“THE CABRIOLET’S HERE, sir,” said the slave who had been dispatched to the mother church of São José to summon the priest to give the last rites to not one but two individuals.
Today’s generation witnessed neither the arrival nor the departure of the cabriolet in Rio de Janeiro. Nor will they know about the days when the cabriolet and the tilbury filled the role of carriage, public and private. The cabriolet did not last very long. The tilbury, which predates both, looks likely to last as long as the city does. When the city is dead and gone and the archaeologists arrive, they will find a skeletal tilbury waiting for its usual customer, complete with the skeletons of horse and driver. They will be just as patient as they are today, however much it rains, and more melancholy than ever, even if the sun shines, because they will combine both present-day melancholy with that of the spectral past. The archaeologist will doubtless have some strange things to say about the three skeletons. The cabriolet, on the other hand, had no history, and left only the tale I’m about to tell you.
“Two?” cried the sacristan.
“Yes, sir, two: Senhora Anunciada and Senhor Pedrinho. Poor Senhor Pedrinho! And Senhora Anunciada, poor lady!” said the slave, moaning and groaning and pacing up and down, quite distraught.
Anyone reading this with a darkly skeptical soul will inevitably ask if the slave was genuinely upset, or if he simply wanted to pique the curiosity of the priest and the sacristan. I’m of the view that anything is possible in this world and the next. I believe he was genuinely upset, but then again I don’t not believe that he was also eager to tell some terrible tale. However, neither the priest nor the sacristan asked him any questions.
Not that the sacristan wasn’t curious. Indeed, he was more than curious. He knew the whole parish by heart; he knew the names of all the devout ladies, knew about their lives and those of their husbands and parents, their talents and resources, what they ate, drank, said, their clothes and their qualities, the dowries of the unmarried girls, the behavior of the married women, the sad longings of the widows. He poked his nose into everything, and, in between, helped at mass and so on. His name was João das Mercês, a man in his forties, thin, of medium height, and with a sparse, graying beard.
“Which Pedrinho and Anunciada does he mean?” he wondered, as he accompanied the priest.
He was burning to know, but the presence of the priest made any questions impossible. The priest walked to the door of the church so silently and piously that he felt obliged to be equally silent and pious. And off they went. The cabriolet was waiting for them; the driver doffed his hat, and the neighbors and a few passersby knelt down as priest and sacristan climbed into the vehicle and headed off down Rua da Misericórdia. The slave hurried back on foot.
Donkeys and people wander the streets, clouds wander the sky, if there are any clouds, and thoughts wander people’s minds, if those minds have thoughts. The sacristan’s mind was filled with various thoughts, all of them rather confused. He was not thinking about Our Holy Father, although the sacristan knew how He should be worshipped, nor about the holy water and the hyssop he was carrying; nor was he thinking about the lateness of the hour—a quarter past eight at night—and, besides, the sky was clear and the moon was coming up. The cabriolet itself—which was new in the town, and had replaced, in this case, the chaise—even that did not occupy the whole of João das Mercês’s mind, or only the part that was preoccupied with Senhor Pedrinho and Senhora Anunciada.
“They must be young people,” the sacristan was thinking, “staying as guests in someone’s house, because there are no empty houses to be had near the sea, and the number he gave us is Comendador Brito’s house. Relatives, perhaps? But I’ve never heard any mention of relatives. They could be friends or possibly mere acquaintances. But in that case why would they send a cabriolet? Even the slave is new to the house; he must belong to one of the two people who are dying, or to both.”
Such were João das Mercês’s thoughts, although he didn’t have much time to think. The cabriolet stopped outside a two-story house, which was indeed the house of the comendador, José Martins de Brito. There were already a few people waiting outside, holding candles. The priest and the sacristan stepped out of the cabriolet and went up the stairs, accompanied by the comendador. On the landing above, his wife kissed the priest’s ring. Grown-ups, children, slaves, a murmur of voices, dim light, and the two people who were dying, each waiting in their respective rooms at the back.
Everything happened as it always does on such occasions, according to rules and customs. Senhor Pedrinho was absolved and anointed, as was Senhora Anunciada, and the priest left the house to return to the church with the sacristan. The latter just had time to ask the comendador discreetly if the two were relatives of his. No, they weren’t, said Brito; they were friends of his nephew, who lived in Campinas; a terrible story. João de Mercês’s wide eyes drank in those three words and said, without actually speaking, that they would return to hear the rest—perhaps that same night. All this happened very quickly, because the priest was already going down the stairs, and he had to follow.
