Quincas Borba

by Machado De Assis

  “Do you know that I’m going to leave you people?”

  LV

  The other man had expected anything but that. Hence the amazement into which his rage dissolved; hence, too, a touch of sorrow that the reader least expects. Leave them? He was leaving Rio de Janeiro of course. It was the punishment he was imposing upon himself for his actions in Santa Teresa. He’d become immediately upset and had repented. He didn’t have the gall to put in an appearance before his friend’s wife. That was Palha’s first conclusion, but other hypotheses came to mind. For example, the passion might still persist, and his departure was a way of getting away from the person he loved. It might also be that some marriage plan was involved.

  The last hypothesis brought a new element that I don’t know what to call to Palha’s features. Disappointment? The elegant Garrett could find no other term for such feelings, and, even though it was English, he didn’t reject it.* Let disappointment stand. Mingled with the sadness of the separation you mustn’t forget the rage that had rumbled softly at first, and there are doubtless many people who will say that this man’s soul is a patchwork quilt. It could well be. Moral quilts made of one piece are so rare! The main thing is for the colors not to contradict each other—when they are unable to follow symmetry and regularity. That was the case with our man. He had a mixed–up look at first sight, but with close attention, as opposite as the tones might be, the man’s moral unity could be found there.

  LVI

  But why was Rubião leaving, then? What was the reason? What kind of business was it? The day after the events in Santa Teresa he’d awakened oppressed. He didn’t enjoy breakfast. He put on his African slippers without interest, didn’t look at the beautiful or simply expensive furniture that filled his house. He could only bear the dog’s nuzzling for two minutes. As soon as Rubião greeted him in the room he sent him away. The dog managed to trick the servants and come back into the room, but such was the clout he got on the ear that he didn’t repeat his nuzzling. He lay down on the floor with his eyes on his friend.

  * João Batista de Almeida Garrett (1799–1854), Portuguese romantic poet and dramatist. [Ed.]

  Rubião was repentant, irritated, ashamed. In Chapter X of this book it was written that this man’s remorse came easily but didn’t last long. What was missing was an explanation of the nature of the actions that could make it of short or long duration. Back there it was a matter of that letter written by the late Quincas Borba, so telling as to the mental state of its author and which he’d concealed from the doctor and which might have been of some use to science or the law. If he’d turned over the letter, he wouldn’t have had any remorse and, perhaps, any legacy—the small legacy he was expecting from the sick man at that time. In the present case it was an attempt at adultery. Of course, he’d been sighing a long time before that and had had inner urges, but it was only the young woman’s liveliness and the excitement of the moment itself that led him to make the declaration that was rejected. After the vapors of the night had passed, it wasn’t just annoyance that he felt but also remorse. Morality is one, sins are several.

  Let’s skip over everything he was feeling and thinking during those first days. He reached the point of expecting something on Sunday, a note like the one on the previous Sunday—with strawberries or without them. On Monday he was determined to go to Minas and spend a couple of months. He felt the necessity of restoring his soul in the air of Barbacena. He hadn’t counted on Dr. Camacho.

  “Leave us?” Palha finally asked.

  “I plan to. I’m going to Minas.”

  Camacho, turning away from the window, sat down in the chair where he’d been before.

  “What’s this about Minas?” he asked, smiling. “Forget about Minas for now. You can go there when it’s necessary, and it won’t be long before it will be.”

  Palha was no less surprised by the words of this man than by those of the other. Where had a man with such an air of domination over Rubião come from from? He looked at him. He was a person of average height, narrow face, thin beard, long jaw, big, broad ears. That was all he could take in at a glance. He also saw that his clothing was of good quality, not luxurious, and that he was wearing rather good shoes. He didn’t examine his eyes or his smile or his mannerisms. He didn’t notice the beginning of baldness or his thin, hairy hands.

  LVII

  Camacho was a political man. A law graduate of the Faculty of Recife in 1844, he had returned to his native province, where he set himself up in practice. But the law was a pretext. At school already he’d written a political journal, with no definite party in mind but with a lot of ideas picked up here and there. A person who had collected those first fruits of Camacho had put together an index of his principles and aspirations:—Order through freedom and freedom through order;—Authority cannot abuse the law without hitting itself;—A life of principle is the moral necessity of new nations as well as old nations;—Give me good politics and I will give you good finances (Baron Louis);—Let us plunge into the constitutional Jordan;—Make way for the valiant, men of power, and they will be your support—etc., etc.

  In his native province that set of ideas had to give way to others, and the same could be said of his style. He founded a newspaper there, but since local politics was less abstract, Camacho lowered his wings and descended to the level of the appointment of chiefs of police, provincial work projects, fees, a fight with a rival paper, and proper and improper names. The adjectivation called for great precision. Disastrous, prodigal, shameful, perverse were the obligatory terms when he attacked the government, but as soon as there was a change in provincial presidents, he went over to defending it, and the characterizations changed, too: energetic, enlightened, just, faithful to principles, a real glory of an administration, etc., etc. That sniping lasted for three years. At the end of them political passion had come to dominate the young lawyer’s soul.

