The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  AHASUERUS: Is this a trick? You really are Prometheus? So it was not some dream concocted by the ancient imagination?

  PROMETHEUS: Look at me; touch these hands. See if I exist.

  AHASUERUS: So Moses lied to me. You, Prometheus, you created the first men?

  PROMETHEUS: That was my crime.

  AHASUERUS: Yes, it was your crime, you artificer of hell; it was a crime for which there is no possible atonement. Here you should have remained for all time, chained and being endlessly devoured; you who are the source of all the evils that afflict me. I lacked pity, it is true, but you, who brought me into existence, you, perverse divinity, were the original cause of everything.

  PROMETHEUS: Your impending death clouds your reason.

  AHASUERUS: Yes, it really is you; you have the Olympian forehead of a strong and handsome Titan: it really is you . . . Are these your chains? I see no sign of your tears.

  PROMETHEUS: I shed them for your race.

  AHASUERUS: It shed many more on account of you.

  PROMETHEUS: Listen to me, O last of your ungrateful line!

  AHASUERUS: What do I want with your words? I want to hear your groans, you perverse divinity. Here are your chains. See how I lift them up? Hear the clanking of the irons? Who unchained you?

  PROMETHEUS: Hercules.

  AHASUERUS: Hercules . . . Let us see if he performs the same service now that you will once again be chained.

  PROMETHEUS: You must be mad.

  AHASUERUS: Heaven gave you your first punishment; now earth will give you your second and last. Not even Hercules will be able to break these irons again. See how I shake them about in the air like feathers; for I represent the strength of millennia of despair. All of humanity is within me. Before I fall into the abyss, I will write the world’s epitaph on this rock. I will summon the eagle and it will come; I will tell it that, on departing this life, the very last man is leaving it a gift from the gods.

  PROMETHEUS: Poor ignorant man; you are refusing a throne! No, you cannot refuse it.

  AHASUERUS: Now you are the madman. Come on, kneel. Let me bind your arms. Yes, like that, don’t resist. Breathe, breathe deeply. Now your legs . . .

  PROMETHEUS: Go on, go on! These are earthly passions that turn against me, but I am not a man and know nothing of ingratitude. You will not change one letter of your fate; it will be fulfilled in its entirety. You will be the new Hercules. I, who proclaimed the glory of the first one, also proclaim yours; and you will be no less generous than he.

  AHASUERUS: Are you mad?

  PROMETHEUS: The truth men do not know is the madness of whoever proclaims it. Go on, finish it!

  AHASUERUS: Glory never pays for anything, and then it dies.

  PROMETHEUS: This glory will never die. Go on, finish what you’re doing; teach the sharp beak of the eagle how to devour my entrails, but listen . . . No, don’t listen; you cannot understand me.

  AHASUERUS: No, speak, speak.

  PROMETHEUS: The passing world cannot understand the eternal, but you will be the link between the two.

  AHASUERUS: Tell me everything, I’m listening.

  PROMETHEUS: I will tell you nothing. Go on, tighten the chains on my wrists so that I cannot escape, so that you will find me here when you return. You want me to tell you everything? I have already told you that a new race will inhabit the earth, made from the finest spirits of the extinct race; the multitude of others will perish. A noble family, lucid and powerful, it will be the perfect blend of the divine and the human. A new era will be born, but between that old era and this a link is needed, and that link is you.

  AHASUERUS: Me?

  PROMETHEUS: Yes, you, the chosen one, the king. Yes, indeed, Ahas­uerus, you shall be king. The wanderer shall find rest. He who was scorned by men shall govern them.

  AHASUERUS: Cunning Titan, you wish to deceive me. Me, a king?

  PROMETHEUS: Yes, you. Who else could it be? The new world needs something from the old world, and no one can explain those two worlds better than you. Thus there will be no break between the two humanities. From the imperfect will come the perfect, and your mouth will tell it of its origins. You will tell the new mankind of all the good and evil of the old. You will spring to life once again like the tree whose dead leaves have been removed to reveal only the lush green ones, but in this case the lushness will be eternal.

  AHASUERUS: A shining vision! Can it really be me?

