The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  There was another motive behind my choice. Among the various electoral methods once used in the Venice of old was the bag and ball, which is how the sons of the nobility were initiated into matters of state. Balls bearing the candidates’ names were placed in the bag, and every year a certain number were taken out, with the chosen few being deemed suitable for public service. Such a system will provoke laughter among experts in electoral suffrage, but that is not the case with me. For it precludes the follies of passion, the errors of ineptitude, and the commingling of corruption and greed. This was not my only reason for choosing it; I felt that a community so skilled in the spinning of webs would find the use of the electoral bag easy to adapt to, indeed almost second nature.

  My proposal was accepted. “The Most Serene Republic” struck them as a magnificent title: high-sounding and generous, and suitably aggrandizing of their work as a collective.

  I would not say, gentlemen, that my work has reached perfection, nor that it will do so in the near future. My pupils are not Campanella’s solarians or More’s utopians; they are a new people, who cannot in a single bound o’erleap our most venerable nations. And time is not a workman who willingly hands his tools to another; it will, though, serve far better than any paper theories, which look good on paper, but prove lame in practice. What I will say is that, notwithstanding the uncertainties of the age, the spiders continue to make progress, having at their disposal some of the virtues which I believe essential for a state to endure. One of those virtues, as I have already mentioned and as I will now demonstrate, is perseverance, the long-suffering patience of Penelope.

  In effect, ever since they first grasped that the electoral act was the fundamental basis of public life, they set out to exercise it with the utmost punctiliousness. Weaving the bag was itself a national undertaking. It was five inches long, three inches wide, and woven from the finest threads into a solid, sturdy piece of work. To make it, ten ladies of the very highest rank were selected by acclamation, and given the title “mothers of the republic” along with various other privileges and perquisites. A real masterpiece, of that you can be sure. The electoral process itself is quite simple. The names of the candidates, each of whom must fulfill certain conditions, are inscribed on the balls by a public official known as the Inscriptions Officer. On election day, the balls are placed in the bag and then picked out by the Withdrawals Officer, until the required number of candidates has been chosen. What was simply an initiation ceremony in the Venice of old, here serves to fill all public positions.

  At first the election passed off without incident. But soon afterward, one of the legislators declared that the election had been tainted, because the bag contained two balls each inscribed with the name of the same candidate. The assembly verified the truth of the allegation, and declared that the bag would henceforth be only two inches wide, not three, thus restricting the bag’s capacity and limiting (which was as good as eliminating) the scope for fraud. However, in the following election, it transpired that the name of one of the candidates had not been inscribed on the relevant ball; whether this was due to carelessness or willful omission on the part of the public official is not known. The official insisted that he had no recollection of seeing the illustrious candidate, but nobly added that it was not impossible that he had been given the name, in which case it had not been a matter of deliberate exclusion, but of forgetfulness on his part. Faced with so ineluctable a psychological phenomenon as forgetfulness, the assembly could not bring itself to punish the official; however, in the belief that the narrowness of the bag could give rise to nefarious exclusions, it revoked the previous law and restored the bag to its full three inches.

  Meanwhile, gentlemen, the first magistrate passed away and three citizens presented themselves as candidates for the position. Only two of them were important: Hazeroth and Magog, the respective leaders of the rectilinear party and the curvilinear party. I should explain these names to you. Since arachnids are masters of geometry, it is geometry that divides them politically. Some are convinced that spiders should always spin their webs with straight threads, and they adhere to the rectilinear party. Others, however, think that webs should be spun using curved threads, and they form the curvilinear party. There is a third party, which occupies the middle ground with the proposition that webs should be woven with both straight and curved threads, and is therefore called the recto-curvilinear party. Finally, there is a fourth political grouping, the anti-recto-curvilinear party, which sweeps away all such principles and proposes the use of webs woven from thin air, resulting in an entirely transparent and lightweight structure with no lines of any sort. Since geometry could only divide them, without inflaming their passions, they have adopted a purely symbolic geometry. For some, the straight line represents noble sentiments: justice, probity, integrity, and perseverance, while base or inferior sentiments such as flattery, fraud, betrayal, and perfidy are quite clearly curved. Their adversaries disagree, saying that the curved line is the line of virtue and wisdom, because it is the expression of modesty and humility, whereas ignorance, arrogance, foolishness, and boasting are straight, indeed rigidly so. The third party, less angular, less exclusive, has trimmed away the exaggerations of both sides and combined their contrasting positions, proclaiming the simultaneous nature of lines to be the exact representation of the physical and moral world. The fourth grouping simply repudiates everything.

