“OH! SO YOU’RE PESTANA? said Sinhazinha Mota, raising her hands in surprise and admiration. And then, correcting her over-familiar tone, she quickly followed this up with: “You must forgive me for being so forward, but . . . is it really you?”
Embarrassed and annoyed, Pestana replied that yes, it was indeed him. He had just left the piano, mopping his brow with his handkerchief, and had nearly reached the window, when the young lady stopped him. It was not a ball, just an intimate gathering for a handful of guests, no more than twenty, all told, who had come to dine with the Widow Camargo at Rua do Areal on the occasion of her birthday, November 5, 1875. Such a kind and cheerful widow! She loved to laugh and have fun, even though she had just reached the fine old age of sixty; indeed this turned out to be the last time she did laugh and have fun, for she died during the first few days of 1876. Yes, such a kind and cheerful widow! Such spirit and enthusiasm: no sooner had they finished dinner than she launched into organizing the dances, asking Pestana to play a quadrille! She scarcely needed to finish her request, for Pestana bowed graciously and hastened to the piano. After the quadrille, she gave him barely time to draw breath before she bustled over once again to ask a very particular favor.
“Just say the word, madam.”
“Would you play that polka of yours, Keep Your Hands to Yourself, Mister?”
Pestana grimaced, then, quickly disguising his displeasure, gave a stiff, silent bow, and returned, unenthusiastically, to the piano. On hearing the first few bars, a new wave of gaiety swept the room, the gentlemen rushed over to the ladies, and the pairs launched furiously into the latest polka. It was absolutely the latest thing, for it had been published only a couple of weeks earlier and there was hardly a corner of the city where it had not been heard. It had even attained that highest of accolades, being whistled and hummed in the streets at night.
Sinhazinha Mota had not for one moment thought that the Pestana she had seen at the dining table and then at the piano, with his snuff-brown frock coat and long black curly hair, his somewhat wary eyes and smoothly shaven chin, could possibly be the composer Pestana; a friend had only told her this when Pestana got up from the piano after finishing the polka. Hence her admiring question. As we have seen, he responded with some embarrassment and annoyance. Unperturbed, Sinhazinha Mota and her friend heaped so many extravagant compliments upon him that even the most humble of vanities would have been pleased. Pestana, however, received their words with growing annoyance until, pleading a terrible headache, he asked to be excused. Neither the young ladies nor his hostess could persuade him to stay. He was offered homemade remedies and a little rest, but would have none of it; he insisted on leaving, and he left.
Out in the street, he walked quickly away, afraid they might still call him back; he only slowed down once he had turned the corner of Rua Formosa. But there, too, his polka awaited him in all its jollity. From a smallish house on the right-hand side, only a few yards away, came the notes of his latest composition, played on a clarinet. There was the sound of dancing, too. Pestana paused for a few moments, considered turning back, but carried on walking, quickening his pace and crossing to the other side of the street. The notes faded into the distance, and Pestana turned into Rua do Aterrado, where he lived. As he reached his house, he saw two men coming toward him. One of them, almost brushing past Pestana, started whistling the same polka, con brio; the other man joined in and the two of them headed noisily and cheerily off down the street, while the tune’s composer ran despairingly into his house.
Once inside, he breathed again. His old house, his old staircase, his old black manservant, who came to inquire whether he wanted any supper.
“No, no supper,” Pestana bawled at him. “Just make me some coffee and go to bed.”
He got undressed, put on a nightshirt, and went to the room at the back of the house. When the servant lit the gas lamp in the room, Pestana smiled and nodded his heartfelt greetings to the ten or so portraits hanging on the wall. Only one was an oil painting; it was a portrait of the priest who had raised him, taught him Latin and music, and who, if you believed idle gossip, was Pestana’s father. He had certainly left him as an inheritance this old house, along with its bits and pieces of antique furniture, some dating from the reign of Pedro I. The priest had himself composed a couple of motets; he was mad about music, both sacred and profane, and this passion he instilled in the boy, or perhaps transmitted to him by blood, if those wagging tongues were right. However, as you will see, my story does not concern itself with such matters.
The other portraits were of classical composers: Cimarosa, Mozart, Beethoven, Gluck, Bach, Schumann, and three more; some of them were engravings, others lithographs, all badly framed and of differing sizes, but arranged on the wall like saints in a church. The piano was the altar and upon it lay open the evening gospel: a Beethoven sonata.
The coffee arrived; Pestana gulped down the first cup and went over to the piano. He looked up at the portrait of Beethoven and began to play the sonata, as if caught up in a kind of wild ecstasy, but with absolute perfection. He repeated the piece, then paused, stood up, and went to one of the windows. Then he returned to the piano; now it was Mozart’s turn. He picked up a sheet of music and performed it in the same manner, his soul transported to another place. Haydn took him up to midnight and his second cup of coffee.