The fashion for the cabriolet was so short-lived that this one probably never took another priest to administer the last rites to anyone else. All that remained was this brief, insubstantial tale, a mere bagatelle that I’ll have finished in no time. Not that its substance or lack of it mattered to the sacristan, for whom it was another welcome slice of life. He had to help the priest put away the Communion wafers, take off his surplice, and do various other things, before they could say good night and go their separate ways. When he was finally able to get away, he walked along by the shore as far as the comendador’s house.
On the way, he reviewed the comendador’s life, before and after he had received that title. He began with his business—which was, I think, that of ship’s supplier—then moved on to his family, the parties he had given, the various parish, commercial, and electoral posts he had held, and it was only a step or two from that to sundry rumors and anecdotes. João das Mercês’s vast memory stored away every fact and incident, however large or small, so vividly that they might have happened yesterday, and so completely that not even the people involved could have recounted them in such detail. He knew these things as he knew the Our Father, that is, without having to think about the words—indeed, he would pray as if he were eating or chewing the prayer, which emerged unthinking from his mouth. If the rule was to say three dozen Our Fathers on the trot, João das Mercês would do so without even counting. So it was with other people’s lives; he loved knowing about them, finding out about them, and memorizing them so that he would never again forget them.
Everyone in the parish loved him, because he never meddled or gossiped. With him it was a case of art for art’s sake. Often it wasn’t even necessary to ask any questions. José would tell him about Antônio’s life and Antônio about José’s life. What he did was ratify or rectify one version with the other, then compare their two versions with Sancho’s, then Sancho’s version with Martinho’s and vice versa, and so on and on. This is how he filled his empty hours, of which there were many. Occasionally, while at mass, he found himself thinking about some tale he had heard the previous evening, and the first time this happened, he asked God’s forgiveness, but immediately canceled this request when he realized that he had not missed a single word or gesture of the holy sacrament, so consubstantiate were they with him. The tale he had briefly relived was like a swallow flitting across a landscape. The landscape remains the same, and the water, if there is water, murmurs the same song. This comparison was of his own invention and was more fitting than he imagined, because the swallow, even when it’s flying, is part of the landscape, and the tale was part of him as a person; it was one of the ways in which he lived his life.
By the time he had reached his destination, he had told every rosary bead of the comendador’s life, and he entered the house with his right foot first for luck. He had decided that, despite the sadness of the occasion, he would stay there for some time, and luck was on his side. Brito was in the front room, talking to his wife, when he was told that João das Mercês was asking after the two people who had received the last rites. His wife withdrew, and the sacristan entered, apologizing profusely and saying that he would not stay long. He had just been passing and wondered if they had already gone up into heaven or were still in this world. He was, naturally, interested in anything that affected the comendador.
“No, they haven’t died, and may yet live, although I think it highly unlikely that she will survive,” said Brito.
“They both seemed to be in a very bad way.”
“Oh, yes, especially her, because she’s the worst affected by the fever. They fell ill here, in our house, soon after they arrived from Campinas a few days ago.”
“So they were already here?” asked the sacristan, astonished that he had known nothing of their arrival.
“Yes, they arrived nearly two weeks ago. They came with my nephew Carlos, and caught the fever here—”
Brito suddenly broke off, or so it seemed to the sacristan, who adopted the expression of someone eager to know more. Brito, however, sat for a moment biting his lip and staring at the wall, and did not notice the expectant look on the sacristan’s face, and so both sat on in silence. Brito ended up walking the length of the room, and João das Mercês thought to himself that there was clearly more to this than a mere fever. He wondered, at first, if perhaps the doctors had made a wrong diagnosis or prescribed the wrong medicine; or if there was some other concealed illness, which Brito was calling a fever in order to cover up the truth. He kept his eyes fixed on the comendador as he paced up and down the room, treading very softly so as not to disturb anyone else in the house. From within came the occasional faint murmur of conversation, a call, an order, a door opening or closing. None of this would have been of any importance to those with their minds on other things, but our sacristan had but one thought, to find out what he did not already know. At the very least, some information about the patients’ family, their social position, whether they were married or single, some page from their lives; anything was better than nothing, however removed it was from his own little parish.
“Ah!” cried Brito, stopping his pacing.
There seemed to be in him a great desire to recount something, the “terrible story” he had mentioned to the sacristan shortly before, but the sacristan did not dare ask him and the comendador, not daring to tell the sacristan, resumed his pacing.
