DOM CASMURRO E-Book

Machado de Assis

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 400

Beschreibung

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839 – 1908) was a writer considered by many critics, scholars, writers, and readers to be the greatest name in Brazilian literature. Machado de Assis left behind a very extensive body of work, the fruit of half a century of literary labor, including plays, poetry, prefaces, critiques, speeches, more than two hundred short stories, and several novels. "Dom Casmurro" is one of the most well-known, translated, and studied works of Machado de Assis, and it certainly attests to the technical prowess of its author and his ability to handle a plot that could be considered tragic with unparalleled irony and detachment. The work, if read only as a bare plot, could be just one of the many "adultery novels" that populate 19th-century literature. However, once transformed into a novel by Machado de Assis, it becomes an exercise in narrative technique that challenges and provokes the reader. In this novel, the reader can witness the talent of this exceptional writer, one of the greatest of all time.

Leseprobe

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

DOM CASMURRO

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

DOM CASMURRO

INTRODUCTION

Machado de Assis

1839 - 1908

Joaquín Machado de Assis was born on June 21, 1839, in Morro do Livramento, one of the hills surrounding Rio de Janeiro, which is now a favela area extremely dangerous and unpleasant to walk through due to the paths of misery and violence.

His father, a mulatto and descendant of slaves, was a house painter. His mother, of Portuguese origin, was born on an island in the Azores. From these backgrounds, critics have constructed a story in which this humble, dark-skinned boy managed to achieve a dizzying career that elevated him, thanks to continuous struggles and enormous patience in the face of humiliations, to the highest peaks of Brazilian culture and society. And if epilepsy is added as another of his constitutive traits, the image of the genius forging his destiny by himself is almost perfect. The perfect self-made man. However, as the Brazilian critic Antonio Candido points out, what should be highlighted is the ease with which he rose and deserved the highest recognitions.

And he was not an exception: during the colonial empire, black and poor men not only received Portuguese titles of nobility but also held high positions in the colonial organization. According to Candido, Machado's life was a peaceful one: typographer, journalist, modest office worker, high-ranking official, founder and first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and, from the age of fifty, "the most important writer in the country, and an object of as much reverence and general admiration as no other Brazilian novelist or poet was in life, neither before nor after."

Machado de Assis' literary career began in 1861, at the age of twenty-two, with the publication of an apparent translation and a dramatic fantasy. Before that, at the age of fifteen, he had presented a poem at the literary gathering of the bookseller and publisher Francisco de Paula Brito that no one believed was written by him. Since then, he frequented the most important literati in Brazil and contributed to the cenacle's magazine, the Marmota Fluminense. Generally, the first period of his work is considered to be from the age of fifteen or twenty-two until 1880, when the serialization of "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas" began, marking the start of the journey for who would become Brazil's greatest writer, the most important Latin American writer of the 19th century, and a writer of worldwide relevance who, as Susan Sontag maintains, has not deserved that recognition because he was Brazilian and spent his entire life in Rio de Janeiro.

Machado de Assis left behind a very extensive body of work, the fruit of half a century of literary labor, including plays, poetry, prefaces, critiques, speeches, more than two hundred short stories, and several novels. Among the short stories, there are more than a dozen that are among the best written in Portuguese; and among the novels, three reach unknown heights for literature written in Spanish during the 19th century: "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas" (1880), "Quincas Borba" (1891), and "Dom Casmurro," considered by some critics as his masterpiece. Machado de Assis's life was indeed calm. He always had writers and people of good social and economic standing supporting him. Despite family opposition to his marriage to a young Portuguese woman, the sister of poet Francisco Xavier de Novais, the marriage proved successful, and his wife played a fundamental role in his life and work. Furthermore, he was known to be an excessively formal man, fond of maintaining distances, conventional, with a very protected private life. It is said that the only thing missing in his life was a child.

Despite being unanimously considered one of the great writers of the 19th century, outside Brazil, Machado de Assis' work does not have the dissemination and recognition it deserves, particularly in Hispanic countries.

In "Genius," one of his latest books, the prestigious American literary critic Harold Bloom selected what he calls his "mosaic of a hundred exemplary creative minds, a hundred genuine geniuses." Among them appears Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, alongside Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov, Victor Hugo, Stendhal, Henry James, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, José Maria Eça de Queiroz, among other 19th-century writers. Surely, very few would dispute the inclusion of the Brazilian writer in that select list. On the contrary, they will agree that the quality and originality of his work place him on the same level as those authors.