Between midnight and one o’clock, Pestana did little except stand at the window and gaze at the stars, or back at the portraits in the room. From time to time he went to the piano and, without sitting down, played a few random chords, as if searching for a thought. But the thought did not appear and he returned to the window. To him the stars resembled a host of musical notes fixed in the night sky waiting for someone to reach out and unstick them; a time would come when the sky would be empty, and the Earth would be a constellation of musical scores. Nothing, no image, no reverie or reflection reminded him of Sinhazinha Mota, who, at that very moment, was drifting off to sleep thinking about him, that famous composer of so many well-loved polkas. Perhaps the idea of marriage deprived that young lady of several moments of sleep? And why shouldn’t it? She was about to turn twenty, and he was thirty, a good age. The young lady fell asleep to the sound of the polka, which she knew by heart, whereas its composer was thinking of neither the polka nor of her, but of the great classics of old, while he endlessly quizzed the heavens and the night, asking the angels and, as a last resort, the devil himself. Why could he not write just one of those immortal pages?
At times, the dawn of an idea seemed to rise up from the depths of his unconscious, and he would run to the piano in order to set it down whole, translate it into sounds, but in vain; the idea vanished. At other times, sitting at the piano, he would let his fingers run wild, to see what fantasias blossomed from them, as they had from Mozart’s hands. But nothing, absolutely nothing; inspiration failed him, his imagination slumbered. If by any chance an idea did appear, fully formed and beautiful, it was merely the echo of another piece repeated from his memory, and which he thought he had invented. Then he would leap angrily to his feet and swear that he would give up his art, go and plant coffee or push a cart around the streets. But ten minutes later there he would be once again at the piano, with his eyes fixed on Mozart, trying to mimic his genius.
Two, three, four o’clock. Sometime after four he went to bed; he was weary, disheartened, dead with fatigue; he had to give lessons the following day. He only slept a little, awoke at seven, got dressed, and ate breakfast.
“Would Sir like the cane or the umbrella?” the servant asked, following orders, for his master was often distracted.
“The cane.”
“But it looks like rain today, sir.”
“Rain,” Pestana repeated mechanically.
“Yes, sir. Seems so. The sky’s quite dark.”
Pestana looked at the servant vaguely, his mind elsewhere. Suddenly:
“Wait right there.”
He ran to the room with the portraits, opened the piano, sat down, and spread his hands over the keyboard. He began to play something of his own making, a real and spontaneous inspiration, a polka, a rambunctious polka, as the papers would say. The composer did not hold back: his fingers plucked the notes from the air, entwining them, shaping them; you could say his muse was simultaneously composing and dancing. Pestana forgot all about his lessons, his servant waiting for him with the cane and the umbrella, forgot even the portraits hanging gravely on the wall. He simply composed, at the keyboard or on paper, with none of the previous evening’s vain efforts, no frustration, asking nothing of heaven or of Mozart’s impassive eyes. No weariness at all. Life, wit, and novelty gushed from his soul like an unquenchable stream.
Soon the polka was finished. He made a few minor changes when he returned for dinner, but already he was humming the tune as he walked down the street. He liked it; the blood of his father and his musical vocation flowed through this new and original composition. Two days later, he took it to the publisher of his other polkas, of which there were already over thirty. The editor thought it delightful.
“It will be a huge success.”
The matter of a title arose. When Pestana composed his first polka, in 1871, he had wanted to give it a poetical title; his choice was “Drops of Sunshine.” The publisher shook his head and told him that titles must themselves be destined for popular tastes, either by allusion to some current event or some catchy expression. He suggested two: “The Law of September 28,” or “Fine Words Butter No Parsnips.”
“But what does ‘Fine Words Butter No Parsnips’ mean?” asked the composer.
“Oh, it means nothing at all, but soon enough it’ll be all the rage.”
Still new to the ways of the world, Pestana refused both titles and kept his polka, but it was not long before he composed another, and the itch of publicity led him to have both of them published, with whatever titles the publisher considered most attractive or appropriate. And thus the pattern was set.
Now, when the composer delivered his brand-new polka and they came to discussing the title, the publisher remembered that, for quite some time, he had been keeping one aside for the next tune Pestana brought him. It was intriguing and expansive, yet jaunty: “Hey Missus, Hang On to Your Hamper.”
“And I’ve already thought up another good one for next time,” he added.
