The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  “Remorse? Yes, you should feel remorse, but for quite another reason. You feel horribly humiliated at the moment, and I did make you suffer, didn’t I? However, when you hear what I have to say, you will agree, I’m sure, that I, too, suffered, and far more bitterly.”

  “This sounds like something out of a novel,” Adelaide said to Tito.

  “No, it’s pure reality,” answered Tito, “prosaic reality. One day, some years ago now, I was fortunate enough to see a young woman, with whom I fell in love. That love was as irresistible as it was sudden. And it was more ardent then than it is now, because, at the time, I was innocent of the ways of the world. I resolved to declare my love and ask for her hand in marriage. I received this note in reply . . .”

  “I know,” said Emília. “I was that young woman, and I feel utterly humbled. Forgive me!”

  “My love forgives you. I never stopped loving you. I was certain that I would find you again one day and I have done my best to make you love me.”

  “No, really, if you wrote this down, people would say it was a novel,” said Adelaide gaily.

  “Life is a novel,” said Tito.

  Half an hour later, Azevedo arrived. Amazed to find Emília there when he had assumed she would be on the train, and even more amazed by the cordial way in which Tito and Emília were chatting away to each other, he asked how all this had happened.

  “It’s quite simple,” answered Adelaide. “Emília came back because she’s going to marry Tito.”

  This reply failed to satisfy Azevedo, and he demanded a further explanation.

  “I see,” he said at last. “Having failed to get anywhere by following the straight line, Tito decided to see what could be achieved by following the curved line, which sometimes proves to be the shortest route.”

  “As it has here,” said Tito.

  Emília dined at their house. That evening, Diogo came to say goodbye, because he had to leave for Rio the next day. Imagine his surprise when he saw Emília there!

  “You’ve come back!”

  “Yes,” said Emília, laughing.

  “Well, I was about to leave, too, but now I won’t. Ah, yes, and I’ve just received a letter from Europe, brought to me by the captain of the Macedonia. The bear has arrived!”

  “Good, it will be company for you,” said Tito.

  Diogo pulled a face; then, when he asked what lay behind Emília’s sudden return, she explained that she was going to marry Tito.

  Diogo did not believe her.

  “This is another trick, isn’t it?” he said with a wink.

  And he not only refused to believe it then, he would not believe it later, either, despite all the evidence. A few days after this, they all left for Rio. Diogo remained unconvinced, but when he arrived at Emília’s house one day and saw that the wedding was about to take place, the poor man could no longer deny the facts. This was a huge blow to him, but he nevertheless summoned up the courage to attend the ceremony, at which Azevedo and Adelaide were witnesses. Two months later, the happy bridegroom wrote to Azevedo:

  I must confess that I was playing a dangerous game. I could have lost, but fortunately, I won.

  BROTHER SIMÃO

  I

  BROTHER SIMãO BELONGED TO the Benedictine order of friars. Even though he was only thirty-eight when he died, he looked about fifty. The reason for his premature aging was exactly the same as the one that had led him to join the order when he was thirty, and, as far as we can tell from the fragmentary memoir he left behind, was ample justification for both.

  Brother Simão was a suspicious, taciturn man. He would spend whole days in his cell, from which he only emerged at mealtimes and for divine service. He had not a single friend in the whole monastery, because he made it impossible for anyone even to attempt the necessary preliminary stages that both begin and consolidate any friendship.

  In a monastery, where the deep communion of souls should be taken for granted, Brother Simão appeared to be the exception to the rule. One of the novices nicknamed him the Bear, and the name stuck, although only among the other novices. And yet, even though Brother Simão’s solitary nature was displeasing to the ordained friars, they nevertheless felt a degree of respect, even veneration, for him.

  One day, it was reported that Brother Simão had fallen gravely ill. Doctors were called and he was given all the necessary care and attention. The illness, however, proved fatal, and, five days later, Brother Simão died.

  During that time, his fellow friars crowded into Brother Simão’s cell. He spoke not a word until, when the final moment was approaching, he sat up in bed, beckoned the abbot over to his bedside, and whispered in a strange, muffled voice:

  “I die filled with a loathing for humanity!”

  The abbot recoiled when he heard these words and the manner in which they were spoken. As for Brother Simão, he fell back on his pillow and passed into eternity.

  When all the usual honors had been paid to their dead brother, the other friars asked the abbot what Brother Simão had said that had so frightened him. The abbot told them, crossing himself as he did so. The friars, however, saw in those words only some past secret, which, though grave, was certainly not dreadful enough to instill terror into the abbot’s heart. Then the abbot told them what he had thought on hearing those vengeful words and seeing the terrible piercing look that accompanied them. He had felt sure then that Brother Simão was mad, indeed, that he had been mad when he first entered the order. The other friars said that while Brother Simão’s silent, solitary habits might well have been symptoms of some mental illness, albeit of a very mild and gentle sort, it seemed impossible that, during the eight years he had spent there, Brother Simão should have shown no further signs of madness. The abbot, however, was unconvinced.

