And so it was. Once evicted from their house, they went straight to the new lodgings, and, two days later, the baby was born. Cândido felt both enormously happy and enormously sad. Aunt Mônica insisted that they take the child straight to the foundling hospital on Rua dos Barbonos. “If you don’t want to do it, I’ll take him.” Cândido begged her to wait, promising that he would take him later. Yes, the baby was a boy, just as his parents had wanted. Clara quickly gave the child some milk, but then it began to rain, and Candinho said that he would take the baby to the foundling wheel the next day.
That night, he went over all the notes he had taken about runaway slaves. Most of the rewards were mere promises; some did specify an amount, but it was always some very paltry sum. One, though, offered a hundred mil-réis. The slave in question was a mulatta; there was a description of her face and clothes. Cândido Neves had looked for her before, but given up, imagining that perhaps some lover had taken her in. Now, though, he felt encouraged both by the thought of that generous reward and by the desperate straits he was in. The next morning, he went out to patrol Rua da Carioca and the adjoining square, as well as Rua do Parto and Rua da Ajuda, which was the area where, according to the advertisement, she had last been seen. He found no trace of her, but a pharmacist on Rua da Ajuda recalled having sold an ounce of some drug three days before to a woman answering that description. Playing the part of the slave’s master, Cândido Neves politely thanked the pharmacist. He had no better luck with any of the other fugitives for whom the reward was either unspecified or low.
He returned to their rather gloomy, temporary lodgings. Aunt Mônica had made some food for Clara, and had the baby all ready to be taken to the foundling hospital. Although Candinho had agreed to this, he could barely conceal his grief. He could not eat the food Aunt Mônica had kept for him; he simply wasn’t hungry, he said, and it was true. He thought of a thousand ways that would allow him to keep his son, but none of them worked. He thought about the slum in which they lived. He consulted his wife, but she seemed resigned. Aunt Mônica had painted a picture for her of what awaited their child—still greater poverty and with the child possibly dying as a result. Cândido Neves had no option but to keep his promise; he asked Clara to give the child the last milk he would take from his mother. Once fed, the little one fell asleep, and his father picked him up and headed off toward Rua dos Barbonos.
More than once, he considered simply taking him back to the house; he also kept him carefully wrapped up, kissing him and covering his face to protect him from the damp night air. As he entered Rua da Guarda Velha, Cândido Neves slowed his pace.
“I’ll delay handing him over for as long as possible,” he murmured.
However, since the street was not infinite in length, he would soon reach the end; it was then that it occurred to him to go down one of the alleyways connecting that street to Rua da Ajuda. He reached the bottom of the alleyway and was about to turn right, in the direction of Largo da Ajuda, when, on the opposite side, he saw a woman: the runaway slave. I will not even attempt to describe Cândido Neves’s emotions, because I could not do so with the necessary intensity. One adjective will have to suffice; let’s say “overwhelming.” The woman walked down the street, and he followed; the pharmacy we mentioned earlier was only a few steps away. He went in, spoke to the pharmacist, and asked if he would be so kind as to look after the baby for a moment; he would return soon.
“Yes, but—”
Cândido Neves did not give him time to say anything more; he left at once, crossed the street, and continued on to a point where he could arrest the woman without making too much of a scene. At the end of the street, when she was about to head off down Rua de São José, Cândido Neves drew nearer. Yes, it was definitely her, the fugitive mulatta.
“Arminda,” he called, for that was the name given in the advertisement.
Arminda innocently turned around, and it was only when he removed the length of rope from his pocket and grabbed her arms that she realized what was happening and tried to flee. By then it was too late. With his strong hands, Cândido Neves had bound her wrists together and was ordering her to walk. She tried to scream, and she did perhaps call out more loudly than usual, but saw at once that no one would come to free her; on the contrary. She then begged him, for the love of God, to let her go.
“I’m pregnant, sir!” she cried. “If you yourself have a child, I beg you for the love of that child to let me go. I’ll be your slave and serve you for as long as you like. Please, sir, let me go!”
