So may the eyes of all the friends that I leave behind in this world, men and women, weep for me, but I doubt they will. I have tried to make people forget me. I live at a distance, and hardly go out. It’s not that I have really tied the two ends of life together. This house in Engenho Novo, even though it does reproduce the Matacavalos one, merely reminds me of it, and then more by comparison and reflection than by feeling. I’ve already said just that.
You will ask me why, since I owned the old house itself, in the same old street, I did not stop it being demolished and instead had this one reproduce it. The question should have been asked at the beginning, but here is the reply. The reason is that, shortly after my mother died, I wanted to move there, and first made a long visit of inspection for some days, and the whole house refused to recognize me. In the garden, the aroeira and the pitanga tree, the well with its old bucket and the washing stones knew nothing of me.* The casuarina tree was the same one I had left at the bottom of the garden, but the trunk, instead of being straight as in earlier days, now had the look of a question mark; probably it was surprised by the intruder. I ran my eyes over the scene, looking for some thought I might have left there, and could find none. On the contrary, the branches began to whisper something that I didn’t at first understand, and which it seems was the song of a new morning. Beneath that clear and cheerful music, I also heard the grunting of the pigs, a kind of concentrated, philosophical mockery.
Everything was strange and hostile. I let the house be demolished, and later, when I came to Engenho Novo, I had the idea of making this reproduction according to instructions I gave the architect, as I have recounted at the opportune moment.