A Chapter of Hats: Selected Stories Page 6

  ‘What is it, my angel?’

  ‘Would you sacrifice something for my sake?’

  ‘Ten, twenty things …’

  ‘Well, stop going to town with that hat on.’

  ‘Why? Is it ugly?’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s ugly; but it’s for wearing round and about, here in the neighbourhood, in the evening or at night, but in town, for a lawyer, I don’t think …’

  ‘Darling, how silly!’

  ‘All right, but would you do me this tiny favour?’

  Conrado struck a match, lit his cigarette, and made an amused gesture, so as to change the subject; but his wife insisted. Her insistence, at first muted and pleading, soon became sharp and demanding. Conrado was taken aback. He knew his wife; usually, she was a passive, sweet creature, pliable and made to measure – she could have worn a royal diadem or a nun’s habit with the same divine indifference. The proof of this is that, having had an active social life in the two years before she was married, no sooner did she marry than she settled into quiet habits. She went out from time to time, most often because her husband himself insisted; but she was only really comfortable at home. The furniture, curtains and ornaments took the place of children; she loved them like a mother, and so perfect was her harmony with her surroundings, that she savoured her knick-knacks in their usual place, the curtains pulled back in the usual fashion, and so on and so forth. One of the three windows that gave on to the street, for example, was always half open; always it was the same one. Even her husband’s study didn’t escape his wife’s demands for monotony; she kept the books in exactly the same disorder, and even went so far as to recreate it. Her mental habits followed this same uniform pattern. Mariana had very few ideas, and had read the same books over and over: A moreninha, by Macedo,1 seven times; Ivanhoe and The Pirate, by Walter Scott, ten times; Le mot de l’énigme, by Madame Craven,2 eleven times.

  This said, how are we to explain the business of the hat? The previous evening, while her husband was at a meeting at the Law Institute, Mariana’s father had come to their house. He was a good old man, thin, deliberate, an ex-civil servant, eaten up by nostalgia for the time when functionaries went to their offices in frock-coats. A frock-coat was what he still wore to funerals, and not for the motives my reader might suspect, the solemnity of death or the gravity of the final farewell, but for this, less philosophical, reason – it was an old custom. It was the only explanation he gave, whether for frock-coats at funerals, for eating his main meal at two in the afternoon, or for twenty other old-fashioned ways. He was so attached to his habits that on his daughter’s wedding anniversary he went to their house at six in the evening with his meal eaten and digested, watched them eat, and at the end accepted a little dessert, a glass of wine and coffee. Such was Conrado’s father-in-law; how can we expect him to approve of his son-in-law’s flat hat? He put up with it in silence, out of respect for the qualities of the individual; nothing more. However, that day it happened that he saw it in the street out of the corner of his eye, chatting with other top hats on professional men, and it had never seemed so crass. That evening, finding his daughter alone, he opened his heart to her; he dubbed the low hat the height of abomination, and entreated her to have it permanently banished.

  Conrado knew nothing of these details, which were the origin of her demand. Knowing how docile his wife was, he didn’t understand her resistance; and because he was authoritarian and stubborn, her insistence ended by irritating him profoundly. Even so he contained himself; he preferred to make fun of the matter; he spoke to her with such irony and disdain that the poor lady felt humiliated. Mariana twice tried to get up; he made her stay, the first time gripping her lightly by the wrist, the second subjugating her with a look. And he said, smiling:

  ‘Look, love, I have a philosophical reason for not doing what you’re asking of me. I’ve never told you this; but now I’ll confide everything to you.’

