MACHADO DE ASSIS: Greatest Short Stories E-Book

Machado de Assis

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

Seitenzahl: 193

Beschreibung

Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Brazilian writers of all time. Author of "Dom Casmurro," "Memórias Póstumas de Braz Cubas," "Quincas Borba," and dozens of other unforgettable titles, Machado was a complete author, having written novels, short stories, poems, plays, critiques, chronicles, and correspondence. In the genre of short stories, Machado published over two hundred stories, always with the enormous talent that is peculiar to him, which makes any selection of his best short stories a challenging task; but it has been done! "Machado de Assis Best Short Stories" brings the reader an exquisite selection of his best stories, recognizing in each of them the unparalleled talent of this brilliant Brazilian writer.

Leseprobe

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

MACHADO DE ASSIS

Greatest Short Stories

Foreword

When we talk about Machado de Assis, we initially think of his famous novels, but the fact is that he was also a great short story writer, probably the best we ever had.

Machado published over two hundred short stories, always with the enormous talent that is peculiar to him, therefore, selecting his best stories is a huge challenge that naturally involves the peculiar perceptions of each reader.

On the other hand, we are convinced that the reader will delight in this exquisite selection of his best and most well-known stories, recognizing in each of them the unparalleled talent of the greatest Brazilian writer of all time.

An Excellent Reading!

THE CRIATURE

I know of an ancient and formidable creature,

that devours its own limbs and entrails,

with the voracity of insatiable hunger.

It dwells both in valleys and mountains.

and in the sea, which tears open like an abyss,

it stretches out in strange convulsions.

Imprinted on its forehead is obscure despotism.

Every gaze it casts, bitter and sweet,

seems an expression of love and selfishness.

Coldly it contemplates despair and joy,

liking the hummingbird as much as the worm,

and embracing both beauty and monstrosity.

To it, the jackal is as defenseless as the dove,

and it walks on the earth undisturbed, like

a vast elephant across vast sands.

In the tree that bursts forth its first bud

comes the leaf, slowly unfolding,

then the flower, then the long-awaited fruit.

For this creature is in all creation

it crowns the flower's bosom and corrupts its fruit

and it is in this destruction that its strength lies.

It loves the polluted as much as the unpolluted

it begins and begins again in perpetual struggle,

and smilingly obeys the divine decree.

You may call it Death; I will call it Life.

INTRODUCTION

About the autor

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, (born June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - died September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro), Brazilian poet, novelist, and short-story writer, a classic master of Brazilian literature, whose art is rooted in the traditions of European culture and transcends the influence of Brazilian literary schools.

Machado de Assis

1839 – 1908

The son of a house painter of mixed black and Portuguese ancestry, he was raised, after his mother’s death, by a stepmother, also of mixed parentage. Sickly, epileptic, unprepossessing in appearance, and a stutterer, he found employment at the age of 17 as a printer’s apprentice and began to write in his spare time. Soon he was publishing stories, poems, and novels in the Romantic tradition.

By 1869 Machado was a typically successful Brazilian man of letters, comfortably provided for by a government position and happily married to a cultured woman, Carolina Augusta Xavier de Novais. In that year illness forced him to withdraw from his active career. He emerged from this temporary retreat with a new novel in a strikingly original style that marked a clear break with the literary conventions of the day. This was Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881; “The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas”; Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952), an eccentric first-person narrative with a flow of free association and digression. The “small winner,” Brás Cubas, cynically reviews his life in 160 short, often disconnected chapters.

Machado’s reputation of being among the greatest of Brazilian writers rests on this work, his short stories, and two later novels Quincas borba (1891; Philosopher or Dog?, 1954) and his masterpiece, Dom Casmurro (1899; Eng. trans., 1953), a haunting and terrible journey into a mind warped by jealousy. Translations into English of his shorter fiction included The Devil’s Church, and Other Stories (1977), The Psychiatrist, and Other Stories (1963), A Chapter of Hats: Selected Stories (2008), and The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis (2018).

Urbane, aristocratic, cosmopolitan, aloof, and cynical, Machado used an indirect style in his fiction that could confound later scholars and critics attempting to determine his level of social engagement. One generation of critics might argue that he ignored such social questions as Brazilian independence and the abolition of slavery; a subsequent generation could find evidence of the opposite. His worldview tempered what might be called a “typical” contemporary Brazilian enthusiasm for local colour and self-conscious nationalism, but the locale of his fiction is usually a keenly observed Rio, which he took for granted as though there were no other place. The natural world is practically nonexistent in his work. His writing shows a deep-rooted pessimism and disillusionment that would be unbearable were it not disguised by flippancy and wit.

