V
The Terror
Four days later, the people of Itaguaí were shocked by the news that a certain Costa had been interned in the Casa Verde.
“Impossible!”
“Impossible? It happened this morning.”
“But … the truth is that he didn’t deserve it. On top of everything else?”
Costa was among the most highly esteemed fellows in town. Once he had inherited a princely sum, four hundred thousand Portuguese cruzados, a sum that, invested at interest, would produce “enough,” according to the uncle who left it to him in his will, “to live on for the rest of his life, and then some.” But no sooner did the money come into Costa’s hands than he started to lend it, without interest, to anyone who asked. After five years he had practically nothing left. Had it happened all at once, the population of Itaguaí would have been dismayed, but it happened little by little. Costa slipped from opulence to affluence, from affluence to sufficiency, from sufficiency to difficulty, from difficulty to poverty, and from there to utter indigence, ever so gradually. At the end of those five years, people who had once taken off their hats when within a block of meeting Costa on the street, now clapped him familiarly on the shoulder, pinched his nose, and made brazen remarks. And Costa, ever simple and good-humored, said nothing. He even pretended not to notice that the least courteous were precisely those who still owed him money. To the contrary, when one of them made a rude joke that Costa merely laughed off and a bystander, who disliked Costa, asked scornfully whether he had no pride or suffered insults in the hopes of finally being paid back, why, Costa responded by canceling the debt on the spot. The ungrateful ex-debtor jeered at him: “How noble of Costa to cancel a debt that he couldn’t collect!” This slur at his generosity finally wounded Costa’s pride and spurred him to action. Two hours later, he laid hands on a few coins and sent them to the ungrateful ex-debtor.
“I certainly hope that settles it,” he thought.
This gesture convinced both credulous and incredulous. Who could thereafter doubt the generosity of such a worthy citizen? The most timid paupers in Itaguaí now knocked on his door asking for handouts. But the slur still rang in Costa’s ears and something gnawed at his spirit: the idea that someone didn’t like him. Fortunately, after three months the man who disliked Costa reappeared, asking for a loan of 120 cruzados, which he promised to repay in two days. Costa seized the opportunity to demonstrate his lack of avarice. The amount was all that remained of his inheritance, but he did not hesitate an instant and lent it without interest. Sadly, he did not have time to be repaid, because he was interned in the Casa Verde five months later.
Imagine the consternation of Itaguaí when people found out. They talked of nothing else, some saying he’d lost his mind at lunch, some, in the wee hours of the morning, and they described the onset of his fits: dark, violent, and terrible—or mild, and even amusing—according to the teller. A lot of people ran to the Casa Verde, and they found poor Costa calm, a bit startled, perfectly lucid, and asking repeatedly why he had been taken there. A few went to speak with the alienist. Bacamarte applauded their expressions of concern, but he made clear that Science was Science. He could not let a madman go around loose. The last person who tried to intercede (because, after what I am about to relate, nobody else dared) was Costa’s cousin. The fearsome doctor explained confidentially to the unfortunate woman that the way her cousin had squandered the family fortune betrayed a disequilibrium of his mental faculties.
“No, no, you are wrong!” interrupted the good woman. “It’s not his fault that he spent his inheritance so quickly.”
“No?”
“No, sir. I’ll tell you how it happened. My late uncle was not a bad man, but when he got mad, he was capable of anything—why, he wouldn’t take off his hat for a religious procession if it passed right in front of him! Now, just before he died he discovered that a slave had stolen his ox, and he about had a fit. He started trembling and foaming at the mouth, and his face turned as red as a tomato. I can see him now. And then up comes an ugly, long-haired fellow in shirt sleeves and asks him for a glass of water. My uncle, God rest his soul, told him to go drink from the river or go to hell. And the man raises his hand and says ‘Curse you, and may all your wealth vanish in seven years and one day, by this Star of David!’ and he pointed to a tattoo on his arm. A Jew’s curse, Dr. Bacamarte. That’s what happened to my poor cousin’s inheritance.”