  Mariana bit her lip, and said no more; she picked up a knife, and began to tap it very slowly on the table, to do something; but her husband wouldn’t allow her even this – delicately, he took the knife away, and went on:

  ‘The choice of a hat is not an indifferent act, as you might suppose; it is governed by a metaphysical principle. Don’t imagine that a person buying a hat is committing a free, voluntary act; the truth is that he is obeying an obscure determinism. The illusion of freedom is rooted in the purchaser, and kept alive by hatters who, when they see a customer try on thirty or forty hats, imagine he is freely looking for an elegant combination. The metaphysical principle is the following – the hat completes the man, it is a complement decreed ab eterno; no one can change it without self-mutilation. This is a profound matter, one that has never yet occurred to anyone. Wise men have studied everything from stars to worms, or, to give you the bibliographical references, from Laplace onwards … You’ve never read Laplace? From Laplace and his Mécanique céleste to Darwin and his curious book about worms,3 yet they’ve never thought to stop and look at a hat, and study it from every angle. No one has noticed that there is metaphysics in hats. I might write a memoir about it. It’s a quarter to ten; I’ve no time to say any more; but think about it yourself, and you’ll see … Who knows? Perhaps the hat isn’t the complement of man, but man of the hat …’

  Mariana finally got control of herself, and left the table. She’d understood nothing of his grating vocabulary, nor his peculiar theory; but she felt the sarcasm, and, inside herself, she wept for shame. Her husband went up to dress; he came down a few minutes later, and stood in front of her with the famous hat on his head. Mariana thought it really did make him look coarse, commonplace, vulgar, not at all serious. Conrado said a ceremonious goodbye and left.

  The lady’s irritation had subsided a good deal; but the feeling of humiliation was still there. Mariana didn’t weep or scream, as she thought she was going to; but in her thoughts she remembered her simple request, Conrado’s sarcastic comments, and even though she recognised she had been a little demanding, she could find no excuse for such excesses. She paced up and down, unable to keep still; she went into the sitting room, approached the half-open window, and saw her husband again, in the street waiting for the tram, with his back to the house, and the eternal, disgusting, crass hat on his head. Mariana felt possessed by hatred of that ridiculous article; she didn’t understand how she’d been able to put up with it for so many years. And she thought back over those years, thought of her docile ways, her acquiescence to all her husband’s wishes and whims, and asked herself if that might not actually be the cause of that morning’s outburst. She called herself foolish, a pushover; if she’d been like so many others, Clara or Sophia, for instance, who treated their husbands as they should be treated, nothing remotely like this would have happened. One thought led to another, and she thought of going out. She got dressed, and went round to see Sophia, an old schoolfriend, just to get some fresh air, not to tell her anything.

  Sophia was thirty, two years older than Mariana. She was tall, robust and very much her own mistress. She greeted her friend in her usual enthusiastic manner; and even though Mariana said nothing, she guessed she was nursing a considerable grievance. Goodbye to Mariana’s intentions! Twenty minutes later, she was telling her all. Sophia laughed at her, shrugged her shoulders, and told her it wasn’t her husband’s fault.

  ‘Oh of course, it’s mine,’ Mariana concurred.

  ‘Don’t be so silly, my girl! You’ve been too soft with him. But this time you must be strong; pay no attention; don’t speak to him too soon; and if he wants to make it up, tell him to change his hat first.’

  ‘Just think, such a trivial thing …’

  ‘At bottom, he’s quite right; just like a lot of other men. Look at that booby Beatriz; hasn’t she just gone into the country, only because her husband took against an English-man who used to go by their house in the afternoons, on horseback? Poor Englishman! Naturally, he didn’t even notice she’d gone. We women can live qui
te well with our husbands, with mutual respect, nobody treading on anyone else’s toes, with no fits of pique and no overbearing ways. Look – I live very happily with my Ricardo; we’re in complete harmony. I never ask him anything but he does it straight away; even when he’s not at all in the mood, all I have to do is frown, and he obeys in no time. He’d not be one to dig his heels in! What? Not likely! Where would that lead us! He’d change his hat whether he liked it or not.’

  Mariana listened enviously to this delightful definition of conjugal bliss. Eve’s rebellion was just putting the trumpet to her lips, ready for a fanfare; and being with her friend gave her an itch for independence and self-assertion. Just to round the situation off, Sophia was not only very much mistress of herself, but of others too; she had eyes for any Englishman, on horseback or on foot. She was virtuous, but a flirt; perhaps the word is a bit crude, and there’s no time to find another, more polite one. She flirted with anyone, left, right and centre, out of a natural need, a habit from before she was married. It was the small change of love, which she distributed to all the poor people who knocked at her door – a penny to one, another to another; never a five-pound note, much less a share certificate. This same charitable feeling now led her to propose to her friend that they should go out, see the shops and have a good look at some other handsome, dignified hats. Mariana accepted; some devil was stoking up the fires of vengeance inside her. Moreover, her friend, like Bonaparte, had the gift of seduction, and gave her no time to reflect. Yes, she would go, she was tired of living like a captive. She had the right to some fun too, etc., etc.

