The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  Luís Soares noticed that when his fingers touched hers, she was clearly very moved, and would first blush, then turn pale. Soares was an experienced sailor in the seas of love: he knew its calms and its storms. He realized that his cousin had fallen in love with him again. This discovery brought him no joy; on the contrary, it annoyed him intensely. He was afraid that if his uncle learned of his niece’s feelings, then he would suggest that Soares marry her, and a refusal to do so would doubtless compromise his hoped-for inheritance. Soares’s ideal was to inherit without having to marry. Giving me wings, he thought, but binding my feet is tantamount to condemning me to prison. That is the fate of a domesticated parrot, one I do not aspire to.

  His fears proved to be justified. The major discovered the cause of his niece’s sadness and decided to resolve the situation by proposing that Soares marry her.

  Soares could not openly refuse without compromising the edifice of his fortune.

  “This marriage,” his uncle told him, “completes my happiness. At a stroke, I bring together two people I love, and I can then die in peace, taking no sorrows with me into the next world. You’ll accept, won’t you?”

  “I will, Uncle, but I must just say that marriage is based on love, and I do not love my cousin.”

  “But you will. Get married first . . .”

  “I wouldn’t want to disillusion her.”

  “What do you mean, ‘disillusion her’?” said his uncle, smiling. “I like to hear you speaking so poetically, but marriage is not poetry. I agree that it’s always best if, before marrying, two people already feel some mutual esteem, but I think you do. As for flaming passions, my dear nephew, such things are fine in poetry and even in prose, but in life, which is neither prose nor poetry, marriage demands only respect and a certain conformity of character and upbringing.”

  “You know I would never disobey an order from you.”

  “I’m not ordering you to do anything; I’m merely making a suggestion. You say you don’t love your cousin, fine, but do your best to love her and give me the pleasure of seeing you married. But don’t delay, because it won’t be long before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

  Soares agreed. Unable to resolve the problem, he postponed it. The major was pleased with the arrangement and consoled his niece with the promise that she would one day marry her cousin. This was the first time he had broached the subject, and Adelaide did not conceal her surprise, a surprise that proved most flattering to the major’s powers of discernment.

  “Just because I’m old, you think I can no longer see with my heart. Well, I see everything, Adelaide, even those things that try to remain hidden.”

  She could not hold back her tears, and when he tried to console her by offering her some hope, she shook her head, saying:

  “No, there is no hope!”

  “Leave it to me,” said the major.

  While her uncle’s kindness was entirely spontaneous and born of the love he bore for his niece, she realized that his intervention could give her cousin the impression that she was begging him for his affection like someone asking for alms.

  This was her woman’s pride speaking, preferring suffering to humiliation. When she put these objections to her uncle, he smiled kindly and tried to reassure her.

  A few days passed and nothing happened. Soares was enjoying the respite given him by his uncle. Adelaide resumed her air of cold indifference, and Soares, knowing the reason for this coldness, responded to that show of pride with a wry smile. Twice Adelaide caught that scornful look. What further proof did she need that he remained as indifferent to her as before? She noted, too, that whenever they found themselves alone, he was always the first to leave the room. No, he hadn’t changed.

  “He doesn’t love me, he never will!” she told herself.

  IV

  One morning, Major Vilela received the following letter:

  My valiant Major. I arrived back from Bahia today and I’ll drop round this evening to see you and embrace you. Prepare a fine supper, for I don’t imagine you will receive me as if I were just anyone. And don’t forget the vatapá. Your friend, Anselmo.

  “Excellent!” said the major. “Anselmo is coming to see us, Cousin Antônia, tell the cooks to prepare a vatapá.”

  The Anselmo who had just arrived from Bahia was Anselmo Barroso de Vasconcelos. He was a rich landowner and a veteran of the War of Independence. Despite his seventy-eight years, he was still strong and capable of great deeds. He had been a close friend of Adelaide’s father, who had introduced him to the major, with whom he remained friends after her father died. Anselmo had been with his friend until his final moments and had mourned his passing as he would a brother’s. Those tears cemented the friendship between him and the major.

  Anselmo arrived that evening full of talk and jokes and as lively as if he were about to embark on his second youth. He embraced everyone and kissed Adelaide, whom he complimented on her growing beauty.

  “Now, don’t laugh at me,” he told her, “I was your father’s greatest friend and, alas, poor friend, he died in my arms.”

  Soares, who was finding the life he led at his uncle’s house stultifyingly dull, was delighted to meet this talkative old man, who was a veritable firework. Anselmo, however, seemed not to take to the major’s nephew. When the major learned this, he said:

  “I’m sorry to hear that, because Soares is a very serious lad.”

  “Too serious, if you ask me. A lad who never smiles . . .”

  Some incident or other, I’m not sure what, prevented Anselmo from finishing his sentence.

  After supper, Anselmo said to the major:

  “What date is it tomorrow?”

  “The fifteenth.”

  “Of which month?”

  “Oh, come on, now. Of December!”

  “Right. Tomorrow, the fifteenth of December, I need to have a meeting with you and your relatives. If the steamship had been a day late, I would have been in real trouble.”