Bacamarte skewered the unfortunate woman with his piercing gaze. When she had finished her story, he extended his hand to her as courteously as he might to the viceroy’s wife, and invited her to come talk to her cousin. The unhappy lady suspected nothing, and she never left the Casa Verde.
The attitude of our illustrious alienist terrified everyone in town. No one could believe that he would lock up a perfectly rational woman for no reason at all, a woman whose only crime was attempting to intercede for her cousin. People discussed the incident on street corners and in barbershops. The rumor mill went to work. There had been an unhappy love affair, it seems, years ago. The doctor had made certain overtures to Costa’s cousin, which she had spurned, leading to the doctor’s insistence, Costa’s indignation, hard feelings, and so on … leading to this act of revenge. It was obvious. The alienist’s apparent dignity and studiousness were a mere façade. And someone reported knowing much, much more—things that he wouldn’t say because he couldn’t prove them. But he could almost swear for sure.
“You’re his friend. Can’t you tell us what’s going on, what his motives are?”
Crispim Soares melted with contentment. The rush of people to his shop and the curiosity of all his acquaintances amounted to a public tribute, a recognition that he, Crispim the apothecary, was the confidant and collaborator of the great man. The apothecary’s glowing countenance and discreet smile said it all, his smile and his silence, because he hardly opened his mouth. At most he uttered a few oracular monosyllables that possessed nothing of the eloquence of that ever-present little half-smile, so suggestive of scientific mysteries that the apothecary could not reveal to any living person without danger or dishonor.
“Something is going on,” suspected the townsfolk.
Mateus the outfitter, for one, had his suspicions, but he shrugged, said nothing, and went about his affairs. He had recently built a sumptuous residence. The house itself was enough to get people’s attention, but there was more: the fine furniture imported from Holland and Hungary (as he explained, and as people could see from outside, because he always had the windows open) and the magnificent garden, a masterpiece of artistry and good taste. Mateus lost himself in contemplation of his house. He had always dreamed of having it, and when he grew rich enough making the rough saddles used for pack animals such as mules and donkeys, he got what he wanted, the grandest residence in Itaguaí, more elegant than the town hall, grander, even, than the Casa Grande. The town’s most illustrious citizens were mortified at the very thought of the outfitter’s house. A mule outfitter, and such a house! Good heavens!
“He never gets tired of looking at it,” said passersby in the morning.
Mateus had the habit of planting himself in the garden and gazing at his house for a good hour every morning, until the servants called him to lunch. The neighbors greeted him respectfully to his face, but they laughed at him behind his back. One neighbor liked to joke that if Mateus made saddles for himself, he’d be a millionaire, which, while it made no sense strictly speaking, produced gales of laughter.
“There’s Mateus, again, showing himself,” they said in the evening.
Because at the hour when the neighbors went out for their after-dinner stroll, Mateus stationed himself in an open window, dressed in white, against a dark background, and struck a noble pose for two or three hours, until night fell. One might assume that his intention was to be admired and envied, although he never confessed it in so many words to the apothecary or Father Lopes, his great friends. The apothecary inferred that intentio
n, nonetheless, on the day when the alienist told him that Mateus the outfitter appeared to suffer from petromania, a mania that he, Bacamarte, had recently discovered, because of the way Mateus was observed to stare every morning in rapt contemplation of the stone walls of his house.
“No, sir!” Crispim Soares hurriedly corrected him.
“No?”
“Excuse me, but perhaps it has escaped your attention that he isn’t contemplating the stonework every morning, he is inspecting it. Then, in the afternoon, it’s his neighbors who inspect him and the stonework.” And he told the alienist what Mateus did every evening for two or three hours.
