A Chapter of Hats: Selected Stories

by Machado De Assis

  One day these profits began to dwindle. Runaway slaves no longer gave themselves up to Candido Neves as they had been doing. There were other, skilled hands at work. As the business was growing, more than one unemployed man got his act together, grabbed a rope, looked at the papers, copied advertisements and set out on the hunt. Even in the neighbourhood there was more than one rival. This meant that Candido Neves’s debts started to mount, with less of those timely or near-timely payments than in the early days. Life became a hard grind. They ate badly, and on borrowed money; they ate late. The landlord insisted on the rent.

  Clara didn’t even have time to mend her husband’s clothes, so great was the necessity to sew for money. Aunt Monica helped her niece, of course. When he came in every evening, you could see on his face that there was nothing in his pocket. He had his supper and went out again, looking for some runaway or other. Sometimes, though not often, he even got the wrong person, and grabbed a faithful slave going about his master’s business. Once, he caught a freedman; he was full of apologies, but he got a healthy drubbing from the man’s family.

  ‘That’s all we needed!’ Aunt Monica exclaimed when he’d come in and told the story of the mistake and its consequences. ‘Give it up, Candinho; look for another way of earning your living.’

  Candido truly did want to do something else, not because of this advice, but because he felt like a change of job; it would be a way of changing skin or identity. The trouble is that he couldn’t find any job to hand that he could learn in a hurry.

  Nature did its work; the foetus was growing, until it was heavy in the mother, and the birth was not far off. The eighth month came, a month of worries and necessities, though still less so than the ninth, which I’ll skip too. It’s best to come to the effects of all this. They couldn’t have been much nastier.

  ‘No, Aunt Monica!’ shouted Candinho, rejecting some advice which I find difficult to write down, though less difficult than it was for the father to hear it. He’d never do that!

  It was in the last week of the final month that Aunt Monica advised the couple to take the child when it was born to the Orphans’ Wheel for abandoned babies, set in the wall of a convent.3 Nothing could be harder to bear for two young parents awaiting their child, to kiss it, care for it, watch it laugh, grow, fatten, jump up and down … Put it where? What did she mean? Candinho stared wide-eyed at the aunt, and ended up thumping the dining table. The table, which was old and falling to pieces, nearly collapsed completely. Clara intervened:

  ‘Auntie doesn’t mean any harm, Candinho.’

  ‘Harm?’ Aunt Monica answered. ‘Harm or no harm, whatever, I’m telling you that’s the best thing you can do. You’re up to your eyes in debt; there’s hardly any meat or beans in the house. If some money doesn’t turn up, how can your family grow? There’ll be time later; later, when you’ve got a surer way of earning your living, the children that come will be received with the same affection as this one, or more. This one will be well brought up; it’ll lack for nothing. Is the Wheel some beach, or a rubbish dump? They don’t kill people there, no one dies unnecessarily; here, it’s certain to die if it doesn’t get fed enough. Oh well …’

  Aunt Monica ended the sentence with a shrug of her shoulders, turned her back and went to her bedroom. She had already hinted at this solution, but it was the first time she’d done it so openly and passionately – cruelly, if you prefer. Clara held her hand out to her husband, as if looking to him to buck her up; Candido Neves grimaced, and, under his breath, said the aunt was crazy. The couple’s show of affection was interrupted by someone knocking at the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked the husband.

  ‘It’s me.’

  It was the landlord, who was owed three months’ rent, and was coming in person to threaten his tenant with eviction. Candido begged him to come in.

  ‘There’s no need …’

  ‘Please do.’

  Their creditor came in and refused to sit down; he glanced at the furniture to see if any could be pawned; not much, he thought. He’d come to get the rent they owed, and could wait no longer; if he wasn’t paid in five days, he’d put them in the street. He’d not worked for the benefit of others. When you saw him you wouldn’t think he was a proprietor; but words made up for appearances, and poor Candinho shut up rather than answering back. Instead he gave a bow, promising and begging at the same time. The owner gave no ground.

  ‘Five days or out you go!’ he repeated as he went out, his hand on the latch.

