As for the other person who had the power to erase my thoughts, it was my friend Escobar, who came to Matacavalos one Sunday, before midday. A friend thus took the place of a dead boy, and this same friend took my hand in his for about five minutes, as if he had not seen me for many months.
“Will you have dinner with me, Escobar?”
“That’s exactly what I came for.”
My mother thanked him for his friendship towards me, and he replied very politely, though a little hesitantly, as if he couldn’t easily find words to express himself. You have already seen that he was not like that, words obeyed him, but people are not the same all the time. What he said, in summary, was that he esteemed me for my good qualities and refined manners; at the seminary everybody liked me, as was natural, he added. He emphasized my manners, the good example I gave, the “rare, sweet mother” that heaven had given me … All this with a choking, tremulous voice.
Everybody came to like him. I was as happy as if Escobar had been my invention. José Dias loosed a couple of superlatives at him, Uncle Cosme beat him twice at backgammon, and cousin Justina could find no fault to lay at his door; later, it’s true, on the second or third Sunday, she confessed to us that my friend Escobar was a little inquisitive and that he had eyes like a policeman, that took everything in.
“It’s his eyes,” I explained.
“I’m not saying they’re anyone else’s.”
“They are reflective eyes,” said Uncle Cosme.
“Assuredly,” added José Dias, “however, it may be that there is some truth in what Dona Justina says. One thing does not rule out the other, and reflection is well matched with natural curiosity. He is inquisitive, certainly, but …”
“He seems a very serious young man to me,” said my mother.
“Exactly!” chimed José Dias so as not to disagree with her.
When I told Escobar of my mother’s opinion (naturally, without recounting the others’) I saw that he took extraordinary pleasure in it. He thanked me, said that we were too good, and also praised my mother, a dignified, distinguished, and youthful lady, very youthful… What would her age be?
“She’s over forty,” I replied vaguely, out of vanity.
“Impossible!” exclaimed Escobar. “Forty! She hardly seems to be thirty; she’s very youthful and pretty. And you have to take after someone, with those eyes God gave you; they’re just like hers. Was she widowed many years ago?”
I told him what I knew of her life and my father’s. Escobar listened attentively, asking for more, requesting explanation of anything I omitted, or what was merely unclear. When I told him I remembered nothing of the country, being so young when I came to the city, he told me of two or three memories from when he was three years old, and which were still fresh in his memory. And did we have no plans to go back to the country?
“No, we’ll never go back now. Look, that black over there, he’s from there. Tomás!”
We were in the orchard, and the slave was working; he came up to us and waited.
“He’s married,” I said to Escobar. “Where’s Maria?”
“She’s poundin’ corn, yes, sir.”
“Do you remember the plantation, Tomás?”
“Yes, sir, I ‘member.”
“All right, off you go.”
I showed him another, then another and another, here Pedro, there José, then Damião…
“All the letters of the alphabet,” interrupted Escobar.
It was true, they were different letters, and only then did I notice it; I pointed out other slaves, some with the same first names, distinguished by a nickname, either describing the person, like Crazy João, or Fat Maria, or others from their place of origin, like Pedro Benguela, Antônio Mozambique…
“And are they all here at home?” he asked.
“No, some are working in the streets, and others are hired out. It wasn’t possible to keep them all at home. And these are not all the ones from the plantation; the majority stayed there.”
“What surprises me is that Dona Glória should have got used to living in a town house, where everything is cramped; the house there must be big.”
“I don’t know, but I expect so. Mamma has other houses larger than these; but she says she wants to die here. The others are rented. Some are really big, like the one on the Rua da Quitanda …
“I know that one; it’s lovely.”
“She also has them in Rio Comprido, in Cidade Nova, one in Catete …”
“She’ll never be without a roof over her head,” he concluded, smiling agreeably.
We went towards the bottom of the garden. We went past the washing place; he stopped for a moment, looking at the stones for beating the clothes and making some reflections on cleanliness; then we went on. What reflections he made I cannot remember; I can only remember that I thought they were clever, I laughed, and so did he. My happiness brought his out, and the sky was so blue, the air so clear, that nature itself seemed to laugh with us. Happy times are like that. Escobar confessed to this harmony of the inner and outer worlds, in words so lofty and subtle that I was moved; then, concerning the accord between moral and physical beauty, he talked of my mother again: “a double angel,” he said.