The sheer pleasure of Science shone in the eyes of Simão Bacamarte. Perhaps he had known nothing of the outfitter’s habit in the evenings. Perhaps he now interrogated Crispim merely in order to confirm a preexisting hunch or hypothesis. Whatever the case may be, the apothecary’s explanation satisfied him, because he expressed happiness, but as a sage does, imperceptibly, and the other noticed nothing that might lead him to suspect the alienist had any ill intention. Far from it. And as it was evening, the alienist offered his arm, an invitation to go for a stroll. My Lord! It was the first time that Simão Bacamarte had bestowed such an honor on his friend and confidant. The invitation left Crispim Soares stunned and tremulous; yes, he said, he was ready. At that point two or three people knocked on the door. Crispim mentally sent the lot of them to the devil. They might stop the stroll before it started, or worse, displace him from it. He couldn’t wait to leave. How awful! At last they set out. The alienist directed their steps to the vicinity of the mule outfitter’s house, spotted him in the window, walked back and forth in front of the house five or six times, slowly, stopping to observe his pose and facial expressions. And poor Mateus, seeing that he had awakened the curiosity or admiration of the most prominent figure of Itaguaí, struck a yet more noble pose and intensified his facial expressions. Poor man, poor man, he only sealed his fate. The next day they took him to the Casa Verde.
“The Casa Verde is nothing but a private prison,” said a failed physician.
And the phrase spread like wildfire in Itaguaí: “a private prison,” they repeated, from north to south and east to west. The talk was driven by fear. In the week following the arrest of poor Mateus, more than twenty people, two or three of them leading citizens, had been taken forcibly to the Casa Verde. The alienist said that they were all pathological cases, but few people were inclined to believe him. The rumor mill rumbled on. Revenge, greed, divine punishment, the monomania of the alienist, a plot hatched in the viceregal capital Rio de Janeiro to hinder the progress of the provincial cities throughout Brazil, and a thousand other explanations that explained nothing—such was the stuff that the popular imagination produced daily during that week.
And at that point the wife of the alienist returned from Rio de Janeiro, along with her aunt, the wife of Crispim Soares, and the rest of the party that had departed from Itaguaí a few weeks earlier. The alienist went to receive her, along with the apothecary, Father Lopes, and a number of town councilmen and magistrates. The moment when Dona Evarista laid eyes on her husband is considered by many chroniclers to be among the most sublime in human annals, because of the perfect contrast between these two noble temperaments, both extreme, both worthy. Dona Evarista let out a shriek, babbled a few words, and hurled herself at her consort in a manner that cannot be better defined than “part jaguar and part turtledove.” Not so the illustrious Bacamarte. Cold as a diagnosis, full of scientific rigidity, he wordlessly reached out to his lady, who fell into his arms and fainted. The incident did not last long. Within two minutes Dona Evarista’s friends were welcoming her back and the homeward procession had begun.
Dona Evarista was the great hope of Itaguaí. Everyone counted on her to save the town from the Casa Verde. Hence the public acclaim, the banners, the press of people in the street, the flowers and damask window dressings. Walking arm in arm with Father Lopes—because the eminent Bacamarte had confided his wife to the vicar and accompanied them a few steps away, lost in meditation—Dona Evarista swiveled her head from side to side, curious, stirred, swollen with pride. The vicar inquired about Rio de Janeiro, where he had not traveled since the reign of the previous viceroy, and Dona Evarista responded enthusiastically that Rio de Janeiro was the most beautiful thing that could possibly exist in the whole world. The Public Promenade and Gardens, a veritable paradise, had finally opened, and she had gone there several times, and the main streets were so impressive, and … oh, the Fountain of Ducks! Real ducks, made of metal, with water coming out of their mouths! Unbelievably lovely. The vicar said that, yes, Rio de Janeiro must be lovely now, indeed. It was already nice years ago. And no wonder, being much bigger than Itaguaí, after all, and home to the viceroy … not that Itaguaí could be called ugly, of course. It had fine buildings, like the mansion that Mateus built, and the Casa Verde …
“And speaking of the Casa Verde,” said Father Lopes, gliding skillfully into the topic at hand, “I believe that you’ll find it quite full of people.”
“Is that so?”
“Very full. Let’s see, there’s Mateus—”
“The mule outfitter?”
“The mule outfitter. And then there’s Costa, and Costa’s cousin, and old So-and-So, and—“
“They’re all crazy?”
“Apparently,” prevaricated the clergyman.
“But how? Why?”