However, one must agree with Susan Sontag that it is astonishing that a writer of such magnitude still does not occupy the place he deserves. In his case, it cannot be said that he is forgotten, for that would imply that he once enjoyed a period of recognition and dissemination. Rather, it is a matter of little knowledge of his work outside his country, despite the reasons being difficult to explain. Sontag herself, however, offers one: "Surely Machado would have been better known if he had not been Brazilian and spent his entire life in Rio de Janeiro; if he had been, say, an Italian or a Russian. Or even a Portuguese." She considers it even more remarkable that he is little recognized and read in the rest of Latin America, "as if it were still hard to digest the fact that the greatest author to emerge from it wrote in Portuguese instead of Spanish." Machado de Assis died on September 19, 1908.

Now, in the 21st century, when technology allows faster and cheaper access to international works, the Spanish-speaking reader has the opportunity to learn a bit about this extraordinary Brazilian writer. In this edition, one of his most outstanding works will be presented.

About the work

"Dom Casmurro" is one of the most well-known, translated, and studied works of Machado de Assis. It certainly attests to the author's technical prowess and his ability to handle a plot that could be considered tragic with a comedic irony and detachment that almost turn it into a farce.

If read only as a bare plot, the work could be just one of the many "adultery novels" that populate 19th-century literature. However, once transformed into a novel by Machado de Assis, it becomes an exercise in narrative technique that challenges and provokes the reader. The narrator and protagonist of the novel, Bento (also known as Bentinho, also known as Dom Casmurro), tells us the story of his life and, above all, his loves with Capitu, from childhood to adulthood, until he discovers her supposed infidelity, embodied in their only son, Ezequiel.

But Dom Casmurro, as a narrator, has two characteristics that condition the entire novel: first, he is fully aware that he is writing a novel (and he intrudes in the process with comments about the rhythm, order, or truthfulness of the narration); and second, he is a perfect example of what Wayne Booth called an unreliable narrator, as his almost pathological jealousy — he identifies himself with Othello — his manipulable personality, and his excessive imagination force the reader to question everything narrated, distinguishing the "facts" from the "interpretations" of the narrator.

Additionally, throughout the novel, a comic and light surface is maintained, which, as mentioned before, prevents a tragic reading: very short chapters (sometimes just one or two paragraphs) alternate with chapters of several pages; ridiculous characters—including, notably, Dom Casmurro himself—succeed one another; episodes seemingly unrelated to the plot are inserted here and there as comments or digressions. Thus, the novel is entertaining and easy to read, varied and original, without giving up presenting complex, ambiguous, and realistic characters.

DOM CASMURRO

I. The Title

One night not long ago, as I was coming from the city to Engenho Novo, on the Brazil Central, I ran into a young man from here in the neighborhood, with whom I have a bowing acquaintance. He spoke, sat down beside me, talked of the moon and the Government, ended by reading me some verses. The trip was short and the verses may not have been entirely bad. It happened, however, that as I was tired, I closed my eyes three or four times — it was enough to make him stop reading and put the verses in his pocket.

“Go on," I said, rousing myself.

“I’ve finished,” he muttered.

“They are very fine.”

I saw him make a gesture to take them out of his pocket again, but it did not pass beyond a gesture. He was offended.

 The next day he said some hard things about me and gave me the nickname Dorn Casmurro. The neighbors, who do not like my taciturn, recluse-like habits, took up the nickname: it stuck. This did not make me angry. I told the story to my friends in the city and they, in fun, call me by it and write to me: “Dom Casmurro, I am coming to have dinner with you on Sunday.” “I am going to my old place at Petropolis, Dom Casmurro. See if you can’t tear yourself away from the cave in Engenho Novo and come spend a couple of weeks with me.” “My dear Dom Casmurro, don’t imagine that you are going to escape my theatre party tomorrow night. You can stay overnight in the city. I promise you a box at the theatre, tea and a bed. The only thing I don’t promise you is a girl.”

Don’t consult your dictionaries. Casmurro is not used here in the meaning they give for it, but in the sense in which the man in the street uses it, of a morose, tight- lipped man withdrawn within himself. The Dorn was for irony: to impute to me aristocratic airs. All for dozing off! Well, I have found no better title for my narrative; if no better occurs, let it standi My poet of the train will know that I do not bear him a grudge. And, with a little effort, since the title is his, he will be able to decide that the work is his. There are books which owe no more to their authors; some, not so much.

2. The Book

 Now that I have explained the title, I will proceed to the book. First, however, let us go over the motives which placed a pen in my hand.

I live alone, with one servant. The house in which I live is mine. I had it built, specially, to satisfy a desire that is so personal I am ashamed to print it — but here goes. One day, a number of years ago, I decided to reproduce in Engenho Novo, the house in which I grew up on old Rua de Matacavallos. It was to have the same appearance and plan as the other house, which had disappeared. Builder and decorator understood my instructions. It is the same tall structure with three windows across the front, veranda at the back, the same rooms upstairs and down. In the living-room, the decoration of ceiling and walls is more or less identical: garlands of tiny flowers steadied, from space to space, by the beaks of stout birds. In the four corners of the ceiling, are the figures of the seasons; and in the center of the walls, the medallions of Caesar, Augustus, Nero and Massinissa, with their names beneath . . . The reason for these personages eludes me. When we moved to the Matacavallos house, it was already decorated with them; they were from the previous decade. Perhaps it was the taste of that day to introduce a classical flavor and ancient figures into American paintings. The rest of the place is in the same mood.

