CXLII
The Secret Request
So many things in a minuet!, as the saying goes. So many things in a dogfight! But I was no servile or weak-hearted disciple who was not about to make one or another adequate objection. As we walked along I told him that I had some doubts. I wasn’t too sure of the advantage of fighting with dogs over a meal. He answered with exceptional softness:
“It’s more logical to fight over it with other men, because the status of the contenders is the same and the stronger one gets the bone. But why shouldn’t it be a grand spectacle to fight over it with dogs? Locusts are eaten voluntarily, as in the case of the One Who Goes Before or, even worse, that of Ezequiel, therefore, what’s awful is edible. It remains to be seen whether or not it’s more worthy for a man to fight over it by virtue of a natural necessity or to prefer it in obedience to religious, that is, mutable, exaltation, while hunger is eternal, like life and like death.”
We were at the door of my house. I was given a letter, which they said was from a lady. We went in and Quincas Borba, with the discretion proper to a philosopher, went over to read the spines of the books on a shelf while I read the letter, which was from Virgília:
My good friend,
Dona Plácida is very ill. I’m asking you the favor of doing something for her. She’s living on the Beco das Escadinhas. Could you see if you can get her admitted to Misericórdia Hospital for the indigent?
Your sincere friend,
It wasn’t Virgília’s delicate and correct hand, but heavy and uneven. The V of the signature was nothing but a scribble with no alphabetical intent, so that from the looks of the letter it was very hard to attribute its authorship to her. I turned the piece of paper over and over. Poor Dona Plácida! But I’d left her with the five contos from the beach at Gamboa, and I couldn’t understand why…
“You’ll understand,” Quincas Borba said, taking a book off the shelf.
“What?” I asked, startled.
“You’ll understand that I was telling nothing but the truth. Pascal is one of my spiritual grandfathers, and even though my philosophy is worth more than his, I can’t deny that he was a great man. Now, what does he say on this page?” And with his hat still on his head, his cane under his arm, he pointed out the place with his finger. “What does he say? He says that man has ‘a great advantage over the rest of the universe; he knows that he is going to die, while the universe is completely ignorant of the fact.’ Do you see? The man who fights over a bone with a dog, has the great advantage over him of knowing that he’s hungry. And that’s what makes it a grand fight, as I was saying. ‘He knows that he is going to die’ is a profound statement, but I think my statement is more profound: He knows that he’s hungry. Because the fact of death limits, in a manner of speaking, human understanding. The consciousness of extinction lasts only for a brief instant and ends forever, while hunger has the advantage of coming back, of prolonging the conscious state. It seems to me (at the risk of some immodesty) that Pascal’s formula is inferior to mine, without ceasing to be a great thought, however, or Pascal a great man.”
CXLIII
I’m Not Going
While he was putting the book back on the shelf I reread the note. At dinner, seeing that I wasn’t talking very much, chewing without really swallowing, staring into a corner of the room, or at the edge of the table, or at a plate, or at an invisible fly, he said: “Something’s not right with you. I’ll bet it was that letter.” It was. I felt really bothered, annoyed with Virgília’s request. I’d given Dona Plácida five contos. I doubt very much that anyone had been more generous than I, or even equally as generous. Five contos! And what had she done with them? She’d thrown them away, naturally, squandered them on big parties, and now she’s ready for Misericórdia and I’m the one to get her in! You can die anywhere. Furthermore, I didn’t know or didn’t recall any Beco das Escadinhas. But judging from its name as an alley I imagined it to be some dark and narrow corner of the city. I would have to go there, attract neighbors’ attention, knock on the door and all that. What a nuisance! I’m not going.
CXLIV
Relative Usefulness
But night, which is a good counselor, reflected that courtesy demanded I obey the wishes of my former lady.
“Bills that fall due have got to be paid,” I said on arising.
After breakfast I went to Dona Plácida’s place. I found a bundle of bones wrapped in rags lying on an old and revolting cot. I gave her some money. The next day I had her taken to Misericórdia, where she died a week later. I’m lying. She was found dead in the morning. She’d sneaked out of life just the way she’d come into it. I asked myself again, as in Chapter LXXV, if that was why the sexton of the cathedral and the candymaker had brought Dona Plácida into the world at a specific moment of affection. But I realized immediately that if it hadn’t been for Dona Plácida my affair with Virgília might have been interrupted or broken off suddenly in its full effervescence. Such, therefore, was the usefulness of Dona Plácida’s life. A relative usefulness, I admit, but what the devil is absolute in this world?
CXLV
A Simple Repetition
As for the five contos, it’s not worth mentioning that a neighborhood stonemason pretended to be in love with Dona Plácida, succeeded in arousing her feeling or her vanity, and married her. At the end of a few months he invented some business deal, cashed in their savings, and fled with the money. It’s not worth it. It’s a case like Quincas Borba’s dogs: a simple repetition of a chapter.
