A delight, Quincas Borba. Never in my childhood, never in my whole life did I find a funnier, more inventive, more mischievous boy. He was a delight not only in school but all over the city. His mother, a widow of certain means, worshiped her son and would bring him to school pampered, well dressed, all decked out, with a striking houseboy following, a houseboy who would let us play hooky, go hunt for birds’ nests or lizards on Livramento and Conceição hills, or simply roam the streets on the loose like two idle loafers. And as emperor! It was a pleasure to see Quincas Borba play the emperor during the festival of the Holy Spirit. In our children’s games he would always choose the role of king, minister, general, someone supreme, whoever he might be. The rascal had poise and gravity, a certain magnificence in his stance, in his walk. Who would have said that… Let’s hold back our pen, let’s not get ahead of events. Let’s take a leap to 1822, the date of our political independence and of my first personal captivity.
XIV
The First Kiss
I was seventeen. My upper lip was beginning to sprout as I strove to grow a mustache. My eyes, lively and resolute, were my really masculine feature. Since I showed a certain haughtiness it was hard to tell whether I was a child with the arrogance of a man or a man with the look of a boy. In short, I was a handsome young fellow, handsome and bold, who was entering life in boots and spurs, a whip in his hand and blood in his veins, mounted on a nervous, robust, swift steed, like the steeds in ancient ballads, for whom romanticism went looking in medieval castles, only to run into him on the streets of our century. The worst is that the romantics wore the fellow out so much that it became necessary to lay him aside, where realism came to find him, eaten by leprosy and worms, and, out of compassion, they bore him off for their books.
Yes, I was that handsome, graceful, well-to-do young fellow, and it’s easy to imagine how more than one lady lowered her pensive brow before me or lifted her covetous eyes up to me. Of them all, however, the one who captivated me immediately was a … a … I don’t know if I should say it. This book is chaste, at least in its intention. In its intention it is ever so chaste. But out with it, either you say everything or nothing. The one who captivated me was a Spanish woman, Marcela, “beautiful Marcela,” as the boys of those times called her. And the boys were right. She was the daughter of a gardener from Asturias. She told me so herself during a day of sincerity, because the accepted version was that she’d been born to a lawyer from Madrid, a victim of the French invasion, wounded, jailed, and shot when she was only twelve years old. Cosas de España. Whatever her father was, however, lawyer or gardener, the truth is that Marcela didn’t have any rustic innocence and hardly understood the morality of the law. She was a good girl, cheerful, without scruples, a little hampered by the austerity of the times, which wouldn’t allow her to haul her flightiness and her gossip games through the streets, fond of luxury, impatient, a friend of money and young men. That year she was madly in love with a certain Xavier, a wealthy and tubercular fellow—a pearl.
I saw her for the first: time on the Rossio Grande, the night of fireworks celebrating the declaration of independence, a springtime festival, the dawn of the public soul. We were a couple of youths, the people and I, We were coming out of childhood with all the ecstasy of youth. I saw her get out of a sedan chair, graceful and eye-catching, a slim, swaying body, elegant—something I’d never found in chaste women, “Follow me,” she said to her page. And I followed her, as much a page as the other, as if the order had been given to me. I let myself go, in love, vibrant, full of the first inklings of a dawn. Along the way they called out to her, “Beautiful Marcela!” I remembered that I’d heard that name from my Uncle João and I stood there, I must confess, I stood there stupefied.
Three days later my uncle asked in secret if I wanted to have dinner with some “girls” in Cajueiros. We went. It was Marcela’s house. Xavier, along with all his tubercles, presided over the nocturnal banquet at which I ate little or nothing because I only had eyes for the lady of the house. The Spanish woman was so elegant! There were more than half a dozen women—all in the amorous profession—and pretty, lively, but the Spaniard … The enthusiasm, a few swallows of wine, an imperious temperament, hotheaded—all of that led me to do a singular thing. On leaving, at the street door, I told my uncle to ‘wait a moment and I went back up the steps.
