The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  “Was it large?”

  “Indeed it was. And as I say, it was really very kind of her, because the mirror had previously been in the parlor, and was the best piece in the house. But there was no dissuading my aunt; she replied that it would not be missed, that it was only for a couple of weeks, and, after all, it was the least the ‘Senhor Lieutenant’ deserved. The fact is that all these little attentions, shows of affection, and kindnesses brought about a transformation in me, aided and abetted by the natural vanity of youth, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

  “Well, no, actually.”

  “The officer eliminated the man. For several days, the two hung in the balance, but it wasn’t long before my original nature gave way to the other; only a tiny part of my humanity remained. What had happened was that my external soul, which, up until then, had been the sun, the air, the rolling countryside, and the eyes of young women, changed entirely and became the bowing and scraping that went on around the house, everything that spoke to me of my rank, and nothing about me, the man. Only the officer remained; the private citizen had vanished into thin air, and into the past. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “I find it hard even to understand,” replied one of his listeners.

  “You will in due course. Actions are better at explaining feelings: actions are everything. After all, even the very best definition of love is no match for a kiss from the girl you’re courting, and, if memory serves me right, an ancient philosopher once demonstrated movement by walking. So let’s cut to the chase. Let us see how, as the consciousness of the man was slowly being obliterated, that of the officer was becoming intensely alive. Human suffering and human joys, if that’s all they were, barely won from me so much as an apathetic nod or a condescending smile. After three weeks, I was a different person, changed utterly. I was all lieutenant and nothing else. Then one day, Auntie Marcolina received some grave news. One of her daughters, married to a farmer who lived five leagues away, was ill, perhaps dying. Farewell, nephew! Farewell, Lieutenant! The distraught mother immediately made arrangements to travel, asked her brother-in-law to go with her, and me to take charge of the farm. I believe that had she not been so upset she would have done the opposite, leaving the brother-in-law behind and taking me with her. As it turned out, however, I was left on my own, with a couple of household slaves. I immediately felt a great sense of oppression, as if the four walls of a prison had suddenly closed around me. It was my external soul contracting, you see, for now it was limited to a handful of half savages. The officer continued to hold sway within me, albeit less intensely alive and less fiercely conscious. The slaves put a note of humility into their bows and curtsys, which somewhat made up for the lack of family affection and the interruption of domestic intimacy. That same night, they noticeably redoubled their cheerful expressions of respect and admiration. It was ‘Massa’ Lieutenant every other minute. Massa Lieutenant very handsome, Massa Lieutenant soon be colonel, Massa Lieutenant marry pretty girl, general’s daughter; a concerto of praise and prophesies that left me feeling ecstatic. Ah, the traitors! Little did I suspect the scoundrels’ secret intentions.”

  “What? To kill you?”

  “If only.”

  “Worse?”

  “Just listen. The following morning I awoke to find myself alone. The scoundrels, whether egged on by others or of their own accord, had plotted to run away in the night, and had done precisely that. I found myself completely alone, with no one else within the four walls of the house, staring out at the deserted yard and empty countryside beyond. Not a single human breath. I searched the house, the slave quarters, everywhere, but found nothing and no one, not a single pickaninny. Only some cocks and hens, a pair of mules philosophizing about life as they flicked away the flies, and three oxen. The slaves had even taken the dogs. Not a single human being. Do you think this was better than dying? Well, I can tell you it was worse. Not that I was afraid; I swear to you that I wasn’t; in fact, I was almost devil-may-care, to the point of not feeling anything at all during those first few hours. After that, I felt sad for Auntie Marcolina’s financial loss, and was in somewhat of a quandary as to whether I should go and see her and give her the bad news, or stay and take care of the house. I opted for the latter course of action, so as not to leave the house completely defenseless, and because, if my cousin was seriously ill, I would only be increasing her mother’s distress without providing any remedy. Besides, I expected Uncle Peçanha’s brother to return that day or the next, since he’d already been gone thirty-six hours. But the morning passed with no sign of him, and during the afternoon I began to feel decidedly odd, like someone who has lost all sensation in his nerves and can no longer feel his muscles move. Uncle Peçanha’s brother did not return that day, or the next, or for the rest of the week. My solitude took on overwhelming proportions. Never had the days been so long; never had the sun scorched the earth with such wearying ferocity. The hours passed as slowly as centuries on the old clock in the parlor, whose pendulum, tick-tock, tick-tock, tapped away at my inner soul like the endlessly snapping fingers of eternity. When, many years later, I read an American poem, one of Longfellow’s, I think, and came across the famous refrain: ‘Never, for ever! – For ever, never!’ I confess that I felt a shiver run down my spine at the memory of those terrifying days. Auntie Marcolina’s clock was just like that: ‘Never, for ever! – For ever, never!’ It wasn’t merely the tick-tock of the pendulum, but a dialogue from the abyss, a whispering voice from the void. And then there were the nights! Not that they were any quieter. They were as silent as the days, but the nights were filled with darkness and an even narrower, or perhaps vaster, solitude. Tick-tock, tick-tock. No one in any of the rooms, no one on the veranda, in the hallways, the yard; no one anywhere at all. Are you laughing?”

