The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  “I’ve come to ask you to draw up a deed . . .”

  Expecting a different opening gambit, Vaz Nunes did not reply, but simply peered over his glasses and waited.

  “A deed of gratitude,” explained Custódio; “I’ve come to ask you a great favor, an indispensable favor, and I’m counting on you, my friend . . .”

  “If I can help, of course . . .”

  “It’s a really excellent business, a magnificent business. I would not even deign to bother other people if the outcome were not certain. It’s all set to go; stock has already been ordered from England, and the business should be up and running within two months; it’s a new factory, you see. There are three of us in the partnership; my share is five contos and I’ve come to ask you to lend me that amount for six months—or even three, at a reasonable rate of interest . . .”

  “Five contos?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “But I can’t, Custódio. I simply don’t have that kind of money. Business is bad, and even if it were going really well, I wouldn’t be able to lay my hands on that amount. Who could ever expect five contos from a humble notary?”

  “If you really wanted to . . .”

  “But I do want to. All I’m saying is that if it were a small amount, proportionate to my means, I would have no hesitation in advancing it. But five contos! Believe me, it’s quite impossible.”

  Custódio’s spirits sank. He had climbed up Jacob’s ladder to heaven, but instead of descending like the angels in the biblical dream, he had tumbled down and fallen flat on his face. This was his last hope, and precisely because it had arisen so unexpectedly, he was convinced it would bear fruit, since, like all souls who trust themselves to happenstance, Custódio was a superstitious man. The poor wretch could feel his body being pierced all over by every one of those millions of needles that the factory would undoubtedly produce during its first six months. Speechless, eyes downcast, he waited for the notary to continue, to take pity on him and give him a chance. But, sensing this, the notary remained equally silent, turning his snuff box around and around in his hand, and breathing heavily, with a certain knowing, nasal whistle. Custódio attempted every possible pose, now a beggar, now a general. The notary would not be moved. Custódio stood up.

  ”In that case,” he said, with just a touch of resentment, “forgive me for bothering you . . .”

  “There’s nothing to forgive: it is I who must apologize for not being able to help you, as I would have liked. As I said, had the amount been smaller, much smaller, I would not have hesitated; however . . .”

  He reached out to shake hands with Custódio, who mechanically tipped his hat with his other hand. Custódio’s dull stare revealed the state of his soul, barely recovered from its fall, which had drained him of his last ounce of energy. No mysterious ladder and no heaven; everything had vanished at the snap of a notary’s fingers. Farewell, needles! Reality once again gripped him with its bronze talons. He would have to return to his precarious, unplanned existence, to his old account books with their goggle-eyed zeros and wiggly-eared $-signs, that would continue to stare and listen, listen and stare, dangling before him the implacable numerology of hunger. What a fall! And into what an abyss! Realizing the truth of his situation, he looked at the notary as if to say goodbye, but an idea suddenly lit up the dark night of his brain. If it were a smaller amount, Vaz Nunes could provide it, and willingly. So why shouldn’t it be a smaller amount? He had already given up the idea of the business adventure; but he could scarcely do the same with his rent arrears and his various other creditors. A reasonable sum, five hundred mil-réis, for example, would do nicely, if he could only persuade the notary to lend it to him. Custódio’s spirits rose; he would live for the present and have nothing to do with the past, no regrets or fears, no remorse. The present was all that mattered. The present was the five hundred mil-réis that he would watch emerging from the notary’s pocket like a certificate of emancipation.

  “In that case,” he said, “why don’t you see what you can give me, and I’ll go and ask some other friends as well. How much do you think you could afford?”

  “I hardly dare say, because it can really only be a very modest amount indeed.”

  “Five hundred mil-réis?”

  “No, impossible.”

  “Not even five hundred mil-réis?”

  “No,” said the notary firmly. “What’s so surprising about that? I won’t deny that I own several properties, but, my friend, I don’t walk around with them in my wallet; and I have certain obligations incumbent upon me . . . Don’t you have a job?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Look, I’ll give you something better than five hundred mil-réis; I’ll have a word with the minister of justice. I know him well, and—”

  Custódio interrupted him, slapping his thigh. Whether this was a natural gesture or a crafty diversion to avoid discussing a potential job, I have absolutely no idea; nor does it seem an essential element of the story. What is essential, though, is that he persisted in his request. Could the notary really not give him five hundred mil-réis? He would take two hundred; two hundred would be enough, not for the factory, for he would follow his friends’ advice and turn it down. Two hundred mil-réis, seeing that the notary was disposed to help him, would meet an urgent need, to “fill a hole,” as he put it. And then he told the notary everything, meeting frankness with frankness, for that was his rule of life. He admitted that, in dealing with the business proposal, he also had in mind settling matters with a particularly persistent creditor, a devil of a fellow and a Jew, who, strictly speaking, still owed him, but had treacherously turned the tables on him. It was two hundred and something mil-réis; two hundred and ten, to be precise; but he would accept two hundred—

  “Really, it pains me to repeat what I’ve already said, but there we are; even two hundred mil-réis is beyond my means. Even if you were to ask me for a hundred mil-réis, that would still exceed my capabilities at this particular time. On another occasion, possibly, I’m sure, but not right now . . .”

