A Chapter of Hats: Selected Stories Read online

  The moon hadn’t had time to wax and wane before the honeymoon was over. As at other times, and sooner still than before, the old masters in the portraits made him bleed with remorse. Irritated and fed up, Pestana took it out on the muse that had come so often to console him, the one with the roguish eyes and seductive gestures, lively and graceful. Then his self-aversion came back, his hatred of anyone who asked him to play the latest polka, and together with it the effort to compose something in classical taste, one page would do, but one that could be printed and bound to stand between Bach and Schumann. But all study was useless, all struggle vain. He plunged into the Jordan, but came back out unbaptised. Night after night he spent in this manner, confident, stubborn, sure that will-power was enough, and that once he gave up the easy music …

  ‘The polkas can go to hell for the devil to dance to,’ he said to himself one day, at dawn, on his way to bed.

  But the polkas didn’t want to go that far down. They came to Pestana’s house, right into the room with the portraits, and burst in so readily that he barely had the time to compose them, have them printed, enjoy them for a few days, get fed up with them, and go back to the old wellsprings, from whence nothing flowed. He lived this way, between these two options, until he married, and even after.

  ‘Marry who?’ asked Sinhazinha Mota of her uncle, a notary, who’d given her this news.

  ‘He’s going to marry a widow.’

  ‘Old, is she?’

  ‘Twenty-seven.’

  ‘Pretty?’

  ‘No. She’s not ugly either – so-so. I’ve heard he fell in love with her because he heard her sing in the last festival at St Francis de Paul. But I’ve also heard she’s got another quality, not uncommon, but less attractive: she’s consumptive.’

  Notaries shouldn’t be so witty – or, at any rate, so unkind with it. His niece felt a final drop of balm, which cured the slight sting of envy. It was all true. A few days later, Pestana married a twenty-seven-year-old widow, a good singer and a consumptive. He received her as the spiritual bride of his genius. Doubtless celibacy was the cause of his sterility and his straying from the straight and narrow, he said to himself; artistically, he thought of himself as a late-night reveller – the polkas were the affairs of a habitual roué. Now, however, he would father a family of serious, profound, inspired and polished works.

  This hope came to bud in the first hours of their love, and burgeoned in the first dawn of their marriage. ‘Maria,’ stammered his soul, ‘give me what I’ve not found in nights of solitude, or in the tumult of my days.’

  Right at the beginning, to celebrate the marriage, he had the idea of composing a nocturne. He would call it ‘Ave, Maria’. Happiness, it seemed, brought him the beginnings of inspiration; not wanting to say anything to his wife before it was ready, he worked in secret. This was difficult, for Maria, who loved music as much as he did, came to play with him, or just to listen to him, hour after hour, in the portrait room. They even put on some weekly concerts, with three artists, friends of Pestana’s. One Sunday, however, he could no longer contain himself, and called his wife to play her a part of the nocturne; he didn’t tell her what it was nor whom it was by. Suddenly, stopping, he looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Go on,’ said Maria; ‘isn’t it Chopin?’

  Pestana went pale, stared into space, repeated one or two passages and got up. Maria sat down at the piano, and after a small effort of memory played the Chopin piece. The idea and the motif were the same; Pestana had found it down some alleyway of his memory, an ancient city full of treacherous turnings. Unhappy, desperate, he left the house, and went towards the bridge on the way to São Cristóvão.

  ‘Why fight it?’ he said. ‘Let’s go with the polkas … Hurrah for the polka!’

  Men who passed by and heard his words stopped to look, as if he was a madman. He went on his way, delirious, tormented, an eternal shuttlecock between his ambition and his vocation … He went past the old slaughterhouse; when he got to the railway crossing gate, he had the notion to walk up the line and wait for the first train to come and crush him. The guard made him turn back. He came to his senses and went home.

  A few days later – a clear and fresh morning in May 1876 – it was six o’clock, and Pestana felt in his fingers a peculiar, well-known tremor. He got up slowly, so as not to wake Maria, who had coughed all night and was now in a deep sleep. He went into the portrait room, opened the piano and, as quietly as possible, brought out a polka. He had it published with a pseudonym; in the next two months he composed and published two more. Maria knew nothing of it; she went on coughing and dying, till, one night, she expired in the arms of her terrified and desperate husband.

