Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas

by Machado De Assis

  “What do you mean?”

  She told me that her husband had turned down the nomination and for reasons that he only told her, charging her to the greatest secrecy. He couldn’t admit it to anyone else. “It’s childish,” he observed, “ridiculous, but in the end for me it’s a powerful reason.” He told me that the decree was dated the 13th and that that number carried a mournful memory for him. His father had died on the 13th, thirteen days after a dinner where thirteen people had been present. The house in which his mother died was Number 13. Etc. It was a fateful figure. He couldn’t admit such a thing to the minister. He would tell him that he had personal reasons for not accepting. I was left as the reader must be—a little startled at that sacrifice to a number, but since he was an ambitious man the sacrifice must have been sincere …

  LXXXIV

  The Conflict

  Fateful number, can you remember how many times I blessed you? That, too, must have been the way the red-haired virgins of Thebes blessed the mare with a russet mane that took their place in Pelopidas’ sacrifice—a charming mare who died there covered with flowers without anyone’s ever having given her a word of fond remembrance. Well, I give you one, pitiful mare, not only because of the death you suffered but because among the spared maidens it’s not impossible that a grandmother of the Cubases figured … Fateful number, you were our salvation. Her husband didn’t confess the reason for his refusal to me. He told me, too, that it was because of personal business and the serious, convinced face with which I listened to him did honor to human hypocrisy. He was the only one who had trouble covering up the sadness eating at him. He spoke little, was self-absorbed, stayed home reading. On other occasions he would receive and then he would converse and laugh a lot, with noise and affection. Two things were oppressing him—ambition, which had had its wings clipped by a scruple and immediately following doubt and perhaps regret, but a regret that would return if the hypothesis were repeated, because the superstitious basis still existed. He had his doubts about the superstition without arriving at its rejection. That persistence of a feeling that was repugnant to the individual himself was a phenomenon worthy of some attention. But I preferred that she couldn’t bear seeing a toad turned on its back.

  “What is there about that?” I asked her.

  “It’s evil,” was her answer.

  Only that, the single answer that was worth as much as the book with seven seals for her. It’s evil. They’d told her that when she was a child with no other explanation and she was content with the certainty of harm. The same thing happened when there was talk of pointing at a star. That she knew perfectly well could cause a wart.

  A wart or anything else, what was that to someone who’d lost the presidency of a province? A gratuitous or cheap superstition can be tolerated. What cannot be is one that carries away part of your life. That was the case with Lobo Neves along with doubt and the terror of having been ridiculous. And the added fact that the minister hadn’t believed in any personal reasons. He attributed Lobo Neves’ refusal to political maneuvers, a complicated illusion because of certain aspects. He treated him shabbily, conveyed his lack of trust to colleagues. Incidents arose. Finally, with time, the resigned president went over to the opposition.

  LXXXV

  The Summit

  A person who has escaped a danger loves life with new intensity. I began to love Virgília even more ardently after being on the brink of losing her and the same things happened with her. In that way the presidency had only given new life to our original affection. It was the drug with which we made our love more delightful and also more esteemed. During the first days following that episode we entertained ourselves by imagining the pain of separation had there been a separation, how sad we both would have been, how far the sea would have stretched out between us like an elastic cloth. And just as children snuggle up to their mother’s breast to escape a simple scowl, we fled the imagined danger by squeezing each other with hugs.

  “My wonderful Virgília!”

  “My love!”

  “You’re mine, aren’t you?”

