Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
"Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas," by Machado de Assis, is a novel narrated by the deceased Brás Cubas, who revisits his life, loves, and failures with irony and sarcasm. Critiquing 19th-century society, the work challenges narrative conventions and explores human vanity and hypocrisy with humor and depth.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 306
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
Machado de Assis
SYNOPSIS
"Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas," by Machado de Assis, is a novel narrated by the deceased Brás Cubas, who revisits his life, loves, and failures with irony and sarcasm. Critiquing 19th-century society, the work challenges narrative conventions and explores human vanity and hypocrisy with humor and depth.
Palavras-chave
Irony, death, philosophy
Notice
This text is a work in the public domain and reflects the norms, values and perspectives of its time. Some readers may find parts of this content offensive or disturbing, given evolving social norms and our collective understanding of issues of equality, human rights and mutual respect. We ask readers to approach this material with an understanding of the historical era in which it was written, recognizing that it may contain language, ideas or descriptions that are incompatible with today's ethical and moral standards.
Foreign language names will be preserved in their original form, without translation.
TO THE WORM THAT FIRST GNAWED AT THE COLD FLESH OF MY CORPSE I DEDICATE THESE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS AS A NOSTALGIC REMEMBRANCE
To the Reader
That Stendhal would confess to having written one of his books for a hundred readers is both surprising and dismaying. What isn't surprising, and probably won't be, is if this other book doesn't have Stendhal's hundred readers, or fifty, or twenty, or at most ten. Ten? Maybe five. It is, in fact, a diffuse work, in which I, Brás Cubas, have adopted the free form of a Sterne or a Xavier de Maistre, but I don't know if I've added a few grumbles of pessimism. Could be. Work of the dead. He wrote it with the pen of banter and the ink of melancholy, and it's not hard to foresee what might come out of this conundrum. What's more, serious people will find in the book some semblance of a pure novel, while frivolous people won't find in it their usual novel; and there he is deprived of the esteem of the serious and the love of the frivolous, which are the two highest pillars of opinion.
But I'm still hoping to win over the sympathies of opinion, and the first remedy is to avoid an explicit and long prologue. The best prologue is the one that contains the fewest things, or the one that says them in an obscure and truncated way. As a result, I have avoided telling you about the extraordinary process I used to compose these Memoirs, which I worked on here in the other world. It would be curious, but it would be far too long and unnecessary to understand the work. The work itself is everything: if it pleases you, fine reader, I'll pay you for the task; if it doesn't, I'll pay you with a pip, and goodbye.
Brás Cubas
CHAPTER 1 - Death of the Author
For some time, I hesitated about whether to open these memoirs at the beginning or the end—that is, whether to start with my birth or my death. Although the common practice is to start with birth, two considerations led me to adopt a different method: first, I am not merely a deceased author, but a dead author, for whom the grave was another cradle; second, starting with death would render the writing more gallant and fresh. Moses, who also recounted his death, didn't place it at the beginning but at the end—a radical difference between this book and the Pentateuch.
Having said that, I died at two o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday in August 1869, in my beautiful farmhouse in Catumbi. I was about sixty-four years old, strong and prosperous, single, had about three hundred contos, and was accompanied to the cemetery by eleven friends. Eleven friends! The truth is that there were no letters or announcements. What's more, it was raining—pouring—a little rain, sad and constant, so constant and so sad, that it led one of those faithful of the last hour to include this ingenious idea in the speech he gave at my graveside: "You who knew him, gentlemen, you can say with me that nature seems to be mourning the irreparable loss of one of the most beautiful characters that has honored humanity. This gloomy air, these drops from the sky, those dark clouds that cover the blue like a funereal crepe, all this is the raw and evil pain that gnaws at nature's innermost depths; all this is sublime praise for our illustrious deceased."