CXLVI
The Prospectus
It was urgent that I found the newspaper. I drew up the prospectus, which was a political application of Humanitism. Except that since Quincas Borba hadn’t published his book yet (which he went on perfecting year by year), we agreed not to make any reference to it. Quincas Borba only asked for a signed and confidential declaration that certain principles applied to politics had been drawn from his still-unpublished book.
It was a choice prospectus, it promised a cure for society, an end to abuses, a defense of the sound principles of liberty and conservation. It appealed to commerce and to labor. It quoted Guizot and Ledru-Rollin and ended with this threat, which Quincas Borba found petty and local: “The new doctrine that we profess will inevitably bring down the present government.” I must confess that given the political climate of the moment, the prospectus looked like a masterpiece to me. The threat at the end, which Quincas Borba found petty, was shown to him to be saturated with the purest Humanitism, and later on he himself allowed that it was. Since Humanitism excluded nothing, the Napoleonic Wars and a fight between goats, according to our doctrine, possessed the same sublimity, with the difference being that Napoleon’s soldiers knew that they were going to die, something that apparently wasn’t true with the goats. So I was only applying our philosophical formula to the circumstances: Humanitas wanted to replace Humanitas for the consolation of Humanitas.
“You are my beloved disciple, my caliph!” Quincas Borba roared with a touch of tenderness I hadn’t heard in him till then. “I can say like the great Mohammed: Even if the sun and the moon come against me, I will not turn back from my ideas. Believe me, my dear Brás Cubas, this is the eternal truth, before the world and after the ages.”
CXLVII
Madness
I immediately sent a discreet notice to the press saying that within a few weeks an opposition paper edited by Dr. Brás Cubas would begin publication. Quincas Borba, to whom I read the notice, picked up a pen and with true humanistic brotherhood added this phrase after my name: “one of the most glorious members of the previous Chamber of Deputies.”
The next day Cotrim stopped by my place. He was a bit upset, but he hid it, affecting calm and even happiness. He’d seen the news of the paper and felt that as a friend and relative he should dissuade me from an idea like that. It was a mistake, a serious mistake. He pointed out how I would be putting myself in a difficult situation and, in a certain way, locking th
e doors of parliament to me. The government not only seemed excellent to him, which couldn’t be my opinion of course, but it would also certainly endure for a long time. So what could I gain by turning it unfavorable to me? He knew that some of the ministers liked me. It wasn’t impossible that a vacancy, and … I interrupted him at that point to tell him that I had meditated a great deal about the step I was going to take and I wouldn’t retreat an inch. I got to the point of suggesting that he read the prospectus, but he refused vehemently, saying that he didn’t want to share the tiniest part of my madness.
“It’s absolute madness,” he repeated. “Think it over for a few days and you’ll see that it’s madness.”
Sabina said the same thing at the theatre that night. She left her daughter in the box with Cotrim and took me out into the corridor.
“Brother Brás, what are you doing?” she asked me with affliction. “What kind of an idea is that, provoking the government for no reason when you could …”
I explained to her that it wasn’t for me to go about begging for a seat in parliament, that my idea was to bring down the government because I didn’t think it was equal to the situation—and a certain philosophical formula. I promised always to use courteous although energetic language. Violence wasn’t a spice for my palate. Sabina tapped the tips of her fingers with her fan, lowered her head, and picked up the matter again, alternating between pleas and threats. I told her no, no, no. Disappointed, she threw into my face the idea that I preferred the advice of strange and envious people to hers and her husband’s. “So, then, just keep on with what seems best to you,” she concluded. “We’ve done our duty.” She turned her back on me and returned to her box.
CXLVIII
The Unsolvable Problem
I published the newspaper. Twenty-four hours later a declaration by Cotrim appeared in other papers saying in substance that given the fact that he was not a member of either of the parties into which the nation was divided, he found it expedient to make it quite clear that he had no influence on or any direct or indirect part in the journal of his brother-in-law Dr. Brás Cubas, whose ideas and political directions he disapproved of. The present government (like any other composed of equally competent members) seemed to him to be working for the public good.
It was hard for me to believe my eyes. I rubbed them once or twice and reread the inopportune, unusual, and enigmatic declaration. If he had nothing to do with the parties, what was an incident as minor as the publication of a newspaper to him? Not all citizens who find a government good or bad make declarations like that to the press, nor are they obliged to do so. Really, Cotrim’s intrusion into that affair was a mystery, no less than his personal attack. Our relations until then had been smooth and pleasant. I. couldn’t remember any dissension, any shadow, anything, after the reconciliation. On the contrary, the memory was one of genuine good will. As, for example, when I was a deputy I was able to obtain some supply contracts for the naval arsenal for him, contracts that he continued fulfilling with the greatest punctuality and concerning which he spoke to me a few weeks earlier, saying that at the end of three more years they might bring him two hundred contos. Well, then, shouldn’t the memory of such a large favor be enough to stop him from going public and tarnishing his brother-in-law’s reputation? The reasons behind his declaration must have been very powerful in order to make him commit an act of impertinence and an act of ingratitude at the same time. I must confess, it was an unsolvable problem.