João das Mercês sat down. He knew that, in the circumstances, the polite thing would be to leave, proffering a few kind, hopeful, comforting words, and then to return the following day. He, however, preferred to sit and wait, and saw no sign of disapproval on the other man’s face; indeed, the comendador stopped pacing for a moment and stood before him, uttering a weary sigh.
“Yes, it’s a very sad business,” said João das Mercês. “And they’re good people, too, I imagine.”
“They were going to be married.”
“What, to each other?”
Brito nodded in a melancholy way, but there was still no sign of the promised terrible story, for which the sacristan continued to wait. It occurred to him that this was the first time he had heard about the lives of people unknown to him. All he had seen of these people, shortly before, were their faces, but his curiosity was no less intense for that. They were going to be married. Perhaps that was the terrible story; to have fallen mortally ill on the eve of a new life, that was terrible indeed. About to be wed and about to die.
Someone came to summon the comendador, and he excused himself so hurriedly that the sacristan had no time to take his leave. The comendador disappeared for about fifty minutes, at the end of which time the sacristan heard something like muffled sobbing coming from the next room. The comendador returned shortly afterward.
“What was I saying just now? That she, at least, would die. Well, she’s dead.”
Brito said this unemotionally, almost indifferently. He had not known the dead woman very long. The sobbing the sacristan had heard came from Brito’s nephew from Campinas and a relative of the dead woman who lived here in Mata-porcos. It took only an instant for the sacristan to imagine that the comendador’s nephew must have been in love with the dying man’s bride, but this idea proved short-lived, for the nephew had, after all, traveled to Rio with both of them. Perhaps he was to have been the best man. As was only natural and polite, he asked the name of the dead woman. However, either because he preferred not to say or because his thoughts were elsewhere—or perhaps for both those reasons—the comendador did not give her name, nor that of her fiancé.
“They were to be married . . .”
“May God receive her and keep her safe, and him, too, if he should die,” said the sacristan sadly.
And that was enough to draw forth half of the secret that seemed so eager to leave the comendador’s lips. When João das Mercês saw the look in his eyes, the gesture with which he beckoned him over to the window, and the promise he exacted from him, he swore on the souls of all his loved ones that he would listen and say nothing. He was not a man to divulge other people’s confidences, especially those of honorable persons of high rank like the comendador, who, satisfied with these assurances, finally plucked up the courage to tell him the first half of the secret, which was that the engaged couple, who had been brought up together, had come to Rio in order to get married, when that same relative from Mata-porcos had given them some dreadful news . . .
“Which was?” João das Mercês prompted, sensing some hesitation on the part of the comendador.
“That they were brother and sister.”
“What do you mean? Blood relatives?”
“Yes, they had the same mother, but different fathers. Their relative did not explain in detail, but she swore this was the truth, and for a day or more, they were both in a state of shock . . .”
João das Mercês was no less shocked, but he nonetheless determined not to leave without hearing the rest of the story. He heard ten o’clock strike and was prepared to hear the clock chime throughout the night and to watch over the corpse of one or both, as long as he could add this page to his other parish pages, even though these people were not from the parish.
“So was that when they fell ill with the fever?”
Brito clenched his jaw as if he would say nothing more. However, when he was once again summoned, he hurried off and returned half an hour later, with the news of the second death, news to which the sacristan had already been alerted by the sound of weeping, quieter this time, although not unexpected, since there was no one from whom it needed to be concealed.
“The brother, or bridegroom, has just passed away too. May God forgive them! I’ll tell you the whole story now, my friend. They loved each other so much that, a few days after learning of the natural and canonical impediment to their marriage, they decided that, since they were only half-siblings, they would elope, and they fled in a cabriolet. The alarm was given, and the cabriolet was stopped on its way to Cidade Nova. They, however, were so distraught and angry at being captured that they both fell ill with the fever from which they have now died.”
It is impossible to describe the sacristan’s feelings when he heard this tale. He managed, with some difficulty, to keep it to himself for a while. He found out the names of the couple from the obituary in the newspaper, and supplemented the details the comendador had given him with others. In the end, without feeling he was being indiscreet, he divulged the story—without naming names—to a friend, who told it to another, who told it to another, and so on and so forth. More than that, he got it into his head that the cabriolet in which the couple had attempted to elope could well have been the same one that had carried him and the priest to offer them the last rites; he went to the coach house, chatted to an employee, and discovered that it was indeed the same one, which is why this story is called “the tale of the cabriolet.”