The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil

by Machado De Assis

  “But did you find Marocas?”

  “We were getting something to eat at a hotel—it was nearly eight o’clock—when we finally got a clue. A coachman came to report taking a lady out to the vicinity of the Botanical Garden the previous day. He’d seen her go into a lodging house, and she had not come out. We didn’t even finish our meal. We had the driver take us there, and the owner of the lodging house confirmed the story, saying that the lodger had gone to her room and stayed there. She seemed profoundly depressed. All she’d had to eat since the day before was a cup of coffee. He took us to the room and knocked on the door. She responded in a weak voice and opened the door. Andrade shoved me aside, and the two fell into each other’s arms. I didn’t have time to say a word. Marocas sobbed until she fainted.”

  “And things were clarified?”

  “Not a bit. They never spoke of it again. Like survivors of a shipwreck, they refused to revisit the storm. Their reconciliation took no time at all. Within months Andrade had bought her a little house in an outlying neighborhood. Marocas gave him a child who died when it was two years old. When the government posted him to the North, a bit later, their affection had not dimmed—or only slightly, because the giddiness of the first days of a love affair always wears off sooner or later. Still, she wanted to move up north with him. I was the one who made her stay behind. Andrade believed that he would shortly return to Rio but, as I think I’ve mentioned, he died up north. Marocas was stunned by his death. She dressed in mourning and considered herself a widow. I know that for the first three years she always went to mass on the anniversary of his death, but then she dropped out of sight. It’s been ten years. So, what do you think of all this?”

  “If it’s all true, some occurrences in life are quite singular, just as you say.”

  “It’s pure reality. I didn’t make up anything.”

  “It’s so curious. A sincere, burning love and yet … I insist that she had a nostalgia for the gutter.”

  “No. Marocas had never stooped so low in her life.”

  “Then why did she do it that night?”

  “She never dreamed that a man like Leandro would ever come near a person of her acquaintance. That’s what gave her the confidence. But chance intervened … one never knows.”

  TERPSICHORE

  “Terpsícore” (1886), named for the Greek goddess (muse, actually) of dance, is another lighthearted story. This time, however, the protagonists are not of the elite class. Although no physical description of them is given, they may well be partly of African descent, like so many working-class Brazilians then and now. Porfirio is a hardworking tradesman and his wife, Gloria, is a seamstress. Together they earn barely enough to make ends meet. They live in a nice house but struggle to pay the rent. Like many of Machado’s nonelite characters (and some of the elite ones), they are often in debt. Still, if there’s one thing that they wouldn’t think of omitting on certain occasions, it’s a good party. This story illustrates the importance of music and dance in nineteenth-century Brazilian popular culture. And the “polkas” mentioned here would be performed (and danced) in a style called maxixe, with a tropical Brazilian lilt and plenty of movement in the hips. The story also illustrates the social imperative felt by nineteenth-century Brazilians, not just the elite, to mark important social occasions with lavish celebrations.

  Gloria opened her eyes to find her husband sitting up in bed staring at the wall, and she told him to lie down and sleep or he would be sleepy when he went to the workshop.

  “What do you mean sleep, Gloria? The bells already tolled six o’clock.”

  “Jesús! How long ago?”

  “Just now.”

  Gloria pushed the patchwork quilt off herself, searched for her slippers with her feet, slid them on, and got out of bed. Then, seeing that her husband had remained in the same position, with his head between his knees, she went to him and pulled at his arm, telling him affectionately not to mope, that God would take care of them.

  “Everything will come out all right, Porfirio. Do you think that the landlord is really going to confiscate our things? I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it. He says that to scare us into scraping up the money.

  “Yes, but the fact is that I can’t scrape up six months’ back rent. I don’t even know where to start. Six months’ worth, Gloria! Who’s going to lend us that much money? Your godfather has already said that he won’t give us any more.”

  “I’m going to talk to him.”

  “What for? It’s a waste of time.”

  “I’ll go beg. I’ll go with mother, and both of us will beg …”

  Porfirio shook his head.

  “No, no,” he said. “You know what would be a better idea? Find another place for the time being, until Saturday, and we’ll move there and see how we can pay the rent here. Your godfather could at least undersign a lease for us. To the devil with all these expenses! Bills as far as the eye can see—the corner store, the bakery—the devil take them all! I can’t go on! I spend the whole blasted day with tools in my hands, and still there is never enough money. I can’t go on, Gloria, I can’t go on …”

  Porfirio jumped out of bed and started getting ready for work, as his wife, her face summarily washed, her hair not combed, took care of his breakfast. It was a summary breakfast, too: bread and coffee with milk. Porfirio gulped it down quickly, at the head of the cheap pine table, his wife standing in front of him with a broad smile intended to cheer him up. Gloria’s features were irregular and commonplace, but the smile gave them some charm. It wasn’t her face, anyway, that had made him fall in love with her. It was her body, when he saw her dancing a polka, one evening, on Empress Street. He was passing by and stopped to look in the open window of a house where people were dancing. A number of curious onlookers had gathered in front of the house already. The front room was packed with dancing couples, who, little by little, got tired and left the floor to Gloria.

