XI
The Child Is Father to the Man
I grew. My family had no part in that. I grew naturally, the way magnolias and cats do. Cats may be less sly and magnolias are certainly less restless than I was in my childhood. The poet said that the child is father to the man. If that’s true, let’s have a look at some of the markings of the child.
From the age of five I’d earned the nickname of “Devil Child,” and I really was just that. I was one of the most malevolent children of my time, evasive, nosey, mischievous, and willful. For example, one day I split open the head of a slave because she’d refused to give me a spoonful of the cocoanut confection she was making and, not content with that evil deed, I threw a handful of ashes into the bowl and, not satisfied with that mischief, I ran to tell my mother that the slave was the one who’d ruined the dish out of spite. And I was only six years old. Prudêncio, a black houseboy, was my horse every day. He’d get down on his hands and knees, take a cord in his mouth as a bridle, and I’d climb onto his back with a switch in my hand. I would whip him, make him do a thousand turns, left and right, and he would obey—sometimes moaning—but he would obey without saying a word or, at most, an—“Ouch, little master!”—to which I would retort, “Shut your mouth, animal!” Hiding visitors’ hats, pinning paper tails on dignified people, pulling pigtails, pinching matrons on the arm, and many other deeds of that sort were the sign of a restive nature, but I have to believe that they were also the expressions of a robust spirit, because my father held me in great admiration, and if at times he scolded me in the presence of people, he did it as a mere formality. In private he would give me kisses.
You mustn’t conclude that I spent the rest of my life cracking people’s skulls or hiding their hats, but opinionated, selfish, and somewhat contemptuous of people, that I was. If I didn’t spend my time hiding their hats, I did pull their pigtails on occasion.
I also took a liking to the contemplation of human injustice. I tended to mitigate it, explain it, classify it into sections, understand it not according to a rigid pattern but in light of circumstance and place. My mother indoctrinated me in her own way, made me learn certain precepts and prayers by heart. But I felt that, more than by the prayers, I was governed by nerves and blood, and the Golden Rule lost its living spirit and became a hollow formula. In the morning before porridge and at night before bed, I would beg God’s forgiveness the same as I forgave my debtors. But between morning and night I would be involved in some terrible bit of mischief and my father, after the uproar had passed, would pat me on the cheek and exclaim, laughing: “Oh, you little devil! You little devil!”
Yes, my father adored me. My mother was a weak woman with not much brain and lots of heart, quite credulous, sincerely pious—homespun in spite of being pretty and modest in spite of being well-off, afraid of thunder and of her husband. Her husband was her god on Earth. My upbringing was born of the collaboration of those two people and although there was some good about it, in general it was corrupt, incomplete, and in some ways negative. My uncle the canon would sometime? remark to his brother about it, telling him that he was giving me more freedom than education and more affection than correction, but my father would answer that he was applying a system to my education that was completely superior to the usual system, and in that way, while not confusing his brother, he was duping himself.
Along with communication with education there was also outside example, the domestic milieu. We’ve seen the parents, now let’s have a look at the uncles and the aunt. One of them, João, was a man with a loose tongue, a dashing life, and picaresque conversation. From the age of eleven on I was admitted to his anecdotes, true or otherwise, all contaminated with obscenity or filth. He didn’t respect my adolescence any more than he respected his brother’s cassock, with the difference that the latter would flee as soon as some scabrous subject was touched upon. Not 1.1 allowed myself to stay without understanding anything at first, later understanding, and finally finding him amusing. After a time the one who sought him out was I and he liked me a lot, gave me candy, took me for walks. At home, when he would come to spend a few days, it happened quite often that I would find him in the rear of the house in the laundry chatting with the slave girls who were washing clothes. ‘That’s where he’d string together stories, comments, questions, and there’d be an explosion of laughter that nobody could hear because the laundry was too far away from the house. The black women, with clothes around their middle, their dresses hiked up a little, some inside the tank, others outside, leaning over the articles of clothing, beating them, soaping them, twisting them, went on listening to Uncle Joéo’s jokes and commenting on them from time to time, saying:
“Get thee behind me, Satan! This Master Joao is the devil himself!” My uncle the canon was quite different. He was full of austerity and purity. Those traits weren’t elevating a superior spirit, however, but only compensating for a mediocre one. He was not a man who saw the substantive side of the church. He saw the superficial side; hierarchy, pre-eminences, vestments, genuflections. He was closer to sacristy than to altar. A slip in ritual would arouse him more than an infraction of the commandments. Now, after so many years away from it, I’m not sure whether or not he could easily understand a passage from Tertullian or expound without hesitation the story of the Nicene symbol. But no one at high mass knew better than he the number and type of bows to be made to the officiant. Being canon was the only ambition in his life. And he said with all his heart that it ‘was the only honor to which he could aspire. Pious, austere in his habits, precise in his observance of the rules, limp, timid, subordinate, he possessed some few virtues in which he was exemplary, but he was absolutely lacking in the strength to instill them or impose them on others.