Good and faithful friend! No, I don't regret the twenty policies I left you. And that's how I arrived at the clause of my days; that's how I made my way to Hamlet's undiscovered country, without the anxieties or doubts of the young prince, but slow and unsteady, like someone who leaves the show late. Late and bored. I was seen off by about nine or ten people, including three ladies: my sister Sabina, married to Cotrim, her daughter, a lily-of-the-valley, and... Bear with me, I'll tell you in a moment who the third lady was. Be pleased to know that this anonymous woman, although not a relative, suffered more than her relatives. It's true, she suffered more. I'm not saying she cried herself out, nor that she let herself roll around on the floor, convulsed. Nor was my death highly dramatic... A bachelor who expires at the age of sixty-four doesn't seem to have all the elements of a tragedy in him. And given that he did, the least convenient thing for this anonymous woman was to appear so. Standing at the head of the bed, her eyes dull, her mouth ajar, the sad lady could hardly believe my extinction.
"Dead! Dead!" she said to herself.
It's her imagination, like the storks that an illustrious traveler saw flying from Ilisso to the shores of Africa, despite the ruins and the times—this lady's imagination also flew over the present wreckage to the shores of a youthful Africa... Let her go; we'll go there later; we'll go there when I return to my early years. Now, I want to die quietly, methodically, listening to the sobs of the ladies, the low voices of the men, the rain drumming on the leaves of the farmhouse, and the loud sound of a razor that a sharpener is honing outside, at the door of a post office. I swear to you that this orchestra of death was much less sad than it might have seemed. From a certain point onwards, it was delicious. Life rumbled in my chest like a wave of the sea, my conscience vanished, I descended into physical and moral immobility, and my body became a plant, a stone, mud, and nothing at all.
I died of pneumonia, but if I tell you that it was less pneumonia than a great and useful idea that caused my death, you may not believe me, but it's true. I'll briefly explain the case. Judge for yourself.
CHAPTER 2 – The Poultice
One morning, as I was walking around the farm, an idea took hold of me, swinging from the trapeze in my brain. Once it latched on, it began to twitch, to waddle, to perform the most daring acrobatics imaginable. I let myself be mesmerized by it. Suddenly, it made a great leap, stretching out its arms and legs until it took the shape of an X: decipher me or I'll devour you.
This idea was nothing less than the invention of a sublime medicine, an antihypochondriac plaster, intended to relieve our melancholy humanity. In the petition for privilege that I wrote at the time, I drew the government's attention to this truly Christian result. However, I didn't deny my friends the pecuniary advantages that should result from distributing a product with such profound effects. But now that I'm on the other side of life, I can confess everything: what mainly influenced me was the pleasure of seeing these three words printed in newspapers, on displays, on leaflets, on street corners, and finally on medicine boxes: Emplasto Brás Cubas. Why deny it? I had a passion for the splash, the poster, the rocket of tears. Perhaps the modest will blame me for this defect, but I'm sure the skilled will recognize this talent.
So my idea had two sides, like medals, one facing the public, the other me. On the one hand, philanthropy and profit; on the other, a thirst for prestige. Let's say: love of glory.
An uncle of mine, a canon with a full prebend, used to say that the love of temporal glory was the perdition of souls, which should only covet eternal glory. To which another uncle, an officer in one of the old infantry thirds, retorted that the love of glory was the most truly human thing in man, and therefore his most genuine feature. Let the reader decide between the military man and the canon; I'll come back to the plaster.
CHAPTER 3 – Genealogy
But since I've mentioned my two uncles, let me give you a brief genealogical sketch.
The founder of my family was a certain Damião Cubas, who flourished in the first half of the 18th century. He was a cooper by trade, from Rio de Janeiro, where he would have died in poverty and obscurity if he had only worked as a cooper. But no; he became a farmer, planted, harvested, exchanged his produce for good and honorable money, until he died, leaving a large fortune to a son, the graduate Luís Cubas. It was this boy who really began the series of my grandparents—the grandparents my family always confessed to—because Damião Cubas was, after all, a cooper, and perhaps a bad one, whereas Luís Cubas studied at Coimbra, excelled in the State, and was one of the Viceroy Count da Cunha's private friends.
