One reason for this may be that his stories bear witness to a desire to map the human psyche in all its endless variety. Is there perhaps a self-portrait in “The Tale of the Cabriolet,” the last story in the last collection, published two years before his death? Machado introduces us to a sacristan who is obsessed (yet another one) with hearing and collecting other people’s stories, not in order to approve or disapprove or to gossip about them, but for the sheer pleasure of the story itself, however mundane, bizarre, or terrible. This sounds very much like Machado himself, an avid and, yes, obsessive collector of other people’s lives. As the narrator in “The Blue Flower” says: “There are no mysteries for an author who can scrutinize every nook and cranny of the human heart.”
Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson
MISS DOLLAR
I
FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS story it would be handy if the reader were kept waiting a very long time before finding out who Miss Dollar was. On the other hand, if there were no such introduction, the author would be obliged to make long digressions, which would certainly fill up the pages, but without moving the action along at all. I have no alternative, therefore, but to introduce you to Miss Dollar now.
If you, the reader, are male and of a melancholy bent, imagine, then, that Miss Dollar is a pale, slender Englishwoman, somewhat fleshless and bloodless, with very large blue eyes and long, fair hair waving in the wind. The girl in question should be as delicate and ideal as one of Shakespeare’s creations; she should be the very opposite of the roast beef of Olde England, which sustains the United Kingdom’s liberty. This Miss Dollar should know Tennyson’s poems by heart and have read Lamartine in the original French; if she knows Portuguese, she should delight in reading Camões’s sonnets and Gonçalves Dias’s Cantos. Milky tea should be her chief sustenance, along with a few sweets and biscuits to stave off hunger. Her voice should be like the murmurings of an aeolian harp, her love a swoon, her life a contemplation, her death a sigh.
All very poetic, but nothing like the heroine of this story.
Let us suppose that the reader is not given to such daydreams and bouts of melancholy; let us, then, imagine a totally different Miss Dollar. This one will be a robust American girl, with rosy cheeks, a curvaceous figure, bright, sparkling eyes, in short, a round, ripe, real woman. Fond of good food and good wine, this Miss Dollar—as is only natural when the stomach calls—would prefer a decent lamb chop to a page of Longfellow, and she will never understand why people find sunsets so poetic. She will be a good mother according to the doctrine laid down by certain religious scholars, namely: fertile and ignorant.
The reader who is past his second youth and sees before him only a hopeless old age will not be of the same opinion. For him, the only Miss Dollar truly worthy of being described in these pages would be a good Englishwoman in her fifties, with a few thousand pounds sterling to her name and who, arriving in Brazil in search of a subject for a novel, ends up living a novel, by marrying the reader in question. This Miss Dollar would be incomplete unless she wore spectacles with green-tinted lenses and wore her thick, graying hair parted in the middle. White lace gloves and a linen hat in the shape of a gourd would add the finishing touch to this magnificent foreigner.
A more astute reader will say that the heroine of the story neither is nor ever was English, but, rather, Brazilian through and through, and that the name, Miss Dollar, merely suggests that the young woman in question is very rich.
This would be an excellent contribution if it were true; unfortunately, neither that nor any of the others is true. The Miss Dollar of the story is not a romantic girl, nor a sturdy mature woman, nor an aging novelist, nor a wealthy Brazilian. Here the proverbial perspicacity of readers is found wanting, for Miss Dollar is a little Italian greyhound bitch.
Such a heroine will immediately cause certain people to lose interest in the story: a grave error. Despite being only a little greyhound bitch, Miss Dollar was lucky enough to see her name in the newspapers before she even entered this story. The following promise-filled lines appeared in the small ads section of O Jornal do Commercio and O Correio Mercantil:
Lost last night, 30th: a little Italian greyhound bitch. Answers to the name of Miss Dollar. Anyone finding her and bringing her to Rua de Matacavalos, No. . . . will receive a reward of 200 mil-réis. Miss Dollar has a collar around her neck with a padlock bearing the following words: De tout mon coeur.
