It was thus, each according to his own temperament, that they recounted and remarked on the day’s events. Examples of pure, sincere faith, of indifference, of dissembling and double-dealing, had already been laid bare; the two ascetics grew ever sadder, but Saint Francis de Sales reminded them of the words of the Scriptures: “Many are called but few are chosen,” by which he meant that not all who attended that church came with a pure heart. Saint John shook his head.
“I must tell you, Francis de Sales, I am developing a most unusual sentiment in a saint: I’m beginning to lose my faith in humankind.”
“Now, don’t exaggerate, John the Baptist,” replied the saintly bishop. “Let’s not get carried away. Look, something happened here today that made me smile, and yet the very same thing might well have filled you with indignation. Men are no worse now than they were in earlier centuries. Set aside all their bad qualities, and you’ll find there are many good qualities left. Believe this and you will surely smile when you hear the tale I have to tell you.”
“Me? Smile?”
“Yes, you, John the Baptist, and you as well, Francis of Paola; in fact, it will make all of you smile. And I can tell you about it now because I have already interceded with the Lord and obtained from Him the very thing for which this person was praying.”
“Which person?”
“Someone far more interesting than your notary, Joseph, or your storekeeper, Michael—”
“That may be so,” said Saint Joseph, breaking in. “But nothing could be more interesting than the adulteress who prostrated herself at my feet today, asking me to cleanse her heart of the leprosy of lust. Only yesterday she had argued with her lover, who vilely insulted her, and she had spent the whole night crying. In the morning, she resolved to leave him, and came here to seek the strength she needed to escape the demon’s grasp. She began by praying earnestly, fervently even, but little by little I could tell that her thoughts were drifting back to those earthly delights. Her words gradually lost their vigor. Her prayers became lukewarm, then cold, then mechanical; her lips, accustomed to prayer, continued praying, but her soul, on which I was spying from above, was no longer present; it was with that other man. Finally, she crossed herself, stood up, and left without asking for anything.”
“My story is better than that.”
“Better than mine?” asked Saint Joseph curiously.
“Much better,” replied Saint Francis de Sales, “and it isn’t sad like the one about that poor soul tormented by base earthly desires, and who may yet be saved by the grace of our Lord. For why would He not save her as well? Anyway, here goes.”
They all stopped talking and leaned forward attentively, waiting. Here I took fright, remembering how they, who see everything that goes on inside us as clearly as if we were made of glass—all our hidden thoughts, our devious intentions, our secret loathings—could easily have already spied within me some sin, or even the germ of a sin. But I had no time for further reflection; Saint Francis de Sales began to speak.
“My man is fifty years old,” he said, “his wife is in bed, suffering from a deadly skin infection in her left leg. He’s been beside himself with worry for the last five days, because the disease is getting worse and science has as yet failed to come up with a cure. See, however, how far public prejudice can go. Nobody believes in Sales’s anguish (yes, he bears my name), nobody believes he loves anything but money, for as soon as news of his unhappiness began to spread, the whole neighborhood was awash with scurrilous jokes and jests; there were even those who believed that what was really upsetting him was the thought of how much her funeral would cost.”
“That could well be true,” said Saint John.
“But it wasn’t. That he is usurious and miserly I do not deny; as usurious as life itself, and as miserly as death. Never has anyone so resolutely extracted gold, silver, paper, and copper from the pockets of others; never has anyone squirreled away money with more alacrity and zeal. A coin that falls into his hand rarely leaves it again, and anything that isn’t invested in property resides in an iron chest always kept firmly under lock and key. Sometimes, in the dead of night, he opens the chest and contemplates his money for a few minutes, then quickly closes it again; but on such nights, he sleeps either badly or not at all. He has no children. He leads a mean and niggardly life, eating little and badly, just enough to keep body and soul together. His family consists of his wife and a black slave woman, one of two he bought many years ago, secretly, from smugglers. They say he didn’t even pay for them, because the seller died shortly afterward and there was nothing written down. The other slave woman died a little while ago, and this is where you can decide whether or not this man is a genius when it comes to penny-pinching: he gave the corpse its freedom!”
