“Ruined,” he repeated, nodding. “There’s nothing for it; my life is ruined. You’ll remember those plans we made at college; you would be minister of internal affairs and I would be minister of justice. Well, you can have both portfolios now; I will never be anything. The egg that should have hatched into an eagle won’t even produce a chicken. Yes, completely ruined. I’ve been like this for a year and a half, and I can see no way out; I’ve lost every ounce of ambition.”
When I met him six months later, he was in a frantic, wretched state. Adriana had left him to go and study “geometry” with a student at the old Central School of Engineering. “It’s for the best,” I said to him. Oliveira hung his head in shame, then mumbled a goodbye and ran off after her. He found her several weeks later; they said their worst to each other, and in the end were reconciled. I then began to visit them, with the idea of separating them. She was still pretty and fascinating, with elegant, gentle manners, but these were evidently insincere, for they were accompanied by certain poses and gestures whose underlying aim was to entice and lure me in.
I took fright and pulled away. She had no shame whatsoever; she threw off her prim lace cape and revealed her true nature. I saw then that she was steely, scheming, unscrupulous, and often vulgar; in some situations I noticed a streak of depravity in her. At first Oliveira put up with everything, laughing, hoping to make me believe it was all lies or exaggerations; it was shame at his own weakness. But he could not keep the mask on; one day she pulled it off, pitilessly revealing all the humiliations he suffered when I wasn’t there. I felt disgust for her, and pity for the poor fellow. I openly encouraged him to leave her; he hesitated, but promised that he would.
“You’re right. I can’t take it any longer . . .”
We made all the arrangements, but, at the last moment, he simply couldn’t do it. Once again, she fixed him with her doe-eyed, basilisk stare, and this time—Oh, my dear, dear cousins from Sapucaia!—this time left him exhausted and dead.
A LADY
WHENEVER I ENCOUNTER this particular lady, I’m always reminded of the prophecy made by a lizard to Heine, when the poet was climbing the Apennines: “The day will come when stones will become plants, plants become animals, animals become men, and men become gods.” And it makes me want to say to her: “My dear Dona Camila, you so loved youth and beauty that you turned back the clock to see if you could fix those two shimmering moments forever in time. Do not despair, Dona Camila. When the lizard’s day comes, you will be Hebe, goddess of youth, and from your eternally youthful hands we will drink the nectar of everlasting life.”
The first time I saw her she was thirty-six years old, although she looked only thirty-two and still clung hopefully to the house of twenty-nine. “House” is a manner of speaking. No castle is grander than the dwelling occupied by that tender age, nor anything more flattering than the hospitality it offers to those who pass through its doors. Every time Dona Camila tried to leave, it begged her to stay, and stay she did. Yet more amusements would follow: games, music, dancing—a succession of delightful distractions concocted with the sole aim of keeping this lady from going on her way.
“Mama, Mama,” her growing daughter would say, “let’s go. We can’t stay here forever.”
Dona Camila would look at her, mortified, then smile, give her a kiss, and tell her to go play with the other children. What other children? By then Ernestina was fourteen or fifteen; tall for her age, very quiet, and already beginning to behave like a young lady. She would probably not much enjoy playing with little girls of eight or nine, but never mind; as long as she left her mother in peace, it scarcely mattered whether she was happy or bored. But, alas, all good things must come to an end, even the age of twenty-nine.
Dona Camila finally resolved to bid farewell to her generous host, and did so full of regrets. Her host begged her to hold off for five or six months, but the gracious lady replied that it was quite impossible and, mounting the sorrel horse of time, she trotted off to dwell in the house of thirty.
