The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  Chapter 3

  GOD KNOWS WHAT HE IS DOING!

  By the end of two months, that illustrious lady was the unhappiest of women; she fell into a deep melancholy, grew thin and sallow, ate little, and sighed at every turn. She did not dare to criticize or reproach Bacamarte in any way, for she respected him as her husband and master, but she suffered in silence and was visibly wasting away. One evening over dinner, when her husband asked her what was wrong, she replied sadly that it was nothing; then she summoned up a little courage and went as far as to say that she considered herself just as much a widow as before, adding:

  “Who would have imagined that half a dozen lunatics . . .”

  She did not finish the sentence, or, rather, she finished it by raising her eyes to the ceiling—those eyes which were her most appealing feature: large, dark, and bathed in a dewy light. As for the gesture itself, it was the same one she had employed on the day Simão Bacamarte had asked her to marry him. The chronicles do not say if Dona Evarista deployed that weapon with the wicked intention of decapitating science once and for all, or at least chopping off its hands, but it is a perfectly plausible conjecture. In any case, the alienist did not suspect her of having any ulterior motive. The great man was neither annoyed nor even dismayed; his eyes retained the same hard, smooth, unchanging metallic gleam, and not a single wrinkle troubled the surface of his brow, which remained as placid as the waters of the bay at Botafogo. A smile may have crossed his lips, as he uttered these words, as sweet as the oil in the Song of Songs:

  “All right, you can go to Rio.”

  Dona Evarista felt the ground beneath her feet give way. She had never been to Rio, which, although but a pale shadow of what it is today, was still considerably more exciting than Itaguaí. For her, seeing Rio de Janeiro was something akin to the dream of the Hebrew slaves. Now that her husband had settled for good in that provincial town, she had given up all hope of ever breathing the airs of our fine city. And yet now there he was inviting her to fulfill her childhood and adolescent dreams. Dona Evarista could not conceal her delight at his proposal. Simão Bacamarte took her by the hand and smiled—a smile that was both philosophical and husbandly, and in which the following thought could be discerned: “There is no reliable remedy for the ailments of the soul; this woman is wasting away because she thinks I do not love her. I’ll give her Rio de Janeiro, and that will console her.” And since he was a studious man, he made a note of this observation.

  Then a doubt pierced Dona Evarista’s heart. She controlled herself, however, saying only that if he was not going, then she would not go, either, since there was no question of her undertaking a journey like that by herself.

  “You can go with your aunt,” said the alienist.

  It should be noted that this same thought had occurred to Dona Evarista, but she had not wanted to ask or even suggest it, in the first place because it would be causing her husband even more expense, and secondly, because it would be better, more methodical, and more rational for the idea to come from him.

  “Oh! But just think how much it would cost!” sighed Dona Evarista, without conviction.

  “So? We’ve made a lot of money,” said her husband. “Why, only yesterday the accountant showed me the figures. Would you like to see?”

  And he showed her the ledgers. Dona Evarista was dazzled by that Milky Way of numbers. Then he showed her the coffers where the money was kept.

  Goodness! There were heaps of gold; piles and piles of doubloons and mil-cruzado coins, a veritable treasure trove.

  The alienist watched while she devoured the gold coins with her dark eyes, and whispered in her ear this most perfidious of remarks:

  “Who would have imagined that half a dozen lunatics . . .”

  Dona Evarista understood his meaning, smiled, and gave a heavy sigh:

  “God must know what He is doing!”

  Three months later, they set off: Dona Evarista, her aunt, the apothecary’s wife, and one of their nephews, together with a priest whom the alienist had met in Lisbon and who happened to be in Itaguaí, five or six footmen, and four slave-women; this was the entourage that the townsfolk watched depart on that May morning. The farewells were a sad affair for everyone concerned, apart, that is, from the alienist. Although Dona Evarista’s tears were abundant and sincere, they were not enough to move him. As a man of science, and only of science, nothing beyond science could dismay him, and the only thing bothering him on that occasion, as he cast an uneasy, policeman’s gaze over the crowd, was the thought that some madman might be lurking among those of sound mind.

