I
“BY EXCHANGING DAY FOR NIGHT,” Luís Soares would say, “we are restoring Nature’s empire and correcting the work of society. The heat of the sun is telling mankind to rest and sleep, while the relative cool of the night is the proper season in which we should live. Since I am independent in all my actions, I do not wish to submit to an absurd law imposed on me by society: I will stay awake at night and sleep during the day.”
Unlike many governments, Soares carried out this program with a scrupulousness worthy of a noble mind. For him, dawn was dusk and dusk was dawn. He slept for twelve hours during the day, that is, from six in the morning until six in the evening. He breakfasted at seven and dined at two in the morning, but eschewed supper. Supper for him was a cup of hot chocolate brought to him by his servant at five in the morning when he came home. Soares would down the chocolate, smoke a couple of cigars, exchange a few puns with his servant, read a page or two of a novel, then go to bed.
He never read newspapers. He considered the newspaper the most pointless thing in the world, after politics, poems, and mass. This doesn’t mean that Soares was an atheist as regards religion, politics, and poetry. No, he was simply indifferent. He greeted all “matters of importance” with the same grimace of disgust as he would at the sight of an ugly woman. He could have turned out to be a truly nasty piece of work, instead, though, he was merely an utterly useless individual.
Thanks to the large fortune left him by his father, Soares was able to lead the life he led, avoiding any kind of work and following the instincts of his nature and the caprices of his heart. “Heart” is perhaps something of an exaggeration. It was doubtful that Soares had one. He himself said so. Whenever a lady begged him to love her, Soares would reply:
“My dear little woman, I was born with the great advantage of having no heart and no brain. What others call reason and sentiment are complete mysteries to me. I don’t understand them because I don’t feel them.”
Soares would add that Fortune had supplanted Nature by placing a large quantity of money in his cradle. He forgot, however, that, although generous, Fortune also makes certain demands and requires some effort on the part of her godchildren. Fortune is not like the daughters of Danaus. When she sees that the barrel of water is drying up, she will take her pitchers elsewhere. Soares did not know this. He thought his wealth would be constantly reborn like the heads of the Hydra. He spent money left, right, and center, and the wealth his father had accumulated through hard work slipped from his hands like birds eager to fly free.
When he least expected it, he found that he was poor. One morning, or, rather, one evening, Soares saw written on a piece of paper the fateful words that had appeared on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast. It was a letter given to him by his servant, who explained that Soares’s banker had delivered it at midnight. The servant spoke as his master lived, calling midday midnight.
“I’ve told you before,” said Soares, “I only receive letters from friends or from—”
“Some young woman, yes, I know. That’s why I haven’t given you the other letters that your banker has been bringing you for a whole month now. Today, though, he insisted that I had to give you this one.”
Soares sat down on the bed and asked his servant in a tone that was half joking, half angry:
“Are you his servant or mine?”
“Master, the banker said you were in grave danger.”
“What danger?”
“I don’t know.”
“Show me the letter.”
The servant handed him the letter.
Soares opened it and read it twice. According to the letter, he now had only six contos de réis to his name. For Soares, this was almost nothing.
For the first time in his life, he experienced a deep emotion. It had never occurred to him that he might run out of money; he had never imagined that he would one day find himself in the same position as any other man who needs to work for a living.
He listlessly ate his breakfast, then went out. He went to the Alcazar. When his friends saw his downcast face, they asked if he had suffered some disappointment in love. Soares replied that he was ill. The local courtesans felt it would be in good taste to appear equally sad. There was general consternation.
One of his friends, José Pires, suggested a visit to Botafogo to drive away Soares’s melancholy mood. Soares agreed. Alas, a trip to Botafogo was too run-of-the-mill to distract him. Then they thought of visiting Corcovado, an idea that was immediately accepted and acted upon.
But can anything distract a young man in Soares’s position? The visit to Corcovado proved equally futile, leaving him so fatigued that, on the return journey, he fell sound asleep.
When he woke, he sent for Pires to come and speak to him urgently. An hour later, a carriage pulled up outside the door: it was Pires, but he was accompanied by a dark-complexioned young woman who answered to the name of Vitória. The two walked into Soares’s living room talking loudly, in the casual manner of family members.
“I thought you were ill,” Vitória said to the master of the house.
“No, I’m not,” he replied, “but what are you doing here?”
“That’s a good one!” said José Pires. “She came because she’s my boon companion, of course. Did you want to talk to me about something in particular?”
“I did.”
“Well, let’s find a quiet corner somewhere. Vitória can stay here, leafing through your albums.”