“Walk on!” repeated Cândido Neves.
“Let me go!”
“Look, I don’t have time for this. Walk on!”
There was a struggle at this point, because she, heavy with her unborn child, kept moaning and resisting. Anyone passing by or standing in a shop doorway would have realized what was going on and would, naturally, have done nothing to help. Arminda was telling him that her master was a very bad man and would probably beat her, and in her present state that would be even harder to endure. Yes, there was no doubt about it, he would have her beaten.
“It’s your own fault. Who told you to get pregnant and then run away?” Cândido Neves asked.
He was not in the best of moods because he had his own child waiting for him at the pharmacy, and, besides, he had never been a great talker. He continued to drag her down Rua dos Ourives toward Rua da Alfândega, where her master lived. On the corner, she struggled still more fiercely, planting her feet against the wall and trying vainly to pull away from him. All that she achieved, though, with the house now so near, was to delay her arrival a little. They did at last arrive, she reluctant, desperate, panting. Even then, she knelt down, but again to no avail. Her master was at home and ran out to see what all the noise and shouting were about.
“Here’s your runaway,” said Cândido Neves.
“So it is.”
“Master!”
“Come on, in you come!”
In the hallway, Arminda stumbled and fell. And there and then her master opened his wallet and took out two fifty-mil-réis notes, which Cândido Neves immediately pocketed, while the master again ordered Arminda to come into the house. Instead, on the floor where she lay, overcome by fear and pain, she went into labor and gave birth to her now-dead child.
That unripe fruit entered the world amid the cries and moans of the mother and the despairing gestures of the master. Cândido Neves watched the whole spectacle. He had no idea of the time, but whatever the hour, he urgently needed to go back to Rua da Ajuda, which is precisely what he did, quite indifferent to the consequences of the disaster he had just witnessed.
When he arrived at the shop, he found the pharmacist alone, with no son to return to him. Cândido’s first instinct was to throttle the man. Fortunately, the pharmacist quickly explained that the child was inside with the family, and when both men went in, Cândido Neves furiously snatched up the baby, much as he had grabbed the runaway slave a little earlier—a very different fury, of course, the fury of love. He brusquely thanked the pharmacist; then, with his son in his arms and the reward in his pocket, he raced off, not to the foundling hospital, but back to their temporary lodgings. When Aunt Mônica heard his explanation, she forgave him for bringing the child back, given that he also brought with him the hundred mil-réis. She did have a few harsh words to say about the slave-woman, though, both for running away and for having miscarried. Kissing his son and shedding genuine tears, Cândido Neves, on the other hand, blessed the fugitive and gave barely a thought to her dead child.
“Not all children make it,” his heart told him.
MARIA CORA
Chapter I
I ARRIVED HOME one night feeling so tired that I even forgot to wind my watch. My forgetfulness may have had something to do with a certain lady I had met at the comendador’s house, but those two reasons, of course, cancel each other out. Thinking keeps you from sleeping, and sleeping stops you from thinking, so only one of those reasons can be
the real one. Let’s just say that neither of them was, and concentrate on the main point: my stopped watch and me waking in the morning to the sound of the house clock chiming ten.
At the time (1893), I was living in a boardinghouse in Catete. There were many such residences in Rio at the time. Mine was small and tranquil. With my four hundred mil-réis I could have afforded a house all to myself, but, firstly, I was already living in the boardinghouse when I won that money at cards, and, secondly, I was a forty-year-old bachelor so accustomed to boardinghouse life that I would have found it impossible to live alone. Marriage was equally impossible. Not that there was any shortage of candidates. Since the end of 1891, more than one lady—and not of the plainer variety, either—had looked at me with tender, friendly eyes. One of the comendador’s daughters was particularly attentive. I didn’t encourage any of them, though; the bachelor life is my very soul, my vocation, my habit, my destiny. I would only love if ordered to or for my own amusement. A couple of adventures a year are quite enough for a heart half inclined toward sunset and night.
