A Chapter of Hats: Selected Stories Read online

  Rangel declared he couldn’t play, he had a headache; but Joaninha came over and asked him to partner her. ‘Half the winnings for you, half for me,’ she said smiling; he smiled too and accepted. They sat next to one another. Joaninha was talking to him, laughing, lifting her beautiful eyes to him, restless, moving her head to one side and another. Rangel felt better, and in no time he was completely happy. He marked the numbers at random, missing some, which she pointed out with her finger – a nymph-like finger, he said to himself; and he began making mistakes deliberately so as to see her finger, and hear her scolding him: ‘You’re very forgetful; if you carry on like this, we’ll lose our money …’

  Rangel thought of giving her the letter under the table; but since nothing had been said, she’d be bound to be shocked and spoil everything; she must be forewarned. He looked around the table: all the faces were bent over their cards, attentively following the numbers. Then he leaned over to the right, and looked down over Joaninha’s cards, as if to check something.

  ‘You’ve got two lines,’ he whispered.

  ‘I haven’t, I’ve got three.’

  ‘Three, yes, three, you’re right. Listen …’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ve got two.’

  ‘What d’you mean, two? You’ve got four.’

  There were four; she leaned over to show him them, almost brushing her ear against his lips; then she looked at him, laughing and shaking her head: ‘Tut, tut, Senhor Rangel!’ Rangel heard this with singular delight; her voice was so sweet, her expression so friendly, that he forgot everything, grabbed her by the waist, and threw himself into an eternal, chimerical waltz. House, table, guests, all disappeared, vain products of the imagination, all of them. Nothing was left but a single reality, the two of them whirling in space under a million stars purposely shining to light up their way.

  No letter, nothing. When morning was near, they all went to the window to see the guests leaving from the ball opposite. Rangel recoiled in horror. He saw Queiroz gently squeeze the lovely Joaninha’s hand. He tried to explain it away, it was just an illusion, but no sooner had he destroyed one than others appeared, like waves breaking over him, one after another. He could barely understand that one single night, a few hours could be enough to join two creatures in this way; but it was the living truth, evident from their gestures, their eyes, their words, their laughter, even from the sadness with which they separated in the early morning.

  He left in a state of shock. A single night, just a few hours! When, some time later, he got home, he lay down on the bed, not to sleep, but to burst out sobbing. When he was alone, all his affectation disappeared, no longer was he the diplomat, he was a maniac rolling around on the bed, shouting, crying like a child, truly unhappy, all because of this sad, autumnal passion. This poor soul, this mixture of daydreaming, indolence and affectation, was, in substance, as unhappy as Othello, and his end was even crueller.

  Othello kills Desdemona; our lover, whose hidden passion had been suspected by no one, acted as Queiroz’s witness when he and Joaninha were married six months later.

  The years passed by, and nothing happened to change his nature. When the Paraguayan war broke out3 he often thought of enlisting as an officer in the volunteer force; he never did; all the same, he won a few battles and ended up as a brigadier.

  The Fortune-Teller

  Hamlet observes to horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy. The lovely Rita gave this same explanation to young Camilo, one Friday in November 1869, when he was laughing at her for having consulted a fortune-teller the day before; the only difference was that she used other words to express the idea.

  ‘Go on, laugh if you want. That’s men for you; they don’t believe in anything. Well, I did go, and she knew why I was consulting her even before I’d told her. She’d hardly begun to lay out the cards when she said to me, “You’re fond of someone …” I confessed I was, and then she went on laying out the cards, put them in order, and then told me I was frightened you’d forget me, but there was no need …’

  ‘Wrong!’ Camilo interrupted, laughing.

  ‘Don’t say that, Camilo. If you knew how I’ve been lately, because of you. You know; I’ve told you. Don’t laugh at me, don’t laugh …’

  Camilo took hold of her hands, and gazed at her with a serious, steady look. He swore he really loved her, that these were childish fears; in any case, if she was at all fearful, he was the best fortune-teller to come to. Then he reproached her, and said it was imprudent to go to houses like that. Vilela might get to know about it, and then …

  ‘Not a chance! I took great care as I went in.’