“I certainly will not,” said the young woman. “If that’s how it is, I’d better leave. On just one condition: that you both come to my house afterwards. We’re having big supper party tonight.”
“Agreed!” said Pires.
Vitória departed, and the two young men were left alone.
Pires was a frivolous, gossipy type. As soon as he sensed a bit of tittle-tattle, he would do his best to find out all the details. He felt flattered that Soares should confide in him and sensed that he was about to tell him something important. He therefore adopted a suitably earnest air. He settled himself comfortably in an armchair, rested his chin on the handle of his cane, and began the attack with these words:
“Right, here we are alone. What did you want to tell me?”
Soares told him everything; he read out the banker’s letter; he laid bare to Pires his utter poverty. He said that he could see no possible solution, even confessing frankly that he had spent long hours contemplating suicide.
“Suicide!” exclaimed Pires. “You must be insane!”
“Insane!” retorted Soares. “Well, I can see no other way out of this particular cul-de-sac. Besides, it’s only half a suicide, given that poverty is half a death.”
“I agree that poverty is not a pleasant thing, and I even think . . .”
Pires broke off there. An idea had just crossed his mind, the idea that Soares might end their conversation by asking him for money. Pires had one firm belief: never lend money to friends. After all, he would say, you don’t lend blood.
Soares failed to notice this sudden pause, and said:
“Living like a pauper after being so rich, it’s just impossible.”
“What do you want from me, then?” asked Pires, who felt it would be best to take the bull by the horns.
“Advice.”
“Useless advice, given that you’ve already made a decision.”
“Possibly, but I must confess it’s not so easy to leave life, and however good or bad life is, it’s always hard to die. On the other hand, revealing my poverty to the people who have always known me as a rich man is a humiliation too far. What would you do in my place?”
“Well,” began Pires, “there are various different possibilities . . .”
“For example.”
“First possibility: go to New York and make a fortune.”
“No good. I’d rather stay in Rio de Janeiro.”
“Second possibility: marry a rich woman.”
“That’s easy enough to say, but who?”
“Look around. Didn’t you have a cousin who was in love with you?”
“I don’t think she is anymore, and, besides, she’s not rich. She only has thirty contos, barely enough for a year.”
“That’s a good principle in life.”
“Thank you. What else?”
“Third and best possibility: go to your uncle, wheedle your way into his affections, tell him you repent of your old ways, ask him for a job, and see if he’ll make you his sole heir.”
Soares said nothing, but this seemed to him a good idea.
“You like that third possibility, don’t you?” asked Pires, laughing.
“It’s not at all bad, although I know it will be a long, hard process. Then again, I don’t have much choice.”
“Good,” said Pires, getting up. “You just have to be sensible. It will require some sacrifice on your part, but, remember, this is the only way you’re going to get a fortune quickly. Your uncle is not a well man and could kick the bucket any day now. Make good use of your time. And now let’s go to Vitória’s supper party.”
“No, I’m not going,” said Soares, “I need to get used to my new life.”
“Fine. Goodbye, then.”
“Look, I told you all this in strictest confidence. It’s our secret.”
“I’ll be as silent as the grave,” said Pires, going down the stairs.
The following day, though, all their young friends knew that Soares was about to withdraw from the world . . . because he had run out of money. Soares himself saw this in his friends’ faces. They all seemed to be saying: What a shame! That’ll put a dent in our social life!
Pires never again visited him.
II
The name of Soares’s uncle was Major Luís da Cunha Vilela, and he was, indeed, an old and ailing man, although this was no guarantee that he would die soon, for Major Vilela maintained a strict regime which kept him alive. Well into his sixties now, he was, by turns, jovial and stern. He loved to laugh, but was implacable when it came to bad habits. A constitutionalist by necessity, in his heart he was an absolutist. He mourned the loss of the old ways and constantly criticized the new. He had, after all, been the last man to stop wearing his hair in a pigtail.
Major Vilela lived in Catumbi with his niece Adelaide and another, more elderly female relative. He led a very patriarchal life. Caring little or nothing about what went on in the outside world, he dedicated himself entirely to his household, where a few friends and certain neighboring families occasionally came to visit and spend the evenings. The major was always cheerful, even when prostrated by his rheumatism. Fellow rheumatics will find this hard to believe, but I can confirm that this is true.
One morning—fortunately a morning on which the major was entirely free of pain, and was laughing and joking with his two female relatives—Soares turned up at his uncle’s door.