  “Yours, yours …”

  And thus we picked up the thread of our adventure the same as the Sultaness Scheherezade had done with the thread of her stories. That was, to my mind, the high point of our love, the summit of the mountain from where, for a time, we could make out the valleys to the east and west and the tranquil blue sky above us. Having rested for that time, we began to descend the slope, holding hands or apart, but descending, descending …

  LXXXVI

  The Mystery

  As I perceived her to be somewhat different on the way down, I don’t know whether downcast or something else, I asked her what was wrong. She was silent, with an expression of annoyance, upset, fatigue. I persisted and she told me that … A thin fluid ran through my whole body, a strong, quick, singular sensation that I’ll never be able to put down on paper. I grasped her hands, pulling her softly to me, and kissed her on the brow with the solemnity of Abraham. She shuddered, took my head between her hands, stared into my eyes, then stroked me with a maternal gesture … There’s a mystery there. Let’s give the reader time to decipher that mystery.

  LXXXVII

  Geology

  A disaster occurred around that time: the death of Viegas. Viegas had passed through by chance, his seventy years oppressed by asthma, disjointed by rheumatism, and a damaged heart to boot. He was one of the delicate observers of our adventure. Virgília nourished great hopes that this old relative, avaricious as a tomb, would protect her son’s future by means of some legacy. And if her husband had similar thoughts he covered them or choked them off. Everything must be told: there was a certain fundamental dignity in Lobo Neves, a layer of rock that resisted dealings with people. The others, the outer layers, loose earth and sand, had been brought to him by life in its perpetual overflow. If the reader remembers Chapter XXIII he will observe that this is the second time I’ve compared life to an overflow, but he must also notice that this time I add an adjective: perpetual. And God knows the strength of an adjective, above all in young, hot countries.

  What’s new to this book is Lobo Neves’ moral, geology, and probably that of the gentleman reading me. Yes, these layers of character that life alters, preserves, or dissolves according to their resistance, these layers deserve a chapter that I’m not going to write so as not to make the narration too long. I’m only going to say that the most honest man I ever met in my life was a certain Jacó Medeiros or Jacó Valadares, I can’t remember his name too well. Maybe it was Jacó Rodrigues, in any case, Jacó. He was probity personified. He could have been rich by going counter to the tiniest scruple and he refused. He let no less than four hundred cantos slip through his fingers. His probity was so exemplary that it got to be punctilious and wearisome. One day as we were alone together at his place in the midst of a pleasant chat they came to tell him that Doctor B., a boring fellow, was looking for him. Jacó told them to say he wasn’t at home.

  “It won’t work,” a voice roared in the hallway, “because I’m already inside.”

  And, indeed, it was Doctor B. who appeared at the parlor door. Jacó got up to receive him, stating that he’d thought it was someone else, not he, adding that he was very pleased with his visit, which subjected us to an hour and a half of deadly boredom and no more because Jacó took out his watch. Doctor B then asked him if he was going out.

  “With my wife,” Jacó answered.

  Doctor B. left and we gave a sign of relief. Once we got through with our sighing, I told Jacó that he’d just lied four times in less than two hours. The first time by contradicting himself, the second by showing happiness at the presence of the intruder, the third by saying that he was going out, the fourth by adding that it was with his wife. Jacó reflected for a moment, then confessed the accuracy of my observation, but he defended himself by saying that absolute veracity was incompatible with an advanced social state and that the peace of cities could only be obtained at the
cost of reciprocal deceits … Ah! Now I remember. His name was Jacó Tavares.

  LXXXVIII

  The Sick Man

  Needless to say, I refuted such a pernicious doctrine with the most elementary arguments, but he was so annoyed with my observation that he resisted to the end, displaying a certain fictitious heat, perhaps in order to confuse his conscience.

  Virgília’s case was a bit more serious. She was less scrupulous than her husband. She openly showed the hope she had for the legacy, showering her relative with all manner of courtesies, attentions, and allurements that could bring on a codicil at the very least. Properly speaking, she flattered him, but I have observed that women’s flattery is not the same as that of men. The latter tends toward servility, the former is mingled with affection. The gracefully curved figure, the honeyed word, their very physical weakness give women’s flattery a local hue, a legitimate look. The age of the one being flattered doesn’t matter. A woman will always have a certain air of mother or sister for his—or even that of a nurse, another feminine position in which the most skillful of men will always lack a quid, a fluid, something.

