Quincas Borba (Library of Latin America) (26 page)

“Me, naturally?”

“From the capital and with big eyes. Look, I’m not fooling. She’s a country girl of the highest class. I’ve got a picture of her here.”

Dona Fernanda opened the album and showed him a picture of the person.

“She’s not ugly,” he agreed.

“Is that all?”

“All right, she’s pretty.”

“Where can you find something to top that, cousin?”

Carlos Maria smiled without answering. He didn’t like the expression. He tried to change the subject, but Dona Fernanda went back to his marrying her friend from Pelotas. She stared at the picture and colored it in with words, saying what her eyes were like, her hair, her skin. And then she gave him a short biography of Sonora. That was her pretty name. The priest who’d baptized her was hesitant about bestowing it in spite of the prestige and influence of the child’s father, a wealthy rancher, but he gave in finally, stating that a person’s virtues could carry the name to the roster of the saints.

“Do you think she’s going to join the roster of the saints?” Carlos Maria asked.

“If she marries you, I do.”

“That doesn’t explain anything. If she married the devil, the same thing could happen and with even more certainty because of the martyrdom involved. Saint Sonora. It’s not a bad name, it sounds nice in that setting. Saint Sonora... In any case, cousin …”

“You’re sounding like a Jew, be quiet,” she interrupted. “So, are you refusing my country girl?” she went on, putting the album away.

“I’m not refusing. Just let me go on with my celibacy, which is halfway to heaven.”

Dona Fernanda let out a loud laugh.

“Merciful God! Do you really think you’re going to heaven?”

“I’ve been there already for twenty minutes now. Because isn’t it this room, peaceful, cool, so far away from the people out there? Here are the two of us, chatting away without hearing any blaspheming, without suffering the presence of any crippled, tubercular, scrofulous, unbearable spirits, hell itself, in a word. This is heaven—or a piece of it. Since we fit into it, it’s as good as the infinite. We’re talking about Saint Sonora, Saint Carlos Maria, Saint Fernanda, who, in contrast to Saint Gonçalo, has become a matchmaker for young girls. Where can another heaven like this be found?”

“In Pelotas.”

“Pelotas is so far away!” he sighed, stretching out his legs and looking at the chandelier.

“All right. This is only the first attack. I’ll make others until you end up wanting to.”

Carlos Maria smiled and looked at the tassels hanging from the silk sash around her waist, tied with a loose bow, either to observe the tassels or to take note of the elegance of her body. He could easily see, once again, that his cousin was a beautiful creature. Her shape attracted his eyes—respect turned them away. But it wasn’t just friendship that made him tarry there a little and that brought him to that house again. Carlos Maria generally loved the conversation of women as much as he detested that of men. He found men declamatory, coarse, tiring, boring, trivial, crude, banal. Women, on the other hand, were neither coarse nor declamatory nor boring. Their vanity was fitting, and a few defects did them no harm. Furthermore, they had the grace and gentleness of their sex. Even from the most insignificant of them, he thought, there was always something to be had. When he found them insipid or stupid, he thought to himself that they were unfinished men.

In the meantime, the relationship between Dona Fernanda and Maria Benedita was becoming closer. The latter, in addition to being bashful, was rather sad at the time. It was precisely the disparity of character and situation that had brought them together. Dona Fernanda possessed the quality of sympathy on a large scale. She loved the weak and the sad from her need to make them happy and courageous. She had many acts of mercy and dedication to her credit.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked her little friend one day. “You almost never laugh, and you always go around with frightened eyes, thinking …”

Maria Benedita replied that there was nothing the matter, that it was her manner. And she smiled as she said it out of simple acquiescence. She alluded to the loss of her mother as one of the causes of her melancholy. Dona Fernanda began to take her everywhere, having her to dinner, keeping a seat in her box for her if she went to the theater, and, thanks to that and to her genius for revelry, she shook out of the girl’s soul the hateful ravens that had been flapping their wings there. Habit and affection
quickly made them intimate friends. Nevertheless, Maria Benedita continued to be silent about her mystery.

“Whatever the mystery is,” Dona Fernanda thought one day, “I think the best thing would be to get her married to Carlos Maria. Sonora can wait.”