  “Goodbye!” sobbed the ladies and the apothecary.

  And so the entourage left. As the apothecary and the doctor returned home, Crispim Soares kept his gaze fixed firmly between the ears of his mule, while Simão Bacamarte’s eyes were fixed on the horizon ahead, leaving his horse to deal with how to get home. What a striking image of the genius and the common man! One stares at the present, filled with tears and regrets, while the other scrutinizes the future with its promise of new dawns.

  Chapter 4

  A NEW THEORY

  As Dona Evarista’s journey brought her, tearfully, closer to Rio de Janeiro, Simão Bacamarte was studying, from every angle, a bold new idea that stood to enlarge substantially the foundations of psychology. He spent any time away from his duties at the Casa Verde roaming the streets, or going from house to house, talking to people about anything and everything, and punctuating his words with a stare that put fear into even the most heroic of souls.

  One morning, about three weeks later, while Crispim Soares was busy concocting some medicine or other, someone came to tell him that the alienist wanted to see him.

  “He says it’s important,” added the messenger.

  Crispim blenched. What important matter could it be, if not some sad news of the traveling party, in particular his wife? For this point must be clearly stated, given how much the chroniclers insisted upon it: Crispim loved his wife dearly and, in thirty years of marriage, they had never been apart for even one day. This would explain the muttered private monologues he often indulged in, and which his assistants often overheard: “What on earth were you thinking of? What possessed you to agree to letting Cesária go with her? Lackey, miserable lackey! And all to get into Dr. Bacamarte’s good books. Well, now you just have to grin and bear it; that’s right, grin and bear it, you vile, miserable lickspittle. You just say Amen to everything, don’t you? Well, now you’ve got your comeuppance, you filthy blackguard!” And many other such insults that a man should never say to anyone, still less to himself. Thus it is not hard to imagine the effect of Bacamarte’s message. Soares instantly dropped what he was doing and rushed to the Casa Verde.

  Simão Bacamarte received him with the joy that befits a man of learning, that is to say, a joy buttoned up to the neck with circumspection.

  “I am very happy,” he said.

  “News of our womenfolk?” asked the apothecary, his voice trembling.

  The alienist made a grand gesture and replied:

  “No, it concerns something far more exalted: a scientific experiment. I say experiment, because I am not so rash as to assert my conclusions with absolute certainty, and because science, Senhor Soares, is nothing if not a constant search. So we shall call it, therefore, an experiment, but one that will change the very face of the Earth. Madness, the object of my studies, was, until now, considered a mere island in an ocean of reason; I am now beginning to suspect that it is a continent.”

  Upon saying this, he fell silent, the better to savor the apothecary’s astonishment. Then he explained his idea at length. As he saw it, insanity afflicted a vast swath of humanity, an idea he expounded with copious arguments, texts, and examples. He cited examples both from Itaguaí itself and from history: being the rarefied intellectual he was, he recognized the dangers of drawing all his examples from Itaguaí, and sought refuge in history. He thus drew particular attention to several famous persons such as So
crates, who had his own personal demon, to Pascal, who always imagined a yawning abyss lay somewhere to his left, to Caracalla, Domitian, Calig­ula, and so on, a whole string of cases and people, the repulsive and the ridiculous. Since the apothecary seemed taken aback by such a promiscuous mixture, the alienist told him that it all amounted to the same thing, even adding sententiously:

  “Ferocity, Senhor Soares, is merely the serious side of the grotesque.”

  “Witty, very witty indeed!” exclaimed Crispim Soares, throwing his hands in the air.

  As for the idea of expanding the territory of insanity, the apothecary thought it somewhat extravagant, but since modesty, the principal ornament of his mind, would not suffer him to admit to anything other than a noble enthusiasm, he declared it sublime and utterly true, adding that it was definitely one for the town crier.