  Neither Hazeroth nor Magog was elected. The relevant balls were drawn from the bag, but were deemed invalid—Hazaroth’s because the first letter of his name was missing, and Magog’s because his lacked the last letter. The remaining, triumphant name was that of an ambitious millionaire of obscure political opinions, who promptly ascended the ducal throne to the general amazement of the republic. However, the defeated candidates were not content to rest on the winner’s laurels; they called for an official inquiry. The inquiry showed that the Inscriptions Officer had intentionally misspelled their names. The officer confessed to both the error and the intention, explaining that it had been nothing more than a simple ellipsis; a purely literary misdemeanor, if that. Since it was not possible to prosecute someone for errors of spelling or rhetoric, it seemed sensible to review the law once again. That very same day, it was decreed that the bag would henceforth be made from a fine gauze, through which the balls could be read by the public, and ipso facto by the candidates themselves, who would thus have the opportunity to correct any misspellings.

  Unfortunately, gentlemen, fiddling with the law brings nothing but trouble. That same door flung wide to honesty also served the cunning of a certain Nabiga, who connived with the Withdrawals Officer to get himself a seat on the assembly. There was one vacancy to be filled and three candidates; the officer selected the balls with his eyes fixed on his accomplice, who only stopped shaking his head when the ball in question was his own. That was all it took to put paid to the idea of a gauze bag. With exemplary patience, the assembly restored the thick fabric of the previous regime, but, to avoid any further ellipses, literary or otherwise, it decreed that balls with incorrect inscriptions could henceforth be validated if five persons swore an oath that the name inscribed was indeed that of the candidate in question.

  This new statute gave rise to a new and unforeseen issue, as you will see. It concerned the election of a Donations Collector, a public servant charged with raising public revenue in the form of voluntary donations. Among the candidates were one called Caneca and another called Nebraska. The ball drawn from the bag was Nebraska’s. There was, however, a mistake, in that the last letter was missing, but five witnesses swore an oath in accordance with the law that the duly elected candidate was the republic’s one and only Nebraska. Everything seemed to be settled, until the candidate Caneca sought leave to prove that the name on the ball in question was not Nebraska’s, but his own. The justice of the peace granted the hearing. As this point, they summoned a great philologist—perhaps the greatest in the republic, as well as being a good metaphysicia
n and a rather fine mathematician—who proved the matter as follows:

  “First of all,” he said, “you should note that the absence of the last letter of the name ‘Nebraska’ is no accident. Why was it left incomplete? Not through fatigue or love of brevity, since only the final letter, a mere a, is missing. Lack of space? Not that, either; look closely and you will see that there is still space for another two or three syllables. Hence the omission is intentional, and the intention could only be to draw the reader’s eye to the letter k, being the last one written, hanging there abandoned and alone, devoid of purpose. Now, then, the brain has a tendency, which no law can override, to reproduce letters in two ways: the graphic form k, and the sonic form, which could equally be written ca. Thus, by drawing the eyes to the final letter written, the spelling defect instantly embeds it in the brain as the first syllable: Ca. Once so embedded, the natural impulse of the brain is then to read the whole name, and thus returns to the beginning of the word, to the initial ne of Nebrask, giving us Ca-ne. There remains the middle syllable, bras, and it is the easiest thing in the world to demonstrate how that can be reduced to another ca. I will not, however, demonstrate precisely how, since you lack the necessary preparation for a proper understanding of the spiritual or philosophical meaning of such a syllable, along with its origins and effects, its phases, modifications, logical and syntactical consequences, both deductive and inductive, as well as symbolic, and so forth. But taking that as read, we are faced with the final and incontrovertible proof of my initial assertion that the syllable ca is indeed joined to the first two, Ca-ne, giving us the name Caneca.”

