SHE COULD NOT have arrived at a more opportune moment. Dona Paula entered the room just as her niece was drying her eyes, which were red with crying. The aunt’s surprise is easy enough to understand, as is the niece’s, given that Dona Paula lives up in Tijuca and rarely comes down to the city; the last time was at Christmas and we are now in May of 1882. She arrived yesterday afternoon and went straight to her sister’s house in Rua do Lavradio. Today, as soon as she had breakfasted, she dressed and rushed over to visit her niece. When she reached the house, one of the slaves tried to go and warn her mistress, but Dona Paula ordered her to stay put, and, tiptoeing very slowly to keep her skirts from rustling, she opened the door of the drawing room and went in.
“Whatever’s wrong?” she exclaimed.
Venancinha threw herself into her aunt’s arms, and again burst into tears. Her aunt kissed her and embraced her tightly, saying many words of comfort, and begging her to tell her what the matter was. Was she ill, or—
“Oh, I wish I were ill! I wish I were dead!” said the young lady, interrupting her.
“Now, don’t be so silly. What is it? Come on, what’s happened?”
Venancinha dried her eyes and tried to speak. She got no further than five or six words before the tears returned, so abundantly and unstoppably that Dona Paula thought it best to let them first run their course. Meanwhile, she took off her black lace cape and removed her gloves. She was, for her age, still a beautiful, elegant woman whose large eyes must once have seemed infinite. While her niece wept, she prudently went over to shut the door, then returned to the sofa. After a few minutes, Venancinha stopped crying and told her aunt what had happened.
She’d had a terrible quarrel with her husband, so violent that they had even spoken of separation. The cause was jealousy. For some time now, her husband had harbored a dislike for a certain gentleman, but on the previous evening, at C.’s house, seeing her dance with said man twice and talk to him for several minutes, he had concluded that they were lovers. He sulked all the way home, and, in the morning, after breakfast, his anger exploded and he said some very harsh and bitter things, to which she had responded in kind.
“Where is your husband?” asked her aunt.
“He’s gone out, probably to the office.”
Dona Paula asked if his office was still to be found in the same building, and told her not to worry, that this was clearly a fuss about nothing, and in a couple of hours it would all have blown over. She quickly pulled on her gloves.
“Are you going to see him, Auntie?”
“I am indeed. Your husband is a good man, and this is just a minor tiff. Number 104, you said? Right, I’m off; wait for me here, so that the slaves don’t see you.”
All this was said with a kind and confident fluency. After her gloves, she put on her cape, helped by her niece, who kept repeating, indeed swearing, how, despite everything, she still adored Conrado. Conrado was her husband, who had been practicing as a lawyer since 1874. Dona Paula left, taking with her many kisses from the young lady. She really could not have arrived at a more opportune moment. As she made her way to Conrado’s office, it seems that Dona Paula reflected upon the incident with curiosity and not a little suspicion, somewhat uneasy about what might really have happened; in any event, she was determined to restore domestic harmony.
Her nephew was not in his office when she arrived, but he soon returned. Despite his initial surprise at seeing her there, he did not need Dona Paula to explain the reason for her visit; he guessed what had happened. He admitted that he had gone too far in some respects, and while he did not actually believe his wife to be a wicked or depraved woman, she was something of a flibbertigibbet, too fond of men’s gallantry, tender looks, and flattering remarks. Frivolity could itself be a doorway to vice. As for the man in question, he had no doubt that something was going on between them. Venancinha had only told Dona Paula about the previous night; she had not mentioned the four or five other incidents, the last of which had taken place at the theater, and had even turned into something of a scandal. He had no desire to assume responsibility for his wife’s indiscretions. If she wanted to take lovers, then so be it, but it would be at a cost.
Dona Paula listened in silence, then she spoke. She agreed that her niece was somewhat flighty; it was only to be expected at her age. Pretty girls cannot go out into the street without attracting attention, and it was only natural for her to be flattered by the attentions of other men. It was also only natural that her response should appear, both to the flatterers and to her husband and to other people, as the beginnings of an affair: their foolishness and his jealousy explained everything. On the other hand, she, Dona Paula, had just seen the poor girl shed genuine tears; she had left her in a wretched state, completely distraught at what he had said to her, even saying she wanted to die. And if he himself only thought her frivolous, then why not proceed with caution and kindness, offering sage advice, avoiding as much as possible the occasions on which such incidents might arise and pointing out to her the harm that can be done to a lady’s reputation by even the appearance on her part of any reciprocity, affection, or kindness toward other men?
