The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

by Machado De Assis

  CX

  31

  A week later Lobo Neves was named president of a province. I clung to the hope of a refusal, that the decree would again come out dated the I3th. The date was the 31st, however, and that simple transposition of ciphers eliminated any diabolical substance in them. How deep are the springs of life!

  CXI

  The Wall

  As it isn’t my custom to cover up or hide anything, on this page I shall tell about the wall. They were ready to embark. In the meantime at Dona Plácida’s house I caught sight of a small piece of paper on the table. It was a note from Virgília. She said she would expect me at night in the yard, without fail. And she ended: “The wall’s low on the alley side.”

  I made a gesture of displeasure. The letter seemed uncommonly audacious to me, poorly thought out, even ridiculous. It wasn’t just inviting scandal, it was inviting ridicule along with it. I pictured myself climbing over the wall, even though it was low on the alley side. And just as I was about to get over it I saw myself in the clutches of a policeman who took me to the station house. The wall is low! And what if it was low? Virgília didn’t know what she was doing, naturally. It was possible that she was already sorry. I looked at the piece of paper, wrinkled but inflexible. I had an itch to tear it up into thirty thousand pieces and throw them to the wind as the last remnants of my adventure. But I retreated in time. Self-respect, the vexation of the running away, the idea of fear … There was nothing to do but go.

  “Tell her I’m coming.”

  “Where?” Dona Plácida asked.

  “Where she said she expects me.”

  “She didn’t say anything to me.”

  “On this piece of paper.”

  Dona Plácida focused her eyes. “But I found that paper in your drawer this morning and I thought that …”

  I had a strange sensation. I reread the piece of paper, looked at it, looked at it again. It was, indeed, an old note of Virgília’s received during the beginning of our love affair, a certain meeting in the yard, which had, indeed, led to my leaping over the wall, a low and discreet wall. I put the paper away … I had a strange sensation.

  CXII

  Public Opinion

  But it was written that the day was to be one of dubious moves. A few hours later I ran into Lobo Neves on the Rua do Ouvidor. We talked about the presidency and politics. He took advantage of the first acquaintance who passed and left me after all manner of pleasant words. I remember that he was withdrawn, but it was a withdrawal he was struggling to hide. It seemed to me then (and may the critics forgive me if this judgment of mine is too bold), it seemed to me that he was afraid—not afraid of me, or of himself, or of the law, or of his conscience. He was afraid of public opinion. I imagined that that anonymous and invisible tribunal in which every member accuses and judges was the limit set for Lobo Neves’ will. Maybe he didn’t love his wife anymore and therefore it was possible that his heart was indifferent in its indulgence of her latest acts. I think (and again I beg the critics’ good will), I think he was probably prepared to break with his wife, as the reader has probably broken with many personal relationships, but public opinion, that opinion which would drag his life along all the streets, would open a minute investigation into the matter, would put together, one by one, all circumstances, antecedents, inductions, proofs, would talk about them in idle backyard conversations, that terrible public opinion, so curious about bedrooms, stood in the way of a family breakup. At the same time, it made vengeance, which would be an admission, impossible. He couldn’t appear resentful toward me without also seeking a conjugal breakup. Therefore he had to pretend the same ignorance as before and, by deduction, similar feelings.

  I think it was quite hard for him. In those days especially, I saw how hard it must have been for him. But time (and this is another point in which I hope for the indulgence of men who think!), time hardens sensibility and obliterates the memory of things. It was to be supposed that the years would dull the thorns, that a removal from events would smooth the sore spots, that a shadow of retrospective doubt would cover the nakedness of reality. In short, that public opinion would occupy itself a bit with other adventures. The son, as he grew up, would try to satisfy the father’s ambitions. He would be heir to all his affection. This and constant activity and public prestige and old age, then illness, decline, death, a dirge, an obituary, and the book of life was closed without a single blood-stained page.

  CXIII

  Glue

  The conclusion, if the previous chapter has one, is that public opinion is a good glue for domestic institutions. It’s not entirely impossible that I’ll develop that thought before finishing the book, but it’s also not impossible that I’ll leave it the way it is. One way or another, public opinion is a good glue, both in domestic order and in politics. Some bilious metaphysicians have arrived at the extreme of presenting it as the simple product of foolish or mediocre people. But it’s obvious that even when a conceit as extreme as that doesn’t bring out an answer by itself, it’s sufficient to consider the salutary effects of public opinion and conclude that it’s the superfine work, of the flower of mankind, to wit, the greatest number.

  CXIV

  End of a Dialogue

  “Yes, it’s tomorrow. Are you going to come on board?”

  “Are you mad? That’s impossible.”

  “Goodbye, then!”

  “Goodbye!”

  “Don’t forget Dona Plácida. Go see her from time to time. Poor thing! She came to say goodbye to us yesterday. She cried a lot, said I’d never see her again … She’s a good person, isn’t she?”

  “Of course.”

  “If we have to write, she’ll get the letters. Goodbye for now then, until …”

  “Two years maybe?”

