Do not think that I say this out of bitterness. The greatest happiness I could possibly have would be the annihilation of my individual self.
Therefore, I have no scruples. The wretchedly unhappy are like little children: they should be seen naked.
More than anything, I suppose these pages could prove to be a useful lesson for those caught up in the illusions of passion. So listen carefully!
It is eleven o’clock at night. At this hour, who knows how many women are suffering, hoping, lying, in the grip of a feeling that gives them little more than the joy of being wretched! You, my poor friend J., a woman who suffers discreetly and whose eyes I have so often seen brimming with tears! And Th…, you who have spent your life trembling, fearful, humiliated, watchful, always ready for flight… And you who find yourselves plunged into the cruel element of passion, barely alive, doing battle with human truth: listen to me – all of you!
The moment I fell in love, my life was in a state of permanent imbalance. I did not yield voluntarily to the attraction, but proudly and reluctantly. A thousand things were weeping inside me, but what suffered most of all was my pride. It refused to be reconciled. It resisted constantly and still protests. It seems subdued, resigned, but suddenly it rises up within me and strikes at my heart.
How I suffered! How I blushed! I blushed in front of poor Joana, my old nursemaid, an aged angel who knows as much about loving as she does about forgiving! I blushed in front of the servants. I felt happy when they smiled at me and trembled when they frowned. I gave them dresses, taught them how to style their hair. Sometimes they would go out in the afternoon and not come back until late at night; I blushed in my heart, but smiled at them.
I could not bear men to look at me: their eyes seemed laden with insults. I imagined that my affair was public knowledge, that people judged me to be a creature of easy virtue, which gave everyone the right to make me blush. How often I must have left the theatre in tears. I analysed every gesture, every stare, every unheard comment. So-and-so looked at me with contempt! That woman over there laughed insolently as I passed. Someone else pretended not to see me. If I were choosing a dress at a dressmaker’s and the assistants said: ‘This is a nice bright colour!’ I would think to myself: ‘I know what they’re thinking, they’re advising me to wear brash, lurid colours, scandalous colours, the kind that actresses wear!’And so I would leave, draw the blinds on my carriage and sob.
I didn’t dare to kiss a child; I would look at her with infinite tenderness and go to take her in my arms, but at the last moment say to myself: ‘Let the poor little angel be. You are not pure enough to touch her!’
There is worse. I blushed when my coachman looked at me! I smiled at him with the greatest affection, constantly fearing a sharp response, an impudent remark, an accusing word. When I got into the carriage and he stood respectfully to attention, I was so pleased that I felt like hugging him!
You find this distasteful, don’t you?
One terrible example defines my condition: when my husband tenderly clasped my hand, it upset me as much as if I’d seen my lover betray me!
Poor me! How many times I tried to soothe my pride by thinking of the theatrical glories of pain and suffering! How often I compared myself to those lyrical figures of passion, who stand before the footlights to recount their tales of anguish accompanied by the thunderous roar of an orchestra; characters such as Violetta, Lucia, Elvira, Amelia, Marguerite, Juliet, Desdemona! But alas, where were my castles, my pageboys, my cavalcades? A woman who lives the society life of the Chiado, who wears creations by Aline… what can possibly be glorious about her love?
And then, I know it’s cruel but I have to confess it, there is always a point at which a woman wonders if it is really her lover’s great moral qualities that keep her in thrall to him. Because if so, there would be some justification. And we feel deeply humiliated when we finally realise that when we love a man, what sways us is not only the nobility of his ideas and his idealism, but a certain something else, the colour of his hair, for instance, or the way he knots his tie. Let us be frank. Why do we continue to deny the narrow pettiness of our affections? Why do we have to paint in idealistic colours the very ordinary object of our desire? I am not saying that moral elevation may not be a powerful aid to our instinctive feelings of attraction, but in reality, what moves us is a man’s external appearance. Let all those women reading these painful confessions look into their heart and ask what exactly made them love that man: his character or his physiognomy? And those who answer honestly will admit that, for them, the colour of a tailcoat had far more influence than an elevated mind.
Yes, I say this openly from my little corner of the world where everything has the hollow sound of a coffin lid banging shut. There is almost no way to explain or excuse women’s romantic follies.
I was young and, like all women, my idle hours were often filled with daydreams. I had my own private romances that were born, languished and died in the time it took me to embroider two flowers. I created adventures, passionate dramas and thrilling elopements while safely ensconced in my armchair by the fire.
Later, I read about other female characters and their loves and disappointments. I even experienced the shock of passion myself, yet I never saw, never understood, that these imaginings and attractions sprang from some natural reality, from the logic of circumstances, from the irresistible workings of the heart. I always thought they came from the ephemeral little world, romantic, literary and entirely fictitious, that exists in every woman’s head.