When the Brazilian Academy of letters was founded in 1897, Machado de Assis was unanimously elected president and held the position until his death. Oliveira Lima, who lectured at Harvard during the college season of 1915-1916, and who is himself one of the great intellectual forces of contemporary Brazil, has written of Machado de Assis:

"By his extraordinary talent as writer, by his profound literary dignity, by the unity of a life that was entirely devoted to the cult of intellectual beauty, and by the prestige exerted about him by his work and by his personality, Machado de Assis succeeded, despite a nature that was averse to acclaim and little inclined to public appearance, in being considered and respected as the first among his country's men-of-letters: the head, if that word can denote the idea, of a youthful literature which already possesses its traditions and cherishes above all its glories ... His life was one of the most regulated and peaceful after he had given up active journalism, for like so many others, he began his career as a political reporter, paragrapher and dramatic critic. "

Sumário

MACHADO DE ASSIS GREATEST SHORT STORIES

THE ATTENDANT'S CONFESSION

THE FORTUNE-TELLER

LIFE

WEDDING SONG

THE SIAMESE ACADEMIES

THE NURSE

THE SECRET HEART

A WOMAN'S ARMS

DONA PAULA

FATHER VERSUS MOTHER

WALLOW, SWINE

MACHADO DE ASSIS GREATEST SHORT STORIES

THE ATTENDANT'S CONFESSION

So, it really seems to you that what happened to me in 1860 is worthwhile writing down? Very well. I'll tell you the story, but on the condition that you do not divulge it before my death. You'll not have to wait long a week at most; I am a marked man.

I could have told you the story of my whole life, which holds many other interesting details: but for that there would be needed time, courage and paper. There is plenty of paper, indeed, but my courage is at low ebb, and as to the time that is yet left me, it may be compared to the life of a candle-flame. Soon tomorrow's sun will rise a demon sun as impenetrable as life itself. So goodbye, my dear sir; read this and bear me no ill will; pardon me those things that will appear evil to you and do not complain too much if there is exhaled a disagreeable odor which is not exactly that of the rose. You asked me for a human document. Here it is. Ask me for neither the empire of the Great Mogul nor a photograph of the Maccabees; but request, if you will, my dead man's shoes, and I'll will them to you and no other.

You already know that this took place in 1860. The year before, about the month of August, at the age of forty-two, I had become a theologian that is, I copied the theological studies of a priest at Nictheroy, an old college-chum, who thus tactfully gave me my board and lodging. In that same month of August, 1859, he received a letter from the vicar of a small town in the interior, asking if he knew of an intelligent, discreet and patient person who would be willing, in return for generous wages, to serve as attendant to the invalid Colonel Felisbert. The priest proposed that I take the place, and I accepted it eagerly, for I was tired of copying Latin quotations and ecclesiastic formulas. First, I went to Rio de Janeiro to take leave of a brother who lived in the capital, and from there I departed for the little village of the interior.

When I arrived there, I heard bad news concerning the colonel. He was pictured to me as a disagreeable, harsh, exacting fellow; nobody could endure him, not even his own friends. He had used more attendants than medicines. In fact, he had broken the faces of two of them. But to all this I replied that I had no fear of people in good health, still less of invalids. So, after first visiting the vicar, who confirmed all that I had heard and recommended to me charity and forbearance, I turned toward the colonel's residence.

I found him on the veranda of his house, stretched out on a chair and suffering greatly. He received me fairly well. At first, he examined me silently, piercing me with his two feline eyes; then a kind of malicious smile spread over his features, which were rather hard. Finally, he declared to me that all the attendants he had ever engaged in his service hadn't been worth a button, that they slept too much, were impudent and spent their time courting the servants; two of them were even thieves.

"And you, are you a thief?"

"No, sir."

Then he asked me my name. Scarcely had I uttered it when he made a gesture of astonishment.

"Your name is Colombo?"

"No, sir. My name is Procopio José Gomes Vallongo."

Vallongo? He came to the conclusion that this was no Christian name and proposed thenceforth to call me simply Procopio. I replied that it should be just as he pleased.

If I recall this incident, it is not only because it seems to me to give a good picture of the colonel, but also to show you that my reply made a very good impression upon him. The next day he told the vicar so, adding that he had never had a more sympathetic attendant. The fact is, we lived a regular honeymoon that lasted one week.

From the dawn of the eighth day, I knew the life of my predecessors a dog's life. I no longer slept. I no longer thought of anything, I was showered with insults and laughed at them from time to time with an air of resignation and submission, for I had discovered that this was a way of pleasing him. His impertinences proceeded as much from his malady as from his temperament. His illness was of the most complicated: he suffered from aneurism, rheumatism and three or four minor affections. He was nearly sixty, and since he had been five years old had been accustomed to having everybody at his beck and call. That he was surely one could well forgive; but he was also very malicious. He took pleasure in the grief and the humiliation of others. At the end of three months I was tired of putting up with him and had resolved to leave; only the opportunity was lacking.

