A Chapter of Hats: Selected Stories Read online

  ‘These pictures are getting old. I’ve already asked Chiquinho to buy some others.’

  Chiquinho was the husband. The pictures spoke of the man’s principal interest. One represented Cleopatra; I can’t remember what the subject of the other was, but it was women. Both were vulgar; at that time I didn’t think they were ugly.

  ‘They’re pretty,’ I said.

  ‘They are, I agree; but they’re stained. And anyway, to be honest, I’d prefer two images, two saints. These are more suitable to a young man’s room, or a barber’s shop.’

  ‘A barber’s? You’ve never been to a barber’s.’

  ‘But I imagine the customers while they’re waiting, talking about girls and love affairs, and naturally the owner likes to cheer their surroundings up with nice pictures. In a family house, though, I don’t think it’s suitable. That’s what I think; but I think lots of funny things like that. Anyhow, I don’t like the pictures. I’ve got an Our Lady of the Conception, my patron saint, very pretty; but it’s a statue, and you can’t put it on the wall – I don’t want to anyway. It’s in my oratory.’

  The idea of the oratory reminded me of Mass; I remembered it was getting late and thought of saying so. I think I got as far as opening my mouth, but I soon shut it to listen to what she was saying, sweetly, charmingly, so softly that a laziness spread over my spirit and made me forget the Mass and the church. She was talking about her devotions when she was a child and a young girl. Then she told some stories about dances, things that had happened on outings, memories of boat trips to Paquetá, all jumbled up, one thing following on from another. When she tired of the past she spoke about the present, what she did in the house, the burden of family duties. They’d told her before she was married it would be bad, but her duties were no bother. She didn’t tell me, but I knew she’d married when she was twenty-seven.

  She wasn’t moving around now, as she had done before, and stayed almost in the same position. Her eyes no longer had that wide, distant look in them, and she began looking aimlessly round the walls.

  ‘We should change the wallpaper,’ she said a little later, as if talking to herself.

  I agreed, so as to say something, to get out of the kind of magnetised sleep, or whatever it was, that was paralysing my tongue and my senses. I wanted to end the conversation, but didn’t want to at the same time; I made an effort to tear my eyes from her, and did so, out of respect; but the idea that she might think it was boredom when it wasn’t brought my eyes back again to Conceição. The conversation was slowly dying. In the street, the silence was complete.

  We stayed completely quiet for a while, even – I can’t say for how long. The only tiny noise was the gnawing of a mouse in the study, which awoke me from my state of somnolence; I went to speak of it, but I couldn’t find a way. Conceição seemed to be daydreaming. Suddenly I heard a knock on the window, from outside, and a voice shouting: ‘Midnight Mass! Midnight Mass!’

  ‘There’s your friend,’ she said, getting up. ‘That’s funny; you were going to wake him, and it’s he who’s come to awaken you. Off you go, it must be time; goodnight.’

  ‘Is it time already?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Midnight Mass!’ the person repeated from outside, knocking.

  ‘Go on, off you go, don’t make them wait for you. It was my fault. Goodnight; till tomorrow.’

  And with the same sway to her body, Conceição went down the corridor into the house, treading softly. I went out into the street to find the neighbour waiting. We went off to the church. During Mass, the figure of Conceição came once or twice between me and the priest; put it down to my seventeen years. The following morning, at breakfast, I talked about the Midnight Mass and the people in the church without arousing Conceição’s curiosity. During the day, I found her as she always was, natural, kind, with nothing about her that reminded me of the previous night’s conversation. At New Year I went to Mangaratiba. When I came back to Rio de Janeiro, in March, the notary had died of apoplexy. Conceição was living in Engenho Novo, but I didn’t go to visit, nor did I happen to see her. Later, I heard she’d married her late husband’s apprenticed clerk.