  That was what I was thinking when Virgília broke out into a warm greeting for her old relative. She went to meet him at the door, talking and laughing, took his hat and cane, gave him her arm and led him to a chair, or to the chair, because in the house it was “Viegas’ chair,” a special piece of work, cozy, made for ill or aged people. She would go close the nearest window if there was a breeze or open it if it was hot, but carefully seeing to it that he wouldn’t get a draft.

  “So? You’re a little stronger today …”

  “Ha! I had a rotten night. I can’t shake off this hellish asthma.”

  And the man was puffing, gradually recovering from the fatigue of arriving and climbing the steps, not from the walk because he always came in a carriage. Beside him, a little to the front, Virgília would sit on a stool, her hands on the sick man’s knees. In the meantime the young master would come into the room without his usual leaping about, more discreet, meek, serious. Viegas was very fond of him.

  “Come here, young master,” he would say to him and with great effort would put his hand into his wide pocket, take out a pillbox, put one in his mouth and give another to the boy. Asthma pills. The boy said they tasted very good.

  This would be repeated with variations. Since Viegas liked to play checkers, Virgília would follow his desire, enduring it for a long spell as he moved the pieces with his weak, slow hand. At other times they would go out to stroll in the yard, with her offering him her arm, which he wouldn’t always accept, saying that he was solid and capable of walking a league. They would walk, sit down, walk again, talk about different things, sometimes about some family matter, sometimes about drawing-room gossip, sometimes, finally, about a house he was thinking of building for his own residence, a house of modern design because his was an ancient one, going back to the time of King John VI, like some that can still be seen today (I think) in the São Cristóvão district with their thick columns in front. He thought that the big house where he was living could be replaced and he’d already ordered a sketch from a well-known mason. Ah!, then indeed, Virgília would see what an old man of good taste was like.

  He spoke, as can be imagined, slowly and with difficulty, with pauses for gasping, which were uncomfortable for him and for others. From time to time he would have a coughing attack. Bent over, groaning, he would lift his handkerchief to his mouth and inspect it. When the attack had passed he would go back to the plans for the house, which would have this and that room, a terrace, a coach house, a thing of beauty.

  LXXXIX

  In Extremis

  “Tomorrow I’m going to spend the day at Viegas’,” she told me one time. “Poor thing! He hasn’t got anybody …” Viegas had been put to bed once and for all. His married daughter had fallen ill precisely at that time and couldn’t keep him company. Virgília would go there from time to time. I took advantage of the occasion to spend the whole day next to her. It was two in the afternoon when I got there. Viegas was coughing so hard that it made my chest burn. Between attacks he was haggling over the price of a house with a skinny fellow. The fellow was offering him thirty contos, Viegas demanded forty. The buyer kept insisting, like someone afraid of missing a train, but Viegas wouldn’t give in. First he refused the thirty contos, then two more, then three more, and finally fell into a severe attack that shut off his speech for fifteen minutes. The buyer was most solicitous to him, rearranging his pillows, offering him thirty-six contos.

  “Never!” the sick man groaned. He asked for a bundle of papers on his desk. Not having the strength to take off the rubber band that held the papers, he asked me to do it. I did. They were the accounts for the construction of the house: bills from the mason, the carpenter, the painter. Bills for the wallpaper in the parlor, the dining room, the bedrooms, the studies. Bills for the hardware, the cost of the lot. He was opening them one by one with a trembling hand and he asked me to read them and I read them.

  “See? One thousand two hundred, paper at one thousand two hundred a room. French hinges … Look, it’s a giveaway,” he concluded after the last bill was read.