  “You can’t imagine the tricky situation I find myself in!”

  “I repeat, not even one hundred mil-réis. I’ve had a lot of expenses recently. Clubs and societies, subscriptions, the Freemasons . . . You probably don’t believe me, do you, given that I do own some property, but, my friend, it is indeed a fine thing to own houses, but what you don’t see is all the wear and tear, the repairs, the water pipes, the tithes, the insurance, the rent arrears, and all the rest of it. They’re the holes in the pot through which most of the water is lost . . .”

  “If only I had a pot!” sighed Custódio.

  “I’m not saying I’m not fortunate, but what I am saying is that owning houses doesn’t mean you don’t have worries, expenses, even creditors . . . Believe you me, I have creditors too.”

  “So not even a hundred mil-réis!”

  “Not even a hundred mil-réis. It pains me to say so, but that’s how it is. Not even a hundred mil-réis. Now what time is it?”

  He stood up and stepped forward into the middle of the room. Custódio did likewise, impelled by necessity and desperation. He could not bring himself to believe that the notary did not have at least a hundred mil-réis. Who on earth doesn’t have a hundred mil-réis? He considered making a pathetic scene, but the notary’s office opened directly onto the street and he didn’t want to appear ridiculous. He peered outside. In the shop across the street a man was asking the price of a frock coat; he was standing at the door because dusk was coming on and it was already dark in the shop. The clerk was holding up the item of clothing for the customer, who was examining the cloth with eyes and fingers, then the seams, the lining . . . The incident opened up a new horizon to Custódio, albeit a modest one: it was high time he replaced the jacket he was wearing. But the notary couldn’t even give him fifty mil-réis. Custódio smiled, not scornfully or angrily, but bitterly and hesitantly. It was impossible that the man didn’t have fifty mil-réis
. Twenty, at least? Not twenty. Not even twenty! No, it was all pretense, all lies.

  Custódio pulled out his handkerchief, slowly smoothed his hat, then put his handkerchief back in his pocket and straightened his tie, with a mixture of hope and resentment. He had gradually been trimming the wings of his ambitions, feather by feather, but there still remained a fine, furry down, which gave him the foolish idea that he could fly. The other man, however, remained unmoved. Vaz Nunes was checking his pocket watch with the clock on the wall, holding it to his ear, cleaning the watch face, quietly oozing impatience and annoyance from every pore. The clock’s hands were creeping toward five. Finally, the hour struck, and the notary was at last able to begin his farewells. It was late; he lived far away. As he said this, he took off his alpaca jacket and put on the cashmere one, transferring from one to the other his snuffbox, handkerchief, and wallet. Oh, the wallet! Custódio saw this problematic item, caressed it with his eyes, envying the alpaca, envying the cashmere, wishing he could be the pocket, wishing he could be the leather, the material of the precious receptacle itself. There it went, plunged straight into the inside left-hand pocket of the jacket, which the notary swiftly buttoned up. Not even twenty mil-réis! It was impossible that he didn’t have twenty mil-réis on him, thought Custódio; perhaps not two hundred, but certainly twenty, or ten . . .

  “Right, then!” said Vaz Nunes, putting on his hat.

  It was the fateful moment. Not a word from the notary, not even an invitation to dine with him; nothing. It was the end of the road. But supreme moments call for supreme efforts. Custódio felt this cliché in all its strength, and, suddenly, like a shot, he asked the notary if he couldn’t at least give him ten mil-réis.

  “Shall I show you?”

  And the notary unbuttoned his jacket, took out his wallet, opened it, and removed two notes of five mil-réis.

  “See? That’s all I have,” he said. “What I can do is share them with you; I’ll give you one five mil-réis note, and I’ll keep the other; will that do?”

  Custódio accepted the five mil-réis, not glumly or with bad grace, but smiling, indeed as thrilled as if he had just conquered Asia Minor. There was his dinner taken care of. He shook the other man’s hand, thanked him for his kindness, bade him farewell for now—a “for now” full of implicit meanings. Then he left; the beggar slipping out the door of the notary’s office and the general marching boldly down the street, nodding fraternally to the English merchants making their way up toward the suburbs. Never had the sky seemed so blue or the evening so clear; all the men around him had a gleam of hospitality in their eyes. With his left hand he lovingly squeezed the five-mil-réis note in his trouser pocket, the residue of a grand ambition which, but a short time ago, had soared boldly up to the sun like an eagle, and now flapped modestly with the flightless wings of a chicken.

  THE MOST SERENE REPUBLIC

  (Canon Vargas’s Lecture)

  GENTLEMEN,

  Before informing you of a new discovery, which I consider will bring some luster to our nation, please allow me to thank you for your prompt response to my invitation. I know that only the loftiest of interests have brought you here today, but I am also aware—and it would be ungrateful on my part not to be—that your entirely legitimate sense of scientific curiosity is mingled with a modicum of affection. I very much hope that I may prove worthy of both.