“Did you forget something?” Marcela asked, standing on the landing.
“My handkerchief.”
She went to open the way back to the parlor for me. I grasped her hands, pulled her toward me, and gave her a kiss. I don’t know whether she said anything, cried out, or called anyone. I don’t know anything. I do know that I went back down the steps as swift as a typhoon and as unsteady as a drunkard.
XV
Marcela
It took me thirty days to get from the Rossio Grande to Marcela’s heart, no longer riding the courser of blind desire but the ass of patience, crafty and stubborn at the same time, for there are really two ways of enticing a woman’s will: the violent way like Europa’s bull and the insinuative way like Leda’s swan or Danaë’s shower of gold—three inventions of Father Zeus, which, being out of fashion, have been replaced by the horse and the ass. I won’t mention the plots I wove or the bribes or the alternation of confidence and fear or the wasted waiting or any other of those preliminary things. I can tell you that the ass was the equal of the courser—an ass like Sancho’s, a philosopher, really, who bore me to her house at the end of the period mentioned above. I dismounted, patted him on the haunch, and sent him off to forage.
Oh, first agitation of my youth, how sweet you were to me! That was what the effect of the first sunlight must have been like in biblical creation. Just imagine the effect of the first sun beating down on the face of a world in bloom. Because it was the same thing, dear reader, and if you have ever counted eighteen years, you must certainly remember that it was exactly like that.
Our passion, or union, or whatever name it went by, because I don’t hold much with names, had two phases: the consular phase and the imperial phase. During the first, which was short, Xavier and I ruled without his ever thinking he was sharing the government of Rome with me. But when credulity could no longer resist evidence, Xavier lowered his standards and I gathered all power into my hands. It was the Caesarean phase. It was my universe, but, alas, it wasn’t free. I had to gather money together, multiply it, invent it. First I exploited my father’s largesse. He would give me anything I asked for without scolding, without delay, without coldness. He told everybody that I was young and that he’d been young once himself. But the abuse reached such extremes that he put restrictions on his liberality, then more, then still more. Then I went to my mother and induced her to turn something my way, which she did in secret. It wasn’t much. Then I laid hands on a final recourse: I got to sacking my father’s legacy, signing notes that I would redeem one day at usurious rates.
“Really,” Marcela would tell me when I brought her something in silk, some piece of jewelry, “really, you’re trying to start a fight with me … Because this is something that… such an expensive gift…”
And if it was a jewel, she said that as she examined it between her fingers, looking for the best light, trying it on, laughing, and kissing me with an impetuous and sincere obstinacy, but protesting, though happiness was pouring out of her eyes and I felt happy seeing her like that. She liked our ancient gold doubloons very much and I would bring her as many as I could get hold of. Marcela would put them all together in a little iron box whose key was kept where no one ever knew. She hid it because she was afraid of the slaves. The house in which she lived in Cajueiros belonged to her. The carved jacaranda furniture was solid and good as were all the other items, mirrors, pitchers, a silver plate—a beautiful plate from India that an appeals judge had given her. You devilish plate, you always got on my nerves. I told its owner herself many times. I didn’t hide from her the annoyance that these and other spoils from her loves of oth
er times brought on in me. She would listen to me and laugh, with an innocent look—innocence and something else that I didn’t understand too well at the time, but now, recalling the case, I think it was a mixed laugh, as if it were coming from a creature born to a witch of Shakespeare’s by a seraph of Klopstock’s. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself. So it happened one day when I was unable to give her a certain necklace she’d seen at a jeweler’s she retorted that it was all a game, that our love didn’t need such a vulgar stimulant.
“I’ll never forgive you if you get that awful idea of me,” she concluded, threatening me with her finger.
