The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

by Machado De Assis

  They seek and they find. Sílvio has finally found his Sílvia. They see each other and fall into each other’s arms, panting with exhaustion, but satisfied with their reward. They join together, arms about each other, and return, pulsating, from unconscious to conscious. “Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” asks Sílvio, as in the Song; and she, with the same erudite turn of phrase, replies that it is “the seal upon thine heart” and that “love is as strong as death itself.”

  At this the canon trembles. His face lights up. His pen, filled with emotion and respect, joins the adjective to its noun. Sílvia will now walk side by side with Sílvio in the sermon that the canon will one day preach, and hand in hand they will go to the printer’s, if, that is, he ever gets around to putting together a collection of his sermons, which remains to be seen.

  Author’s Preface

  Whatever various herbs you use,

  they are all swallowed up beneath the name of salad.

  —MONTAIGNE, ESSAYS, BOOK I, CHAPTER XLVI

  Montaigne explains in his own way the variousness of this book. There is no point in repeating the same idea, nor would any other idea have the same elegance of expression as that in the epigraph. The only thing I need do is explain the origin of these pages.

  Some are tales and short stories, figures that I saw or imagined, or merely ideas that it occurred to me could be reduced to language. They first appeared in the ephemeral pages of magazines, at various times, and were chosen from among many, because it was felt that they might still be of interest. All in all, it is an excuse to collect together stories I am fond of.

  Machado de Assis

  THE CANE

  DAMIÃO RAN AWAY from the seminary at eleven o’clock on a Friday morning in August. I don’t know which year it was exactly, but certainly before 1850. After only a few minutes, he stopped running, suddenly filled with embarrassment. He had not considered how people might react to the sight of a fleeing, frightened seminarian. Being unfamiliar with the streets, he walked aimlessly up and down, and finally stopped. Where could he go? He could not go home, because his father, after giving him a sound beating, would send him straight back to the seminary. He had not planned where exactly he might take refuge, because he had intended making his escape at some later date; however, a chance incident had precipitated his departure. Where could he go? There was his godfather, João Carneiro, but he was a spineless creature, incapable of doing anything on his own initiative. He had been the one to take him to the seminary in the first place, presenting him to the rector with these words:

  “I bring you a great man of the future.”

  “We welcome great men,” the rector said, “as long as they are humble and good. True greatness lies in simplicity. Come in, boy.”

  That had been his introduction to the seminary. Shortly afterward, he had run away. We see him now standing in the street, frightened, uncertain, not knowing where to turn for shelter or advice; in his mind he reviewed his various relatives and friends, but none seemed quite right. Then a thought occurred to him:

  “I’ll appeal to Sinhá Rita! She’ll send for my godfather and tell him she wants me to leave the seminary. Perhaps that way . . .”

  Sinhá Rita was a widow and João Carneiro’s mistress. Damião had a vague understanding of what this meant, and it occurred to him that he might be able to take advantage of the situation. But where did she live? He was so disoriented that it took him a few minutes to find the house, which was in Largo do Capim.

  “Good heavens! Whatever’s the matter?” cried Sinhá Rita, sitting bolt upright on the sofa on which she was reclining

  Damião had burst in unannounced, looking utterly terrified, for when he reached Sinhá Rita’s house, he saw a priest coming down the street, and, in sheer panic, he violently pushed open Sinhá Rita’s front door, which, fortunately for him, was neither locked nor bolted. Once inside, he peered through the shutters to watch the priest, who had clearly failed to notice him and walked on by.

  “Whatever’s the matter, Senhor Damião?” she said again, for she had recognized him now. “What are you doing here?”

  Damião, who was trembling so much he could barely speak, told her not to be afraid, it was nothing very important, and he would explain everything.

  “All right, sit down and explain yourself, then.”

  “First, I swear that I haven’t committed a crime of any kind . . .”