The good lady spent no less than twenty minutes saying these soothing things, and so convincing were her arguments that the nephew felt his heart soften. He did, of course, put up some resistance. Not wishing to seem overly indulgent, he declared two or three times that it was all over between him and Venancinha. To stir his resolve, he brought to mind all the various grievances he held against his wife. The aunt, meanwhile, bowed her head to let the wave wash over, before again raising it and fixing him with her large, wise, perseverant eyes. Slowly and reluctantly, Conrado began to give way. It was then that Dona Paula proposed a compromise.
“Forgive her, make peace between you, and let her come and stay with me up in Tijuca for a month or two; call it a sort of exile. While she’s with me, I will do my best to knock some sense into her. Agreed?”
Conrado agreed. As soon as she had his word, Dona Paula bade him good day and left to take the good news to her niece. Conrado accompanied her to the stairs and they shook hands; Dona Paula did not release his without first repeating her words of prudent, compassionate advice, then commented nonchalantly:
“And the pair of you will come to see that the man who caused all this trouble doesn’t merit even a moment’s thought.”
“His name is Vasco Maria Portela.”
Dona Paula turned pale. Which Vasco Maria Portela? An old man, a former diplomat, who . . . No, he had retired to Europe several years before and had just been made a baron. It was one of his sons, recently returned, a regular dandy . . . Dona Paula released Conrado’s hand and hurried downstairs. Although there was no need to adjust her cape, she stood in the hallway for several minutes, fumbling with it, her hands trembling, and with a somewhat troubled look on her face. She even stopped and stared down at the floor, thinking. Then she left the building and returned to her niece, taking with her the reconciliation and its conditions. Venancinha agreed to everything.
Two days later, they left for Tijuca. Venancinha went rather less willingly than she had promised; it was probably the prospect of exile, or perhaps some lingering regrets. In any event, Vasco’s name went with them up to Tijuca, if not in both of their heads, then at least in the aunt’s, where it created a kind of distant echo, wafting gently down from the days of the great mezzo Rosine Stoltz when the Marquis of Paraná was in government. Power and fame are fragile things, and no less fragile than the bloom on a young girl’s cheek. And where had those three eternities gone? They were buried beneath the ruins of the past thirty years, which was all that Dona Paula had within her and all that lay ahead of her.
The reader will by now have realized that the other Vasco, the older one, had also once been young and in love. For several years, in the shadow of their respective marriages, they had loved each other until they could love no more, and since the passing breeze does not record our human words, it is impossible to set down here what was said of the affair at the time. The affair ended; it had been a succession of sweet and bitter hours, of delights, tears, rages, and raptures—for such were the intoxications that filled this lady’s cup of passion. Dona Paula drank deeply, down to the very last drop, then cast the cup aside, never to drink again. Surfeit led to abstinence, and, with time, her public reputation rested on that latter phase. Her husband died and the years passed. Dona Paula was now an austere and pious widow, held in the highest esteem and respect.
It was her niece who took her thoughts back to the past. The similarity of the situation, with a man of the same name and blood, awoke in her some old memories. Do not forget that the two of them were now up in Tijuca and would be living together for some time, one in obedience to the other; it was both a temptation and a challenge to memory.
“Are we really not going back to the city for several weeks?” asked Venancinha, laughing, the following morning.
“Are you bored already?”
“No, not at all, I could never be bored; I was just asking . . .”
Dona Paula, also laughing, wagged her finger and asked if she was already missing life down in the city. Of course she wasn’t, said Venancinha, curling her lip in disdain or indifference. She did perhaps protest too much, like someone who reveals more than she should in her letters, and Dona Paula had the good sense not to read in haste, preferring to weigh each word and syllable so that nothing escaped her, and she found her niece’s gesture somewhat excessive.
“They’re in love!” she thought to herself.
This discovery reawakened the spirit of the past. Dona Paula struggled to shake off those importunate memories, yet back they came, meek and mild or bold and blowsy, like the young things they were, singing and laughing and generally causing mayhem. Dona Paula returned to the dances of her youth, to those endless waltzes that sent everyone into raptures, to the mazurkas, which she always held up to her niece as the most graceful thing in the world, to the theaters, the card games, and, more circumspectly, the kisses; but all of these things—and here’s the nub of it—all of these things were like dry, dusty chronicles, mere skeletons of the story, lacking any soul. It was all in her head. Dona Paula tried to yoke her heart to her head, to see if she could feel anything beyond a purely mental reenactment, but, however hard she tried to revive those extinct emotions, none returned. Only bare stumps remained.