As this nickname Cubas smelled too much like cooperage, my father, Damião's great-grandson, claimed that it had been given to a knight, a hero on the journeys to Africa, as a reward for the feat he had performed in snatching three hundred Cubas from the Moors. My father was a man of imagination; he escaped the cooperage on the wings of a calembour. He was a good character, my father, a dignified and loyal man like few others. It's true that he was a bit of a pachyderm, but who isn't a bit of a pachyderm in this world? It's worth noting that he didn't resort to invention until he had tried forgery; first of all, he joined the family of my famous namesake, Captain Major Brás Cubas, who founded the town of São Vicente, where he died in 1592, and that's why he gave me the name Brás. However, he was opposed by the captain's family, and it was then that he imagined the three hundred Moorish vats.
Some members of my family still live, my niece Venance, for example, the lily-of-the-valley, who is the flower of the ladies of her time; her father, Cotrim, lives, a guy who... But let's not anticipate successes; let's put an end to our plaster once and for all.
CHAPTER 4 - The Fixed Idea
My idea, after so many blunders, had become a fixed idea. God forbid, reader, a fixed idea; rather a mote than a beam in the eye. Look at Cavour; it was the fixed idea of Italian unity that killed him. It's true that Bismarck didn't die, but we must warn you that nature is a great capricious and history an eternal laurel tree.
For example, Suetonius gave us Claudius, who was a simpleton, or "a pumpkin" as Seneca called him, and Titus, who deserved to be the delight of Rome. A modern professor came along and found a way to demonstrate that of the two Caesars, the delicious one, the truly delicious one, was Seneca's "pumpkin." And you, Madame Lucrezia, flower of the Borgias, if a poet has painted you as the Catholic Messalina, an incredulous Gregorovius has come along and wiped out that quality, and if you haven't become a lily, you haven't become a swamp either. I let myself be between the poet and the sage.
So long live history, the fickle history that can be used for anything; and as for the fixed idea, I'll say that it's what makes men strong and crazy; the mobile, vague or off-color idea is what makes the Claudians," says Suetonius.
My idea was fixed, fixed like... I can't think of anything that's quite fixed in this world: perhaps the moon, perhaps the pyramids of Egypt, perhaps the late Germanic diet. Let the reader see the comparison that best suits him, let him see it and don't go twisting my nose just because we haven't got to the narrative part of these memoirs yet. We will. I think you prefer anecdote to reflection, like the rest of your fellow readers, and I think you're right. So there we go. However, it's important to say that this book is written with patience, with the patience of a man already dismayed by the brevity of the century, a supremely philosophical work, of an unequal philosophy, now austere, then playful, something that neither builds nor destroys, neither inflames nor regales, and yet is more than a pastime and less than an apostolate.
Come on, rectify your nose and let's get back to the plaster. Let's leave history to its elegant lady whims. None of us fought in the battle of Salamis, none of us wrote the Augsburg Confession; for my part, if I ever remember Cromwell, it's only with the idea that His Highness, with the same hand that had locked up parliament, would have imposed the Brás Cubas plaster on the English. Don't laugh at this common victory for pharmacy and puritanism. Who doesn't know that at the foot of every large, public, ostentatious flag, there are often several other modestly private flags, which fly and float in its shadow, and not infrequently outlive it? In comparison, it's like the little stingray that used to sit in the shadow of the feudal castle; the castle fell and the stingray stayed. It's true that it became big and castellated... No, the comparison is no good.
CHAPTER 5 - In which a Lady's Ear Appears
Then, while I was busy preparing and refining my invention, I was hit hard by a blast of air; I immediately fell ill and didn't get treatment. I had the plaster on my brain; I had the fixed idea of the mad and the strong with me. In the distance, I saw myself rising from the ground of the mobs and soaring into the sky like an immortal eagle, and it is not before such an exquisite spectacle that a man can feel the pain that punishes him. The next day I was worse; I treated myself at last, but incompletely, without method, care, or persistence; such was the origin of the evil that brought me to eternity. You already know that I died on a Friday, a bad day, and I believe I have proved that it was my invention that killed me. There are less lucid but no less triumphant demonstrations.