When the major saw the visiting card bearing his nephew’s name, he thought it must be a joke. His nephew was the last person he would expect to visit him. He hadn’t seen him for two years, and a year and a half had passed between his last two visits. However, such was the seriousness with which the houseboy announced that Senhor Luís was waiting in the parlor that the major finally believed him.
“What do you make of it, Adelaide?”
Adelaide did not respond.
The major went straight to the parlor.
Soares had pondered how best to approach his uncle. Falling on his knees before him would be too dramatic; falling into his arms would require a spontaneity he did not possess; besides, Soares could not bear to feel or feign an emotion he did not have. He considered beginning a conversation that had nothing to do with his real reason for being there, and slowly moving toward an admission that he was ready to change his ways. The disadvantage of this approach was that any reconciliation would inevitably be preceded by a sermon, something he could well do without. He had still not yet chosen one of the many alternatives that came into his head when the major appeared at the door to the parlor.
The major stood there silently, regarding his nephew with a stern, interrogative eye.
Soares hesitated for a moment, but since he did not stand to benefit from prolonging the situation, on a natural impulse he went over to his uncle and held out his hand.
“Uncle,” he said, “you need not say anything. The look in your eyes says it all. I was a sinner and I repent of my sins. Here I am.”
The major took his hand, which Soares kissed with as much respect as he could muster. Then the major went over to a chair and sat down. Soares remained standing.
“If you sincerely do repent, then I open to you both my door and my heart. If your repentance is insincere, then you can leave now. I haven’t been to the theater for a very long time, and I don’t like actors.”
Soares assured him that he was entirely sincere. He admitted that he had been a crazed dissolute, but now that he had reached the age of thirty, it was time to grow up. He saw now that his uncle had been right all along. He had initially dismissed his uncle’s views as the curmudgeonly grumblings of old age, but such levity was only to be expected in a lad brought up to live a life of excess. Luckily, he had seen the light, and his ambition was now to live like any other decent man, his first step being to take on some public position that would oblige him to work and become a serious citizen. It was just a matter of finding such a position.
As he listened to the speech of which I give only an extract above, the major was trying to plumb the depths of Soares’s mind. Was he being sincere? He concluded that the lad’s words were indeed truly heartfelt, so much so that he thought he saw a tear in his eyes, although no tear, not even a pretend one, actually appeared.
When Soares finished speaking, the major held out his hand and clasped the hand held out to him by the young man.
“I believe you, Luís. And I’m glad that you have at last repented. The life you led was neither life nor death; life is more dignified and death more peaceful than the existence you were blithely frittering away. You come here now like a prodigal son. You will have the best place at the table. My family is your family.”
The major continued in this vein, and Soares stood quietly listening to his uncle’s speechifying. He told himself that this was merely one example of the misery yet to come, and would be discounted from his sins.
The major finally led the young man into the dining room, where lunch awaited them.
Adelaide and the elderly female relative were both there. Senhora Antônia de Moura Vilela received Soares with loud exclamations of delight, which Soares found genuinely embarrassing. As for Adelaide, she merely nodded in his direction, without actually looking at him. He returned her nod.
The major noted the coldness of her welcome, but merely snickered in a way peculiar to him, as if he knew the cause.
They sat down at the table, and lunch was interspersed with the major’s jokes, Senhora Antônia’s recriminations, Soares’s explanations and Adelaide’s silence. When the meal was over, the major gave Soares permission to smoke, a concession that the young man resisted at first, then accepted. The ladies left the room, and the two men sat on alone at the table.
“So you’re willing to work?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Well, I’ll see if I can find a job for you. What kind of work would you prefer?”
“Whatever you decide, Uncle, just as long as I’m working.”
“Fine, tomorrow I’ll write a letter of recommendation for you to present to a couple of ministers. Let’s just hope you find a post easily. I want to see you working hard and seriously; I want to see you make a man of yourself. Dissipation produces nothing but debts and disappointments. Do you have any debts?”
“No, none,” said Soares.
He was lying. He had a relatively small debt with his tailor, but he was hoping to pay that off before his uncle found out.
The following day, the major wrote the promised letter, which Soares took to one of the ministers, and, a month later, he was fortunate enough to be employed in an office earning a good wage.
To be fair to the lad, he made an enormous sacrifice in changing his habits, and to judge by his previous record, no one would have thought him capable of such a sacrifice. However, both change and sacrifice could be explained by his desire to resume his life of dissipation. This was merely a rather long parenthesis in Soares’s existence. He was hoping to close the parenthesis and return to the sentence he had begun, in other words, living with Aspasius and carousing with Alcibiades.
