A Chapter of Hats: Selected Stories Read online

  Ignacio’s agitation grew; he couldn’t keep calm or understand what was happening to him. Nowhere did he feel easy. He’d wake up at night, thinking about Dona Severina. In the street, he would take wrong turnings, go to the wrong doors, much more than before, and he couldn’t set eyes on a woman, nearby or far off, who didn’t remind him of her. When he entered the house along the corridor as he returned from work, he always felt some excitement; sometimes a great deal, when he saw her at the top of the stairs, looking at him through the wooden slats of the door, as if having come to see who it was.

  One Sunday – he never forgot that Sunday – he was alone in his room, at the window, looking at the sea, which was whispering the same obscure new language as Dona Severina. He amused himself watching the gulls describing circles in the air, alighting on the water or simply fluttering round. It was a beautiful day. It wasn’t just a Christian Sunday; it was an immense, universal Sunday.

  Ignacio always spent these days there in his room or looking out of the window, or rereading one of the three little books he’d brought with him, stories of times past, bought for next to nothing under the archway in the Largo do Paço. It was two in the afternoon. He was tired, he’d slept badly, having walked around a great deal the previous day; he stretched out in the hammock, picked up one of the books, Princess Magalona, and began reading. He’d never been able to understand why all the heroines in these old stories had the same face and figure as Dona Severina, but the fact was that they had. After half an hour, he let the book drop and stared at the wall, from where, five minutes later, he saw the mistress of his thoughts emerge. He should have been astonished; but he wasn’t. Even though his lids were shut, he saw her detach herself completely, stop, smile, and walk towards the hammock. It was she; those were her arms.

  The truth is, however, that not only could Dona Severina not have emerged from the wall, supposing there to have been a door or a fissure there – but she was in the front room, listening to the lawyer’s footsteps as he went downstairs. She heard him go down; she went to the window and only came back when he’d disappeared into the distance, on his way to the Rua das Mangueiras. Then she came in and went to sit on the settee. She seemed out of sorts, restless, almost manic; getting up, she went to pick up a jar on the sideboard and put it back where it had been; then she walked as far as the door, stopped and turned back, for no reason at all, it seems. She sat down again, for five or ten minutes. Suddenly, she remembered that Ignacio hadn’t eaten much at breakfast and looked a bit downcast. It occurred to her he might be ill – maybe he was very ill indeed.

  She went out of the door, hurriedly crossed the corridor and went to the lad’s room, finding the door wide open. Dona Severina stopped, peeped in, and saw him in the hammock, asleep, with his arm hanging down and the book on the floor. His head was turned a little towards the door, so one could see his eyes were closed; his hair was tousled and he had a smiling, blissful look about him.

  Dona Severina’s heart beat violently, and she drew back. She had dreamed of him the previous night; maybe he was dreaming about her now. Since daybreak, the lad’s image had been floating in front of her eyes like a temptation of the devil. She drew back further, then came forward again, and looked for two, three, five minutes or more. It seems sleep gave an emphasis to Ignacio’s adolescence, an almost feminine, childlike expression. A child! she said to herself, in that wordless language we all have within us. This idea slowed the rush of blood to her heart and partially calmed her agitated feelings.

  ‘A child!’

  She looked him over slowly, surfeited herself with looking at him, with his head bent to one side, his arm drooping; but, at the same time as she found him childlike, she found him handsome, much more than when he was awake, and one of these notions corrected or corrupted the other. Suddenly she shuddered and drew back in shock: she’d heard a noise nearby, in the ironing closet. She went to look – a cat had knocked a bowl on to the floor. Slowly, quietly coming back to look at him, she saw he was in a deep sleep. How soundly the boy slept! The noise that had given her such a fright hadn’t even made him change position. And she went on looking at him sleeping – sleeping, dreaming, who knows?

