Anyhow, at about that time I felt a certain need to tell someone what was happening between me and Capitu. I didn’t tell everything, only a part, and Escobar was my confidant. When I returned to the seminary, on Wednesday, I found him anxious; he said that he had been intending to come and visit me, if I spent another day at home. He asked with concern what had been the matter, and if I was completely well.
“Yes.”
He listened, fixing me with his eyes. Three days later he told me that people were finding me very absent-minded; I should disguise it as much as possible. He, for his part, had reasons to be distrait too, but he tried to keep attentive.
“So you think…?”
“Yes, sometimes it seems as if you’re not hearing anything, staring into space; put up a pretense, Santiago.”
“I have reasons …”
“I believe you; no one gets distracted for no reason at all.”
“Escobar …”
I hesitated; he waited.
“What is it?”
“Escobar, you are my friend, and I am yours; here in the seminary you are the person that I feel closest to, and outside, apart from my family, I really have no friends.”
“If I say the same thing,” he replied with a smile, “it won’t seem so spontaneous; it’ll look as if I’m repeating you. But it’s true that here I have no intimate friends, you are the first, and I think they have already noticed; but that doesn’t matter to me.”
I was moved, and felt the words rushing into my mouth.
“Escobar, can you keep a secret?”
“If you ask it’s because you have doubts, and in that ease …”
“I’m sorry, that’s just my way of putting it. I know that you’re a serious person, and I’ll make believe I’m confessing to a priest.”
“If you need absolution, you’re absolved.”
“Escobar, I can’t be a priest. I’m here, and my family believe it and expect it of me; but I can’t be a priest.”
“Neither can I, Santiago.”
“You neither?”
“One secret for another. I have no intention of finishing the course either; my desire is to go into business, but say nothing, nothing at all; it’s just between us. And it’s not that I’m not religious; I am, but business is my passion.”
“Is that all?”
“What more could there be?”
I gave two turns around the room, and whispered the first words of my secret, in such a faint, low voice that I didn’t hear it myself; I know, however, that I said “a person” hesitantly. A person? There was no need to say anything more for him to understand. A person must be a girl. And don’t think that he was astonished to find me in love; he even found it natural and his eyes fixed me again. Then I told him sketchily what I could, but slowly so as to have the pleasure of dwelling on the subject. Escobar listened with interest; at the end of our conversation, he declared that it was as if my secret were buried in a cemetery. He advised me not to become a priest. I could not offer the Church a heart that did not belong to heaven, but to earth; I would be a bad priest—no priest at all, in fact. On the contrary, God protects those who are sincere; since I could only serve Him in the wider world, that was where I should stay.
You can’t imagine the pleasure that I got from confiding this secret. It was one happiness on top of another. That youthful heart that listened to me and approved of my plans, gave the world an extraordinary new aspect. It was grand and beautiful, life was a wonderful race to be run, and I no more nor less than the darling of heaven; that was the sensation I had. And note that I didn’t tell him everything, nor yet the best of it; I didn’t tell him the story of combing her hair, for example, nor others like it; but I did tell him a great deal.
Needless to say, we returned to the subject. We came back to it many times; I praised Capitu’s moral qualities, a subject appropriate for a seminarist’s admiration: her simplicity, her modesty, her industry, and her religious habits. I didn’t touch on her physical charms, nor did he ask about them; I only hinted that he should get to know her by sight.
“It’s not possible now,” I said to him in the first week, when I returned from home; Capitu is going to spend a few days with a friend in the Rua dos Inválidos. When she comes back, you can come. But you can come before, you can come any time; why didn’t you come for dinner yesterday?”
“You didn’t invite me.”
“Do I have to invite you? Everybody at home has taken a great liking to you.”
“I liked everyone too, but if had to choose between them, I confess that your mother is an adorable lady.”
“She is, isn’t she?” I replied enthusiastically.