  I should explain. At that time, Itaguaí, like all other towns, villages, and hamlets throughout the colony, had no printing press. There were, therefore, only two means of circulating news: either by nailing a handwritten notice to the doors of the town hall and the parish church, or by means of the town crier, who would roam the streets of the town with a rattle in his hand. From time to time, he would shake the rattle, townspeople would gather, and he would announce whatever he had been instructed to announce—a cure for fever, plots of arable land for sale, a sonnet, a church donation, the identity of the nosiest busybody in town, the finest speech of the year, and so on. The system had its inconveniences in terms of the inhabitants’ peace and tranquility, but was preserved due to its effectiveness in disseminating information. For example, one of the municipal councillors—the very one who had been most vehemently opposed to the establishment of the Casa Verde—enjoyed a reputation as a tamer of snakes and monkeys, despite never having domesticated even one such creature. He did this simply by taking good care, every month, to employ the services of the town crier. Indeed, the chronicles say that some people attest to having seen rattlesnakes dancing on the councillor’s chest, a claim that is perfectly false, but that was accepted as true entirely on account of the absolute confidence in which the system was held. As you can see, not every institution of the old regime deserves our own century’s disdain.

  “There is only one thing better than announcing my new theory,” replied the alienist to the apothecary’s suggestion, “and that is putting it into practice.”

  And, not wishing to diverge significantly from the alienist, the apothecary agreed that it would indeed be better to begin with action.

  “There’ll be time enough for the town crier,” he concluded.

  Simão Bacamarte reflected further for a moment, then said:

  “Let’s suppose, Senhor Soares, that the human spirit is an enormous seashell. My goal is to see if I can extract from it the pearl of reason. Or, in other words, to delineate definitively the boundaries of reason and insanity. Reason is the perfect equilibrium of all the faculties; beyond that lies madness, madness, and only madness.

  Father Lopes, to whom the alienist also confided his new theory, declared bluntly that he could make neither head nor tail of it, that it was an absurd endeavor, and, if not absurd, then it was such a grandiose endeavor that it was not worth even embarking upon.

  “Using the current definition, which is the one that has existed since time immemorial,” he added, “madness and reason are perfectly delineated. We all know where one ends and the other begins. Why start moving the fence?”

  Across the thin, discreet lips of the alienist danced the faintest shadow of an incipient laugh, in which disdain marched arm in arm with pity. But not a single word emerged.

  Science merely extended its hand to theology, and with such self-assurance that theology no longer knew whether to believe in one or the other. Itaguaí and the universe stood on the brink of a revolution.

  Chapter 5

  THE TERROR

  Four days later, the inhabitants of Itaguaí heard with some consternation that a certain fellow by the name of Costa had been taken to the Casa Verde.

  “Impossible!”

  “What do you mean, ‘impossible’? He was taken there this morning.”

  “But surely he is the last person to deserve that . . . After all he’s done!”

  Costa was one of the most highly respected of Itaguaí’s citizens. He had inherited four hundred thousand cruzados in the good coinage of King João V, a sum of money that would, as his uncle had declared in his will, provide income enough to live on “until the end of the world.” No sooner had he received his inheritance than he began to share it out in the form of loans, at no interest; one thousand cruzados here, two thousand there, three hundred to this fellow, eight hundred to the next, so much so that, after five years, there was nothing left. Had penury befallen him suddenly, Itaguaí would have sat up and taken notice. But it came little by little; he slipped from opulence to affluence, from affluence to moderation, from moderation to poverty, and from poverty to penury, all in gradual steps. By the end of those five years, people who had once raised their hats to him as soon as they spotted him at the end of the street, would now clap him familiarly on the back, tweak his nose, and make all sorts of rude comments. And Costa would always laugh amiably. He seemed not even to notice that the least courteous men were precisely those who still owed him money; on the contrary, he would embrace them with even greater pleasure, and even more sublime resignation. One day, when one of these incorrigible debtors jeered at him and Costa simply laughed, a skeptical bystander commented, somewhat perfidiously: “You only put up with that fellow in the hope he will repay you.” Costa did not hesitate for a second; he went up to the man who owed him money and canceled the debt on the spot. “Don’t be surprised,” interjected the bystander, “all Costa has given up is a far-distant star.” Costa was perceptive enough to realize that the onlooker was mocking the worthiness of his actions, alleging that he was only relinquishing something he would never receive anyway. Costa prized his honor, and, two hours later, he found a means of proving that such a slander was untrue: he got hold of a few coins and sent them to the debtor as a new loan.

