The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  “No, not at all,” said Mendonça.

  “True. My cousin always has her nose in a book too, and I’m pretty sure she has no such ambitions, either.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “Oh, you’ve no idea. All she does is read. She shuts herself up in her room and spends whole days reading.”

  Given what Jorge said, Mendonça imagined that Margarida was perhaps a woman of letters, even a poet, who spurned men’s love in favor of the muses’ fond embrace. This was a completely baseless supposition and the child of a mind blinded by love. There are various reasons for reading a great deal without one necessarily having any truck with the muses.

  “My cousin never used to read so much. It’s a new fad of hers,” said Jorge, taking from his cigar case a magnificent Havana cigar worth three tostões, and offering another to Mendonça. “Here,” he went on, “smoke this—it’s from Bernardo’s shop—and tell me if you can find a better cigar anywhere.”

  Once the cigars were smoked, Jorge took his leave, bearing with him the promise that the doctor would visit Dona Antônia’s house as soon as possible.

  Two weeks later, Mendonça returned to Matacavalos.

  He found Andrade and Dona Antônia in the drawing room, where they received him almost with cries of hallelujah. Mendonça did indeed resemble someone who has just emerged from his tomb, for he was thinner and paler, and his melancholy mood had imprinted on his face a look of sadness and weariness. He claimed to have been overwhelmed by work, then began chatting away as gaily as ever. That gaiety, of course, was entirely forced. After a quarter of an hour, his face resumed its sad expression. During that time, Margarida did not appear; for some reason, Mendonça had not asked after her, but, when there was still no sign of her, he asked if she was ill. Dona Antônia told him that Margarida was a little unwell.

  Margarida’s unwellness lasted about three days; it was merely a headache, which her cousin Jorge attributed to her reading too much.

  After a few more days, Margarida surprised Dona Antônia with an unusual request: she wanted to go and spend some time in the countryside.

  “Are you bored with the city?” asked her aunt.

  “Yes, a little,” answered Margarida, explaining that she fancied spending a couple of months in the country.

  Since Dona Antônia could deny her niece nothing, she agreed to that rural retreat, and they began preparations. Mendonça learned of this plan when he was out for a stroll one night and met Jorge, who was on his way to the theater. Jorge considered the plan a stroke of great good fortune, because it would rid him of the one obligation he had in the world, namely having to dine with his mother.

  Mendonça was not in the least surprised by this decision, for all Margarida’s decisions were beginning to seem to him inevitable.

  When he returned to his house, he found a note from Dona Antônia, which said:

  We have to leave Rio for a few months; I hope you will not let us go without coming to say goodbye. We set off on Saturday, and there is something I would like you to do for me.

  Mendonça drank a cup of tea and settled down to sleep. But he couldn’t sleep. He tried to read, but he couldn’t do that, either. It was still quite early, and so he went out for a walk. His steps led him to Matacavalos. Dona Antônia’s house was dark and silent; everyone must already be asleep. Mendonça walked on, then stopped by the railings surrounding the garden. From there he could see Margarida’s bedroom window, almost at ground level and giving onto the garden. A lamp was burning, which meant that Margarida must still be awake. Mendonça took a few more steps; the garden gate was open. Mendonça could feel his heart beating furiously. A suspicion entered his mind. It happens to even the most trusting of souls; besides, perhaps his suspicion was right. Not that Mendonça had any rights over the widow; he had been firmly rebuffed. If he had any duty toward her, it was to withdraw in silence.

  Mendonça did not want to overstep the boundary set for him; one of the servants had doubtless simply forgotten to close the garden gate. He persuaded himself that the open gate was mere chance and, with some effort, he walked on. Then he stopped and thought again; some demon was propelling him through that gate. He went back and very cautiously entered the garden.

  He had only gone a few feet when Miss Dollar emerged out of the darkness, barking, having apparently slipped out of the house unnoticed. Mendonça bent down and stroked her, and the dog seemed to recognize him, for she stopped barking and began licking him instead. The shadow of a woman appeared on the wall of Margarida’s bedroom; she had come over to the window to see what all the noise was about. Mendonça shrank back among the bushes growing by the railings, and Margarida, seeing no one, went back into her room.

  After a few minutes, Mendonça came out of his hiding place and went over to Margarida’s window. He was accompanied by Miss Dollar. Even if he’d been taller, he would not have been able to see into the young woman’s room. As soon as Miss Dollar reached that point, she trotted lightly up the stone steps connecting the garden and the house; the door to Margarida’s room was in the corridor immediately beyond; that door stood open. Mendonça followed Miss Dollar and when he set foot on the last step, he heard Miss Dollar scampering about in the room and repeatedly running to the door barking, as if to warn Margarida that a stranger was approaching.

  Mendonça was about to go farther when a slave came into the garden, attracted by the barking; he peered about him, but, seeing nothing and no one, withdrew. Margarida went to the window and asked what the matter was; the slave reassured her, saying that there was no one out there.

  As Margarida turned away from the window, Mendonça appeared at her bedroom door. She shuddered and turned still paler; then, her eyes aflame with all the indignation a heart can muster, she asked in a tremulous voice:

  “What are you doing here?”