  “Oh, no! He says it’s only until they hold elections.”

  “Is that so? So long, then. Watch out, they’re looking at us.”

  “Who?”

  “Over there on the sofa. We’d better break up.”

  “It’s awfully hard for me.”

  “But we have to. Goodbye, Virgília!”

  “See you later. Goodbye!”

  CXV

  Lunch

  I didn’t see her leave, but at the designated hour I felt something that wasn’t pain or pleasure, a mixed sort of thing, relief and longing all mixed in together in equal doses. The reader shouldn’t be irritated by this confession. I know quite well that in order to titillate the nerves of fantasy I should have suffered great despair, shed a few tears, and not eaten lunch. It would have been like a novel, but it wouldn’t have been biography. The naked truth is that I did eat lunch, as on every other day, succoring my heart with the memories of my adventure and my stomach with the delicacies of M. Prudhon …

  … Old people from my time, perhaps you remember that master chef at the Hotel Pharoux, a fellow who, according to what the owner of the place said, had served in the famous Véry and Véfour in Paris and later on in the palaces of the Count Molé and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. He was famous. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro along with the polka … The polka, M. Prudhon, the Tivoli, the foreigners’ ball, the Casino, there you have some of the best memories of those times, but above all, the master’s delicacies were delicious.

  They were, and on that morning it was as if the devil of a fellow had sensed our catastrophe. Never had ingenuity and art been so favorable to him. What a delight of spices! What a delicacy of meats! What refinement in the shapes! You ate with your mouth, with your eyes, and with your nose. I can’t remember the bill on that day. I know that it was expensive. Oh, the sorrow of it! I had to give magnificent burial to my love affair. It was going off there, out to sea, off into space and time, and I was staying behind at a corner table with my forty-some-odd years, so lazy and so hazy. It was left for me never to see them again, because she might come back and she did come back, but who asked for an out-pouring of morning from the evening sunset?

  CXVI


  The Philosophy of Old Pages

  The end of the last chapter left me so sad that I was capable of not writing this one, of taking a little rest, purging my spirit of the melancholy that encumbers it and then continuing on. But no, I don’t want to waste any time.

  Virgília’s departure left me with a sample of what it’s like to be widowed. During the first few days I stayed home, catching flies like Domitian, if Suetonius is telling the truth, but catching them in a particular way, with my eyes. I would catch them one by one, lying in the hammock in the rear of a large room with an open book in my hands. It was everything: nostalgia, ambitions, a bit of tedium, and a lot of aimless daydreaming. My uncle the canon died during that interval along with two cousins. I didn’t feel shocked. I took them to the cemetery as one takes money to the bank. What am I saying? As one takes letters to the post office. I sealed the letters, put them in the box, and left it to the postman to see that they were delivered into the right hands. It was also around that time that my niece Venância, Cotrim’s daughter, was born. Some were dying, others were being born. I continued with the flies.

  At other times I would get agitated. I would open drawers, shuffle through old letters from friends, relatives, sweethearts (even those from Marcela), and open all of them, read them one by one, and revive the past … Uninstructed reader, if you don’t keep the letters from your youth, you won’t get to know the philosophy of old pages someday, you won’t enjoy the pleasure of seeing yourself from a distance, in the shadows, with a three-cornered hat, seven-league boots, and a long Assyrian beard, dancing to the sound of Anachreonic pipes. Keep the letters of your youth!

  Or, if the three-cornered hat doesn’t suit you, I’ll use the expression of an old sailor, a friend of the Cotrims. I’ll say that if you keep the letters of your youth, you’ll find a chance to “sing a bit of nostalgia.” It seems that our sailors give that name to songs of the land sung on the high seas. As a poetic expression it’s something that can make you even sadder.

  CXVII

  Humanitism

  Two forces, however, along with a third, compelled me to return to my usual agitated life. Sabina and Quincas Borba. My sister was pushing the conjugal candidacy of Nhã-loló in a truly impetuous way. When I became aware, I practically had the girl in my arms. As for Quincas Borba, he finally laid out Humanitism for me. It was a philosophical system destined to be the ruination of all others.

  “Humanitas,” he said, “the principle of things, is nothing but man himself divided up into all men. Humanitas has three phases: the static, previous to all creation; the expansive, the beginning things; the dispersive, the appearance of man; and it will have one more, the contractive, the absorption of man and things. The expansion, starting the universe, suggested to Humanitas the desire to enjoy it, and from there the dispersion, which is nothing but the personified multiplication of the original substance.”