It wasn't impossible, however, that I would rise to the top of a century and appear in the public sheets among the macrobes. I was healthy and robust. Suppose that, instead of laying the foundations for a pharmaceutical invention, I was trying to collect the elements of a political institution or a religious reform. Then along came the current of air, which beats human calculation in efficiency, and there it all went. This is how men's fortunes turn out.
With this reflection, I said goodbye to the woman, I won't say the most discreet, but certainly the most beautiful among her contemporaries, the anonymous woman from the first chapter, the one whose imagination was like the storks of Ilisso... She was 54 at the time, a ruin, an imposing ruin. Imagine, reader, that she and I had loved each other many years before and that one day, when I was already sick, I saw her standing at the door of the alcove...
CHAPTER 6 - Chimène, qui l' eût dit? Rodrigue, qui l'eût cru?
I saw her come to the door of the alcove, pale, moved, dressed in black, and stay there for a minute, not wanting to go in or to be stopped by the presence of a man who was with me. From the bed where I lay, I gazed at her during that time, forgetting to say anything to her or make any gestures. We hadn't seen each other for two years, and now I saw her not as she was, but as she had been, as we had both been, because a mysterious Hezekiah had turned back the sun to her youthful days. The sun went back, I shook off all the misery, and this handful of dust, which death was going to scatter in the eternity of nothingness, was able to do more than time, which is the minister of death. No Juventa water could match simple nostalgia there.
Believe me, the least bad thing is to remember; don't let present happiness hold you back; there's a drop of Cain's drool in it. Once time has passed and the spasm has stopped, then yes, then perhaps you can really enjoy yourself, because between one or the other of these two illusions, the best is the one you like without hurting.
The evocation didn't last long; reality soon took over; the present expelled the past. Perhaps I'll explain my theory of human editions to the reader somewhere in this book. What is important to know for now is that Virgília—her name was Virgília—entered the alcove, firm, with the gravity given to her by her clothes and her years, and came to my bedside. The stranger got up and left. He was a guy who visited me every day to talk about the exchange rate, colonization, and the need to develop the railways; nothing more interesting for a dying man. He left; Virgília stood up; for a while, we stared at each other without saying a word. Who knew? There was nothing left of two great lovers, of two unbridled passions, twenty years later; there were only two withered hearts, devastated by life and sated by it, I don't know if in equal measure, but finally sated. Virgília now had the beauty of old age, an austere and maternal air; she was less thin than when I last saw her at a St. John's party in Tijuca; and because she was one of those who resist a lot, her dark hair was only now beginning to be interspersed with a few strands of silver.
“Are you visiting the dead?" I said.
“Well, dead people!" Virgília replied with a snort. And after shaking my hand: "I'm trying to put the bums out on the street."
It didn't have the tearful caress of another time, but the voice was friendly and sweet. She sat down. I was alone at home with a simple nurse; we could talk to each other without danger. Virgília gave me long reports from abroad, telling them with grace, with a certain hint of a bad tongue, which was the salt of the conversation; I, on the verge of leaving the world, felt a satanic pleasure in getting sick of it, in persuading myself that I wasn't leaving anything.
“What ideas!" interrupted Virgília, somewhat angrily. “Look, I'm not coming back. Die! We'll all die; we just have to be alive."
And watching the clock:
“Jesus! It's three o'clock. I'm leaving."
“Now?"
“I'll come tomorrow or the day after."
“I don't know if it's right," I said, "the patient is a bachelor and the house has no ladies..."
“Your sister?"
“She'll come here for a few days, but it can't be before Saturday."
Virgília thought for a moment, lifted her shoulders, and said gravely:
“I'm old! Nobody notices me anymore. But to cut through the doubt, I came with Nhonhô."
Nhonhô was a bachelor, the only son of her marriage, who, at the age of five, had been an unwitting accomplice in our love affair. They came together two days later, and I confess that when I saw them there, in my alcove, I was overcome with a shyness that didn't allow me to respond immediately to the boy's affable words. Virgília guessed and told her son:
“Nhonhô, don't look at that big man who's there; he doesn't want to talk to make you believe he's dying."
