The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  ROMEO: You mean, that splendid star . . .

  FRIAR LAWRENCE: Exactly, my child, and that is why the altar is better than the sky. On the altar, the blessed candle burns quickly and dies before our eyes.

  JULIET: What a lot of hot air!

  FRIAR LAWRENCE: No, no, it isn’t!

  JULIET: Or a lunatic’s horrible dream. An old lunatic, you said a little while ago, and that is what you are. An empty, nasty dream, like your winds, and your Xerxes, and your tears, and your sun, and that whole parade of imaginary figures.

  FRIAR LAWRENCE: My child . . .

  JULIET: Father, you clearly do not know that there is at least one immortal thing, which is my love, and another, too, which is the incomparable Romeo. Take a good look at him, and tell me if you see in him one of Xerxes’s soldiers. No, you don’t. Long live my beloved, who was not at the Hellespont, who paid no heed to the ravings of those night winds, unlike you, a friar, who is both friend and enemy. Be but our friend and marry us. Marry us wherever you like, here or there, before the candles or beneath the stars, be they ironic or compassionate, but marry us, marry us, marry us . . .

  OLD LETTERS

  BROTERO IS A DEPUTY. It is two o’clock in the morning, and he has just arrived home in a somber, agitated mood, speaking sharply to the houseboy, who keeps asking if he wants this or that, until, finally, he orders the boy to stop pestering him. Once alone, he takes off his jacket, slips on his dressing gown, and, cigar in mouth, lies down on the couch in his study, where he gazes up at the ceiling, muttering and trembling, unable to think clearly. After a while, he sits up, gets to his feet, and walks over to one of the windows, where he paces back and forth, before stopping in the middle of the room and stamping his foot; at last, he decides he will try to sleep, and goes into his bedroom; he undresses and climbs into bed, where he lies tossing and turning; unable to sleep, he again gets dressed and returns to his study. No sooner has he sat down on the couch than the clock strikes three. A profound silence follows, then, since a fundamental principle of clock-making is that clocks never agree, all the other clocks in the vicinity begin to chime at irregular intervals: one, two, three. When the mind is troubled, the most insignificant thing seems to contain a hidden intention, a humiliating message from fate. And Brotero began to feel precisely as if those three short chimes, cutting through the night silence, were like the voices of time itself, calling to him: Go to sleep. Then they stopped, and he felt free to ponder and reach a decision, finally springing to his feet, crying:

  “There’s no alternative, that’s what I must do.”

  Having said this, he went over to his desk, picked up his pen and a sheet of paper, and wrote this letter to the president of the Council of Ministers:

  Dear Sir,

  Everything I am about to say is sure to seem strange to you, but, however strange it may seem both to you and to me, extraordinary situations sometimes call for extraordinary measures. I do not wish to vent my feelings on street corners, on Rua do Ouvidor, or in the corridors of the Chamber. Nor do I wish to address the Chamber tomorrow or at some later date, when you present your government’s program; that would be the dignified thing to do, but it would also imply complicity with an order of things I entirely repudiate. I have only one alternative: to resign from my position as deputy and return to private life.

  I do not know, even so, if you would describe me as resentful. If you did, I think you would be right. However, I must draw your attention to the fact that there are two kinds of resentment, and mine is of the very finest quality.

  Do not think I am withdrawing because of certain influential appointments, nor that I felt wounded by A.’s intriguing, or by all of B.’s connivings to get C. a post in the cabinet. Mere trivia. What bothers me is loyalty, not political but personal loyalty; what bothers me, sir, is you. You were the one who obliged me to break with the former administration earlier than had been my intention, and possibly earlier than suited the party. You, sir, were the one who, once, standing by a window in Z.’s house, told me that my diplomatic training made me a natural candidate for the post of Foreign Minister. You will recall my answer: that such promotions mattered little to me as long as I could serve my country. You responded: “That’s all very well, but the government wants only the top talents.”

  In the Chamber, as I continued to rise up the ladder and to be showered with distinctions, it was said, indeed, assumed, that I would be appointed a minister at the earliest opportunity; and when you summoned me yesterday to organize the new cabinet, that belief remained. Various lists were drawn up, and my name appeared on all of them. Well, everyone knew how kind you had been to me, had seen various memoranda in which you praised me to the skies, had heard your oft-repeated invitations, etc. And I confess that I shared that widely held view.

  However, the widely held view was mistaken, as was I. I have been excluded from the cabinet, and since I consider that exclusion to be an irreparable stain on my reputation, I have decided to bequeath the post of deputy to someone more capable and, more importantly, more docile. I am sure you will have no problem finding such a person among your numerous admirers.