She was, however, one of those women who scorn both sun and almanacs. With a milk-white complexion, fresh and unchanging, she left the task of aging to others; she wanted only the task of living. She had jet-black hair and warm chestnut-brown eyes. Her neck and shoulders seemed made for wearing décolleté dresses, likewise her arms, which, to avoid a rather hackneyed simile, I will not compare to those of the Venus de Milo, but they can scarcely be described otherwise. Dona Camila knew this; she knew she was pretty, not only because the furtive glances of other ladies told her so, but by virtue of a certain instinct that beauty possesses, as do talent and genius. I should add that she was married, that her husband had ginger hair, and that they were still as in love with each other as newlyweds. And, finally, that she was an honest woman, not, please note, by temperament but on principle, out of love for her husband, and, I believe, a little out of pride.
Not a single flaw, then, except that of holding back the years. But is that a flaw? I don’t remember where it says in the Scriptures—one of the prophets, naturally—that days are like the waters of a river that can never turn back. Dona Camila wanted to build a dam for her own personal use. In the turmoil of this continual march from birth to death, she clung to the illusion of stability. All one could ask of her was not to make herself an object of ridicule, and she didn’t. The reader will tell me that beauty lives of and for itself, and that her preoccupation with the calendar shows that this lady was more concerned with what other people thought. That much is true, but how else do you expect women to live in this day and age?
Dona Camila entered the house of thirty, and the move was not so very difficult. Evidently her fears were unfounded. Two or three close friends, well versed in arithmetic, continued to say that she had lost count of the years. They did not add that nature was complicit in the error, and at forty—yes, forty!—Dona Camila still appeared to be in her early thirties. They had one last resort: to catch sight of her first gray hair, just one little gray hair. They spied on her in vain; her wretched hair seemed blacker than ever.
In this they were mistaken. The gray hair was there, in the shape of Dona Camila’s daughter, who was just turning nineteen and, for her sins, was very pretty indeed. Dona Camila persisted as long as she could in giving her daughter girlish dresses to wear, keeping her at convent school beyond the usual age, and doing everything possible to proclaim her still a child. Nature, however, is not only immoral but illogical, and while it held back the mother’s years, it loosened the reins on her daughter’s. Ernestina, now a grown woman, made a dazzling entrance at her first ball. She was a revelation. Dona Camila adored her daughter and drank in her glory in slow, deep draughts. At the bottom of the cup, though, she found a bitter drop and grimaced. She even considered abdicating her throne, but a man who was never at a loss for words told her that she looked like Ernestina’s elder sister, and so she abandoned the idea. From then on, Dona Camila began telling everyone that she had married very young.
One day, a few months later, the first suitor appeared on the horizon. Dona Camila had vaguely considered such a calamity, but without really facing up to it or preparing her defense. When she least expected it, she found an admirer on her doorstep. She quizzed her daughter and discovered in her an indefinable excitement, natural in a girl of twenty. Dona Camila was devastated. Marrying off her daughter was the least of it; for if human beings are like those waters in the Scriptures that never turn back, it is because others come after them, and it is in order to give a name to these successive waves of humanity that mankind invented the word “grandchildren.” Dona Camila could see that her first grandchild would soon be approaching, and was determined to delay it. Clearly she didn’t precisely formulate this resolution, just as she had not precisely formulated the danger she was in. The soul understands itself instinctively; a feeling is worth as much as rational thought. The feelings she had were obscure and fleeting, existing somewhere in the depths of her being, whence she chose not to
dredge them up, so as not to have to face them.
“But what’s wrong with Ribeiro?” her husband asked her one night, standing by the window.
Dona Camila shrugged.
“He has a crooked nose,” she said.
“Don’t be cruel. You’re upset. Let’s talk about something else,” her husband replied. And, after gazing out into the street for a couple of minutes and humming to himself, he returned to the subject of Ribeiro, whom he considered an entirely acceptable son-in-law. If the young man asked for Ernestina’s hand, he thought they should say yes. He was intelligent and polite. He was also likely to inherit from an aunt in Cantagalo. And, furthermore, he had a heart of gold. People said charming things about him. At college, for example . . . Dona Camila listened, tapping her foot and drumming impatiently with her fingers. But when her husband said that Ribeiro was expecting a position in the foreign ministry, a posting to the United States, she could not contain herself and cut him short:
“What? Separate me from my daughter? Certainly not.”