The son smiled, I think I smiled too, and everything ended in pure banter. Virgília was serene and laughing; she had the look of immaculate lives. No suspicious look, no gesture that could give anything away; an equality of word and spirit, a self-restraint that seemed and perhaps was rare. As we casually touched on some illegitimate, half-secret, half-publicized love affairs, I saw her speak with disdain and a little indignation about the woman we were talking about, who was actually her friend. Her son was pleased to hear that dignified and strong word, and I wondered what the hawks would say about us if Buffon had been born a hawk... My delirium was beginning.
CHAPTER 7 - The Delirium
As far as I know, no one has yet reported their own delirium; I'm doing it, and science will thank me. If the reader is not given to contemplating these mental phenomena, they can skip the chapter; go straight to the story. But no matter how curious you are, I'll always tell you that it's interesting to know what went on in my head for twenty or thirty minutes.
First of all, I took the form of a Chinese barber, bulky, right-handed, shaving a Mandarin, who paid me for the work with pinches and confetti: Mandarin whims.
Immediately afterwards, I felt myself transformed into St. Thomas' Summa Theologica, printed in one volume and bound in Morocco, with silver clasps and prints; this idea gave my body the most complete immobility; and even now it reminds me that, as my hands were the clasps of the book, and as I crossed them over my belly, someone uncrossed them (Virgília, I'm sure), because the attitude gave her the image of a dead person.
Lately, when I had been restored to human form, I saw a hippopotamus coming and it snatched me up. I let myself go quietly, I don't know if it was out of fear or confidence, but soon the journey became so vertiginous that I dared to question it, and with some art I told it that it seemed to be going nowhere.
“You're wrong," replied the animal, "we're going to the origin of the centuries."
I hinted that it must be very, very far away, but the hippopotamus either didn't understand me or didn't hear me, if he wasn't pretending one of those things; and when I asked him, since he was talking, if he was descended from Achilles' horse or Balaam's ass, he replied with a gesture peculiar to these two quadrupeds: he waggled his ears. For my part, I closed my eyes and let myself go. By the way, I don't have to confess that I felt a tickle or two of curiosity to know where the origin of the centuries was, if it was as mysterious as the origin of the Nile, and above all if it was worth anything more or less than the consummation of the same centuries: reflections of a sick brain. As I was going with my eyes closed, I couldn't see the road; all I can remember is that the sensation of cold increased with the journey, and that there came a time when I felt like I was entering the region of eternal ice. In fact, I opened my eyes and saw that my animal was galloping across a snow-white plain, with one snowy mountain or another, snowy vegetation, and various large, snowy animals. It was all snow; the snowy sun was freezing us. I tried to speak, but I could only grunt this anxious question:
“Where are we?"
“We're past Eden."
“Well, let's stop at Abraham's tent."
“But if we walk backwards! - he mocked my horse.
I was vexed and stunned. The journey began to seem tedious and extravagant, the cold uncomfortable, the driving violent, and the result unpalatable. And then - the thoughts of a sick man - once we reached the end we had indicated, it wasn't impossible that the centuries, irritated by the fact that they had been ravaged, would crush me between their nails, which must have been as secular as they were. While I was thinking this, we were devouring the path, and the plain was flying under our feet, until the animal stopped, and I could look around me more calmly. Just look; I saw nothing but the immense whiteness of the snow, which this time had invaded the sky itself, which until then had been blue. Maybe, every now and then, one or two plants would appear, huge, brutish, waving their broad leaves in the wind. The silence of that region was like that of the tomb: it had been said that the life of things had become stupid before man.
Did it fall from the air? Did it detach itself from the earth? I don't know; I know that an immense figure, a woman's figure appeared to me then, staring at me with eyes as bright as the sun. Everything about this figure had the vastness of savage forms, and everything escaped the comprehension of the human eye, because the contours were lost in the environment, and what seemed thick was often diaphanous. Stupefied, I didn't say anything, I didn't even let out a scream; but after a while, which was short, I asked who it was and what it was called: curiosity of delirium.