If she could only peer into her niece’s heart, she might find her own image reflected there, and then . . . Once this notion entered Dona Paula’s head, it somewhat complicated her task of cure and restoration. She was sincere in her concern for her niece’s welfare, and wanted to see her reconciled with her husband. Steadfast sinners may well wish for others to sin as well, so as to have some company on the way down to purgatory, but in this case the sin was long gone. Dona Paula set out to her niece Conrado’s superior virtues, but also the passions that could bring their marriage to a bad, indeed worse than tragic, end: he could disown her.
Conrado’s first visit to them, nine days later, only confirmed her aunt’s warnings: he was cold when he arrived and cold when he left. Venancinha was terrified. She had hoped that those nine days of separation would have softened her husband’s heart, which indeed they had, but he concealed this on arrival and kept a tight lid on his feelings so as not to be seen to be giving in. This proved more salutary than anything else. The terror of losing her husband was the most important element in Venancinha’s recovery. It was even more effective than exile.
Then, all of a sudden, two days after Conrado’s visit, when aunt and niece were standing at the garden gate ready to go out for their customary stroll, they saw a man approaching on horseback. Venancinha stared at him, uttered a faint cry, and ran to hide behind the wall. Dona Paula understood at once, and remained where she was. She wanted to see the rider at closer quarters, and two or three minutes later she did just that: a handsome, elegant young man with gleaming boots and a firm seat in the saddle. He had the same face as the other Vasco, for he was indeed the son; the same tilt of the head, slightly to the right, the same broad shoulders, the same round, deep eyes.
That very night, once the first word had been pried out of her, Venancinha told her aunt everything. They had first seen each other at the races, soon after he returned from Europe. Two weeks later, he was introduced to her at a ball, and he looked so dashing, had such a Parisian air about him, that the following morning she mentioned him to her husband. Conrado had frowned, and it was precisely this reaction that planted in her mind an idea that had never occurred to her up until then. She began to enjoy seeing Vasco, and soon enjoyment turned to longing. He spoke to her respectfully and said nice things to her, that she was the prettiest and most elegant girl in Rio, that some of the ladies of the Alvarenga family, whom he had met in Paris, had already been singing her praises to him. He made witty, cutting remarks about other mutual acquaintances, but also knew how to speak from the heart, like no one else she had met before. He did not speak of love, but followed her with his eyes, and though she tried to look away, she could not do so entirely. She began to think about him, often and with great excitement, and her heart beat faster whenever they met; and he may well have seen in the look on her face the impression he made upon her.
Leaning toward her niece, Dona Paula listened to this account, which appears here in abbreviated form. Her whole life was there in her eyes; with her lips parted, she seemed to drink in her niece’s words, eagerly, like a cordial. She asked for more, for her to tell her everything, absolutely everything. Venancinha’s confidence grew. Her aunt looked so youthful, her very exhortations were so gentle and full of ready forgiveness, that Venancinha found in her a confidante and a friend, apart from the few harsh words that Dona Paula, out of unwitting hypocrisy, had felt obliged to mix in with other, kinder ones, for I wouldn’t say this was intentional, given that Dona Paula was deceiving herself as well. We might compare her to a general invalided out of the army and who tries to rekindle some of his former ardor by listening to the tales of other men’s campaigns.
“Now you can see that your husband was right,” she said. “You’ve been reckless, very reckless . . .”
Venancinha agreed, but swore that it was all over.
“I’m afraid it might not be. Did you really love him?”
“Auntie!”
“So you do still love him!”
“I swear I don’t. Not anymore, but I confess . . . yes, I confess I did. Oh, Auntie, please forgive me; don’t say anything to Conrado. I’m truly sorry . . . As I said, at the beginning I was somewhat smitten . . . But what can you expect?”
“Did he make any declarations of love?”
“Yes, one night at the theater, the Teatro Lírico, as we were leaving. He had the habit of calling at our box to accompany me to my carriage. It was at the door to the box . . . just three little words . . .”