“You need to get married, Maria Benedita,” she told her two days later in the morning at her country house in Mata-Cavalos. Maria Benedita had gone to the theater with her and had spent the night there. “I don’t want any shuddering. You need to get married, and you’re going to get married … I’ve been meaning to tell you that ever since the day before yesterday, but things like that, when they’re talked about in the salon or on the street, don’t have the force they need. Here in the country place it’s different. And if you feel like climbing, come up the hill a bit with me, then it’ll be just right. Shall we go?”

“It’s getting hot…”

“It’s more poetic than that, child. Oh, you bloodless Rio people! You’ve got water in your veins. Let’s stay here on this bench, then. Sit down. That’s it. I’ll stay here next to you, ready for anything. Marry or die. Don’t answer me. You’re not happy,” she went on, changing her tone. “No matter what you do, I can see that you’re going through life without any pleasure. Come on, tell me frankly, are you interested in anyone? If you are, confess it, and I’ll have that person sent for.”

“I’m not.”

“No? Well, that’s exactly what’s needed. You don’t have to engrave it on your heart. I know a good candidate …”

Maria Benedita turned completely around, facing her, her lips half open and her eyes wide. She seemed fearful of the proposal or anxious for it. Dona Fernanda, without sensing her friend’s real state of mind, took her hand first and asked her to tell her everything. She must be in love with someone, it was clear, she saw it in her eyes. She had to get her to confess it, she’d insist, beg—she’d hint at it if that was necessary. Maria Benedita’s hand had grown cold, her eyes were piercing the ground, and for a few moments neither said anything.

“Come on, say something,” Dona Fernanda repeated.

“I’ve nothing to say.”

Dona Fernanda put on an expression of disbelief. She hugged
her tighter, put her arms around her waist, and drew her close to her. She told her in a very soft voice, into her ear, that it was as if she were her own mother. And she kissed her on the cheek, on the ear, on the back of the neck. She laid the girl’s head on her shoulder, stroked it with her other hand. Everything, everything, she wanted to know everything. If her lover was on the moon, she’d send for him on the moon—wherever he was—except in a cemetery, but if he was in a cemetery, she’d give her a much better one who’d make her forget the first in a few days. Maria Benedita listened, all agitated, throbbing, not knowing how to escape—ready to talk and falling silent just in time, as if defending her chastity. She wasn’t denying, she wasn’t confessing—but she wasn’t smiling either and was trembling with emotion. It was easy to guess half the truth at least.

“But I’m your friend, am I not? Don’t you trust me? Pretend I’m your mother.”

Maria Benedita couldn’t resist much longer. She’d used up all her strength and she felt the need to reveal something. Dona Fernanda listened, touched. The sunlight was already beginning to lick the ground around the bench; it wouldn’t be long in climbing up their shoes, the hems of their skirts to their knees, but neither noticed it. Love had them absorbed. The revelation of one was like a strange rapture for the other. It was a passion that wasn’t known, wasn’t shared, wasn’t guessed. A passion that was losing its nature and its type and changing into pure adoration. At first, when she saw the beloved person, she would go through two very different states—one that she couldn’t define: excitement, foolishness, throbbing of her heart, almost a swoon. The second was one of contemplation. Now it was almost all the last. She’d wept a lot to herself, lost nights and nights of longings. She’d paid dearly for the ambition of her hopes. But she would never lose the certainty that he was superior to all other men, a divine being who, even if he didn’t notice her, would always be worthy of adoration.

“Well,” said Dona Fernanda when her friend finally fell silent. “Let’s get down to the essential thing, which is not idle grieving. No, my dear, this business of adoring a man who doesn’t notice you is all poetry. Get rid of the poetry. Just remember that you’re the only loser in the matter because he’ll marry someone else,
the years will pass, passion will ride off in their saddlebags, and one day, when you least suspect, you’ll wake up without love and without a husband. So who is this savage?”

“That I won’t say,” Maria Benedita answered, getting up from the bench.

“Well, don’t,” Dona Fernanda put in, taking her wrists and making her sit on her lap. “The main thing is to get married. If it can’t be to this one, it will be to someone else.”

“No, I’m not getting married.”

“Only to him?”