  “Bravo for the queen!” shouted an enthusiast.

  From the street window, Porfirio nailed her with his satyr’s eyes, following her joyous, sensual movements, a swirling mixture of filly and swan. Everybody moved aside, pressing back into the corners of the not-very-big room, so that she had enough space for her flaring skirt, her rhythmically swiveling thighs, and her quick turns, now to the left, now to the right. Porfirio had added jealousy to admiration, experiencing the impulse to go punch out her dance partner, a tall, muscular young guy who held her firmly around the waist.

  The next day, Porfirio woke up determined to win Gloria’s love and her hand in marriage. It seems that his determination paid off quickly, in about six months. Before the wedding, though, as soon as he began to court Gloria, he tried to fill a blank spot in his education, diverting a small quantity from his wages each month to take a dance class, where he learned the waltz, the mazurka, the polka, and the French quadrille. Every other day, he spent fully two evening hours dancing to the music of a flute and antique horn in the company of other young men and half a dozen thin and tired seamstresses. In a short time he had become a master. The first time he danced with his betrothed was like a revelation to her. The other dancers squinted with insincere, yellow smiles, allowed that he wasn’t bad. Gloria melted with happiness.

  With that done, Porfirio looked for a house and found the one where he still lives, not big, more on the small side. It was the arabesque adornments on the façade that caught his eye. He did not like the rent, though, and haggled for a time, raising his offer by tiny increments until, receiving no concessions in return, he finally paid the full amount.

  Then he arranged the wedding. His future mother-in-law proposed that they go to the church on foot, because it was nearby. He declined gravely, but later, in private with his betrothed and their friends, he laughed at the old lady’s extravagant suggestion. It would look like a kind of procession, bride and groom, wedding party, and guests traipsing through the street on foot, something never before seen! People would make fun of t
hem! Gloria explained that her mother wanted to cut expenses. Cut expenses? If you don’t spend money on a great occasion, when do you spend money? Not a chance. He was young and strong and not afraid of working hard. For her wedding, he told Gloria, she could count on a stylish coach with white horses and coachmen in full uniform, with gold-trimmed hats.

  And all this came true. The wedding was a major success, with many coaches and a dance that lasted until dawn. None of the guests wanted to go home. They all wanted to preserve the moment, stop the march of time. But the party finally ended. What did not end was the legend of the party, preserved in neighborhood memory as a point of comparison for other notable parties. The person who lent them the money for the party never asked for it back and, on his deathbed, pardoned the debt. It was that sort of party.

  Naturally, though, in the cold light of the next day, reality took charge of the poor cabinetmaker, who had managed to forget it for a few hours. The honeymoon was more modest, fit for minor nobility only. All honeymoons are similar, substantively speaking, for such is the law and prestige of love. This one was a bit different, though, in that Porfirio went from the lap of luxury back to toiling in a carpentry workshop. The couple’s initial enthusiasm resulted in excessive outlays. The house was expensive, and their lives started to get tough. The debts accumulated, softly and in small increments at first: two milréis, then five, tomorrow seven and nine. The biggest debt of all, and the most urgent, was their unpaid rent. Now the landlord threatened to evict them in a week unless he were paid.

  Such was the butter (with its rancid taste of misery) that Porfirio smeared on his bread on the morning in question. It was the only butter available. He ate quickly and went out, almost without responding to his wife’s kisses. Thoughts fluttered around in his head like startled birds in a cage. Everything was so devilishly, life-threateningly expensive! And his earnings never increased! If something did not change, he had no idea what might happen. It simply could not go on like this. He mentally added up the debts, so much here, so much there, so much wherever, and he lost count, perhaps on purpose, in order to avoid knowing the awful sum. Along the way, he looked at the big houses, without resentment—he did not resent the wealth of others—but rather, with a sort of nostalgia for a life he had never known, a life of ease, bright satisfactions, and infinite delights.

  When the church bells rang for evening prayers, Porfirio got home to find Gloria depressed. Her godfather had told her that they were a couple of spendthrifts and that he would not give them anything more until they stopped acting crazy.

  “What did I tell you, Gloria? Why did you go there? So we’re crazy, are we? He’s the crazy one!”

  Gloria calmed him down and spoke to him of patience and resolve. The best thing now was, after all, to find a cheaper house, request an extension on what they owed, and figure out how to pay for everything later. And they had to be patient, very patient. For her part, she was counting on her godmother in heaven. Porfirio listened to her and calmed down. He did not ask for anything more than a ray of hope. Hope, they say, is the poor man’s wealth, and for a few days he was a wealthy man.