His uncle suspected none of this, but he was afraid Soares might be tempted to backslide, either because he was seduced by memories of his former dissipations or had grown bored with the monotony and weariness of work. In order to prevent disaster, he decided to encourage Soares’s political ambitions, thinking that politics would be the perfect remedy for that particular patient, as if it were a well-known fact that Lovelace and Turgot can easily coexist in the same head.
Soares did not discourage the major. He said it was only natural that he should go into politics, even saying that he had occasionally dreamed of having a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said his uncle. “But, first, you need to study political science and the history of our government; above all, though, you need to continue being what you are now: a serious young man.”
No sooner said than done, for Soares immediately plunged into his reading and began earnestly studying the debates in the Chamber of Deputies.
Soares did not live with his uncle, but spent any nonworking hours at his house, returning home after a patriarchal tea, very different from the slap-up suppers he had known before.
I shan’t deny that there may not have been a thread linking the two phases of Luís Soares’s life, or that the emigrant from fashionable society did not make the occasional return visit to his homeland. These forays were, however, so secret that no one knew of them, possibly not even the inhabitants of said homeland, with the exception of the chosen few who welcomed the expatriate. This was unusual, because in that land, naturalized citizens are not thought of as foreign, unlike in England, which denies the queen’s subjects the right to choose another country.
Soares occasionally met up with Pires. The convert’s confidant proved his former friendship by offering him a Havana cigar and recounting a few of the triumphs he had enjoyed in the war of love, in which the fool imagined himself to be a consummate general.
Major Vilela’s nephew had been employed for five months, and, so far, his bosses had no reason to complain. Such devotion was worthy of a better cause. On the outside, Luís Soares was a monk, but scratch the surface and you would find the devil.
And that devil could spy in the distance a possible conquest . . .
III
Cousin Adelaide was twenty-four years old, and, in the full flower of her youth, her beauty had the capacity to make men feel they might die of love for her. She was tall and well proportioned; she had a classically shaped head; her brow was broad and clear, her eyes dark and almond-shaped, and her nose slightly aquiline. Anyone studying her for a few moments would feel that she contained all the energies, both of the passions and of the will.
The reader will doubtless remember the cool greeting exchanged by Adelaide and her cousin; you will also recall that Soares had told his friend Pires that he had once been loved by his cousin. Put those two things together. Adelaide’s coolness stemmed from a painful memory; Adelaide had loved her cousin, not with the usual cousinly love, which tends to emerge out of long familiarity rather than from any sudden attraction. She had loved him with all the vigor and warmth of her soul; but, by then, he was already beginning to visit other regions of society and was indifferent to her affections. A friend who knew this secret asked him one day why he did not marry Adelaide, to which Soares answered coldly:
“No one with a fortune like mine would marry, but if I did, I would need to marry someone who had a still larger fortune. Adelaide’s wealth is only a fifth of mine; for her, it would be a really lucrative deal, but not for me.”
The friend who heard this reply gave further proof of his friendship by going to Adelaide and telling her what Soares had said. This was a tremendous blow, not only because it proved beyond a doubt he did not love her, but because it did not even give her the right to respect him. Soares’s confession was a corpus delicti. The officious confidant was perhaps hoping to pick up the spoils, but as soon as Adelaide heard his treacherous words, she immediately despised the traitor too.
The incident went no further.
Soares’s return to his uncle’s house left Adelaide in a very painful situation; she was forced to have dealings with a man she could not respect. For his part, Soares also felt inhibited, not because he regretted the words he had spoken that day, but because of his uncle, who knew nothing about the affair. The uncle did in fact know, but Soares assumed he didn’t. The major knew of Adelaide’s passion and knew, too, that her cousin had rejected her. He may not have known the actual words repeated to her by Soares’s friend, but he knew the gist; he knew that, as soon as he had felt he was loved, the lad had begun to loathe his cousin, and she, seeing herself repulsed, had begun to loathe him too. He had assumed initially that Soares’s absence from the house was due to her presence there.
Adelaide was the daughter of one of the major’s brothers, an extremely rich and extremely eccentric man, who had died ten years before, leaving his daughter in the care of the major. Her father had been a great traveler and, it transpired, had spent a large part of his fortune on his travels. When he died, his only child, Adelaide, was left with a mere thirty contos, which her uncle preserved intact as her future dowry.
Soares coped as best he could with the strange situation in which he found himself. He never conversed with his cousin, or only enough not to arouse his uncle’s suspicions. She did the same.
