The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  “Oh, good heavens!” she exclaimed. “You’re so suspicious. Yes, I did look at him, but only because of you.”

  “Because of me?” asked Ernesto in an icily ironic tone of voice.

  “Yes, I was admiring his very smart cravat and thinking that I could buy something similar for you at New Year. Now that you’ve forced me to reveal my secret, though, I’ll have to think of some other little present.”

  Ernesto saw that she was right. He recalled that there really had been a munificent gleam in her eye, if you’ll forgive such an old-fashioned adjective; his anger dissolved into a fond, contrite smile, and the quarrel went no further.

  Days later, on a Sunday, when he and she were in the parlor, and one of her uncle’s children was standing at the window, the two lovers were interrupted by the boy running over to them, shouting:

  “He’s coming, he’s coming!”

  “Who?” asked Ernesto, feeling his heart splinter.

  Going to the window, he saw it was his rival.

  Fortunately, Rosina’s aunt entered at this point, for a storm was already brewing over Ernesto’s blazing forehead.

  Shortly afterward, the young man with the long nose arrived and, on seeing Ernesto, he seemed to smirk. Ernesto withdrew into a sulk. Had his eyes been knives they would have committed two murders there and then. He managed to contain himself, though, in order to observe the couple more closely. Rosina did not appear to pay particular attention to the other man; she was merely polite. This slightly calmed Ernesto’s troubled spirit, and, after an hour, he was restored to his usual state of perfect happiness.

  He did not, however, notice the suspicious glances occasionally directed at him by the young man with the long nose. The mischievous smile had vanished from the bookkeeper’s lips, suspicion having slipped into his mind when he noticed the almost indifferent manner in which Rosina treated both him and her other suitor.

  “Could he be a serious rival?” he wondered.

  The next day, as soon as he had the chance to speak to her alone, with no witnesses, he revealed the suspicions that had cast a dark cloud over a mind that had hitherto been innocently sunny. Rosina merely laughed, so persuasively that the young man with the long nose thought it undignified to repeat such an absurd suspicion.

  “Oh, he would like me to love him, but he’s wasting his time. I have only one face and one heart!”

  “Ah, Rosina, you’re an angel.”

  “Come, now!”

  “Yes, an angel,” he insisted. “And I believe it will not be long before I can call you my wife.”

  Rosina’s eyes sparkled with contentment.

  “Yes,” he went on, “in two months’ time we’ll be married.”

  “Oh!”

  “If, that is . . .”

  Rosina turned pale.

  “If?” she repeated.

  “If Senhor Vieira gives his consent . . .”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” she said, quickly recovering from this sudden shock. “He wants only my happiness, and to marry you would be my greatest happiness. Even were he opposed to my heart’s desire, I would only have to stand my ground for our wish to be granted. But, don’t worry, my uncle will put no obstacles in our way.”

  The young man with the long nose stood for a few minutes gazing wordlessly at Rosina; two things astonished him: Rosina’s strength of mind and her love for him. She was the first to break that silence.

  “So in two months’ time, then?”

  “If luck is on my side.”

  “Is there any reason it won’t be?”

  “Who knows?” he said, with a hesitant sigh.

  In the light of this happy prospect, the scale in which poor Ernesto’s hopes were resting began to grow still lighter. Rosina’s letters became less frequent, and in the few he did receive, her passion was less intense, the phrasing stiffer, colder, more stilted. When they were together, there was no longer the same easy expansiveness; his presence seemed to embarrass her. Ernesto seriously began to think the battle was lost. Unfortunately, his tactic was to ask if his suspicions had any foundation, and she responded earnestly that they did not, and this was enough to restore his peace of mind. This peace was short-lived and his serenity only skin-deep. Rosina’s letters continued to be brief and her manners cold, and that, together with the other man’s continued presence, cast a pall over Ernesto’s thoughts. And yet, while one moment he was plunged into the slough of despond, the next he was lifted up into celestial bliss, thus demonstrating what nature wanted him to be: a fickle, passive soul, carried like a leaf wherever the wind chose to take him.