  ‘Where’s the house?’

  ‘Near here, in the Rua da Guarda Velha; there was no one in the street at the time. Don’t worry; I’m not crazy.’

  Camilo laughed again:

  ‘Do you really believe in that kind of thing?’ he asked her.

  That was when, without knowing she was translating Hamlet into common speech, she told him that there are lots of mysterious things in the world that are true. If he didn’t believe her, fine; but the truth is that the fortune-teller had divined everything. What more did he want? The proof is that now she was calm and contented.

  I think he was going to say something, but he stopped himself. He didn’t want to deprive her of her illusions. He too, when he was a boy, and even later in life, had been superstitious; he’d had a whole arsenal of absurd beliefs impressed on him by his mother, which disappeared when he was twenty. This parasitic vegetation then fell away, leaving only the main trunk of religion; but since he’d received both from his mother, he wrapped them up in the same doubt, and soon afterwards in a single total denial. Camilo believed in nothing. Why? He couldn’t say; he didn’t have a single argument, and limited himself to denying everything. Even that isn’t right, because denying something is still a kind of affirmation, and he didn’t put his disbelief into words; faced by life’s mystery, he was happy to shrug his shoulders and carry on as before.

  They went their separate ways; each of them was happy, he even more than she. Rita was certain she was loved; Camilo not only was sure of that, but saw how she trembled and risked herself for him by going to fortune-tellers – however much he reproached her, he couldn’t but feel flattered. The house they’d met in was in the old Rua dos Barbonos, where a friend of Rita’s from her home town lived. Rita went off down the Rua das Mangueiras towards her home in Botafogo; Camilo went down the Rua da Guarda Velha, looking at the fortune-teller’s house as he passed.

  Vilela, Camilo and Rita, three names – an affair, then, but what about its origins? Here they are. The first two were childhood friends. Vilela studied to be a lawyer, and became a magistrate. Camilo trained to be a civil servant, against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to be a doctor; but his father died, and Camilo preferred doing nothing, until his mother got him an administrative job. In early 1869, Vilela came back from the provinces, where he’d married a beautiful, foolish woman; he abandoned the magistracy and opened a law firm. Camilo got him a house in the Botafogo area, and went on board ship to welcome him.

  ‘Is it you?’ Rita had exclaimed, holding out her hand. ‘You can’t imagine how much my husband thinks of you; he was always talking about you.’

  Camilo and Vilela looked at each other affectionately. They were true friends. Then, Camilo confessed to himself that Vilela’s wife didn’t belie her husband’s letters. She really was a lovely, vivacious woman, her eyes were warm, her mouth delicate and inquisitive. She was a little older than either – thirty, while Vilela was twenty-nine and Camilo twenty-six. However, Vilela’s air of severity made him look older than his wife, while Camilo was an innocent in the moral and practical sides of life. Time had taught him nothing, and he was not provided with the crystal spectacles nature puts in some people’s cradles to foresee the effects of time. He possessed neither experience nor intuition.

  The t
hree became fast friends. Daily contact brought on intimacy. A little later, Camilo’s mother died, and in this calamity – which was what it was – the other two stuck by him and showed real friendship. Vilela looked after the funeral, the Masses and the inventory; Rita especially looked after the emotional side of things, and no one could have done it better.

  How they moved from this stage to love he never knew. The truth is that he liked spending time in her company; she was his moral nurse, almost a sister, but more than anything else she was a woman, and a pretty one. Odor di femmina: that was what he scented in her and around her, and it enveloped him. They read the same books, went to the theatre and on trips together. Camilo taught her draughts and chess and they played in the evenings; she played badly – he, to be agreeable to her, a little less badly. So much for the preliminaries: then there was the woman herself, Rita, with her insistent eyes, which often sought his out, which consulted him before her husband, her cold hands, her unexpected attitudes. One day, on his birthday, he got an expensive walking stick from Vilela, from Rita only a card with plain good wishes in pencil, and it was then he started to read his own heart; he couldn’t tear his eyes from the words. Common words; but things can be common and sublime or, at least, delicious. The old hired cab in which you first went for a ride with your loved one with the curtains down is worth as much as Apollo’s chariot. That’s the nature of man, and of the things that surround him.

