Rangel thought of slipping her the letter under the table, but since nothing had been said between them, she would be taken too much by surprise, and that would spoil everything. Best to say something first. He looked around the table: all the faces were bent over their cards, attentively following the numbers. Then he leaned to his right and looked down at Joaninha’s cards, as if checking something.
“You have two squares left,” he whispered.
“No, I haven’t. I have three.”
“Oh, yes, quite right. Three. Now, listen—”
“And you?”
“I have two.”
“What do you mean, ‘two’? You have four.”
There were indeed four; she leaned closer as she pointed to them, almost brushing her ear against his lips; then she looked up at him laughing and shaking her head: “Oh, Senhor Rangel! Senhor Rangel!” Rangel listened with exquisite delight; her voice was so soft, her tone so amicable that he forgot everything, seized her by the waist, and launched them both into the eternal waltz of the chimeras. House, table, guests, all vanished as if they were mere fancies, leaving the two of them as the one true reality, turning and turning in space beneath a million stars that shone for them and them alone.
No letter, nothing. As dawn approached, they all went to the window to watch the guests leaving the ball across the street. Rangel recoiled in horror. He saw Queirós and the lovely Joaninha brush fingers. He tried to explain this away as a mere illusion, but no sooner had he demolished one such illusion than up sprang another and another, breaking over him like never-ending waves. He could scarcely believe that a single night, a few hours, could be enough to bind two creatures together like that, but the proof was there in their gestures, their eyes, their words, their laughter, and even in the regret with which they parted in the early hours of the morning.
He left, feeling bewildered. A single night! A few hours! When he arrived home late, he lay down on his bed, not in order to sleep, but to sob. Only now, alone, did all his affectations desert him; no longer was he the haughty Mr. Diplomat, he was the crazed madman, tossing and turning on his bed, screaming and bawling like a child, made truly miserable by his sad autumnal love. The poor devil, made of daydreams, indolence, and pretension, was, in substance, as wretched as Othello, and had met a still crueler fate.
Othello killed Desdemona; our lover, whose hidden passions went unnoticed by anyone, served as a witness when, six months later, Queirós married Joaninha.
Neither events nor the passing years changed his essential nature. When the Paraguayan War broke out, he often thought about enlisting as an officer with the volunteers, but he never did; although there can be no doubt that he won several battles and ended up a brigadier.
MARIANA
I
“I WONDER WHAT became of Mariana?” Evaristo asked himself as he crossed Largo da Carioca, after bidding farewell to an old friend who had reminded him of his old sweetheart.
The year was 1890. Evaristo had returned from Europe only a few days earlier, after an absence of eighteen years. He had left Rio de Janeiro in 1872, expecting to stay until 1874 or 1875 while he visited a series of famous or merely interesting cities, but the traveler proposes and Paris disposes. Upon reaching the City of Light in 1873, Evaristo allowed himself to stay on beyond his allotted timetable; he postponed his departure for a year, then another, then thought no more of leaving. He had lost all interest in the affairs of our country, latterly not even bothering to read the Brazilian newspapers; an impoverished student from Bahia would borrow his newspapers before he’d read them, and in return give him a summary of one or two of the more important items. Then, suddenly, in November 1889, a Parisian reporter came to his home and started talking about the revolution in Rio de Janeiro, and asking for political, social, and biographical information. Evaristo considered his response, then said:
“My dear sir, I rather think I should go there myself and find out.”
Having neither party nor opinions, no close relatives, no financial interests (all his wealth being in Europe), it is difficult to explain Evaristo’s sudden decision in terms of mere curiosity, and yet there was no other motive. He simply wanted to see the new state of affairs. He checked the date of an opening night at the Odéon, for a lighthearted play written by a friend, and calculated that if he left on the first steamship and returned three steamships later, he would be back just in time to buy a ticket and take his seat for the performance. He packed his bags, hastened to Bordeaux, and boarded the ship.