  With the greatest esteem and respect,

  Your Excellency’s former friend,

  Brotero

  Real politicians will say that the only believable thing about this letter is the resentment it contains, while the decision taken by the writer is completely unbelievable. However, these politicians are, I feel, unaware of two things. They have not read Boileau’s words, warning us that, in matters of art, the truth may not seem probable, and, as defined by one of the fathers of our language, politics is the art of all the arts; they also do not know that Brotero’s soul had received another blow. As if his exclusion from the cabinet were not enough to explain his resignation, a further loss had given him a firm nudge in the same direction. You already know about the political crisis; you know that the Emperor charged Counselor *** with forming a new cabinet, and that, thanks to the machinations of B., he managed to slip in C., who ended up with the post of foreign minister. The secret aim of these machinations was to provide a place in the public gallery for Widow Pedroso. Only days before, this lady—as lovely as she was rich—had chosen the new minister as her husband. This would not have been so very bad if Brotero had not coveted both ministry and widow, and coveting them, courting them, and losing them without being left with even one to console him for the loss of the other, well, is that not enough to explain our friend’s angry response?

  Brotero reread his letter, folded it up, put it in an envelope, and addressed it; then he tossed it to one side, intending to send it off the next day. The die was cast. Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, only in the opposite direction. Rome could keep her new consuls and rich, fickle patrician ladies! He was returning to the land of the obscure and forgotten. He did not want to waste good steel in empty, futile, demeaning shows of force. He leaned back in his chair and covered his face with one hand. When he stood up, his eyes were red, and the reason he stood up was that he heard the house clock chime four, followed by a repeat of that cruel, infuriating, monotonous procession of other clocks. One, two, three, four . . .

  He did not feel at all sleepy; he did not even return to bed. He began his pacing again, pacing, planning, thinking. As he drifted from memory to memory, he revisited past illusions, and, comparing then and now, he felt as if he had been robbed. A voluptuary even in matters of pain, he scrutinized those lost illusions, the way an old lady scrutinizes photographs from her youth. He remembered a friend saying that, even in the most difficult of times, one must always look to the future. But what future? He could see none at all. He went over to his desk, where he kept all his letters from friends, lovers, and political allies. And since he would not now be able to sleep, he decided to reread those old letters. After all, people often reread old books.

  He opened the drawer, took out a few bundles, and untied them. Many of the letters had grown yellow with age. Not all the signatories
were dead, but, even so, the letters did have a whiff of the cemetery about them, which rather implies that, in a certain sense, the senders were all dead and buried. And he began to reread the letters, one by one, those that were ten pages long as well as the briefest of notes, plunging into that dead sea of faded memories, matters private and public, a play, a ball, a loan, an intrigue, a new book, a speech, a confession of love. One of the letters signed by Vasconcelos made him shudder:

  L. [the letter said] arrived in São Paulo the day before yesterday. I had the devil’s own job getting her to give me your letters, but I succeeded, and, in a week’s time, you’ll have them back again. I’ll bring them myself. As for what you say in the letter you wrote from H. . . . , I hope you’ve abandoned that grim idea; quite absurd. We’ll talk when we meet.

  That brief passage brought with it a swarm of memories. He decided to read all of Vasconcelos’s letters. He and Vasconcelos had been friends in their student days, and Vasconcelos was now governor of the state of Piauí. In another letter, written long before that first one, he wrote:

  So L. has really got her claws into you. And why not? She’s a nice, quiet girl. And very pretty, too, you lucky so-and-so! As for Chico Sousa, I don’t think you need worry; you’re not friends, after all, just acquaintances. Besides, there’s no adultery involved. After all, he who builds a house on another man’s land . . .

  Thirteen days later:

  All right, I withdraw what I said about another man’s land. I will say, rather, on land that by divine, human, and diabolical right belongs to my friend Brotero. Satisfied?

  Another letter, two weeks later:

  I give you my word of honor that I intended no disrespect; I was joking, not realizing that you were that serious about her. Let’s forget I said it. It’s easy enough to take back one’s words, far harder to lose a friend like you . . .

  Another four or five letters referred to further amorous effusions on his part. In the interval, Chico Sousa found out about the affair and left L., and our friend reported this to Vasconcelos, declaring how happy he was to have her all to himself. Vasconcelos congratulated him, but added a word of warning:

  I think you’re being too demanding, too persnickety. Having lost a man to whom she owed a great deal and who gave her a certain status in society, it’s only natural that she should be somewhat upset by that loss. Her missing him, you say, is tantamount to infidelity, and that really is too much. All it proves is that she’s grateful for past kindnesses. As for you ordering her to get rid of anything and everything that he ever bought her, from a chair to a comb, I don’t quite understand. You say you made this demand out of a sense of dignity, and I can believe that, but isn’t it also a form of retrospective jealousy? I think so. If missing someone is a form of infidelity, then a fan given as a gift is a kiss, and you want nothing of that sort in the house. Well, that’s certainly one way of looking at things . . .