CXLIX
The Theory of Benefits
… So unsolvable that Quincas Borba couldn’t handle it in spite of having studied it for a long time and quite willingly. “So goodbye, then!” he concluded. “Not every philosophical problem is worth five minutes’ attention.”
As for the censure of ingratitude, Quincas Borba rejected it out of hand, not as unprobable, but as absurd, because it didn’t obey the conclusions of a good humanistic philosophy.
“You can’t deny one fact,” he said, “which is that the pleasure of the benefactor is always greater than that of the benefactee. What is a benefit? It’s an act that brings a certain deprivation of the one benefited to an end. Once the essential effect has been produced, once the deprivation has ceased, that is, the organism returns to its previous state, a state of indifference. Just suppose that the waist of your trousers is too tight. In order to relieve the uncomfortable situation you unbutton the waist, you breathe, you enjoy an instant of pleasure, the organism returns to indifference and you forget about the fingers that performed the operation. If there’s nothing that lasts, it’s natural that memory should disappear, because it’s not an aerial plant, it needs earth. The hope for other favors, of course, always holds the benefactee in a remembrance of the first one, but that fact, also one of the most sublime that philosophy can find in its path, is explained by the memory of deprivation or, using a different formula, by deprivation’s continuing on in memory, which echoes the past pain and advises alertness for an opportune remedy. I’m not saying that even without this circumstance it doesn’t sometimes happen that the memory of the favor will persist, accompanied by a certain more or less intense affection. But they’re true aberrations with no value whatever in the eyes of a philosopher.”
“But,” I replied, “if there’s no reason for the memory of the favor to last in the favored, there must be even less in relation to the favorer. I’d like you to explain that point for me.”
“What’s obvious by its nature can’t be explained,” Quincas Borba replied, “but I’ll say one thing more. The persistence of the benefit in the memory of the one performing it is explained by the very nature of the benefit and its effects. In the first place, there’s the feeling of a good deed and, deductively, the awareness that we’re capable of good acts. In the second place, a conviction of superiority over another being is received, a superiority in status and means, and this is one of the most legitimately pleasant things for the human organism according to the best opinions. Erasmus, who wrote some good things in his In Praise of Folly, called attention to the complacency with which two donkeys rub against each other. I’m far from rejecting that observation by Erasmus, but I shall say what he didn’t say, to wit, that if one of the donkeys rubbed better than the other, he would have some special indication of satisfaction in his eyes. Why is it that a pretty woman looks into a mirror so much if not because she finds herself pretty and, therefore, it gives her a certain superiority over a multitude of women less pretty or absolutely ugly? Conscience is just the same. It looks at itself quite often when it finds itself pretty. Nor is remorse anything else but the twitch of a conscience that sees itself repugnant. Don’t forget that since everything is a simple irradiation of Humanitas, a benefit and its effects are perfectly admirable phenomena.
CL
Rotation and Translation
Every enterprise, attachment, or age contains a complete cycle of human life. The first number of my paper filled my soul with a vast awakening, crowned me with garlands, restored the quickness of youth to me. Six months later the hour of old age struck, and two weeks later that of death, which was in secret, like Dona Plácida’s. On the day the paper was found dead in the morning, I sighed deeply, like a man who’d come back from a long journey. So if I were to say that human life feeds other more or less ephemeral lives, the way a body feeds its parasites, I don’t think I would be saying something completely absurd. But in order not to risk a less neat and adequate image like that, I prefer an astronomical one: man executes, to the turn of the wheel of the great mystery, a double movement of rotation and translation. Its days are unequal, like those of Jupiter, and they comprise its more or less long year.
At the moment I was finishing my movement of rotation, Lobo Neves was concluding his movement of translation. He died with his foot on the ministerial step. It had been rumored for several weeks that he was going to be a minister. And since the rumor filled me with a great deal of irritation and envy, it’s not impossible that the news of
his death left me with a touch of tranquility, relief, and one or two minutes of pleasure. Pleasure may be an exaggeration, but it was true. I swear to the ages that it was absolutely true.
I attended the funeral. At the mortuary I found Virgília by the casket, sobbing. When she lifted her head I saw that she was really weeping. Before leaving the funeral she embraced the coffin with affliction. They came to pull her off and take her away. I tell you, the tears were genuine. I went to the cemetery and, to say it outright, I didn’t feel much like speaking. A stone was stuck in my throat or in my conscience. At the cemetery, most of all when I dropped the spadeful of lime onto the coffin at the bottom of the grave, the dull thud of the lime gave me a shudder, a fleeting one, it’s true, but unpleasant. And afterwards the afternoon had the weight and color of lead. The cemetery, the black clothing …
CLI
The Philosophy of Epitaphs
I left, keeping away from the groups of people and pretending to read the epitaphs. Besides, I like epitaphs. Among civilized people they’re an expression of that pious and secret selfishness that induces us to pull out of death a shred at least of the shade that has passed on. That may be the origin of the inconsolable sadness of those who know their dead are in potter’s field. They feel the anonymous rotting reaching themselves.
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas Page 22