Perhaps that is why I did pay some attention to the lady I had seen at the comendador’s house on the previous evening. She was a strong, dark-haired creature, between twenty-eight and thirty, and somberly dressed; she arrived at ten o’clock, accompanied by an old aunt. Since it was the first time she had been there—it was my third—she was greeted with rather more ceremony than the other guests. I asked someone if she was a widow.
“No, she’s married.”
“Who to?”
“The owner of a large estate in Rio Grande do Sul.”
“Name?”
“Him? He’s Fonseca, and she’s Maria Cora.”
“Didn’t her husband come with her?”
“No, he’s in Rio Grande.”
That was all I could glean; but what intrigued me most were her physical attractions, the very opposite of what romantic poets and seraphic artists would dream of. I spoke to her for a few minutes about matters of no importance, but long enough to hear her very singsong voice, and to learn that she had republican leanings. I didn’t like to admit that I had no leanings at all, and so mumbled something suitably vague about the future of the country. When she spoke, she had a way of moistening her lips with her tongue; whether this was intentional, I don’t know, but it was both charming and piquant. Seen from close up, her features were less perfect than they had seemed at a distance, but they were also more hers, more original.
Chapter II
In the morning, I found that my watch had stopped. When I reached town, I walked down Rua do Ouvidor as far as Rua da Quitanda, and, as I was about to turn right to go to my lawyer’s office, I glanced at my watch, forgetting that it had stopped.
“Oh, what a bore!” I cried.
Fortunately, to the left, on Rua da Quitanda, between Rua do Ouvidor and Rua do Rosário, was the shop where I had bought that watch, and by whose clock I always set my own. Instead of going in one direction, I went in the other. It was only half an hour out of my way; I wound my watch, set it to the right time, exchanged a few words with the clerk at the counter, and, as I was leaving, I saw, standing outside a novelty shop opposite, the somberly dressed lady I had met at the comendador’s house. I greeted her, and she returned my greeting somewhat hesitantly, as if she did not immediately recognize me, and then she continued on up Rua da Quitanda, still on the other side of the road.
Since I had a little time to spare (slightly less than thirty minutes), I started following Maria Cora. I’m not saying I was already in the grip of some violent force, but I cannot deny giving in to an impulse of curiosity and desire, a remnant from my lost youth. Watching her walking along, wearing the same somber colors she had worn the night before, I found her even more impressive. She kept up a pace that was neither fast nor slow, but certainly one that allowed me to admire her lovely figure, which was more perfect than her face. She walked up Rua do Hospício to an optician’s, where she went inside, remaining there for ten minutes or so. I kept a safe distance, furtively watching the doorway. Then she left and set off briskly, turning down Rua dos Ourives toward Rua do Rosário, then up to Largo da Sé; from there, she walked on to Largo de São Francisco de Paula. You will think all these details unnecessary, not to say tedious, but they fill me with a particularly intense feeling, as the first steps on a long and painful road. You’ll have noticed that she avoided walking up Rua do Ouvidor, which is the route everyone and anyone would take at that or any other hour in order to go to Largo de São Francisco de Paula. She crossed the square in the direction of the Escola Politécnica, but, halfway there, was met by a carriage, which was waiting for her outside the college; she got in, and the carriage left.
Like other earthly paths, life has its crossroads. At that moment, I found myself at a particularly complicated one, except that I didn’t have time to choose a direction—neither time nor opportunity. I still don’t know how it was that I found myself in a cab, telling the driver to follow her carriage.
Maria Cora lived in a part of Rio called Engenho Velho, in a good, solid, fairly old house surrounded by a garden. I could tell that she lived there, because her aunt was looking out of one of the windows. When she stepped from the carriage, Maria Cora told the driver (my cab happened to be passing hers at that point) that she would not be going out again that week, but asked him to come for her on Monday at noon. Then she walked straight into the garden, as if she were the mistress of the house, and paused to talk to the gardener, who began earnestly explaining something to her.