And the saintly bishop paused to savor the reaction of his fellow saints.
“The corpse?”
“Yes, the corpse. He had the slave buried as a free pauper, so as not to incur any funeral expenses. Little enough, perhaps, but it was still something. And for him there is no such thing as little: it is with drops of water that whole streets are flooded. He’s not interested in outward appearances or in aping aristocratic tastes; all those things cost money and, as he says, money doesn’t grow on trees. He has no social life to speak of and no family amusements. He listens to and repeats tittle-tattle about other people’s lives, for such pleasures come free.”
“One can understand people’s skepticism,” said Saint Michael.
“I wouldn’t disagree there, because the world never looks below the surface of things. The world doesn’t see that, while Sales does indeed think of his wife as his carefully house-trained companion and confidante of twenty years, he really does love her. Don’t be shocked, Michael. Even on the most inhospitable of walls a flower may bloom, colorless and without scent, but a flower nonetheless. The botany of love is full of such anomalies. Sales loves his wife; he’s devastated at the thought of losing her. And so, in the early hours of this morning, not having slept for more than two hours, he began thinking about the impending catastrophe. Despairing of the Earth, he turned to God; he thought of us, and especially of me, since he bears my name. Only a miracle could save her, and so he resolved to come here. He lives nearby, and came running. When he entered, his eyes shone with hope; it could have been the light of faith, but, in fact, it was something quite specific, as I will explain. Now, here’s where you all need to pay even closer attention.”
I saw them lean even farther forward, and I myself could not resist the temptation to take another step closer. The saint’s account was so long and detailed, his analysis so complicated, that I won’t set it down here in full, but merely give the main points.
“When he thought of coming to ask me to intercede on behalf of his wife, Sales had an idea typical of a usurer: he would promise me a wax leg. It wasn’t the believer seeking a symbolic reminder of a favor granted, but, rather, the usurer trying to force the hand of divine grace with the expectation of profit. And it wasn’t only usury that spoke, but avarice too: by offering this vow he was showing that he truly wished to save his wife—a miser’s intuition. Payment is proof: parting with ready cash is the test of whether you truly want something, or so his conscience whispered darkly to him. Well, you all know that such thoughts are not formed as others are; they are born deep within the bowels of character and linger on in the shadows of conscience. But I read all this in his mind the moment he came into the church, looking agitated, his eyes ablaze with hope. I read all these things, and waited for him to finish crossing himself and praying.”
“At least he has some religious feeling,” muttered Saint Joseph.
“Some, yes, but only in a very vague and parsimonious way. He never became a member of any confraternities or lay orders, because they do nothing but steal what belongs to the Lord. Or so he says, trying to reconcile devotion with his pocket. But I suppose we can’t have everything; at least he fears God and believes in doctrine.”
&nb
sp; “So he knelt and prayed.”
“Yes, he prayed, and while he was praying, I saw his poor suffering soul, although hope was already beginning to turn to instinctive certainty. God was sure to save the sick woman; He was bound to, thanks to my intervention, and I would intercede. That’s what he was thinking as his lips mouthed the words of the prayer. When he had finished praying, Sales stayed for a short time gazing upward, his hands still clasped together. Finally, he spoke: to confess his pain and to swear that no other hand, beyond that of the Lord Himself, could stay the blow. His wife was dying . . . dying . . . dying . . . And he repeated the word, unable to escape it. His wife was dying. He went no further. Ready to formulate his request and give his promise, he could find no appropriate or even vaguely approximate words; he could find nothing at all, so unaccustomed was he to giving anything away. Finally, he spluttered out his request; his wife was dying and he was begging me to save her, to plead with the Lord on her behalf. The promise, however, simply would not come out. As his mouth tried to articulate the first word, avarice tightened its grip about his guts and stopped that promise from escaping his lips. ‘Save her . . . Intercede for her . . .’ he begged.