“Yes, I wonder what became of Mariana?” he thought again on his way down Rua da Assembléia. “Perhaps she’s dead? Or if she’s still alive, she must be very different; she’ll be forty-five or so . . . No, forty-eight! She was about five years younger than me. Forty-eight, by Jove . . . She was a real beauty, absolutely marvelous! And a marvelous old time we had of it too!”
He wanted to see her. He inquired discreetly, and found out that she was still alive and living in the same house on Rua do Engenho Velho, but she hadn’t been seen for several months, on account of her husband, who was ill and, according to some reports, dying.
“She’s probably at death’s door herself,” Evaristo said to the acquaintance who gave him the information.
“Good Lord, no. The last time I saw her, she was as fresh as a daisy. You wouldn’t think her a day over forty. Shall I let you in on a secret? There may be some delightful rosebushes around these parts, but when it comes to our stately cedars of 1860 to 1865, well, they just don’t make them like that anymore.”
“Ah, but they do! You just don’t see them because you’ve stopped climbing Mount Lebanon,” retorted Evaristo.
His desire to see Mariana had grown. How would they look to each other now? What bygone visions would return to transform the reality of the present? It goes without saying that the purpose of Evaristo’s journey was not simply to amuse, but to cure. Now that the march of time had done its work, what would remain of the specter of 1872, the sad year when they parted, a separation that nearly drove him crazy, and nearly killed her?
II
A few days later, he stepped down from a cab at Mariana’s front door, and handed his card to a servant, who showed him into the parlor.
While he waited, he looked around him and was moved by what he saw. All the furnishings were exactly as they had been eighteen years before. Although he had been unable to reconstruct them mentally during his absence, he recognized all of them instantly, along with their precise arrangement, which hadn’t changed, either. They looked old and fusty. The artificial flowers in a large vase, placed on a side table, had faded with time. The room resembled a pile of scattered bones that the imagination could fit together once again to form a body, lacking only a soul.
But the soul was not lacking. Hanging on the wall, above the sofa, was Mariana’s portrait. It had been painted when she was twenty-five; the frame, never re-gilded and peeling in several places, was in marked contrast with her fresh, cheerful face. Time had not tarnished her beauty. Mariana was there, dressed in the fashions of 1865, with the wide, pretty eyes of a woman in love. It was the only living breath in the room, but that was enough to give a fleeting youthfulness to the decrepit surroundings. Evaristo felt a surge of emotion. There was an armchair facing the portrait; he sat down in it and stared at that young woman from another time. Her painted eyes stared back at his real ones, perhaps surprised both at their meeting again and at the changes in him, because his real eyes did not have the warmth and humor of those in the portrait. However, this difference did not last long; the man’s former life outwardly restored his youthful vigor, and they drank in each other’s eyes and all their former sins.
Then, slowly, Mariana descended from the canvas and its frame, and came and sat opposite Evaristo. She leaned forward, reached out her arms to him, and opened her hands. Evaristo placed his hands in hers, and the four hands squeezed each other in cordial affection. Neither of them asked anything about the past, because as
yet there was no past; they were both in the present, time had stopped so instantaneously and completely that it was as if they had spent the whole of the previous evening rehearsing for this single, unending, performance. All the clocks in the city and around the world had quietly broken their mechanisms, and all the clockmakers had found a new trade. Adieu, vieux lac de Lamartine! Evaristo and Mariana had dropped anchor in the ocean of time. And then came the sweetest words ever uttered by the lips of man or woman, and that includes the most ardent words, words never spoken, angry words, dying words, words of jealousy and of forgiveness.
“Are you well?”
“I am, and you?”
“I’ve been dying to see you. I’ve been waiting for you for the last hour, so filled with longing I almost cried; but as you can see I’m happy and cheerful now, and all because the very best of men has finally entered the room. What took you so long?”
“I was delayed along the way, and the second delay took much longer than the first.”