  It was then, and only then, that Mendonça realized the baseness of his actions, or, to be more exact, his madness. He seemed to see in Margarida his own conscience reproaching him for such undignified behavior. The poor young man did not even try to excuse himself; his response was simple and honest:

  “I know I have behaved contemptibly,” he said. “I have no reasonable explanation. I was mad, and only now do I see how wrong my actions were. I do not ask you to forgive me, Dona Margarida; I do not deserve to be forgiven; I deserve only scorn. Goodbye!”

  “Oh, I understand perfectly, sir,” said Margarida. “By discrediting my name, you wish to make me do what your heart could not persuade me to. That is not the act of a gentleman!”

  “I assure you that such a thing could not be further from my thoughts.”

  Margarida slumped down in a chair, apparently crying. Mendonça made as if to go into the room, for, until then, he had not moved from the doorway. Margarida looked up at him with tear-filled eyes and gestured imperiously for him to leave.

  Mendonça obeyed. Neither of them slept that night. Both were bent beneath the weight of shame, but to be fair to Mendonça, his shame was far greater than hers; and the pain of one could not compare to the remorse of the other.

  VIII

  The following day Mendonça was at home, smoking cigar after cigar, something he usually reserved for special occasions, when a carriage drew up outside his house and out stepped Dona Antônia. This visit seemed to Mendonça to presage no good. However, she dispelled all his fears as soon as she came into the house.

  “I believe,” said Dona Antônia, “that, given my great age, it is safe for me to visit a bachelor on my own.”

  Mendonça tried to smile at this joke, but failed. He invited the good lady to take a seat and he sat down, too, waiting for her to explain the reason for her visit.

  “I wrote to you yesterday,” she said, “asking you to come and see me today. Then I decided to come and see you instead, fearing that, for whatever reason, you might not come to Matacavalos.”

  “You had a favor to ask of me.”

  “No, not all,” she replied, smili
ng. “That was just an excuse. What I want is to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “Do you know who did not get out of bed today?”

  “Dona Margarida?”

  “Exactly. She woke up feeling rather under the weather and saying that she had slept badly. And I think I know the reason,” added Dona Antônia, smiling mischievously at Mendonça.

  “What would that be?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No.”

  “Margarida loves you.”

  Mendonça leapt out of his chair as if propelled by a spring. Dona Antônia’s words were so unexpected that he thought he must be dreaming.

  “She loves you,” Dona Antônia said again.

  “I don’t think she does,” answered Mendonça after a silence. “You must be mistaken.”

  “Mistaken!” said Dona Antônia.

  She then told Mendonça that, curious to know what lay behind Margarida’s sleepless nights, she had gone into her niece’s room and found Margarida’s personal diary, written in imitation of all those many heroines in novels; and there she had read what she had just told him.

  “But if she loves me,” said Mendonça, feeling his soul filling up with a whole world of hope, “if she loves me, why then does she reject me?”

  “The diary explains precisely why. Margarida was unhappily married; her husband was only interested in her money. She became convinced that she would never be loved for herself, but only for her wealth. She attributes your love to greed. Now do you believe me?”

  Mendonça began to protest his innocence.

  “There’s no need,” said Dona Antônia, “I believe in the sincerity of your love. I have for a long time, but how to convince a suspicious heart?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nor do I,” she said, “but that is what has brought me here today. I’m asking you to see if you can make my Margarida happy again, if you can make her believe in your love.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  Mendonça considered telling Dona Antônia about what had happened the previous night, but decided not to.

  Dona Antônia left shortly afterward.

  Mendonça’s situation may have been clearer, but it was also more complicated. It would have been possible to do something before last night’s scene, but not after; Mendonça felt that now it would be impossible to achieve anything.

  Margarida’s illness lasted two days, after which she got out of bed, feeling slightly low in spirits, and the first thing she did was to write to Mendonça asking him to visit her.

  Mendonça was most surprised to receive this invitation, and he obeyed immediately.

  “After what happened three days ago,” Margarida said, “you will understand that I cannot remain at the mercy of idle gossip. You say you love me, well, then, our marriage is inevitable.”

  Inevitable! The word left a bitter taste in the doctor’s mouth, but he could hardly protest. He remembered, too, that he was loved, and while this thought made him smile, the accompanying thought, that Margarida suspected his motives, instantly put paid to any momentary flicker of pleasure.

  “As you wish,” he said.

  When, that same day, Margarida told her aunt the news, Dona Antônia was amazed at the speed with which their marriage had been arranged. She assumed the young man had performed some miracle. Later, though, she noticed that bride and groom looked more as if they were about to attend a funeral than a marriage. She asked her niece about this, but received no satisfactory answer.

  The wedding was a modest, sober affair. Andrade was best man, Dona Antônia was matron of honor, and Jorge asked a friend of his from the theater, a priest, to conduct the ceremony.

  Dona Antônia wanted the newlyweds to continue living in the house with her. And the first time Mendonça found himself alone with Margarida, he said:

  “I married you in order to save your reputation, but I do not want such an accident of fate to oblige another person to love me. I am, however, your friend. Until tomorrow.”