Anyone in urgent need of two hundred mil-réis and lucky enough to read that advertisement would have spent the day scouring the streets of Rio de Janeiro in case they spotted the escapee, Miss Dollar. Any greyhound that appeared on the horizon was pursued tenaciously until the pursuer was able to ascertain that it was not the sought-after animal. This hunt for the two hundred mil-réis, however, proved completely useless, given that, on the day the advertisement appeared, Miss Dollar was already lodging in the house of a man who lived in the Cajueiros district and was a collector of dogs.
II
No one could ever say precisely what it was that drove Dr. Mendonça to collect dogs; some said it was quite simply a passion for that symbol of fidelity or servility, others that Mendonça’s adoration of dogs was simply his revenge on his fellow man, whom he found utterly repugnant.
Whatever the reasons, the truth is that no one had a finer or more varied collection than he. They were of all breeds, sizes, and colors. He cared for them as if they were his children, and if one of them died, he would be plunged into grief. One might almost say that, in Mendonça’s mind, the dogs were as important as love itself, and, as the saying goes: without dogs, the world would be a wilderness.
The superficial reader will conclude that our Mendonça was an eccentric, but he wasn’t. Mendonça was the same as other men, and liked dogs in much the same way as others like flowers. Dogs were his roses and violets, and he nurtured them just as carefully. He liked flowers, too, but he preferred to see them on the plants on which they were born; cutting a sprig of jasmine or caging a canary seemed to him equally murderous acts.
Mendonça was a good-looking thirty-four-year-old, with a frank, distinguished manner. He had studied medicine and had, for some time, practiced as a doctor. His clinic had been doing very well until the city was struck by an epidemic. Dr. Mendonça invented an elixir against the illness, and this proved so successful that it earned him a couple of thousand mil-réis. He still practiced medicine, but only in an amateur capacity. He had enough money for himself and his family, his family consisting of the aforementioned dogs.
On the memorable night when Miss Dollar got lost, Mendonça was returning home when he was fortunate enough to find the stray greyhound in the Largo do Rocio. The dog started following him, and Mendonça, realizing that the dog had no apparent owner, took her with him back to Cajueiros.
As soon as they arrived, he submitted the dog to a careful examination. Miss Dollar was a real beauty; she had the slender, graceful form of her noble breed, and her velvety brown eyes, so bright and serene, seemed to express her utter contentment with the world. Mendonça studied her closely. He read the words on the padlock on the collar and became convinced that the animal must be greatly loved by her owner, whoever that was.
“If the owner doesn’t turn up, she stays with me,” he said, delivering Miss Dollar into the hands of the houseboy in charge of the dogs.
The houseboy was given the task of feeding Miss Dollar, while Mendonça planned a golden future for his new guest, whose progeny would live on in the house.
Mendonça’s plan lasted as long as dreams usually last, a single night. While reading the newspaper the next day, he came upon the advertisement transcribed above, promising a reward of two hundred mil-réis to anyone who returned the lost dog. The size of the reward and his own passion for dogs told him the scale of the grief of Miss Dollar’s master or mistress. With considerable sadness, he decided to return the dog. He hesitated for a few moments, but what finally convinced him were his feelings of honesty an
d compassion, which were the dominant features of that particular soul. And since he found it hard to let go of the dog, however recently acquired, he decided to return her to the owner himself and made the necessary preparations to do so. He had breakfast, and, having made sure that Miss Dollar had done likewise, they both set off to Matacavalos.
Since the Barão do Amazonas had not yet won the Battle of Riachuelo, which was the name later given to Rua de Matacavalos, the street still bore its traditional name, which meant nothing of any great importance.
The house indicated in the advertisement was rather a fine one, suggesting that its inhabitants were fairly wealthy. Before Mendonça had even knocked on the door, Miss Dollar, recognizing her home, began to jump up and down with joy and utter a few happy, guttural barks which—were there such a thing as canine literature—would have been a hymn of gratitude.