  Brotero continued to read about the affair, a whole chapter of his life, not very long, it’s true, but still warm and vivid. The letters covered a period of ten months, and the tantrums, arguments, and threats to leave her began in the sixth month. He was jealous, and she said that jealousy meant he didn’t trust her; she even went so far as to repeat that commonplace, enigmatic saying: Zealous, yes, but never jealous. And she would simply shrug whenever her lover proved suspicious or interrogated her. Then he would go too far, provoking angry scenes, reproaches, threats, and, finally, tears. Brotero would occasionally storm out of the house, swearing that he would never come back, only to return the following day, meek and contrite. Vasconcelos scolded him from a distance, and, on the subject of those comings and goings, he said once:

  A bad policy, Brotero. Either read the book to the end or put it down once and for all; opening and closing it over and over is a dangerous tactic, because then you always have to reread the previous chapter to pick up the thread again, and if you do that, you’ll never finish.

  Brotero agreed and promised to mend his ways; besides, he and L. were getting along famously now, like two angels in heaven.

  Then the angels fell out again. It seems that angel L. grew weary of this perpetual antiphony, and, hearing Daphnis and Chloe singing down below, she flew off to see what those two innocent creatures were saying in such melodious tones. The new Daphnis was wearing a frock coat, had a medal pinned to his chest, and a touch of rouge on his cheeks. He was also a bank manager. The angel taught him, as Chloe had been taught, that the only cure for love was kissing; well, you can guess the rest.

  During this period, Vasconcelos’s letters were full of consoling words and philosophy. Brotero recalled what he had suffered, his reckless behavior, his mad outpourings, all on account of losing that woman, who had him in the palm of her hand. He tried everything to get her back, but in vain. Gripped by a sudden desire to read the letters he had written to her at the time, and which Vasconcelos had managed, later on, to retrieve, he went back to the drawer where he kept them along with the others. The bundle was tied with a black ribbon. Smiling at this detail, Brotero untied the ribbon and read the letters. He did not skip a single word or date or comma; he read everything, justifications, curses, pleadings, promises of love and peace, all written in a humiliatingly garbled style. Everything was there in those letters—the infinite, the abyss, eternity. One such eternity, scribbled on the back of a sheet of paper, was now illegible, but one could guess what it said. The sentence ran as follows: “Just one minute of your love, and I would be prepared to suffer for all . . .” A silverfish had eaten the next word, devouring eternity and leaving only the minute. It is impossible to know to what one should attribute this, whether to the voracity of the silverfish or to their philosophy. Probably the former, because, as everyone knows, silverfish do have voracious appetites.

  The last letter spoke of suicide. When Brotero read this banal word, he felt an indefinable shudder run through him, which one could perhaps put down to a sense of having narrowly escaped ridicule. If he had killed himself, he would not be suffering this present political and personal upset, but what would the idlers on Rua do Ouvidor have to say? It would all come out and more, and they would call him weak, foolish, libidinous, before the talk turned to something else, an opera, for example.

  One, two, three, four, five, the clocks began to say.

  Brotero gathered up the letters, putting them back in their envelopes one by one, tying them into neat bundles again, and returning them to the drawer. While he was doing this, and even for a few minutes afterward, he devoted himself to the interesting task of reviving those lost emotions. He had reconstructed the episode in his head, and now he wanted to reconstruct the feelings, too, with the aim of comparing cause and effect and trying to establish if the idea of suicide had been a natural product of that crisis. Logically, this would appear to be true, but Brotero was keen to judge not with his reason but with his emotions.

  Imagine a soldier whose nose has been shot off and who, once the battle is over, returns to the battlefield to look for that unfortunate appendage. Let us suppose he finds his nose among a heap of arms and legs; he picks it up and examines it to make sure it’s his. But is it a nose or merely the corpse of a nose? If the owner placed the finest Arabian perfumes before it, would the nose be able to smell them? No. That ex-nose will never again bring him any smells, either good or bad; he could take the nose home with him and preserve or embalm it; nothing will change. He will never again be able to fully grasp the act of blowing his nose, even though he can see and understand that same action in others; he will never be able to recall the touch of handkerchief on nose. He will know it rationally, but not sensorially.

  “Never more?” thought Brotero. “I will never again be able to . . .”

  Incapable of reviving that lost sensation, he wondered if it would be the same with his current feelings of pique, if this personal and political crisis would, one day, seem as footling as old diary entries in which he described the appointment of the new cabinet and
the widow’s marriage. Brotero decided that it would indeed seem just as footling. The sky was growing light. He got to his feet, picked up the letter he had written to the president of the Council of Ministers, and held it to the candle flame, only to draw back just in time.

  “No,” he said to himself, “let’s add it to those other old scraps of paper. One day, it, too, will be an ex-nose.”

  Author’s Preface

  A house often contains its own relics, souvenirs of other times, of past sadness, lost happiness. Imagine that the owner of said house should, for your and my amusement, decide to expose those relics to the light of day. Not all of them will be interesting, a few may prove frankly dull, but if the owner chooses carefully, he can select those few that deserve an airing.

  Call my life a house and give the name of “relic” to these hitherto unpublished, unprinted tales—ideas, stories, histories, dialogues—and you will have an explanation for both book and title. They will not perhaps enjoy the same imagined good fortune of others I did not choose, and not all of them will merit being brought out into the light. That is for you to judge, dear reader, and to forgive me if I have chosen badly.