“The wax leg appeared to him, hanging in midair before his eyes, followed shortly by the vision of the coin that it would cost him. The leg disappeared, but the coin remained; a disk of purest yellow gold—solid gold, far better than the candlesticks on my altar, which are merely gilt. Whichever way he looked, he could see the coin spinning, spinning, spinning. From afar, he caressed it with his eyes, feeling the cold sensation of the metal and even the texture of the raised relief stamped upon it. It was her, his old friend of many years, his companion by day and by night; it was her, hanging in the air before him, spinning giddily, descending from the ceiling, rising from the floor, rolling across the altar from the Epistle to the Gospel, tinkling against the chandelier’s crystal drops.
“By now the sadness and supplication in his eyes were more intense and entirely genuine. I watched his gaze reach up to me, full of contrition, humiliation, and pain. He mouthed some incoherent platitudes—God . . . the angel of the Lord . . . Christ’s holy wounds . . .—tearful, tremulous words, as if hoping they would convince me of the sincerity of his faith and the immensity of his sorrow. But still no promise of a leg. At times, like someone steeling himself before leaping a ditch, his soul dwelled at length upon his wife’s imminent demise and prepared to fling itself into the despair her death would bring him; but when he reached the edge of the ditch and the moment came to leap, he hung back. The coin rose up before him, and the promise stayed buried in his heart.
“Time was passing. The hallucination grew, because the coin, accelerating and multiplying its leaps and bounds, multiplied itself again and again until there appeared an infinite number of coins; his inner conflict reached tragic proportions. Suddenly the fear that his wife might be at death’s door froze the poor man’s blood and all he could think of was rushing off to be with her. She might be dying! Again he asked me to intercede for her, to save her . . .
“At this point, the demon of avarice suggested a new transaction—a change of currency, if you will—telling him that the value of prayer was of the highest rank and quality, far superior to that of mere earthly undertakings. And Sales, contrite, head bowed, hands pressed together, his gaze obedient, helpless and resigned, asked me once again to save his wife. And to save her he promised me three hundred—no less—three hundred Our Fathers and three hundred Hail Marys. He repeated this emphatically: three hundred, three hundred, three hundred . . . He went higher and higher: five hundred, then a thousand Our Fathers and a thousand Hail Marys. He could see this number written out in front of him, not in words but in numerals, as if this made the figure somehow more vivid and exact, the obligation greater, greater also its seductive power. One thousand Our Fathers, one thousand Hail Marys. And once again those tearful, tremulous words returned: the holy wounds, the angel of the Lord . . . 1,000, 1,000, 1,000. The four numerals had grown so tall that they now filled the church from top to bottom, and with them grew both the man’s efforts and his confidence. The word came out loud and clear, ever faster, ever more urgent: ‘thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand!’ Come, now,” said Saint Francis of Sales, “surely you can see the funny side. Go on, laugh! Laugh as much as you like.”
And the other saints did indeed laugh; not the great guffaws of Homer’s gods when they saw lame Vulcan serving at table, but a polite, pious, very Catholic laugh.
I heard nothing more after that. I fell to the floor in a dead faint. When I came to, it was broad daylight. I rushed to open the doors and windows of the church and sacristy, to let in the sun, that enemy of bad dreams.
HER ARMS
FLINCHING AT THE attorney’s angry cries, Inácio took the plate being handed to him and tried to eat beneath the deluge of insults: “Good-for-nothing, blockhead, idiot, imbecile!
“How is it you never hear a word I say? I’ll tell your father and he’ll beat the laziness out of you with a good quince rod or some other big stick; you’re not too old to get a beating, sonny, so don’t go thinking you are. Idiot! Imbecile!
“He’s the same out of the house as in,” the attorney went on, turning to Dona Severina, a lady who had been living with him, matrimonially, that is, for many years. “He gets all my documents in a muddle, goes to the wrong house, visits one notary instead of another, mixes up the lawyers’ names: he’s a complete disaster! It’s that endless sleeping of his that does it. You’ve seen what he’s like in the mornings; you practically have to break his bones to get him out of bed . . . Well, just you wait; tomorrow I’ll beat him out of bed with a broom handle!”
Dona Severina nudged him with her foot to stop. Borges spat out several more choice insults, then made his peace with God and men.
