MY NAME IS Inácio and his is Benedito. I won’t give our last names out of a sense of decorum, which I’m sure all people of discretion will appreciate. Inácio is quite enough to be going on with, and you’ll have to make do with Benedito. It’s not much, but it’s something, and chimes with Juliet’s philosophy: “What’s in a name?” she asked of her lover. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Let us move on to Benedito’s particular smell.
And let us state at once that he was the most unlikely Romeo in the world. He was forty-five when I met him, although I won’t say precisely when we met, because everything in this story is going to be mysterious and incomplete. As I say, he was forty-five and endowed with a lot of black hair; and any hair that wasn’t black he treated with a chemical substance so effective that you couldn’t tell black from black—except when he got out of bed, but when he got out of bed, there was no one to see him. Everything else was entirely natural: legs, arms, head, eyes, clothes, shoes, watch chain, and cane. Even the diamond tie pin—one of the loveliest I’ve ever seen—was natural and genuine, and had cost him a fair penny too; I myself saw him buy it at . . . ah, but I nearly gave the name of the jeweler; let’s just say it was on Rua do Ouvidor.
Morally, he was entirely himself. No one really changes his character, and Benedito was of good character, or, rather, he was a quiet soul. Intellectually, he was less original. He could be compared to a popular inn, where ideas of all kinds and from all over would visit and sit down at the table along with the family. Sometimes two enemies would be staying there or else people who simply disliked each other; they would not quarrel, though, for the landlord imposed on his guests a reciprocally indulgent attitude. Thus he was able to reconcile a vague kind of atheism with the two fraternities he had founded, possibly in Gávea or Tijuca or Engenho Velho. He thus made promiscuous use of devotion, irreligion, and silk socks. Not that I ever saw his socks, but he had no secrets from his friends.
We met on a trip to Vassouras. We had left the train and got into the cab that would take us from the station to the city. We exchanged a few words and were soon conversing freely, borne along on the circumstances that had brought us together, even before we really knew each other.
Naturally, the first topic of conversation was the enormous progress brought to us by the railroads. Benedito recalled the days when every journey was made by donkey. We told a few anecdotes then, mentioned a few names, and agreed that the country’s progress was conditional on the existence of the railroads. Only those who have never traveled can possibly be ignorant of the value of these exchanges of grave, solid banalities, which help to dissipate the tedium of a journey. One’s mind breathes more freely, one’s very muscles revel in that pleasant interchange, the blood flows easily, one feels at peace with God and with mankind.
“Even our children won’t see this country crisscrossed by railroads,” he said.
“No, you’re right. Do you have children yourself?”
“No, none.”
“Nor do I. Anyway, it’ll be another fifty years before we get the railroads we need, and yet it’s what we most need. I always compare Brazil to a child who is only at the crawling stage, and who will only begin to walk when we have a whole network of railroads.”
“What a fine image!” cried Benedito, his eyes shining.
“I don’t know about fine, but it is, I hope, at least fitting.”
“It’s both fine and fitting,” Benedito said warmly. “You’re quite right. Brazil is only at the crawling stage, and will only begin to walk when we have a whole network of railroads.”
We reached Vassouras, and I made my way to the house of the municipal judge, an old friend of mine, while Benedito was only staying in Vassouras for a day before traveling into the interior. A week later, I returned to Rio de Janeiro, alone this time, and he returned shortly afterward. We met at the theater and talked at length, exchanging news; Benedito ended by inviting me to have lunch with him the following day, and he gave me a lunch fit for a prince, followed by good cigars and animated talk. I noticed, however, that his conversation made less of an impression on me than it had during the journey, where it had refreshed the mind and left us both at peace with God and with mankind; but maybe the lunch was to blame for that. It really was magnificent, and it would be quite wrong to place Lucullus’s lavish table in Plato’s modest house. Between the coffee and the cognac, he leaned one elbow on the edge of table, gazed at his lit cigar, and said:
“On my recent journey, I had occasion to see how right you were about Brazil still being only at the crawling stage.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it’s exactly as you were saying in the carriage that took us to Vassouras that day. We will only start to walk when we have a proper network of railroads. That is so true.”
And he spoke of many other things, about life in the interior, how difficult things were there, how backward, although he also remarked on the kindness of the people and their hopes for progress. Unfortunately, the government was not responding to the needs of the country; indeed, it seemed intent on holding the country back, keeping us lagging behind the other American nations. However, we had to convince ourselves that principles are everything and mankind nothing. The people are not made for the government, the government is made for the people, and abyssus abyssum invocat. Then he showed me the other rooms, all of which were furnished impeccably. He showed me his collections of paintings, coins, antiquarian books, stamps, and weapons, including swords and rapiers, while admitting that he knew nothing about fencing. Among the paintings, I noticed a lovely portrait of a young woman, and when I asked who she was, Benedito smiled.
“Say no more,” I said, smiling too.
“No, I won’t deny it,” he went on. “She was a young woman of whom I was very fond. She’s pretty, isn’t she? You can’t imagine how beautiful she was in the flesh. Her lips were carmine-red, and her cheeks like roses, and her eyes as dark as night. And her teeth! Like pearls they were. Sheer perfection.”