I have a small estate with flowers, vegetable garden, a casuarina tree, a well-pool and washing stones. I use old China and old furniture. And now, as formerly, there is the same contrast between the life within, which is tranquil and that without, which is noisy and restless.

My purpose was to tie together the two ends of my life, to restore adolescence in old age. Well, sir, I did not succeed in putting back together what had been nor what I had been. If the face is the same, the expression is different. If it were only the others that were missing, no matter.

 A man consoles himself more or less for those he has lost, but I myself am missing and this lack is essential. What is here may be likened to dye on hair and beard: it barely preserves the outer habit , as they say in autopsies; the inner structure will not take dye. A certificate stating that I am twenty years old might deceive a stranger, like any forged document, but not me. The friends I have left are of recent date; the old ones have all gone to study the geology of holy ground. As for my lady friends, some date back fifteen years, others less and almost all believe in their own youthfulness.

 Two or three would have others believe in it, but the language they speak often obliges one to consult a dictionary and such intercourse is wearisome.

Still, a different life does not mean a worse life; it is just not the same. In certain respects, that old life now appears stripped of much of the enchantment I found in it; but it has also lost many a spine that made it painful and in my memory, I keep some sweet and charming recollections.

 Now, I go out little; I seldom talk to people. Rare dis- tractions. Most of my time is spent working in the garden and reading. I eat well and I do not sleep badly.

 But, as everything wearies one, this monotony too finally exhausted me. I wanted change. What if I wrote a book? Jurisprudence, philosophy and politics suggested them- selves; but they did not bring with them the necessary energy. Then I thought of making a History of the Suburbs , something less dry than the memoirs of Padre Luiz Gonçalves dos Santos concerning our city; it would be a modest work, but it would demand documents and dates as preliminaries — a long dull business. It was then that the busts painted on the walls spoke to me and said that since they had failed to bring back the days gone by, I should take my pen and tell over those times. Perhaps the act of narration would summon the illusion for me and the shades would come treading lightly, as with the poet, not the one of the train but Faust’s: Ah there, are you come again, restless shades ?

I was so happy with this idea that the pen still trembles in my hand. Yes. Nero, Augustus, Massinissa and thou, great Caesar, who insists me to compose my commentaries, I thank you for your advice and I will put on paper the memories that come crowding. In this way I will live what I have lived and I will strengthen my hand for some work of greater scope. Let us commence the evocation with a notable afternoon in November, which I never forgot.

 I had many others, better and worse, but that one never faded from my spirit — as you will discover by reading.

3. The Information

I was about to go into the living-room when I heard my name mentioned and hid behind the door. It was the house on Rua de Matacavallos, the month November, the year — the year is a trifle remote, but I am not one to change the dates of my life just to please those who do not like old stories — the year was 1857.

“Dona Gloria, ate you going ahead with your idea of putting our Bentinho in the seminary? It’s high time and even now there may be a difficulty.”

“What difficulty?”

“A great difficulty.”

My mother wanted to know what it was. José Dias, after several instants of hesitation, came to see if there was anyone in the hall; he did not notice me, went back and, lowering his voice, said that the difficulty was in the house close by, the Padua family.

“The Padua family?”

“I’ve wanted to say this for some time, but I didn’t have the courage. It doesn’t look right to me for our Bentinho to be always getting into corners with the daughter of old Turtleback And this is the difficulty, for if they should start making love, you’d have a struggle on your hands to separate them.”

“Oh, no! Getting into corners?”

“It’s a manner of speaking. Whispering in secret, always together. Bentinho almost never leaves that place. The girl is a scatter-brain. Her father pretends not to see; he’d just as soon things went so far that ... I understand your gesture; you don’t believe that there are people so calculating, you think that everyone has a frank, open nature. . . .”

“But, Senhor Jose Dias, I’ve seen the youngsters playing and I’ve never seen anything to make one mistrust — their age alone — Bentinho is barely fifteen. Capitú had her fourteenth birthday last week. They’re two babes. Don’t forget, they were brought up together, ever since the big flood ten years ago, when the Paduas lost so much; that was what started our intimacy. And am I to believe . . . ? Brother Cosme, what do you think?”

Uncle Cosme answered with an “Aw!” which, translated into the vulgar tongue, meant: “José Dias and his imagination! The youngsters amuse themselves! I amuse myself! Where is the backgammon board?”

