The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  Why so pale? However ridiculous and pitiable it may seem, dear reader, I have to inform you that our Ernesto did not own a tailcoat, either old or new. Vieira’s request was absurd, but there was no getting out of it; he could either go to the party in a tailcoat or not go at all. Whatever it took, he had to find a solution to this gravest of problems. Three possible solutions occurred to the poor, troubled lad: order a new tailcoat for the following night, regardless of the cost; buy one on credit; borrow one from a friend.

  He dismissed the first two possibilities as impracticable; Ernesto had no money nor that much credit. There remained only the third idea. Ernesto drew up a list of friends and probable tailcoats, put it in his pocket, and set off in search of the golden fleece.

  Luck, however, was not on his side: the first friend had to go to a wedding the next day and the second to a ball; the tailcoat of the third was torn, the fourth had lent his to someone else, the fifth never lent his to anyone, and the sixth had no tailcoat at all. He asked two more friends, but one had left the day before for Iguaçu, and the other was stationed at the Fortress of São João as second lieutenant in the national guard.

  You can imagine Ernesto’s despair, but observe, too, how cruelly fate was treating the poor fellow, for, on the way home, he encountered no fewer than three funerals, two of which involved a lot of carriages, all of whose occupants were wearing tailcoats. He had no alternative but to bow his head to fate, and accept the situation. Since, however, he had determined to be reconciled with Rosina, he wrote her the letter I mentioned earlier and sent the houseboy to deliver it and to tell her that he would be waiting that night on the corner of Campo da Aclamação to receive her answer. As we know, no answer came. Ernesto could not understand the reason for her silence; there had been many other tiffs before, but none had withstood the first letter he sent, or lasted more than forty-eight hours.

  Convinced that no reply would come that night, Ernesto returned home with despair in his heart. He lived on Rua da Misericórdia. By the time he arrived, he was weary and downcast. And yet it still took him an age to get to sleep. He undressed so hurriedly that he almost tore his vest when the back buckle got caught on a trouser button. He hurled his boots at the dresser and almost broke a vase. He thumped the table seven or eight times, smoked two cigars, railed against fate, against Rosina and against himself, and, finally, as dawn was breaking, managed to fall asleep.

  While he is sleeping, let us find out what lies behind his beloved’s silence.

  Chapter II

  You see that girl over there, sitting on a sofa between two other young ladies, talking to them in a low voice, and occasionally batting her eyelids. That is Rosina. Rosina’s eyes deceive no one except her suitors. Her eyes are bright and ensnaring, and she has a particular way of deploying those eyes that makes them even brighter and more ensnaring. She is elegant and graceful; if she were not, our poor unhappy Ernesto would not be so taken with her, for he has excellent taste. She isn’t tall, but petite, lively, and mischievous. Her manners and her way of speaking are somewhat bold and affected, but, when a friend pointed this out to him, Ernesto declared that he didn’t like shrinking violets.

  “Well, I’ve never liked violets myself, shrinking or not,” retorted his friend, delighted to be able to make this little joke.

  A very 1850s joke.

  She does not wear expensive clothes because her uncle is not rich, but she still manages to be extremely smart and elegant. Her head is adorned very simply, with two blue ribbons.

  “Ah, if only those two ribbons wanted to tie the knot with me!” said one dandy sporting a black mustache and a middle parting.

  “If only those ribbons wanted to carry me up to heaven!” said another dandy with brown side-whiskers and tiny ears.

  Ambitious desires on the part of both lads—ambitious and futile, because, if anyone has caught her attention, it is a young man with a fair mustache and a long nose who is currently talking to the subdelegate. He is the person at whom Rosina occasionally glances, furtively it’s true, but not so furtively as to escape the notice of the two girls beside her.

  “She’s really got her teeth into him!” one said to the other, indicating with a nod of her head the young man with the long nose.

  “Oh, really, Justina!”

  “Pure tittle-tattle!” said the other girl.