We then went into his study. It was vast and elegant, but somehow rather banal, although it lacked for nothing. There were two bookcases full of beautifully bound volumes, a mappa mundi, and two maps of Brazil. The desk was made of exquisitely turned ebony, and lying casually open on the desk was a copy of Laemmert’s Almanac. The inkwell was made of crystal, “rock crystal,” he informed me, explaining this as he had explained all the other furnishings. In the next room, there was an organ, which he himself played, for he was a great lover of music and spoke about it with enthusiasm, citing his favorite operas and their best arias. He added that, as a boy, he had learned to play the flute, but had soon abandoned it, which, he concluded, was rather a shame, since the flute is the most nostalgic of instruments. He ushered me into still more rooms, then we went out into the garden, which was truly splendid, with art working hand in hand with nature, and nature crowning art. There were roses, for example, of every type and from every region. “There’s no denying,” he said, “that the rose is the very queen of flowers.”
I left feeling utterly charmed. We met on other occasions, too, in the street, at the theater, in the houses of mutual friends, and I grew quite fond of him. Four months later, I traveled to Europe on business that would require me to be absent for a whole year; he had an election to deal with, for he wanted to be a deputy. In fact, I was the one who encouraged him in this ambition, albeit without any real political intention, but simply to be agreeable; if you’ll forgive the comparison, it was rather as if I had complimented him on the cut of his vest. He took up the idea and duly stood for election. One day, as I was crossing a street in Paris, who should I bump into but Benedito.
“What are you doing here?” I cried.
“I lost the election,” he said, “and so decided to visit Europe instead.”
He did not leave my side then, and we traveled together for what remained of our stay. He confessed that, despite losing the election, he was still keen to get into parliament, indeed, he was even keener. He told me of his grand plan.
“You could be a minister,” I told him.
Benedito was not expecting this remark, and his face lit up, although he quickly disguised this delight.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said. “Although, if I were to become a minister, I would want to work solely with industry. People are tired of party politics; we need to develop the vital energies of our country, its great resources. Do you remember what we talked about on our way to Vassouras, about how Brazil is only at the crawling stage, and will only begin to walk once there’s a proper railroad network . . . ?”
“Yes, you’re right,” I said, slightly alarmed. “And why do you think I came to Europe? To make arrangements for a railroad to be built. That’s what I was doing in London.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
I showed him the documents, and he gazed at them as if dazzled. I showed him the various notes, statistics, bulletins, reports, and contracts for industrial materials that I had accumulated, and he declared that he wanted to collect such things too. And to this end, he visited ministries, banks, and trade associations, requesting all manner of notes and pamphlets, which he stuffed into his luggage. He did this with great ardor, but the ardor was short-lived, on loan, as it were. He was far keener on collecting political axioms and parliamentary terminology. He had a whole arsenal of them in his head and often trotted them out in conversation, as if speaking from long experience; he believed them to be highly prestigious and of inestimable value. Many came from the English tradition, and he preferred these to any others, as if they brought a little touch of the House of Commons with them. He enjoyed them so much that I’m not sure he would even have accepted real freedom if he could not deck it out with all that verbal apparatus; no, I don’t think he would. I think that, given the choice, he would have chosen those brief, convenient sayings, some of them satisfyingly pithy, some high-sounding, and all of them axiomatic, requiring no thought, filling the void, and leaving people at peace with God and with mankind.
We journeyed to Brazil together, but I disembarked in Pernambuco, before going back to London, and only returned to Rio a year later. By then Benedito was a deputy. I went to see him and found him preparing his maiden speech. He showed me his notes, excerpts from reports, and books on political economy, some with the pages marked with strips of paper labeled thus: “Exchange Rates,” “Land Taxes,” “Cereal Crops in England,” “John Stuart Mill’s Opinion,” “Thiers’ Erroneous Views on Railroads,” etc. He was sincere, painstaking, and passionate. He spoke to me about these things as if he had just discovered them, laying it all out before me, ab ovo; he was determined to show the practical men of the Chamber that he, too, was practical. Then he asked me about my business dealings, and I brought him up to date.
“In a couple of years, I hope to be opening the first stretch of track.”
“What about the English investors?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are they pleased? Hopeful?”
“Of course they are.”
I told him a few technical details, to which he listened rather abstractedly, either because what I told him was too complicated, or for some other reason. When I finished speaking, he said how glad he was to see me so involved in the industrial movement, which is precisely what the country needed, and a propos of this, he did me the favor of reading me the introduction to the speech he would be giving in a few days’ time.
“It’s still only in draft form,” he said, “but the main ideas are there.” He began thus:
“In an age of growing anxiety, when partisan shouting drowns out the voices of legitimate interests, allow me to give expression to a plea from the nation. Gentlemen, it is time to concentrate exclusively—and I mean exclusively—on the material improvements this country requires. Oh, I know what you will say, you will say that a nation is not merely a stomach for digesting food, but a head to think with and a heart to feel with. I say that all these things would be worth little or nothing if they had not legs to walk on; and I will repeat here what I said to a friend of a mine a few years ago, on a journey into the interior of the country: Brazil is a child who is still only at the crawling stage, and will only begin to walk once it is crisscrossed by a network of railroads . . .”
I heard nothing more, but sat there, deep in thought. Or, rather, not deep in thought, but utterly astonished, staring wild-eyed into the abyss that psychology was digging beneath my feet. This man is completely sincere, I was thinking, he believes what he has written. And so I went down into that abyss to see if I could find some explanation for the various processes through which his memory of our trip to Vassouras had passed. I found (and forgive me if I’m being presumptuous), I found further proof of the law of evolution, as defined by Spencer. Well, either Spencer or Benedito, one of the two.