  Sinhá Rita stared at him in alarm, and all the young girls in the room—boarders and day pupils—froze over their lace-making pillows, their bobbins and hands suddenly motionless. Sinhá Rita earned her living largely from teaching lace-making, cutwork, and embroidery. While the boy was catching his breath, she ordered the girls to go back to their tasks, while she waited for Damião to speak. Finally, he told her everything, about how much he hated the seminary and how he was certain he would not make a good priest. He spoke with great passion and begged her to save him.

  “But how? I can’t do anything.”

  “You could if you wanted to.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m not getting involved in family matters; besides, I hardly know your family, and they say your father has a very nasty temper on him!”

  Damião saw that he was lost. In desperation, he knelt at her feet and kissed her hands.

  “Please help me, Sinhá Rita. Please, for the love of God, by everything you hold most sacred, by the soul of your late husband, save me from death, because I will kill myself if I have to go back.”

  Flattered by the boy’s pleas, Sinhá Rita tried to reason with him. The life of a priest was a very holy and pleasant one, she said; in time, he would see that it was best to overcome his dislike of the seminary and then, one day—

  “No, never!” insisted Damião, shaking his head and again kissing her hands and saying it would be the death of him.

  Sinhá Rita hesitated for a while longer. Then she asked why he could not speak to his godfather.

  “My godfather? He’s even worse than Papa. He never listens to me. I shouldn’t think he listens to anyone . . .”

  “Doesn’t listen, eh?” Sinhá Rita responded, her pride wounded. “I’ll show you if he listens or not.”

  She summoned a slave-boy and ordered him to go straight to Senhor João Carneiro’s house, and if the gentleman wasn’t at home, then he should ask where he could be found and run and tell him that she needed to speak to him urgently.

  “Off you go.”

  Damião sighed loudly and sadly. To justify the authority with which she had issued these orders, she explained to him that Senhor João Carneiro had been a friend of her late husband and had brought her several new pupils. Then, when he remained leaning in the doorway, looking glum, she tweaked his nose and said, smiling:

  “Don’t you worry, my little priest, it’ll all be fine.”

  According to her birth certificate, Sinhá Rita was forty years old, but her eyes were only twenty-seven. She was a handsome, lively woman, who enjoyed both her food and a joke; however, when she had a mind to, she could be extremely fierce. She tried to cheer the boy up and, despite the situation, this did not prove difficult. Soon they were both laughing; she was telling him stories and asking him to reciprocate, which he did with considerable humor. One particularly extravagant tale, which required him to pull funny faces, made one of Sinhá Rita’s pupils laugh so much that she neglected her work. Sinhá Rita picked up a cane lying next to the sofa and threatened her:

  “Remember the cane, Lucrécia!”

  The girl bowed her head, waiting for the blow, but the blow did not come. It had only been a warning. If, by the evening, she had not finished her work, then Lucrécia would receive the usual punishment. Damião looked at her; she was a scrawny little black girl, all skin and bone, with a scar on her forehead and a burn mark on her left hand. She was about eleven years old. Damião noticed, too, that she kept coughing, quietly, as if not wanting to disturb their co
nversation. He felt sorry for her and decided to take her side if she did not finish her work. Sinhá Rita would be sure to forgive her . . . Besides, she had been laughing at him, so it was his fault, if being funny can be a fault.

  At this point, João Carneiro arrived. He blanched when he saw his godson there, and looked at Sinhá Rita, who came straight to the point. She told him he had to remove the boy from the seminary, that the child had no vocation for the ecclesiastical life, and it was far better to have no priest at all than a bad priest. One could just as easily love and serve Our Lord in the outside world. For the first few minutes, João Carneiro was too taken aback to reply; in the end, however, he did open his mouth to scold his godson for coming and bothering “complete strangers” and threatened him with punishment.

  “What do you mean, ‘punishment’!” Sinhá Rita broke in. “Punish him for what? Go on, talk to his father.”

  “I can’t promise anything; in fact, I think it’s highly unlikely, if not impossible . . .”

  “Well, I’m telling you that it has to be possible. If you really try,” she went on in a rather insinuating tone, “I’m sure you can sort something out. You just have to ask nicely and he’ll give in. Because, Senhor João Carneiro, your godson is not going back to the seminary.”