“Yes, I believe that you are mistaken, senhor.”

“Perhaps so. God grant that you are right; but, believe me, I spoke only after much careful observation. ...”

“In any case, the time is drawing near,” interrupted my mother, “I must see about entering him in the seminary as soon as possible.”

“Good, if you have not given up the idea of making him a priest, that’s the main thing. Bentinho is bound to comply with the wishes of his mother. And then too the Brazilian Church has a noble destiny. Let us not forget that a bishop presided at the Constituent Assembly and that Padre Feij6 governed the Empire. . . .”

“Governed like the fool he was!” cut in Uncle Cosme, giving way to old political rancor’s.

“Beg pardon, doctor, I am not defending anyone, I am merely citing cases. What I want to say is that the clergy still plays a big role in Brazil.”

“What you want is a capot; get the backgammon board.

 As for the boy, if he has to be a padre, of course it’s better for him not to commence saying Mass behind doors. But look sister, is it really necessary to make a priest of him?”

“It’s a promise, it must be kept.”

“I know that you made a promise . . . but a promise like that . . .'I don’t know ... I believe that, when you come to think of it . . . What do you think. Cousin Justina?”

"I?”

“The truth is that each one knows best for himself,” continued Uncle Cosme. “God is the one who knows what’s best for all. Still, such an old promise, made so many years ago. . . . But what is this, Sister Gloria? You’re crying! Oh, now, is this anything to cry about?”

My mother blew her nose without answering. I believe that Cousin Justina arose and went to her. There followed a deep silence during which I was on fire to go into the room; but another, greater, force, another emotion ... I could not hear what Uncle Cosme was saying. Cousin Justina was comforting my mother: “Cousin Gloria! Cousin Gloria!” José Dias was excusing himself: “If I had known, I would not have spoken, but I spoke because of my respect and esteem, because of affection, to perform an unpleasant duty, a most unpleasant duty. . .

4. A Most Unpleasant Duty

José Dias loved superlatives. It was a means of giving a monumental aspect to his ideas; when he had no ideas, it served to prolong his phrases. He went to fetch the back- gammon beard, which was in another part of the house.

 I flattened myself against the wall and watched him walk past in his white starched trousers which strapped under the shoe, his cotton jacket and the patent cravat. He was one of the last to wear such trousers in Rio de Janeiro and perhaps in the world. He wore his trousers short so that they were stretched tight. The black, satin cravat, with the steel spring inside, immobilized his neck: it was the fashion.

 The simple jacket of printed cotton seemed like a full-dress coat on him. He was thin, drawn and had a bald spot.

 He walked off with his usual slow step — not the dragging slowness of a lazy man, but a calculated, deliberate slowness, a complete syllogism, the major premise before the minor, the minor premise before the conclusion. A most unpleasant duty!

5 The Dependent

He did not always walk with that slow, stiff step. At times he gave way to excited gestures, was often swift and gay in his movements, as natural in this as in the other style.

 And he laughed loudly, if need be, a great hollow laugh, but infectious: to such a degree point did cheeks, teeth, eyes, the whole face, the whole person, the whole world seem to laugh in him. In grave situations, most grave — gravis si mo.

He had been our dependent for many years. My father was still on the old plantation at Itaguahy and I had just been born. One day he appeared, representing himself as a homeopathic doctor; he carried a Manual and a case of medicines. There happened to be an epidemic of fevers at the time; Jose Dias cured the overseer and a female slave, but would not accept remuneration. My father proposed that he stay on. At the plantation, with a small salary. Jose Dias refused. He said it was his duty to bring health to the thatched hut of the poor.

“Who’s keeping you from going anywhere? Go where you like, but live with us.”

“I’ll come back in three months.”

He was back in two weeks. He accepted food and lodging without other wages, except what they gave him as presents.

 When my father was elected deputy and came to Rio de Janeiro with his family, he came too and had his room at the rear of the estate. Once when fever was again raging in Itaguahy my father asked him to go look after our slaves.

 José Dias was silent, sighed and finally confessed he was not a doctor. He had taken the title to help spread the doctrines of the new school and he had done it without a great deal of study; but his conscience would not permit him to accept any more patients.

“But you cured the others.”

Perhaps so; but it would be more just to give the credit to the remedies prescribed in the books. They performed the cures; yes, they — with God’s help. I was a charlatan. . .

 Don’t deny it. It may be that my motives were the highest; homoeopathy is Truth and to serve Truth I lied; but it is time to set everything straight.

He was not sent away, as he requested: my father could no longer get along without him. He had the gift of making himself welcome and indispensable; one felt his absence as one did that of a member of the family. When my father died, his grief was enormous, that is what I was told, I do not remember. My mother was very grateful and would not hear of his leaving his room on the estate. On the seventh day, after the Mass, he went to take leave of her.