  Since that explanation didn’t seem sufficiently clear to me, Quincas Borba developed it in a profound way, pointing out the main lines of the system. He explained to me that on the one side Humanitism was related to Brahmanism, to wit, in the distribution of men throughout the different parts of the body of Humanitas, but what had only a narrow theological and political meaning in the Indian religion, in Humanitism was the great law of personal worth. Thus, descending from the chest or the kidneys of Humanitas, that is, being strong, wasn’t the same as descending from the hair or the tip of the nose. Therefore the necessity to cultivate and temper muscles. Hercules was only an anticipatory symbol of Humanitism. At that point Quincas Borba pondered whether or not paganism might have reached the truth if it hadn’t been debased by the amorous part of its myths. Nothing like that will occur with Humanitism. In this new church there will be no easy adventures, or falls, or sadness, or puerile joys. Love, for example, is a priestly function, reproduction a ritual. Since life is the greatest reward in the universe and there’s no beggar who doesn’t prefer misery to death (which is a delightful infusion of Humanitas), it follows that the transmission of life, far from being an occasion of lovemaking, is the supreme moment of the spiritual mass. From all of which there is truly only one misfortune: that of not being born.

  “Imagine, for example, that I had not been born,” Quincas Borba went on. “It’s positive that I wouldn’t be having the pleasure of chatting with you now, of eating this potato, of going to the theatre, or, to put it all into one word, living. Note that I’m not making a man a simple vehicle of Humanitas. He is vehicle, passenger, and coachman all at the same time. He is Humanitas itself in a reduced form. It follows from that that there is a need for him to worship himself. Do you want a proof of the superiority of my system? Think about envy. There is no moralist, Greek or Turkish, Christian or Muslim, who doesn’t thunder against the feeling of envy. Agreement is universal, from the fields of Idumea to the heights of Tijuca. So, then, let go of old prejudices, forget about shabby rhetoric, and study envy, that ever so subtle and so noble feeling. With every man a reduction of Humanitas, it’s clear that no man is fundamentally opposed to another man, whatever contrary appearances may be. Thus, for example, the headsman who executes the condemned man can excite the vain clamor of poets. But, substantially, it is Humanitas correcting in Humanitas an infraction of the law of Humanitas. I will say the same of an individual who disembowels another. It’s a manifestation of the force of Humanitas. There is nothing to prevent (and there are examples) his being disemboweled just the same. If you’ve understood well, you will easily understand that envy is nothing but an admiration that fights, and since fighting is the main function of humankind, all bellicose feelings are the ones that best serve its happiness. It follows, then, that envy is a virtue.”

  Why deny it? I was flabbergasted. The clarity of the exposition, the logic of the principles, the rigor of the deductions, all of that seemed great to the highest degree, and it became necessary for me to break off the conversation for a few minutes while I digested the new philosophy. Quincas Borba couldn’t conceal the satisfaction of his triumph. He had a chicken wing on his plate and he was gnawing on it with philosophical serenity. I voiced a few objections still, but they were so feeble that he didn’t waste much time in knocking them down.

  “In order to understand my system well,” he concluded, “it’s necessary never to forget the universal principle, distributed and summed up in every man. Look. War, which looks like a calamity, is a convenient operation, which we could call the snapping of Humanitas’ fingers; hunger (and he sucked philosophically on his chicken wing), hunger is proof that Humanitas is subject to its own entrails. But I don’t need any other documentation of the sublimity of my system than this chicken right here. It nourished itself on corn, which was planted by an African, let us suppose imported from Angola. That African was born, grew up, was sold. A ship brought him here, a ship built of wood cut in the forest by ten or twelve men, propelled by sails that eight or ten men sewed together, not to mention the rigging and other parts of the nautical apparatus. In that way, this chicken, which I have lunched on just now, is the result of a multitude of efforts and struggles carried out with the sole aim of satisfying my appetite.”

  Between cheese and coffee Quincas Borba demonstrated to me how his system meant the destruction of pain. Pain, according to Humanitism, is pure illusion. When a child is threatened with a stick, even before being struck, he closes his eyes and trembles. That predisposition is what constitutes the basis of the human illusion, inherited and transmitted. It’s not enough, of course, to adopt the system in order to do away with pain immediately, but it is indispensable. The rest is the natural evolution of things. Once man gets it completely into his head that he is Humanitas itself, there’s nothing else to do but raise his thought up to the original substance in order to prevent any painful sensation. The evolution is so profound, however, that it can only take place over a few thousand years.

  For a few days after that Quincas Borba read me his magnum opus. It consisted of four h
andwritten volumes, a hundred pages each, in a cramped hand and with Latin quotations. The last volume was a political treatise based on Humanitas. It was, perhaps, the most tedious part of the system, since it was conceived with a formidable rigor of logic. With society reorganized by his method, not even then would war, insurrection, a simple beating, an anonymous stabbing, hunger, or illness be eliminated. But since those supposed plagues were really errors of understanding, because they were nothing but external movements of the internal substance destined not to have any influence over man except as a simple break in universal monotony, it was clear that their existence would not be a barrier against human happiness. But even when such plagues (a basically false concept) corresponded in the future to the narrow conception of former times, not even then would the system be destroyed, and for two reasons: first, because Humanitas being the creative and absolute substance, every individual would find the greatest delight in the world in sacrificing himself to the principle from which he descends; second, because even then it wouldn’t diminish man’s spiritual power over the earth, invented solely for his recreation, like the stars, breezes, dates, and rhubarb. Pangloss, he said to me as he closed the book, wasn’t as dotty as Voltaire painted him.