relative, a follower, a colleague of her husband, anything that would make him a participant in their domestic life by relationship, by blood, or by custom couldn’t be explained except for some secret reason. Love, most certainly. The curiosity of a virtuous woman, which can descend into sin and remorse. She probably withdrew in time. She was left with her morbid sympathy… And, therefore, who knows?

  CLXVIII

  “And, therefore, who knows?” Dr. Falcão repeated the next morning. Night hadn’t snuffed out the man’s mistrust. And, therefore, who knows? Yes, it might not be just morbid sympathy. Without knowing Shakespeare, he improved on Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philanthropy” The finger of love was at work there. And he wasn’t mocking or tarnishing anything. I’ve already said that he was a skeptic, but since he was also discreet, he didn’t pass his conclusion on to anyone.