The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  Falcão quivered. “At your age,” he confessed, “I had barely one hundred.”

  He was captivated. Reginaldo said it would take him two or three weeks to tell him all the miracles of the American dollar.

  “What’s that you call it?”

  “The dollar.”

  “You perhaps won’t believe it, but I’ve never even seen a dollar.”

  Reginaldo took a dollar coin out of his vest pocket and showed it to him. Before touching it, Falcão devoured it with his eyes. As it was somewhat dark inside, he stood up and went to the window to get a good look at it—from both sides. He then returned it, warmly praising how well it had been designed and minted, and adding that our old patacas were also rather fine.

  The visits continued. Reginaldo resolved to ask for the young lady’s hand. She, however, told him that he must first earn her uncle’s blessing; she would not marry against his wishes. Undaunted, Reginaldo redoubled his efforts, overwhelming the uncle with tales of fabulous dividends.

  “By the way,” Falcão said to him one day, “you never did show me your coin collection.”

  “Come to my house tomorrow.”

  Falcão went, and Reginaldo showed him the collection, displayed in a magnificent glass cabinet. Falcão was flabbergasted; he had expected a little box with one specimen of each coin, and instead found mounds of gold, silver, bronze, and copper. At first Falcão gazed at them in universal and collective wonder; then he began to study them one by one. He only knew the pounds, dollars, and francs, but Reginaldo named all of them: florins, crowns, rubles, drachmas, piastres, pesos, rupees—the entire numismatics of toil, he concluded poetically.

  “But what patience you showed in putting this collection together!” said Falcão.

  “Oh, it wasn’t me,” replied Reginaldo. “The collection belonged to the estate of a man from Philadelphia. I bought it for a trifle—five thousand dollars.”

  In reality, of course, it was worth a great deal more. Falcão left Reginaldo’s house with the collection embedded in his soul. He told his niece about it and, in his imagination, he untidied and re-tidied the coins, the way a lover tousles his sweetheart’s hair just in order to smooth it down again. At night, he dreamt he was a florin, tossed by a lansquenet player onto the card table, and that he returned to the player’s pocket with more than two hundred other florins. In the morning, as consolation, he went to examine the coins that he kept in his own safe, but nothing would console him. The finest possessions are those we don’t possess.

  A few days later, at home, in the parlor, he thought he saw some money lying on the floor. He bent down to pick it up; it wasn’t money, just a letter. He opened it absentmindedly and read it in horror: it was from Reginaldo to Virgínia . . . But the reader interrupts me, crying:

  “Enough! I can guess the rest. Virgínia married Reginaldo, the coins passed into Falcão’s hands, and they turned out to be fake . . .”

  No, dear reader, they were genuine. It would indeed be more moral if, to punish our man, they were counterfeit. But, alas! I am no Seneca; I am more like a Suetonius, who would recount the death of Caesar ten times over if that would bring him back to life, and yet Caesar would only return to life if he could also return to his empire.

  FULANO

  COME WITH ME, dear reader, to hear the will of my dear friend Fulano Beltrão. Did you know him? Now, stop sniggering; that’s not his real name, of course, but does it really matter what the fellow was called? Anyway, he was nearly sixty years old and he died yesterday, January 2, 1884, at half-past eleven at night. You can’t imagine the strength of mind he showed throughout his illness. He fell ill on Halloween, and at first we all assumed it was nothing to worry about, but the illness persisted and, just over two months later, death carried him off.

  I must confess that I’m very curious to hear the will. It’s bound to contain several provisions that are of both general interest and to his credit. It would not have been so prior to 1863, because, up until then, he was a man who kept very much to himself, living quietly on the road that leads to the Jardim Botânico, to where he would journey by omnibus or mule. He had a wife and son, and an unmarried daughter then age thirteen. It was in that year that he began to concern himself with other things besides his family, revealing a universal and generous spirit, although I cannot say why. I believe, however, that it began with a tribute from a friend on the occasion of his fortieth birthday. Fulano Beltrão read in the Jornal do Commercio, on March 5, 1864, an anonymous article in which many a fine and true thing was said about him: a good husband and father, a loyal friend, a worthy citizen, a pure and noble soul. To do him such ample justice was remarkable in itself; to do so anonymously was rare indeed.