  A member of the provincial assembly and immediately after of the Chamber of Deputies, then president of a second-rate province where, by a natural twist of fate, he read in the opposition press all the names he had written in times gone by: disastrous, prodigal, perverse. Camacho had seen times that were great and times that were petty. He was active inside the chamber and out. He orated, wrote, and fought constantly. He ended up coming to reside in the capital of the empire. A deputy because of a compromise between parties, he saw the Marquis of Paraná become head of the government, and he pressed for some appointments, which were granted. But whether it was really true that the Marquis sought his advice and was accustomed to confiding his plans to him, no one could tell for sure, because when it was a matter of his own interest, Camacho had no problem in lying.

  What can be believed is that he wanted a cabinet position, and he worked to get it. He attached himself to various groups according to what seemed advantageous. In the chamber he would expatiate at length on administration affairs, put figures together, legislative articles, bits of reports, passages from French authors, although poorly translated. But between the ear of corn and the hand there is the wall the poet speaks of, and no matter how far our man reached out his hand in his desire to pick it, the ear remained on the other side, where other hands, more or less eager or even casual, were picking it.

  There is such a thing as a political old bachelor. Camacho was entering that melancholy category where all nuptial dreams evaporate with time. But he didn’t have the superior grace to give it up. No one who organized a cabinet dared, even though he may have wished, give him a portfolio. Camacho felt himself sinking. In order to give the appearance of influence, he dealt with the powerful people of the day on familiar terms, spoke in a loud voice about his visits to ministers and other dignitaries of state.

  He didn’t lack for food. His family was small: wife, a daughter going on eighteen, a godson of nine, and his law practice took care of them. But he had politics in his blood. He didn’t read, he didn’t pay attention to anything else. He had absolutely no concern for literatu
re, the natural sciences, history, philosophy, or art. Nor did he have any great knowledge of the law. He still retained a few things from school along with subsequent legislation and court procedures. With that he argued in court and earned money.

  LVIII

  Some days before, when he went to spend the evening at the home of a counselor, he found Rubião there. They were talking about the conservatives’ assumption of power and the dissolution of the chamber. Rubião had attended the session in which the Itaborai ministry presented the budgets. He was still trembling as he expressed his impressions, describing the chamber, the speakers, the galleries filled to the rafters, José Bonifacio speech, the motion, the vote … That whole narrative was coming out of a simple soul, it was obvious. The wild gestures, the heat of the words carried the eloquence of sincerity. Camacho listened to him attentively. He found a way to get him over to a corner by the window and give him his considered opinion of the situation. Rubião expressed himself with nods or with random words of approval.

  “The conservatives won’t be in power for long,” Camacho told him finally.

  “No?”

  “No. They don’t want war, and they’re bound to fall. Read what I had to say in my program in the newspaper.”

  “What newspaper?”

  “We’ll talk later.”

  The next day they had lunch at the Hôtel de la Bourse at Camacho’s invitation. The latter told him that some months before he’d founded a newspaper with the sole program of continuing the war at all costs … He was very much aware of the dissension among liberals. It seemed to him that the best way to serve his own party was to give it a neutral and nationalist terrain.

  “And this is to our benefit now,” he concluded, “because the government is leaning toward peace. Tomorrow an angry article of mine is coming out.”

  Rubião listened to it all, almost without taking his eyes off the other man, eating quickly during the intervals when Camacho himself leaned over his plate. He was pleased to see himself as a political confidant, and, to put it briefly, the idea of getting into a fight that might bring him something in the end, a seat in the chamber, for example, spread its golden wings in our friend’s mind. Camacho had nothing more to say. Rubião looked him up the following day and didn’t find him in. Now, a short time after he’d arrived, Palha came by to interrupt them.

  LIX

  “Yes but I’ve got to go to Minas,” Rubião insisted. “What for?” Camacho asked.

  Palha asked him the same question. Why would he be going to Minas unless it was something that could be taken care of quickly. Or was he already bored with the capital?

  “No, I’m not bored, on the contrary…”

  On the contrary, he liked it very much. But one’s homeland—no matter how ugly—a village even—makes people nostalgic—all the more so when we leave as adults. He wanted to see Barbacena. Barbacena was the best place in the world. For a few minutes Rubião was able to remove himself from the presence of the others. He had his homeland inside himself. Ambitions, public vanities, ephemeral pleasures, all gave way to the longing of the man from Minas for his province. Even though his soul might pretend sometimes, and he would listen to the voice of self–interest, now it was the simple soul of a man repentant of pleasures and uncomfortable with his own wealth.

  Palha and Camacho looked at each other… Oh! That look was like calling cards exchanged between the two consciences. Neither told its secret, but they saw the names on the cards and they greeted each other. Yes, it was necessary to stop Rubião from leaving. Minas might keep him there. They agreed that he could go, but later—a few months later—and Palha might go, too. He’d never been to Minas. It would be an excellent opportunity.