  Pylades and Orestes

  Quintanilha begat Gonçalves. That was the impression they gave together, not that they were alike. On the contrary, Quintanilha’s face was round, Gonçalves’s long, the former was small and dark, the latter tall and fair, and overall they were quite different in their appearance. We can add that they were about the same age. The idea of paternity sprang from the way the former treated the latter; a father wouldn’t have lavished as much affection, care and thought as he did.

  They had been students together, lived together, and graduated in the same year. Quintanilha didn’t go into law or become a magistrate, he went into politics; but after he was elected a provincial member of the Chamber of Deputies in 187—, he finished his mandate and abandoned the career. He’d got an inheritance from an uncle, which earned him about thirty contos de réis a year. He came to see his friend Gonçalves, who was a solicitor in Rio de Janeiro.

  Though he was well off, young, and a friend to his only friend, you can’t say Quintanilha was completely happy, as we’ll see. Let’s put on one side the distress caused by the hatred of the other relatives; it was so bad he almost gave up the inheritance, and the only reason he didn’t was that his friend Gonçalves, who used to give him ideas and advice, convinced him it would be the height of madness to do it.

  ‘Is it your fault you deserved more of your uncle than the other relations? It wasn’t you that made the will or sweet-talked the old man, as they did. If he left you everything, it’s because he thought better of you than of them; keep the fortune, according to the will of the deceased, and don’t be a fool.’

  Quintanilha ended up agreeing. Some of the relatives tried to make it up with him, but his friend showed him what their hidden intentions were, and Quintanilha shut the door on them. One of them, seeing him so close to his ex-student friend, told anyone who cared to listen:

  ‘There you are; he abandons his relatives and goes around with strangers; we’ll see where that leads.’

  When he heard about this, Quintanilha hurried indignantly to tell Gonçalves about it. Gonçalves smiled, called him a fool and calmed his worries; there was no sense in getting concerned about tittle-tattle.

  ‘There’s only one thing I want,’ Gonçalves went on, ‘and that’s that we separate, so it can’t be said that …’

  ‘So what can’t be said? That’s a good one! That’d be a fine thing, if I started choosing my friendships according to the whim of a lot of barefaced layabouts!’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Quintanilha. You’re very rude about your relatives.’

  ‘The devil take my relatives! So I’m to live with people recommended by half a dozen scoundrels who want to come and live off my money? No, Gonçalves; anything you want but that. It’s me, and my own heart, that chooses my friends. Or are you … are you tired of me?’

  ‘Me? You’re joking.’

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No buts about it.’

  Their lives were as united as it was possible for them to be. When Quintanilha awoke, he thought about his friend, had breakfast and went to see him. They dined together, visited friends, went for a stroll or ended the evening at the theatre. If Gonçalves had some work to do in the evening, Quintanilha dutifully went to assist him; he looked for legal texts, marked them, copied them or carried the books. Gonçalves often forgot things, a message, a letter, shoes, cigars, papers. Quintanilha acted as his memory. At times, in the Rua do Ouvidor watching the girls go by, Gonçalves would remember some documents he’d left at the office. Quintanilha flew off to fetch them and came back so happy you wouldn’t have known if they were legal papers or a winning lottery ticket. He sought him anxiously with his eyes as he ran in, all smiles, and dead of fatigue.

  ‘Are these the ones?’

&nb
sp; ‘Yes … let me see … the very ones. Give me them.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll carry them.’

  At first, Gonçalves would sigh: ‘What trouble I’ve put you to!’

  Quintanilha laughed at the sigh so good-naturedly that his friend, so as not to upset him, would no longer accuse himself; he agreed to accept these favours. With time, they turned into a job. Gonçalves said to his friend: ‘Remind me later today of this or that,’ and Quintanilha committed these things to memory, or wrote them down if there were a lot of them. Some had to be remembered at a given moment, and it was quite something watching the good Quintanilha sigh, waiting for a given moment to arrive, to have the pleasure of reminding his friend of his affairs. And he carried his letters and papers, went to get the replies, to look for people, to wait for them at the railway station, or went on trips into the interior. On his own initiative, he discovered good cigars, good restaurants or good shows. Gonçalves could no longer mention a new book – or just an expensive one – without finding he had a copy at home.