  The following day, the meeting Anselmo had asked for took place. Present were the major, Soares, Adelaide, and Dona Antônia, the deceased man’s only relatives.

  “It’s ten years to the day that this young woman’s father died,” said Anselmo, indicating Adelaide. “As you know, Dr. Bento Varela was my best friend, and I returned his affection until the very last moment of his life. As you also know, he was an eccentric genius, and he lived an equally eccentric life. He was always coming up with new projects, each more grandiose than the last, each more impossible than the last, and none of them was ever brought to fruition, because no sooner had his creative spirit come up with one idea than it was already planning another.”

  “That’s true,” said the major.

  “Bento died in my arms, and, as a final proof of his friendship, he gave me a letter, which, he said, I should open only in the presence of his family members ten years after his death. Were I to die, the obligation would fall on my heirs, or, if they were not available, then on the major, Senhora Dona Adelaide, or anyone connected to him by blood. And if none of the above was alive, a notary had been charged with carrying out that duty. I had put all this in my will, which I will now have to revise. The letter I mentioned is here in my pocket.”

  There was a murmur of curiosity.

  Anselmo took from his pocket a letter bearing a black wax seal.

  “Here it is,” he said. “Unopened. I don’t know what it says, but I can more or less guess what it contains because of certain circumstances that I will reveal to you now.”

  Those present grew still more attentive.

  “Before he died,” Anselmo went on, “my dear friend gave me part of his fortune, I mean the larger part, because Adelaide received only thirty contos. I received from him three hundred contos, which I have kept intact until today, and which I must distribute according to the instructions in this letter.”

  General gasps of surprise were followed by a faint shiver of anxiety. What would they be, these mysterious i
nstructions left by Adelaide’s father? Dona Antônia remembered that, as a girl, she had been the dead man’s sweetheart, and, for a moment, she flattered herself with the idea that, at the gates of death, the crazy old man might perhaps have thought of her.

  “That’s so typical of my brother Bento,” said the major, taking a pinch of snuff. “He always was a man for mysteries, surprises, and extravagant ideas, not to mention his other sins, if, that is, he committed any . . .”

  Everyone was all ears as Anselmo opened the letter and read it out.

  My dear, kind Anselmo. I want you to do me one last favor. You already have in your possession the larger portion of my fortune, and I would say the better portion apart, that is, from my dear daughter Adelaide. Keep those three hundred contos for ten years, and at the end of that period, read this letter out to my relatives.

  If, by then, my daughter Adelaide is still alive and married, then give her that fortune. If she is not married, then give it to her anyway, but on one condition, that she marry my nephew Luís Soares, the son of my sister Luísa; I love him dearly and, even though he himself is rich, I want him to have my daughter’s fortune. Should she refuse to meet this condition, then the entire fortune is yours.

  When Anselmo finished reading, an amazed silence filled the room, an amazement shared by Anselmo himself, who had known nothing of the letter’s contents until then.

  Soares was staring at Adelaide, who was, in turn, staring down at the floor.

  When the silence continued, Anselmo decided to break it.

  “Like you,” he said, “I had no idea what was in this letter; fortunately it has arrived in time for my late friend’s final wish to be granted.”

  “Indeed,” said the major.

  On hearing this, Adelaide very slowly looked up, and her eyes met her cousin’s eyes. His were filled with contentment and tenderness, and she gazed into those eyes for some moments. On his lips there appeared a smile, which was no longer a mocking smile. She smiled scornfully back at him as if at the bowings and scrapings of a courtier.

  Anselmo got to his feet.

  “Now that you know everything,” he said to the two cousins, “I hope you will resolve the matter, and since there can be no doubt as to the result, I give you my heartfelt congratulations. Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I have other people to see.”

  With his departure, the party broke up. Adelaide retired to her room with Dona Antônia. Uncle and nephew remained in the room.

  “Luís,” said his uncle, “you are the most fortunate man in the world.”

  “Do you think so, Uncle?” said Soares, trying to conceal his joy.

  “I do. Not only do you have a young woman who is madly in love with you. Suddenly an unexpected fortune falls into her lap, and she can only have that fortune if she marries you. Even the dead are working in your favor.”

  “I can assure you, Uncle, that money has nothing to do with it, and if I agree to marry my cousin it will be for other reasons entirely.”

  “I know that wealth is not essential, but it has some value. It’s better to have three hundred contos than thirty; it’s three figures, not two. However, I will not advise you to marry her if you feel no affection for her, and I’m not talking here about the kind of passions you spoke of. However much money is involved, a bad marriage is still a bad marriage.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Uncle. That’s why I haven’t yet given my answer, and why I won’t do so as yet. If I do become fond of my cousin, then I am ready to accept that unexpected wealth.”

  As the reader will have guessed, Soares was firmly resolved to marry. Instead of waiting for his uncle to die, it seemed to him a far better idea to gain immediate possession of that large sum of money, something that seemed to him all the easier, given that a voice from the grave was demanding it.

  Soares was counting, too, on Adelaide’s deep respect for her father. This, together with the love she felt for him, should produce the desired effect.