“I don’t know whether to him,” Maria Benedita answered after a few moments. “I love him the way I love God in heaven.”

“Holy Virgin! Such blasphemy! Double blasphemy, child. The first is that you mustn’t love anyone as much as God, the second is that a husband, even if he’s a bad one, is always better than the best of dreams.”

“A
husband, even if he’s a bad one, is always better than the best of dreams.” The maxim wasn’t idealistic. Maria Benedita protested against it, because wasn’t it better to dream than to weep? Dreams end or change, while husbands can live a long time. “You said that,” Maria Benedita concluded, “because God picked out an angel for you … Look, there he comes.”

“Let’s leave it that there must be an angel for you, too. I know a magnificent one for you. Angels always seek me out.”

Teófilo, Dona Fernanda’s husband, had seen them from a distance and came over to join them. He was carrying a crumpled newspaper in his hand. He didn’t greet their guest, but went straight to his wife.

“Do you know what they’ve done to me, Nana?” he said with clenched teeth. “My speech on the fifth came out today. Look at this sentence. I said:
When in doubt, abstain, as the wise man
advises
. And they put:
When in debt, abstain …
It’s intolerable! You should know that it was precisely about an outstanding debt by the navy, and I claimed in my speech that there were too many expenses. So it can look like a crude remark on my part. It’s as if I were advising nonpayment. In any case, it’s an absurdity.”

“But didn’t you read the proofs?”

“I read them, but the author’s the one least qualified to read them well.
When in debt, abstain”
he continued, with his eyes on the newspaper. And snorting: “That can only…”

He was dejected. He was a man of talent, seriousness, and hard work, but at that moment all great acts, the most daunting problems, the most decisive battles, the most profound revolutions, the sun and the moon and the constellations, and all the beasts of the field and all human generations were not as important as the substitution of an
e
for an
ou
. Maria Benedita looked at him, not understanding. She thought she was suffering from the greatest sadness, but here was one just as great as hers and much more painful. In that way the gnawing melancholy of a poor girl was on the same level as a typographical error. Teófilo, who only then noticed her, held out his hand. It was cold. No one can fake cold hands. He must really have been suffering. Moments later he flung the paper to the ground with a violent gesture and started off.

“But Teófilo, you can correct it tomorrow,” Dona Fernanda told him, getting up.

Teófilo, without turning around, shrugged his shoulders, hopeless. His wife ran to him. Her friend was still bewildered. She remained alone on the bench, free of them now, receiving the full force of the sun, which didn’t make love or speeches. Dona Fernanda took her husband into a study and consoled him for that blow with kisses. At lunch he was already smiling, even though with a pale smile. His wife, to get his mind off his worry, brought up her plan to get Maria Benedita married, and it would have to be a deputy, if there was some bachelor in the chamber, no matter what his politics. He could be in the government, in the opposition, in both, or in nothing—as long as he was a husband. She made a few reflections on that theme, lively, jolly ones, which filled time and were aimed at doing away with the memory of the switched letters. Merciful creature! Teófilo, understanding
his wife, was becoming happy, and he agreed to the suitability of getting Maria Benedita married.

“The worst part,” his wife put in, looking at her friend, “is that she’s in love with someone whose name she refuses to tell.”

“She doesn’t have to,” her husband said, wiping his lips, “it’s obvious that she’s in love with your cousin.”

T
he following Sunday Dona Fernanda went to the church of Santo Antonio dos Pobres. When mass was over, amidst the bustle of the faithful greeting each other and bowing to the altar, whom should she see but her cousin rise up, erect, cheerful, somberly garbed, holding out his hand to her.

“Did you come to mass, too?” she asked, surprised.

“I did.”

“Do you come regularly?”

“Not regularly, but often.”

“Frankly, I didn’t expect to see such devotion in you. Men are generally a bunch of heretics. Teófilo never sets foot in a church except to baptize his children. Are you all that religious, then?”

“I can’t answer that with certainty, but I have a horror of banality, which is what speaking ill of religion is, that’s all. I came to mass, I didn’t come to confession. Now I’m going to see you home, and if you invite me to lunch I’ll have lunch with you people. Unless you want to have lunch with me. I’m on this street, as you know.”