The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

by Machado De Assis

  That same day I took them to the Banco de Brasil. There I was received with many gracious references to the matter of the half doubloon, the news of which was already spreading among people of my acquaintance. I replied with annoyance that the matter wasn’t worth the great to-do. Then they praised my modesty—and since I got angry they answered that it was nothing more or less than something grand.

  LIII

  • • • • •

  Virgília was the one who no longer remembered the half doubloon. Her whole being was concentrated on me, on my eyes, on my life, on my thoughts—that was what she said and it was true.

  There are some plants that are born and grow quickly. Others are late and stunted. Our love was like the former. It burst forth with such drive and so much sap that in a short while it was the broadest, leafiest, and most luxuriant creation in the forest. I can’t tell you for certain the number of days that this growth took. I do remember that on a certain night the flower, or the kiss if you want to call it that, began to bud, a kiss that she gave me trembling—poor thing—trembling with fear, because it was by the gate in the yard. That single kiss united us—just as the moment was brief, so was the love ardent, the prologue to a life of delights, terrors, remorse, pleasures that ended in pain, afflictions that opened up into joy—a patient and systematic hypocrisy, the only check rein on an unchecked passion—a life of agitation, rage, despair, and jealousy, which, one hour would pay for fully and more than enough, but another hour would come and swallow it all up along with everything else, leaving on the surface agitation and all the remains, and the remains of the remains, which are aversion and satiety. Such was the book with that prologue.

  LIV

  The Grandfather Clock

  I left there savoring the kiss. I couldn’t sleep. I lay down on my bed, of course, but it meant nothing. I heard the hours of night. Usually when I couldn’t sleep, the chiming of the grandfather clock would upset me very much. The mournful tick-tock, slow and dry, seemed to say with every note that I was having one instant less of life. Then I would picture an old devil sitting between two sacks, that of life and that of death, taking out the coins of life and giving them to death, counting them like this:

  “Another less…”

  “Another less…”

  “Another less…”

  “Another less…”

  The strangest thing is that if the clock stopped I would wind it up so it wouldn’t stop ticking and I could count all of my lost instants. There are inventions that are transformed or come to an end; institutions themselves die. A clock is definitive and perpetual. The last man, as he says farewell to the cold and used-up sun, will have a watch in his pocket in order to know the exact time of his death.

  On that night I didn’t suffer that sad feeling of tedium but a different and delightful one. Fantasies swarmed inside of me, coming one on top of another like the devout women who crush forward in order to get a look at the singing angel in processions. I wasn’t hearing the instants lost but the minutes gained. From a certain time forward I didn’t hear anything at all because my thought, wily and frisky, leaped out the window and flapped its wings toward Virgília’s house. There it found Virgília’s thought on a window sill. They greeted each other, remained chatting. We were tossing in bed, cold perhaps, in need of rest, and those two idlers there were repeating the old dialogue of Adam and Eve.

  LV

  The Old Dialogue of Adam and Eve

  Brás Cubas?

  Virgília

  Brás Cubas

  Virgília

  Brás Cubas

  Virgília

  Brás Cubas

  Virgília

  Brás Cubas

  Virgília

  Brás Cubas

  Virgília

  LVI

  The Opportune Moment

  But, dash it all! Who can explain the reason for this difference to me? At one time we kept company, discussed marriage, broke up, and separated, coldly, painlessly, because there’d been no passion. I only carried away a little spite and nothing else. The years pass, I see her again, we take three or four turns in a waltz, and here we are, madly in love with each other. Virgília’s beauty, it’s true, had reached a high degree of perfection, but we were substantially the same and I, for my part, hadn’t become more handsome or more dashing. Who will explain the reason for that difference to me?

  The reason couldn’t have been anything else but the opportune moment, because if on that first occasion neither of us was too green for love, both of us were for our love, a fundamental distinction. No love is possible without the opportunity of the subjects. I found that explanation myself two years after the kiss one day when Virgília was complaining to me about a fop who kept flirting with her tenaciously.

  “What a pest! How importune!” she said, putting on an angry face. I shuddered, stared at her, saw that the indignation was sincere. Then, it occurred to me that maybe I’d brought on that same frown at some time and I immediately understood the degree of my evolution. I’d gone from importune to opportune.

  LVII

  Fate

  Yes, sir, we were in love. Now that all the social laws forbade it, now was when we truly loved each other. We found ourselves yoked together like the two souls the poet encountered in Purgatory:

  Di pari, come buoi, che vanno a giogo

  and I’m wrong comparing us to oxen because we were a different species of animal, less sluggish, more roguish and lascivious. There we were, going along without knowing where to, on what secret roads, a problem that frightened me for a few weeks but whose outcome I turned over to fate. Poor Fate! Where can you be walking now, great supervisor of human affairs? Maybe you’re growing a new skin, a different face, different ways, a different name, and it’s even possible that… I forget where I was… Ah, yes, on secret roads. I said to myself that now it would be whatever God willed. It was our fate to fall in love. If it hadn’t been, how could we explain the waltz and all the rest? Virgília was thinking the same thing. One day, after confessing to me that she had moments of remorse, since I’d told her that if she felt remorse it was because she didn’t love me, Virgília clasped me in her magnificent arms, murmuring:

  “I love you. It’s the will of heaven.”