  PROMETHEUS: Yes, really.

  AHASUERUS: These eyes . . . these hands . . . a new and better life . . . Sublime vision! Well, it is only fair, Titan. The punishment was fair, but so is the glorious remission of my sin. I shall live? Me? A new and better life? No, surely you mock me.

  PROMETHEUS: Well, then, leave me; one day you will return, when these immense heavens open for the spirits of new life to descend. You will find me here, at peace. Go.

  AHASUERUS: Will I greet the sun again?

  PROMETHEUS: This very sun which now is setting. Our friend the sun, eye of the ages, will never again close its eyelids. Gaze upon it, if you can.

  AHASUERUS: I cannot.

  PROMETHEUS: Later you will, when the circumstances of life have changed. Then your eyes will be able to gaze safely at the sun, because future mankind will be a concentration of all that is best in nature: robust and delicate, shimmering and pure.

  AHASUERUS: Swear to me you’re not lying.

  PROMETHEUS: You will see if I am lying.

  AHASUERUS: Speak, tell me more; tell me everything.

  PROMETHEUS: Describing life is not the same as feeling it; you will have it in abundance. The bosom of Abraham described in your old Scriptures is none other than this perfect world beyond. There you will see David and the prophets. There you will tell the astonished multitudes not only the great events of the extinct world, but also the evils that they will never know: illness and old age, deceit, selfishness, hypocrisy, tedious vanity, unimaginable foolishness, and all the rest. The soul, like the earth, will have an incorruptible sheath.

  AHASUERUS: I will once again see this immense blue sky!

  PROMETHEUS: Look, how beautiful it is!

  AHASUERUS: As beautiful and serene as eternal justice. O magnificent sky, more beautiful even than the tents of Kedar, I will see you again and forevermore; you will gather up my thoughts as in ages past; you will grant me clear days and friendly nights . . .

  PROMETHEUS: Sunrise upon sunrise.

  AHASUERUS: Speak, speak! Tell me more. Tell me everything. Let me loosen these chains . . .

  PROMETHEUS: Unchain me, new Hercules, last man of one world and first of the next. That is your destiny; neither you nor I, nor anyone else, can change it. You are greater even than your Moses. From the heights of Nebo, ready to die, he gazed upon all the lands of Jericho that would belong to his posterity; and the Lord said unto him: “You have seen it with your eyes, but you will not cross into it.” You will cross into it, Ahasuerus; you will reach Jericho.

  AHASUERUS: Place your hand upon my head, look into my eyes; fill me with the reality and force of your prediction; let me feel something of this full, new life . . . King, you said?

  PROMETHEUS: Chosen king of a chosen people.

  AHASUERUS: It is no more than just amends for the utter scorn in which I have lived. Where one life spat mud at me, another will crown my head with a halo. Go on, tell me more . . . tell me more . . . (He continues dreaming. The two eagles approach.)

  FIRST EAGLE: Woe is he, this the last man on earth, for he is dying and yet still dreams of life.

  SECOND EAGLE: He only hated life so much because he loved it dearly.

  THE CANON, OR THE METAPHYSICS OF STYLE

  “COME FROM LEBANON, my spouse, come from Lebanon, come . . . The mandrakes give their smell. At our doors we have every breed of dove . . .

  “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him I am sick of love . . .”

  And so it was, to the melody of that ancient drama of J
udah, that a noun and an adjective searched for each other inside the head of Canon Matias. Do not interrupt me, hasty reader; I know you won’t believe anything I’m about to say. I will, however, say it, despite your little faith, because the day of public conversion will come.

  On that day—sometime around 2222, I imagine—the paradox will take off its wings and put on the thick coat of common truth. At that point, this page will merit not just favor, but apotheosis. It will be translated into every tongue. Academies and institutes will make a little book out of it, to be used throughout the centuries, with bronze pages, gilt edges, letters of inlaid opal, and a cover of unpolished silver. Governments will decree that it be taught in schools and colleges. Philosophers will burn all previous doctrines, even the most definitive, and will embrace this, the one true psychology, and everything will be complete. Until then, I will pass for a fool, as you will see.