“If you truly loved me, you would have spent only two minutes with either of them, then you’d have got here three-quarters of an hour ago. Why are you laughing?”
“The second delay was your husband.”
Mariana trembled.
“It was just near here, around the corner,” continued Evaristo. “We talked about you, he mentioned you first. I’m not entirely sure what he said, but he spoke kindly, almost affectionately. It dawned on me that it was a trap, a way of winning my confidence. Finally, we said goodbye. I waited, watching to see if he’d come back, but he didn’t. That’s the reason for my delay, and there you also have the cause of all my torments.”
“Don’t start again with those eternal suspicions of yours,” said Mariana, smiling just as she had in the portrait a moment or two earlier. “What do you want me to do? Xavier’s my husband; I’m not going to send him away, or punish him, or kill him, simply because you and I love each other.”
“I’m not telling you to kill him, but do you love him, Mariana?”
“I love you and no one else,” she replied, thus avoiding a negative answer, which seemed to her excessively cruel.
That was what Evaristo thought, but he couldn’t accept the delicacy of that indirect answer. Only a plain and simple negative would satisfy him.
“You do love him, then,” he insisted.
Mariana paused for a moment.
“Why must you rummage about in my soul and in my past?” she said. “For us, the world began four months ago and will never end—or only when you tire of me, for I shall never change . . .”
Evaristo knelt down, drew her arms toward him, kissed her hands, and buried his face in them; finally, he rested his head on Mariana’s knees. The two of them remained like that for several moments, until, feeling her fingers growing moist, she raised his head and saw his eyes brimming with tears. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Goodbye.”
“What on earth has got into you?”
“You love him,” replied Evaristo, “and the idea both torments and terrifies me, because I would be capable of killing him if I were sure you did still love him.”
“What a strange man you are,” retorted Mariana, after drying Evaristo’s eyes with her hair, which she had hurriedly loosened, thus providing him with the finest handkerchief in the world. “Do I love him? No, I don’t love him anymore. There—you have my answer. But now you will allow me to tell you everything, because it is not in my nature to indulge in half confidences.”
This time it was Evaristo who trembled, but curiosity so gnawed at his heart that his fears had to give way to waiting and listening. With his head still resting on her knees, he heard what she had to say, which was brief. Mariana told him about her marriage, her father’s opposition, her mother’s suffering, and her own and Xavier’s perseverance. They waited resolutely for ten months, she less patiently than he, because the passion that gripped her was strong enough to withstand even the most violent decisions. What tears she shed for him! What heartfelt curses she heaped on her parents, stifled only by her fear of God, for she did not want such words, like weapons of parricide, to condemn her to a fate even worse than hell: eternal separation from the man she loved. Perseverance triumphed, time disarmed her parents, and the wedding took place some seven years later. Their passionate courtship continued into married life. When time brought with it tranquility, it also brought affection. Their hearts were in tune; the memories of their struggle still poignant and sweet. A serene happiness came and sat at their door, like a sentinel, but then, suddenly, the sentinel departed, leaving behind neither unhappiness nor even tedium, but apathy: a pale, motionless figure who barely smiled and remembered nothing. It was around this time that Evaristo appeared and stole her heart. He hadn’t stolen her from the love of another man, and for exactly that reason he had nothing to do with her past, which remained a mystery and a potential source of regrets—
“Regrets?” he asked, interrupting her.
“You may well imagine that I have regrets, but I don’t, and I never will.”
“Thank you!” said Evaristo after several moments. “I’m grateful for your confession. I will never speak of the matter again. You do not love him, and that’s what counts. How beautiful you are when you swear such an oath and talk to me about our future! Yes, it’s all over, and here I am, so love me!”
“You and only you, my love.”
“Only me? Swear it once again!”
“By these eyes,” she replied, kissing his eyes, “by these lips,” she continued, placing her lips on his. “By my life and yours, I swear!”
