A Chapter of Hats: Selected Stories Page 8

  The final time this separation of mind and the lower instincts happened, I was already at the coffee stage, and had a parliamentary speech in front of me. I found myself once more at the church door; I imagined my cousins weren’t there, and that I was walking behind the lovely lady. That’s how those who lose in the lottery console themselves; that’s how thwarted ambitions are satisfied.

  Don’t ask for the details or the preliminaries of this encounter. Dreams scorn the delicate lines and the finish of a landscape; they’re happy with four or five rough but representative strokes. My imagination leaped over the difficulties of the opening words, and went straight to the Rua do Lavradio, or Inválidos, to Adriana’s own house. Her name is Adriana. She hadn’t come to the Rua da Misericórdia for an amorous encounter, but to see someone, a relative or a close friend, or a seamstress. She saw me, and felt the same agitation. I wrote to her; she wrote back. We were everything to each other, far above all the decrees of morality and the dangers threatening us. Adriana’s married; her husband is fifty-two; she’s not yet thirty. She’s never been in love, not even with her husband, whom she married to obey her family. I taught her love and betrayal at the same time; that’s what she’s telling me in this little house I’ve rented outside the city, just for us.

  Intoxicated, I listen to her. I wasn’t mistaken; she’s the ardent, loving woman her eyes already told me of, the eyes of a bull, like those of Juno, large and round. She lives through me and for me. We write to each other every day; and in spite of that, when we meet in the little house, it’s as if a century had gone by. I think her heart has taught me something, though she is so innocent – or maybe for that very reason. In matters like these custom stales, and ignorance is the best teacher. Adriana doesn’t disguise her happiness or her tears: she writes as she thinks, and says what she feels; she shows me that we are not two people, but one, simply one universal being, for whom God created the sun and the flowers, paper and ink, the mail system and carriages with their curtains down.

  While I was sketching this picture, I believe I finished drinking my coffee; I remember a waiter came to the table and removed the cup and the sugar bowl. I don’t know if I asked him for a light – probably he saw me cigar in hand and brought me matches.

  I can’t swear it, but I think I lit the cigar, because an instant later, through a veil of smoke, I saw the sweet, vibrant face of my lovely Adriana, stretched out on a sofa. I’m on my knees, listening to her recounting her latest tiff with her husband. For he’s already suspicious; she goes out a lot, she’s distraite, absorbed in her thoughts, seems sad or happy for no reason, and her husband is beginning to threaten her. What with? I tell her that, before anything serious happens, it would be better to leave him, and come to live with me, publicly, only for each other. Adriana listens to me, pensive, looking just like Eve, listening to the devil’s words as he whispers in her ear what her heart is already telling her. Her fingers are stroking my hair.

  ‘Yes, yes!’

  She came the next day, all alone, no husband, no social ties, no scruples, just herself, and from that moment on we lived together. We did it without ostentation, but without secrecy. We thought of ourselves as foreigners, and in truth that was what we were; we spoke a language no one had ever heard or spoken before. Other love affairs, for centuries, had been counterfeits; ours was the only authentic edition. For the first time, the divine manuscript was printed, a large volume we divided into as many chapters and paragraphs as there were hours in the day or days in the week. The style was a weave of sunshine and music; the language was made up of the choicest parts of other languages. Everything sweet or vibrant that was to be found in them was distilled by the author to make this unique book, which lacked an index, for it was infinite; it had no margins, so that boredom couldn’t scribble in them; and it lacked a bookmark, for we no longer needed to interrupt our reading.

  A voice called me back to reality. It was a friend who had got up late, and come for his lunch. I couldn’t even dream without this cousin from Sapucaia appearing! Five minutes later I said goodbye and left; it was after two.

  I’m ashamed to say that I went back to the Rua da Misericórdia, but I must tell all: I went, and found nothing. I went again during the next few days and got nothing further out of it but the time I wasted. I resigned myself to giving up on the adventure, or waiting for chance to bring a solution. My cousins thought I was irritated or ill; I didn’t deny it. A week later, they left, and I didn’t miss them for a moment; I said farewell to them as one might to a bout of malignant fever.