  While Sophia went to get dressed, Mariana stayed in the drawing room, restless and pleased with herself. She planned her whole week ahead, fixing the day and time for each thing, as if she was on an official trip. She got up, sat down, went to the window, waiting for her friend.

  ‘Is Sophia dead, or what?’ she said from time to time.

  Once when she went to the window, she saw a young man pass by on horseback. He wasn’t English, but she was reminded of that other woman, whose husband had taken her into the country because he was suspicious of an Englishman, and she began to feel hatred for the whole masculine race – except, perhaps, for young men on horseback. In all honesty, this one was too affected; he stuck his legs out in the stirrups, obviously vain about his boots, and stuck his hand in his belt as if in a fashion plate. Mariana did note those two defects, but she thought his hat made up for them; not that it was a top hat: it was flat, but it fitted in with his riding gear. It wasn’t sitting on the head of a lawyer going gravely to his office, but on that of a man who was amusing himself or passing the time of day.

  Sophia’s heels came unhurriedly down the stairs. ‘Ready!’ she said a little later, as she came into the room. She was pretty, without a word of a lie. We already know she was tall. Her hat made her look more imperious; and a wicked black silk dress, moulding her breasts, made her look even more striking. Next to her, Mariana was somewhat in the shade. You had to look at her first to notice that she had very attractive features, a pair of very pretty eyes, and a great deal of natural elegance. The worst of it was that Sophia took over from the start; and if there was only a brief moment available, she took it all for herself. This comment would be incomplete, if I didn’t add that Sophia was aware of her superiority, and for this very reason appreciated beauties of Mariana’s type, less flamboyant and obvious. If this is a defect, it’s not my duty to correct it.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Mariana.

  ‘Don’t be silly! For a trip into town … Now I remember, I’m going to have my photograph taken; then I’m going to the dentist. No; let’s go to the dentist first. You don’t have to go the dentist?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor have your photograph taken?’

  ‘I’ve got lots already. And what for? To give it to “him”?’

  Sophia realised that her friend’s resentment was still there, and on the way, was careful to spice things up a bit. She told her that, difficult though it might be, there was still time to break free. And she showed her the method for escaping tyranny. The best thing was not to do it all at once, but slowly, surely, so that he would only come to when she already had her foot on his neck: a few weeks’ work, three or four, no more than that. Sophia herself was quite ready to help her. And she repeated that she mustn’t be too soft, she was no one’s slave, and so on. Mariana, in her heart, was intoning the Marseillaise of matrimony.

  They reached the Rua do Ouvidor. It was a little after midday. There were lots of people, walking or standing, the usual hustle and bustle. Mariana felt a little dizzy, as she always did. Uniformity and placidity, the basis of her character and life, got the usual knocks from all this agitation. She could hardly find her way between the groups of people, even less did she know where to fix her gaze, such was the confusion of the crowds, the variety of the shops. She kept close to her friend, and without noticing that they had already passed the dentist’s surgery, was anxious to get there. It would be a resting place; it was something better than this tumult.

  ‘Oh, this street!’ she was saying.

  ‘Uh-huh?’ Sophia replied, turning her head towards her and the eyes of a young man on the opposite pavement.

  Sophia, a frequent traveller on these turbulent seas, made her way through the crowd, passing round people skilfully and calmly. She had an imposing figure; those who knew her were pleased to see her again; those who didn’t, stopped or turned round to admire her panache. And the good lady, overflowing with charity, spread her eyes to right and left, causing no great scandal, for Mariana served to lend respectability to her movements. Her sentences were often curtailed; in fact, it seemed as if she hardly heard her friend’s replies; but she talked about everything, about other people coming and going, about a shop, a hat … And in fact, there were lots of hats – ladies’ and gentlemen’s hats – as people gathered on the Rua do Ouvidor.