I won’t say anything about my maternal aunt, Dona Emerenciana, or add that she was the person who had the most authority over me. That made her quite different from the others, but she only lived with us a short time, a couple of years. Other relatives and a few close friends aren’t worth mentioning. We had no life in common, only intermittently and with great spans of separation. What is important is the general description of the domestic milieu and that has been shown here—vulgarity of character, love of gaudy appearance and clamor, a slackness of will, the rule of whim, and more. Out of that earth and that manure this flower was born.
XII
An Episode in 1814
But I don’t want to go ahead without giving a quick rundown of a stirring episode in 1814. I was nine years old.
When I was born Napoleon was already basking in all the splendor of his power and his glory. He was emperor and had completely conquered men’s admiration. My father, who, on the strength of having persuaded others of our nobility had ended up persuading himself, kept on feeding a completely mental hatred of him. That was the motive for some angry disputes in our house because my Uncle João—I don’t know whether out of a spirit of class or sympathy for his profession—pardoned in the despot what he admired in the general. My priest uncle was inflexible in his opposition to the Corsican and my other relatives were divided. That was the basis of the controversy and the rows.
When the news of Napoleon’s first fall reached Rio de Janeiro, there was naturally great shock in our house, but no gibes or taunts. The losers, witnessing the public rejoicing, considered it more decorous to remain silent. Some even went so far as to clap hands. The populace, cordially happy, didn’t skimp on their affection for the royal family. There were torches, salvos, Te-Deums, parades, and cheers. I went about those days with a new rapier my godfather had given me on Saint Anthony’s Day and, quite frankly, I was more interested in the rapier than in Bonaparte’s fall. I’ve never forgotten that. I’ve never stopped thinking to myself that my rapier has always been greater than Napoleon’s sword. And please note that I heard a lot of speeches when I was alive, read a lot of controversial pages with big ideas and bigger words, but—I don’t know why—behind all the applause they drew from my mouth,
sometimes that voice of experience would echo:
“Come on, all you care about is your rapier.”
My family wasn’t satisfied with having an anonymous share of the public celebration. They found it opportune and indispensable to celebrate the overthrow of the emperor with a banquet, and such a banquet that the sound of the acclamations would reach the ears of His Highness or, at least, those of his ministers. No sooner said than done. All the old silver inherited from my grandfather Luís Cubas was taken down. The tablecloths from Flanders were unpacked, the large pitchers from India. A barrow was slaughtered. Compotes and quince marmalades were ordered from the nuns of Ajuda. Everything was washed, scoured, and polished: parlors, stairs, candlesticks, wall brackets, lamp chimneys, all items of classic luxury.