  The image of my mystery lady didn’t leave me for many weeks. Several times in the street, I made mistakes. I discerned a figure far off, just like her; I took to my heels till I caught up with her, and was disappointed. I began to think myself ridiculous; but then came another hour or a minute, a shadow in the distance, and the obsession revived. Finally, other concerns took over, and I thought no more about it.

  At the beginning of the following year, I went to Petrópolis; I made the journey with an old friend from student days, Oliveira, who had been a barrister in Minas Gerais but had lately inherited some money and given up the career. He was cheery, as he had been when we were younger; but from time to time he went quiet, looking out from the boat or the carriage with an empty stare, as if his soul was preoccupied with some memory, hope or desire. When we reached the top of the climb I asked him which hotel he was going to; he answered that he was going to a private house, but didn’t tell me where; he even changed the subject. I thought he might visit me the next day, but he didn’t, nor did I see him anywhere. Another acquaintance of ours had heard tell he had a house over in the Renânia neighbourhood somewhere.

  None of these incidentals would have come to my mind if it weren’t for the information I was given days later. Oliveira had taken a woman from her husband, and taken refuge in Petrópolis. They gave me the husband’s name and hers. Hers was Adriana. I confess that, though the other woman’s name was purely an invention of mine, I shivered as I heard it; mightn’t it be the same woman? Straight away, I realised that this was asking a great deal of Chance. This poor disposer of human affairs already does enough, pulling one or two loose threads together; to demand that he tie them all up and give them the same titles is to move from reality to the novel. Thus spoke my good sense, and it never said anything so solemnly foolish, for the two women were the very same, no more, no less.

  I saw her three weeks later, when I went to visit Oliveira, who’d left Rio unwell. We’d come up together the previous day; halfway up the mountain he began to feel discomfort; by the time we got to the top he was feverish. I accompanied him in the carriage as far as his house, and didn’t go in, because he didn’t want to put me to any more trouble. But the next day I went to see him, partly out of friendship, and partly too because I was eager to meet the mystery woman. I saw her; it was her, the one and only, my own Adriana.

  Oliveira soon recovered, and in spite of my regular visits he didn’t offer me his hospitality; he limited himself to coming to see me in my hotel. I respected his motives; but that was just what brought back my old obsession. I thought that, apart from reasons of decorum, there was jealousy on his part, itself the product of love, and that both might prove the existence of fine, noble qualities in the woman. This was enough to unsettle me; but the idea that her passion was no less intense than his, the picture of this couple who were one single soul, one single person, excited every envious nerve in my body. I spared no effort to get my foot inside the house; I even told him of the rumour that was going the rounds; he smiled and talked about something else.

  The Petrópolis season ended, and he stayed on. I believe he came down to Rio in July or August. At the end of the year we met by chance; I found him somewhat taciturn and preoccupied. I saw him a few times more, and he seemed no different, unless, to go with the taciturnity, he had a long furrow of unhappiness in his features. I imagined it was the consequence of the adventure, and, since I’m not here
to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes, I can add that I felt a sensation of pleasure. It didn’t last long; it was the devil I have inside me, who has a habit of making rude gestures. But I soon chastised him, and replaced him with an angel I also have at my command for such moments, and who took pity on the poor lad, whatever the cause of his sadness.

  A neighbour of Oliveira, a friend of ours, told me something which confirmed my suspicion of domestic troubles; but it was he himself who told me everything, one day when I asked him, rashly, what was the matter with him; why had he changed so much?

  ‘What do you think’s the matter? Imagine I bought a lottery ticket, and I didn’t even have the pleasure of getting no prize at all; what I got was a scorpion.’

  Then, as I raised my eyebrows interrogatively:

  ‘Ah! If you knew half the things that have happened to me! Have you got time? Let’s go over here to the promenade.’