  Matias, honorary canon and a preacher by trade, was composing a sermon when this psychic idyll began. He is forty years of age and lives in the Gamboa District surrounded by books. Someone came to ask him to give a sermon at a forthcoming festival; at the time, he was enjoying reading a weighty spiritual tome that had arrived on the last steamer and so he refused their request; but they were so insistent that he gave in.

  “Your Reverence will rattle it off in no time at all,” said the principal organizer of the festival.

  Matias smiled meekly and discreetly, as should all clerics and diplomats. Bowing low, the organizers took their leave and went to announce the festival in the newspapers, with the declaration that Canon Matias, “one of the ornaments of the Brazilian clergy,” would preach the Gospel. The phrase “ornaments of the clergy” quite put the canon off his breakfast when he read the morning papers, and it was only because he had given his word that he sat down to write the sermon.

  He began unwillingly, but after only a few minutes he was already working with passion. Inspiration, its eyes turned toward heaven, and meditation, its eyes turned to the floor, stand on either side of his chair, whispering a thousand grave and mystical things in his ear. Matias carries on writing, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. The sheets of paper fly from his hands, vibrant and polished. Some have a few corrections, others have none at all. Suddenly, on the point of writing an adjective, he stops; he writes another and scores it out, then another, which meets the same fate. Here lies the nub of the idyll. Let us climb inside the canon’s head.

  Ouf! Here we are. Not that easy, was it, dear reader? So don’t go believing those people who troop up to the top of Corcovado and claim that from that great height man seems utterly insignificant. A false and hasty conclusion; as false as Judas and other such diamonds. Do not believe it, beloved reader. No Corcovados or Himalayas are worth much when set beside the head that measures them. Here we are. Notice that it is indeed the canon’s head. We have the choice of one or other cerebral hemisphere, but let’s go into this one, which is where nouns are born. Adjectives are born in the other one, on the left-hand side. This is one of my own discoveries, possibly the principal one, but it is a starting point, as we will see. Yes, sir, adjectives are born on one side and nouns on the other, and the entire destiny of words is based on sexual difference—

  “Sexual difference?”

  Yes, ma’am. Words have a gender. Indeed, I am currently in the process of finishing my great psycho-lexico-logical dissertation, in which I expound and demonstrate this discovery. Words are of different sexes . . .

  “But do they then love each other?”

  They do indeed. And they get married. Their marriage is what we call style. You must confess, ma’am, that you have understood nothing.

  “I confess I haven’t.”

  Well, then, join me inside the canon’s head. Just now there is some whispering going on over there. Do you know who is whispering? It is the noun from just a few minutes ago, the one the canon wrote down on the piece of paper just before his pen hesitated. The noun is summoning a certain adjective, which fails to appear: “Come from Lebanon, come . . .” That is how it speaks, for it is inside the head of a priest; if it were in a layman’s head, the language would be Romeo’s: “Juliet is the sun . . . Arise, fair sun.” But in an ecclesiastical brain, the language is that of Scripture. At the end of the day, though, what do such formulations matter? Lovers in Verona or in Judah all speak the same language, just as the thaler or the dollar, the florin or the pound, are all the same money.

  So let us carry on through these circumvolutions of the ecclesiastical brain, on the trail of the noun seeking an adjective. Sílvio calls to Sílvia. Listen: in the distance it sounds like someone else is whispering; lo, it is Sílvia calling to Sílvio.

  Now they can hear each other and they begin to seek each other out. What a difficult and intricate path this is, in a brain so chock-full of things old and new! There is such a hubbub of ideas in here that it almost drowns out their voices; let us not lose sight of ardent Sílvio over there, going up and down, slipping and jumping; when he stumbles, he grabs hold of some Latin roots over there, he leans against a psalm, yonder he climbs aboard a pentameter, and on he goes, carried along by an irresistible inner force.

  From time to time, a lady—another adjective—appears to him and offers him her graces ancient or modern; but, alas, she is not the right one, not the one and only, the one destined ab eterno for this union. And so Sílvio carries on, looking for that special one. Pass by, ye eyes of every hue, ye shapes of every caste, ye hairstyles fit for Day or Night; die without an echo, sweet ballads yearningly played upon the eternal violin; Sílvio is not asking for any old love, casual or anonymous; he is asking for one specific love, named and predestined.