  On Saturday, on his way home with his wages in his pocket, he was tempted by a lottery vendor, who offered him the very last two tenths of a hot ticket. Porfirio felt something in his heart, a twinge of intuition, and he stopped, then started walking again, and finally turned around, went back, and bought it. He figured that at worst he could lose a few milréis, and at best he could win, win quite a lot, get himself out of the quagmire, pay off everything, and maybe even have money left over. Even if there were no money left over, winning would still be a good deal, because where on earth was he going to find money to pay so many debts? Winning the lottery, on the other hand, would come precisely out of nowhere, or rather, from heaven. The ticket number was very nice, too, and he had quickly memorized it, even though he did not usually have a head for math! The digits were well distributed, somehow, with nicely repeated fives and a nine in the middle. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought that this ticket just might be a winner.

  Getting home to São Diogo Street, he was going to show his wife the lottery ticket, but he changed his mind and decided to wait. The lottery would not occur for two days. Gloria asked him if he’d found a house, and on Sunday she told him to go look for one. Porfirio went out and found none but returned in a good mood. That afternoon he asked his wife laughingly what she would do if he brought her a silk dress that week? Gloria shrugged, silk was not for them. And why shouldn’t it be? Who was more deserving than she? Why, if he had the means, he’d see that she went around in a coach!

  “But that’s just it, Porfirio. We don’t have the means.”

  Yes, but God sometimes remembers everybody, okay, that’s all he could say for now. He’d have to explain later. He was superstitious and did not want to tempt fate by revealing that he held the winning ticket. And mentally he removed his wife’s faded, wrinkled, cotton print dress and replaced it with another of blue silk—it had to be blue—with lace or something else that would show off her beautiful body … and he forgot himself and said aloud:

  “There can’t be too many other bodies like it.”

  “What bodies, Porfirio? Have you gone nuts?” asked Gloria in confusion.

  No, he wasn’t nuts. He was thinking about that body that God had given her … and Gloria writhed hilariously in her chair because she was always ticklish, and finally he withdrew his hands and reminded her of the twist of fate by which he happened to go down Empress Street that night and see her dancing, all sultry. And talking, he put his arm around her waist and started to dance with her, humming a polka. Dragged along at first, Gloria started to dance in the narrow room, without music or spectators. Neither bills nor demands for back rent came to intrude on them for a while.

  But good fortune did come—when the lottery happened—and Porfirio won five hundred milréis. Overjoyed, he ran toward his house, unable for a while to control his leaping spirit. He finally got a grip on himself as he crossed the parade ground at the edge of town as evening shadows lengthened. The five hundred milréis sparkled like five hundred thousand stars in the imagination of the poor devil, who could not see anything else, not other passersby, nor the streetlamps that were being lit here and there. Those five hundred milréis were all he saw. He’d been right to say that he’d get out of this quagmire and that God takes care of his own. He mumbled and laughed to himself, and at other moments strutted with a superior air. As he entered São Diogo Street, he bumped into a friend, who consulted him about the parish celebration for the Feast of São Carlos. Porfirio responded casually:

  “First of all you’ll need to raise maybe two hundred or three hundred milréis.”

  He felt quite comfortable tossing around large sums now. The friend explained, however, that getting members for the group was the first step and that the money would come later. Porfirio, who was already thinking about something else, agreed and went on his way. He got home, looked in the window, saw his wife sewing by candlelight in the front room, and bellowed for her to open the door. Gloria ran to the door, startled, and he almost bowled her over, hugging her tightly, talking, laughing, hopping, they had money, everything paid off, a dress. Gloria asked what was going on, asked him to explain, but to calm down. How could that be? Five hundred milréis? She refused to believe it. Where did he get five hundred milréis? So Porfirio told her everything, how he’d bought two tenths of a hot lottery ticket a few days ago, and not told her, to see if he’d win something first. But he had been sure, really, because he’d had a hunch, and the heart doesn’t lie.

  Gloria embraced him tearfully. Thank Heavens, they were saved! And would it be enough to pay all their debts? Yes, it would. Porfirio showed her that there would even be some money left over, and he went to do the arithmetic with her on the corner of the pine table. Gloria listened and trusted him because she could only count by dozens and couldn’t get hundreds of milréis into her head at all. She listened an
d trusted in silence, with her eyes fixed on him as he counted, slowly, not to make a mistake. When all the debts were subtracted, almost two hundred milréis remained.

  “Two hundred? Let’s put it in the bank.”

  “Except,” he insisted, “except for a certain thing that I have to buy … a certain thing. Guess what it is!”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, who is it that needs a chic silk dress, tailor-made?”

  “Forget it, Porfirio. What dress? Luxury isn’t for poor people. Put the money in the bank.”

  “I’ll put the rest of it in the bank, but there’s going to be a dress. I don’t want a raggedy wife. Poor people wear clothes, too, right? I’m not saying buy a dozen dresses, but what harm can one dress do? You might need to go somewhere a little more dressed up. And anyway, you’ve never had a dress made in a French shop before.”