The first edition sold out as soon as it appeared. The composer’s fame was enough to guarantee sales, and in itself the tune was well suited to the genre, being original, danceable, and easily learned by heart. Within one week it was famous. For the first few days Pestana was truly in love with his new creation; he enjoyed humming it to himself, would stop in the street to listen to it being played in some house, and get annoyed when it was played badly. Soon the theater orchestras were playing it, and he even went to one of the performances. Nor was he displeased to hear it whistled, one night, by a shadowy figure coming down Rua do Aterrado.
The honeymoon lasted only a quarter moon. As on previous occasions, and even more quickly than before, the old masters in the portraits made him bleed with remorse. Angry and ashamed, Pestana raged against the muse who had so often consoled him, she with her impish eyes and warm embraces, so easygoing and so gracious. Back came his self-disgust and his loathing of anyone who asked him to play his latest polka, and he resumed his efforts to compose something along classical lines, even if it was only a page, just one, but one that would deserve to be bound between those of Bach and Schumann. A futile enterprise, a vain effort. He plunged himself into that Jordan, but emerged from it unbaptized. He wasted night after night, confidently and stubbornly convinced that it was only a matter of willpower, and that if he could only let go of the easy stuff . . .
“To hell with polkas; let the devil dance to them,” he said to himself one morning, at dawn, as he was getting into bed.
But the polkas did not want to go quite that far. They came to Pestana’s house, to the very room where the portraits hung, bursting in so profusely that he scarcely had time to set them down, have them published, enjoy them for a few days, get bored with them, and return to the same old wellsprings whence nothing flowed. And thus his life swung between those two extremes until he married, and after he married too.
“Who’s he marrying?” Sinhazinha Mota asked her uncle the notary, who gave her this news.
“A widow.”
“Is she old?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Pretty?”
“No, but not ugly, either. Just so-so. I’m told he fell in love with her because he heard her sing at the last feast day of Saint Francis of Paola. But I also heard that she possesses another great gift, less rare and not as worthy: she has consumption.”
Notaries should not attempt wit, or at least not the caustic sort. At this last piece of news, his niece felt a drop of soothing balm, which cured her twinge of envy. It was all true. A few days later, Pestana married a widow age twenty-seven, a fine singer and a consumptive. She would be the spiritual wife of his creative genius. Celibacy was doubtless the cause of his sterile, errant ways, he told himself; artistically he considered himself a wandering outcast of the dead of night; his polkas were merely his foppish fancies. Now, finally, he was going to beget a whole family of works that were serious, profound, inspired, and finely polished.
Such hopes had budded in the very first hours of love, and blossomed at the first dawn of married life. “Maria,” his soul stammered, “give me what I could find neither in the solitude of night, nor in the turmoil of day.”
Straightaway, to celebrate their union, he had the idea of composing a nocturne. He would call it Ave Maria. It was as though happiness brought with it the beginnings of inspiration; not wanting to say anything to his wife before it was ready, he worked in secret, which was difficult, since Maria, also a fervent music lover, would come and play with him, or simply listen, for hours and hours, in the room with the portraits. They even put on a few weekly concerts, with three of Pestana’s musician friends. One Sunday, however, he could contain himself no longer and called his wife into the room to play her a passage from the nocturne; he did not tell her what it was, nor who it was by. Suddenly, stopping, he looked at her inquiringly.
“Don’t stop,” said Maria. “It’s Chopin, isn’t it?”
Pestana went pale, stared into space, repeated one or two passages, and stood up. Maria sat down at the piano, and, struggling slightly to remember, played the piece by Chopin. The idea and the motif were the same; Pestana had discovered them in some dark alleyway of his memory, that perfidious old city. Sad and despairing, he left the house and headed toward the bridge, in the direction of São Cristóvão.
“Why struggle?” he asked himself. “I’ll stick to polkas . . . Long live the polka!”
Passersby hearing this stared at him as if he were mad. He carried on walking, delirious, tormented, an eternal shuttlecock between his ambition and his vocation. He passed the old slaughterhouse; when he came to the railroad crossing, he had the notion of walking up the tracks and waiting for the first train to come and crush him. The guard made him turn back. He came to his senses and went home.
A few days later—a clear, fresh morning in May 1876—at six o’clock in the morning, Pestana felt a familiar tingling in his fingers. He slipped slowly out of bed so as not to wake Maria, who had been coughing all night and was now sound asleep. He went to the room with the portraits, opened the lid of the piano, and, as quietly as he could, knocked out a polka. He had it published under a pseudonym; in the following two months he composed and published two more. Maria knew nothing about it; she carried on coughing and dying, until one night she passed away in the arms of her distraught and despairing husband.
