Some months later I went to the São José seminary. If I could count the tears I wept the day before and on the morning of my departure, they would add up to more than all those shed since Adam and Eve. This is somewhat of an exaggeration; but it is good to be emphatic from time to time, to make up for this obsession with accuracy that plagues me. However, if I were to rely on the memory of the sensation, I would not be far from the truth; at fifteen, everything is infinite. The truth is that however prepared I was, I suffered a great deal. My mother suffered too, but inwardly, in her heart and soul; moreover, Father Cabral had found a compromise, to try out my vocation; if at the end of two years, I revealed no ecclesiastical vocation, I would pursue another career.
“Promises should be fulfilled as God wills it. Suppose that Our Lord refuses to incline your son to the Church, and that he does not get the pleasure from the habits of seminary life that God gave me, then it must be that God’s will is otherwise. You could not have given your son, before he was born, a vocation that Our Lord has refused him …”
It was a concession from the priest. It gave my mother an advance pardon, making the remission of the debt come from the creditor. Her eyes shone, but her lips said no. José Dias, having failed to go to Europe with me, took the next best thing, and backed up “the Protonotary’s proposal”; it merely seemed to him that one year was enough.
“I am certain,” he said, winking at me, “that in a year our Bentinho’s ecclesiastical vocation will manifest itself clearly and decisively. He’ll make a first-rate priest, no doubt of that. But if it doesn’t come in a year …”
Later, he said to me in private:
“Go for a year: a year will soon be gone. If you still don’t like it, it’s because God doesn’t will it, as the Father says, and in that case, my young friend, the best solution is Europe.”
Capitu gave me the same advice when my mother told her that I was definitively going to the seminary:
“My daughter, you’re going to lose your playmate …”
She was so pleased at being addressed as “my daughter” (it was the first time my mother had done so), that she didn’t even have time to be sad: she kissed my mother’s hand, and said that she had been told about it already, by me. Privately, she encouraged me to endure everything patiently; after a year everything would have changed, and a year would go quickly by. We were not yet saying farewell; that happened the day before I went, in a manner that requires a chapter to itself. All I’ll say here is that, just as we were becoming more attached to one another, she attached herself to my mother, became more attentive and affectionate, was always in her company, with eyes only for her. My mother was by nature as affectionate as she was sensitive; every little thing gave her joy or anguish. She began to discover a number of new charms in Capitu: fine, rare gifts. She gave her a ring of hers, and some other trinkets. She refused to be photographed when Capitu asked for her picture; but she had a miniature, done when she was twenty-five and, after some hesitation, resolved to give it her. Capitu’s eyes, when she got this present, cannot be described; they were not oblique, nor were they undertow eyes: they were direct, clear, and bright. She passionately kissed the portrait, and my mother did the same to her. All this reminds me of our farewells.