  How sad we can’t see each other’s dreams! Dona Severina would have seen herself in the boy’s imagination; she would have seen herself standing by the hammock, smiling and motionless; then leaning over, taking his hands, lifting them to her chest and enfolding them in her arms, her wondrous arms. Ignacio, fond as he was of her arms, even so heard her words, which were beautiful, warm, and above all new – or, at least, they belonged to some language he didn’t know, even though he understood it. Two, three, four times the figure faded away, only to return, coming from the sea or somewhere else, flying with the gulls, and crossing the corridor, with all the robust charm she was capable of. And coming back, she leaned over, took his hands in hers again and folded her arms across her chest, until, leaning over further, much further, she pursed her lips and gave him a kiss on the mouth.

  Here the dream coincided with reality, and the same mouths were united in the imagination and outside it. The difference is that the vision did not draw back, and the real person had no sooner completed this movement than she fled to the door, ashamed and afraid. From there she went to the front room, stunned by what she had done, unable to fix her eyes on anything. Her ears were on stalks, she went to the end of the corridor to see if she could hear any noise that might tell her he was awake, and only after a long time did the fear begin to subside. It really was true that the lad slept soundly; nothing would open his eyes, whether it was a nearby crash, or a real kiss. But, if the fear faded, her shame stayed and grew. Dona Severina couldn’t believe she’d done a thing like that; it seems she’d wrapped up her desires in the idea that in front of her was an adoring child, unconscious and blameless; and half-mother, half-friend, she had leaned over and kissed him. However that may be, she was confused, irritated, annoyed at herself and at him. The fear that he might be pretending he was asleep surfaced in her soul and made her shiver.

  But the truth is that he slept for much longer, and only woke for supper. He sat eagerly down at the table. Although he found Dona Severina silent and severe and the lawyer as sharp as ever, neither the sharpness nor the severity could dissolve the charming scene he still had in his mind, nor could they dull the sensation of the kiss. He didn’t notice that Dona Severina was wearing a shawl covering her arms; he noticed later, on the Monday, and the Tuesday, and until the Saturday, when Borges sent to tell his father that he couldn’t keep him any longer. He didn’t do it angrily, treating him relatively well, and even saying as he left:

  ‘If you need me for anything, look me up.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Senhora Dona Severina …’

  ‘She’s in her room, with a bad headache. Come back tomorrow or the next day to say goodbye to her.’

  Ignacio left without understanding a thing. The dismissal, the complete change in Dona Severina’s attitude towards him, the shawl, it was all a mystery to him. She seemed so content! She spoke to him so kindly! How, so suddenly … He thought about it so much that he ended up surmising that some indiscreet look or a momentary distraction had offended her. That must be it; that explained the frowning face and the shawl covering those beautiful arms … Never mind; he took the taste of the dream away with him. And for many years, passing through other love affairs, more tangible and longer, he never found a sensation like the one he felt that Sunday, in the Rua da Lapa, when he was fifteen years old. Sometimes, unaware of his mistake, he himself exclaims:

  ‘And it was a dream! No more than a dream!’

  The Cynosure of All Eyes

  ‘Come, come, counsellor, you’re beginning to talk in verse.’

  ‘All men should have their lyrical side – without it, they’re not men. I’m not saying it should surface all the time, or for just any reason; but now and then, for some particular memory … Do you know why I sound like a poet, in spite of my grey hairs and
my lawyer’s training? It’s because we’re walking along here by Glória, by the foreign ministry … There’s the famous hill … Just ahead there, there’s a house …’

  ‘Let’s walk on.’

  ‘Let’s go … Divine Quintilia! All these faces passing by have changed, but they speak to me of that time, as if they were just the same; it’s that lyrical side again, and my imagination does the rest. Divine Quintilia!’

  ‘Was that her name? When I was a medical student, I knew a lovely girl called that, though only by sight. They said she was the most beautiful girl in town.’

  ‘It’ll be the same one, because she had that reputation. Tall and thin, was she?’

  ‘That’s the one. What became of her?’

  ‘She died in 1859. The twentieth of April. I’ll never forget the day. I’ll tell you what I think is an interesting story, and I think you’ll find it interesting too. Look, that’s the house … She lived with an uncle, a retired naval commander; she had another house in Cosme Velho. When I met Quintilia … How old do you think she was when I met her?’