But who can control their heart? Adelaide felt her old affection for Soares beginning to resurface. She tried to fight these feelings, but the only way to stop a plant from growing is to tear it out by the roots. The roots were still there. Despite all her efforts, love gradually took the place of hate, and if she had suffered greatly before, that suffering was now multiplied tenfold. A battle began between pride and love. She kept her suffering to herself, though, and said not a word.
Luís Soares noticed that when his fingers touched hers, she was clearly very moved, and would first blush, then turn pale. Soares was an experienced sailor in the seas of love: he knew its calms and its storms. He realized that his cousin had fallen in love with him again. This discovery brought him no joy; on the contrary, it annoyed him intensely. He was afraid that if his uncle learned of his niece’s feelings, then he would suggest that Soares marry her, and a refusal to do so would doubtless compromise his hoped-for inheritance. Soares’s ideal was to inherit without having to marry. Giving me wings, he thought, but binding my feet is tantamount to condemning me to prison. That is the fate of a domesticated parrot, one I do not aspire to.
His fears proved to be justified. The major discovered the cause of his niece’s sadness and decided to resolve the situation by proposing that Soares marry her.
Soares could not openly refuse without compromising the edifice of his fortune.
“This marriage,” his uncle told him, “completes my happiness. At a stroke, I bring together two people I love, and I can then die in peace, taking no sorrows with me into the next world. You’ll accept, won’t you?”
“I will, Uncle, but I must just say that marriage is based on love, and I do not love my cousin.”
“But you will. Get married first . . .”
“I wouldn’t want to disillusion her.”
“What do you mean, ‘disillusion her’?” said his uncle, smiling. “I like to hear you speaking so poetically, but marriage is not poetry. I agree that it’s always best if, before marrying, two people already feel some mutual esteem, but I think you do. As for flaming passions, my dear nephew, such things are fine in poetry and even in prose, but in life, which is neither prose nor poetry, marriage demands only respect and a certain conformity of character and upbringing.”
“You know I would never disobey an order from you.”
“I’m not ordering you to do anything; I’m merely making a suggestion. You say you don’t love your cousin, fine, but do your best to love her and give me the pleasure of seeing you married. But don’t delay, because it won’t be long before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”
Soares agreed. Unable to resolve the problem, he postponed it. The major was pleased with the arrangement and consoled his niece with the promise that she would one day marry her cousin. This was the first time he had broached the subject, and Adelaide did not conceal her surprise, a surprise that proved most flattering to the major’s powers of discernment.
“Just because I’m old, you think I can no longer see with my heart. Well, I see everything, Adelaide, even those things that try to remain hidden.”
She could not hold back her tears, and when he tried to console her by offering her some hope, she shook her head, saying:
“No, there is no hope!”
“Leave it to me,” said the major.
While her uncle’s kindness was entirely spontaneous and born of the love he bore for his niece, she realized that his intervention could give her cousin the impression that she was begging him for his affection like someone asking for alms.
This was her woman’s pride speaking, preferring suffering to humiliation. When she put these objections to her uncle, he smiled kindly and tried to reassure her.
A few days passed and nothing happened. Soares was enjoying the respite given him by his uncle. Adelaide resumed her air of cold indifference, and Soares, knowing the reason for this coldness, responded to that show of pride with a wry smile. Twice Adelaide caught that scornful look. What further proof did she need that he remained as indifferent to her as before? She noted, too, that whenever they found themselves alone, he was always the first to leave the room. No, he hadn’t changed.
“He doesn’t love me, he never will!” she told herself.
IV
One morning, Major Vilela received the following letter:
My valiant Major. I arrived back from Bahia today and I’ll drop round this evening to see you and embrace you. Prepare a fine supper, for I don’t imagine you will receive me as if I were just anyone. And don’t forget the vatapá. Your friend, Anselmo.
“Excellent!” said the major. “Anselmo is coming to see us, Cousin Antônia, tell the cooks to prepare a vatapá.”
The Anselmo who had just arrived from Bahia was Anselmo Barroso de Vasconcelos. He was a rich landowner and a veteran of the War of Independence. Despite his seventy-eight years, he was still strong and capable of great deeds. He had been a close friend of Adelaide’s father, who had introduced him to the major, with whom he remained friends after her father died. Anselmo had been with his friend until his final moments and had mourned his passing as he would a brother’s. Those tears cemented the friendship between him and the major.
Anselmo arrived that evening full of talk and jokes and as lively as if he were about to embark on his second youth. He embraced everyone and kissed Adelaide, whom he complimented on her growing beauty.
“Now, don’t laugh at me,” he told her, “I was your father’s greatest friend and, alas, poor friend, he died in my arms.”