I turned back once she had gone into the house, and only farther down the hill did I think to look at my watch; it was almost half-past one. I reached Rua da Quitanda at a trot, and got out at the door to my lawyer’s office.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I met a friend who insisted on recounting some tiresome business or other.”
This was not the first time in my life that I had lied, nor would it be the last.
Chapter III
I often met Maria Cora after that; first, at the comendador’s house and, later, at other houses. Maria Cora was not a complete recluse, but occasionally went on outings and visited friends and acquaintances. She also received visitors, not on any fixed day, but every now and then, although these gatherings only ever consisted of five or six close friends. The general view of her was that she was a person of strong feelings and austere habits. Add to this her sharp, brilliant, virile nature and her capacity for dealing with difficulties and hard work, not to mention quarrels and struggles; in the words of a poet and regular visitor, she was: “one part pampa and one part pampeiro,” a reference to the icy wind that blows across the pampas in southern Brazil. The original line rhymed, but I took from it only the underlying idea. Maria Cora liked to hear herself described like this, although she didn’t always display those qualities, nor did she dwell on stories of herself as an adolescent. Her aunt, on the other hand, did sometimes lovingly tell the occasional anecdote, saying that her niece was exactly like her when she was a girl. Justice demands that I declare, here and now, that her aunt, although ill, was still full of life and vigor.
It did not take long for me to fall in love with the niece. It doesn’t pain me to admit this, because it is the one page in my life that merits any interest. I will make my story brief; and I will invent nothing and tell no lies.
I loved Maria Cora. I didn’t tell her how I felt straightaway, but, like all women, she probably realized or guessed how I felt. Even if she had made this realization before my visit to the house in Engenho Velho, there are still no grounds for disapproving of her for inviting me there one evening. She may have been completely indifferent to my state of mind; she may also have enjoyed feeling loved, even though she had not the slightest intention of reciprocating that love. The fact is that I went there on that first evening and on other evenings too; her aunt took a liking to me and my ways. The silly, gabby poet who also visited said once that he
was tuning his lyre in readiness for the aunt’s marriage to me. The aunt laughed, and, wanting to stay in her good graces, I had to laugh, too, and, for about a week, the topic provided material for much banter. By then, though, my love for her niece had reached new heights.
Shortly afterward, I learned that Maria Cora was separated from her husband. They had married eight years before, and it had been a real love match. For five years, they lived very happily together. Then, one day, her husband had an affair that destroyed their domestic peace. João da Fonseca fell in love with a circus performer, a Chilean woman, Dolores, who did stunts on horseback. He left house and estate and went after her. Six months later, he returned, entirely cured of love, but only because Dolores had fallen in love with a newspaper editor without a penny to his name, and for whom she left Fonseca and all his wealth. His wife had sworn never to take him back, and this is what she said to him when he returned:
“It’s all over between us. We must separate.”
At first João da Fonseca agreed, but he was a proud forty-year-old, for whom such a suggestion was in itself an affront. That same evening, he began making the necessary arrangements; however, the following morning, his wife’s beauty again stirred his heart and—not imploringly, but rather as if he were forgiving her—he suggested that they wait for six months. If, at the end of that period, the feelings that had provoked the separation remained unchanged, then they would part. Maria Cora did not want to accept this emendation, but her aunt, who lived in Porto Alegre and had gone to spend a few weeks with them, acted as go-between. Three months later, they were reconciled.
“João,” his wife said to him on the day after their reconciliation, “as you can see, my love is greater than any feelings of jealousy, but you have to understand that if you deceive me again, I will never forgive you.”
João da Fonseca’s conjugal passion was reborn; he promised his wife everything and more. “I’m forty years old,” he said, “I’m hardly going to have such an affair again, especially one that had such painful consequences. You’ll see, this is forever.”
The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis Page 98