  ‘If it was in 1855 …’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘She must have been twenty.’

  ‘She was thirty.’

  ‘Thirty?’

  ‘Thirty. She didn’t look it, but it wasn’t just said by some rival. She admitted to it herself, even insisted on it. In point of fact, one of her friends said that Quintilia was no older than twenty-seven; but since both of them were born on the same day, she said it to make herself look younger.’

  ‘Now, now, less of the irony; you can’t be ironic and nostalgic.’

  ‘What is nostalgia but an irony of time and fortune? There you are; I’m beginning to sound pompous. Thirty; but she really didn’t look it. Remember too that she was tall and thin; as I used to say back then, she had eyes that seemed as if they’d just been plucked from the night sky, but though they were dark, they had no mysteries, no depths. Her voice was very soft, with a bit of a São Paulo accent, and an ample mouth; she only had to talk, and her teeth made it seem she was laughing. She laughed, too, and it was her laughter, together with her eyes, that caused me a great deal of pain for a long while.’

  ‘But if her eyes had no mysteries …’

  ‘It’s true; so much so that I thought they were the open doors to the castle, and her laughter the clarion summoning the knights to combat. We already knew her, my colleague João Nóbrega and I, when we were both beginning our careers and were very close friends; but it never occurred to us to woo her. She was on the top rung; she was beautiful, rich, elegant and a member of high society. But one day, in the old Pedro II theatre, between two acts of I Puritani,1 when I was in the corridor, I heard a group of young men talking about her, referring to her as an impregnable fortress. Two of them confessed they’d tried something on, but had got nowhere; and all of them were amazed by the girl’s aloofness, for which they could find no explanation. And they joked about it: one said that it was a vow, and she wanted to see if she could get fat first; another that she was waiting for her uncle’s second childhood so she could marry him; another that she’d probably had a guardian angel specially sent from heaven – childish comments that annoyed me a good deal. Coming from people who admitted they’d wooed her or fallen for her, I thought they were appalling. What they did all agree on was that she was extraordinarily beautiful; on that point, they were enthusiastic and sincere.’

  ‘Oh! I can still remember! … She was very pretty.’

  ‘The next day, when I got to the office, in between two of our non-existent cases, I told Nóbrega what I’d heard the day before. Nóbrega laughed, went thoughtful, paced around a bit and stopped in front of me, silently staring. “I bet you’re in love with her?” I asked. “No,” he said, “nor you? I’ve had an idea: let’s see if we can take the fortress. What have we got to lose? Nothing; either she sends us packing, as is only to be expected, or she accepts one of us, and all the better for the loser, who’ll see his friend happy.” “Are you serious?” “Very.” Nóbrega added that it wasn’t just her beauty that made her attractive. It’s as well to say that he prided himself on being the practical sort, but in fact he was a dreamer who spent all his time reading and constructing social and political systems. In his opinion, what those lads in the theatre had avoided mentioning was the girl’s wealth, which was one of her charms, and one of the probable causes of the distress some suffered, and the sarcasm they all dispensed. He said: “Listen, money isn’t everything, but you can’t ignore it; we shouldn’t think it’s the be-all and end-all, but we should admit it provides something – quite a lot, in fact: this watch, for example. Let’s fight for our Quintilia, mine or yours, but probably mine, because I’m the more handsome of the two.”’

  ‘Counsellor, this is a serious thing to confess to; was this the way it began, just a joke …?’

  ‘Just a joke; like a couple of foolish students, we entered on such an important matter – it might have ended in nothing, but it had consequences. It was a silly beginning, like a children’s game, with nothing sincere about it; but man proposes and the species disposes. We knew her, though we’d not met her often; once we’d started on this common enterprise, a new element came into our life, and in a month we’d fallen out.’

  ‘Fallen out?’

  ‘Or almost. We hadn’t reckoned on her, and she cast a powerful spell on us. Within a few weeks we hardly mentioned Quintilia, and then it was with indifference; we were trying to dupe one another, and hide what we were feeling. That was how our friendship collapsed, after six months, with no hatred or quarrels, nothing overtly said, because we still spoke to each other, when we met accidentally; but we had separate offices.’