Soares, who was finding the life he led at his uncle’s house stultifyingly dull, was delighted to meet this talkative old man, who was a veritable firework. Anselmo, however, seemed not to take to the major’s nephew. When the major learned this, he said:
“I’m sorry to hear that, because Soares is a very serious lad.”
“Too serious, if you ask me. A lad who never smiles . . .”
Some incident or other, I’m not sure what, prevented Anselmo from finishing his sentence.
After supper, Anselmo said to the major:
“What date is it tomorrow?”
“The fifteenth.”
“Oh, come on, now. Of December!”
“Right. Tomorrow, the fifteenth of December, I need to have a meeting with you and your relatives. If the steamship had been a day late, I would have been in real trouble.”
The following day, the meeting Anselmo had asked for took place. Present were the major, Soares, Adelaide, and Dona Antônia, the deceased man’s only relatives.
“It’s ten years to the day that this young woman’s father died,” said Anselmo, indicating Adelaide. “As you know, Dr. Bento Varela was my best friend, and I returned his affection until the very last moment of his life. As you also know, he was an eccentric genius, and he lived an equally eccentric life. He was always coming up with new projects, each more grandiose than the last, each more impossible than the last, and none of them was ever brought to fruition, because no sooner had his creative spirit come up with one idea than it was already planning another.”
“That’s true,” said the major.
“Bento died in my arms, and, as a final proof of his friendship, he gave me a letter, which, he said, I should open only in the presence of his family members ten years after his death. Were I to die, the obligation would fall on my heirs, or, if they were not available, then on the major, Senhora Dona Adelaide, or anyone connected to him by blood. And if none of the above was alive, a notary had been charged with carrying out that duty. I had put all this in my will, which I will now have to revise. The letter I mentioned is here in my pocket.”
There was a murmur of curiosity.
Anselmo took from his pocket a letter bearing a black wax seal.
“Here it is,” he said. “Unopened. I don’t know what it says, but I can more or less guess what it contains because of certain circumstances that I will reveal to you now.”
Those present grew still more attentive.
“Before he died,” Anselmo went on, “my dear friend gave me part of his fortune, I mean the larger part, because Adelaide received only thirty contos. I received from him three hundred contos, which I have kept intact until today, and which I must distribute according to the instructions in this letter.”
General gasps of surprise were followed by a faint shiver of anxiety. What would they be, these mysterious instructions left by Adelaide’s father? Dona Antônia remembered that, as a girl, she had been the dead man’s sweetheart, and, for a moment, she flattered herself with the idea that, at the gates of death, the crazy old man might perhaps have thought of her.
“That’s so typical of my brother Bento,” said the major, taking a pinch of snuff. “He always was a man for mysteries, surprises, and extravagant ideas, not to mention his other sins, if, that is, he committed any . . .”
Everyone was all ears as Anselmo opened the letter and read it out.
My dear, kind Anselmo. I want you to do me one last favor. You already have in your possession the larger portion of my fortune, and I would say the better portion apart, that is, from my dear daughter Adelaide. Keep those three hundred contos for ten years, and at the end of that period, read this letter out to my relatives.
If, by then, my daughter Adelaide is still alive and married, then give her that fortune. If she is not married, then give it to her anyway, but on one condition, that she marry my nephew Luís Soares, the son of my sister Luísa; I love him dearly and, even though he himself is rich, I want him to have my daughter’s fortune. Should she refuse to meet this condition, then the entire fortune is yours.
When Anselmo finished reading, an amazed silence filled the room, an amazement shared by Anselmo himself, who had known nothing of the letter’s contents until then.
Soares was staring at Adelaide, who was, in turn, staring down at the floor.
When the silence continued, Anselmo decided to break it.
“Like you,” he said, “I had no idea what was in this letter; fortunately it has arrived in time for my late friend’s final wish to be granted.”
“Indeed,” said the major.
On hearing this, Adelaide very slowly looked up, and her eyes met her cousin’s eyes. His were filled with contentment and tenderness, and she gazed into those eyes for some moments. On his lips there appeared a smile, which was no longer a mocking smile. She smiled scornfully back at him as if at the bowings and scrapings of a courtier.
Anselmo got to his feet.
“Now that you know everything,” he said to the two cousins, “I hope you will resolve the matter, and since there can be no doubt as to the result, I give you my heartfelt congratulations. Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I have other people to see.”
With his departure, the party broke up. Adelaide retired to her room with Dona Antônia. Uncle and nephew remained in the room.
“Luís,” said his uncle, “you are the most fortunate man in the world.”
“Do you think so, Uncle?” said Soares, trying to conceal his joy.