  And that wasn’t just random words. Virgília was somewhat religious. She didn’t go to mass on Sundays, it’s true, and I even think she only went to church on feast days and when there was a vacant pulpit somewhere. But she prayed every night, fervently, or sleepily at least. She was afraid of thunder. On those occasions she’d cover her ears and mumble all the prayers in the catechism. In her bedroom she had a small carved jacaranda prie-dieu, three feet high and with images inside. But she never mentioned it to her friends. On the contrary, she would tag as fanatics those who were simply religious. For some time I suspected that there was a certain annoyance with belief in her and that her religion was a kind of flannel undergarment, hidden and cozy, but I was obviously mistaken.

  LVIII

  Confidence

  Lobo Neves gave me great fear at first. An illusion! He never tired of telling me how he loved his wife. He thought that Virgília was perfection itself, a combination of solid and refined qualities, loving, elegant, austere, a model woman. And the confidence didn’t stop there. From the crack that it once was it grew to be a wide-open door. One day he confessed to me that he had a sad worm gnawing at his existence. He needed public glory. I bolstered his spirits, told him many nice things that he listened to with that religious unction of a desire that doesn’t want to finish dying. Then I realized that his ambition was fatigued from beating its wings and being unable to take flight. Days later he told me about all his annoyance and weariness, the bitter pills he’d swallowed, spites, intrigues, perfidy, interests, vanity. There was obviously a crisis of melancholy there. I tried to fight against it.

  “I know what I’m talking about,” he replied sadly. “You can’t imagine what I’ve been through. I went into poli
tics because of a liking for it, the family, ambition, and a little bit because of vanity: You can see that I have in me all the motives that lead a man into public life. All I was missing was interest in a different way. I’d seen the theatre from the audience’s side and, I swear, it was beautiful! Superb sets, life, movement and grace in the performance. I signed on. They gave me a role that… but why am I boring you with all this? Let me keep my afflictions to myself. Believe me, I’ve spent hours, days … There’s no constancy of feelings, there’s no gratitude, there’s no nothing … nothing … nothing.”

  He fell silent, deeply downcast, his eyes in the air, not seeming to hear anything unless it was the echo of his own thoughts. After a few moments he stood up and held out his hand to me. “You must be laughing at me,” he said, “but please forgive my letting things out. I had some business that was eating at my soul.” And he laughed in a somber, sad way, then he asked me not to mention to anyone what had passed between us. I replied that absolutely nothing had happened. Two deputies and a district leader came in. Lobo Neves greeted them effusively, at first a little artificially, but then quite naturally. After half an hour no one would have said he wasn’t the most fortunate of men. He chatted, joked, laughed, and everybody laughed.

  LIX

  An Encounter

  Politics must be an invigorating wine, I said to myself as I left Lobo Neves’ house. And I kept walking on and on until, on the Rua dos Barbonos, I saw a carriage and in it one of the ministers, an old schoolmate of mine. We waved to each other affectionately, the carriage went on its way, and I kept walking on … on … on …

  “Why can’t I be a minister?”

  That idea, resplendent and grand—extravagantly clad, as Father Bernardes would have said—that idea started a swirl of somersaults and I let myself stand there watching it, finding it amusing. I wasn’t thinking about Lobo Neves’ sadness anymore, I felt the attraction of the abyss. I remembered that schoolmate, how we played around on the hills, our joys and our mischief, and I compared the boy with the man and asked myself why I couldn’t be like him. I was turning into the Passeio Público then and everything seemed to be telling me the same thing—Why can’t you be a minister, Cubas?—Cubas, why can’t you be a minister of state? When I heard it a delightful feeling refreshed my whole organism. I went in, sat down on a bench, mulling that idea over. And how Virgília would enjoy it! A few moments later, coming toward me, I saw a face that didn’t seem unknown to me. I recognized it from somewhere or other.

  Imagine a man between thirty-eight and forty, tall, slim, and pale. His clothes, except for their style, looked as if they’d escaped from the Babylonian captivity. The hat was a contemporary of one of Gessler’s. Imagine now a frock coat broader than the needs of his frame—or, literally, that person’s bones. The fringe had disappeared some time ago, of the eight original buttons, three were left. The brown drill trousers had two strong knee patches, while the cuffs had been chewed by the heels of boots that bore no pity or polish. About his neck the ends of a tie of two faded colors floated, gripping a week-old collar. I think he was also wearing a dark silk vest, torn in places and unbuttoned.

  “I’ll bet you don’t know me, my good Dr. Cubas,” he said.

  “I can’t recall…”

  “I’m Borba, Quincas Borba.”

