Quincas Borba (Library of Latin America) (11 page)

“He didn’t see anything,” Rubião thought.

And then, merrily:

“It could be, but marriages take place in Minas, too. And there’s no lack of priests there.”

“Father Mendes is lacking,” the major put in, laughing.

Rubião smiled weakly, not knowing whether the major’s words were innocent or malicious. The latter was the one who took up the reins of the conversation and steered it onto other matters: the weather, the city, the cabinet, the war and Marshal López.
*
And just note the contrast in the occasion. That torrential rain, heavier than the one at the beginning, was like a ray of sunshine for our Rubião. Behold his soul flapping the dust off its wings to the heat of the major’s endless discourse, injecting a small word here and there if he could and always nodding with applause. And he was thinking once more, “No, he hadn’t seen anything.”

“Papa! Papa, are you there?” a voice said at the door to the garden.

It was Dona Tonica. She’d come to fetch him so they could leave. Tea was on the table, it was true, but she couldn’t stay any longer; she had a headache, she told her father in a low voice. Then she held out her fingers to Rubião. The latter asked her to wait just a few minutes more, the distinguished major …

“You’re wasting your time,” the major interrupted. “She’s the one who governs me.”

Rubião offered him his hospitality again. He even demanded that they set a date that very week, but the major was quick to say that he couldn’t promise a specific day. He would come as soon as it was possible. His life was quite busy. He had duties at the arsenal, a lot of them, and besides that…

“Papa! Let’s go!”

“I’m coming. See? I can’t stop and chat for even a minute. Did you say goodbye already? Where’s my hat?”

* Francisco Solano Lopez (1826–1870), dictator of Paraguay during the 1865-1870 war with Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. [Ed.]

O
n the way down Dona Tonica went along listening to the remainder of her father’s discourse as he changed subjects without changing style—diffuse and digressive. She was listening without understanding. She went along all wrapped up in herself, absorbed, putting the night through the mill again, recomposing the looks between Sofia and Rubião.

They reached their home on the Rua do Senado. The father went to bed, but the daughter didn’t lie down right away, sitting up in a small chair beside her dressing table, where she had an image of the Virgin. She wasn’t carrying any ideas of peace and innocence. Without having known love, she knew what adultery was, and the persona of Sofia seemed rotten to her. She saw a monster in her now, half–human, half–snake, and she felt that she hated her, that she was capable of getting her revenge by telling her husband everything.

“I’ll tell him everything,” she was thinking, “either orally or in a letter… No, not a letter. I’ll tell him everything face–to–face one day.”

And imagining the dialogue, she foresaw the man’s surprise, then his anger, then his curses, the harsh words that he would address to his wife: miserable wretch, unworthy, vile woman … All those names sounded good to the ears of her desire. She was able to bring out her own rage with them. She could only bring her down that way, placing her beneath her husband’s feet, since she couldn’t do it herself… Vile, unworthy, miserable woman …

That explosion of inner rage lasted for a long time—close to twenty minutes. But her soul grew tired, and she became herself again. Her imagination couldn’t do anything further, and the reality around her caught her sight. She looked about, looked at her old maid’s bedroom, artistically arranged—that ingenious art which turns cotton into silk and an old swatch into a ribbon, which decorates, arranges, embellishes the nakedness of things as much as possible, adorns sad walls, beautifies the few modest pieces. And everything there seemed made to receive a loving bridegroom.

Where did I read that an ancient tradition made a virgin in Israel wait for divine conception during a certain night of the year? Wherever it was, let’s compare her to this other one, who differs from the first only in that she doesn’t have one fixed night but all of them, all, all... The wind whistling outside never brought her the hoped–for male, nor did maiden dawn tell her the spot on earth where he lived. It was only waiting, waiting…

Now, with her imagination and resentment soothed, she looks and looks again at her lonely bedroom. She remembers her friends from school and family, the closest ones, all married. The last of them married a naval officer at the age of thirty, and that was what made the hopes of her unmarried friend bloom again. She wasn’t asking for so much because a cadet’s uniform had been the first thing to seduce her eyes at the age of fifteen … Where did they go? But that was five years ago. She was thirtynine and would soon be forty. An old maid of forty. Dona Tonica shuddered. She kept on looking, remembering everything. She stood up suddenly, turned around twice, and threw herself onto the bed weeping …