  It was Christmas Night. Pestana’s grief was made worse by a dance in the neighbourhood where several of his best polkas were being played. The dance was bad enough; his compositions gave it an ironic, perverse air. He heard the steps, imagined the movements, maybe provocative, which some of his compositions led to; all this right next to the pallid corpse, a bag of bones laid out on the bed … Every hour of the night went by like this, slow or fast, wet with tears or sweat, with cheap scent or cologne, ceaselessly frolicking and cavorting, as if to the sound of a polka by a great invisible Pestana.

  Once his wife was buried, the widower had a single aim: he would abandon music after composing a requiem, which he’d have played on the first anniversary of Maria’s death. He’d choose another occupation, clerk, postman, peddler, anything to make him forget art, murderous and deaf to his pleas.

  He began the work; he employed every trick, boldness, patience, meditation, even the caprices of chance, as he’d done in the old days, when he’d imitated Mozart. He reread and studied the composer’s Requiem. Weeks and months went by. The work, which first of all went quickly, began to slow its pace. Pestana had ups and downs. He thought it was missing something, that it had no religious feeling, no ideas, no inspiration or method; later, his heart would lift once more and he’d be hard at work. Eight months, nine, ten, eleven, and the requiem wasn’t finished. He redoubled his efforts; forgot his teaching and his friends. He’d reworked the piece many times; but now he wanted to finish it, one way or another. Two weeks, one week, five days … The dawn of the anniversary found him still at work.

  He contented himself with a simple spoken Mass, for himself alone. It’s impossible to say if all the tears that came furtively to his eyes belonged to the husband, or if some were the composer’s. What’s certain is that he never went back to the requiem.

  ‘What for?’ he said to himself.

  Yet another year went by. At the beginning of 1878, the publisher came by.

  ‘It’s been two years since you’ve given us one of those tunes of yours,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s asking if you’ve lost your gift. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I know you’ve had a severe blow; but it was two years since. I’ve come to propose a new contract: twenty polkas in twelve months; the old price, and a bigger percentage on the sales. Then, when the year’s up, we can renew it.’

  Pestana made a gesture of assent. He didn’t have many pupils, he’d sold the house to pay off debts, and his basic needs were eating up what was left, which wasn’t very much. He accepted the contract.

  ‘But the first polka must come straight away,’ the publisher explained. ‘It’s urgent. Have you seen the Emperor’s letter to Caxias?4 The liberals have been called on to form a government; they’re going to undertake electoral reform. The polka will be called “Hurrah for Direct Elections!” It’s not a political statement; just a good topical title.’

  Pestana composed the first work for the contract. In spite of the long silence, he hadn’t lost his originality or his inspiration. He still had the same touch of genius. The other polkas came, in regular succession. He’d kept the portraits and their works; but he avoided spending every night at the piano, so as not to get caught up in more failed attempts. Now he asked for a free tick
et whenever there was a good opera or solo concert; he went and sat in a corner, enjoying all these things which would never sprout from his brain. Once or twice, when he came back home, his head full of music, the unpublished maestro woke again; then, he’d sit down at the piano, and, with no real aim, play a few passages until he went to bed twenty or thirty minutes later.

  So the years went by, until 1885. Pestana’s fame had given him the undisputed first place among polka composers; but the chief place in the village wasn’t enough for this Caesar, who would still have preferred not the second, but the hundredth place in Rome. He still had the mood swings he’d had before about his compositions; the difference was they were less violent now. There was no enthusiasm in the first hours following a new composition, nor was there the horror after the first week; a bit of pleasure and a certain ennui were all.

  That year, he picked up a slight fever, which worsened in a few days, and became pernicious. He was already in danger when the publisher appeared; he knew nothing of the illness, and was coming to give him the news of the conservatives’ return to power, and to ask him for a topical polka. The nurse, an impoverished clarinet player in a theatre band, told him of Pestana’s state, so the publisher thought it better to remain silent. It was the sick man who insisted he should tell him what he’d come for; the publisher obeyed.