  “Oh, do be quiet, Amélia!”

  “Are you trying to pull the wool over our eyes?” said Justina. “Well, don’t. He’s looking over here again. He’s not even listening to the subdelegate, who, poor man, is far too fat to play the part of chaperone.”

  “If you don’t shut up, I’m leaving,” said Rosina, pretending to be annoyed.

  “Well, leave, then!”

  “Poor Ernesto!” sighed Amélia.

  “Sshh, Auntie might hear you,” said Rosina, shooting a sideways look at a plump, elderly lady seated right next to the sofa and currently regaling a friend with a detailed account of her husband’s latest malady.

  “Why didn’t Ernesto come this evening?” asked Justina.

  “He sent a message to Papa saying he had some urgent work to do.”

  “Perhaps he’s found someone else too,” said Justina in an insinuating voice.

  “He wouldn’t dare!” cried Rosina.

  “Such confidence!”

  “Such love!”

  “Such certainty!”

  “Such faith!”

  “He wouldn’t dare,” repeated Rosina. “Ernesto wouldn’t dare fall in love with another girl, I’m sure of that. Ernesto is a . . .”

  She did not finish her sentence.

  “A what?” asked Amélia.

  “A what?” asked Justina.

  At that moment, a waltz struck up, and the young man with the long nose, whom the subdelegate had now abandoned in order to go and speak to Vieira, came over to the sofa and asked Rosina if he could have the honor of that dance. She modestly lowered her eyes, murmured a few inaudible words, then got to her feet and joined the other dancers. Justina and Amélia moved closer to each other so as to pass comment on Rosina’s behavior and the rather graceless way in which she waltzed. However, since they were both friends of Rosina’s, these criticisms were not made with any desire to offend, but in the gentle way in which friends always criticize absent friends.

  Not that they were right, for Rosina waltzed very well and could stand comparison with any other exponent of that dance. As for her being hopelessly in love, they could have been right, indeed they were; the way in which she looked at and spoke to the young man with the long nose would have aroused suspicions in the most innocent of minds.

  When the waltz was over, they strolled about a little, before going over to stand near a window. By then, it was one o’clock, and poor Ernesto was already trudging back to Rua da Misericórdia.

  “I’ll come tomorrow at six o’clock,” said the other young man.

  “No, not six o’clock!” said Rosina.

  That was the time Ernesto usually called.

  “At five, then.”

  “At five?” she said. “Yes, at five,”

  The young man with the long nose thanked her with a smile that was a ratification of his amorous treaty, and he proffered a few more words to which she listened tenderly and blushingly, half proud, half modest. What he said was this: that Rosina was the flower of the ball, but also the flower of Rua do Conde, and not just the flower of Rua do Conde, but the flower of the whole city.

  Ernesto had often said exactly the same, but the young man with the long nose had a particular way of complimenting a young woman. There was, for example, the elegant and quite inimitable way in which he stuck his left thumb in the left armhole of his vest, then wiggled the other fingers about as if he were playing the piano; and no one, at least no one in the immediate vicinity, had quite such an elegant way of holding out his arm, smoothing his hair, or simply offering a cup of tea.

  Such were the qualities that conquered the lovely Rosin
a’s fickle heart. Was that all? No. The mere fact that Ernesto lacked the alluring tailcoat that adorned the body and enhanced the charms of his more fortunate rival might give a clue to the more alert reader. Rosina was probably unaware of Ernesto’s difficulties in finding a tailcoat, but she did know that he occupied a rather lowly position at the arsenal, whereas the young man with the long nose had a rather better position in a commercial establishment.

  Any girl claiming to have philosophical ideas about love and marriage would say that the impulses of the heart came first. Rosina was not entirely immune to the impulses of the heart or to the philosophy of love, but she had ambitions to be somebody, she longed for new dresses and frequent visits to the theater, she wanted, in short, to be seen. In time, the young man with the long nose would be able to give her all these things, for she could already see him being made a director of the company he worked for; Ernesto, on the other hand, would find it hard to gain promotion at the arsenal, and he would certainly not rise quickly or very far.