  “Yes, for it seems you were a little scared after all.”

  “Oh! If only I could have felt scared! At least I would have been alive. But the main thing I remember is that I couldn’t even feel fear, or at least not fear as it is commonly understood. It was an inexplicable sensation. I was like a dead man walking, a sleepwalker, a mechanical toy. Sleep itself was another matter. Sleep brought me relief, but not for the usual reason: that sleep is death’s brother. I think I can explain the phenomenon as follows: in eliminating the need for an external soul, sleep gives free rein to the internal one. In my dreams, I would put on my uniform surrounded by family and friends, who would praise my elegant attire, address me as lieutenant; then a family friend would come and promise me a promotion to captain or major, and I would be filled with life again. But when I woke to the cold light of day, that sense of my newly reunified self faded with my dreams—because my internal soul had lost its exclusive power of action, and was once again dependent upon the other, the external soul, which stubbornly refused to return. And it did not return. I would wander about outside to see if there was any sign of life. Sœur Anne, sœur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir? Nothing, absolutely nothing, just like that old French fairy tale. Only the dust of the road and the grassy hilltops. I would return to the house, at my wits’ end, and lie down on the sofa in the parlor. Tick-tock, tick-tock. I would stand up, pace the room, drum my fingers on the windowpanes, whistle. At one point, I considered writing something, a political article, a novel, an ode, perhaps; I didn’t choose which, but sat down and scribbled a few words and random phrases that I could use to spice up the style. But the style, like Auntie Marcolina, would not come. Sœur Anne, sœur Anne . . . Nothing at all. All I could see was the ink turning blacker and the page whiter.”

  “But didn’t you have anything to eat?”

  “Not much; just fruit, ground-up cassava, preserves, a few roots roasted on the fire, but I would have endured it all quite cheerfully had it not been for the terrible mental state I was in. I recited verses, speeches, passages in Latin, Gonzaga’s love poems, whole stanzas by Camões, sonnets, a thirty-volume anthology in all. Sometimes I did gymnastic exercises, other times I pinched my legs
, but the effect was only a physical sensation of weariness or pain, nothing more. There was only silence, a vast, enormous, infinite silence, only underscored by the eternal tick-tock of the clock. Tick-tock, tick-tock . . .”

  “Yes, that would be enough to drive anyone mad.”

  “There’s worse to come. I should tell you that ever since I’d been alone, I had not once looked in the mirror. I wasn’t avoiding it deliberately, for I had no reason to do so; it was an unconscious impulse, a dread of finding two of me, at the same time, in that solitary house. If that is the true explanation, then there is no better proof of man’s contradictory nature, for, a week later, I got it into my head to look at the mirror with precisely the aim of seeing myself twice over. I looked and recoiled. The glass itself seemed to be conspiring with the rest of the universe; it didn’t show me as a sharp, complete image, but as something vague and hazy, diffuse, a shadow of a shadow. The laws of physics will not allow me to deny that the mirror did indeed reproduce my shape and features accurately, for it must have done, but that was not what my senses told me. Then I did feel afraid; I attributed the phenomenon to my strained nerves; I feared I would go mad if I stayed any longer. ‘I must leave,’ I said to myself. And I raised my arm in a gesture that was both ill-tempered and decisive. I saw the gesture repeated in the mirror, but it was somehow dispersed, frayed, mutilated . . . I began to get dressed, muttering to myself, clearing my throat, shaking my clothes brusquely, and cursing my recalcitrant buttons, just in order to say something. From time to time, I glanced furtively at the mirror, only to see the same blurred outlines, the same confused shapes. I carried on getting dressed. Suddenly some inexplicable flash of inspiration, some spontaneous impulse, planted an idea in my head. Can you guess what it was?”

  “No, tell us.”

  “I was staring desperately at the mirror, contemplating my own dissolving, incomplete features, a mass of loose and shapeless lines, when the idea came to me . . . No, you’ll never guess.”

  “Go on, tell us.”

