Here is the chapter. My mother was God fearing; you know of that, of her religious habits, and of the pure faith that inspired them. Nor are you unaware that my ecclesiastical career was the subject of a promise made when I was conceived. This has all been recounted in its proper place. Furthermore, you know that, in order to tie the moral bond tighter, she confided her projects and motives to relatives and members of the family. The promise, made devoutly, and accepted with compassion, was kept by her, with joy, in the depth of her heart. I think I tasted its happiness in the milk she gave me when she suckled me. If my father had lived, it is possible that he might have altered the plans, and as he had a vocation for politics, it is probable that he would have pushed me exclusively in that direction, even if the two occupations were not and still are not incompatible; more than one priest has entered into the struggle between the parties and the governance of men. But my father had died in ignorance, and she remained behind, as the only debtor in the terms of the contract.
One of Franklin’s maxims is that, if you have to pay at Easter, Lent is short. Our Lent was no longer than the others, and my mother, though she had me taught Latin and Church doctrine, began to put off my entry into the seminary. It’s what is called, in commercial terms, rescheduling a debt. The creditor was a multimillionaire, didn’t depend on that amount to eat, and allowed the payment to be put off, without even raising the interest rate. One day, however, one of the household who had endorsed the promissory note, spoke of the necessity to pay the agreed sum; it’s in one of the first chapters. My mother agreed and I betook myself to Sāo José.
Now, in that same chapter, she shed some tears, which she then dried without explaining them, and which none of those present, Uncle Cosme, cousin Justina, nor the dependent José Dias understood at all; I, behind the door, understood them no better than they did. On careful examination, and in spite of the distance in time, it can be seen that they were tears of anticipated longing, the pain of separation—and it may also be (this is the beginning of the point), it may also be that she repented of her promise. Catholic and devout, she knew very well that promises must be kept; the question is whether or not it is appropriate and fitting to keep them all, and naturally she inclined to reply in the negative. Why would God punish her, denying her a second child? The divine will might have been that I should live, without there being any need to dedicate me to Him ab ovo. It was a belated argument; she should have thought of it on the day I was conceived. At any event, she had reached a first conclusion; but since this was not enough to destroy everything, everything went on as planned, and I went to the seminary.
If faith had nodded for a moment, that might have resolved the matter in my favor, but faith kept watch with her wide, naive eyes. My mother, had she been able, would have exchanged her original promise for another, giving part of her own life to keep me with her, out of the clergy, married, and a father; that’s what I presume, just as I suppose that she rejected the idea as disloyal. That is how I understood her in her daily life.
It happened that my absence was soon tempered by Capitu’s solicitude. She was beginning to make herself necessary to my mother. Little by little she became persuaded that the girl would make me happy. Then (and this is the end of my point), the hope that our love, making the seminary impossible for me, would cause me to refuse to stay there in spite of God or the devil: this intimate and secret hope began to invade my mother’s heart. In that case, I would break the contract without her being to blame. She would keep me to herself without any action that could be called hers. It was as if, having entrusted someone with the amount of a debt to take it to the creditor, the bearer had kept the money for himself, and delivered nothing. In ordinary life, the action of a third party does not free the contractor from an obligation; but the advantage of making a contract with heaven is that intentions are valid currency.
You must have had conflicts like this, and if you are religious, you must have sometimes tried to find a way to reconcile heaven and earth by identical or analogous means. Heaven and earth can be reconciled in the end; they are almost twins, heaven having been created on the second day and earth on the third. Like Abraham, my mother took her son to the mountain of the Vision, with the wood for the burnt offering, the kindling and the knife. And she tied Isaac to the bundle of wood, took the knife and lifted it up. When she was about to strike, she heard the voice of the angel ordering him in the name of the Lord: “Lay not thy hand upon the lad; for now I know that thou fearest God.” That must have been my mother’s secret hope.
Naturally, Capitu was the angel of the Scriptures. The truth is that my mother needed her continually near her. Her growing affection manifested itself in extraordinary ways. Capitu became the flower of the household, the sun in the morning, the cool of the evening, the moon at nighttime; she spent hours and hours there, listening, talking, and singing. My mother was sounding out her heart, searching in her eyes, and my name, between the two of them, was like the password to a future life.