  We went into the gardens, and along one of the avenues. He told me everything. He spent two hours telling the beads of an infinite rosary of misery. As he talked, I discerned two incompatible natures, united by love or by sin, sated with each other, but condemned to live together in hatred. He couldn’t leave her; but neither could he bear her. There was no esteem, no respect, happiness was rare and tarnished; a life ruined.

  ‘Ruined,’ he repeated, vigorously nodding his head. ‘There’s nothing to be done; my life’s ruined. You remember the plans we made at college, when we decided that you would be Interior Minister, I Minister of Justice. You can have both portfolios; I’ll never be anything, anything at all. The egg, which should have produced an eagle, hasn’t even brought forth a chicken. It’s completely addled. For a year and a half now I’ve been like this, and I can find no way out; I’ve lost my energy …’

  Six months later, I came across him in a worried, frantic state. Adriana had left him to go and study geometry with a student from the old Central Engineering School. ‘So much the better,’ I said to him. Oliveira looked at the ground in shame; he excused himself, and ran off in search of her. He found her some weeks later; they said unforgivable things to each other, and then at the end were reconciled. I began to visit them, with the idea of separating them from each other. She was still pretty and fascinating; she had delicate, soft manners, but they were obviously put on, accompanied by attitudes and gestures whose latent intent was to attract me and drag me in.

  I took fright and drew back. She wasn’t bothered; she threw her lace cape aside, and returned to her real self. Then I saw that she was iron-willed, cunning, spiteful and often vulgar; in some situations I noticed a streak of perversity. At first, Oliveira put up with everything, laughing, to make me believe he’d lied or exaggerated; it was shame at his own weakness. But he couldn’t keep the mask on; one day she ripped it off him, pitilessly revealing the humiliation he put up with when I wasn’t there. I felt disgust at her, and pity for the poor fellow. I openly encouraged him to leave her; he hesitated, but promised he would.

  ‘It’s true, I can’t take it any longer …’

  We planned everything; but at the moment of separation, he couldn’t do it. She enveloped him once more in her big eyes, like those of a bull or a basilisk, and this time – oh my beloved cousins from Sapucaia! – this time only to leave him exhausted and dead.

  Admiral’s Night

  Deolindo Nostrils (a shipboard nickname of his) left the Navy Arsenal and set off up the Rua de Bragança. The clock was striking three. He was the crème de la crème of sailors and, what’s more, his eyes were brimming with happiness. His corvette had just come back from a long training cruise, and Deolindo came on land as soon as he got leave. His mates had said to him, laughing:

  ‘Hey, Nostrils! What an admiral’s night you’re going to have! Dinner, music and Genoveva’s arms. A little cuddle from Genoveva …’

  Deolindo smiled. That hit the nail on the head; an admiral’s night, as the saying goes, a wonderful admiral’s night lay in wait for him on land. The passion had begun three months before the corvette left. The name of the girl was Genoveva, and she was from up-country, twenty years old, clever, with mischievous black eyes. They’d met at a friend’s house and fallen head over heels for one another, so much so that they almost decided to do something silly – he’d abscond from the Navy and she’d go with him to some town hidden away in the backlands.

  Old Ignacia, who lived with her, dissuaded them; Deolindo had no option but to go on the training cruise. He’d be eight or ten months away. To commit themselves, they thought they should swear an oath of fidelity.

  ‘I swear by God in heaven. And you?’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Say it out loud then.’

  ‘I swear by God in heaven; may the light fail me at the hour of death.’

  They had made their contract. You had to believe in their sincerity; she was weeping uncontrollably, he was biting his lip to disguise his feelings. Finally they parted. Genoveva went to see the corvette leave, with her chest so tight she thought she was ‘going to have a turn’. Nothing happened, luckily; days, weeks, months went by, ten months in all. Finally the corvette came back, and Deolindo with it.