Y
ou mustn’t believe that the pain here was more real than the anger. By themselves they were equal; the effects were what was different. Anger didn’t lead anywhere. Humiliation dissolved into legitimate tears. And, nonetheless, that lady still had an urge to strangle Sofia, to trample her, tear out her heart in pieces, telling her to her face the cruel names she’d attributed to her husband … All of it was imagined! Believe me, there are tyrants by intention. Who knows? In that lady’s soul there was a slight touch of Caligula …

“w
hile one is weeping, the other one laughs. It’s the law of the world, my fine fellow, it’s universal perfection. Nothing but weeping would be monotonous, nothing but laughter would be wearisome. But a proper distribution of tears and polkas, sobs and sarabands ends up by giving the soul of the world the necessary variety, and it becomes the balance of life.

The other one that’s laughing is Rubião’s soul. Listen to the merry, bright tune with which it goes down the hill, saying the most intimate things to the stars, a kind of rhapsody made of a language that no one ever gave an alphabet to because it’s impossible to find a sign to convey the words. Down below the deserted streets seemed full of people to him, the silence a tumult, and leaning out of all the windows were the figures of women, pretty faces and thick eyebrows, all Sofias and one single Sofia. Over and over Rubião thinks he was rash, indiscreet; he remembers that business in the garden, the resistance, the young woman’s annoyance, and he begins to repent. Then he has chills, is terrified by the thought that the door might be slammed in his face and relations broken off completely. All because he’d got ahead of things. Yes, he should have waited. It wasn’t the right occasion. Visitors, all the lights, what kind of a notion was it to talk about love, carelessly, shamelessly … ? He thought she was right. It would have been proper for her to turn him away at once.

“I was crazy!” he said aloud.

He wasn’t thinking about the dinner, which was sumptuous, or the wines, which were abundant, or the very electricity of a room in which there were lovely ladies. He was thinking that he’d been crazy, absolutely crazy.

Immediately after, the same soul that was being accused defended itself. It seemed to him that Sofia had encouraged him to do what he did. Her frequent looks, then stares, her manners, her compliments, the honor of having her seat him next to her at the dinner table, paying attention only to him, telling him pleasant things in a melodious voice, what could all that be if
not encouragement and solicitation? And the good soul explained the lady’s annoyance in the garden afterwards: it was the first time she’d heard such words outside her conjugal relationship, and close to all the people there. She naturally must have trembled a lot, too. He’d opened up so much that he brought it all out. No gradations. He should have gone step by step and never taken her hands with so much force that he annoyed her. In sum, he found himself to have been rude. The fear that the door would be closed on him came back. Then he returned to the consolation of hope, to the analysis of the young lady’s actions, to the invention of Father Mendes, a lie of complicity. He also thought of her husband’s esteem … He shuddered there … Her husband’s esteem gave him remorse. Not only did he have his trust, but added to that was a certain monetary debt, some three notes Rubião had taken on for him.

“I can’t, I mustn’t,” he was saying to himself. “It’s not right to go on. It’s also true that I didn’t start anything, really. She’s the one who’s been challenging me for a long time. So let her challenge, then! Yes, I’ve got to resist her . . . I lent the money almost without being asked because he needed a lot and I owed him favors. The notes, yes, the notes he asked me to sign, but he didn’t ask for anything else. I know that he’s honest, that he works hard. It’s that devil of a woman who did the wrong thing in coming between us with her beautiful eyes and her figure … What a figure, God in heaven! Just tonight it was divine. When her arm brushed mine at the table, in spite of my sleeve …”

Confused, uncertain, he went along thinking about the loyalty he owed his friend, but his conscience was split in two, one part accusing the other, the other explaining itself, both disoriented …

He found himself on the Praça da Constituição. He’d been wandering aimlessly. He thought about going to the theater, but it was too late. Then he headed for the Largo de São Francisco to get a cab and go to Botafogo. He found three of them, whose owners immediately came over to offer their services, mainly praising their horses: a good horse—an excellent animal.

