Sometimes a happy opportunity comes our way, but mischance then lands two or three cousins from Sapucaia on us; at other times, however, these same cousins are more of a blessing than a misfortune.
It happened at a church doorway. I was waiting for my cousins Claudina and Rosa to take holy water, so I could conduct them to our house, where they were staying. They had come from Sapucaia at around carnival time, and had stayed on in Rio for two months. It was I who accompanied them everywhere, to Mass, the theatres, the Rua do Ouvidor, because my mother, with her rheumatism, could hardly move around the house, and they weren’t used to going out alone. Sapucaia was where our family came from. Though our relatives were scattered about all over the place, that was where the family tree had first taken root. My uncle, José Ribeiro, father to these cousins, was the only one of five brothers who stayed there farming the land and playing his part in local politics. I came to Rio early on, and went on from there to study and graduate in São Paulo. I only went back to Sapucaia once, to fight an election, and lost.
Strictly speaking, all this information is unnecessary to the understanding of my adventure; but it’s a way of saying something before I get to the real story, since I can’t find an entrance for it, large or small; the best solution is to loosen the reins on my pen, and let it wander on till it finds a way in. There must be one; everything depends on circumstances – a rule as valid for one’s style as it is for life; one word leads to another, and that’s the way books, governments and revolutions happen; some even say that’s the way nature put the species together.
So then, where were we? – the holy water and the church doorway. It was the church of São José. Mass was over; Claudina and Rosa made the sign of the cross on their foreheads with their thumbs, dipping them in the water, the glove removed expressly for that purpose. Then they adjusted their capes, while, in the doorway, I stood looking at the ladies as they came out. Suddenly, I shuddered, leaned out, and even took a couple of steps towards the street.
‘What was that, cousin?’
‘Nothing, nothing.’
It was a lady, who’d passed by right next to the church, slowly, her head bowed, leaning on her parasol; she was going up the Rua da Misericórdia. To explain my agitation, it has to be said that this was the second time I’d seen her. The first was at the races, two months before, with a man who, to all appearances, was her husband, but could just as easily have been her father. She was a bit of a spectacle, dressed in scarlet, with big showy trimmings, and a pair of earrings that were too large; but her eyes and mouth made up for the rest. We flirted outrageously. If I say I left there head over heels in love, I’ll not put my soul in hell – it’s the simple truth. I was giddy, but frustrated too, for I lost sight of her in the crowd. I never managed to see her again, nor could anyone tell me who she was.
Imagine my vexation when chance brought her my way again and these accidental cousins didn’t let me get my hands on her. It’ll not be hard to imagine, because these cousins from Sapucaia take all kinds of different guises, and in one shape or another my reader must have come across them. Sometimes they take the form of the gentleman who knows everything about the latest ministerial crisis, and who in the greatest confidence expatiates on all the overt and secret elements in play, conflicts new or old, the interests at stake, conspiracies, crises, etc. At others, they’re dressed like that immortal citizen who states in a ponderous, buttoned-up tone that laws depend on customs, nisi lege sine moribus. Others slip on the mask of the bore at the tram stop, who recounts every detail of the ribbons and lace worn by some lady or other to a ball or the theatre. Meanwhile, Opportunity passes by, slowly, head bowed, leaning on her parasol; she passes, turns the corner, and goodbye … The ministry’s on the point of collapse; real Belgian lace, mind you; nisi lege sine moribus …
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell my cousins to take their own way home; we lived not far off, in the Rua do Carmo – but I gave up on the idea. Once we were in the street, I thought of leaving them to wait for me at the church and going to see if I could catch Opportunity by the coat-tails. I think I even stopped for a moment, but I rejected that option too and went on my way.
I went on my way with them, going in the opposite direction from my mystery lady. I looked back over and over again, until round a curve in the street I lost sight of her, with her eyes on the ground, as if she was reflecting, daydreaming or on her way to a rendezvous. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that this last idea gave me a twinge ofjealousy. I’m possessive and take things personally; I’d be useless as a lover for a married woman. No matter that all there was between me and the lady was a fleeting dalliance lasting a few hours; since I was so bound up with her, sharing her became unbearable. I’m imaginative too; I soon dreamed up an adventure, with an adventurer to go with it, and gave myself over to the morbid pleasure of tormenting myself for no good reason at all. My cousins walked ahead, and spoke to me from time to time; I gave brief answers, if I answered at all. In my heart, I detested them.
When I got home, I looked at my watch, as if I had something to do; then I told my cousins to go in and start lunch. I ran to the Rua da Misericórdia. First I went to the School of Medicine; then I turned and came back as far as the Chamber of Deputies, then walked slower, hoping to see her at every turn in the street; not a sign. Stupid, wasn’t it? Still, I went up the street once more, for I realised that, on foot and walking slowly, she’d hardly have had time to get halfway along Santa Luzia beach – that is, if she’d not stopped before; and on I went, up the street and along the beach, as far as the Ajuda convent. I found nothing, nothing at all. Even so I didn’t lose hope; I turned back on myself and walked, slowly or quickly, depending on whether I might catch up with her in front of me or give her time to emerge from somewhere. As I pictured the lady in my imagination, I felt in a state of shock, as if I might see her any minute. I understood what it must feel like to be mad.
However, there was nothing to be seen. I went down the street, but found not the least vestige of my mystery lady. Dogs are lucky; they find their friends by their sense of smell! Who knows if she wasn’t there, close by, inside some house, maybe even her own? I thought of enquiring; but who, and how? A baker, leaning in a doorway, was watching me; some women were peeping through the shutters, doing the same thing. Naturally, they were suspicious of this passer-by, his step slow or hurried by turns, his inquisitive look, his restless manner. I went as far as the Chamber of Deputies and stopped for about five minutes, unsure what to do. It was nearly midday. I waited another ten minutes, then five more, standing there in the hope of seeing her; finally I gave up and went to have lunch.
I didn’t lunch at home. I didn’t want to see those damned cousins, who’d stopped me following the unknown lady. I went to a hotel. I chose a table at the back of the room, and sat with my back turned; I didn’t want to be seen or spoken to. I began to eat what they brought me. I asked for some papers, but I confess I read nothing through, and scarcely understood three-quarters of what I did. In the middle of a news item or an article, my mind slipped and fell into the Rua da Misericórdia, at the church door, watching the mystery lady pass by, slowly, her head bowed, and leaning on her parasol.
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.