  ‘I’m beginning to see the beginnings of a drama …’

  ‘Tragedy, rather, call it a tragedy; because a little time later, either because she had told him to desist, or because he gave up hope, Nóbrega left the field to me. He got himself appointed as a judge in a small town in the backlands of Bahia, where he pined away and died before he was forty. And I swear to you it wasn’t Nóbrega’s vaunted practical sense that separated us; he, who used to talk so much about the importance of having money, died of love like Werther.’

  ‘Without the pistol.’

  ‘Poison kills too; and love for Quintilia could be said to be something like that; it killed him, and still gives me pain … But I see I’m getting on your nerves …’

  ‘Not for the world. No, I swear to you; it was just a stupid wisecrack. Go on, Counsellor; you were alone in the field.’

  ‘Quintilia never left anyone alone in the field – not that it was her doing; others answered for that. Many came to drink a hopeful little aperitif, and then went off to dine elsewhere. She showed no particular favours to anyone; but she was affable, charming, and her eyes had a liquid quality about them not made for the jealous among us. I was bitterly, sometimes violently jealous. I thought every mote a beam, and every beam the devil incarnate. In the end, I got used to the idea that they only lasted a day or two. Others gave me more cause for alarm; they were the ones introduced by lady friends. I think these led to one or two attempts at negotiation, but nothing came of it. Quintilia said she would do nothing without consulting her uncle, and the uncle advised refusal – something she knew would happen. The good old fellow never liked men visiting, out of fear his niece would choose one and marry. He was so used to having her by him; it was as if he needed a crutch for his soul, and was afraid of losing her altogether.’

  ‘Maybe that was the cause of the girl’s systematic coldness?’

  ‘You’ll see not.’

  ‘What I can see is that you were more stubborn than the rest …’

  ‘… Deluded, at first, because in the midst of so many failed candidates, Quintilia preferred me to all other men, and spoke to me more openly and intimately, so much so that the rumour got around that we were to be married.’

  ‘But what did you talk about?’

&nb
sp; ‘About everything she didn’t talk to others about; and it was astonishing how a person who loved balls and excursions, waltzing and laughing, was so serious and earnest with me, so different from what she was, or seemed to be.’

  ‘It’s obvious why: she found your conversation less trivial than that of other men.’

  ‘Thank you; the cause of the difference was deeper than that, and it grew over time. When life here in town got on her nerves she went up to Cosme Velho, and there our conversations became longer and more frequent. I can’t tell you – you wouldn’t understand anyway – what the hours I spent there were like; all the life bursting out of her blended into mine. Often I wanted to tell her what I felt, but the words took fright and stayed in my heart. I wrote one letter after another; all of them seemed cold, wordy or pompous. What’s more, she never gave any opening; she seemed like an old friend. At the beginning of 1857 my father fell ill in Itaboraí; I hurried to his bedside, and found him dying. This kept me away from Rio for some four months. I came back around the end of May. When I visited Quintilia, she seemed affected by my sadness, and I saw clearly that my mourning had migrated to her eyes …’

  ‘But surely that could only be love?’

  ‘That’s what I thought, and I organised my effects as if to marry her. At that point, her uncle fell seriously ill. Quintilia wouldn’t be left alone if he died, because, as well as a lot of other relatives she had here and there, there was a cousin living with her now, in the Catete house, Dona Ana, a widow; still, it is true that her principal companion would no longer be there, and in this transition from the present life to the future, I might get what I wanted. The uncle’s illness was short; old age contributed, and it took him in a space of two weeks. I can tell you that his death reminded me of my father’s, and I felt almost the same grief. Quintilia saw my suffering, understood the double cause, and, so she told me later, she was glad of the coincidence, since it had to happen anyway, and it happened quickly. These words seemed to me like an invitation to marriage; two months later I decided to ask for her hand. Dona Ana was now living with her, and they were up in Cosme Velho. I went there, and found them both on the terrace, which was close to the mountain. It was four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Dona Ana, who thought we were in love, left the field open.’