  “But, senhora—”

  “Go on, off you go.”

  João Carneiro did not want to go, but neither could he stay. He was caught between two opposing forces. He really didn’t care if the boy ended up being a cleric, a lawyer, or a doctor, or something else entirely, however useless, but he was being asked to do battle with the father’s deepest feelings and could not guarantee the result. If he failed, that would mean another battle with Sinhá Rita, whose final words had a threatening note to them: “your godson is not going back to the seminary.” Either way, there was sure to be a ruckus. João Carneiro stood there, wide-eyed, his eyelids twitching, his chest heaving. He kept shooting pleading glances at Sinhá Rita, glances in which there was just a hint of censure. Why couldn’t she ask him for something else, anything? Why couldn’t she ask him to walk in the rain all the way to Tijuca or Jacarepaguá? But to persuade a father to change his mind about his son’s career . . . He knew the boy’s father well, and knew that he was perfectly capable of smashing a glass in his face. Ah, if only the boy would just drop down dead of an apoplectic fit! That would be a solution—cruel, yes, but final.

  “What do you say?” demanded Sinhá Rita.

  He made a gesture as if asking for more time. He stroked his beard, looking for some way out. A papal decree dissolving the Church or, at the very least, abolishing all seminaries, that would do the trick. João Carneiro could then go home and enjoy a quiet game of cards. It was like asking Napoleon’s barber to lead the Battle of Austerlitz . . . Alas, the Church was still there, so were the seminaries, and his godson was still standing waiting by the wall, eyes downcast, with no convenient apoplectic fit in sight.

  “Go on, off you go,” said Sinhá Rita, handing him his hat and cane.

  There was nothing for it. The barber put away his razor, buckled on his sword, and went off to battle. Damião breathed more easily, although, outwardly, he remained grave-faced, eyes fixed on the floor. This time, Sinhá Rita pinched his chin.

  “Come on, don’t be so glum, let’s have something to eat.”

  “Do you really think he’ll succeed?”

  “He has to,” retorted Sinhá Rita proudly. “Come along, the soup’s getting cold.”

  Despite Sinhá Rita’s natural joviality and his own naturally playful self, Damião felt less happy over supper than he had earlier on. He had no confidence in his spineless godfather. Nevertheless, he ate well and, toward the end, was once again telling jokes as he had in the morning. Over dessert, he heard the sound of people in the next room, and asked if they had come for him.

  “No, it’ll be the ladies.”

  They got up and went into the drawing room. The “ladies” were five neighbors who came every evening after supper to have coffee with Sinhá Rita and stayed until nightfall.

  Once the pupils had finished their supper, they returned to their lace-making pillows. Sinhá Rita presided over this gaggle of women, some of whom were resident and others not. The whisper of bobbins and the chatter of the ladies were such worldly sounds, so far removed from theology and Latin, that the boy let himself be carried along by them and forgot about everything else. At first the ladies were a little shy, but soon recovered. One of them sang a popular ballad accompanied on the guitar by Sinhá Rita, and the evening passed quickly. Before the soirée ended, Sinhá Rita asked Damião to tell them the story she had particularly liked. The same one that had made Lucrécia laugh.

  “Come on, Senhor Damião, don’t play hard to get. Our guests are just about to leave. You’ll really love this one, ladies.”

  Damião had no option but to obey. Despite the expectation created by Sinhá Rita’s words—which rather diminished the joke and its effect—the story did nevertheless make the ladies laugh. Pleased with himself, Damião glanced over at Lucrécia to see if she had laughed as well, but she had her head bent over her work, intent now on finishing her task. She certainly wasn’t laughing, or perhaps only to herself, in the same way she kept her cough to herself.