I won’t say he made his peace with children, because our Inácio was not exactly a child. He was fifteen years old, and a good fifteen at that. He had a somewhat disheveled but handsome head, and the dreamy eyes of a young lad who wonders, and questions, and wants to know everything, but ends up knowing nothing at all. All this set atop a body that was not devoid of grace, albeit badly dressed. His father, a barber in Cidade Nova, had apprenticed him as an errand boy or clerk or whatever, to the attorney Borges, in the hope of seeing him one day practice at the bar, for he reckoned that even small-time attorneys made lots of money. All this took place in Rua da Lapa, in 1870.
For some minutes, nothing more was heard apart from the clink of cutlery and the sound of chewing. Borges stuffed himself with lettuce and beef, punctuating his munching with an occasional slurp of wine before continuing to eat in silence.
Inácio ate slowly, not daring to raise his eyes from his plate, not even to return them to where they had been resting before the formidable Borges began laying into him. Doing so now would be very risky indeed. He never could set eyes upon Dona Severina’s arms without forgetting both himself and everything else.
The blame for this lay first and foremost with Dona Severina for showing off her arms like that. All the dresses she wore around the house had short sleeves, scarcely a few inches below the shoulder, leaving her arms bare for all to see. They were, it must be said, beautifully full and rounded arms in perfect harmony with their mistress—who was more plump than thin—and neither their color nor their softness suffered on being exposed to the air. However, it is only fair to explain that she did not display them out of vanity, but because all her long-sleeved dresses were too old and worn. When standing, she was a fine figure of a woman, and when she walked, she had a charming little wiggle; Inácio, however, hardly ever saw her except at the dining table, where he could scarcely see beyond her arms to look at her bust. She could not be said to be pretty, but nor was she ugly. She wore no jewelry and took little trouble with her hair, simply combing it back and fastening it on top of her head with the tortoiseshell comb her mother had left her. She wore a dark-colored scarf around her neck and no earrings at a
ll—a sturdy twenty-seven-year-old in the full bloom of life.
When supper was over and coffee was served, Borges pulled four cigars from his pocket, compared them, squeezed them between thumb and forefinger, chose one, and put the others back. Once he had lit the chosen cigar, he planted his elbows on the table and talked to Dona Severina about a hundred and one things that were of no interest whatsoever to our Inácio. Still, for as long as the attorney talked, at least he wasn’t scolding him, and he could let his mind wander freely.
Inácio lingered over his coffee as long as he could. Between one sip and the next, he smoothed the tablecloth, picked imaginary bits of skin from his fingers, or let his eyes wander over the pictures in the dining room, of which there were two: one of Saint Peter and one of Saint John, devotional prints brought back from church festivals and framed at home. He might just about be able to hide his thoughts from Saint John, whose youthful head brings cheer to Catholic imaginations, but the austere Saint Peter was too much for him. In his defense, young Inácio could plead only that he saw neither one nor the other; his eyes passed over them as if there were nothing there at all. He saw only Dona Severina’s arms—either because he took the occasional stealthy sideways glance at them, or because they were emblazoned on his memory.
“Come on, man! Are you still not done?” bellowed the attorney suddenly.
There was nothing for it. Inácio downed the last drop of already cold coffee, and retired, as usual, to his room at the rear of the house. On entering, he made a silent gesture of anger and despair, then went over to lean at one of the two windows looking out to sea. After five minutes, the view of the water close by and the mountains far off brought back the confused, vague, restless feeling that both pained and comforted him, much as a plant must feel when its first flower blooms. He wanted to leave, but also to stay. He’d been there for five weeks now, and his life followed the same, unchanging routine: leaving the house every morning with Borges, hanging around the courts and notaries’ offices, running here and there getting documents stamped and delivered, chasing after clerks and bailiffs. In the afternoon, he would return to the house, have his dinner, and go to his room until it was time for supper; after supper, he went straight to bed. Borges did not treat him as part of the family, which consisted solely of Dona Severina, whom Inácio saw only three times a day at mealtimes. Five weeks of solitude and drudgery, far from his mother and sisters; five weeks of silence, since he only spoke now and then to someone in the street, and in the house, not a word.
The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis Page 75