But that came soon enough. One day, when I was a bit late in giving him a massage, he took his cane and struck me with it two or three times. That was the last straw. I told him on the spot that I was through with him and I went to pack my trunk. He came later to my room; he begged me to remain, assured me that there wasn't anything to be angry at, that I must excuse the il-humored ness of old age ... He insisted so much that I agreed to stay.

"I am nearing the end, Procopio," he said to me that evening. "I can't live much longer. I am upon the verge of the grave. You will go to my burial, Procopio. Under no circumstances will I excuse you. You shall go, you shall pray over my tomb. And if you don't," he added, laughing, "my ghost will come at night and pull you by the legs. Do you believe in souls of the other world, Procopio?"

"Nonsense!"

"And why don't you, you blockhead?" he replied passionately, with distended eyes.

That is how he was in his peaceful intervals; what he was during his attacks of anger, you may well imagine!

He hit me no more with his cane, but his insults were the same, if not worse. With time I became hardened, I no longer heeded anything; I was an ignoramus, a camel, a bumpkin, an idiot, a loggerhead I was everything! It must further be understood that I alone was favored with these pretty names. He had no relatives; there had been a nephew, but he had died of consumption. As to friends, those who came now and then to flatter him and indulge his whims made him but a short visit, five or ten minutes at the most. I alone was always present to receive his dictionary of insults. More than once I resolved to leave him; but as the vicar would exhort me not to abandon the colonel I always yielded in the end.

Not only were our relations becoming very much strained, but I was in a hurry to get back to Rio de Janeiro. At forty-two years of age, one does not easily accustom himself to perpetual seclusion with a brutal, snarling old invalid, in the depths of a remote village. Just to give you an idea of my isolation, let it suffice to inform you that I didn't even read the newspapers; outside of some more or less important piece of news that was brought to the colonel, I knew nothing of what was doing in the world. I therefore yearned to get back to Rio at the first opportunity, even at the cost of breaking with the vicar. And I may as well add since I am here making a general confession that having spent nothing of my wages, I was itching to dissipate them at the capital.

Very probably my chance was approaching. The colonel was rapidly getting worse. He made his will, the notary receiving almost as many insults as did I. The invalid's treatment became more strict; short intervals of peace and rest became rarer than ever for me. Already I had lost the meagre measure of pity that made me forget the old invalid's excesses; within me there seethed a cauldron of aversion and hatred. At the beginning of the month of August I decided definitely to leave. The vicar and the doctor, finally accepting my explanations, asked me for but a few days' more service. I gave them a month. At the end of that time I would depart, whatever might be the condition of the invalid. The vicar promised to find a substitute for me.

You'll see now what happened. On the evening of the 24th of August, the colonel had a violent attack of anger; he struck me, he called me the vilest names, he threatened to shoot me; finally he threw in my face a plate of porridge that was too cold for him. The plate struck the wall and broke into a thousand fragments.

"You'll pay me for it, you thief!" he bellowed.

For a long time he grumbled. Towards eleven o'clock he gradually fell asleep. While he slept, I took a book out of my pocket, a translation of an old d'Arlincourt romance which I had found lying about, and began to read it in his room, at a small distance from his bed. I was to wake him at midnight to give him his medicine; but whether it was due to fatigue or to the influence of the book, I, too, before reaching the second page, fell asleep. The cries of the colonel awoke me with a start; in an instant I was up. He, apparently in delirium, continued to utter the same cries; finally he seized his water-bottle and threw it at my face. I could not get out of the way in time; the bottle hit me in the left cheek, and the pain was so acute that I almost lost consciousness. With a leap I rushed upon the invalid; I tightened my hands around his neck; he struggled several moments; I strangled him.

When I beheld that he no longer breathed, I stepped back in terror. I cried out; but nobody heard me. Then, approaching the bed once more, I shook him so as to bring him back to life. It was too late; the aneurism had burst, and the colonel was dead. I went into the adjoining room, and for two hours I did not dare to return. It is impossible for me to express all that I felt during that time. It was intense stupefaction, a kind of vague and vacant delirium. It seemed to me that I saw faces grinning on the walls; I heard muffled voices. The cries of the victim, the cries uttered before the struggle and during its wild moments continued to reverberate within me, and the air, in whatever direction I turned, seemed to shake with convulsions. Do not imagine that I am inventing pictures or aiming at verbal style. I swear to you that I heard distinctly voices that were crying at me: "Murderer; Murderer!"