  My discovery is not a recent one; it dates from the latter part of 1876. I did not reveal it then for a reason you will easily comprehend, and if it weren’t for Globo, surely our capital’s most interesting newspaper, I would not be revealing it now. The work I have come here to discuss with you still lacks a few final touches, verifications, and complementary experiments. However, when Globo reported that an English expert has discovered the phonetic language of insects, citing a study undertaken with flies, I immediately wrote to colleagues in Europe, and keenly await their responses. Since it is undoubtedly the case that, in the field of aerial navigation, so ably invented by our very own Father Bartolomeu, the names of foreigners have taken all the glory, while that of our compatriot is scarcely remembered even by his own people, I was determined to avoid the fate of that eminent Flying Priest, and so have come to this rostrum to proclaim loud and clear, to the entire universe, that long before that English expert, and far beyond the British Isles, I, a humble naturalist, discovered exactly the same thing, and made a much better job of it.

  Gentlemen, I am about to astonish you, as I would have astonished Aristotle had I asked him: “Do you believe that a social order could ever be imposed upon spiders?” Aristotle would have replied in the negative, as will all of you, because it is simply impossible to believe that such a shy and solitary arthropod made for work alone and not for love, could ever be inducted into some form of social organization. Well, I have achieved the impossible.

  I hear some laughter among the other curious murmurings. One must always strive to overcome one’s prejudices, gentlemen. Spiders may strike you as inferior precisely because you do not know them. You love your dogs and hold cats and hens in high esteem, and yet you fail to notice that the humble spider neither jumps nor barks like a dog, nor meows like a cat, nor clucks like a hen. Nor does it buzz or bite like a mosquito, or rob us of our blood and sleep the way fleas do. All these creatures are the very model of vagrant parasites. Even the ant, so praised for certain qualities, preys upon our sugar and our crops, and builds its home by stealing someone else’s. The spider, gentlemen, neither troubles nor defrauds us; indeed, it catches flies, our sworn enemies. The spider spins, weaves, works, and dies. What better example could there be of patience, order, foresight, respect, and, dare I say it, humanity? As for its talents, there can be no doubt. From Pliny to Darwin, naturalists the world over speak as one in praise of this tiny bug, whose marvelous web is destroyed in less than a minute by your servant’s thoughtless broom. And if time permitted, I would now repeat all of these men’s wise opinions; however, I have a lot to get through and so must be brief. I have them here, not quite all of them, but almost; I have, for example, this excellent monograph by Büchner, who studied the psychological lives of animals with such perspicacity. In citing Darwin and Büchner, I am, of course, merely paying due respect to two geniuses of the first order, without (as my vestments attest) in any way absolving them of the unfounded and erroneous theories of materialism.

  Yes, gentlemen, I have discovered a species of spider that has the gift of speech. Initially I collected just a few of these new arthropods, then many more, and set about imposing a social order on them. The first of these marvelous specimens came to my attention on December 15, 1876. It was so large, so brightly colored, with a red dorsal patch and blue transversal stripes, so swift in its movements and at times so cheerful, that it completely captured my attention. The next day, three more appeared, and the four of them took possession of a suitable corner in my country house. I studied them at length, and was full of admiration. Nothing, however, could compare to my surprise upon discovering the arachnid language; for it is, gentlemen, a rich and varied tongue, with its own syntactical structure, verbs, conjugations, declensions, Latin cases, and onomatopoeia. I am currently engaged in meticulously compiling its grammar for use in schools and universities, based on the initial summary I prepared for my own use. It has, as you can imagine, taken extraordinary patience to overcome this most testing of challenges. I often lost heart, but my love of science gave me the strength to press ahead with a task that, I can tell you now, no man could hope to accomplish twice in his lifetime.

  I will keep the technical descriptions and linguistic analysis for another time and place. The purpose of this lecture is, as I said, to safeguard the rights of Brazilian science with this timely protest, and, having done so, to tell you about the ways in which I consider my own work superior to that of that English expert. I will need to demonstrate this, and for that reason I ask for your close attention.

  Within one month, I had collected twenty spiders; th
e following month, there were fifty-five and, by March 1877, four hundred and ninety. The two main factors involved in collecting them were: using their language as soon as I began to discern something of it, together with the sheer terror I instilled in them. My height, my flowing vestments, and my mastery of their language all made them believe that I was the god of spiders, and, from that point on, they worshipped me. And behold the benefits of their delusion. I followed their every action with great attention and detail, jotting down all my observations in a notebook, which they believed to be a record of their sins, thus reinforcing still further their virtuous behavior. My flute was also of great assistance. As you know, or should know, spiders are quite mad about music.

  Mere association was not enough; I needed to give them a suitable form of government. I hesitated in my choice of system; many of the current forms seemed to me adequate, some even excellent, but they all had the disadvantage of already existing. Let me explain. Any current form of government would expose them to comparisons that might be used to belittle them. I needed either to find a brand-new system, or to reintroduce one that had long since been abandoned. Naturally, I chose the latter, and nothing seemed more fitting than a republic in the Venetian mold; I even adopted the same epithet. This obsolete system, which was, in general terms, unlike any other current system of government, had the added advantage of all complicated mechanisms, namely, it would put my young society’s political skills to the test.