  ‘You’re a spendthrift,’ he’d say in a tone of reprimand.

  ‘That’s a good one! Is money spent on literature and science wasted, then?’ Quintanilha would conclude.

  At the end of the year he thought Gonçalves should spend the summer holidays out of the city. The latter ended up agreeing, and the pleasure this gave Quintanilha was enormous. They went up to Petrópolis. On the way back, as they were coming down the mountain, they were talking about painting, and Quintanilha noted they didn’t yet have a portrait of them both and had one painted. When he took it to his friend, Gonçalves had to tell him it was no good. Quintanilha was speechless.

  ‘It’s rubbish,’ Gonçalves insisted.

  ‘But the painter told me …’

  ‘You don’t understand painting, Quintanilha, and the painter took advantage and put one over on you. Is this a decent face? Is my arm twisted like this?’

  ‘What a robber!’

  ‘No, he’s not to blame, he did his job; it’s you that’s got no feeling for art, or any experience of it, and you’ve bungled it. With the best of intentions, no doubt …’

  ‘Yes, I had good intentions.’

  ‘And I bet you’ve already paid?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gonçalves shook his head, called him an ignoramus and ended up laughing. Quintanilha, embarrassed and annoyed, looked over and over at the picture, till he took out a knife and ripped it from top to bottom. As if this gesture of vengeance wasn’t enough, he gave the picture back to the artist with a note in which he informed him of some of the things that had been said, and added that he was an ass. These things happen in life. Moreover, a promissory note of Gonçalves’s that fell due some days later, and that he couldn’t pay, gave Quintanilha something else to think about. They almost had a fight; Gonçalves’s intention was to renew the loan; Quintanilha, who had endorsed it, thought it not worth the bother asking for this favour when the amount was so small (a conto and a half); he would lend the sum, and his friend could pay him when he was able. Gonçalves wouldn’t consent to this, and the loan was renewed. This was repeated when the second due-date came, and all Gonçalves would do was give Quintanilha a promissory note, at the same rate of interest as the first.

  ‘Can’t you see you put me to shame, Gonçalves? How can I take interest off you?’

  ‘Either you accept it, or nothing doing.’

  ‘But, my dear friend …’

  He had to agree. The two were so united that a lady called them newly-weds, and an intellectual, Pylades and Orestes. They laughed, of course, but Quintanilha’s laughter had something like tears in it; there was a soft tenderness about his eyes. Another difference is that Quintanilha’s feelings had an enthusiasm about them completely lacking in Gonçalves; but then enthusiasm can’t be invented. Of course, the second of the two men was better able to inspire it in the first than vice versa. In fact, Quintanilha was most sensitive to any kind of favour; a word or a look could light up his brain. A tap on the shoulder or the stomach, just to signal approval or merely underline their intimacy, could melt him with pleasure. He would recount the gesture and its circumstances for two or three days.

  It wasn’t uncommon to see him get irritated and stubborn, and lambast others. Frequently, too, he could be seen laughing; sometimes the laughter invaded him completely, bursting out of his mouth, his eyes, his forehead, arms and legs – he exuded laughter from every pore. Though not strongly passionate, he was far from being unemotional.

  Gonçalves’s promissory note came due in six months. On the day itself, not only had Quintanilha no thought of asking for the money, he’d decided to have dinner in some distant part of the city so as not to see his friend if he was to be asked to renew it. Gonçalves spoiled the whole plan: early in the morning he brought him the money. Quintanilha at first made a gesture of refusal, telling him to keep it – he might need it; the debtor insisted on paying, and paid.

  Quintanilha watched all Gonçalves did; he saw how hard he worked, and the energy he put into his cases. He was full of admiration. In truth, Gonçalves wasn’t a great lawyer, but within the limits of his abilities he acquitted himself well.

  ‘Why don’t you get married?’ Quintanilha said to him one day. ‘Lawyers should get married.’