The vicar drew down the corners of his mouth as if he knew nothing or would rather not say, an answer that could not be quoted for lack of text. Dona Evarista found it really extraordinary that all those people had lost their minds. One or two, maybe, but all of them? Still, she found it difficult to doubt her husband’s judgment. He was a brilliant man. Surely he wouldn’t commit anyone to the Casa Verde without proof of insanity.
“No, surely not … of course not,” agreed the vicar.
Three hours later, nearly fifty guests sat around the table of Simão Bacamarte for the home-coming dinner. Dona Evarista was the obligatory subject of toasts, speeches, metaphors, eulogies, and all manner of tributes in verse and prose. She was the wife of the new Hippocrates, the muse of Science, an angel, divine, the Dawn, Charity, a Consolation, Life itself. Her eyes were “twinkling stars” in the modest metaphor of Crispim Soares, “blazing suns” in the more robust version of a town councilman. The alienist listened to it all without visible impatience. He merely explained in his wife’s ear that she should regard such flights of fancy as poetic license. Dona Evarista tried to follow her husband’s advice, but even discounting three quarters of the flattery, the rest was enough to swell her head. One of the orators, for example, Martim Brito, a pretentious twenty-five-year-old lover boy with quite a reputation in Itaguaí, gave a speech in which he described the birth of Dona Evarista. “After creating man and woman, who are the diamond and the pearl of his heavenly crown,” intoned the orator, dragging that last phrase triumphantly from one end of the table to the other, “God decided to outdo God, and so … he created Dona Evarista.”
Dona Evarista lowered her eyes with exemplary modesty. Two ladies who found young Brito’s flattery excessive or audacious interrogated the head of the household with their eyes, and they did find his expression clouded with misgiving, threatening a storm and, possibly, mayhem. Excessive audacity, thought the two ladies. Each of them prayed silently that God prevent a tragedy, or, better, that he postpone it until tomorrow. One of the ladies, the more charitable of the two, had to admit that Dona Evarista was so far from being attractive or pretty as to be practically above suspicion. An unappetizing dish! But then, there is no accounting for taste, the lady reflected, with renewed alarm, although less this time. Less, because now the alienist was smiling at Martim Brito, and, when everyone rose from the table, going to chat with him about his speech. He couldn’t deny that it was a tour de force of extemporaneous speaking, loaded with brilliant images. Was that bit about Evarista’s birth his own idea, or insp
ired by something that he had read? … No, sir! It was entirely original, an improvisation inspired purely by the occasion. His ideas were typically bold rather than delicate or jocular, you see. Bold, tending toward the epic. Once, for example, he had composed an ode about the 1777 fall of the Marquis de Pombal in which he compared the king’s famous minister to “a jagged dragon of Nothingness” torn asunder by “the avenging talons of Everything.” He liked that sort of unusual trope. He went for the sublime …
“Poor lad,” thought the alienist. And he silently elaborated: some sort of cerebral lesion, probably not life threatening, but still worthy of study …
Dona Evarista was astounded to learn, three days later, that Martim Brito had been taken to the Casa Verde. A young man with such lovely ideas! The two ladies blamed the alienist’s jealousy. What else could it be? The young man’s remarks had really been too provocative.
Jealousy? How, then, to explain the similar fate of the frolicsome and harmless Chico, the colorless scribe Fabrício, the unquestionably respectable José Borges do Couto Leme, and others taken into custody along with Martim Brito, none of whom had given the alienist any reason for jealousy? The atmosphere of terror intensified. One no longer knew who was sane and who was crazy. Women lit candles to the Virgin whenever their husbands left home, and some husbands would not leave home unless accompanied by armed men. Absolute terror. Whoever could, got out of town. One such fugitive got no farther than a few hundred steps, however. He was fellow of about thirty years old, friendly, well-spoken, polite—so polite that he doffed his hat and bowed to greet everyone he met: ladies, gentlemen, even children. He had a sort of vocation for social pleasantries. To know Gil Bernardes was to love him. And yet, once informed that the alienist was watching him, not even Gil Bernardes felt safe. He tried to get away in the early morning hours of the very next day but was stopped at the edge of town and escorted to the Casa Verde.
The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil Page 12