“Stay, Jose Dias.”

 “It is your wish, senhora.”

 He received a little legacy in the will, a gilt-edged security and four words of praise. He copied off the words of praise, had them turned and hung them in his room, over his bed.

 “These are the best gilt-edged securities,” he used to say.

 With time, he acquired a certain authority in the family, was listened to at least. He did not presume; he knew how to give his opinion and defer simultaneously. In short, he was a friend, I won’t say the best, but not everything is best in this world. And do not imagine that he had the soul of a toady: his bowing and scraping were calculated rather than natural. His clothes lasted forever. Unlike those who ruin a new suit the first time they put it on, he wore the old one brushed and unwrinkled, smooth-seamed, buttoned-up, with a poor and modest elegance. He had read, carelessly, but enough to be amusing of an evening or over dessert, or to explain some phenomenon, to speak of the effects of heat and cold, of the North and South Poles and of Robespierre. He often told about a trip he had made to Europe and he confessed that if it had not been for us he would have returned there long ago; he had friends in Lisbon, but our family, he said, next below God, was everything.

“Below or above?” asked Uncle Cosme one day.

 “Below,” repeated José Dias reverently.

And my mother, who was religious, was glad to see that he placed God in the proper place. She smiled her approval.

 José Dias thanked her with an inclination of the head. My mother used to give him small sums of money from time to time. Uncle Cosme, who was a lawyer, entrusted him with the copying of legal papers.

6. Uncle Cosme

Uncle Cosme had lived with my mother ever since she be- came a widow. He was already a widower at the time, like Cousin Justina: it was the house of the three widowed folk.

Fortune, many times, changes the intentions of Nature.

 Formed for the serene functions of capitalism. Uncle Cosme did not get rich in the law courts: he made a living. He had an office in old Rua das Violas, near the courthouse, which was in the abandoned Aljube Prison. He was in criminal law.

 José Dias never missed Uncle Cosme’s speeches to the jury.

 He was the one who helped him on and off with his robes and paid him many compliments as they left the courtroom.

 At home he reported the arguments. Uncle Cosme, for all he tried to appear modest, could not help smiling a little.

He was a fat, heavy man, short of breath and sleepy-eyed.

 One of my earliest recollections was watching him mount, every morning, the mare that my mother had given him and which carried him to his office. The slave who had brought the beast from the stable held the bridle while he lifted his foot and set it in the stirrup; there followed a minute of rest or reflection. Then he gave an impulse, the first; his body threatened to go up, but it did not; second impulse, equal effect. Finally, after several long instants. Uncle Cosme gathered together all his forces, physical and moral, gave a final leap from the earth and this time landed on the saddle.

 It was seldom that the mount failed to show by a gesture that she had just received the world. Uncle Cosme adjusted his flesh and the animal went off at a trot.

I have not forgotten either what he did to me one afternoon. Though born in the country (I left there when I was two) and despite the customs of the time, I did not know how to ride and was afraid of a horse. Uncle Cosme grabbed me one day and threw me astride his beast. When I saw myself up high (I was nine), alone and forsaken, I began to yell desperately: “Mama! Mama!” She came to the rescue, pale and trembling, thinking they were killing me.

 She took me down, petted me, while her brother asked:

“Sister Gloria, a boy that size afraid of a gender animal?”

“He’s not used to it.”

“He better get used to it. Even if he’s a padre, if he’s a country vicar he’ll have to ride horseback; and here in the city, though he’s not yet a padre, if he wants to cut a fine figure like other young fellows and doesn’t know how to ride, he’ll blame you for it* Sister Gloria.”

“Then he’ll have to blame me; I’m afraid.”

“Afraid! Aw, afraid!”

The truth is I did not learn until much later and then less from taste than because I was ashamed to admit I did not know how to ride. “Now he is really going to take an interest in the girls,” they said when I started the lessons.

 The same could not be said of Uncle Cosme. In his case, it was a habit and a necessity. He no longer went in for love affairs. They say that, as a young man, he was a devil with the women, besides being a hot-headed party man. But the years had taken from him most of his ardor, both political and sexual and his fat had put an end to the rest of his ideas, public and specific. Now he merely performed the duties of his job and without love. In his hours of leisure he looked on or played backgammon. Now and again he made a witty remark.

7. Dona Gloria

My mother was a good soul. When her husband died — Pedro de Albuquerque Santiago — she was thirty-one years old and might have returned to Itaguahy. She chose to remain near the church in which my father was buried. She sold the plantation and slaves, bought others whom she rented out or sent into the streets to earn her money. She bought a dozen or so buildings, a certain number of government securities and kept on living in the Metacavallos house, where she had lived the last two years of her married life. She was the daughter of a mistress of a plantation in Minas Gerais, descendant of another plantation owner from Sao Paulo, of the Fernandes family.