At the given hour a very select: society gathered: the district judge, three or four military officers, some businessmen and lawyers, several government officials, some with their wives and daughters, some without them, but all with a common desire to stuff a turkey with Bonaparte’s memory. It wasn’t a banquet but a Te-Deum. That was more or less what one of the lawyers present, Dr. Vilaça, said. He was a famous glosser who added the tidbit of the muses to the dishes of the house. I remember as if it were yesterday, I remember seeing him rise up with his long hair gathered in a pigtail, silk tailcoat, an emerald on his finger, and ask my priest uncle to repeat a maxim, and when the maxim was repeated, he fastened his eyes on the head of a lady, coughed, lifted his right hand, clenched except for his forefinger which pointed to the ceiling, and, posed and composed like that, he gave back the word with a gloss. Not just one gloss, but three. Then he swore to his gods that it would never end. He would ask for a maxim, would be given one, would quickly gloss it, and then ask for another, and another, to the point that one of the ladies present couldn’t keep her admiration silent.
“You say that,” Vilaça modestly replied, “because you never heard Bocage in Lisbon at the end of the century as I did. That was something! The ease! And such lines of poetry! We had battles that went on glossing for an hour or two in the midst of applause and bravos in Nicola’s bar. Bocage had a tremendous talent! That was what I was told a few days ago by Her Grace the Duchess of Cadaval…”
And those last three words, expressed quite emphatically, produced a flutter of admiration and amazement in all assembled because so cordial and so simple a man, in addition to competing with poets, was close to duchesses! A Bocage and a Cadaval! Contact with such a man made the ladies feel superrefined. The males looked on him with respect, some with envy, no few with disbelief. He, meanwhile, went along piling adjective on adjective, adverb on adverb, listing everything that rhymed with tyrant and usurper. It was dessert time. No one was thinking anymore about eating. During the intervals in the glosses a merry murmur went about, the chatter of full stomachs. The eyes, sluggish and moist or lively and warm, lounged or leaped about the table loaded with sweets and fruit—pineapple wedges here, melon slices there, the crystal dessert dishes displaying the thinly shredded cocoanut sweets, yellow as an egg yolk—or the molasses, thick and dark, not far from the cheese. From time to time a full, jovial, unbuttoned laugh—a family laugh—would come along to break the political gravity of the banquet. In the midst of the great and common interest, the small and private ones were also moving about. The girls spoke about the modinhas they were going to sing to the accompaniment of the harpsichord, the minuets, the English airs. Nor was there any lack of a matron who promised to perform an eight-beat dance just to show them how she had enjoyed herself in the good old days of childhood. One fellow, next to me, was passing on to another a recent report on the new slaves who were on their way according to letters he’d received from Luanda, one letter in which his nephew told him that he’d already made a deal for about forty head, and another in which … He had them right there in his pocket but he couldn’t read them on that occasion. What he guaranteed is that from this one shipment we can count on some hundred and twenty slaves at least.
“Shh … shh … shh …,” Vilaça was saying, clapping his hands. The noise quickly stopped, like a pause with an orchestra, and all eyes turned to the glosser. Those farther off cupped their ears in order not to lose a single word. Most of them, even before the gloss, had already given a chuckle of approval, mild and sincere.
As for me, there I was, solitary and out of it, making eyes at a certain dessert that was my passion. I was happy with the end of each gloss, hoping that it would be the last, but it wasn’t, and the dessert remained intact. No one had thought to say the first word. My father, at the head of the table, was savoring the joy of the guests with deep swallows, he had eyes only for the jolly fat faces, the dishes, the flowers. He was delighted with the familiarity that bound the most distant spirits together, the influence of a good dinner. I could see that because I dragged my eyes away from the compote to him and then from him back to the compote, as if begging him to serve me some. But it was in vain. He didn’t see anything; he was seeing himself. And the glosses went on one after the other like sheets of water, obliging me to withdraw the desire and the plea. I was as patient as I could be, but I couldn’t be for long. I asked for some dessert in a low voice. Finally I roared, bellowed, stamped my feet. My father, who would have given me the sun if I’d asked for it, called to a slave to serve me the sweet, but it was too late. Aunt Emerenciana pulled me out of my chair and turned me over to a slave girl in spite of my shouts and shoves.