“Call me Nature or Pandora; I'm your mother and your enemy."
When I heard that last word, I took a step back, startled. The figure let out a laugh, which had the effect of a typhoon around us; the plants twitched and a long moan broke the silence of things outside.
“Don't be alarmed," she said, "my enmity doesn't kill; it's above all through life that it asserts itself. You live: I don't want another scourge."
“Alive?" I asked, digging my nails into my hands, as if to make sure I was.
“Yes, worm, you live. Don't be afraid of losing that cloak of pride; for a few hours yet, you will taste the bread of pain and the wine of misery. You live: even now that you've gone mad, you live; and if your conscience sees an instant of wit again, you'll say that you want to live."
As she said this, the vision stretched out her arm, grabbed me by the hair and lifted me into the air like a feather. Only then was I able to get a closer look at his face, which was enormous. Nothing was still; no violent contortions, no expression of hatred or ferocity; the only, general, complete feature was that of selfish impassivity, eternal deafness, immovable will. Anger, if he had any, was locked up in his heart. At the same time, there was an air of youth in this face with its glacial expression, a mixture of strength and vigor, before which I felt like the weakest and most decrepit of beings.
“Do you understand me?" she said, after some time of mutual contemplation.
“No," I replied, "I don't even want to understand you; you're absurd, you're a fable. I'm certainly dreaming, or, if it's true that I've gone mad, you're just an alien conception, that is, a vain thing that absent reason can neither govern nor feel. Nature, you? The Nature I know is only a mother and not an enemy; it doesn't make life a scourge, nor, like you, does it bear that indifferent face, like the tomb. And why Pandora?"
“Because I carry in my purse goods and bads, and the greatest of all, hope, the consolation of men. Do you tremble?"
“Yes, your gaze fascinates me."
“I believe; I am not only life, I am also death, and you are about to give me back what I lent you. Great lascivious one, the voluptuousness of nothingness awaits you."
When this word echoed like thunder in that immense valley, it seemed to me that it was the last sound that reached my ears; I felt the sudden decomposition of myself. Then I looked at her with pleading eyes and asked for a few more years.
“Poor minute!" she exclaimed. "What do you want with a few more moments of life? To devour and then be devoured? Aren't you sick of the spectacle and the struggle? You're familiar with everything I've come across that's not so stupid or distressing: the dawn of the day, the melancholy of the afternoon, the stillness of the night, the sights of the earth, sleep, in short, the greatest benefit of my hands. What more do you want, you sublime idiot?"
“Just to live, I ask nothing more of you. Who put this love of life in my heart if not you? And if I love life, why should you strike yourself by killing me?"
“Because I don't need you anymore. Time doesn't care about the minute that passes, but the minute that comes. The minute that comes is strong, jucund, supposes to bring eternity, and brings death, and perishes like the other, but time remains. Selfishness, you say? Yes, selfishness, I have no other law. Selfishness, conservation. The jaguar kills the calf because the jaguar's reasoning is that it must live, and if the calf is tender, so much the better: that's the universal statute. Go up and look."
In other words, he took me to the top of a mountain. I bent my eyes to one of the slopes and gazed for a long time into the distance, through a fog, at something unique. Imagine, reader, a reduction of the centuries, and a parade of all of them, all the races, all the passions, the tumult of empires, the war of appetites and hatreds, the reciprocal destruction of beings and things. Such was the spectacle, an acerbic and curious spectacle. The history of man and the earth thus had an intensity that neither imagination nor science could give it, because science is slower and imagination more vague, while what I saw there was the living condensation of all time. To describe it, you'd have to stare at the lightning. The centuries marched by in a whirlwind, and yet, because the eyes of delirium are different, I saw everything that passed before me—scourges and delights—from that thing called glory to that other thing called misery, and I saw love multiplying misery, and I saw misery aggravating weakness. Here came the greed that devours, the anger that inflames, the envy that drools, and the hoe and the pen, damp with sweat, and ambition, hunger, vanity, melancholy, wealth, love, and they all shook man like a rattle until they destroyed him like a rag. They were the various forms of an evil that sometimes bit the viscera, sometimes bit the thought, and eternally walked around the human race in its harlequin robes. Pain sometimes gave way, but it gave way to indifference, which was a dreamless sleep, or to pleasure, which was a bastard pain. Then man, scourged and rebellious, would run before the fatality of things, after a nebulous and elusive figure, made of patches, one patch of the impalpable, another of the improbable, another of the invisible, all stitched together precariously with the needle of the imagination; and that figure—nothing less than the chimera of happiness—either fled from him perpetually, or allowed itself to be caught in his diaper, and the man girded it to his chest, and then it laughed, like a mockery, and disappeared, like an illusion.