A houseboy came to the door, and Mendonça explained that he had come to return the lost greyhound. A big smile appeared on the houseboy’s face, and he ran inside to give the good news. Taking advantage of the slightly open door, Miss Dollar pushed her way in and raced up the stairs. His duty done, Mendonça was just about to leave when the houseboy returned, asking him to go upstairs to the drawing room.
The room was deserted. Some owners of elegantly furnished rooms often allow time for these to be admired by visitors before coming to welcome them. This may have been the custom in that house, but not on this occasion, because no sooner had the doctor entered the room than an old lady emerged from an adjoining room, clutching Miss Dollar in her arms and smiling broadly.
“Do sit down,” she said, pointing to a chair.
“I won’t stay long,” said the doctor, sitting down. “I just came to bring you the dog, which has been with me since yesterday.”
“You can’t imagine how upset we’ve been since Miss Dollar went missing.”
“Oh, I can, senhora. I, too, am a lover of dogs, and if one of mine were ever to go missing, I would feel its absence deeply. Your Miss Dollar—”
“Forgive me,” said the old lady, “she isn’t mine. She belongs to my niece.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Here she comes now.”
Mendonça got to his feet as the niece in question came into the room. She was a young woman of about twenty-eight and in the full flower of her beauty, one of those women who look set for a late but imposing old age. The dark silk of her dress emphasized her intensely white skin. Her dress rustled as she walked, enhancing still further her majestic stature and comportment. The bodice of her dress had a very modest neckline, but one could sense beneath the silk a beautiful marble torso sculpted by a divine sculptor. Her naturally wavy brown hair was arranged in a very simple, homely way—which is the best of all known fashions—and it gracefully adorned her forehead, like a crown bestowed on her by nature. There was not so much as a touch of pink on her cheeks to provide some contrast or harmony with the extreme whiteness of her skin. She had a small, somewhat imperious mouth, but her eyes were her most striking feature: imagine two emeralds swimming in milk.
Mendonça had never seen green eyes before, although he had been told that they existed, and knew by heart the famous lines by Gonçalves Dias in his poem on the subject, but, up until then, such eyes were what the phoenix had been for the ancients. One day, talking to some friends about precisely this, he had said that if ever he met a pair of green eyes, he would flee from them in terror.
“But why?” asked one of his companions, somewhat taken aback.
“Green is the color of the sea,” answered Mendonça, “and just as I avoid storms at sea, so will I avoid the storms caused by such eyes.”
I leave it to the reader to judge this eccentric idea of Mendonça’s, who is becoming increasingly “precious” in Molière’s sense of the word.
III
Mendonça bowed respectfully to the new arrival, and she gestured to him to sit down again.
“I am so grateful to you for returning my poor dog, who means so very much to me,” said Margarida, also sitting down.
“I thank God it was me who found her, because she could have fallen into the hands of someone who might not have returned her.”
Margarida beckoned to Miss Dollar, who jumped off the old lady’s lap and went and placed her front paws on her owner’s knees. Margarida and Miss Dollar exchanged a long, affectionate look. While this lasted, the young woman played with one of the greyhound’s ears, thus giving Mendonça the chance to admire her exquisite fingers armed with very sharp nails.
However, although Mendonça was greatly enjoying being there, he realized that any further delay would be both strange and humiliating, for it might seem that he was waiting to receive the reward. In order to avoid such an inelegant interpretation, he gave up the pleasure of talking and looking at the young woman and got to his feet, saying:
“Well, my mission has been accomplished . . .”
“But—” began the old lady.
Mendonça understood the threat that lay behind that word. He said:
“The joy that I have restored to this household is the best reward I could possibly hope for. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
The two women understood his intentions, and the young woman repaid his courtesy with a smile, while the older woman, channeling all her remaining bodily strength into her fingers, fondly clasped his hand.