And then, quick like a bird, she opened her hands, grasped my face in them, pulled me to her, and put on a funny expression, the mummery of a child. Afterward, reclining on the settee, she continued talking about it with simplicity and frankness. She’d never wanted people to buy her affection. She’d sold the appearances of it many times, but the reality she saved for the few. Duarte, for example, Second Lieutenant Duarte, whom she’d really loved two years before. Only after a struggle had he been able to give her something of value, as had happened with me. She would only willingly accept keepsakes with a low price tag, like the gold cross he’d given her once as a present.
“This cross…”
She said that putting her hand into her bosom and taking out a delicate gold cross attached to a blue ribbon and tied around her neck.
“But that cross,” I observed, “didn’t you tell me it was your father who …”
Marcela shook her head with a look of pity.
“Couldn’t you tell that it was a lie, that I told you that in order not to upset you? Come here, chiquito, don’t be so mistrustful with me … I was in love with somebody else. What difference does it make? It’s all over. Someday, when we break up …”
“Don’t say that!” I roared.
“Everything comes to an end! Someday …”
She couldn’t go on. A sob was strangling her voice. She held out her hands, took mine, snuggled me against her breast, and whispered softly in my ear, “Never, never, my love!” I thanked her, teary-eyed. The next day I brought her the necklace I’d refused to get.
“For you to remember me with when we’ve broken up,” I said.
Marcela at first maintained an indignant silence. Then she made a grand gesture: she made as if to throw the necklace into the street. I held back her arm, kept begging her not to do such an awful thing to me, to keep the jewel. She smiled and kept it.
In the meantime she was rewarding me abundantly for my sacrifices. She would ferret out my most hidden thoughts. There was no desire of mine that she wouldn’t hasten to fulfill with all her heart, without any effort, by some kind of law of awareness of the needs of the heart. The desires were never reasonable, but pure whims, some childish wish to see her dress in a certain way, with such and such accessories, this dress and not that one, to go for a walk or something like that, and she would accede to everything, smiling and chattering.
“You’re a regular expert,” she would tell me.
And she would go put on the dress, the lace, the earrings with bewitching obedience.
XVI
An Immoral Reflection
An immoral reflection occurs to me, one which at the same time is a correction of style. I think I said in Chapter XIV that Marcela was dying with love for Xavier. She wasn’t dying, she was living. Living isn’t the same as dying. That is attested to by all the jewelers in this world, people held in great esteem for their grammar. My good jewelers, what would become of love were it not for your trinkets and your credit? A third or a fifth at least of the universal trade in hearts. This is the immoral reflection I was trying to make and which is really more obscure than immoral because what I’m trying to say isn’t easily understood. What I’m trying to say is that the most beautiful head in the world will be no less beautiful if ringed by a diadem of fine stones, neither less beautiful nor less loved. Marcela, for example, who was quite pretty, Marcela loved me …
XVII
Of the Trapeze and Other Things
…Marcela loved me for fifteen months and eleven contos, no more, no less. My father, as soon as he got wind of the eleven contos, was really taken by surprise. He thought the case was reaching beyond the bounds of a juvenile caprice.
“This time,” he said, “you’re going to Europe. You’re going to study at a university, probably Coimbra. I want you to be a serious man, not a loafer and a thief.” And since I showed an expression of surprise, “Thief, yes sir. A son who does this to me is nothing but…”
He took from his pocket my I.O.U.s that he had already redeemed and waved them in my face, “Do you see these, you rascal? Is this how a young man is supposed to protect his family name? Do you think my grandfathers and I earned our money in gambling houses or drifting about in the streets? You playboy! This time either you take account of yourself or you’ll be left with nothing.”
He was furious, but with a tempered and short fury. I listened to him in silence and didn’t oppose the trip in any way as I’d done at other times. I was pondering the idea of taking Marcela with me. I went to see her. I explained the crisis and made my proposal. Marcela listened to me with her eyes in the air, without responding immediately. As I insisted, she told me that she would stay, that she couldn’t go to Europe.