  Camilo sincerely wanted to escape, but he couldn’t. Rita, like a snake, moved closer and closer, wrapped herself round him, made his bones crack in a single spasm, and dropped her venom on his lips. He was stunned, and submitted. Embarrassment, fright, remorse, desire – he felt them all, each mixed with the other; but the battle was short and the victory ecstatic. Goodbye to scruples! It didn’t take long for the shoe to adjust itself to the foot, and there they went along the high road, arm in arm, happily treading on plants and pebbles, suffering nothing but a little longing when they were apart. Vilela’s trust and esteem were the same as ever.

  One day, however, Camilo received an anonymous letter, calling him immoral and perfidious, and saying that their adventure was public knowledge. Camilo was afraid, and, to deflect suspicions, began to visit Vilela’s house less often. The latter noticed his absences. Camilo replied that the cause was a trivial, youthful love affair. Innocence bred guile. His absences became longer and longer, until the visits came to a complete stop. Maybe a little amour propre came into it too, a desire to lessen the husband’s favours, and so make the betrayal itself less burdensome.

  It was around this time that Rita, suspicious and fearful, had recourse to the fortune-teller to ask her about the real cause of Camilo’s behaviour. We have seen that the fortune-teller restored her trust, and that the young man reprimanded her. A few weeks went by. Camilo got two or three more anonymous letters, so heated, that they couldn’t have been prompted by a concern for virtue or morality; they were written by some jealous, thwarted lover; this was Rita’s opinion, who formulated this thought in other, ill-expressed words: virtue is lazy and stingy, and doesn’t waste time or paper; only self-interest is active and spendthrift.

  This made Camilo no less anxious; he feared that the anonymous author would go to see Vilela, and then catastrophe would be unavoidable. Rita agreed it was possible.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll take the envelopes to compare the writing with any letters that appear there; if any are the same, I’ll take them and tear them up …’

  None came; but a little time later Vilela began to look morose, saying little, as if he was suspicious. Rita lost no time in telling her lover, and they deliberated on the matter. Her opinion was that Camilo should go back to their house, sound out her husband, and maybe he would confide some private trouble to him. Camilo begged to differ; to appear after so many months was to confirm the suspicion or the accusation. It was better that they should be cautious, and sacrifice themselves for a few weeks. They fixed a way of exchanging news, if they had to, and tearfully separated.

  The following day, at work, Camilo got a message from Vilela: ‘Come to our house instantly; I need to speak to you without delay.’ It was after midday. Camilo left immediately; in the street, he realised it would have been more natural for Vilela to have asked him to come to his office; why at home? Everything pointed to something unusual, and the handwriting, rightly or not, looked shaky to him. He put all these things together with yesterday’s news.

  ‘Come to our house instantly; I need to speak to you without delay,’ he repeated, staring at the piece of paper.

  In his imagination, he saw the tip of a drama – Rita humiliated and in tears, Vilela indignant, taking up the pen, certain he would come, and waiting there to kill him. Camilo shivered, he was frightened; then he smiled nervously – in any case, any idea of going back was repugnant to him, and he went on his way. As he did so, it occurred to him to go home; he might find a message from Rita explaining everything. There was nothing there, nobody. He went back into the street, and the idea that they had been found out began to seem more and more probable; some kind of anonymous accusation was likely, perhaps from the same person who had threatened him before; maybe Vilela now knew everything. The cessation of his visits for no apparent motive, on a feeble pretext, must have confirmed everything else.