Mendonça left, feeling deeply impressed by the very interesting Margarida. What he mainly noticed, apart from her beauty—which was of the very first order—was a certain sad seriousness in her eyes and in her manner. If that was her nature, then it fit well with the doctor’s own personality; if it was the result of some episode in her life, then it was the page of a novel calling for analysis by a pair of skillful eyes. In truth, her only defect, as far as Mendonça was concerned, was the color of her eyes, not because it was unattractive, but because he did not like green eyes. This dislike, it must be said, was more literary than anything else. Mendonça had become attached to the words he had once spoken and that we quoted earlier, and it was these words that fueled his dislike. Now, don’t take against him or me: Mendonça was an intelligent, educated man with plenty of common sense; he also had a markedly romantic bent; despite this, though, he also had an Achilles’ heel. In that respect, he was like most other men, for there are Achilleses out there who are one vast heel from head to toe. Mendonça’s weak point was this: the love of a nicely turned phrase was enough to distort his affections; he would willingly sacrifice a promising situation to a well-honed sentence.
When he spoke to a friend about the lost greyhound and his conversation with Margarida, Mendonça remarked that he could really come to like her if only she didn’t have green eyes. His friend gave a slightly sarcastic laugh and said:
“Doctor, I cannot understand such prejudice. I’ve even heard tell that green eyes are the sign of a kind heart. Besides, the color of someone’s eyes is irrelevant, what matters is the look in those eyes. They could be as blue as the sky and as treacherous as the sea.”
This anonymous friend’s remark had the virtue of being as poetic as Mendonça’s, and so it took deep root in the latter’s consciousness. He did not, like Buridan’s ass, remain caught, undecided, between a pile of hay and a pail of water; the ass might hesitate, but Mendonça did not. He suddenly recalled the Spanish Jesuit Tomás Sánchez’s views about probable opinions and so opted for the most probable.
A serious-minded reader will doubtless find all this business about green eyes and their probable qualities quite childish. He will thereby prove that he has little practical experience of the world. Illustrated almanacs delight in describing the eccentricities and flaws of great men, who are nevertheless admired by all humanity, whether for their scholarship or for their courage in battle. The reader should not, therefore, create a special category in which to pigeonhole our doctor. Let us accept him along with his ridiculous notions; after all, who does not have such notions? The ridiculous provides a k
ind of ballast for the soul when it enters the sea of life; indeed, some make the entire voyage with no other cargo.
To make up for these weaknesses, Mendonça had, as I have mentioned, other sterling qualities. Adopting his friend’s opinion as the most probable, Mendonça decided that the key to his future might lie in Margarida’s hands, and he duly came up with a plan for their joint happiness: a house out in the wilds, with a view of the sea to the west, so that they could watch the sunset together. Margarida and he, united by love and by the Church, would drain the entire cup of celestial happiness, drop by drop. Mendonça’s dream also contained other details that we need not mention here. He thought about this plan for some days and, on a few occasions, even walked down Rua de Matacavalos, but since, alas, he never once saw Margarida or her aunt, he abandoned these walks and returned to his dogs.
His collection of dogs was a veritable gallery of illustrious men. The most esteemed among them was called Diogenes; there was also a greyhound who answered to the name of Caesar, a spaniel called Nelson, a terrier called Cornelia, and Caligula, a huge mastiff, who was the very image of the great monster produced by Roman society. When he was surrounded by these people, all of whom were famous for different reasons, Mendonça felt that he was stepping back into history, and this provided him with a means of forgetting about the rest of the world.
IV
One day, Mendonça was standing outside Carceler’s patisserie, where he had been enjoying an ice cream with a friend of his, when he saw a carriage drive past; inside the carriage were two ladies who looked very like the two ladies from Rua de Matacavalos. Mendonça looked so startled that his friend asked:
“Whatever’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I thought I recognized those ladies. Did you see them, Andrade?”
The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis Page 3