  Here he goes then, up the Rua de Bragança, through Prainha and Saúde, as far as Gamboa, where Genoveva lives. The house is a wooden shack, its door cracked by the sun, just beyond the Cemetery of the English; Genoveva’s bound to be there, leaning out of the window, waiting for him. Deolindo’s prepared something to say to her. Here’s what he’s composed: ‘I swore an oath and I kept it,’ but he’s trying to find something better. At the same time he remembers the women he’s seen in God’s wide world, Italians, Marseillaises and Turks, lots of them pretty, or he thought they were anyway. All right, not all of them might be his type; some were, though, but that didn’t mean he paid any attention. He thought only of Genoveva. Even her house, so tiny, with its rickety furniture, all old and not much of it either – he remembered it when he saw palaces in faraway lands. It was only by saving every penny that he’d bought a pair of earrings in Trieste, which he was carrying in his pocket with some other trinkets. And what would she have ready for him? Maybe a neckerchief with his name and an anchor in the corner, for she was very good at embroidery. At this point he reached Gamboa, went past the cemetery and found the house with the door shut. He knocked, and a familiar voice answered, old Ignacia, who came to open the door with loud exclamations of delight. Deolindo impatiently asked about Genoveva.

  ‘Don’t talk to me about that flibbertigibbet,’ the old woman burst out. ‘I’m really glad I gave you that piece of advice. Just think, if you’d run away. You’d be in a fine pickle.’

  ‘But what happened? What happened?’

  The old woman told him to calm down, it was nothing, one of those things that happen in life; there was no point in getting worked up. Genoveva’s head had been turned …

  ‘Turned, how?’

  ‘She’s taken up with a peddler, José Diogo. Did you ever meet José Diogo, the one that sells cuts of cloth? She’s with him. You can’t imagine how much in love they are. She’s mad about him. That was why we had a fight. José Diogo wouldn’t keep away from my door; they were forever whispering to each other, till one day I said I didn’t want my house to get a bad name. Oh, God in heaven! It was like the day of judgement. Genoveva took off at me, her eyes bursting out of her head, saying she’d never cast aspersions on anyone and she didn’t need my charity. What d’you mean, charity, Genoveva? All I’m saying is I don’t want this whispering at my door, from noon till night … Two days later she’d moved and we were no longer speaking.’

  ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘On Formosa beach, before you get to the quarry, in a house with the door freshly painted.’

  Deolindo wouldn’t listen to any more. Old Ignacia, a bit sorry she’d spoken, gave him some prudent bits of advice, but he wouldn’t listen and went on his way. I’ll not say what his thoughts were on the way; he had none. Ideas were clambering about in hi
s head, as if in a storm at sea, amid a confusion of howling winds and ships’ whistles. His sailor’s knife flashed out in the chaos, bloody and vengeful. He’d passed Gamboa and the Alferes inlet, and got to Formosa beach. He didn’t know the house number, but it was near the quarry, freshly painted, and with help from the people in the neighbourhood he’d find it. He couldn’t have foreseen that, as chance would have it, Genoveva was sitting at her window sewing at the moment Deolindo was going by. He recognised her and stopped; she, seeing the figure of a man, lifted her eyes and recognised the sailor.

  ‘What’s this?’ she exclaimed in astonishment. ‘When did you get in? Come in, Deolindo.’

  She got up, opened the door and brought him in. Another man would have been buoyed up with hope, so open was the girl’s manner. Maybe the old woman had been wrong or lied; maybe the peddler’s serenade had reached its final refrain. All this passed through his head, though not in a reasoned or reflective form, but in a flash, and in a jumble. Genoveva left the door open; she had him sit down, asked about his voyage and said she thought he’d put on weight; no emotion or intimacy. Deolindo lost his last hope. Without his knife, he still had hands to strangle Genoveva, who was a slip of a thing, and for the first few minutes he thought of nothing else.

  ‘I know everything,’ he said.

  ‘Who told you?’

  Deolindo shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Whoever it was,’ she replied, ‘did they say I was in love with someone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What they said was true.’

  Deolindo started forward; she made him stop just with her eyes. Then she said that, if she’d opened the door to him, it was because she thought he was a sensible man. Then she told him everything, how much she’d missed him, the peddler’s courting, her refusals, until one day, without knowing why, she’d got up one morning in love with him.