  Candinho went off in another direction. When he was in a fix like this he never despaired; he always counted on some loan or other, how or where from he had no idea, but from somewhere. Then he cast his eye over the advertisements. He found several, some already old, but he’d been looking in vain for a long time. He spent some hours to no effect, and went back home. Four days later, he’d still found no way out; he tried to find backing, and went to see people friendly with the owner, but was only told to pack his bags.

  It was a tight situation. They couldn’t find a house, or anyone to give them temporary lodging; it was the street or nothing. They couldn’t count on the aunt. Aunt Monica managed to find a room for the three of them in the house of an old rich woman, who promised to lend her basement at the back of the stables, on one side of the courtyard. Moreover, she deliberately said nothing to the two of them, so that Candido Neves, in despair at this state of affairs, would start by putting the child on the Wheel and finding some secure and regular way of getting money; putting his life in order, in short. She listened to Clara’s complaints, without echoing them, it’s true – but she brought no comfort. The day they were forced to leave the house, she’d surprise them with news of the favour and they’d go and sleep better than they’d expected.

  That was what happened. Thrown out of the house, they went to the rooms they had been lent, and two days later the child was born. The father was very happy, and unhappy at the same time. Aunt Monica insisted on giving the child to the Wheel. ‘If you don’t want to take it, leave it to me; I’ll go to the Rua dos Barbonos.’ Candido Neves asked her not to, wait, and he’d take it himself. We might note that it was a boy, and that this was the sex both parents had wanted. They’d only given him a bit of milk; but, as it was raining that evening, the father agreed to take him to the Wheel the next night.

  That evening, he went through all his notes of runaway slaves. The rewards for the most part were just promises; some mentioned a sum, though nothing much. One, however, was for a hundred mil-reis. It was for a mulatta; there was information about her looks and her clothes. Candido Neves had searched for her without success, and had given up on it; he imagined some lover had taken her in. Now, however, looking again at the amount and the need he had for it gave Candido Neves the energy to make one last big effort. He went out in the morning to look for signs and ask questions round the Rua da Carioca and the nearby square, the Rua do Parto and the Rua da Ajuda, which was where she might be, according to the advertisement. He didn’t find her; only a chemist in the Rua da Ajuda remembered selling an ounce of some drug, three days before, to someone with those marks. Candido Neves talked as if he were the slave’s owner, and politely thanked him for the information. He had no better luck with other runaways whose reward was meagre, or less certain.

  He went back to the miserable lodgings they’d been lent. Aunt Monica had put some food together for the young mother, and had the child ready to be taken to the Wheel. The father, in spite of the agreement they’d reached, could hardly hide his pain at what he saw. He refused to eat what Aunt Monica had kept for him; he wasn’t hungry, he said, and it was true. He thought of a thousand ways whereby he could keep his son; but none was any good. He couldn’t even forget the shelter where he was living. He consulted his wife, who seemed resigned. Aunt Monica had described the child’s future upbringing: more and greater poverty – perhaps he would die in utter destitution. Candido Neves was forced to fulfil his promise; he asked his wife to give
their son the last milk he would drink from his mother. This done, the child went to sleep; his father picked him up, and went off in the direction of the Rua dos Barbonos.

  We can be sure he thought more than once of going back home with him; and that he wrapped him up warm, kissed him, and covered his face to keep the damp night air off. When he entered the Rua da Guarda Velha, Candido Neves began to slacken his pace.

  ‘I’ll give him up as late as I can,’ he murmured.

  But since the street was not infinite, or even long, eventually he’d come to its end; it was then that it occurred to him to go into one of the alleyways that linked it to the Rua da Ajuda, and he saw the figure of a woman on the other side of the street: it was the mulatta who had escaped. I won’t depict Candido Neves’s commotion here, because I can’t convey it with enough intensity. One adjective is enough; let’s say it was enormous. As the woman went down the street, he went too; a few steps away was the pharmacy where he’d got the information, as I’ve already recounted. He went in, found the pharmacist, asked him if he’d be so kind as to look after the child for a moment; he’d be back to get it, without fail.