  ‘But only when you’re completely better,’ he concluded.

  ‘As soon as the fever’s gone down a bit,’ said Pestana.

  There was a pause for a few seconds. The clarinettist went on tiptoe to prepare his medicine; the publisher got up and took his leave.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Look,’ said Pestana, ‘as it’s probable I’ll be dying in the next few days, I’ll do you two polkas; the other’ll serve when the liberals come back again.’

  It was the only joke he’d ever cracked in his life, and it was just in time, because he died early the next morning, at five past four, at peace with his fellow men and at war with himself.

  The Cane

  Damião ran away from the seminary at eleven in the morning one Friday in August. I don’t know what year it was; before 1850, anyhow. A few minutes later he stopped in confusion; he hadn’t bargained on the effect on passers-by of a shocked runaway seminarian in a cassock. He wasn’t familiar with the streets, and kept losing his way and retracing his steps; finally he stopped. Where was he to go? Not home; his father was there, and he’d send him back to the seminary after a good hiding. He’d not fixed on where he’d go, because he’d planned the escape for later; a chance event had brought it forward. Where could he go? He remembered his godfather, João Carneiro, but his godfather was a gutless lazybones, who’d do nothing unless he was pushed to it. It was he who’d taken him to the seminary and introduced him to the rector:

  ‘Here he is; here’s the great man of the future,’ he said to the rector.

  ‘Come in,’ the rector replied, ‘let the great man come in, so long as he’s humble and good. True greatness is modest. My lad …’

  That was when he got there. A little time later he ran away from the seminary. Here he is now, in the street, scared, uncertain, unsure where to go for safe haven or for advice; he searched his memory for the houses of relatives and friends, without settling on any. Suddenly, he exclaimed:

  ‘I’ll take refuge with Sinhá Rita! She’ll call my godfather over and tell him she wants me out of the seminary … Maybe that way …’

  Sinhá Rita was a widow, João Carneiro’s mistress; Damião had some inkling of this situation and thought of using it for his own ends. Where did she live? He was so dazed that it was only a few minutes later that it came to mind; it was in the Largo do Capim.

  ‘Holy name of Jesus! What’s this?’ shouted Sinhá Rita, sitting up on the settee where she was reclining.

  Damião had just entered in terror; at the very moment he got to the house he’d seen a priest go by, and shoved the door open – luckily it wasn’t locked or bolted. Once inside, he peeped through the shutters, looking for the priest. He hadn’t noticed him, and went on his way.

  ‘What’s this, young Senhor Damião?’ shouted the lady of the house, again, for she’d only just recognised him. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Damião, trembling, almost unable to speak, told her not to be afraid, it was nothing; he’d explain everything.

  ‘Calm down, and explain yourself.’

  ‘I’ll tell you now; I’ve not committed a crime, I swear; but wait a moment.’

  Sinhá Rita looked at him in shock, and all the girls, both those belonging to the house and those from outside, who were sitting around the room in front of their lace-making cushions, stopped their hands and their bobbins. Sinhá Rita lived mostly from teaching lace-making, appliqué and embroidery. While the lad was catching his breath, she ordered the girls to go on working, and waited. In the end, Damião told her everything, his loathing of the seminary; he was certain he wouldn’t make a good priest; he spoke with passion, and asked her to save him.

  ‘What do you mean? There’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘You can, if you want.’

  ‘No,’ she replied, shaking her head; ‘I’m not getting involved in your family’s business; I hardly know them; and then there’s your father – they say he’s got a temper on him!’

  Damião thought he was lost. He kneeled at her feet and kissed her hands in despair.

  ‘There’s a lot you can do, Sinhá Rita; for the love of God, by whatever’s most sacred to you, by your husband’s soul, save me from death, because I’ll kill myself if I have to go back to that place.’

  Sinhá Rita, flattered by the lad’s pleas, tried to persuade him to change his attitude. A priest’s life was holy and beautiful, she told him; time would show him that it was better to get over his aversion, and one day … No, never, never, Damião answered, shaking his head and kissing her hands; and again he said it would kill him. Sinhá Rita hesitated for a long while; finally she asked him why he didn’t go and see his godfather.