The relative proportions of maternal love and personal sentiment present in this protest is a difficult matter to resolve, especially now, so far removed from the events and people involved. Let’s suppose they were present in equal parts. The truth is that her husband didn’t know what to say in defense of the foreign ministry, the needs of the diplomatic service, or the inevitability of marriage. Lost for words, he went off to bed. Two days later, the appointment was made. The day after, the young lady told Ribeiro not to ask her father for her hand, because she did not want to be separated from her family. It was tantamount to saying: “I prefer my family to you.” It’s true that she said this in a faint and trembling voice, and with an air of profound consternation, but Ribeiro heard only the rejection, and promptly boarded ship. Thus ended the first adventure.
It pained Dona Camila to see her daughter so upset, but she was soon consoled. There was no lack of potential bridegrooms, she reflected. To console her daughter, she took her out and about in Rio. Both of them were pretty, and Ernestina had all the freshness of youth, but her mother’s beauty was more perfect and, despite her age, surpassed that of her daughter. We won’t go so far as to believe that it was this feeling of superiority that encouraged Dona Camila to prolong and repeat their frequent outings. No, maternal love alone explains everything. But let’s concede that it did provide a little encouragement. What’s wrong with that? What is the harm in a brave colonel nobly defending both his country and his gleaming epaulets? None of it precludes a love of country or a mother’s love.
A few months later, the second suitor appeared. This time he was a widower, a lawyer, and twenty-seven years old. Ernestina did not have the same feelings for him as she had for the first suitor, but she accepted him anyway. Dona Camila quickly made inquiries. She could find nothing to object to: his nose was as straight as his conscience, and he had a profound aversion to diplomatic life. But there would be other flaws; there must be. Dona Camila moved heaven and earth to find them; she inquired about his relations, his habits, and his past. She managed to find a few snippets here and there, but only a sliver of human imperfection: a certain moodiness, a lack of intellectual refinement, and, finally, an excessive self-regard. It was on the latter point that the good lady caught him. Slowly, she began to build a wall of silence; first, she laid down a layer of pauses of increasing duration, then came the clipped sentences, then the monosyllables, distractions, glazed eyes, condescending stares, and feigned yawns behind her fan. Initially, he did not understand, but when he realized that the mother’s boredom coincided with her daughter’s absences, he sensed that his presence was not welcome and withdrew. Had he been made of sterner stuff, he would have scaled that wall of silence; but he was proud and weak. Dona Camila gave thanks to the gods.
There followed a three-month respite. Then several short-lived flirtations made an appearance; ephemeral blowflies that lasted only a night and left no trace behind them. Dona Camila realized that they were bound to multiply, until something more substantive came along and forced her to give way. But, at the very least, she told herself, she wanted a son-in-law who would bring her daughter the same happiness that her own husband gave her. Once, either to reinforce this declaration of intent or for some other motive, she repeated this thought out loud, even though only she could hear it. You, shrewd psychologist that you are, may well imagine that she was trying to convince herself, but I prefer to tell you what happened to her in 186* . . .
It was morning. Dona Camila was sitting at her mirror, the window open, the verdant garden alive with the sound of cicadas and birds. She felt herself completely at one with the world outside. Only intellectual beauty is independent and superior. Physical beauty is the twin sister of landscape. Dona Camila relished this intimate, secret kinship, a feeling of oneness, a recollection of a previous life sharing the same divine womb. No unpleasant memories, no untoward circumstance came to cloud this mysterious feeling. On the contrary, everything seemed to imbue her with eternity, and her forty-two years weighed upon her no more than an equal number of rose petals. She looked out of the window, then back at the mirror. Suddenly, as if a snake had sprung up before her, she recoiled in terror. She had spotted, above her left temple, a small gray hair. For a moment she thought it must be one of her husband’s, but quickly realized it was her own, a telegram from old age, marching ineluctably toward her. She was utterly devastated. Dona Camila felt everything slipping away from her; she would be a gray-haired old hag within a week.