“I do. Not only do you have a young woman who is madly in love with you. Suddenly an unexpected fortune falls into her lap, and she can only have that fortune if she marries you. Even the dead are working in your favor.”
“I can assure you, Uncle, that money has nothing to do with it, and if I agree to marry my cousin it will be for other reasons entirely.”
“I know that wealth is not essential, but it has some value. It’s better to have three hundred contos than thirty; it’s three figures, not two. However, I will not advise you to marry her if you feel no affection for her, and I’m not talking here about the kind of passions you spoke of. However much money is involved, a bad marriage is still a bad marriage.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Uncle. That’s why I haven’t yet given my answer, and why I won’t do so as yet. If I do become fond of my cousin, then I am ready to accept that unexpected wealth.”
As the reader will have guessed, Soares was firmly resolved to marry. Instead of waiting for his uncle to die, it seemed to him a far better idea to gain immediate possession of that large sum of money, something that seemed to him all the easier, given that a voice from the grave was demanding it.
Soares was counting, too, on Adelaide’s deep respect for her father. This, together with the love she felt for him, should produce the desired effect.
That night, he slept very little. He dreamed of the Orient. His imagination created a harem carpeted with the finest Persian rugs and redolent of all of Arabia’s finest perfumes; the most beautiful women in the world reclined on soft divans. In the middle of the room a Circassian beauty was dancing to the sound of an ivory tambourine. Then an angry eunuch burst into the room, wielding an Ottoman sword, which he plunged into Soares’s chest, at which point Soares awoke from the nightmare and was unable to go to sleep again.
He got up earlier than usual and went for a walk until it was time for breakfast and the office.
V
He would gradually lower his defenses, pretending to succumb to Adelaide’s charms. Such sudden wealth meant that he had to be discreet. The transition had to be slow. He had to be a diplomat.
Readers will have realized that, despite a certain astuteness on Soares’s part, he had not fully grasped the situation, and, besides, he was, by nature, indecisive and fickle.
He had hesitated about marrying Adelaide when his uncle had first spoken to him about it and when it was certain that he would, later on, inherit the major’s fortune. He had said then that he had no desire to be a parrot. The situation was the same now; he was prepared to accept a fortune in exchange for a prison cell. It’s true that if this decision appeared to contradict the first, it could be because he was growing weary of the life he was leading. And, of course, this time he would not have to wait for the money, it would be given to him as soon as he married.
“Three hundred contos,” he thought, “that would make me even richer than I was. I can’t wait to hear what my friends will say!”
Believing his happiness to be assured, Soares began his siege of the castle, a castle that had already surrendered.
He now constantly tried to catch her eye and, when he did, his eyes would ask her for the very thing he had rejected before, the young woman’s heart. When, at the table, their hands touched, Soares took pains to maintain that contact, and when she hurriedly withdrew her hand, he was not discouraged. When he found himself alone with her, he did not run away as he had before, but addressed a few words to her, to which Adelaide would respond coolly and politely.
“She’s obviously playing hard to get,” thought Soares.
Once, he went a step further, entering the room unseen when Adelaide was playing the piano. When she finished playing, he was standing behind her.
“Beautiful!” he exclaimed. “Allow me to kiss those inspired hands.”
She gave him a very somber look, then picked up the handkerchief she had placed on the piano and left the room without saying a word.
This episode demonstrated to Soares the difficult nature of the enterprise, but he remained confident, not because he thought himself capable of great things, but out of a sort of trust in his own good fortune.
“It’s hard to swim upstream,” he said, “but it can be done. No heroes were made without a battle.”
However, further disappointments followed, and had he not been driven on by the thought of all that money, he would have laid down his arms.
One day, he decided to write her a letter. It occurred to him that it would be very difficult to tell her of his feelings face-to-face, but that, however much she loathed him personally, she would at least read a letter.
Adelaide sent the letter back with the houseboy who had delivered it.
The second letter suffered the same fate. When he sent a third, the houseboy refused to take it.
Luís Soares suffered a moment of disillusionment. His indifference was beginning to turn to hate; if he did marry her, he would probably treat her as his mortal enemy.
The situation was becoming ridiculous, or, rather, it had been for a long time, but Soares hadn’t noticed. To put a stop to this absurd state of affairs, he decided to make one final bold move. He seized the first opportunity that appeared, and made an open declaration of his feelings to her, full of pleadings and sighs and possibly tears. He admitted he’d been wrong, mistaken, but now he was utterly repentant. He had finally fallen under her spell.