  ‘Look at this one,’ Sophia said to her.

  And Mariana obediently looked at them, feminine or masculine, without knowing where to put herself, for these accursed hats milled around as if in a kaleidoscope. Where is the dentist? she asked her friend. Only when she asked her a second time did Sophia reply that they’d already passed the surgery; but now they were going on to the end of the street; they’d come back later. Finally, they did so.

  ‘Oh!’ Mariana let out a sigh of relief as they entered the corridor.

  ‘Good heavens, what’s this? Look at you! You’d think you’d just come in from the country.’

  There were some customers already in the dentist’s waiting room. Mariana saw not a single face she recognised, and so as not to be inspected by strangers, she went over to the window. From the window she could enjoy looking at the street, without being jostled. She leaned back; Sophia came over. Some male hats, standing in the street, began to look at them; others did the same as they passed by. Mariana was annoyed by their insistence; but when she saw that they were mostly looking at her friend, her boredom dissolved into a kind of envy. Sophia, meanwhile, was telling the stories attached to some of the hats – or their adventures, more accurately. One of them was seldom out of the thoughts of So-and-so, another was head over heels in love with Such-and-such, and she with him, so much so that they were always to be seen on the Rua do Ouvidor on Wednesdays and Saturdays between two and three in the afternoon. Mariana listened in amazement. It was a handsome hat, in fact, with a lovely tie, and had a look somewhere between elegance and roguishness, but …

  ‘I can’t swear, mind,’ Sophia was saying, ‘but that’s what they say.’

  Mariana stared thoughtfully at the hat under inspection. Now there were three more, as elegant and charming, and the four were probably talking about them, and flatteringly too. Mariana blushed to her roots, turned her head away, then back again, and finally left the window. As she did so, she saw two ladies who’d just arrived, and with them a young man who got up and greeted her very ceremoniously. It w
as her first suitor.

  This first suitor would now be thirty-three. He’d been away, in the country, in Europe, and had lately had a spell as president of one of the southern provinces. He was of medium height, pale, with a thin, full beard, and wore very tight clothes. In his right hand he had a new top hat, black, grave, presidential, administrative, a hat suited to the person and his ambitions. Mariana, however, was almost blind to it. She was so confused, so disoriented by the presence of a man she’d known in somewhat exceptional circumstances, and hadn’t seen since 1877, that she couldn’t fix her eyes on anything. She held her fingers out; it seems she even murmured some kind of reply, and was just going back to the window, when her friend turned from the window towards her and came over.

  Sophia also knew the new arrival. They exchanged some words. Mariana asked her in an impatient whisper if it wouldn’t be better to put the teeth off for another day; but her friend said no; it was only a matter of half or three-quarters of an hour. Mariana felt oppressed: the presence of a man like this inhibited her, threw her into a state of conflict and confusion. It was all her husband’s fault. If he hadn’t been so stubborn, and made fun of her on top of that, nothing would have happened. As she thought this, Mariana swore she’d have her vengeance. In her memory she looked longingly at her house, so quiet, so pretty, where she might still have been, as usual, without the pushing and shoving in the street, without her dependence on her friend …

  ‘Mariana,’ said Sophia, ‘Dr Viçoso insists he’s quite thin. Don’t you think he’s put on weight since last year? … Don’t you remember him last year?’

  Dr Viçoso was the ex-suitor; he was chatting with her, frequently casting his gaze in Mariana’s direction. She replied in the negative. He took advantage of this opportunity to pull her into the conversation, saying that, as a matter of fact, he hadn’t seen her for some years. And he underlined his words with a certain sad, profound look. Then he opened up his box of topics, and pulled out the opera. What did they think of the company? In his opinion it was excellent, except for the baritone; the baritone seemed to be suffering from fatigue. Sophia protested at the baritone’s fatigue, but he insisted, adding that, in London, where he’d heard him for the first time, he’d already struck him the same way. But the ladies were a different matter; the soprano and the contralto were of the first order. He talked about the operas, praised the orchestra, especially in Les Huguenots …4 He’d seen Mariana on the last night, in the fourth or fifth box on the left, wasn’t that right?