  Nevertheless, the truth was hard to avoid. One day, he noticed that as well as Rosina’s suspiciously affectionate ways, her uncle also seemed to be treating his rival more favorably. He was right; although the new suitor had still not formally asked for Rosina’s hand in marriage, it was clear to Senhor Vieira that he would soon have a new nephew, and since this suitor was in the world of commerce, she could not, in his opinion, have made a happier choice.

  I will say nothing of Ernesto’s despair and terror, of the curses he uttered on the day when the certainty of his defeat finally hit home. Rosina’s denials were no longer enough, and, besides, they seemed to him lukewarm, which indeed they were. The poor fellow even began to think that she and his rival had joined forces to mock him.

  Since, as a general rule, it is part of our wretched human condition for pride to come before mere love, the moment he felt his suspicions were well founded, he was filled with a sense of fierce indignation, and I doubt that the final act of any melodrama could possibly contain as much spilled blood as the blood he shed in his imagination. Only in his imagination, kind reader, not just because he was incapable of harming another human being, but because any kind of resolution was repugnant to his nature. For that reason, after pondering the matter long and hard, he confided all his anxieties and suspicions to his housemate and asked for his advice: Jorge gave him two pieces of advice.

  “In my opinion,” Jorge said, “you should forget about her and concentrate on your work, which is far more important.”

  “Certainly not!”

  “What, give up work?”

  “No, I mean that I cannot possibly give her up!”

  “Well, in that case,” said Jorge, removing his left boot, “go and talk to the man you think is your rival and find out the truth.”

  “I will!” cried Ernesto. “That’s an excellent idea, but,” he went on after a moment’s thought, “what if he isn’t my rival, then what should I do? How will I find out if there’s some other rival?”

  “In that case,” said Jorge, reclining philosophically on a chaise longue, “in that case, my advice would be to hell with both of them.”

  Ernesto closed his ears to such blasphemy, got dressed, and left.

  Chapter V

  Ernesto immediately headed for the place where the young man with the long nose worked, determined now to have it out with him once and for all. Well, he did hesitate a little and was almost on the point of turning back, but so violent were his feelings that they won out over any weakness of will, and, twenty minutes later, he reached his destination. He did not go into the actual building, but paced up and down outside, waiting for the other man to come out, which he did only forty-five minutes later; forty-five exasperatingly slow minutes.

  Ernesto walked nonchalantly over to his rival, greeted him with a timid, fearful smile, then they stood for a few seconds looking at each other. The rival was just about to doff his hat and take his leave, when Ernesto asked:

  “Are you going to Rua do Conde today?”

  “Possibly.”

  “At what time?”

  “I don’t know yet. Why do you ask?”

  “We could go together. I’m going at eight.”

  The young man with the long nose did not respond.

  “Where are you off to now?” asked Ernesto after a silence.

  “To the Passeio Público, unless, that is, yo
u are too,” his rival retorted.

  Ernesto turned pale.

  “Are you trying to avoid me?”

  “I certainly am.”

  “Well, I won’t let you. There’s something I need to discuss with you. Wait, don’t turn your back on me. I can be bold, too, though less with my tongue than with my actions. Give me your arm, and we’ll go to the Passeio Público together.”

  The young man with the long nose was tempted to take his rival on, but they were standing immediately outside his place of work, and if he were seen fighting that would be the end of his career in commerce. He therefore preferred to continue walking, and had already set off when Ernesto shouted after him:

  “Come back here, you hapless lover!”

  The young man spun around:

  “What did you call me?”

  “I called you a ‘hapless lover,’ ” said Ernesto, scrutinizing his rival’s face for some clue as to his true feelings.