  And with that, Mendonça left the room, leaving Margarida caught between her own view of him and the impression made on her by those words.

  There could not have been an odder situation than that of those two newlyweds separated by a chimera. The happiest day of their lives was becoming a day of unhappiness and loneliness; the formality of the wedding was simply the prelude to the most absolute divorce. With a little less skepticism on the part of Margarida and some rather more gentlemanly behavior on his, they would have been spared the grim ending to this comedy of the heart. We had best leave to the reader’s imagination the torments of their wedding night.

  However, time, which always has the last word, will overcome what man’s mind cannot. Time persuaded Margarida that her suspicions had been entirely groundless, and when her heart concurred, their still very recent marriage became a real marriage.

  Andrade knew nothing of all this; whenever he met Mendonça, he would call him the Columbus of love. Like anyone who only rarely has a good idea, Andrade, having come up with this bon mot, would repeat it ad nauseam.

  Husband and wife are still married and have promised to remain so until death do them part. Andrade has joined the diplomatic service and looks set to become one of our most eminent representatives abroad. Jorge continues to be a dedicated reveler; and Dona Antônia is preparing to bid farewell to this world.

  As for Miss Dollar, the indirect cause of all these events, she was knocked down by a carriage one day when she ran out into the street. She died shortly afterward. Margarida could not help but shed a few tears over the noble creature, who was buried on her country estate, with a gravestone bearing this simple inscription:

  MISS DOLLAR

  LUÍS SOARES

  I

  “BY EXCHANGING DAY FOR NIGHT,” Luís Soares would say, “we are restoring Nature’s empire and correcting the work of society. The heat of the sun is telling mankind to rest and sleep, while the relative cool of the night is the proper season in which we should live. Since I am independent in all my actions, I do not wish to submit to an absurd law imposed on me by society: I will stay awake at night and sleep during the day.”

  Unlike many governments, Soares carried out this program with a scrupulousness worthy of a noble mind. For him, dawn was dusk and dusk was dawn. He slept for twelve hours during the day, that is, from six in the morning until six in the evening. He breakfasted at seven and dined at two in the morning, but eschewed supper. Supper for him was a cup of hot chocolate brought to him by his servant at five in the morning when he came home. Soares would down the chocolate, smoke a couple of cigars, exchange a few puns with his servant, read a page or two of a novel, then go to bed.

  He never read newspapers. He considered the newspaper the most pointless thing in the world, after politics, poems, and mass. This doesn’t mean that Soares was an atheist as regards religion, politics, and poetry. No, he was simply indifferent. He greeted all “matters of importance” with the same grimace of disgust as he would at the sight of an ugly woman. He could have turned out to be a truly nasty piece of work, instead, though, he was merely an utterly useless individual.

  Thanks to the large fortune left him by his father, Soares was able to lead the life he led, avoiding any kind of work and following the instincts of his nature and the caprices of his heart. “Heart” is perhaps something of an exaggeration. It was doubtful that Soares had one. He himself said so. Whenever a lady begged him to love her, Soares would reply:

  “My dear little woman, I was born with the great advantage of having no heart and no brain. What others call reason and sentiment are complete mysteries to me. I don’t understand them because I don’t feel them.”

  Soares would add that Fortune had supplanted Nature by placing a large quantity of money in his cradle. He forgot, however, that, although generous, Fortune also makes certain demands and requires some effort on the part of her godchildren. Fortune is not like the d
aughters of Danaus. When she sees that the barrel of water is drying up, she will take her pitchers elsewhere. Soares did not know this. He thought his wealth would be constantly reborn like the heads of the Hydra. He spent money left, right, and center, and the wealth his father had accumulated through hard work slipped from his hands like birds eager to fly free.

  When he least expected it, he found that he was poor. One morning, or, rather, one evening, Soares saw written on a piece of paper the fateful words that had appeared on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast. It was a letter given to him by his servant, who explained that Soares’s banker had delivered it at midnight. The servant spoke as his master lived, calling midday midnight.

  “I’ve told you before,” said Soares, “I only receive letters from friends or from—”

  “Some young woman, yes, I know. That’s why I haven’t given you the other letters that your banker has been bringing you for a whole month now. Today, though, he insisted that I had to give you this one.”

  Soares sat down on the bed and asked his servant in a tone that was half joking, half angry:

  “Are you his servant or mine?”

  “Master, the banker said you were in grave danger.”

  “What danger?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Show me the letter.”

  The servant handed him the letter.

  Soares opened it and read it twice. According to the letter, he now had only six contos de réis to his name. For Soares, this was almost nothing.

  For the first time in his life, he experienced a deep emotion. It had never occurred to him that he might run out of money; he had never imagined that he would one day find himself in the same position as any other man who needs to work for a living.

  He listlessly ate his breakfast, then went out. He went to the Alcazar. When his friends saw his downcast face, they asked if he had suffered some disappointment in love. Soares replied that he was ill. The local courtesans felt it would be in good taste to appear equally sad. There was general consternation.