  Meanwhile, they began an inventory of the dead man’s few possessions, and, among these, they found a roll of papers bound together with a ribbon and bearing this label: Notes for a memoir to be written by Brother Simão de Santa Águeda, Benedictine friar.

  These papers were a great find for the community, who were all curious to know more. They would finally be able to peer behind the mysterious veil obscuring Brother Simão’s past life, and thus perhaps confirm the abbot’s suspicions. To this end the papers were duly read by everyone.

  For the most part, they were fragments, brief, scant notes, and yet it was clear that, for a time, Brother Simão had, indeed, been mad.

  While ignoring the less relevant parts of the Memoirs, the author of this account will try to make use of the seemingly least paltry and least obscure fragments.

  II

  Brother Simão makes no mention of his place of birth or the names of his parents. All we know of his early life is that, having finished his basic education, he was unable to pursue a career in letters as he wished, and was obliged to work as a bookkeeper in his father’s business.

  At the time, a cousin of his lived with them; her mother and father had both died, leaving her to be cared for, brought up, and maintained by her aunt and uncle, Simão’s parents, who, it would seem, had money enough to do so. Her father had been a rich man, but, having lost everything to gambling and unfortunate business dealings, had ended up in absolute poverty.

  This orphaned cousin was called Helena; she was beautiful, affectionate, and extremely kindhearted. Simão, who had been brought up with her and lived with her under the same roof, could not resist his cousin’s fine qualities or her beauty. They fell in love. And in their dreams for the future, they both assumed they would marry, which is, after all, the most natural of ambitions for two loving hearts.

  It did not take long for Simão’s parents to find out about their love. Now, even though this is not stated in the friar’s notes, it must be said that his parents were uncommonly selfish. They were happy enough to feed Helena, but could not possibly consent to their son marrying a poor orphan like her. They had their sights set on a rich heiress, and had determined that she would marry their son.


  One afternoon, when the lad was still filling in the figures in the master ledger, his father came into the office looking simultaneously grave and cheerful, and told his son to stop his work and listen. The boy obeyed. His father said:

  “I’m sending you off to the province of ***. I have some letters for my agent there, Amaral, and, since they are extremely important, I prefer not to entrust them to our somewhat lackadaisical postal system. Would you prefer to take the steamer or our brig?”

  The question was asked in such a way that allowed for only one answer, and the boy, turning very pale and lowering his eyes, replied:

  “I will go wherever you wish, Father.”

  Inwardly grateful for his son’s submissive attitude, which would save him the cost of a steamer ticket, the father was pleased to report to his wife that the boy had made no objections.

  That night, the two lovers happened to meet alone in the dining room.

  Simão told Helena what had happened. They both wept a few furtive tears, and hoped that his absence would last no more than a month.

  Over tea, Simão’s father talked about the trip, which he thought would be a matter of only a few days. This reignited the lovers’ hopes. The rest of the evening was taken up with the father giving advice to his son on how to behave when at the house of his agent. At ten o’clock, everyone went to their rooms as usual.

  The days passed quickly, until, finally, it was time for the brig to depart. Helena emerged from her room, her eyes red with crying. When her aunt asked brusquely what was wrong, Helena said that she had spent too long reading the night before. Her aunt advised her to stop reading so much and to bathe her eyes with mallow water.

  As for her uncle, he summoned Simão to his study, gave him a letter for the agent, and embraced him. His trunk and a servant were ready and waiting. The farewell was a sad occasion. His parents shed a few tears, and Helena wept copiously.

  As for Simão, his eyes were dry and burning. He did not cry easily, and so suffered all the more.

  The brig set sail. As long as land was in sight Simão did not leave the deck, and it was only when, to use Ribeyrolles’s picturesque phrase, the walls of that moving prison finally closed about him, that Simão, filled with sadness and a sense of dread, went down to his cabin. A kind of presentiment was telling him that he would never see his cousin again. He felt as if he were being sent into exile.

  When he reached his destination, he sought out his father’s agent and handed him the letter. Senhor Amaral read the letter, looked at the lad, and, after a silence folded the letter up and said:

  “Right, you just have to wait until I’ve sorted out this business of your father’s. In the meantime, you will live with me.”

  “When can I go back?” asked Simão.

  “In a few days’ time, unless things prove more complicated than I thought.”

  That “unless,” which appeared as if only incidentally on Amaral’s lips, was really the main meat of the matter. The letter from Simão’s father read as follows:

  My dear Amaral,

  For various weighty reasons I am obliged to remove my son from town. Keep him with you for as long as you can. The pretext for the journey is my need to finish off some business I have with you, and that is what you should tell the lad, always assuring him that this will take little or no time at all. I recall that, in your youth, you harbored the rather sad ambition to be a novelist, well, now is your chance to invent as many unforeseen circumstances and occurrences as you wish, with the aim of keeping the boy there until you hear further from me. Yours, etc. . . .

  III

  Days and more days passed, and the moment to return home never came. The would-be novelist proved to have an extremely fertile imagination and tirelessly invented excuses with which to convince the boy that he must stay.