  ‘But …’

  Candido Neves gave him no time to say anything; he hurried out, crossed the street, up to the point where he could catch the woman without creating a disturbance. At the end of the street, when she was turning to go down the Rua de São José, Candido Neves came close to her. It was her, it was the runaway mulatta.

  ‘Arminda!’ he shouted, using the name in the advertisement.

  Arminda turned round without suspecting ill intent. It was only when he’d pulled the piece of rope from his pocket and grabbed her arms that she realised and tried to flee. It was too late. Candido Neves, with his strong hands, tied her wrists and told her to get moving. The slave made as if to shout; it seems she even let out a louder cry than usual, but she soon realised that no one would come to free her – quite the contrary. She then asked him to free her, for the love of God.

  ‘I’m pregnant, master!’ she exclaimed. ‘If your worship has a child, I beg you for the love of him to let me go; I’ll be your slave, I’ll serve you for as long as you want. Please, please let me go, young master!’

  ‘Get moving!’ Candido Neves repeated.

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘Don’t keep me waiting; get moving!’

  There was a struggle at this point, for the slave, groaning, was dragging herself and her unborn child along. Passers-by, or people in shop doorways understood what was going on, and naturally didn’t get involved. Arminda alleged that her master was a very bad man, and would probably punish her with a whipping – which, in the state she was in, would hurt much more. No doubt of it, he’d have her whipped.

  ‘It’s your own fault. Who asked you to have a child and then flee?’ asked Candido Neves.

  He wasn’t in the best frame of mind, because of the child he’d left behind in the pharmacy, waiting for him. It’s also true that he wasn’t one for saying anything very profound. He dragged the slave along the Rua dos Ourives, towards the Rua da Alfândega, where her master lived. On the corner of this last street, the struggle got worse; the slave planted her feet against the wall, and pulled back with great effort, to no avail. All she did was make it take more time to get to the house than it would have done, and it was nearby. Finally, she arrived, dragged along, desperate, gasping for breath. She even got down on her knees, but in vain. The master was at home, and responded to the call and the commotion.

  ‘Here’s the runaway,’ said Candido Neves.

  ‘That’s her all right.’

  ‘Master!’

  ‘Come on, get in …’

  Arminda fell in the corridor. Then and there the master opened his wallet and took out the hundred mil-reis of the reward. Candido Neves put the two fifty mil-reis notes away, while the master was still telling the slave to get inside. On the floor, where she was lying, carried away by fear and pain, and after a short struggle, the slave had a miscarriage.

  The product of a few months’ growth came lifeless into the world, amid the groans of the mother, and the owner’s gestures of despair. Candido Neves saw the whole spectacle. He didn’t know what time it was. In any case, he had to run quickly to the Rua da Ajuda, and that was what he did, with no wish to know what the consequences of the disaster were.

  When he got there, he saw that the chemist was alone, without the child he’d handed over. He felt like strangling him. Fortunately, the chemist explained everything in time; the child was inside with his family, and both went inside. The father grabbed his son with the same degree of ferocity he’d used to grab the slave-woman a short while back, a different ferocity, of course – the ferocity of love. He thanked them hurriedly and awkwardly, and left in a tearing hurry, not to the Orphans’ Wheel, but to the borrowed room, with his son and the hundred mil-reis of the reward. Aunt Monica, when she heard the explanation, forgave the return of the child, since he brought the mil-reis with it. She did, it’s true, say some harsh things about the slave, because of the miscarriage, as well as the escape. Candido Neves, kissing his son amid genuine tears, blessed the escape and was unconcerned about the miscarriage.

  ‘Not all children make it,’ said his beating heart.

  Translator’s Notes

  Translator’s Introduction

  1 Dead Souls is discussed at length in one of Machado’s newspaper columns, and it is almost certain that the ‘Diary of a Madman’ provided vital elements for the plot of Philosopher or Dog? This is less surprising than one might think – Mérimée admired Gogol, and wrote about him in terms which would have attracted Machado, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, which was widely read in Brazil as elsewhere.