  “How odd,” said the young man with the long nose, “how odd that you should call me a ‘hapless lover’ when everyone has seen what a pathetic figure you’ve cut in your attempts to win the love of a young woman who is mine . . .”

  “Yours!”

  “Yes, mine!”

  “I would say, rather, ours . . .”

  “How dare you!”

  The young man with the long nose clenched a fist in readiness; however, the calm confidence with which Ernesto was looking at him changed his mind. Was he telling the truth? Had that young woman—who had sworn eternal love to him and whom he was planning to marry, but about whom he, too, had once had his suspicions—had she actually given that man the right to call her his? This simple question so troubled him that he stood for nearly two minutes staring dumbly at Ernesto, who stared dumbly back at him.

  “That is a very grave allegation,” he said at last. “I demand an explanation.”

  “As do I,” answered Ernesto.

  “Let’s go to the Passeio Público.”

  They walked on, initially in silence, not just because of the awkwardness of the situation, but also because each feared hearing some cruel revelation. Conversation began with brief, monosyllabic sentences, only gradually becoming more natural and more fluent. Everything that you, dear reader, already know about the two men was laid out by both of them and heard by both with a mixture of sadness and anger.

  “If what you say is true,” remarked the other man as they walked down Rua das Marrecas, “then I can only conclude that we have been deceived.”

  “Vilely deceived,” added Ernesto.

  “For my part,” said the former, “this is a terrible blow, because I really loved her and was hoping soon to make her my wife. Luckily for me, you have warned me off in time . . .”

  “Others might criticize me for doing what I did, but the end justifies the means. I am suffering, too, of course, for I, too, was madly in love with her!”

  These words were spoken with such deep emotion that they reverberated in his rival’s heart, and the two men remained for a while saying nothing, mulling over their respective feelings of pain and humiliation. Ernesto broke the silence with an agonized sigh just as they reached the Passeio Público. Only the guard at the gate heard that sigh, for the young man with the long nose was pondering a question.

  “Should I condemn her so easily?” he wondered. “And is this man merely a disappointed suitor who is using this ploy to neutralize me, his rival?”

  Ernesto’s face seemed to give the lie to this conjecture; however, since this was too serious a matter to judge by appearances, he reopened the chapter of their shared revelations, and the incidents and gestures recalled by one sparked an echo in the other. What decided them, though, was the moment when they each produced a letter they happened to have with them. The text of both letters proved that they were recent; the expressions of love were not the same, because, as we know, Rosina was deliberately tempering the language she used in her notes to Ernesto, but this was quite enough to deliver the coup de grâce to the young man with the long nose.

  “We must spurn her,” he said when he finished reading his rival’s letter.

  “Is that all?” asked Ernesto. “Is that enough?”

  “What would be the point of taking our revenge?” objected the young man with the long nose. “Even if we did take our revenge, would that be worthy of us?”

  He stopped speaking, then an idea occurred to him, and he exclaimed:

  “I’ve just thought of a way.”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t we each send her a letter breaking off all relations, but our letters will be identical?”

  Ernesto instantly approved of this idea, for he seemed even more humiliated than his rival, and they both went home to write their fateful letters.

  The following day, immediately after breakfast, Rosina was sitting quietly at home, blissfully unaware of the impending disaster, and even forging plans for the future, all of which hinged upon the young man with the long nose, when the houseboy came in, carrying two letters.

  “Miss Rosina,” he said. “This letter is from Senhor Ernesto, and this one—”

  “What,” she said, “are they both . . . ?”

  “No,” explained the houseboy, “one was waiting on the corner up there and the other on the corner down below.”

  And, hand in pocket, jingling the coins the two rivals had given him, he left her to read the two missives at her leisure. The first one she opened was from Ernesto. It read as follows:

  Senhora! Now that I am certain of your treachery, a certainty that nothing will now eradicate from my mind, I am taking the liberty of telling you that you are free and I am restored to health. Enough of humiliations! I could believe in you for as long as you had the ability to deceive me, now, though, I bid you farewell forever!