  Meanwhile, since the minds of lovers are no less inventive than those of novelists, Simão and Helena found a means of writing to each other, and thus drew some consolation for that absence from the presence of words and paper. Héloïse was quite right when she said that the art of writing was invented by some lover separated from her love. In their letters, the two sweethearts swore to remain eternally faithful.

  After two months of vain hopes and many letters, Helena’s aunt came upon one of Simão’s letters. It was, I believe, the twentieth. A great storm broke over the household. Her uncle, who was at work, rushed home and was told the news. The result was that ink, pens, and paper were all banished from the house, and a close watch was kept on the poor unhappy girl.

  Letters to the wretched exile became few and far between. He wrote long, tear-stained letters asking her why she did not write, but the rigorous controls imposed by his parents had taken on extraordinary proportions, and all of the exile’s letters ended up in the hands of his father, who, once he had read and admired his son’s passionate words, would have all his ardent epistles burned.

  Days and months passed without a single letter from Helena. By then, Amaral’s inventive vein had dried up, and he had run out of excuses for keeping Simão there.

  Then Simão received a letter written in his father’s hand. The only thing that distinguished it from other missives he had received from his father was its much greater length. When Simão opened the letter and read it, he trembled and turned pale. For in the letter, the honest businessman told him that Helena, the lovely girl whom he had thought to make his daughter when she married Simão, had died. He had copied out some of the death notices that appeared in the newspapers and added a few consoling thoughts from home, finally urging him to take the next boat home.

  The final sentence read:

  For although my business dealings there are still not finished, and you are unable to marry Helena because God has taken her from us, come home, my child, and console yourself by marrying another, the daughter of Counselor ***. She’s a young woman now and would make a very good match. Do not despair. Think of me.

  Simão’s father had not fully grasped the depth of his son’s love for Helena, and even if he had, he lacked the necessary insight to understand it. Such griefs cannot be consoled with a letter or with a marriage. It would have been better to bring the boy home and then tell him the sad news, because that news, set down so coldly, had dealt the lad a mortal blow.

  Simão remained physically alive, but spiritually dead, so much so that he himself went in search of a grave. It would be far better if I could let Simão himself explain what he suffered after receiving that letter, but his writings are full of errors, and I would not wish to have to correct those ingenuous and utterly sincere outpourings of grief.

  The grave chosen by Simão was a monastery. He wrote back to his father, thanking him for the offer of the counselor’s daughter, but saying that, from that day forth, he would dedicate himself to serving God.

  His father was astonished. He had never expected his son to demonstrate such resolve. He wrote back at once, hoping to make him change his mind, but in vain.

  As for the agent, Amaral—for whom everything was becoming more and more complicated—he allowed Simão to go to the monastery, preferring to keep well out of an affair about which he really knew nothing at all.

  IV

  Some time after these events, Brother Simão of Santa Águeda was sent on a religious mission to the province where he was born.

  He prepared his luggage and set off.

  He had been sent to a town in the interior, not to the provincial capital. However, when he arrived in the capital, he felt it his duty to visit his parents. They were greatly diminished both physically and morally, doubtless weighed down by their feelings of sorrow and remorse for having precipitated their son into taking that decision. They had sold their business and now lived off the interest.

  They received their son with great excitement and genuine love. After many tears and comforting words, Simão’s visit came to an end.

  “So what brings you to the capital, Simão?”

  “I have a mission
to carry out in my role as friar. I have come to preach to the Lord’s flock so that they do not stray from the right path.”

  “Here in the capital?”

  “No, in the countryside. I begin in the town of ***.”

  His aged parents both shuddered, but Simão did not notice. The following day, he left, despite his parents urging him to stay. They noticed that he had not even mentioned Helena, and they did not wish to open old wounds.

  Days later, in the town Brother Simão had mentioned, a crowd gathered to hear what he had to say.

  The old church was packed with people.

  At the appointed hour, Brother Simão entered the pulpit and began to speak. Half of the congregation became bored and left halfway through. The reason for this was simple. Accustomed to the fire-and-brimstone sermons of Pedro Botelho and to the golden words of most other preachers, they could take no pleasure in the friar’s gentle, simple, persuasive language, modeled on the parables told by the founder of our religion.

  The preacher was about to finish when a couple hurried in; they were husband and wife; he was an honest farmer, earning a decent income from the farm he owned and from his own hard work; she, in turn, was greatly respected for her many virtues, but seemed permanently burdened by a terrible melancholy.

  Having dipped their fingers in the stoup and made the sign of the cross, they went and sat in a pew from which they had a clear view of the preacher.

  Just then, a scream was heard, and everyone rushed to help the woman, who had fainted. Brother Simão had to stop speaking until the incident had been dealt with. However, when a gap appeared in the crowd gathered around the woman, he saw her face.

  It was Helena.

  In Brother Simão’s manuscript there are eight lines of dots, as if he himself did not know what happened next, for, after recognizing Helena, he continued his sermon, except that the sermon made no sense now; to the general consternation of the congregation, he merely rambled on in a kind of delirium.