  When placed on the scales, poor Ernesto was inevitably the lighter weight.

  Rosina had known the new candidate for a few weeks, but this was the first time she had been able to speak to him properly, to consolidate, if we can put it like that, their situation. Their relationship, which, up until then, had been purely telegraphic, became verbal; and if the reader has a taste for a more mannered, Gongoristic style, I would say that so many were the telegrams exchanged between them that night, that neighboring states, fearful of losing a possible alliance, sent out a call to the militia of sweet smiles, ordered a whole flotilla of fluttering eyelashes, prepared an artillery of tender glances, fond smiles, and handkerchiefs pressed modestly to lips; but this whole barrage of bucklers had no effect whatsoever because the lovely Rosina, at least that night, was absorbed by one thought only.

  When the ball ended and Rosina went to her room, she saw a folded piece of paper on her dressing table.

  “What’s that?” she thought.

  She opened it. It was the response to Ernesto’s letter that she had forgotten to send. What if someone else had read it? No, they couldn’t have. She carefully folded it up again, sealed it, and put it in a drawer, saying to herself:

  “I must send it tomorrow morning.”

  Chapter III

  “Fool.” That is the word Rosina was going to use when she defended Ernesto’s fidelity, so mischievously mocked by her two friends.

  It was barely three months since Ernesto had begun courting Rosina and exchanging letters, and since they had been declaring eternal love to each other, and, in that short space of time, he had already suspected he might have a few rivals. Whenever this occurred, he would seethe with rage and consider abandoning the whole business. However, with a wave of her magic wand, she always led him back to the straight and narrow, by writing him a sharp note or whispering a few fiery words to him. Ernesto would admit that he had misunderstood, and that she really was far too kind.

  “You’re very fortunate that I do still love you,” Rosina would say, feigning annoyance.

  “I know!”

  “Why must you invent such stories?”

  “I wasn’t inventing . . . someone told me.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have believed them.”

  “No, you’re right, I shouldn’t—and you’re an angel sent from heaven!”

  Rosina would forgive him his latest accusation, and things would carry on as before.

  His friend and housemate, Jorge, to whom Ernesto confided all his joys and woes and to whom he turned for counsel, often used to tell him:

  “Look, Ernesto, I think it’s just wasted effort on your part.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she doesn’t love you.”

  “Impossible!”

  “You’re simply a way of passing the time.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. She does love me.”

  “Yes, but she loves a lot of other men too.”

  “Jorge!”

  “In short . . .”

  “Not another word!”

  “. . . she’s a flirt,” concluded his friend quietly.

  On hearing his friend’s peremptory judgment, Ernesto shot him a long, deep look, capable of stopping all known mechanical movement; however, when his friend’s face showed not a trace of fear or repentance, Ernesto withdrew the look and everything ended peacefully. In this, he was more prudent than a certain senator, Dom Manuel, who, when asked by the Viscount of Jequitinhonha to withdraw his laughter during a debate, continued to laugh anyway.

  Such was Ernesto’s confidence in the flower of Rua do Conde. If she had announced to him that she had in her pocket one of the towers from the Candelária Church, Ernesto might, indeed probably would, have accepted this as true.

  This time, though, the quarrel was a serious one. Ernesto had actually seen her surreptitiously receive a note from some kind of cousin who occasionally visited the house. His eyes flashed angrily when he saw the mysterious epistle gleaming white in her hand. He eyed the young man threateningly, gave Rosina a scornful look, and left. Then he wrote the letter we already know about, and waited in the street for her reply. What reply was he expecting since he had actually seen Rosina take the note? Dear ingenuous reader, he wanted a reply that would prove to him that he had seen nothing, a reply that would make him regard himself with scorn and disgust. He could not really see how such a response was possible, but, deep in his heart, that is what he wanted.