  “You’ll see,” said Fulano Beltrão to his wife, “it will be Xavier or Castro who’s behind this; we’ll unmask them soon enough.”

  Castro and Xavier were two regular visitors to the house, constant partners in games of ombre and old friends of my late friend. Kind words were always spoken on the occasion of his birthday on March 5, but this usually happened over dinner, in the intimacy of the family circle, between four walls; it was the first time he had been blessed with tributes in the press. I may be wrong, but I am of the opinion that this display of justice, the material proof that fine qualities and good deeds do not go unnoticed, was what first encouraged my friend to place himself in the public eye, to see and be seen, and to bestow on human society a few of the virtues he had been born with. He marveled to think that thousands of other people would be reading the article at the same time as him, and he imagined them commenting, querying, and confirming what they had read; indeed, thanks to a phenomenon of hallucination that science will someday explain, and which is not that uncommon, he really did hear, quite distinctly, several of those readers’ voices. He heard them describe him as a good man, a worthy gentleman, a loyal friend, hardworking and honest: all the qualifications he had seen employed to describe others, and which in his quiet, reclusive life he had never presumed would be applied—typographically—to him.

  “The printing press is a great invention,” he said to his wife.

  It was Dona Maria Antônia who unmasked the author; the article was indeed by Xavier. He declared that he was only admitting this out of consideration for the lady of the house, and added that the tribute had not been as fulsome as he had intended, because his plan had been for the article to be published in all the newspapers, but, in the end, he had only finished writing it at seven o’clock in the evening and there had been no time to make copies. Fulano Beltrão corrected this failing, if it could be called a failing, by having the article transcribed in the Diário do Rio and the Correio Mercantil.

  Even if this event does not explain the change in our friend’s life, the fact remains that, from that year onward, and, more precisely, from the month of March, Fulano began to appear more often in public. Until then, he had been a stick-in-the-mud who didn’t attend society gatherings, didn’t vote in political elections, and didn’t go to the theaters, or to anything at all. But already by the end of March, on the twenty-second or twenty-third, he had presented the Santa Casa de Misericórdia Hospital with a Spanish lottery ticket, and received a dignified letter from the chairman, thanking him on behalf of the poor. He consulted his wife and friends as to whether he should publish the letter or put it away, being somewhat concerned that not publishing it might be seen as a discourtesy. And so, on March 26, the letter was sent to all the papers, one of which added an extensive commentary on the pious devotion of the donor. Of those who read the piece, many naturally remembered Xavier’s article, and linked the two: “Why, it’s that very same Fulano Beltrão who . . .” etc. Such are the foundations upon which a man’s reputation is built.

  It’s getting late, and we have to go and hear the will, so I shan’t give all the details now, but will simply say that the iniquities of life found in him an active and eloquent avenger, and that misery, particularly the dramatic sort, begotten of fire or
flood, found in my friend the instigator of the kind of charitable relief that, in such cases, must be both immediate and public. There was no one like him when it came to that sort of thing. It was the same with freeing slaves. Before the Law of September 28, 1871, came into force, it was very common for slave-children to turn up in the Praça do Comércio begging the merchants to help them purchase their freedom. Fulano Beltrão would sign up for three-quarters of the contributions necessary, and with such success that within a few minutes the full price was covered.

  The recognition he received further encouraged him, and even gave him ideas that might not otherwise have occurred to him. I won’t even mention the ball he gave to celebrate the Battle of Riachuelo, because it was a ball planned long before news of the victory reached Rio, and he did no more than invest it with a higher purpose than mere family entertainment, placing the portrait of Admiral Barroso among a display of flags and naval trophies in the hall of honor, opposite the Emperor’s portrait, and, during the supper, he offered several patriotic toasts, all as reported in the newspapers of 1865.