Dona Paula did not, for the sake of decency, ask Venancinha what the precise words of her lover had been, but she imagined the setting, the corridor, the couples leaving, the lights, the crowd, the chatter of voices. With this tableau before her, she was able to imagine some of her niece’s feelings; astutely, and not entirely disinterestedly, she asked her to describe them.
“I don’t know what I felt,” replied the young lady, whose tongue was loosening with her swelling emotions. “I don’t remember the first five minutes. I think I remained composed, though, and I certainly didn’t respond. Everyone seemed to be looking at us, as if they’d overheard something, and when someone greeted me with a smile, I had the impression they were making fun of me. Somehow I made it down the stairs, and without really knowing what I was doing, I got into the carriage; when we shook hands I let my fingers go limp. I swear to you I wish I hadn’t heard those words. Conrado told me he was sleepy and leaned back in the carriage; it was better that way, because I don’t know what I would have said if we’d had to talk all the way home. I leaned back, too, but not for long; I couldn’t keep still. I looked out of the window and could see only the glare of the streetlamps, and then not even that; I saw the corridors at the theater, the stairs, everyone standing there, him right beside me, whispering those words, just three little words, and I cannot say what I thought during all that time; everything inside me was mixed up and confused, like a kind of internal revolution . . .”
“And when you got home?”
“At home, as I undressed, I was able to gather my thoughts a little, but only a little. I slept poorly, and late. I woke in the morning feeling utterly confused. I can’t say whether I was happy or sad; I remember thinking about him a lot, and to put him out of my mind I promised myself that I would tell Conrado everything, but the thoughts kept coming back. From time to time, I could almost hear his voice, and it made me tremble. Then I remembered that, when we said goodbye, I had let my fingers go limp, and I felt, I don’t quite know how to put it, a sort of regret, a fear of having offended him . . . and that made me want to see him again . . . Forgive me, Auntie, but you did ask me to tell you everything.”
Dona Paula nodded and squeezed her niece’s hand tightly. Hearing those feelings so innocently expressed, she had at last rediscovered something from the old days. One minute her eyes were dull with the drowsiness of remembrance, the next instant they sparkled with warmth and curiosity; she listened to everything, day by day, encounter by encounter, the scene at the theater itself, which, at first, her niece had hidden from her. And then came the rest, the hours of anguish, of longing, fear, hope, the disappointments, the deceptions, the sudden impulses, all the turmoil of any young woman in such circumstances; nothing was spared the aunt’s insatiable curiosity. It was not an entire book, not even one chapter of an adultery, but a prologue—interesting and disturbing.
Venancinha finished speaking. Lost in her own thoughts, her aunt said nothing. Then she stirred from her reverie, took her niece’s hand, and drew it toward her. She still didn’t speak; at first she just stared intently at all that restless, quivering youthfulness, the fresh mouth, the still-infinite eyes, and only came to herself when her niece asked once again for her forgiveness. Dona Paula said to her everything that a tender, austere mother could say; she spoke of chastity, of love for her husband, of public reputation; she was so eloquent that Venancinha could not contain herself, and wept.
Tea was brought in, but after certain confidences tea is impossible. Venancinha quickly withdrew to her room and, now that more candles had been lit, she left the room with her eyes lowered so that the footman would not see how upset she was. Dona Paula remained at the table, as did the footman. She spent nearly twenty minutes sipping a cup of tea and nibbling a biscuit, and as soon as she was alone, she went and leaned against the window, which looked out over the garden.
A gentle breeze was blowing; the leaves stirred and whispered, and even though they were not the same leaves as in times gone by, they still asked her: “Do you remember the old days, Paula?” For that is the peculiar thing about leaves: each passing generation tells the next what it has seen, and so they always know everything and ask about everything. “Do you remember the old days?”
Yes, she did remember, but what she had felt only a short time earlier, a mere shadow, had now passed. In vain she repeated her niece’s words, breathing in the sharp night air: it was only in her head that she found some remnants, mere reminiscences, bare stumps. Her heart had slowed once again and her blood was flowing at its normal pace. She lacked her niece’s moral presence. And yet there she stood, staring into the night, which was just the same as all those other nights and yet had nothing in common with the days of Rosine Stoltz and the Marquis of Paraná; and there she stood, while inside the house the slave-women staved off sleep by telling stories and occasionally, growing impatient, saying to each other:
“My, but ol’ missy don’t never go to bed tonight!”