As I contemplated such a calamity, I couldn't hold back a cry of anguish, which Nature or Pandora heard without protest or laughter; and I don't know by what law of cerebral disorder, I was the one who started laughing—an uncontrollable, idiotic laugh.
“You're right," I said, "it's fun and worthwhile, perhaps monotonous, but worthwhile. When Job cursed the day he was conceived, it was because he wanted to see the spectacle from above. Come on, Pandora, open your belly and digest me; it's fun, but digest me."
The answer was to compel me to look down and see the centuries that continued to pass, swift and turbulent, the generations that overlapped generations, some sad, like the Hebrews in captivity, others joyful, like the debauchees of Commodus, and all of them punctual in the grave. I wanted to run away, but a mysterious force held my feet; then I said to myself: "Well, the centuries are passing, mine will come, and it will pass too, until the last one, which will give me the decipherment of eternity." And I fixed my eyes and continued to watch the ages come and go, now calm and resolute, I don't even know if I was happy. Perhaps joyful. Each century brought its share of shadow and light, of apathy and combat, of truth and error, and its procession of systems, new ideas, new illusions; in each of them, the greens of a spring would burst forth, and then turn yellow, only to be revived later. While life thus had the regularity of a calendar, history and civilization were made, and man, naked and unarmed, armed and clothed himself, built the hut and the palace, the crude village and Thebes with a hundred gates, created science, which scrutinizes, became an orator, a mechanic, a philosopher, traveled the face of the globe, descended into the womb of the earth, ascended into the sphere of the clouds, thus collaborating in the mysterious work with which he entertained the necessity of life and the melancholy of helplessness. My gaze, tired and distracted, finally saw the present century arrive, and behind it the future ones. It was agile, dexterous, vibrant, full of itself, a little diffuse, audacious, knowledgeable, but ultimately just as miserable as the first ones, and so it passed and so did the others, with the same speed and the same monotony. I redoubled my attention; I stared; I was finally going to see the last one—the last one! But by then the speed of the march was such that it was beyond all comprehension; next to it, the lightning would be a century. Perhaps that's why the objects began to change; some grew, others shrank, others were lost in the environment; a fog covered everything—except the hippopotamus that had brought me there, which then began to shrink, shrink, shrink, until it was the size of a cat. It really was a cat. I stared at it; it was my cat Sultan, who was playing with a ball of paper outside the alcove...
CHAPTER 8 - Reason vs. Madness
The reader has already understood that it was Reason who returned to the house and invited Madness to leave, calling out Tartuffe's words with better justice: La maison est à moi, c'est à vous d'en sortir.
But it's Madness's old habit to love other people's houses, so that when she's only the mistress of one, she's unlikely to be evicted. It's a knack; you can't get away from it; it's long since worn off her shame. Now, if we look at the immense number of houses she occupies, some for good, others during her quiet seasons, we can conclude that this amiable pilgrim is the terror of the owners. In our case, there was almost a disturbance at the door of my brain, because the adventuress didn't want to give up the house, and the owner wouldn't give up her intention to take what was hers. After all, Madness was already content with a corner in the attic.
“No, ma'am," replied Reason, "I'm tired of giving away attics to you, tired and experienced, what you want is to pass meekly from the attic to the dining room, from there to the drawing room and the rest."
“Okay, let me stay a little longer, I'm on the trail of a mystery..."