Evaristo repeated the same words, accompanied by the same ceremony. Then he sat down facing Mariana, just as he had been at the beginning. She rose and went to kneel at his feet, resting her elbows on his knees. Her loose hair framed her face so perfectly that he regretted not having the genius to copy it and bequeath it to the world. He told her this, but she said nothing in reply; her eyes were gazing yearningly up at him. Evaristo leaned forward, his eyes fixed on hers, and there they stayed, their faces almost touching, for one, two, three hours, until someone came to interrupt them:
“Please, follow me.”
III
Evaristo jumped. Before him stood a man, the same servant who had taken his visiting card. He stood up quickly; Mariana withdrew into the canvas on the wall, where he could see her once again, dressed in the fashions of 1865, hair neatly coiffed, face serene. As if in a dream, his thoughts, gestures, and actions had occupied their own particular time, whereas in reality everything had happened in five or six minutes, the time taken by the servant to carry Evaristo’s card to his mistress and to return with her invitation. However, there was no doubting that Evaristo could still feel the young woman’s caresses, for he really had been back to the years 1869 to 1872, in a vision lasting three hours that had eluded ordinary time. The whole story had come flooding back to him, his jealousy of Xavier, his own words of forgiveness, and Mariana’s reciprocal tenderness. The only thing lacking was the final crisis, when Mariana’s mother, when she found out everything, had bravely intervened, and separated them. Mariana wanted to die and even took poison; it was only her mother’s desperation that brought her back to life. Xavier, who, at the time, was visiting the surrounding province, knew nothing of the tragedy other than that his wife had narrowly escaped death after taking the wrong medication. Evaristo had tried to see her before embarking for Europe, but it proved impossible.
“After you,” he said to the servant, who was waiting for him.
Xavier was in the adjoining study, lying on a sofa, with his wife and several visitors by his side. Evaristo entered in a state of high emotion. The light was dim, the silence deep; Mariana was clutching one of her husband’s hands, watching him closely, fearing either death or some sort of crisis. She scarcely looked up at Evaristo to hold out her hand to him, immediately turning back to gaze at her husband, whose face bore the marks of long suffering, and whose
labored breathing seemed like the prelude to that last great, infinite opera. Evaristo, who had barely seen Mariana’s face, withdrew to a corner of the room, not daring to look at her or follow her movements. The doctor arrived, examined the patient, prescribed the same medication as before, and left, promising to come back that night. Mariana accompanied him to the door, asking him whispered questions and trying to read in his face the truth that his lips dared not speak. It was only then that Evaristo was able to look at her properly; suffering seemed to have bowed her more than the years. He recognized the unmistakable way she moved. This Mariana was stepping out not from a canvas as the other one had, but from time itself. Before she returned to her husband’s side, Evaristo realized that he, too, should leave, and moved toward the door.
“Do please excuse me . . . I’m very sorry not to be able to speak with your husband at this moment.”
“I’m afraid it’s not possible; the doctor recommends complete rest and silence. Perhaps another time . . .”
“I would have come earlier, but I only just found out . . . and I haven’t been back in Rio for long.”
“Thank you.”
Evaristo shook her hand and crept out, while she returned to sit beside the patient. Neither Mariana’s hand nor her eyes had revealed any sort of feeling for Evaristo, and they parted almost as strangers. True, their love had ended long ago, her heart had aged with time, and her husband was on the point of dying. And yet, he thought, how could he explain that, after eighteen years of separation, Mariana could see before her a man who had once played such an important part in her life, without betraying the slightest shock, surprise, or embarrassment? Therein lay a mystery. A mystery indeed. Even now, on leaving, he had felt a pang, something that made his words stumble and threw all his thoughts into disarray, even the most banal expressions of sorrow and hope. She, on the other hand, had shown not the least emotion on seeing him. And, remembering the portrait in the parlor, Evaristo concluded that art was indeed superior to nature, for the canvas had preserved both her body and her soul. All this came sprinkled with a dose of bitter resentment.
The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis Page 84