It was Christmas Eve. Pestana’s suffering was only made worse by the sounds of a dance nearby, where several of his best polkas were being played. The dancing was bad enough; hearing his own compositions gave it all a perverse air of irony. He heard the rhythm of the footsteps and imagined the accidentally salacious movements of the dancers, movements that some of his compositions quite frankly called out for; all this as he sat by her pale corpse, mere skin and bones, laid out on the bed. Every hour of the long night passed like that, fast or slow, moistened by tears and sweat, by eau de cologne and Labarraque’s disinfectant, springing ceaselessly back and forth as if to the sound of a polka written by the great invisible Pestana.
After the burial, the widower had only one goal: to abandon his music forever once he had composed a Requiem, which he would perform on the first anniversary of Maria’s death. Then he would take up some other job: clerk, postman, street peddler, anything that would make him forget his murderous art, so deaf to his aspirations.
He began the great work. He put everything into it: boldness, patience, thought, and even the occasional flight of fancy, as he had done in times gone by, imitating Mozart, whose Requiem he reread and studied. Weeks and months went by. The work, which at first went quickly, slowed its pace. Pestana had his good days and bad. At times he found the music lacking in some way, a sacred soul, ideas, inspiration, or method; at other times his spirits rose and he worked frantically. Eight, nine, ten, eleven months, and the Requiem was still not finished. He redoubled his efforts, neglected his teaching and his friends. He had reworked the piece many times, but now he wanted to finish it, no matter what. Two weeks, one week, five days to go . . . The anniversary dawned and he was still working on it.
He had to make do with a simple spoken mass, for him alone. It is hard to say whether all the tears that came stealthily to his eyes were those of the husband, or if some were the composer’s. In any event, he never looked at the Requiem again.
Another year passed. At the beginning of 1878, the publisher came to see him.
“It’s been two years,” he said, “since you’ve given us one of your lively tunes. Everyone is wondering if you have lost your talent. What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Nothing.”
“I know what a blow your wife’s death must have been, but it’s been two years now. I’m here to offer you a contract: twenty polkas over the next twelve months; the usual fee, and a higher percentage of the sales. And at the end of the year, we can renew it.”
Pestana nodded his agreement. He was giving very few lessons, had sold the house to pay off debts, and daily necessities were eating up what little remained. He accepted the contract.
“But I need the first polka straightaway,” explained the publisher. “It’s urgent. Did you hear that the Emperor has dismissed the Duke of Caxias? The liberals have been summoned to form a government; they’re going ahead with electoral reform. The polka will be called ‘Hurrah for Direct Elections!’ It’s not political, just a good title for the occasion.”
Pestana composed the first piece for the contract. Despite his lengthy silence, he had lost neither his originality nor his inspiration. It had the same touch of genius. The other polkas followed one by one at regular intervals. He had kept the portraits and their subjects’ repertoire, but he avoided spending all his nights at the piano, so as not to fall into new temptations. Now he would always ask for a free ticket whenever there was a good opera or recital on; he would sit in a corner and simply savor the sounds that would never again blossom in his own mind. From time to time, on returning home, his head filled with music, the unsung maestro in him would awaken once again; he would sit at the piano and aimlessly play a few notes, then, twenty or thirty minutes later, go to bed.
And so the years passed, until 1885. Pestana’s fame made him the undisputed master of the polka, but first place in such a village did not suffice for this Caesar, who would still have preferred not the second, but the hundredth place in Rome. He had the same mood swings regarding his compositions as before, the difference being that now they were less violent. No more wild enthusiasm during the first few hours, nor revulsion after the first week; just a degree of pleasure followed by a certain ennui.
That year, he caught a slight fever. After a few days, the fever rose, and became life-threatening. He was already in grave danger when the publisher appeared, unaware that Pestana was ill; he had come to give him the news that the conservatives were back in power, and to ask him to write a polka for the occasion. The nurse, an impoverished theater clarinetist, informed him of Pestana’s condition, and the publisher realized it was best to say nothing. It was the patient himself who insisted that he tell him what he had come for; the publisher obeyed.
“But only once you’re fully recovered,” he concluded.
“Just as soon as the fever subsides a little,” said Pestana.
There was a few seconds’ pause. The clarinetist quietly tiptoed over to prepare the medication; the publisher stood up and took his leave.
“Goodbye.”
“Look,” said Pestana, “since it’s quite likely that I’ll be dead in the next few days, I’ll do you two polkas straightaway; the other will come in handy for when the liberals are back.”
It was the only joke he had made in his entire life, and it came none too soon, for he died at five minutes past four the following morning, at peace with his fellow men and at war with himself.