  Gonçalves answered with a laugh. He had an aunt, his only relative, whom he loved dearly, and who died when they were just reaching thirty. Days later, he said to his friend: ‘You’re the only one I’ve got left now.’

  Quintanilha felt tears in his eyes, and didn’t know what to say. When he thought of saying that he ‘would die for him’ it was too late. He redoubled his endearments, and one day awoke with the notion of making a will. Saying nothing to his friend, he named him executor and only heir.

  ‘Keep this document for me, Gonçalves,’ he said, giving him the will. ‘I feel fine, but death can easily overtake us, and I don’t want to trust my final wishes to just anyone.’

  It was around this time that something happened, which I’ll now recount.

  Quintanilha had a second cousin, Camila, twenty-two, modest, well brought up and pretty. She wasn’t rich; her father, João Bastos, was a bookkeeper for a coffee firm. They had quarrelled over the inheritance; but Quintanilha went to João Bastos’s wife’s funeral, and this act of respect brought them together again. João Bastos easily forgot some rude things he’d said of his cousin, said some nice ones, and invited him to dinner. Quintanilha went, and went back. He listened to his cousin’s eulogies for his dead wife; on one occasion when Camila left them alone, João Bastos praised his daughter’s rare qualities, and said she was, in moral terms, her mother’s absolute heir.

  ‘I’d never say this to the girl, and I ask you to say nothing either. She’s modest, and if we begin to praise her it could be her undoing. So, for example, I’ll never tell her she’s as pretty as her mother was when she was her age; it might make her vain. But she’s even prettier, don’t you think? She can play the piano too, which her mother couldn’t.’

  When Camila came back to the dining room, Quintanilha felt the urge to tell her all, but held back and winked at his cousin. He asked to hear her play the piano; she answered, in melancholy tones:

  ‘Not yet, it’s only a month since Mama died; leave it for a time yet. Anyway, I play badly.’

  ‘Badly?’

  ‘Very badly.’

  Quintanilha winked at his cousin again, and remarked to the girl that only if she played could he judge whether she did it well or ill. As for the time, it was true that only a month had gone by; but it was also true that music was a natural pastime, and a very respectable one. Besides, all she had to do was play something sad. João Bastos approved this view of the matter, and suggested an elegiac piece. Camila shook her head.

  ‘No, no, it’s still playing the piano; the neighbours are quite capable of saying I played a polka.’

  Quintanilha thought that was funny and laughed. Later he agreed and
waited till three months were up. In the interim he saw his cousin a few times, the three last visits being the longest and the closest together. Finally, he was able to hear her play the piano, and liked what he heard. Her father confessed that at first he’d not liked these German pieces; with time he got used to them and enjoyed them. He called his daughter ‘my little German girl’, a nickname Quintanilha adopted, only in the plural: ‘our little German girl’. Possessive pronouns give a certain intimacy; in a little time, it was shared between the three of them – or four, if we count Gonçalves, who was introduced there by his friend; but let’s stick to the three of them.

  You’ve already sniffed it out for yourself, sagacious reader. Quintanilha ended up falling for the girl. How could he not, when Camila had such languid, bewitching eyes? Not that she rested them on him often, and if she did it was with a certain embarrassment at first, like children obeying the voice of a master or a father; but she did rest them on him, and they were such that they gave a fatal wound, though unintentionally. She also smiled frequently and was amusing to listen to. At the piano, however reluctantly she might play, she played well. In short, Camila might not have been acting on her own initiative, but she was no less bewitching for that. Quintanilha discovered one morning that he’d dreamed of her all night, and at night that he’d thought of her all day, and concluded from this discovery that he loved her and was loved in return. He felt so giddy that he was ready to announce it in the newspapers. At the least, he wanted to tell his friend Gonçalves, and ran to his office. Quintanilha’s affection for him was complicated by respect and fear. When he was about to open his mouth he swallowed the secret before it was out. He didn’t dare tell him that day or the next.