Well then, in that year of grace, 1857, Dona Maria da Gloria Fernandes Santiago was forty-two years of age. She was still pretty and girlish, but she stubbornly concealed the remnants of her youth, however much Nature sought to preserve her from the action of time. She lived encased in an eternal dark dress, without adornments, a black shawl doubled in a triangle and fastened at the breast by a cameo.

 Her hair was brought back straight on either side and caught up at the nape of the neck with an old tortoiseshell comb; sometimes she wore a white cap with a frill. Like this she plodded quietly back and forth in her plain old Cordovan shoes, watching and supervising the work of the whole house, from morning to night.

I have her portrait there on the wall, beside that of her husband, just as they were in the other house. The colors have darkened, but still give an idea of both of them. I do not remember anything of him, except vaguely that he was tall and wore his hair long; the portrait shows round eyes that follow me everywhere, an effect of the painting that terrified me when I was little. His neck rises out of a black cravat of many folds, the face is shaven except for a little patch by the ears. The portrait of my mother shows she was beautiful. She was twenty then and held a flower between her fingers. In the picture she seems to offer the flower to her husband. What you read in the face of both is that if conjugal felicity can be compared to the grand prize in a lottery, they had won it with the ticket they purchased together.

I conclude that lotteries should not be abolished. No one holding a winning ticket has yet charged them with being immoral, just as no one has found fault with Pandora’s box because Hope remained at the bottom of it; she has to stay somewhere. Here I have them, the two of them, happily wed in the long ago, the loving ones, the lucky ones, who went from this to the other world to continue a dream, most likely. When I grow weary of the lottery and Pandora, I raise my eyes to them and I forget the blanks I have drawn and the cursed box. They are portraits that could pass for originals. The one of my mother, holding the flower toward her husband, seems to say: “I am all yours, my gallant cavalier!” That of my father, looking out at us, makes this commentary, “See how the girl loves me. . . .” If they suffered annoyances, I know nothing of them, just as I know nothing of their sorrow. I was a child and I commenced by not being born. After his death, I remember that she wept bitterly. But here are the portraits of both and the foul hand of time has not smudged the first ex- pression. They are like snapshots of felicity.

8. It is Time

 But it is time to go back to that afternoon in November, a bright, cool afternoon, tranquil as our house and the stretch of road on which we lived. Actually it was the beginning of my life; all that had gone before was like the making up and putting on costume of those about to go on stage, like the turning up of the lights, the tuning of the fiddles, the overture. . . . Now I was to commence my opera. “Life is an opera,” that is what an old Italian tenor who lived and died here, used to tell me. . . . And one day he explained his definition in such a way that he made me believe in it.

 Perhaps it is worth the trouble to give it: it is only one chapter.

9. The Opera

He no longer had any voice, but he persisted in saying he had. “Lack of practice is my trouble,” he would add. Every time a new company arrived from Europe, he would go to the impresario and recount all the injustices of Heaven and earth: the impresario would confirm one more and the old tenor would go away exclaiming against his unfairness. He still wore the mustachios of his roles. When he walked, in spite of his .age, he looked as if he was paying court to a princess of Babylonia. At times, without opening his mouth, he would trill over some fragment older than he, or as old; voices muffled like that always contain possibilities. He came here to dine with me a number of times. One night, after a good deal of Chianti, he repeated his customary definition and when I said that life was no more an opera than a voyage at sea or a battle, he shook his head and replied:

“Life is an opera and a grand opera. The tenor and the baritone fight for the soprano in the presence of the basso and the second voices, when it is not the soprano and the M contralto who are fighting for the tenor, in the presence of the same basso and the same seconds. There are numerous choruses, many ballets and the orchestration is excellent. . .

“But, my dear Marcolini . .

“Why not?”

And after taking a long drink of wine, he set down the glass and revealed to me the story of Creation, in the following words, which I will condense a little.

“God is the poet. The music is by Satan, a young maestro with a great future, who studied in the conservatory of Heaven. Rival of Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, he could not endure the priority those classmates enjoyed in the distribution of the prizes. It may be, too, that their too-sweet and mystic music was boring to his genius, which was essentially tragic. He started a rebellion, which was dis- covered in time and he was expelled from the conservatory.

 The whole thing would have ended there, if God had not written a libretto for an opera and thrown it aside, because He considered that type of amusement unsuited to His eternity. Satan carried off the manuscript with him to Hell.

 With the idea of showing that he was a better musician than the others — and perhaps to effect a reconciliation with Heaven — he composed a score. As soon as he finished it, he took it to the Eternal Father.