  The reply came the following morning. His housemate woke him at eight to give him the letter from Rosina.

  Ernesto sat bolt upright in bed, then, when he had calmed down, opened the letter and devoured its contents. The look of celestial good fortune on his face revealed the contents of the letter to his friend Jorge.

  “It’s all sorted out,” said Ernesto, folding up the letter and getting out of bed. “She’s explained everything, and I clearly misunderstood.”

  “I see,” said Jorge, looking pityingly at his friend. “So what does she say?”

  Ernesto did not reply at once; he unfolded the letter again, read it to himself, refolded it, looked up at the ceiling, then down at his slippers, then at his friend, and only after making this whole series of gestures intended to indicate the depth of his abstraction, only then did he reply:

  “It turns out that what I took to be a love letter was a note from her cousin asking to borrow some money from Rosina’s uncle. She says I’m most unkind to force her to speak of these family peccadilloes and concludes by saying that she loves me more than she could ever love anyone. Here, read it.”

  Jorge took the letter and read it, while Ernesto paced back and forth, gesticulating and muttering monosyllabically to himself, as if mentally composing an act of contrition.

  “So what do you think?” he asked when Jorge returned the letter.

  “You’re right. She does explain everything,” answered Jorge.

  Ernesto went to Rua do Conde that same evening. She received him with a smile as soon as she saw him enter the room. At the first opportunity, they made their peace, with Ernesto declaring that he was consumed with regret for ever having suspected her, and with Rosina—in the safety of the darkened room, and before the maid came in to light the candles on the dresser—generously allowing him to steal a kiss.

  Now is the reader’s chance to question me about the intentions of this young woman, who, while she preferred the employment prospects of the young man with the long nose, was still corresponding with Ernesto and giving him every indication that she preferred him, even though she didn’t.

  Rosina’s intentions, inquisitive reader, were entirely marital. She wanted to marry and to marry as well as she could. To that end, she allowed herself to be courted by all her suitors, choosing which one best chimed with her desires, but without discouraging the others, because the best of the suitors might fall away, and if there was one thing worse than marrying badly, it was not marrying at all.

  Th
is, at least, was her plan. We should also add that she was an inveterate flirt, who enjoyed having at her feet a whole horde of suitors, many of whom did not intend to marry her at all and for whom courtship was a mere pastime, revealing in these gentlemen an utter vacancy of mind.

  Half a loaf is better than none, as the saying goes. Morally and maritally speaking, Ernesto was Rosina’s possible half a loaf, a kind of pis aller, as the French say, useful to have to hand.

  Chapter IV

  The young man with the long nose was not one of those birds of passage; his intentions were strictly conjugal. He was twenty-six, hardworking, popular, frugal, simple, and sincere, a true son of Minas Gerais. He could certainly make any young woman happy.

  For her part, Rosina so insinuated herself into his thoughts that she almost caused him to lose his job. One day, when his boss came over to the desk where he was working, he noticed underneath the bookkeeper’s inkstand a piece of paper on which the word “love” was written two or three times. One mention of that word was quite enough to send the young man’s spirits soaring. Senhor Gomes Arruda frowned, focused his thoughts, then improvised a long and menacing speech in which the poor bookkeeper understood only the expression “out on your ear.”

  “Out on your ear” is a very weighty expression, which the bookkeeper pondered long and hard, and, forced to acknowledge that his boss was right, he set about mending his ways, although not his love. Love was taking ever deeper root in him; this was his first serious love, and, of course, he had fallen for a past-mistress in the field.

  “Things can’t go on like this,” he was thinking as he walked home one night, scratching his chin. “I should really marry her as soon as possible. With what I get from my family and what I earn at the office, I reckon I can just about manage, and the rest is up to God.”

  Ernesto soon came to suspect the intentions of the young man with the long nose. Once, when he caught Rosina and his rival exchanging a glance, he got angry, and took the first opportunity to interrogate his beloved about this equivocal situation.

  “Come on, own up!” he said.