  “Let’s hope that now . . .” he thought, not even bothering to finish the sentence.

  This last good deed of Costa’s persuaded both the credulous and incredulous; no one now doubted the chivalrous sentiments of that worthy citizen. Even the most timid of paupers ventured out in their old slippers and threadbare capes to knock at his door. One worm, however, still gnawed at Costa’s soul: it was the idea of that bystander disliking him. But even this came to an end: three months later, the very same bystander came and asked him for one hundred and twenty cruzados, promising to pay him back two days later. This was all that was left of Costa’s inheritance, but it was also a noble revenge: Costa lent him the money that very instant, and without interest. Unfortunately, time ran out before he was repaid; five months later he was bundled off to the Casa Verde.

  One can well imagine the consternation in Itaguaí when people learned what had happened. People spoke of nothing else; it was said that Costa had gone mad over breakfast, others said it was in the middle of the night. Accounts were given of his outbursts, which were either violent, dark, and terrifying, or gentle and even funny, depending on which version you heard. Many people rushed to the Casa Verde, where they found poor Costa looking quite calm, if a little dazed, and talking perfectly lucidly and asking why he had been taken there. Some went to see the alienist. Bacamarte applauded such sentiments of kindness and compassion, but added that science was science, and that he could not leave a madman wandering the streets. The last person to intercede on his behalf (because after what I am about to tell you everyone was too terrified to go anywhere near the doctor) was an unfortunate lady, one of Costa’s cousins. The alienist told her confidentially that this worthy man was not in perfect command of his mental faculties, as could be seen from the way in which he had dissipated his fortune—

  “No! Absolutely not!” the good lady said emphatic
ally, interrupting him. “It’s not his fault he spent all the money so quickly.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No, sir. I will tell you what happened. My late uncle was not a bad man, but when he was angry he was capable of anything, even failing to remove his hat in the presence of the Holy Sacrament. Then, one day, shortly before he died, he discovered that a slave had stolen one of his oxen. You can imagine his reaction. He was shaking all over, he turned bright red, and started foaming at the mouth—I remember it as if it were yesterday. Just then, an ugly, long-haired man, in shirtsleeves, came up to him and asked for some water. My uncle, God rest his soul, told the man that he could go drink from the river or, for all he cared, go to hell. The man looked at my uncle, raised his hand menacingly, and laid this curse upon him: ‘All your wealth will last no more than seven years and a day, as sure as this thing here is the Seal of Solomon.’ And he showed my uncle the Seal of Solomon tattooed on his arm. That’s what caused it, sir; it was the evil man’s curse that caused it.”

  Bacamarte fixed the woman with eyes as sharp as daggers. When she finished, he politely offered her his hand, as if to the wife of the viceroy himself, and invited her to come and speak to her cousin. The unfortunate woman believed him, and he took her to the Casa Verde and locked her up in the hallucination wing.

  News of the illustrious Bacamarte’s duplicity struck terror into the souls of the townspeople. No one wanted to believe that, for no reason, with no apparent animosity, the alienist had locked up in the Casa Verde a lady of perfectly sound mind, whose only crime had been to intercede on behalf of a poor unfortunate wretch. The matter was discussed on street corners and in barbershops; a whole web of romantic intrigue was concocted, tales of amorous overtures that the alienist had once made to Costa’s cousin, to Costa’s outrage and the lady’s disdain. And this was his revenge. It was as clear as day. But the alienist’s austere and studious lifestyle seemed to belie such a hypothesis. Nonsense! Surely that was just a façade. And one particularly credulous person even began to mutter that he knew a few other things, too, but he wouldn’t say what they were since he wasn’t absolutely certain, but he knew them nonetheless, and could almost swear they were true.