“‘Lord,’ he said to Him, ‘I have not forgotten what I learned up here. Take this score, hear it, amend it, have it performed and if Thou find it worthy of the Heavenly heights, admit me and it at Thy feet.’

“ ‘No,’ retorted the Lord, ‘I will hear nothing.*

“ ‘But, Lord . . .’

“ ‘Nothing! nothing!*

“Satan went on supplicating with no better luck, until God, wearied and full of pity, consented to have the opera performed, but outside the precincts of Heaven. He designed a special theatre, this planet; and created a whole company with all the parts, first and second, choruses and ballet dancers.

“‘Hear some of the rehearsals!’

“ ‘No, I’ll have nothing to do with rehearsals. It’s enough to have composed the libretto; I am quite willing to split with Thee the author’s royalties.’

“That refusal was probably a mistake: from it resulted certain incongruities which a hearing would have detected and a friendly collaboration prevented. Indeed, in some places the words go to the right and the music to the left.

 And there are those who say that this is the beauty of the composition and keeps it from being monotonous and in this way they explain the trio of Eden, the aria of Abel, the choruses of the guillotine and of slavery. Not infrequently the same plot situation is used over again without sufficient reason. Certain motifs grow wearisome from repetition.

 There are obscure passages; the maestro makes too much use of the choral masses, which often drown out the words with their confused harmony. The orchestral parts, however, are handled with great skill. At least this is the opinion of the unprejudiced.

“The friends of the maestro would have it that a better score would be hard to find. Occasionally one of them will admit that there are rough spots, certain gaps here and there, but with the continued run of the opera no doubt these will be filled in and smoothed over, since the maestro does not refuse to amend his work where he finds it at variance with the sublime thought of the poet. The friends of the latter take a different view. They claim that the libretto has been sacrificed, that the score corrupts the sense of the words and that although it may be fine in some passages and contrived with art in others, it is absolutely unrelated and even contrary, to the spirit of the drama.

 The ridiculous, for example, does not exist in the text of the poet: it is an excrescence in imitation of the Merry Wives of Windsor . This point is contested by the Satanists with some appearance of reason. They say that at the time young Satan composed his grand opera neither this farce nor Shakespeare had been born. They go so far as to affirm that with such art and felicity that he seems himself to be the author of the work; but, manifestly, he is a plagiarist. “This piece,” concluded the old tenor, “will last as long as the theatre lasts — and there’s no telling when it will be demolished as an act of astronomic expediency.

 Its success is increasing. Poet and musician receive their royalties with punctual regularity, but not in the same coin. The law of division is that of the Scriptures: ‘Many are called, few are chosen.’ God gets paid in gold, Satan in paper.”

“Very witty. . . .”

“Witty?” he shouted. Then he calmed himself: “My dear Santiago, I am not witty; I have a horror of wit. What I say is the truth, pure and ultimate. One day, when all the books have been burned as useless, there will be someone, maybe a tenor, most likely an Italian, who will teach this truth to men. All is music, my friend. In the beginning, was the do and the do became re, etc. This wine-glass (he was filling it again), this wine-glass is a brief refrain. You don’t hear it? Neither do you hear wood or stone, but they’re all part of the same opera. . . .”

10. I Accept the Theory

 Which is slightly more than enough metaphysics for a single tenor. But the loss of his voice explains everything; there are philosophers who, when all is said, are nothing more than unemployed tenors.

I, friend reader, accept the theory of my old Marcolini, not only because of its verisimilitude — which is usually all that truth is — but also because my life fits his definition.

 I sang a tender duo, then a trio , then a quatuor . . . . But let us not get ahead of the story; let us get back to that first afternoon when I found out that I had already begun to sing, for when José Dias informed against me, my dear reader, it was primarily to me that he gave his information.

11. The Promise

 As soon as I saw our dependent disappear down the hall, I left my hiding-place and ran to the veranda at the back. I did not bother about the tears nor the reason my mother shed them. The reason for them was probably her ecclesiastical projects and the cause of these is what I am about to relate, for it was even then an old story and went back sixteen years.

The projects were formed at the time I was conceived.

 Because her first child was born dead, my mother made a pact with God that if the second survived she promised that (should it be a male), he would enter the Church. Perhaps she was hoping for a girl. She said nothing to my father, neither before nor after bringing me into the world: she counted on doing it when I started school, but she became a widow before then. As a widow, she dreaded the day of parting from me; but she was so devout, so God-fearing that she tried to get witnesses to her obligation by confiding her promise to relatives and members of the household.

 Only, that we might be parted as late as possible, she had me taught at home, my first letters, then Latin and religion, by Padre Cabral, old friend of Uncle Cosme, who used to come to our house of an evening to play backgammon.

Long terms are easily subscribed to: imagination makes them infinite. My mother waited for the years to roll by.