  The law was amended, gentlemen, abolishing both sworn testimonials and textual interpretations, and introducing another innovation, this time the simultaneous reduction, by half an inch, of both the length and width of the bag. The modification did not, however, avoid a minor abuse in the election of bailiffs, and the bag was restored to its original dimensions, but this time in triangular form. You will readily comprehend that such a form brings with it an inevitable consequence: many of the balls remained in the bottom of the bag. From this came the adoption of a cylindrical bag, which, later, evolved into an hourglass, which was recognized as having the same inconveniences as the triangle, and thus gave way to a crescent, and so on. Most abuses, oversights, and lacunae tend to disappear, and the rest will share the same fate, not entirely, perhaps, for perfection is not of this world, but to the degree advised by one of the most circumspect citizens of my republic, Erasmus—whose last speech I only wish I could give to you here in its entirety. Tasked with notifying the final legislative modification to the ten worthy ladies responsible for weaving the electoral bag, Erasmus recounted to them the tale of Penelope, who wove and unwove her famous web while awaiting the return of her husband Ulysses.

  “You, ladies, are the Penelopes of our republic,” he said in conclusion. “Aim to be as chaste, patient, and talented as she. Weave the bag again, ladies, weave it again, until Ulysses, weary of wandering, comes back to take his rightful place among us. Ulysses is Wisdom.”

  THE MIRROR

  A Brief Outline of a New Theory of the Human Soul

  LATE ONE NIGHT, four or five gentlemen were debating various lofty matters, and although they all had different views, there were no frayed tempers. The house was situated on the Santa Teresa hill overlooking Rio; the room was small and lit by candles, whose glow mingled mysteriously with the moonlight streaming in from outside. Between the bustle and excitement of the city below and the sky above, where the stars were shining in the still, clear air, sat our four or five metaphysical detectives, amicably resolving the universe’s knottiest problems.

  Four or five, I say, and yet, strictly speaking, only four of them spoke, but there was a fifth person in the room who sat in silence, thinking or dozing, and whose only contribution to the debate was an occasional grunt of approval. The man was the same age as his companions, i.e., between forty and fifty years old; he was from the provinces, wealthy, intelligent, not uneducated, and, it would seem, shrewd and somewhat caustic. He never participated in their discussions or arguments, and always justified his silence with a paradox, saying that discussion was simply the polite form of the latent warrior instinct man had inherited from beasts. He would add that the seraphim and cherubim never disagreed, and they were eternal, spiritual perfection. When he gave this same answer that night, one of the others took him up on it and challenged him to prove his assertion, if he could. Jacobina (for that was his name) thought for a moment, then replied:

  “All things considered, perhaps you’re right.”

  And suddenly, in the middle of the night, this taciturn fellow began to hold forth, not for two or three minutes, but for thirty or forty. The meandering conversation had come to rest upon the nature of the soul, a point that radically divided the four friends. No two minds thought alike; not only was there no agreement, discussion became difficult, not to say impossible, on account of the multiplicity of issues branching out from the main trunk of the debate, and perhaps also on account of the inconsistency of the various positions adopted. One of the participants asked Jacobina to offer an opinion, or, at the very least, a conjecture.

  “No conjecture and no opinion,” he replied. “Either one can lead to disagreement and, as you all know, I never engage in arguments. But if you will listen in silence, I can tell you about an episode in my life that demonstrates the issue in question in the clearest possible terms. To begin with, there is not one soul, but two—”

  “Two?”

  “Yes, two. Every human creature contains two souls: one that looks from the inside out, and the other that looks from the outside in. Go on, gawk, stare, shrug your shoulders, whatever you like, but don’t say anything. If you try to argue, I’ll finish my cigar and go home to bed. Now, the external soul can be a spirit, a fluid, a man (or many men), an object, even an action. There are cases, for example, of a simple shirt button being a person’s external soul, or it could be the polka, a card game, a book, a machine, a pair of boots, a song, a drum, etc. Clearly, the function of this second soul, like the first, is to transmit life; together they complete the man, who is, metaphysically speaking, an orange. Whoever loses one half, automatically loses half of his existence, and there have been instances, quite common ones, in which the loss of the external soul implies the loss of one’s entire existence. Shylock, for example. The external soul of that particular Jew was his ducats; to lose them was the same as dying. ‘I shall never see my gold again,’ he says to Tubal; ‘thou stick’st a dagger in me.’ Consider carefully his choice of words: for him, the loss of the ducats, his external soul, meant death. One must, of course, remember that the external soul does not always stay the same—”

  “No?”