  Rosina shrugged when she read this letter, then rapidly tore open the letter from the young man with the long nose and read: Senhora! Now that I am certain of your treachery, a certainty that nothing will now . . .

  Her surprise grew and grew. Both men were bidding her farewell and both letters were couched in the same words. So they must have found out everything from each other. There was no way to repair the situation; all was lost!

  Rosina did not usually cry. She sometimes rubbed her eyes to make them red when she needed to show a suitor she was upset about something. This time, though, she shed real tears, not of hurt, but of rage. Both rivals had triumphed and both were leaving her, having conspired together to deliver the final blow. There was nothing to be done; despair entered her soul. Alas, there was not a single sail on the horizon. The cousin we mentioned in a previous chapter had designs upon another young woman, and those designs were marital in nature. For the last month, she herself had been neglecting her usual system, leaving a number of interrogative glances unanswered. She had been abandoned by God and by men.

  No, she still had something up her sleeve.

  Chapter VI

  A month after this disaster, Ernesto was at home, chatting with his housemate and two other friends, one of whom was the young man with the long nose. He heard someone call him and, going over to the stairs, he saw that it was the houseboy from Rua Nova do Conde.

  “What do you want?” he asked sternly, suspecting that the houseboy might have come to ask him for money.

  “I’ve brought you this,” said the houseboy softly.

  And he took from his pocket a letter, which he handed to Ernesto.

  Ernesto’s initial impulse was to reject the letter and kick the houseboy down the stairs, but, as he later confessed, his heart whispered something to him. He reached out his hand, took the letter, opened it and read.

  Once again I bow to your unjust assertions. I am weary of crying. I can no longer live beneath such a calumny. Come now or I will die!

  Ernesto rubbed his eyes; he could not believe what he had just read. Was it another trap or was she telling the truth? It could be a trap, but when Ernesto looked more close
ly, it seemed to him that he could see a stain left by a teardrop. She had definitely wept, and if she had wept, it was because she was suffering, and in that case . . .

  Ernesto spent about eight or ten minutes pondering these thoughts. He did not know what to do. Answering Rosina’s call would mean forgetting her treacherous love for another man in whose hands he had even seen a letter signed by her. And yet not going to see her might contribute to the death of a creature who, even if he had never loved her, deserved to be treated humanely.

  “Tell her I’ll come soon,” Ernesto told the houseboy.

  When he went back into the room, he looked quite different. His friends inevitably noticed the change and tried to find out what had happened.

  “It must have been a creditor,” said one.

  “He hasn’t been paid,” said another.

  “A new lover,” suggested his housemate.

  “It might be all those things,” answered Ernesto in a voice intended to be cheerful.

  That afternoon, Ernesto got dressed and went to Rua Nova do Conde. He stopped several times, determined to go no farther, but a moment’s thought was enough to drive away all scruples, and so he continued on.

  “There’s some mystery here,” he told himself and reread Rosina’s letter. “He did, after all, reveal everything to me and even read me letters she had sent, so there can be no doubt about what happened. Rosina is guilty; she deceived me; she allowed herself to be courted by another, all the while claiming that she loved only me. But then why this letter? If she loved the other man, why doesn’t she write to him? I need to investigate further.”

  This worthy young man hesitated for even longer when he entered Rua Nova do Conde, spending ten minutes walking back and forth, unable to come to a decision. Finally, he gave free rein to his heart and set off boldly along the path that fate appeared to have chosen for him.

  When he arrived at the Vieira residence, Rosina was in the parlor with her aunt. Rosina seemed genuinely glad to see him, but, as far as Ernesto could judge, that gladness was not enough to disguise the traces left by her tears. Indeed, the lovely Rosina’s usually mischievous eyes seemed veiled in melancholy. They were no longer mischievous, but dull or dead.