 Meanwhile, I was being accustomed to the idea of the Church: children’s toys, devout books, images of saints, conversations at home, everything converged on the altar.

 When we went to Mass, she would always tell me it was to learn to be a priest and that I should watch the padre, that I should not take my eyes off the padre. At home, I played Mass — somewhat on the sly, because my mother said that Mass was not a matter for play. We would arrange an altar, Capitú and I. She acted as sacristan and we altered the ritual in the sense that we divided the host between us; the host was always a sweet. During the time that we used to play this game, it was quite common to hear my little neighbor ask: “Mass to-day?” I recognized what that meant, answered in the affirmative and went to ask for the host under another name. I would come back with it, we would arrange the altar, mumble the Latin and rush through the ceremonies.

 Domin , non sum dignus. ... I was supposed to say that three time., but I believe that I actually said it but once, Such was the gluttony of the padre and his sacristan. We drank neither wine nor water: we did not have the first and the second would have taken away the savor of the sacrifice.

And after a time they no longer spoke of the seminary, to such a degree that I supposed the matter forgotten. If they do not feel the call at fifteen, ask rather the seminary of the world than that of St. Joseph. Sometimes my mother gazed at me like a lost soul or caught hold of my hand for no reason at all and squeezed it hard.

12. On the Veranda

 I came to a halt on the veranda. I was dizzy, stunned, my knees wobbled. It seemed that my heart was trying to leap out through my mouth. I could not go down to the grounds and cross over into the next yard. I commenced to walk back and forth, stopping short at intervals to steady myself, then I would walk again and again stand still. Confused voices repeated the words of José Dias:

“Always together. . . .”

“Whispering in secret. . . .

“If they should start making love. . . .”

Bricks that I trod and retrod that afternoon, yellowed columns that passed me to the right and to the left, de- pending on whether I was going or coming — it was you who shared my crisis, the sensation of a new pleasure which enfolded me within myself, then made me diffuse and scattered me into a thousand pieces, that caused me to shiver and shed through my being some strange, inward balm.

 At times I found myself smiling, a kind of satisfied grin, which belied the abomination of my sin. And the voices were heard again, mixed up:

“Whispering in secret. . . .”

“Always together. . .

“If they should start making love. . . .”

A coconut palm that saw me perturbed and divined the cause murmured from the top of his crown that it was not unseemly for boys of fifteen to get into corners with girls of fourteen; on the contrary, adolescents of that age had no other occupation, nor corners any other use. It was an old coco tree and for myself, I believed in old coco trees, even more than in old books. Birds, butterflies, a cicada that was trying out the summer weather, all the living folk of the air, were of the same opinion.

Then was I in love with Capitú and Capitú with me? It was true that I clung to her petticoats, but I could think of nothing between us that was really secret. Before she went away to school it was all childish pranks and mischief.

 After she returned from school, the old intimacy was not immediately re-established, perhaps, but it returned little by little and in the last year, completely. The substance of our conversations, however, was the same as it had always been. Capitú sometimes called me handsome, her fine, big strapping boy, a darling; at other times she took hold of my hands to count my fingers. I began to remember these and other gestures and things she said, the pleasure I felt when she passed her hand over my hair and said she thought it beautiful. I, though I did not do the same to hers, told her that it was far more beautiful than mine. Then Capitú would shake her head with a look of disillusion and melancholy, the more amazing in that she had hair to really rouse admiration; but I retorted by calling her crazy. When she asked me if I had dreamed of her the night before and I said “No,” she told how she had dreamed of me, extra- ordinary adventures, how we went to the top of Corcovado through the air, danced on the moon and then angels came to ask us our names to give them to other angels that had just been born. In all these dreams we went hand in hand.

 The dream: I had of her were never like that: they merely reproduced our familiar life together and many times did not go beyond a simple repetition of the day before, some phrase, some gesture. I told them to her, anyway. Capitú, one day, remarked on the difference: she said her dreams were finer. After a certain hesitation, I told her that they were like the person who had dreamed them. . . . She turned the color of a pitanga.

It was only now that I understood the emotion which these and other confidences aroused in me. The emotion was sweet and new, but the cause had eluded me and I had not searched it out, or even suspected it. The silences of the last few days had meant nothing to me. Now I felt them signify something and the same with the half-words, the curious questions, the vague answers, the solicitude, the delight in recalling our childhood. I was aware too that it was a recent phenomenon to wake up with my thoughts on Capita and to hear her voice from memory and tremble at her step. If they spoke of her at our house, I paid more attention than before and, as it was praise or criticism, so I felt a more intense pleasure, or displeasure, than before, when we were only companions in mischief. I had even begun to think of her during Mass that month, intermittently it is true and yet to the exclusion of other things too.