  I drew back in astonishment… If only I’d been given the solemn speech of a Bossuet or a Vieira to describe such desolation! It was Quincas Borba, the amusing boy of times gone by and my schoolmate, so intelligent and so well-off. Quincas Borba! No, impossible. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t come to believe that this filthy figure, this beard tinted with white, this aging tatterdemalion, all that ruination was Quincas Borba. But it was. His eyes had something left over from other times and his smile hadn’t lost a certain mocking air that was peculiar to him. In the meantime he withstood my astonishment. After a while I turned my eyes away. If the figure repelled me, the comparison grieved me.

  “I don’t have to tell you a thing, you can guess it all. A life of misery, tribulation, and struggle. Remember our parties where I played the part of the king? What a fiasco! I end up a beggar …”

  And, lifting his right hand and his shoulders with an air of indifference, he seemed resigned to the blows of fortune and, I don’t know, was even happy perhaps. Happy perhaps. Impassive certainly. There was no Christian resignation or philosophical acceptance in him. It seemed that misery had calloused his soul to the point of taking away the feeling of the mud. He dragged his rags along just as he’d formerly done with the royal purple, with a certain indolent grace.

  “Look me up,” I said. “I might be able to fix something up for you.”

  A magnificent smile opened his lips. “You’re not the first to promise me something and I don’t know if you’ll be the last not to do anything for me. So what’s the use? I’m not asking for anything, unless it’s money, money, yes, because I have to eat and eating-places don’t give credit, greengrocers either. A nothing, two vinténs worth of manioc cake, the damned greengrocers won’t even trust you for that… It’s hell, my … I was going to say friend … A hell! Devilish! Absolutely devilish! Look, I still haven’t had any breakfast today.”

  “No?”

  “No. I left home early. Do you know where I live? On the third landing of the São Francisco stairs, to the left of a person going up. You don’t have to knock on the door. A cool house, extremely cool. Well, I left early and I still haven’t eaten …”

  I took out my wallet, picked a five mil-réis note—the least clean one—and gave it to him. He took it with eyes that gleamed with greed. He held the note up in the air and flourished it with enthusiasm.

  “In hoc signo vinces!” he roared.

  And then he kissed it with a great show of tenderness and such noisy carrying on that it gave me a mixed feeling of nausea and pity. He was sharp and he understood me. He became serious and asked my forgiveness for his joy, saying that it was the joy of a poor man who hadn’t seen a five mil-réis note in many a year.

  “Well, it’s in your hands to see a lot more of them,” I said.

  “Yes?” he hastened to say, lunging toward me.

  “Working,” I concluded.

  He made a gesture of disdain. He fell silent for a few moments then told me positively that he didn’t want to work. I was disgusted with that abjection, which was so comical and so sad, and I made ready to leave.

  “Don’t leave until I teach you my philosophy of misery,” he said, taking a broad stance before me.

  LX

  The Embrace

  I presumed that the poor devil was crazy and I was going to leave when he grabbed me by the wrist and stared for a few seconds at the diamond I was wearing on my finger. I could feel the quivers of greed in his hand, an itch for possession.

  “Magnificent!” he said.

  Then he began to walk all around me, examining me closely.

  “You take good care of yourself,” he said. “Jewelry, fine, elegant clothes, and … Just compare those shoes with mine. What a difference! There’s no comparison! I tell you, you take good care of yourself. What about girls? How about them? Are you married?”

  “No …”

  “Me either.”

  “I live at…”

  “I don’t want to know where you live,” Quincas Borba put in. “If we see each other again, give me another five mil-réis note. But allow me not to look you up at home. It’s a kind of pride … Now, goodbye, I can see that you’re impatient.”

  “Goodbye!”

  “And thank you. Let me thank you a little more warmly.”

  And saying that he embraced me so swiftly that I couldn’t avoid it. We finally separated, I with long strides, my shirt wrinkled from the embrace, annoyed and sad. The pleasant side of me no longer dominated, the other one did. I would have preferred to see him bearing this misery with dignity. Yet, I couldn’t help comparing the man of today with the one of days gone by, growing sad as I faced the chasm th
at separates the hopes of one time from the reality of another …

  “So, goodbye! Let’s go have dinner,” I said to myself.

  I put my hand into my vest and I couldn’t find my watch. The final disillusionment. Borba had stolen it during the embrace.

  LXI

  A Project

  I dined in sadness. It wasn’t the loss of the watch that tormented me, it was the image of the perpetration of the theft and the remembrances of childhood, and once again the comparison, the conclusion … Starting with the soup course the yellow, morbid flower from Chapter XXV began to open up in me and then I ate hurriedly in order to run to Virgília’s. Virgília was the present. I wanted to take refuge in it so I could escape the burdens of the past, because the encounter with Quincas Borba had turned my eyes back to the past and I had really entered it, but it was a broken, abject, beggarly, and thievish past.

  I left the house, but it was early. If I went now I’d find them still at the table. I thought about Quincas Borba again and then I got the desire to go back to the Passeio Público and see if I could find him. The idea of regenerating him rose up in me like a driving need. I went, but I couldn’t find him now. I inquired of the guard, who told me that, indeed, “that fellow” came around there sometimes.