I can see you smiling, cousin. Don’t be surprised to hear me speak like this. Do you remember those intimate, serious conversations we used to have in Rua de…? Do you remember the terrace of the Clarence Hotel in Malta when the silent moonlight covered the sea? Surely you remember the ideas and imaginings that I loftily described as my ‘systems’? Don’t you remember you used to call me the ‘fair philosopher’? Well, the philosopher has since felt, wept and suffered – all the essential ingredients for a good education. What better lesson could one have than to weep? Pain is an eternal truth, which endures while all theories die. You cannot imagine how much I have learned of life since unhappiness struck! You cannot imagine how many true and necessary ideas emerge from our incoherent tears.
That is why I no longer believe in ‘the inevitable’, which women use in order to shuffle off responsibility. I no longer believe in what we theatrically call Fate. The Will is everything, as vital a principle as the Sun, upon which Fate, fevers and the ideal burst like soap bubbles.
They come running to me, crying: ‘It was Fate!’ For goodness sake! Let’s take an example. The trivial, or commonplace affair; what one might call the ‘archetypal affair’, the kind we see every day, in every street, at every house number, odd or even. The affair that jostles us on the Passeio Público, that eats a sorbet with us in the Confeitaria Italiana, and is buried beside us in the cemetery at Alto de São João.
The scene is simple, consisting of only three characters. I’ll take the part of the woman. My husband is an honest, hardworking man. He gets tired, he struggles, he wears himself out. Early in the morning, he leaves for the office or the newspaper or the workshop or the ministry. He doesn’t sleep enough, he lunches in a hurry, cuts short his siesta. He is all concentration, watchfulness, work, sacrifice. To what end?
So that our children can have white pinafores to wear and a uniformed nursemaid; so that my chairs are upholstered and not plain wood; so that I can wear silk dresses made by Marie, rather than making my own from cheap printed cotton, stitching away at night, by the feeble light of a lamp.
My husband is an honest fellow, kind, serious, good-natured. He doesn’t use rice powder or brilliantine, nor does he wear showy ties or dress as if for the bull ring; he doesn’t write serials for the press; he just works, works, works! With his long hard hours of tedium and fatigue, he earns his daily dinner and his yearly clothes. His one consolation is me. I am the centre of his life, his ideal, his absolute! He doesn’t write romantic poems, because I am his poem, the muse of all his sacrifices; he has no affairs because I am his wife. He does not make remarkable journeys across deserts nor does he enjoy the prestige of the widely-travelled, because his world is no larger than the space filled by the sound of my voice. My husband didn’t win the Battle of Sadowa, yet he wins the fierce but unsung daily battle to earn his children’s daily bread.
He is fair, he is good, he is dedicated. He sleeps soundly because he deserves his rest; he likes to relax in his dressing gown because he has worked all day. He feels no need to wear a flower in his buttonhole because he always carries my image in his heart.
So what do I do?
I grow bored.
As soon as he goes out, I yawn and open a novel, find fault with the servants, comb the children’s hair, yawn again, open the window and gaze out.
A young man walks past, handsome or strong, blond or dark, imbecile or halfwit. We exchange glances. He has a carnation pinned to his lapel, a complicated cravat. His hair is nicer than my husband’s, the cut of his trousers is perfect, he wears English boots, he boos the dancers at the theatre.
I am captivated! I smile at him. He sends me a letter that lacks wit and grammar. I become infatuated; I hide the letter, kiss it, re-read it, and feel only scorn for the life I lead.
He sends me poems – poems, Lord help me! – and so I forget about my husband, his sacrifices, his goodness, his work, his kindness; I care nothing for the tears and despair to come; I abandon respectability, modesty, duty, family, social niceties, relationships, even my children, everything – all because I have been vanquished, seduced, mesmerized by an error-ridden sonnet copied from some treasury of poems!
Really! That, my poor friends, is what you call ‘a fatal passion’!
And, in the meantime, how does he react to my awful sacrifice?
He cannot conceal his delight at having a mistress; he puts on mysterious, provocative airs; he compromises me; he leaves me alone and goes off to wait, in highly disreputable company, for the bull fight to start; he leaves my letters for anyone to read on a café table beside a bottle of cognac; he swears to his chums that he doesn’t love me, that he’s merely amusing himself. And if my husband were to horsewhip him in the middle of the Chiado, he – the lover – being a vile, cowardly, vulgar imbecile, would immediately go and register a complaint at the Boa-Hora police station!
And there you have your Don Juan!
No, we must demolish this despicable type – this so-called conquistador, this conqueror of women – through ridicule, caricature, horsewhipping and the police. As a type, the conquistador has neither allure, beauty, quality or greatness; and as a man, he has neither breeding, honesty, manners, wit, elegance, skill, courage, dignity, hygiene or spelling…
Please excuse this tirade, cousin. I’m in a very excitable mood; I am, as the saying goes, getting carried away by my own words. I sometimes forget my very modern sorrows and recall my old-fashioned indignation.
And do you suppose that, by condemning these trivial affairs, I am vindicating myself? Not so. Despite having loved a man who was excellent in every way, whose perfect superiority of mind you yourself knew and admired; even though our affection existed in such a refined, noble, proud setting, despite all that, I judge myself to be as reprehensible as those women of whom I spoke, and having no need of a court of law to condemn me, I do penance before the whole world.