“Mama, Mama!” cried Ernestina, entering her mother’s sitting room. “Here are the tickets for the box seats that Papa ordered!”
Dona Camila felt a jolt of shame, and instinctively turned toward her daughter the side of her head unsullied by the gray hair. Never had Ernestina looked so graceful and spry. Dona Camila gazed at her lovingly. She gazed also with envy, and, to smother this unworthy feeling, she snatched the theater tickets from her hand. The performance was that very night. One thought drove out the other; Dona Camila imagined herself surrounded by lights and people, and her spirits quickly rose. Once she was alone again, she turned back to face the mirror, courageously plucked out the gray hair, and blew it into the garden. Out, damned spot! Out! More fortunate than that other Lady Macbeth, she watched her stain disappear into thin air, because in her mind, old age was remorse, and ugliness was a crime. Out, damned spot, out!
But if remorse can return, why not gray hairs? A month later, Dona Camila discovered another lurking in her thick, dark, beautiful locks, and ruthlessly amputated it. Five or six weeks later, she found another. The third gray hair coincided with a third candidate for her daughter’s hand, and both these things left Dona Camila utterly devastated. Beauty, which, in her case, had made up for vanishing youth, also seemed ready to depart, like a dove flying off in search of its mate. The days raced by. Children she had seen in their mothers’ arms, or in perambulators pushed by their nannies, now danced at balls. The boys were now men and had taken to smoking; the girls sang songs at the piano. Several of the latter group presented her with their chubby little babies; the next generation were suckling at their mother’s breast, waiting for their turn to go dancing, or singing, or smoking, and then showing off their own babies to other people, and on and on it would go.
Dona Camila prevaricated only a little before giving in. There was nothing to be done; she must accept the inevitability of a son-in-law. However, just as old habits die hard, Dona Camila saw, in parallel, that such a festival of love was also a stage, indeed a very grand stage. She prepared herself enthusiastically, and the effect matched her efforts. At the church among the other ladies, and in her drawing room seated on the sofa (covered with upholstery which, like the wallpaper, was always dark, so as to accentuate Dona Camila’s fair complexion), she was exquisitely dressed, with neither youthful whimsy nor matronly severity; a happy medium that served to highlight her autumnal graces, smiling and happy. In sum, the brand-new mother-in-law received t
he warmest of praise. Clearly a few shreds of the royal purple still hung from her shoulders.
Purple implies dynasty. Dynasty requires grandchildren. All that remained was for the Lord to bless the union, and He did so the following year. Dona Camila had gotten used to the idea, but abdicating her throne was so painful that she awaited the grandchild with a mixture of love and repugnance. Did the Earth really need this troublesome embryo, so puffed-up and curious about life? Evidently not, but it nevertheless appeared one day, along with the flowers of spring. During the most critical phase, Dona Camila had only to think of her daughter; once the danger had passed she had both a daughter and a grandson to think about. Only days later could she think of herself. Finally, she was a grandmother. No ifs, no buts, she was a grandmother. Neither her features, which were still perfection, nor her hair, which was still black (except for half a dozen stray hairs, carefully concealed), could by themselves betray reality, but the reality existed: she was, finally, a grandmother.
She wanted to hide away. To have her grandson nearby, she asked her daughter to come and live with her. But her house was no monastery, and the streets and newspapers, with their constant chatter, awoke in her echoes of times gone by. She therefore tore up the instrument of abdication and returned to the fray.
One fine day, I saw her standing beside a black nanny who was cradling a baby of five or six months. Dona Camila was holding up her little parasol to shade the baby. I saw her again a week later, with the same baby, the same black nanny, and the same parasol. Three weeks later, and again a month later, I saw her again, getting onto the streetcar with the black nanny and the baby. “Have you already fed him?” she asked the black woman. “Watch the sun. Don’t trip. Don’t hold him so tightly. Is he awake? Don’t disturb him. Cover his little face.” And so on.
The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis Page 65