  Camilo went on his way, worried and nervous. He didn’t reread the note, but he had the words by heart, fixed, in front of his eyes; or, what was even worse, they were whispered in his ear, in Vilela’s own voice. ‘Come to our house instantly; I need to speak to you without delay.’ Said in this way, in another’s voice, they had a tone of mystery and menace. Come instantly, what for? It was nearly one in the afternoon. He became more and more agitated by the minute. His imagination was so fixed on what might happen that he began to believe it and see it. He was genuinely afraid. He considered taking a weapon with him, thinking that, if there was nothing wrong, nothing would be lost by doing so, and it was a useful precaution. Soon after, he rejected the idea, ashamed of himself, and went on, hurriedly, towards the Largo da Carioca, to get a cab. He got there, got in, and ordered the driver to go fast.

  ‘The sooner the better,’ he thought, ‘I can’t carry on in this state …’

  But even the horse’s trotting worsened his anxiety. Time was flying, and very soon he’d be face to face with the danger. Almost at the end of the Rua da Guarda Velha the cab had to stop; the street was blocked by an upturned cart. Camilo, at bottom, was glad of the obstacle, and waited. After five minutes, he noticed that at the roadside, on the left, right by the cab, was the fortune-teller’s house, the one Rita had once consulted, and never before had he wanted so much to believe in the lessons the cards had to teach. He looked and saw the windows, closed, while all the others were open and jammed with faces looking at the incident in the street. You might have said it was the abode of indifferent Destiny itself.

  Camilo leaned back in the cab, so as to see nothing. He was very agitated indeed, extraordinarily so, and from the depths of his moral being emerged ghosts of another time, old beliefs, ancient superstitions. The cab driver suggested that they go back to the first cross-street, and go by another route; he said no, they should wait. And he leaned forward to look at the house … Then he made an incredulous gesture: it was the idea of hearing what the fortune-teller had to say, passing by in the distance, far away, with huge grey wings; the idea disappeared, came back again, and once more faded out of his mind; but a little later it flapped its wings again, closer now, sweeping round in concentric circles. In the street, men were shouting, freeing the cart:

  ‘Right now! Push! Come on, come on!’

  The obstacle would soon be removed. Camilo shut his eyes, thought about other things; but the husband’s voice whispered in his ears the words of the letter: ‘Don’t delay, come, come …’ He saw the twists in this drama, he was shaking. The house was looking at him. His legs wanted to get down and go in … Camilo found himself in front of a long opaqu
e veil … hurriedly, he thought about how so many things are inexplicable. His mother’s voice was telling him about a large number of extraordinary happenings, and the Prince of Denmark’s very own words echoed inside him: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ What was there to lose, if …?

  He came to on the pavement, right next to the door, told the driver to wait, and quickly slipped into the corridor and up the stairs. There was very little light, the stairs were worn down and the handrail was sticky; but he saw and felt none of this. He ran up and knocked. Nobody came, and he thought of going back down; but it was too late, his heart was beating fast, his temples throbbing; he knocked, once, twice, three times. A woman came; it was the fortune-teller. Camilo said he’d come to consult her, and she asked him in. From there they went up to the attic, by a staircase worse than the first one, and darker. At the top was a little room, badly lit from a window which gave on to the roofs at the back. Old bits of furniture, dark walls, an air of poverty – all of which, far from destroying the impact of the place, increased it.

  The fortune-teller asked him to sit on one side of the table, and herself sat down on the other side, her back to the window, so that the little light coming from outside fully illuminated Camilo’s face. She opened a drawer and took out a pack of cards, large and soiled. While she shuffled them, quickly, she was looking at him, not full in the face, but from under her lids. She was a woman of forty, Italian, dark and thin, with big, cunning, acute eyes. She turned three cards on the table over, and said to him:

  ‘First, let’s see what brings you here. You’ve had a shock …’

  Camilo, astonished, gestured that he had.

  ‘And you want to know,’ she went on, ‘if something is going to happen to you or not …’

  ‘To me and her,’ he hurriedly explained.