T
he sound of the voices and the vehicles woke up a beggar who was sleeping on the steps of the church. The poor devil sat up, saw what it was, then lay down again, but awake, on his back, his eyes fixed on the sky. The sky was staring back at him, as impassive as he, but without the beggar’s wrinkles or his worn shoes or his tatters, a clear, starry, calm, Olympian sky, like the one that presided over Jacob’s wedding and Lucretia’s suicide. They looked at each other in a kind of judgment game, with a certain air of rival and tranquil majesties, without haughtiness or wretchedness, as if the beggar were saying to the sky:

“Well, you won’t be falling on me.”

And the sky:

“And you won’t be climbing up me.”

R
ubião was not a philosopher. The comparison he made between his cares and those of the ragamuffin only brought a touch of envy to his soul. “That beggar isn’t thinking about anything,” he said to himself. “In just a little while he’ll be asleep, while I...”

“Get in, master, it’s a fine animal. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

The two other coachmen were telling him the same thing with almost the same words.

“Come over here, master, and you’ll see …”

“Look at my little horse ...”

“Please. It’s a thirteen–minute ride. You’ll be home in thirteen minutes.”

Rubião, still hesitating, got into the cab that was closest at hand and told the driver to go to Botafogo. Then he remembered
an old forgotten episode, or it was the episode that unconsciously gave him the solution. One thing or the other. Rubião was directing his thoughts in an attempt to get away from the night’s feelings.

It had been a long time ago. He was still quite young, and poor. One day, at eight o’clock in the morning, he left the house, which was on the Rua do Cano (now Sete de Setembro), went onto the Largo de São Francisco de Paula, and from there went down the Rua do Ouvidor. He worried as he walked. He was living at the home of a friend who was beginning to treat him like a three–day guest, and he’d already been a four–week one. They say that the three–day ones stink. Dead people stink a lot earlier than that, at least in hot climates like this … What was certain was that our Rubião, simple as the good native of Minas that he was but as wary as someone from São Paulo, went along full of worries, thinking about leaving as soon as possible. It can be believed that from the moment he left the house, went out on to the Largo de Sao Francisco and down the Rua do Ouvidor to the Rua dos Ourives, he hadn’t seen or heard a single thing.

On the corner of the Rua dos Ourives his way was blocked by a crowd of people and a strange procession. A man in judicial robes was reading aloud from a sheet of paper: the sentence. In addition to the judge there were a priest, soldiers, and onlookers. But the principal figures were two black men. One of them, of medium height, thin, had his hands tied, his eyes cast down, bronze–colored skin, and a rope tied around his neck. The end of the rope was in the hands of another black man. This one was looking straight ahead, and his color was uniformly jet black. He was bearing the curiosity of the crowd with poise. When the paper had been read the procession continued on along the Rua dos Ourives. It was coming from the jail and was on its way to the Largo do Moura.

Rubião was naturally affected by it. For a few seconds he was the way he’d been just now about the choice of a cab. Inner forces were offering him their horses, some for him to turn back or to go about his business—others to go along and watch the black man be hanged. It was a rare opportunity to see a hanging! Sir, in twenty minutes it’s all over!—Sir, let’s go and take care of something else! And our man closed his eyes and let himself
go as chance would have it. Chance, instead of leading him down the Rua do Ouvidor to the Rua da Quitanda, turned his path along the Rua dos Ourives behind the procession. He wasn’t going along to see the execution, he thought, it was only to watch the prisoner’s walk, the face of the executioner, the ritual… He didn’t want to see the execution. Every so often everything came to a halt, people appeared in doors and windows, and the court officer read the sentence again. Then the procession continued moving with the same solemnity. The onlookers were discussing the crime—a murder in Mata–Porcos. The murderer was known to be a cold–blooded, violent man. The news of those qualities made Rubião feel better. It gave him the strength to look the prisoner in the face without melting into pity. It was no longer the face of crime. Fright hid perversity. Without noticing, he arrived at the execution square. There were quite a few people there already. Along with those arriving they formed a compact mass.