“Fallen under my spell?” she said. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“You know perfectly well, the spell of your beauty, your love. Please don’t imagine that I’m lying. I’m so deeply in love that I would even be capable of committing a crime.”
“A crime?”
“Isn’t suicide a crime? Of what value is life to me without your love? Please, speak!”
She looked at him for a few moments without uttering a word.
He knelt down.
“Be it death or happiness,” he said, “I want to receive it on my knees.”
Adelaide smiled and said very slowly:
“Three hundred contos. That’s a very high price to pay for a miserable wretch.”
And with that, she turned her back on him.
Soares froze. For a few moments he remained in that same position, his eyes fixed on Adelaide as she walked away. He bowed his head beneath the weight of such humiliation. He had not foreseen such a cruel revenge on her part. Not a hateful word, not a flicker of anger, only calm disdain, a quiet, lofty scorn. Soares had suffered greatly when he lost his fortune, but now that his pride had been so bruised, his pain was infinitely greater.
Poor lad!
Adelaide went inside. It seems she had expected such a scene, because, on entering the house, she immediately went in search of her uncle, and told him that, however much she venerated her father’s name, she could not obey his wishes and would not marry.
“I thought you loved him,” said the major.
“I did love him.”
“Do you love someone else?”
“No.”
“Then explain yourself.”
Adelaide gave him a frank account of Soares’s behavior ever since he’d come to their house, the sudden change in him, his intentions, the scene in the garden. The major listened attentively, tried to excuse his nephew, but, deep down, he believed Soares to be a bad man.
Once Soares was feeling calmer, he went into the house and said goodbye to his uncle until the next day, pretending he had some urgent business to attend to.
VI
Adelaide gave Anselmo a detailed account of the events that prevented her from fulfilling the conditions in the posthumous letter entrusted to him. Since she had to refuse, her father’s fortune should revert to Anselmo; she was perfectly content with what she had.
Anselmo would not give up, however, and before he accepted her refusal, he wanted to see what he himself could make of Luís Soares.
When Soares saw Anselmo enter the house, he suspected it had something to do with the marriage. Anselmo was a very keen judge of character and, despite Soares’s downcast look of victimhood, he saw at once that Adelaide was right.
And that was that. Anselmo prepared to leave for Bahia and announced his departure to the major’s family.
However, when they were all gathered together in the parlor on the eve of Anselmo’s departure, he spoke these words:
“You’re getting stronger and fitter by the day, Major. I think you would benefit from a trip to Europe. And this young lady here would like to see Europe too, and despite her age, I believe Senhora Dona Antônia would enjoy it as well. For my part, I’m prepared to give up Bahia and come with you. What do you say?”
“We’ll need to think about it,” said the major.
“Think? If you think about it, you’ll never go. What do you say, Adelaide?”
“I’ll do whatever my uncle says,” answered Adelaide.
“Besides,” said Anselmo, “now that Dona Adelaide is in possession of a large fortune, she’ll want to see the beautiful things other countries have to offer in order to better appreciate the beauty of our own . . .”
“That’s all very well,” said the major, “but when you say a large fortune . . .”
“Three hundred contos.”
“That belongs to you.”
“To me? Do you think me a thief? What do I care for the dying fantasy of a generous friend? The money belongs to this young woman, his legitimate heir, not to me. I have enough already.”
“That’s very generous of you, Anselmo!”
“How could I be otherwise?”
They all agreed on the trip to Europe.
Luís Soares heard all this without saying a word, but was cheered by the idea that he might be able to tag along with his uncle. The following day he suffered a cruel disappointment. The major said that, before he left, he would recommend him to the minister.
Soares still hoped that he might be able to accompany the family. Was this pure greed for his uncle’s fortune, a desire to see new places, or just to have his revenge on his cousin? It was perhaps all those things.
He clung to these hopes until the very last moment. Then the family left without him.
Abandoned, with no future hopes or prospects other than the daily grind of work, not to mention his humiliated, wounded amour propre, Soares resolved to take the sad, cowardly way out.
One night, his servant heard a shot ring out in Soares’s bedroom; when he went in, he found a corpse.
Pires learned of Soares’s death from someone he met in the street and immediately hurried to Vitória’s house, where she was seated at her dressing table.
“Have you heard?” he asked.
“Heard what?”
“Soares has shot himself.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“Poor man! Is it serious?”
“It is. Are you going out?”
“I’m going to the Alcazar.”
“Oh, yes, they’re doing Bluebeard tonight, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come with you, then.”
And he started humming a tune from Bluebeard.
And that was all Luís Soares received from his closest friends by way of a funeral oration.