  ‘My godfather? He’s worse than Papa; he won’t listen to me, I don’t think he’d listen to anyone …’

  ‘Oh no?’ Sinhá Rita interrupted, hit where it hurts. ‘I’ll show you if he’ll listen or not …’

  She called a slave-boy and ordered him to go to Senhor João Carneiro’s house and call him over on the instant; and if he wasn’t at home, he should ask where he could be found, and run to tell him she needed to talk to him straight away.

  ‘Go on, boy.’

  Damião sighed heavily, out loud. To cover up the imperious way she’d given those orders, she explained to the boy that Senhor João Carneiro had been her late husband’s friend and had got her some orphan girls to teach. Later, as he still looked down in the mouth, leaning in a doorway, she laughingly pinched his nose:

  ‘Come on, my young priest, relax, everything’ll work out.’

  Sinhá Rita was forty on her birth certificate, and twenty-seven in her eyes. She was a handsome woman, lively, jolly, fond of a good laugh; but when it suited her as fearsome as the devil himself. She decided to cheer the boy up, and in spite of the situation it was no great effort. In a short while, both of them were laughing; she told him stories, and asked him to tell her others, which he did with great aplomb. One of these, a silly story accompanied by comic gestures, made one of Sinhá Rita’s girls laugh; she’d forgotten her work to look at the lad, and listen to him. Sinhá Rita picked up a cane at the side of the settee, and threatened her:

  ‘Lucretia, mind the cane!’

  The young girl lowered her head to avoid the blow, but the blow didn’t come. It was a warning; if when night fell the task wasn’t done, Lucretia would get the usual punishment. Damião looked at the orphan: she was a black girl, skinny, a little waif with a scar on her forehead and a burn on her left hand. She was eleven years of age. Damião noticed she was coughing, but inwardly and muffled, so as not to interrupt the conversation. He felt sorry for her and decided to take her u
nder his wing if she didn’t finish her task. Sinhá Rita wouldn’t refuse her forgiveness … What was more, she’d laughed because she thought him comical; it was his fault, if you call being funny a fault.

  At this point, João Carneiro arrived. He went pale when he saw his godson there, and looked at Sinhá Rita, who wasted no time on preambles. She said it was necessary to take the boy out of the seminary, since he had no vocation for the ecclesiastical life, and one priest less was better than a bad priest. We can love and serve the Lord in the wider world. João Carneiro, dismayed, couldn’t find words to reply for the first few minutes; finally, he opened his mouth and admonished his godson for coming to bother ‘strangers’; then he asserted he would punish him.

  ‘Punish him – certainly not!’ Sinhá Rita interrupted. ‘What for? Go on, go and talk to his father.’

  ‘I can’t guarantee a thing, I don’t think it can be done …’

  ‘It is possible, I’ll warrant for that. If you will it,’ she went on in an insinuating tone of voice, ‘everything can be worked out. Go and insist, he’ll give way. Go on, Senhor Carneiro, your godson’s not going back to the seminary; I’m telling you he’s not going …’

  ‘But, madam …’

  ‘Go on, go.’

  João Carneiro couldn’t work up the courage to go, nor could he stay. He was being pulled in opposite directions. He didn’t care if the boy ended up a priest, a lawyer or a doctor, whatever – a layabout would do; the worst thing was that they were entrusting to him a tremendous struggle with the boy’s father’s deepest feelings, with no certainty as to the outcome; as well as, if the answer was no, another struggle with Sinhá Rita, whose final word had been a threat: ‘I’m telling you he’s not going back …’ One way or another there was going to be trouble. There was panic in João Carneiro’s eyes, his lids trembled, his chest heaved. He looked at Sinhá Rita in supplication, and with the slightest tinge of reproof. Why couldn’t she ask something else of him? Why didn’t she ask him to walk, in the rain, all the way to Tijuca or Jacarepaguá? But to ask him to persuade his dear friend to change his son’s career … He knew the old man; he was quite capable of smashing a jug in his face. Oh! If only the lad could drop down dead, on the spot, in an apoplexy! That was one solution – cruel, it’s true, but definitive.