  “Well, all right … but …”

  “Forty contos. I won’t give it to you for anything less. The interest alone … add up the interest …”

  He coughed out those words in gushes, syllable by syllable as if they were the crumbs of a crumbling pair of lungs. In their deep sockets his eyes rolled and flashed, reminding me of a night light. Under the sheet the bony outline of his body was sketched out, coming to points in two places, his knees and his feet. His yellowed, slack, wrinkled skin barely covered the skull of an expressionless face. A white cotton cap covered the cranium that had been shaved by time,

  “So?” the skinny fellow then said.

  I signaled him not to go on and he was silent for a few moments. The sick man stared at the ceiling, silent, gasping hard. Virgília turned pale, got up, went to the window. She sensed death and was afraid. I made an attempt to talk about other things. The skinny fellow told an anecdote but got onto the house again, raising his bid.

  “Thirty-eight contos,” he said.

  “Huh? …” the sick man grunted.

  The skinny fellow went over to the bed, took his hand and it felt cold. I went to the sick man, asked him if he felt like something, if he wanted a glass of wine.

  “No … no … for … fort … for … for …”

  He had a coughing attack and it was his last. Shortly thereafter he expired, to the great consternation of the skinny fellow, who confessed to me afterward that he was ready to offer forty contos. But it was too late.

  XC

  The Ancient Dialogue Between

  Adam and Cain

  Nothing. No remembrance in the will, not even, an asthma pill so that when it was all over he wouldn’t seem ungrateful or forgetful. Nothing. Virgília swallowed that bit of failure in anger and she told me with a certain caution, not because of the matter itself but because she’d mentioned it to her son, whom she knew I didn’t like very much or very little. I suggested that she shouldn’t give any more thought to such a thing. It was best to forget the deceased, an imbecile, a damned skinflint, and think about happy things. Our child, for example …

  There, I’ve revealed the deciphering of the mystery, that sweet mystery of a few weeks before when Virgília seemed a bit different from what she normally was. A child. A being made from my own being! That was my only thought from that moment on. The eyes of the world, the suspicions of her husband, the death of Viegas, nothing interested me at that time, neither political conflicts, nor revolutions, nor earthquakes, nor anything. I only thought about that anonymous embryo of obscure paternity and a secret voice told me: “It’s your child.” My child! And I would repeat those two words with a certain indefinable voluptuous feeling and I don’t know how many feelings of pride. I felt myself a man.

  The best thing was that we
would both converse, the embryo and I, talking about present and future things. The rascal loved me, he was a funny little rogue, giving me little pats on the face with his chubby little hands or then sketching out the shape of a lawyer’s robe, because he was going to be a lawyer and he would make a speech in the chamber of deputies. And his father would listen to him from a box, his eyes gleaming with tears. From lawyer he would go back to school again, tiny, slate and books under his arm, or then he would drop into his cradle and stand up again as a man. I sought in vain to fix the spirit in one age, one appearance. That embryo had my eyes, all of my forms and gestures. He suckled, he wrote, he waltzed, he was interminable in the limits of a quarter hour—baby and deputy, schoolboy and dandy. Sometimes, beside Virgília, I would forget about her and everything. Virgília would shake me, scold me for my silence. She said that I didn’t love her anymore at all. The truth is I was having a dialogue with the embryo. It was the ancient dialogue between Adam and Cain, a conversation without words, between life and life, mystery and mystery.

  XCI

  An Extraordinary Letter

  Around that time I was in receipt of an extraordinary letter accompanied by an object that was no less extraordinary. Here is what the letter said:

  My dear Brás Cubas,

  Sometime back on the Passeio Público I borrowed a watch from you. It gives me great satisfaction to return it to you with this letter. The difference is that it’s not the same watch but another, I won’t say better, but equal to the first. Que voulez-vous, monseigneur, as Figaro said, c’est la misère. Many things have happened since our encounter. I shall proceed to recount them in detail if you won’t slam the door on me. Know, then, that I’m not wearing those caduceus boots nor have I put on a famous frock coat whose flaps have been lost in the night of the ages. I’ve given up my step on the São Francisco stairs. Finally, I eat lunch.