  2 In my comments on this story, I am indebted to José Miguel Wisnik’s wonderful article, ‘Machado maxixe’, in Sem receita (São Paulo: Publifolha, 2004), pp. 15–105.

  The Mirror: A Sketch for a New Theory of the Human Soul

  1 Luís de Camões (c. 1524–80), the great Portuguese poet and author of the national epic, The Lusiads, is said to have uttered these words on his deathbed. In 1580, the Spanish king, Philip II, ascended the Portuguese throne, and Portugal ceased to be independent until 1640.

  2 This institution, originally founded in 1831 as an instrument of social control by the landed oligarchy, had by 1880 become a largely decorative affair.

  3 King João of Portugal fled to Brazil, escorted by the British fleet, in 1808, and Rio de Janeiro became the temporary capital of the Portuguese Empire. The transformation involved eventually led to the colony’s becoming an independent empire, with King João’s son Pedro as the first emperor.

  4 From ‘The Old Clock on the Stairs’ (1845).

  5 A phrase from ‘Bluebeard’, one of the stories collected by Charles Perrault in Mother Goose Stories (1697). Imprisoned by Bluebeard, the heroine anxiously asks her sister if her brothers are coming to save her.

  6 Tomás Antônio Gonzaga (1744–1810), the most famous lyric poet to have written in Brazil in the colonial period.

  An Alexandrian Tale

  1 Herophilus (c. 335 BC–c. 280 BC) is a historical figure, reputed to have been the first to carry out autopsies. The activities attributed to him here have a basis in historical accounts.

  A Singular Occurrence

  1 A now forgotten one-act play, Je dîne chez ma mère (1855), by Lambert Thiboust and Adrien Lacourcelle.

  2 A phrase (‘la nostalgie de la boue’) from a play by Emile Augier, Le mariage d’Olympe (1855), written to counter the view of the reformed prostitute in The Lady of the Camellias.

  A Chapter of Hats

  1 Literally, The Dark-Skinned Girl, by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo (1844). A slight, sentimental romance, it remained popular well into the twentieth century.

  2 A Catholic novelist, born Pauline de La Ferronays, and married to an English diplomat, the Hon. Augustus Craven. Le mot de I’énigme (1874) describes a virtuous woman who, though given every justification and incenti
ve to commit adultery, refuses to do so. Madame Craven’s novels were popular at this time, and were among Queen Victoria’s favourite reading.

  3 The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms (1881).

  4 By Giacomo Meyerbeer (1836). It was one of the most spectacular operas of the nineteenth century, and one of the most popular.

  5 The Cassino was an upper-class ballroom.

  Evolution

  1 ‘One misfortune leads to another.’

  2 An annually published guide of commercial establishments, official institutions, etc., in Rio de Janeiro.

  A Schoolboy’s Story

  1 The Regency began with the abdication of Emperor Pedro I in 1831. It was a period of political unrest, which the premature majority of Pedro II (he was only fifteen) in 1840 largely succeeded in putting an end to.

  2 After the Portuguese court’s flight to Rio in 1808, King João stayed in Brazil until 1821.

  3 An unidentified popular tune: the literal translation is ‘A rat in a frock-coat’.

  Dona Paula

  1 Then a semi-rural retreat in the steep hills surrounding the city of Rio.

  2 The 1850s, a boom period in Rio. Stoltz was the most famous opera singer of the time; the Marquis of Paranà was the leader of the so-called ‘Conciliation’ ministry, which included members of both political parties.

  The Diplomat

  1 Emperor Pedro II’s birthday.

  2 A public garden on Guanabara bay, near the centre of the city.

  3 In 1865.

  The Hidden Cause

  1 Capoeira is a kind of fighting without weapons, originally developed by the slaves as a means of defence and attack, in which all depends on skilful use of arms and legs. In the nineteenth century gangs of practitioners, but these ones often armed, roamed the streets of Rio and constituted a serious public nuisance. They were finally stamped out at the beginning of the 1890s as part of the drive to ‘civilise’ the city and make it attractive to foreign immigrants. In more recent times, capoeira has become a popular form of martial art, in Brazil and abroad.