  That night, he slept very little. He dreamed of the Orient. His imagination created a harem carpeted with the finest Persian rugs and redolent of all of Arabia’s finest perfumes; the most beautiful women in the world reclined on soft divans. In the middle of the room a Circassian beauty was dancing to the sound of an ivory tambourine. Then an angry eunuch burst into the room, wielding an Ottoman sword, which he plunged into Soares’s chest, at which point Soares awoke from the nightmare and was unable to go to sleep again.

  He got up earlier than usual and went for a walk until it was time for breakfast and the office.

  V

  Luís had a plan.

  He would gradually lower his defenses, pretending to succumb to Adelaide’s charms. Such sudden wealth meant that he had to be discreet. The transition had to be slow. He had to be a diplomat.

  Readers will have realized that, despite a certain astuteness on Soares’s part, he had not fully grasped the situation, and, besides, he was, by nature, indecisive and fickle.

  He had hesitated about marrying Adelaide when his uncle had first spoken to him about it and when it was certain that he would, later on, inherit the major’s fortune. He had said then that he had no desire to be a parrot. The situation was the same now; he was prepared to accept a fortune in exchange for a prison cell. It’s true that if this decision appeared to contradict the first, it could be because he was growing weary of the life he was leading. And, of course, this time he would not have to wait for the money, it would be given to him as soon as he married.

  “Three hundred contos,” he thought, “that would make me even richer than I was. I can’t wait to hear what my friends will say!”

  Believing his happiness to be assured, Soares began his siege of the castle, a castle that had already surrendered.

  He now constantly tried to catch her eye and, when he did, his eyes would ask her for the very thing he had rejected before, the young woman’s heart. When, at the table, their hands touched, Soares took pains to maintain that contact, and when she hurriedly withdrew her hand, he was not discouraged. When he found himself alone with her, he did not run away as he had before, but addressed a few words to her, to which Adelaide would respond coolly and politely.

  “She’s obviously playing hard to get,” thought Soares.

  Once, he went a step further, entering the room unseen when Adelaide was playing the piano. When she finished playing, he was standing behind her.

  “Beautiful!” he exclaimed. “Allow me to kiss those inspired hands.”

  She gave him a very somber look, then picked up the handkerchief she had placed on the piano and left the room without saying a word.

  This episode demonstrated to Soares the difficult nature of the enterprise, but he remained confident, not because he thought himself capable of great things, but out of a sort of trust in his own good fortune.

  “It’s hard to swim upstream,” he said, “but it can be done. No heroes were made without a battle.”

  However, further disappointments followed, and had he not been driven on by the thought of all that money, he would have laid down his arms.

  One day, he decided to write her a letter. It occurred to him that it would be very difficult to tell her of his feelings face-to-face, but that, however much she loathed him personally, she would at least read a letter.

  Adelaide sent the letter back with the houseboy who had delivered it.

  The second letter suffered the same fate. When he sent a third, the houseboy refused to take it.

  Luís Soares suffered a moment of disillusionment. His indifference was beginning to turn to hate; if he did marry her, he would probably treat her as his mortal enemy.

  The situation was becoming ridiculous, or, rather, it had been for a long time, but Soares hadn’t noticed. To put a stop to this absurd state of affairs, he decided to make one final bold move. He seized the first opportunity that appeared, and made an open declaration of his feelings to her, full of pleadings and sighs and possibly tears. He admitted
he’d been wrong, mistaken, but now he was utterly repentant. He had finally fallen under her spell.

  “Fallen under my spell?” she said. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

  “You know perfectly well, the spell of your beauty, your love. Please don’t imagine that I’m lying. I’m so deeply in love that I would even be capable of committing a crime.”

  “A crime?”

  “Isn’t suicide a crime? Of what value is life to me without your love? Please, speak!”

  She looked at him for a few moments without uttering a word.

  He knelt down.

  “Be it death or happiness,” he said, “I want to receive it on my knees.”

  Adelaide smiled and said very slowly:

  “Three hundred contos. That’s a very high price to pay for a miserable wretch.”

  And with that, she turned her back on him.

  Soares froze. For a few moments he remained in that same position, his eyes fixed on Adelaide as she walked away. He bowed his head beneath the weight of such humiliation. He had not foreseen such a cruel revenge on her part. Not a hateful word, not a flicker of anger, only calm disdain, a quiet, lofty scorn. Soares had suffered greatly when he lost his fortune, but now that his pride had been so bruised, his pain was infinitely greater.

  Poor lad!

  Adelaide went inside. It seems she had expected such a scene, because, on entering the house, she immediately went in search of her uncle, and told him that, however much she venerated her father’s name, she could not obey his wishes and would not marry.

  “I thought you loved him,” said the major.

  “I did love him.”

  “Do you love someone else?”

  “No.”

  “Then explain yourself.”

  Adelaide gave him a frank account of Soares’s behavior ever since he’d come to their house, the sudden change in him, his intentions, the scene in the garden. The major listened attentively, tried to excuse his nephew, but, deep down, he believed Soares to be a bad man.