  “You?” Rubião asked.

  “Yes, me. I’ve been wanting to go to Minas and São Paulo for a long time. Look, it’s been over a year that we’ve been on the verge of going… Sofia is a good companion on trips like that. Do you remember when we met on the train … ? We were coming from Vassouras, but the Minas idea has never left us. The three of us will go.”

  Rubião grabbed at the upcoming elections. But Camacho intervened there, stating that it wasn’t necessary, that the serpent had to be crushed right there in the capital. There’d be plenty of time afterward to take care of his nostalgia and receive his rewards. Rubião was agitated on the settee. The reward, no doubt, would be his diploma as deputy. A magnificent vision, an ambition he’d never had when he was just a poor devil… He was taken by it as it whetted all his appetites for grandeur and glory. He still insisted, however, on a quick trip and, to be exact, I must swear that he did so with no great desire for them to accept his proposal.

  The moon was shining brightly by then. The cove, seen through the windows, presented the seductive look that no true native of Rio de Janeiro can believe exists in any other part of the world. Sofia’s image passed by in the distance on the slope of the hillside and dissolved in the moonlight. The last tumultuous session of the chamber echoed in Rubião’s ears . .. Camacho went over to the window and came right back.

  “But for how many days?” he asked.

  “That I don’t know, but not many.”

  “In any case, we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Camacho left. Palha stayed on for a few moments more to tell him that it would be strange to return to Minas without their settling accounts … Rubião interrupted him. Accounts? Who was asking him about accounts?

  “It’s easy to see that you’re not a businessman,” Cristiano retorted.

  “I’m not, that’s true, but accounts are settled whenever they can be. That’s how it’s been between us. Unless, maybe, do you need some money?”

  “No, I don’t need any, thank you very much. I’ve got to put together a transaction, but it will take more time. I came to see you in order not to put an ad in the papers saying ‘Missing, a friend, Rubião by name, who has a dog

  Rubião liked the sally. Palha left, and he accompanied him to the corner of the Rua Marquês de Abrantes. When he said goodbye, he promised to visit him in Santa Teresa before leaving for Minas.

  LX

  Poor Minas! Rubião walked slowly back thinking about a way not to go there now. And the words of both men went along with him in his head like little goldfish in a glass bowl, back and forth, glimmering: “The serpent’s head had to be crushed right here”—“Sofia is a good companion on trips like that.” Poor Minas!

  The next day he received a newspaper he’d never seen before, Atalaia, the Lookout. Its editorial thrashed the government. The conclusion, however, was extended to all parties and the entire nation: Let us plunge into the constitutional Jordan. Rubião found it excellent. He tried to find out where the newspaper was published so he could subscribe. It was on the Rua da Ajuda. He headed right there as soon as he left the house. There he discovered that the editor was Dr. Camacho. He ran to his office.

  But along the way, on the same street:

  “Deolindo! Deolindo!” a woman’s anguished voice screamed at the door of a mattress shop.

  Rubião heard the cry, turned, and saw what it was all about. There was a cart coming down the street and a child of three or four crossing. The horses were almost on top of him, hard as the driver tried to rein them in. Rubião threw himself at the horses and pulled the boy to safety. The mother, as she took him from the hands of Rubião, was speechless. She was pale, trembling. Some people began to berate the driver, but a bald man came out and ordered him to be on his way. The driver obeyed. So when the father, who’d been inside the mattress shop, came out the cart had already turned the corner onto Sao Jose.

  “He would have been killed,” the mother said, “If it hadn’t been for this gentleman, I don’t know what would have become of my poor son.”

  It was an event on the block. Neighbors came out to see what had happened to the child. On the street small children and urchins were peering in awe. The child only had a scratch on his left shoulder from where he’d fallen.

 
“It was nothing,” Rubião said. “In any case, you shouldn’t let the boy out on the street. He’s too young.”

  “Thank you so much,” the father put in. “But where’s your hat?”

  Rubião then noticed that he’d lost his hat. A ragged boy who’d picked it up was waiting by the door of the mattress shop for a chance to return it. Rubião gave him a few coins as a reward, something the boy hadn’t thought of when he went to retrieve the hat. He’d only picked it up in order to be a part of and to do something in that glorious moment. He accepted the coins gladly, however. It was, perhaps, his awakening to the mercenary side of human actions.

  “But hold on,” the mattress maker said, “are you hurt?” Indeed, our friend’s hand was bleeding, a cut on the palm, nothing serious. Only then was he starting to feel it. The child’s mother ran to get a basin and a towel in spite of Rubião’s saying it was nothing, it wasn’t worth the bother. The water arrived. While she was washing his hand, the mattress maker ran to a nearby pharmacy and brought back some arnica. Rubião was healed. He tied the cloth around his hand. The mattress maker’s wife brushed off his hat and, when he left, both parents thanked him effusively for having saved their son. The rest of the people in the doorway and on the sidewalk lined up to let him pass.

  LXI

  “What’s that on your hand?” Camacho inquired as soon VV as Rubião entered the office.