  But here, for example, we have a typical case of the influence that the just recognition of others can have on our own conduct. Fulano Beltrão was returning one day from the Treasury, where he had gone to sort out some taxes. As he was passing the Lampadosa Church, he remembered that he had been baptized there; and no man can recall such things without going back through all the years and events of his life, curling up once more in his mother’s lap, laughing and playing as he would never again laugh and play. Fulano Beltrão was no exception; he went up the steps and entered the church, so simple and modest, and yet to him so rich and beautiful. As he left, he made a resolution, which he put into action a few days later, to send the church a gift, a superb silver candlestick, engraved, along with the donor’s name, with two dates: the date of the donation and the date of his baptism. The gift was reported in all the papers, not least since they received the news twice, because the church authorities understood (and with good reason) that it was also incumbent on them to disclose the donation to all and sundry.

  Within three years or less, my friend had entered the public imagination; his name was remembered, even when no recent event suggested it, and not only remembered but endowed with adjectives. His absence was commented upon, his presence sought out. Thus, Dona Maria Antônia saw the biblical snake enter her Eden, not to tempt her, but to tempt Adam. Indeed, her husband had so many places to visit, so many things to take care of, as well as putting in frequent appearances outside Bernardo’s Emporium on Rua do Ouvidor, that their former domestic intimacy became positively strained. Dona Maria Antônia told him so. He agreed, but assured her that it could not be otherwise, and that, in any event, if his habits had changed, his sentiments had not. He had a moral obligation to society; no man is an island and so on, hence his recent neglect of domestic duties. The truth is that their lives had been too secluded; it was neither right nor decorous. It was certainly not appropriate; their daughter was reaching the age of matrimony, and a closed house carries a whiff of the convent about it. A carriage, for example. Why on earth didn’t they have a carriage? Dona Maria Antônia felt a brief frisson of excitement, but, after a moment’s reflection, she protested.

  “No. Whatever for? Certainly not. We don’t need a carriage.”

  “I’ve already bought one,” lied her husband.

  But here we are at the probate office. No one else has arrived yet; let’s wait at the door. Are you in a hurry? It’ll only take twenty minutes at most. Anyway, it’s true, he bought a fine carriage, a victoria, no less; and, for someone who, purely out of modesty, had for so many years traveled on the back of a mule or squeezed into a public omnibus, it was not easy to get used to this new mode of transport. To this I attribute his jutting, forward-leaning posture during those first few weeks, his eyes darting to left and right like someone looking for some particular person or house. Eventually he became accustomed to it and began to lean back in his seat, although without that air of indifference or nonchalance which his wife and daughter had in abundance, perhaps because they were women. As a matter of fact, the two ladies did not like going out in the carriage, but he was so insistent, regardless of whether or not they had any particular place to go, that they had no alternative but to obey. And so they became a well-known sight around the city; as soon as anyone caught so much as a distant glimpse of two ladies’ dresses, along with a certain coachman on the driver’s seat, everyone would immediately say: “Here comes Fulano Beltrão’s family.” And this, without perhaps him realizing it, made him even better known.

  He entered politics in 1868. I remember the year because it coincided with the fall of the liberals and the return of the conservatives. It was only a month or two before this, in March or April 1868, that he announced he was joining the ruling party, not surreptitiously, but with a great fanfare. It was, perhaps, the lowest point in my friend’s life. He was utterly devoid of political ideas; at best, he had one of those temperaments that is a kind of substitute for ideas, and gives the impression that a man is thinking when he is merely sweating. He gave in, however, to a momentary hallucination. He saw himself making pithy remarks in the Chamber, or leaning against the balustrade in conversation with the prime minister, who smiled at him with a grave, governmental intimacy. And it was there that the gallery, in the theatrical sense of the word, would gaze down upon him. He did everything he could to enter the legislature, but when he was halfway there, the government collapsed. Recovering from this shock, he had the presence of mind to tell Viscount Itaboraí the exact opposite of what he had said to the outgoing Zacarias, or perhaps it was the same thing; but, in any event, he lost the election and bowed out of politics. He behaved more wisely when he got himself involved with the prelates over the issue of freemasonry. He had kept quiet, at first; on the one hand, he himself was a Mason; on the other, he wanted to respect his wife’s religious sentiments. But the dispute reached such proportions that he could no longer remain silent; he entered the debate with the same passion, enthusiasm, and publicity that he poured into everything; he held meetings at which he spoke at length about freedom of conscience and the Mason’s right to don his apron; he signed petitions, representations, and letters of congratulations, and opened wide both his heart and his pocketbook.