  The ladies left, and darkness fell. Damião’s heart also grew blacker with the onset of night. What would be happening at his father’s house? Every few minutes he went over to peer out of the window, but returned each time feeling more discouraged. No sign of his godfather. His father had doubtless sent him packing, then summoned a couple of slaves and gone to the police station to demand that a constable come with him to arrest his son and take him back to the seminary. Damião asked Sinhá Rita if there was a back entrance to the house and ran out into the garden to see if he could climb over the wall. He also asked if there was an escape route down Rua da Vala or if she could perhaps speak to one of her neighbors, who might be kind enough to take him in. The problem was his cassock: could Sinhá Rita lend him a jacket or an old overcoat? Sinhá Rita did indeed have a jacket, left behind by João Carneiro, either as a souvenir or out of sheer absentmindedness.

  “I have an old jacket of my husband’s,” she said, laughing, “but why are you so frightened? It will all work out, don’t you worry.”

  At last, when night had fallen, a slave arrived bearing a letter for Sinhá Rita from his godfather. No agreement had yet been reached; the father had reacted furiously and tried to smash everything in the room; he had roared out his disapproval, saying that if his lazy rapscallion of a son refused to go back to the seminary, he would have him thrown in jail or sent to the prison ship. João Carneiro had battled very hard to persuade Damião’s father not to rush into a decision, but to sleep on it and ponder deeply whether it was right to give the Church such a rebellious, immoral child. He explained in the letter that he had only used such language as a way of winning the argument. Not that he considered the argument won, by any means, but tomorrow he would go and see the man again and try to win him around. He concluded by saying that, meanwhile, the boy could stay at his house.

  Damião finished reading the letter and looked at Sinhá Rita. She’s my last hope, he thought. Sinhá Rita ordered a bottle of ink to be brought, and she wrote this response on the bottom half of João Carneiro’s letter: “My dear Joãozinho, either you save the boy or you’ll never see me again.” She sealed the letter with glue and gave it to the slave for him to deliver with all speed. She again tried to cheer up the reluctant seminarian, who had again donned the monkish hood of humility and consternation. She told him not to worry, that she would sort things out.

  “They’ll see what I’m made of! No one’s going to get the better of me!”

  It was time to collect in the lace work. Sinhá Rita examined each piece, and all the girls had completed their daily task. Only Lucrécia was still at her lace-making pillow, furiously working the bobbins, even though it was too dark to see. Sinhá Rita went over t
o her, saw that the work was unfinished, and flew into a rage, seizing her by one ear.

  “You lazy girl!”

  “Please, senhora, please, for the love of God and Our Lady in Heaven.”

  “You idler! Our Lady doesn’t protect good-for-nothings like you!”

  Lucrécia broke away and fled the room. Sinhá Rita went after her and caught her by the arm.

  “Come here!”

  “Please, senhora, please forgive me!”

  “No, I won’t forgive you!”

  And they came back into the room: Lucrécia dragged along by her ear, struggling and crying and pleading; and Sinhá Rita declaring that she must be punished.

  “Where’s that cane?”

  The cane was next to the sofa. From the other side of the room, Sinhá Rita, not wanting to let the girl go, shouted to Damião.

  “Senhor Damião, give me that cane, will you?”

  Damião froze. Oh, cruel moment! A kind of cloud passed before his eyes. Had he not sworn to help the young girl, who had only fallen behind with her work because of him?

  “Give me the cane, Senhor Damião!”

  Damião began to walk over to the sofa. The young black girl begged him by all that he held most sacred, his mother, his father, Our Lord . . .

  “Help me, sir!

  Sinhá Rita, face aflame, eyes bulging, was demanding the cane, still not letting go of the girl, who was now convulsed by a coughing fit. Damião was terribly touched by her plight, but . . . he had to get out of that seminary. He went over to the sofa, picked up the cane, and handed it to Sinhá Rita.

  THE DICTIONARY

  ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a demagogic barrel-maker called Bernardino, who, in the field of cosmography, professed the view that the world is a vast vat of quince jelly, and, in the field of politics, called for the masses to be enthroned. In order for this to happen, he took up a big stick, roused the people to revolution, and overthrew the king; however, on entering the palace, acclaimed as victor, he saw that there was only room on the throne for one person, and got around this little difficulty by sitting on the throne himself, declaring in a booming voice: