José Dias now divided himself between me and my mother, alternately taking dinner at Glória and lunch at Matacavalos. Everything was going well. After two years’ marriage, apart from the great disappointment of not having a child, everything was going well. True, I had lost my father-in-law, and Uncle Cosme couldn’t last long, but my mothers health was good: ours was excellent.
I was the lawyer for some important firms, and the work kept coming. Escobar had contributed a great deal to my first steps in the courts. He intervened with a famous lawyer for him to admit me to his office, and arranged some cases for me, all of this spontaneously.
In any case, the relationship between our families was already set up; Sancha and Capitu continued their schoolgirl friendship after marriage, Escobar and I ours from the seminary. They lived in Andaraí, and were always inviting us to go there; and though we couldn’t go as often as we wanted, we went there to dine sometimes on Sundays, or they came to us.* Dinner hardly describes it. We always went very early, straight after lunch, to enjoy the whole day to the full, and we only came away at nine, ten, eleven, when we could really stay no longer. Now, when I think of those days in Andaraí and Glória, I am sorry that life and the rest of it are not as solid as the Pyramids.
Escobar and his wife lived happily; they had a little daughter. At one time, I did hear talk of the husband having an adventure, something to do with the theater, I can’t remember whether it was an actress or a dancer, but if it was true, it created no scandal. Sancha was modest, and her husband hardworking. As I was saying to Escobar one day that I regretted not having a child, he replied:
“Don’t worry, old man. God will give one when He wills it, and if He doesn’t it’s because He wants them for Himself, and it’s better for them to stay in heaven.”
“A child, a son, is the natural complement of life.”
“It will come if it’s needed.”
It didn’t. Capitu begged for it in her prayers, and more than once I caught myself praying and begging, too. Now it was no longer as it had been when I was a child; now I paid in advance, just as I paid the house-rent.