  Don’t be frightened, reader; it’s nothing to worry about, it’s just the canon standing up, going over to the window, and taking a break from all his labors. While he’s there he forgets about the sermon and about everything else. The parrot on its perch beside the window repeats its usual words to him and, out in the courtyard, the peacock puffs himself up in the morning sun. The sun, for its part, recognizing the canon, sends him one of its faithful rays as a greeting. The ray arrives and stops in front of the window: “Illustrious canon, I bring you the compliments of the sun, my lord and father.” Thus all of nature seems to applaud the return of that galley-slave of the mind. He himself rejoices, gazes up at the pure air and feasts his eyes on greenery and freshness, all to the sound of a little bird and a piano. Then he speaks to the parrot, calls to the gardener, blows his nose, rubs his hands, and leans forward. He has forgotten all about Sílvio and Sílvia.

  But Sílvio and Sílvia have not forgotten each other. While the canon concerns himself with other things, they continue to search for each other, without him suspecting a thing. Now, however, the path is dark. We pass from the conscious to the unconscious, where the confused elaboration of ideas takes place, where reminiscences sleep or doze. Here swarms formless life, the germs and the detritus, the rudiments and the sediments; it is the immense attic of the mind. Here they slip and slide, searching for each other, calling and whispering. Give me your hand, madam reader; you, too, sir, hold tight, and let us slip and slide with them.

  Vast and alien, terra incognita. Sílvio and Sílvia rush onward past embryos and ruins. Groups of ideas, deducing themselves in the manner of syllogisms, lose themselves in the tumult of memories of childhood and the seminary. Other ideas, pregnant with more ideas, drag themselves still more heavily along, assisted by other, virgin ideas. Things and men merge; Plato brings the spectacles of a scribe from the ecclesiastical court; mandarins of all classes distribute Etruscan and Chilean coins, English books, and pale roses; so pale that they do not seem the same as the ones the canon’s mother planted when he was a child. Pious memories and family memories cross paths and commingle. Here are the distant voices of his first mass; here are the country rhymes he heard the black women sing at home; the tattered remnants of faded sensations, a fear here, a pleasure there, over there a distaste for
things that arrived singly, but now lie in an obscure, impalpable heap.

  “Come from Lebanon, my bride . . .”

  “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem . . .”

  They could hear each other growing ever closer. Here they reach the deep strata of theology, philosophy, liturgy, geography, and history, of ancient lessons and modern notions, all mixed together, dogma and syntax. Here the secret, pantheistic hand of Spinoza; there the scratch mark left by the Angelic Doctor’s fingernail; but none of this is Sílvio or Sílvia. They plow on, carried along by an inner force, a secret affinity, through all the obstacles and over all the abysses. But sorrows will also come. Here are dark sorrows that did not linger in the canon’s heart, like moral stains, surrounded by the yellow or purple tints of universal pain, the pain of others, if such pain has a color. They slice through all of this with the speed of love and desire.

  Do you sway and stumble, gentle reader? Fear not, the world is not collapsing; it is the canon sitting down again. Having cleared his head, he returns to his desk and rereads what he wrote; now he takes up his pen, dips it in the ink, and lowers it to the paper, to see which adjective he will attach to the noun.

  Now is precisely the moment when the two lovesick lovers will draw closest. Their voices rise, as does their enthusiasm, the entire Song of Songs passes their lips, tinged with fever. Joyous phrases, sacristy anecdotes, caricatures, witticisms, nonsense, mere foolishness, nothing holds their attention, or even makes them smile. On and on they go, while the space between them narrows. Stay where you are, blurred outlines of dunderheads who made the canon laugh and whom he has long since forgotten; stay, vanished wrinkles, old riddles, the rules of card games, and you, too, the germs of new ideas, outlines of conceits, the dust of what must once have been a pyramid; stay, jostle, hope, and then despair, for to them you are nothing. They have eyes only for each other.