All was quiet in the house. The tick-tick of the clock, very even, slow, dryly metrical, increased the silence and solitude. I put my ear to the door of the room, in hope of hearing a groan, a word, an insult, anything that would be a sign of life, that might bring back peace to my conscience; I was ready to let myself be struck ten, twenty, a hundred times, by the colonel's hand. But nothing was silent. I began to pace the room aimlessly; I sat down, I brought my hands despairingly to my head; I repented ever having come to the place.

"Cursed be the hour in which I ever accepted such a position," I cried. And I flamed with resentment against the priest of Nichteroy, against the doctor, the vicar against all those who had procured the place for me and forced me to remain there so long. They, too, I convinced myself, were accomplices in my crime.

As the silence finally terrified me, I opened a window, in the hope of hearing at least the murmuring of the wind. But no wind was blowing. The night was peaceful. The stars were sparkling with the indifference of those who remove their hats before a passing funeral procession and continue to speak of other things. I remained at the window for some time, my elbows on the sill, my gaze seeking to penetrate the night, forcing myself to make a mental summary of my life so that I might escape the present agony. I believe it was only then that I thought clearly about the penalty of my crime. I saw myself already being accused and threatened with dire punishment. From this moment fear complicated my feeling of remorse. I felt my hair stand on end. A few minutes later I saw three or four human shapes spying at me from the terrace, where they seemed to be waiting in ambush; I withdrew; the shapes vanished into the air; it had been an hallucination.

Before daybreak I bandaged the wounds that I had received in the face. Then only did I pluck up enough courage to return to the other room. Twice I started, only to turn back; but it must be done, so I entered. Even then, I did not at first go to the bed. My legs shook, my heart pounded. I thought of flight; but that would have been a confession of the crime.... It was on the contrary very important for me to hide all traces of it. I approached the bed. I looked at the corpse, with its widely distended eyes and its mouth gaping, as if uttering the eternal reproach of the centuries: "Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother?" I discovered on the neck the marks of my nails; I buttoned the shirt to the top and threw the bed-cover up to the dead man's chin. Then I called a servant and told him that the colonel had died towards morning; I sent him to notify the vicar and the doctor.

The first idea that came to me was to leave as soon as possible under the pretext that my brother was ill; and in reality, I had received, several days before, from Rio, a letter telling me that he was not at all well. But I considered that my immediate departure might arouse suspicion, and I decided to wait. I laid out the corpse myself, with the assistance of an old, near-sighted negro. I remained continually in the room of the dead. I trembled lest something out of the way should be discovered. I wanted to assure myself that no mistrust could be read upon the faces of the others; but I did not dare to look any person in the eye. Everything made me impatient; the going and coming of those who, on tip-toe crossed the room; their whisperings; the ceremonies and the prayers of the vicar.... The hour having come, I closed the coffin, but with trembling hands, so trembling that somebody noticed it and commented upon it aloud, with pity.

"Poor Procopio! Despite what he has suffered from his master, he is strongly moved."

It sounded like irony to me. I was anxious to have it all over with. We went out. Once in the street the passing from semi-obscurity to daylight dazed me and I staggered. I began to fear that it would no longer be possible for me to conceal the crime. I kept my eyes steadily fixed upon the ground and took my place in the procession. When all was over, I breathed once more. I was at peace with man. But I was not at peace with my conscience, and the first nights, naturally, I spent in restlessness and affliction. Need I tell you that I hastened to return to Rio de Janeiro, and that I dwelt there in terror and suspense, although far removed from the scene of the crime? I never smiled; I scarcely spoke; I ate very little; I suffered hallucinations and nightmares....

"Let the dead rest in peace," they would say to me. "It is out of all reason to show so much melancholy."

And I was happy to find how people interpreted my symptoms, and praised the dead man highly, calling him a good soul, surly, in truth, but with a heart of gold. And as I spoke in such a way, I convinced myself, at least for a few moments at a time. Another interesting phenomenon was taking place within me I tell it to you because you will perhaps make some useful deduction from it and that was, although I had very little religion in me, I had a mass sung for the eternal rest of the colonel at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. I sent out no invitations to it, I did not whisper a word of it to anybody; I went there alone. I knelt during the whole service and made many signs of the cross. I paid the priest double and distributed alms at the door, all in the name of the deceased.

I wished to deceive nobody. The proof of this lies in the fact that I did all this without letting any other know. To complete this incident, I may add that I never mentioned the colonel without repeating, "May his soul rest in peace!" And I told several funny anecdotes about him, some amusing caprices of his ...