“Why not?”
“I can’t,” she said with a sorrowful look. “I can’t breathe that air while I think of my poor father, killed by Napoleon.”
“Which one, the gardener or the lawyer?”
Marcela furrowed her brow, hummed a sequidilha, then complained about the heat and sent for a glass of pineapple wine. A slave girl brought it on a silver tray, which was part of my eleven cantos. Marcela politely offered me the refreshment. My answer was to strike the glass and the tray. The liquid spilled into her lap and the black girl cried out. I roared at her to get out. When we were alone I poured out all the despair in my heart. I told her that she was a monster, that she’d never loved me, that she’d let me drop down to the bottom without even the excuse of sincerity. I called her all sorts of ugly names, making wild gestures. Marcela kept herself seated, tapping her teeth with her nails, cold as a piece of marble. I had an urge to strangle her, humiliate her at least, make her crawl at my feet. Perhaps I would have, but my actions took the opposite turn: It was I who threw myself at her feet, contrite and supplicant. I kissed them, I remembered those months of our happiness alone together, I repeated our pet names from past times to her, sitting on the floor with my head between her knees, squeezing her hands, gasping, delirious, I begged her, tearfully, not to abandon me … Marcela sat looking at me for a few seconds, both of us silent, until she pushed me away softly and with an annoyed air.
“Stop annoying me,” she said.
She got up, shook her dress, still wet, and went to her bedroom. “No,” I shouted. “You’re not going in there … I don’t want you to …” I went to reach out my hands to her. It was too late, she’d gone in and locked the door.
I ran out, crazy. I spent two fatal hours wandering through the most distant and deserted neighborhoods, where it would have been hard to find me. I went along gnawing on my despair with a kind of morbid gluttony. I brought back the days, the hours, the instants of delirium, and now I was gratified in believing that they were eternal, that all of this was a nightmare. Deceiving myself now, I tried to push them away like a useless burden. Then I resolved to embark immediately in order to cut my life into two halves, and I pleased myself with the idea that Marcela, learning of my departure, would be tormented by longing and remorse. Since she’d been madly in love with me, she would have to feel something, some kind of remembrance, like that of Lieutenant Duarte … At that point the fangs of jealousy buried themselves in my heart. All of nature roared that I had to take Marcela with me.
“By force …, by force …,” I kept saying, hitting the air with my fist. Finally I got an idea that would save things … Oh! trapeze
of my sins, trapeze of abstruse notions! The saving idea worked out on it like the one about the poultice (Chapter II). It was nothing less than bewitching her, bewitching her greatly, dazzling her, pulling her along. It reminded me to ask her by more concrete means than entreaty. I didn’t measure the consequences: I had recourse to one last loan. I went to the Rua dos Ouvires, bought the finest piece of jewelry in the city, three large diamonds inlaid on an ivory comb. I ran to Marcela’s house.
Marcela was lying in a hammock with a soft and weary expression, one leg hanging down, showing her little foot clad in a silk stocking, her hair loose and flowing, her look quiet and dreamy.
“Come with me,” I said. “I’ll get the money … we’ve got lots of money, you can have anything you want… Look, take it.”
And I showed her the comb with the diamonds. Marcela gave a slight start, raised up halfway, and, leaning on an elbow looked at the comb for a few short seconds. Then she withdrew her eyes, got control of herself. I thrust my hands into her hair, drew it together, quickly wove into braids, improvised a hairdo that wasn’t very neat, and topped it off with the comb and the diamonds. I drew back, went closer again, adjusted the braids, lowered the comb on one side, tried to find some kind of symmetry in that disorder, all with the careful touch and care of a mother.
“There,” I said.
“Lunatic!” was her first response.
The second was to pull me to her and reward my sacrifice with a kiss, the most ardent ever. Then she took off the comb, admired the material and the craftsmanship for a long time, looking at me every so often and nodding her head with a scolding look.
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas Page 6