  “I had the idea of putting on my lieutenant’s uniform. I did so, every last bit of it, and, as I stood in front of the mirror, I raised my eyes and . . . I hardly need say it: the mirror now showed my whole figure, with not a feature or a line out of place; it was me, my own self, the lieutenant, who had finally rediscovered his external soul. This soul, missing since my aunt’s departure, scattered and dispersed since the slaves ran away, was now pieced back together in the mirror. Imagine a man who, little by little, emerges from a coma, opens his eyes without seeing, then begins to see, begins to distinguish people from objects, but cannot recognize any of them individually, then, finally, realizes that this fellow is so-and-so, and that one is what’s-his-name, here’s a chair, there’s a sofa. Everything returns to what it was before his deep sleep. So it was with me. I looked in the mirror, moved from side to side, stepped back, waved, smiled, and the glass reflected everything. I was no longer an automaton, I was a living being. From that point on, I was another person. Every day, at a certain time, I would put on my lieutenant’s uniform and sit in front of the mirror, reading, looking, and meditating; after two or three hours, I would take my uniform off again. By sticking to this regime, I was able to get through more than six days of solitude without the slightest problem.”

  By the time his companions had come to their senses again, the narrator had already left.

  A VISIT FROM ALCIBIADES

  Letter from District Judge “X” to the Rio Chief of Police

  Rio de Janeiro, September 20, 1875

  SIR,

  I trust you will forgive my shaky handwriting and slovenly style; you will soon understand the reason why.

  Today, this very evening, just after dinner, while I was waiting for the Cassino to open, I lay down on the sofa and opened a volume of Plutarch. You, sir, who were my schoolroom companion, will remember that ever since I was a boy I have had a passion for Greek, a passion or indeed a mania, which was the name you gave it, and one so intense that it often led me to fail in other subjects. I opened the book and, as always happens when I read some ancient text, I found myself transported back to the period in question, right into the thick of the action or whatever else was going on. Perfect after-dinner reading. In no time at all, one finds oneself on a Roman road, under a Greek portico, or in a grammarian’s workshop. Modern times, the Herzegovina uprising, the Carlist Wars, Rua do Ouvidor, the Chiarini Circus—all vanish into thin air. Fifteen or twenty minutes of ancient life, and all for free. A veritable literary digestif.

  That is precisely what happened this evening. The book fell open at the life of Alcibiades. I allowed myself to be seduced by the flow of those Attic cadences; within moments, I was entering the Olympic Games, marveling at that flower of Athenian manhood as he drove his chariot magnificently, with the grace and determination he had always shown on the battlefield, or when curbing his fellow citizens or his own sensual urges. Oh, to be alive then, sir! But then the slave-boy came in to light the gas, and that was enough to put all the archaeology of my imagination to flight. Athens was relegated to history, while my gaze fell from the clouds, or, rather, came to rest upon my white duck trousers, my alpaca jacket, and my cordovan leather shoes. And then I thought to myself:

  “What would that illustrious Athenian make of modern-day dress?”

  I have been a spiritualist for some months now, because, convinced that all systems are pure nothingness, I decided to adopt the most enjoyable one. The time will come when it is not only enjoyable, but also useful for solving historical problems: it is far quicker to summon the spirits of the dead than to expend one’s own critical energies to no good end, because no rationale or theory can better explain the intention of an act than the author of the act himself. Such was my goal this evening. Wondering what Alcibiades might have thought was a sheer waste of time, with no benefit beyond the pleasure of admiring my own cleverness. I therefore decided to summon up the Athenian, and asked him to appear in my house forthwith, without delay.

  And here begins the extraordinary part of the adventure. Alcibiades lost no time in answering my call; two minutes later, he was there, in my parlor, standing by the wall, but he was not the intangible shadow I had expected to summon using our schoolboy methods; it was the real Alcibiades, flesh and blood, the man himself, authentically Greek, dressed like the ancients, and full of that blend of courtesy and audacity with which he used to harangue the great assemblies of Athens, and occasionally its fools. You, sir, who know so much about history, cannot ignore the fact that there were, indeed, some fools in Athens. Yes, even Athens had fools, a precedent that perhaps gives us something of an excuse. I swear I could not believe it; no matter what my senses told me, I could not believe that it was not a ghost standing there before me, but Alcibiades himself, restored to life. I still nurtured the hope that it was nothing more than the effects of indigestion, a simple excess of gastric fluids, magnified through the lens of Plutarch. And so I rubbed my eyes, stared, and . . .

  “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  On hearing this, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The figure spoke, and spoke Greek, the purest Attic. There was no doubting that it was the man himself, dead for twenty centuries, brought back from the grave, and as alive as if he had come straight from cutting off his poor dog’s tail, as he so famously did. It was clear that, without a moment’s thought, I had just taken a great stride forward along the path of spiritualism. But, silly me, I didn’t, at first, realize this, and I allowed myself to be caught off guard. He repeated the question, looked around him, and sat down in an armchair. He saw that I was cold and trembling (as I still am even now), and spoke to me rather tenderly, even trying to laugh and joke so as to put me at my ease. As deft as ever! What more can I say? A few minutes later, we were chatting away in ancient Greek, he reclining nonchalantly in his chair, I earnestly begging all the saints in heaven to send some sort of distraction—a servant, a visitor, a local constable, or even, sh
ould it prove necessary, for a fire to break out.