The glosser’s crime had been only that: delaying the compote and bringing about my exclusion. But that was sufficient for me to think about revenge, whatever it might be, that would be huge and exemplary, which would make him look ridiculous in some way. Since Dr. Vilaça was a serious man, mannerly and calm, forty-seven years old, married and a father, I wasn’t content with a paper tail or his pigtail. It had to be something worse. I began scrutinizing him for the rest of the afternoon, following him around the grounds, where they’d all gone to stroll. I saw him chatting with Dona Eusébia, Sergeant-Major Domingues’ sister, a big robust maiden lady, who, if she wasn’t pretty, wasn’t ugly either.
“I’m very angry with you,” she was telling him.
“Why?”
“Because … I don’t know why… because it’s my fate … sometimes I think dying is better …”
They’d gone behind a little thicket. It was twilight. I followed them. There was a spark of wine and sensuality in Vilaça’s eyes.
“Let go of me,” she said.
“Nobody can see us. Dying, my angel? What kind of an idea is that? You know that I would die, too … What am I saying? … I die every day, from passion, from longing …”
Dona Eusébia put her handkerchief to her eyes. The glosser was digging in his memory for some literary fragment and he found this one, which I later discovered was from an opera by Antônio José da Silva, the Jew:
“Don’t weep my love, don’t wish for the day to break with two dawns.”
He said that and pulled her toward him. She resisted some but let herself go. Their faces came together and I heard the smack, very light, of a kiss, the most timid of kisses.
“Dr. Vilaça kissed Dona Eusébia!” I bellowed, running through the yard.
Those words of mine were an explosion. Stupefaction immobilized everyone. Eyes looked out all over. Smiles were exchanged, furtive whispers. Mothers dragged their daughters off with the pretext of the dew. My father pulled my ears, faking it but really annoyed at my indiscretion. The next day at lunch, however, recalling the incident, he tweaked my nose, laughing: “Oh, you little devil! You little devil!”
XIII
A Leap
Let’s put our feet together now and leap over school, the irksome school where I learned to read, write, count, whack noggins, get mine whacked, and make mischief, sometimes up on the hills, sometimes on the beaches, wherever it was convenient for loafers.
They were bitter times. There were the scoldings, the punishments, the arduous long lessons and litt
le else, very little and very slight. The only really bad part was the whacking of the palms with a ruler, and even then … Oh, ruler, terror of my boyhood, you who were the compelle intrare with which an old teacher, bony and bald, instilled in my brain the alphabet, prosody, syntax, and everything else he knew, blessed ruler, so cursed by moderns, if only I could have remained under your yoke with my beardless soul, my ignorance, and my rapier, that rapier from 1814, so superior to Napoleon’s sword! What was it that my old primary teacher wanted, after all? Memorization and behavior in the classroom. Nothing more, nothing less than what life, the final class, wants, with the difference that if you put fear into me, you never put anger. I can still see you now, coming into the room with your white leather slippers, cape, handkerchief in hand, bald head on display, chin clean-shaven. I see you sit down, snort, grunt, take an initial pinch of snuff, and then call us to order for the lesson. And you did that for twenty-three years, quiet, obscure, punctual, stuck in a little house on the Rua do Piolho, not bothering the world with your mediocrity, until one day you took the great dive into the shadows and nobody wept for you except an old black man—no one, not even I, who owe you the rudiments of writing.
The teacher’s name was Ludgero. Let me write his full name on this page: Ludgero Barata—a disastrous name whose second part means cockroach and that gave the boys an eternal basis for crude jokes. One of us, Quincas Borba, was cruel to the poor man at that time. Two or three times a week he would put a dead roach into his pants pocket—wide trousers tied with a cord—or in the desk drawer, or by his inkwell. If he found it during school hours he would leap up, pass his flaming eyes over us, call us by our last names: we were parasites, ignoramuses, brats, scoundrels … Some trembled, others snorted. Quincas Borba, however, allowed himself to remain quiet, his eyes staring into space.
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas Page 5