“What mystery?"
“Of two," Madness added, "that of life and that of death; I'm only asking you for ten minutes."
Reason burst out laughing.
“You'll always be the same... always the same... always the same."
Saying this, he grabbed her wrists and dragged her out; then he went inside and locked himself in. Madness still moaned a few times, grunted a few times; but she quickly disentangled herself, stuck out her tongue in a surly manner, and walked on...
CHAPTER 9 – Transition
And now see with what dexterity, with what art, I make the greatest transition in this book. Look: my delirium began in the presence of Virgília; Virgília was my great sin of youth; there is no youth without boyhood; boyhood presupposes birth; and here is how we arrived, without effort, on October 20, 1805, when I was born. See? No apparent joins, nothing to amuse the reader's paused attention: nothing. So the book has all the advantages of the method, without the rigidity of the method. In fact, it's about time. This method thing, indispensable as it is, is nevertheless better without a tie or suspenders, but a bit loose and free, like someone who doesn't mind the neighboring border or the block inspector. And like eloquence, there's one that's genuine and vibrant, of a natural and enchanting art, and another that's stiff, starched and shocking. Let's go to October 20th.
CHAPTER 10 - That Day
That day, the Cubas tree sprouted a graceful flower. I was born; Pascoela, a renowned midwife from Minho, who boasted of having opened the door to the world for a whole generation of noblemen, welcomed me into her arms. It's not impossible that my father heard her make such a statement, but I think it was paternal sentiment that induced him to reward her with two half-folds. Washed and bandaged, I was immediately the hero of our house. Everyone predicted what they liked best about me. My uncle João, the former infantry officer, thought I looked like Bonaparte, something my father couldn't hear without nausea; my uncle Ildefonso, then a simple priest, sniffed me out as a canon.
“A canon is what he's going to be, and I'm not saying more because it doesn't sound like pride; but I wouldn't be surprised if God destined him for a bishopric... It's true, a bishopric; it's not impossible. What do you say, Brother Bento?"
My father would tell everyone that I would be whatever God wanted me to be, and he would lift me up in the air, as if he was trying to show me off to the city and the world; he would ask everyone if I looked like him, if I was intelligent, handsome?
I'm just saying these things off the top of my head, as I heard them told years later; I don't know most of the details of that famous day. I know that the neighborhood came or sent to greet the newborn, and that during the first few weeks there were many visits to our house. There wasn't a chair that didn't work; a lot of jackets and shorts were worn. If I don't tell you about the cuddles, kisses, admirations and blessings, it's because if I did, I wouldn't be able to finish the chapter, and I have to.
I can't say anything about my christening, because I haven't heard anything about it, except that it was one of the most gallant celebrations of the following year, 1806; I was baptized in the Church of São Domingos, on a Tuesday in March, a clear, bright and pure day, with Colonel Rodrigues de Matos and his mistress as godparents. Both were descended from old families from the north and truly honored the blood that ran through their veins, once spilled in the war against Holland. I think the names of both were among the first things I learned; and I certainly said them with a lot of grace, or showed some precocious talent, because there was no stranger in front of whom I wasn't forced to recite them.
“Nhonhô, tell these gentlemen what your godfather's name is."
“My godfather? He is the Honorable Colonel Paulo Vaz Lobo César de Andrade e Sousa Rodrigues de Matos; my godmother is the Honorable Maria Luísa de Macedo Resende e Sousa Rodrigues de Matos."
“Your boy is very clever," the listeners exclaimed.
“Very clever," my father agreed, and his eyes drooped with pride, and he put his hand on my head and looked at me for a long time, flirtatious, full of himself.
Item, I started walking, I'm not sure when, but ahead of time. Perhaps it was because nature was rushing me, they made me grab chairs early on, they picked me up out of my diaper, they gave me wooden carts. “Only just, nhonhô, only just," the servant would say to me. And I, attracted by the tin rattle that my mother was shaking in front of me, went forward, falling here, falling there; and I walked, probably badly, but I walked, and I kept walking.