  His wife died in 1878. She had asked to be buried without pomp and ceremony, and he did precisely that, because he truly loved her and considered her final wishes a decree from heaven. He had already lost his son; and his daughter, by then married, had gone off to Europe. My friend shared his pain with the public at large, and, although he did bury his wife without any pomp and ceremony, he nevertheless sent to Italy to have a magnificent mausoleum made for her which the whole of Rio was able to admire for nearly a month, when it was displayed on Rua do Ouvidor. His daughter even came to attend the inauguration. I lost touch with them around four years ago. He fell ill recently and, just over two months later, that illness carried him off to a better place. Note that, until the final death throes set in, he never lost either his wits or his strength of mind. He would chat with his visitors, get them to tell him all the news, and was always sure to reveal the names of his previous visitors to the new arrivals, a pointless exercise, since a sympathetic newspaper always published the full list. He had the papers read to him even on the morning of the day he died, and in one of them a brief article about his illness seemed in some way to reinvigorate him. But as the day wore on, he weakened somewhat, and, in the evening, he died.

  I can see you’re getting bored. They really are taking their time. Wait, I think that’s them. Yes, it is. Let’s go in. Here’s our magistrate, and he’s starting to read the will. Are you listening? All this painstaking genealogy is hardly necessary, well beyond the usual notarial requirements; but I suppose the mere fact of listing the entire family since his great-great-great-grandfather is evidence of my friend’s patient and meticulous nature. He certainly hasn’t left anything out. The fu
neral ceremony he sets out is long and complicated, but beautiful. Now begins the list of legacies. They’re all charitable; some industrial. You see laid before you the soul of my friend. Thirty contos . . .

  Thirty contos for what? To open a public subscription for the purpose of erecting a statue of Captain Pedro Álvares Cabral. “We Brazilians must not forget Cabral,” says the will, “for he was the precursor to our Empire.” It recommends that the statue be made of bronze, with four medallions on the pedestal, viz., a portrait of Bishop Coutinho, president of the Constituent Assembly, one of Gonzaga, leader of the Minas Conspiracy, and portraits of two citizens of the present generation “noted for their patriotism and liberalism,” to be chosen by the commission, which he himself appointed to complete the undertaking.

  Whether or not it comes to anything, I can’t say; we, of course, lack the determination of the first subscriber. However, should the commission carry out its task properly, and this South American sun of ours ever see the statue of Cabral erected, it would be an honor to us all if the distinguished features of my late friend were to appear on one of the medallions. Don’t you agree? Ah, the magistrate has finished; we can go now.

  SECOND LIFE

  MONSIGNOR CALDAS interrupted the stranger’s story:

  “Would you excuse me? I’ll just be a moment.”

  He stood up, made his way toward the kitchens, called for his old black manservant, and said in a low voice:

  “João, go down to the police station, speak to the commander on my behalf, and ask him to come here with one or two men, to take a madman off my hands. Go on, hurry.”

  And, returning to the parlor:

  “Right,” he said, “where were we?”

  “As I was saying, Reverend, I died on March 20, 1860, at forty-three minutes past five in the morning. I was sixty-eight years of age. My soul soared through space until it had lost sight of the Earth and left the moon, stars, and sun far behind. Finally, it entered a space where there was nothing at all, just a diffuse glow. I continued to soar ever higher, and began to see a brighter spot far, far in the distance. The spot grew and became a sun. I entered it, without getting burned, because souls are incombustible. Has yours ever caught fire?”