  “Indeed not, sir; it changes both in nature and in state. I am not alluding to certain all-consuming souls, such as one’s country, of which Camões famously said that he would not only die in his country, but with it; or power, which was Caesar’s and Cromwell’s external soul. These are forceful, all-excluding souls, but others, though still forceful, are changeable in nature. There are gentlemen, for example, whose external soul in their earliest years is a rattle or a hobbyhorse, but later on in life it will be their seat on the board of a charity. For my part, I know a lady—and a charming creature she is too—who changes her external soul five or six times a year. During the season it’s the opera, and when the season is over, she swaps her external soul for another: a concert, a ball at the Cassino, a trip to Rua do Ouvidor or Petrópolis—”

  “Excuse me, but who is this lady?”

  “The lady is the devil’s kin and bears the same name: her name is Legion. And there are many other such cases. I myself have experienced these changes. I won’t recount them now because it would take too long; I will confine myself to the episode I mentioned earlier. At the time, I was twenty-five years old . . .”

  Eager to hear the promised tale, his four companions forgot all about thei
r raging controversy. Blessèd curiosity! Thou art not only the soul of civilization; thou art the apple of concord, a divine fruit that tastes quite different from the apple of mythology. The room, until then buzzing with physics and metaphysics, is now a becalmed sea; all eyes are on Jacobina, who trims his cigar while collecting his thoughts. Here’s how he began:

  “I was twenty-five years old and poor, and had just been made a second lieutenant in the National Guard, the very lowest rank of commissioned officer. You cannot imagine what a huge event this was in our house. My mother was so happy and so proud! She insisted on addressing me as her lieutenant. Cousins, aunts, uncles, everyone was bursting with the purest, sincerest joy. In the town, to be sure, there were several disgruntled fellows—a wailing and gnashing of teeth, as it says in the Scriptures—the reason being that there had been many candidates for the post, and these other fellows were the losers. I suppose some of their annoyance was less understandable, though, and arose simply from a feeling of resentment that someone else should be singled out for distinction. I remember how some young men, even friends of mine, looked at me askance for quite some time afterward. On the other hand, many people were pleased by my appointment, the proof of which is that the whole of my rather splendid uniform was paid for by friends. It was then that one of my aunts, Dona Marcolina, Captain Peçanha’s widow, who lived on a remote and isolated farm many leagues from town, begged me to come and see her, and to bring my uniform. I went, accompanied by a footman, who returned to town a few days later, because no sooner had Auntie Marcolina lured me to her house than she wrote to my mother telling her that she wouldn’t let me go for at least a month. And how she hugged me! She, too, called me her lieutenant. She pronounced me a handsome devil and, being a rather jolly sort herself, even confessed to envying the girl who would one day be my wife. She declared that there was not a man in the entire province who was my equal. And it was always lieutenant this, lieutenant that, every hour of the day or night. I asked her to call me Joãozinho as she used to, but she shook her head, exclaiming that, no, I was ‘Senhor Lieutenant’ and that was that. One of her brothers-in-law, her late husband’s brother, who lived in the house, also refused to address me in any other way. I was ‘Senhor Lieutenant’ not in jest but perfectly seriously, and in front of the slaves as well, who naturally followed suit. I sat at the head of the table and was always served first. It was absurd, really. Such was Auntie Marcolina’s enthusiasm that she went so far as to have a large mirror placed in my room—a magnificent, ornate piece of work, quite out of keeping with the rest of the house, which was furnished simply and modestly. It had been given to her by her godmother, who had inherited it from her mother, who had bought it from one of the Portuguese noblewomen who came to Brazil in 1808 with the rest of King João VI’s court. I don’t know how much truth there was in this story, but that was the family tradition. Naturally, the mirror was very old, but you could still see the gilding, eaten away by time, a couple of carved dolphins in the top corners of the frame, a few bits of mother-of-pearl, and other such artistic flourishes. All rather old, but very good quality.”